Nokedli

Greetings!

I am a holy specced paladin from a pretty casual guild on a European PvE Server. I realize that this might not be the best place for my kind - Kara-geared healer, lacking serious (TK/SSC) raid experience -, but I hope, that you might be able to answer a couple questions for me. I'm constantly trying to improve myself, meaning that I'm always open to constructive criticism, but the official post boards (US/EU WoW forums) are just...well, just say that I couldn't find anything interesting there.

All in all, I've got two questions:

1.) Which one is better? Stacking +healing, while neglecting crit and mp5 or keeping a healthy balance between heal up/spellcrit/mp5? (e.g.: I'm currently packing ~1710 heal up, 80mp5, 25,5% crit for FoL and 29,5% crit for HL) In my opinion, it's alright to sacrifice +healing for other stats. By the way, I only need 5 more badges to buy the pants from G'eras. For example, a guildie of mine has ~1830 heal up, with about 19% holy crit and 65 mp5.

2.) Is there an optimal spell selection? Currently I'm using max rank FoL, while keeping LG up with r1 HL, and blowing higher ranks (8-11) of HL if there is trouble.

I've read a couple topics concerning holy pallies, and I'd like to get better at my job, so I welcome any advices that you can offer.

Nevertheless, I'm curious about what you have to say.



My armory:

The World of Warcraft Armory

 

galzohar

The only thing not mentioned in this thread already is light's grace with r1 HL. I find that not a good thing to do as it means you're not healing for 2s. In most fights where I want to keep LG up I use rank 7 HL as it provides similar HPS to my FoL spam - granted a lot lower efficiency but it's better to cast it once and go back to FoL spamming than overhealing with a max rank HL or waiting for the tank to drop low enough for a max rank HL to not overheal much - which would both risk the tank and waste even more mana. r1 HL though is out of question (except for tough heroic pulls where you need to HL spam the tank but even then properly pre-casting max rank HL on him can work fine), as it puts your healing out of the action for too long, risking the tank and/or putting more pressure on your fellow healers.

 

Xetron

Well Fielding good points there. I think with the shield as a pick (vs bastion) you basically get 27 spellcrit vs 22 healing/1mp5 and i would guess that the additional spellcrit is superior here even for a FoL setup (no complex math behind this).
I actually didn't think about the vashj gloves though (only about the leather ones from gorefiend), here you would basically exchange 50+heal vs 2% spellcrit (flat) and i think you are right that the vashj gloves would come out on top here (sadly we don't go ssc anymore).

 

Jakome

My guild recently merged with another and we've jumped ahead from just downing lurker to working on vashj. I'm thinking about doing some work on my gems because basically what i run right now is 8 spell crit/ 9healing2mp5 ones. Problem is i'm not sure if I'm going to see shadow priest that much for a little but I occasionally hang out with shammys. I am a FoL spammer and according to wws they were hitting on average for 1771 but a 27% chance to crit. If I started to switch a majority of them out for 18healing then a couple of the heroic heal/crit heal/int ones do you think that could lead to mana issues or with my current fickle mana battery situation or should i just stick with the set up i have?

Basically I'd go from 1902 healing 115mp5 unbuffed to around 2k healing 97 mp5 plus I would gain a little crit and some int. As it is right now i'm sitting at 10.2k mana

Oh and the gloves off vashj are about the only ones I see i would trade my s3 glove for

 

galzohar

If you always wait until the tank drops low enough to take a ~1.5x of a normal flash heal then crit becomes that much better. However nobody in his right mind plays like that, which makes crit a lot less powerful. With my rough guestimation of having 60% of your heals on targets that only need a non-crit flash, 1 crit is worth roughly 1.25 +heal with my gear, wether I have a shadowpriest or not. MP5 though is worth 3.55 healing for me with shaman+sp, but ~6.7 healing without a shadowpriest - as you haev a lot less mana for the +heal/crit to multiply plain mana increase becomes a lot better. Anyway with 18 healing gems being a lot better than even 10 crit X 1.25 = 12.5 healing, and the fact that when the tank is going down you're not expecting a lucky crit to save his ass and thus +healing provides much higher (reliable) emergency burst on top of the fact it's most likely more efficient.

As you can see (as well as if you play with the spreadsheet) the amount of mana you get from your raid makes a HUGE difference on how good mp5 is. Crit<->+heal will always remain similar as they both increase the effectiveness your mana has, however heal also benefits burst healing while crit doesn't (I know it may sound like it doesn't make sense, but think about it as "the tank is 1k HP from dying - do I want 18 more +heal or more chance to crit?" and the answer will be +heal). Remember though even without a shadowpriest 18 healing is still the higher burst healing gem even over the more efficient (without shadow priest) 9 heal 2 mp5 gem, so it really depends on how much you evaluate burst healing ability VS how much you evaluate doing more healing in a given fight assuming all mana used.

 

Rerolled

I'm working on building two pve healing sets, one with maximum burst healing, and one a more regen oriented set, has anyone else done this? And which set do you find yourself using more often?

 

vorda

Im actually doing that, but mostley because I had alot of high mp5 items laying around, not so much because I aimed to.

We have a 'group1 rotation' currently, which means that every 3-4 weeks I'm in group 1 and thus without a shadowpriest. On the longer, more regen based fights (gurtogg and council mainly) I swap items like my pants with the mail hyjal ones, trinkets with regen based ones (hexxlord and LCPB), boots (badges vs pearl inlaid), belt (primal mooncloth vs stormgarde's hope) and a ring (when I get the nan'jentus ring..).

I'm toying with the idea of picking up more mp5 based mail items for the 'group1' week, but Im not sure if it would benefit me that much, considering most of the times I go oom in g1 is when I'm being abit too cheap on pots.

 

jusion

I just use +22 healing gems. Mana regen is a nonissue since you'll be flashing so much. And even with the occasional burst heal, your mana will be fine.

 

flyingtoastr

There are some fights that you want the maximum burst healing possible and mana is a non-issue (RoS, Shade) and some fights where you will need to squeeze out every ounce of mana you possibly can (Council, Bloodboil). I've personally found that simply swapping trinkets from +healing trinkets to +Mp5/+int and swapping my two weapons (one with 81 healing, one with Spellsurge) is usually enough for most fights and a full gear swap isn't required. That being said, I still find myself chain-chugging on a few of the longer fights even with my regen gear on, so if its your goal to eliminate the need for a pot every 2 minutes you might look into a full resocket gear swap. On most fights I find its best just to take a balanced approach and split the difference between full +healing and full regen.

You will rarely if ever be the sole healer on a tank, and even with just one resto druid rolling a lifebloom there will be no need for you to worry about cranking out the largest FoL possible to keep the tank up, so extra regen sockets instead of straight healing can help by reducing the number of pots you have to take. And of course, the more you use HL the better crit will become compared to healing and Mp5. In all regards though, in a raid enviroment you can't go wrong with a strong balanced set.

I personally am not a fan of the whole "+22 healing in every socket" approach, because I feel a Paladin's job is to outlast, not to outheal. Thats really neither here nor there though.

 

vorda

You should do a search after topics on the class forum with 'spellsurge' in the name, there is an addon to auto swap your spellsurge weapon in/out depending on the internal cooldown. (spellsurge has a very high proc rate with an internal cooldown)

 

jusion

Perhaps, but when I use all +22 healing gems and rarely have to pot on Council or Illidan, (without a spreist) WHILE topping healing, then I think I have a working strategy. Higher flashes = less need to HL/FoL = less mana used. Paladins can outlast simply by merit of FoL's low mana cost.

 

flyingtoastr

Forgive me, but you also have the best in slot item for pretty much every single slot, and I'm going to assume most of your guild is in the same position.

Again though, it was really just a side comment about how I play. I still prefer to downrank HL over straight up FoL spam, (mainly just to stave off boredom) but to compensate I have to use more regen gear than your typical spambot and thus I view my socketing choices differently. And as long as you don't stack so far into +healing that you run OOM even while chain-potting you're fine.

 

jusion

Yeah, such are the benefits or being in a 30-person guild. :P

Yeah, I see what you mean and that makes sense. The BoL nerf didn't happen until we were already done with BC content, so I don't really have a good view of what its like before that.

 

galzohar

All the numbers I'm throwing around I get fromt he spreadsheet after adjusting it to take into account the mana efficiency gained by having more HPS and thus needing to do less of your healing via HL. Without taking that into account there would be little point using full +healing even with a shadow priest most likely, assuming mana efficiency is any kind of an issue over max hps.

Downranking HLs as a standard way to heal is just downright stupid since 2.3. The efficiency of low rank HLs is almost as bad as that of a max rank, which is about 1/2, give or take, of the efficiency of FoL. Not to mention rank 7 is already pretty close to the HPS of max rank FoL, so healing primarily with HL is just a way to create mana issues and do less healing.

Assuming you get a shadowpriest for every healing intensive fight, and don't have any alternative pieces, +22/18 healing in all slots except ones with very worthwhile socket bonuses (which are harder to find when you have access to 22 healing gems as the loss for taking the socket bonus becomes bigger than when you use 18 healing gems) should work great. Having alternative gear that gives you higher efficiency for the fights where you don't get a shadow priest, assuming they're somewhere above "trivial" difficulty level, would be even better.

Trying to gear up for no pots is not something I'll never do. I only really occasionally use pots when I don't have a shadow priest (or if I do have a shadow priest but it's an extremely messy attempt with many people dead etc and I have to HL a lot), however I base my start over using pots, as I will be using the biggest ones as often as possible when it'll actually be needed. If you want to base your gearing on no consumeables, however, it's easy to adjust the spreadsheet for it as well and see what you get (as in, you'll find yourself finding mp5 more powerful (crit vs +heal stay about the same), which means without a shadow priest you'll probably want 4 mp5 in every slot for epic, or 9 heal 2 mp5 or even 3 mp5 for blue). Of course maximizing yourself means you're using full consumeables and therefore dropping 100 mp5 from pots and 25 mp5 from flask (or 16 mp5 50 healing from elixir combo) will have some impact on your gear choices.

 

Chromas

Hey Guys, lemme make sure I'm understanding this correctly.

In the Assumptions section of the original post, the downrank penalty is explained as follows:

The penalty for down-ranking can be calculated via the following: (lvl + 11) / clvl, where lvl is the level you learned the spell in question, and clvl is your character's level. This level must be at 10 or more levels below your current level, and is a multiplicative modifier to the cast time healing penalty coefficients of the respective spell. And the downranking effects the benefit from BoL? Or what?

With this being the case, The spells that would NOT be penalized are HL 10, 11 and FoL 7, correct?

And just for math and examples sake, FoL 6 (learned at level 58, 10 or more levels below) would be calculated as follows:

(58+11=69)/70 = .9857, with .9857 being what exactly?

And HL 7 (learned at level 46), would be calculated as follows:

(46+11=57)/70 = .8142, with .8142 being what exactly?

Are these numbers (.9857 and .8142) percentages of actual healing? Or am I totally and utterly confused?

I've read through the thread but still am confused about this. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

flyingtoastr

Which can be compensated for, jut as I said, with more regen instead of totally stacking +healing. Hell, if you have a decent Shadow Priest in your group there is no reason not to be downranking.

You're entirely correct that it is less efficient that FoL. We have no heal other than a full-OOM LoH that can match the efficiency of FoL. But downranking HL does give a lot more flexibility in healing. Instead of needing to flash twice to heal someone who is -2.5k I can HL VII once and move on. Tank takes a big spike? Great, LG is always up. Bored as hell spamming one button for 10 minutes? Great, try downranking, its fun and requires you to think a little bit.

If everything was about efficiency Paladins wouldn't even have an HL XI on their bars (as it is close to the most inefficient heal in the game). Efficiency looks great on paper, but in a real raid situation you will almost never get to throw only FoL VIIs. Thats just the way bursty damage is on anything except a straight up TnS.

And of course, when you're talking about +22 healing gems you're talking about Spinels, and our DPS casters would kill me for taking any of them.

 

tdevil

It sounds like you might just be pushing more healing burden on your other healers.

I noticed that other healers will usually jump the gun and throw in a heals to keep the tank topped off, unless you coordinate all your healers to not top the tank off so you can land in your heals they might be just covering you slightly more.

 

galzohar

HL7 is 1627 HPS with my gear, FoL7 is 1260, HL6 is 1321, HL11 is 2608.
HL7 is 8.36 HPM, with my gear, FoL7 is 12.02, HL6 is 8.64, HL11 is 7.41.

If you want HPS over efficiency, going from HL6/7 to HL11 loses very little efficiency for a huge gain of HPS. If you want to get efficiency, you "downrank" to FoL7, as downranking to HL7 hardly gives efficiency and already drops your HPS to almost as low as FoL spamming anyway. Not to mention FoL spamming is 1.5s cast over 2s which means it's a lot more likely to heal before other healers are healing, and is generally safer. Granted I will keep light's grace up with HL6-7 on fights that matter to keep my HPS up over using HL1, as letting the tank drop for a HL11 is counter-productive, but my bulk of healing will be FoL7. If you're in such an emergency that FoL doesn't cut it, you probably want HL11 anyway (which only heals to ~4-5k depending on gear and buffs on target, which is not going to overheal if it's a real emergency assuming you're actually the first go get the heal in).

Usually if I want more HPS I need more than that extra 400. In most cases where HL7 is enough HPS, FoL is as well. If you're not about efficiency, use HL11 more on people that need it. If they don't need it, grats, you have the fight on farm - healing-wise at least, since nobody is ever dropping for lower than 5k health deficit the fight is definitely not hard to heal.

 

flyingtoastr

Real theorycrafting.

We'll take your average BT paladin with say 2000 +healing. For the sake of argument, we won't include any set bonuses, though it is worth nothing that the 2 piece T6 is incredible for HL builds and the 4 piece is equally as good for spambots. I personally use Ranks IV, VII, IX, and XI of HL when I downrank, and of course FoL VII. This all assumes BoL is on the target and for now we'll ignore any libram effects (though they do end up changing the numbers drastically). Everything is rounded. Light's Grace is assumed 100% uptime (all Holy Light casts are 2 seconds). This will assume your typical 42/18/0-ish build with 3/3 Healing Light. Downranking is penalized using the typical (lvl + 11) / clvl formula for both BoL and healing coefficients. Finally, at least for now, criticals are not factored.

FoL VII:

Mana Cost: 180
Heal Average: 1699
HPS: 1133
HPM: 9.44

HL IV:

Mana Cost: 190
Heal Average: 1434
HPS: 717
HPM: 7.55

HL VII:

Mana Cost: 465
Heal Average: 2951
HPS: 1475.5
HPM: 6.35

From here on out you incur no penalties from downranking.

HL IX:

Mana Cost: 660
Heal Average: 4131
HPS: 2065.5
HPM: 6.26

HL XII:

Mana Cost: 840
Heal Average: 4848
HPS: 2424
HPM: 5.77

If you would like to see the math I'll be happy to PM it, but it has no real bearing to the discussion.

Things get interesting when you start to bring in Illumination, librams, stacking gear one way or the other, etc. Maybe tomorrow I'll do an "ideal gear" kind of thing. For now though, I must sleep.

And of course, if I made a glaring mistake please feel free to bug me.

 

galzohar

While the practical impementation of your numbers won't be big by those changes, including crit will give a global HPS increase (as I assumed equal crit-overheal for all spells although this isn't nescessarily the best assumption), and give slightly more efficiency incease to HL over FoL, but not nearly enough for a significant playstyle change (as HL efficiency will only go up by slightly more than the FoL efficiency). Not to mention libram of souls redeemed (which had yet to drop even thouhg i've done opera every week since I hit 70 on my paladin) will add much more efficiency and a bit more HPS to FoL than HL. And as a paladin most of your healing should go to targets with BoL up, or else the raid is probably better off with another healer in your spot anyway, and I'd rather gear myself for optimal raid group, as that's what you usually try to run with when progressing.

Also doesn't HL9 have slight downrank penalty?

 

flyingtoastr

HL IX is trained at level 60, so no, it gets full benefits.

I've been working on numbers including crit and the T6 bonuses, but I need to nail down a few things before I post them. Does the 4 piece set bonus from T6 apply before Healing Light, after healing light, multiply with healing light, etc?

 

levk

All multipliers always stacked (with special case exceptions like deathwish + enrage). Back when enrage stacked with deathwish you did 1.2 (deathwish) * 1.25 (enrage) = 1.5 times the damage you'd normally do. So 1.12 (healing light) * 1.05 (T4 4pc) = 1.176 or 17.6% total increase.

 

Gaston

Great post very informative! Would like to add to the professions benefits: Drums of Restoration // Drums of Battle

 

Exio

Any idea why I can't see the link
[Paladin] Spell Haste
with my login? I get Access Denied....

 

◊ Shalas

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