Just the fact that you're not reaching your limits of efficiency doesn't mean it's unlimited. But when you look at how gear affects your efficiency you look at the most extreme case of using all of it - why would you look at how an increase to your efficiency help when you're only using 1/2 of it? That's why efficiency calculations should be based on using all your mana, as it's prediciting what's the maximum healing intensiveness you can handle. Not what you're actually going to be doing.

There's a big difference between burst HPS and <healing done>/<fight duration>. I mean I find dividing the healing done by fight duration quite pointless as it has the exact same meaning as simply the total healing done. That's why I only use the term "HPS" for "burst" or "how much healing/sec I can put up during a short emergency".

The reason I talk a lot about efficiency is actually not because I find it more important than burst, in fact on most fights I've done I've also felt that my burst was noticeably more important although efficiency wasn't of a nil value either. It's more because efficiency is simply harder to calculate - for burst HPS all you have to do is take the max heal and divide by casting time...

For the efficiency calculation with crit of course you need to also multiply by the effective healing of crits, I figured that would've been obvious I just wanted to stress out that the maximum mana you can use due to crit depends on how much mana you have and not how much you used. Note that the effective healing of crits though is naturally lower than +50% per crit since we generally don't heal people assuming that we crit but rather assume we don't crit and a crit would overheal. Of course crits don't heal for +0% either as often enough we also heal people that could use more than the full heal and there crits wouldn't overheal. Finding a way to figure out or even roughly estimate the effective healing done by crits is something I'm still not sure how to do, but it's definitely noticeably lower than +50% per crit and higher than 0%.

The reason crit doesn't do anything effective for burst healing is the same as dodge doesn't do anything for burst survival. It has the chance to save you but it also has the chance not to. On average it'll help your efficiency (like dodge helps reduce the overall damage taken over the fight), but when bad luck hits, bad luck hits, and you don't crit nor does the tank dodge. No matter how much you reduce its chance to happen it'll still happen and burst gearing is gearing to handle that situation the best way possible when it does happen.

For burst HPS stats haste is quite noticeably better than +healing for any realistic gear level, however the efficiency loss is quite noticeable as well. If you really think you should just focus on total max burst and nothing else, haste all the way. Otherwise +healing is a great balance of efficiency and burst. The speradsheets would generally tell you to stack mp5 as they calculate max efficiency, and without massive mana support (shadow priest mostly) mp5 is clearly the best efficiency stat if that's what you actually want.


To sum it up I agree the main role for paladins is burst on the tank (if they wanted efficiency they'd take shamans/priests and keep paladins outside the instance to buff to be honest). Therefore haste or hit gemming depending on how desperate you are for HPS at the cost of efficiency is the best way to gem. mp5 is only a real option if you actually play a role where your efficiency is more important than your burst (possibly for a long najentus fight with low # of healers for example) then mp5 is the best stat, but this kind of situation is more of the exception rather than the rule it seems.


A bit about theory VS practice
The reason even the best paladins seem to gear completely randomly (and no, they don't all mix crit/haste gems, if you look at top raiding paladins you'll see each one with totally different rules that seem to follow pure intuition and often even having clear self-contracdiction!) is that you simply can't measure anything accurately enough to actually prove any theory. Even when you go to the side of the DPSers you simply can't prove one spec is better than another on WWS if only for statistical error not counting other things that affect your measurements. That's why you see people constantly bringing up specs that are theoretically proven to be pointless and back them up with their WWS as "proof". The fact is very little theorycrafting in this game is proven, simply becuase you can't prove it due to measuring the effect of stats and specs being impossible. Therefore people in this game are going to argue forever and the only way to actually decide on a way to gear is pure theory. In practice you will never know if that theory was true or not but you can at least use your knoledge of basic game mechanics to tell if you were at least going in the right direction to make yourself the best player possible. At the end your gear is the last thing to change the outcome of a fight, but it's still another brick that makes the wall.


EDIT: To answer the question "do I need more efficiency? How badly?" you answer by answering "how likely am I to need all my mana?" and not by "do I have mana left at the end of the fight?"
This should solve a lot of the people thinking that calculations based on using all your mana are wrong because of safety reasons, while the calculations are fine - it's when they're relevent that you need to reconsider. They're relevent even if you're not using all your mana as long as there's a chance for you to need to use all your mana. But the calculations should still be based on using all your mana as if you have no chance to use all your mana it means you have way more than enough and do not need any more efficiency.

Anyone pick up that Vial of the sunwell?

How's the instant 2k heal in a raid setting? Its a few hundred more than holy shock.

I've found it extremely useful. Since we don't really have any panic instant heals except holy shock which costs tons of mana, heals for little and triggers gcd which makes it pretty useless in general witha few exceptions. The trinket however does not trigger gcd, and you can stack it up before pulling. That plus the 15mp/5 makes me very happy about this trinket.

Hello everyone

I've been reading the EJ forums for some info on new Paladin healing tactics, and appart some weird threads about how spell haste doesn't really help healing, seems many players noticed some changes for the Paladin. I'm asking myself the same questions and i just did a bit of practising with Spell Haste gear so best is to tell you about it :

Once upon a time ...

Usually the paladin is stuck to his spot trying to give constant healing to whoever is tanking, so most of the time it meant spamming FoL, and if tank didn't get enough heals we just asked to another Paladin to help, best FoL spam fight is Illidan with the Demon form, 2 paladins can keep it alive and 3 makes him safe.
A few other situations needs some higher heals, like when healing the Mage tank on illidari council, just watch the Arcane Bolts inc and start casting HL.
Most of the time, healing was about keeping my group alive and sending around some FoL, Mage gets aggro on trash ?, give him 2 more FoL and forget about him, he's gonna get 40k healing from the whole raid in a sec.

SO even if i had my HL Rank 4-9-11 binded and ready to use :

- I couldn't really use them for a long period due to mana consumption.
- I didn't need to use them 90% of the time.

I had to be reactive on trash, constant on bosses, Paladins wasn't meant for group healing, FoL was the only way to be !


But seems things just changed ..

After healing a few MgT heroics i noticed that my FoL couldn't stand the burst dmg some bosses do (in fact every boss in MgT can remove 2/3 of your group HP in a eyeblink, exept the PvP team if they don't aim the same guy), and my Holy Light was so slow i couldn't save everyone. So i just putted up some tactics where i didn't heal the hunter and kept everyone else alive ... Ah no , i switched my gear to get some Spell Haste.
- HL talent always up.
- Can keep the same amount of low healings on everyone with HL4-5
- If any burst dmg happens i can swith to higher heals and save the hunter

Same happened on Kalecgos, after many wipes where we brought him to almost dead , something was missing, my FoL could help on keeping the tank alive, but i couldn't spare a second for that hunter in my grp who just lost 6k, and the grp healer was already focusing on : 1-Keeping the 3 other members up / 2-Helping me to heal the tank / 3- He missed the portal so he could keep healing the other tank / 4-Whatever.
Tried to use some HL, but 2.44 cast time on the emergency heals just don't save anyone.
Back to my Spell Haste Gear.
- HL talent always up.
- Can keep the same amount of low healings on everyone with HL4-5
- Can keep a constant 6k heals on the tank ( HL9 )
- I feel safe to help the grp healer
- The grp healer don't need to focus on tank
- If any burst dmg happens i can swith to higher heals and save the hunter

Same happens on Brutallus, all of the paladins have to keep a constant flow of healing on the tank + Burst healings when needed ( -Stomp / -Healer gets burned / -Tank switching ), we had no problem on keeping the tank alive when nothing happens , but on every special event the tank dies .... Guid master started to point out something = Paladins failed ...
So just putted on my old Spell Haste Gear (whistle an old cow boy song).
- HL talent always up.
- Can keep the same amount of low healings on everyone with HL4-5
- Can keep a constant 6k heals on the tank ( HL9 )
- Can throw some high heals when needed ( HL11 )
- The grp healer don't need to focus on tank
- I don't have to save the hunter here


Simple Maths :

I can't make a full scale simulation of the paladins healing, and i won't even try, i'm just giving my feelings about how i handle my motorbike, and with SWP Blizz just made Paladin healing much more fun, have to be reactive and powerfull on healings, stop being a constant bandage stuck to the back of your tank, Heal and forget, the FoL can't handle the dmg your raid gets, so give some Holy Light, and give them fast !

At the moment i have 197 Spell haste rating, that makes my Holy Light cast at :
- 2.22 sec unbuffed (1% of the time)
- 1.78 sec with talent up (89% of the time)
- 1.52 sec with trinket, wich procs about 10% of the time (scarab of the infinite Cycle)

The gear set is far from perfect , but i still have 11k mana and 2450+ buffed healing with it (still missing a cloak / belt and mace to have all the spell haste pre 2.4)
I've been gathering spell haste gear since the first day i saw it on a item, for me it was the best way to upgrade the paladin's skills, didn't know if it could become usefull, and the 1.5sec GCD didn't help. So after a few tries i just switched back my T6 gear and sticked to it (At that moment i was aiming for +Healing and a freind of mine decided to go for +crit, tbh we didn't notice any huge difference, Paladins was stuck at 9-11% healing of the raid and couldn't match the 16-18% of the Shammies/ Droods / Priest- So whatever our choice, paladins in our guild was already maxed out).

But with the 2.4 patch, the new Spell Haste items, the GCD reduced to 1 sec, the fast and outrageous dmg u get ... Spell Haste is really the best thing that could happen, i didn't get 100% accurate feedback about it yet , but i won't be surprised to see paladins back on the top of the charts soon.

There are many other things i didn't investigate and i'm really curious about (like how the hell i was able to spam HL9 all the fight without running out of mana ). But i think my post is long enough and i just sayd what i thought about Spell Haste.

I hope this helped you a bit, sorry for my bad english, c u hf.

Pandel

What forces you to use HL4 over FoL with your spell haste? I mean if light's grace is about to fall off you can always do your HL rank of choice instead of a FoL to get it back up and go back to FoL until a HL is needed.

Nothing changed, you still FoL when you can and HL when more is needed.

And haste was never bad. There's a difference between saying "it does nothing for your efficiency" (and even that is only 90% true), to saying "it does nothing for healing" (which is completely not true unless your main issue is your mana efficiency which is usually not the case).

By definition if you can spam FoL through a whole fight it's just a too easy one. If you have to spam HL through it it's too hard and even impossible (unless it's very, very short). On a real fight that's challenging but possible you will need to FoL as your bread&butter heal while keeping light's grace up so you can toss that HL (or 5 of them) in time. There's no reason to cast HL when FoL is getting the job done (safely!) and there's no reason to FoL when it would cause people to die becuase they took more damage than you were healing.

At the end nothing really changed for healing except itemization went a bit more towards HPS and less towards efficiency by having more haste available for / put into it. Alongside came the 2.4 GCD changes which gave a slight buff to haste (I say slight becuase it's only an HPS increase to FoL which isn't really a bonus to your burst ability but only a small boost to your efficiency due to having to HL slightly less often). The role as a healer in general and paladin in specific remained quite the same even once you actually have enough of the new itemization.

Haste has no special favoring for HL (although you generally gear it to increase HL HPS rather than FoL as you don't use FoL for its HPS). Having haste doesn't mean you shouldn't FoL as your bread&butter heal. Not having haste never meant you can let light's grace fall off and fell good about it, and it's still the case.

Why i should use FoL over HL ?

At the moment my HL4 doesn't really match the FoL speed (0.26 sec missing), so i just use the HL5 to compensate this, but as soon i reach 300 Spell Haste i think it will be safe to use HL4 fulltime.

When you're spam healing a tank with FoL and suddenly some burst dmg appears, you don't have 2.5 sec left to send a big HL , and of course , your light's grace buff isn't up because you were -----> spamming FoL (when i'm spam healing FoL, 10% of the time i can safely HL to trigger the Light Grace, makes it rely on luck, and i got 200 examples when i had to cast a big HL who never reached the target because of the missing LG, ofc if i was a bot i could stick to the maths and put up LG , run away from the guy next to me before portal pops up, heal the tank x3 FoL, heal again FoLx2 coz ppl got portal dmg, heal again the tank, take a coffee break and cast HL for triggering LG, and so on ...)

I use HL4 to keep the Buff all time, that's the first reason, but there's some little extra that makes all the difference, like getting more mana regen from HL crits.
So basically i get more mana for about the same amount of HPS ... Why should i use FoL then ?

Btw , don't get me wrong , with the Light Grace up FoL is still a nice emergency heal, and it's a life saver, but spamming a 3k FoL every 1.5sec on a tank who gets 16k burst dmg every 2 second just won't work, even with 3 palys working on it, make it 3 palys casting 5-6k HL9 under 2 sec and you get something done, make this work and you can meet brutallus, get some spell haste and you make the fight easier.

To be Honest, i wasn't the one asking for Spell Haste, i tried to make it work once, and obviously it didn't fit in BT/Hyjal, but if you completed MgT or even if u raid SWP, i think SH is a key stat that makes quite some difference.

Or you can just stick to FoL and Have Fun, there is plenty of situation where people needs constant bandage sticking to theyr back, but i really would like to make a difference on keeping the raid alive, and any single point that makes me heal better / heal faster / heal stronger is 200% efficient. In fact, this is the difference between making a safe run and facing challenges.

Galzohar, i think you are completly wrong, but you're still a nice guy.

Uh, FoL does more HPS then HL4, and for most gear setup HL5. While also using less mana. You can get the same effect of of 100% LG uptime if you just do FoLx8 then HL5, if a higher rank of Holy Light isn't needed in that time. Not being able to watch LG timer is not a good reason to use HL4/5 over FoL. On that note, I find ClassTimers a really good mod to easily see your Light's Grace timer.

For fights like Azgalor where your HL5 might get interrupted just be smarter about it, knew you need to refresh it with like 5-6 seconds left instead of 1-2. Still get the benefit of FoL over HL4/5 most of the time.

FoL does more HPS and is more efficient than HL4. If you have the time for HL4 spamming you also have the time to toss in a HL4 (or any HL for that matter) in between your FoL spams. No reason to waste mana on constant less efficient less HPS heals just to keep LG up. There are people that swear by mid-rank HL for higher HPS but to be honest you don't really need that higher HPS for bread&butter healing and you might not even be able to keep up the mana cost (no matter how much crit you stack FoL will still be more efficient - and the truth is mp5 is going to return more mana anyway no matter what spell you're using, assuming the fact you actually need mana is independant of spell usage). To sum it up rank 4-5 HL provide equal to lower HPS than FoL for lower efficiency and aren't worth it. HL7-8 are generally not needed for consistent healing, and more importantly burn a lot more mana for not a lot extra HPS. HL9-11 will burn mana at a rate that you cannot afford to actually keep it up, but they're pretty awesome when people are simply taking more damage than normal (anything from tank burst to najentus' bubble bursting and multiple vashj's forked lightnings in a row on the same side).

FoL as an emergency is horrible. You're already about to lose the person in an emergency so he's already low, giving a small heal that will likely not even be enough to make him survive the next hit is not a good idea. Better to spend an extra 0.5s and drop a heal that's (more or less) 2-3X the size for 4-5X the mana cost to make sure he doesn't die. Repeat until nobody is in danger of dying, and after that you can go back to normal healing.


Speed of heals (keeping HPS and efficiency constant.
To add to it all we all know a 1.5s heal is nicer to heal with than a 2s heal, as your heals are coming in higher frequency and you don't have to cancel as much (as in, target doesn't need to have as large of a health deficit for your heals to not overheal).

Keeping HPS and HPM/mp5/etc constant, I actually hadn't figured out yet the actual numerical efficiency benefits of having smaller heals (as smaller heals = less overhealing), as well as the actual increase to tank survivability. While having faster smaller heals (again keeping HPS/HPM/mp5/etc constant!) is an obvious benefit, I'm not sure how much additional value, on top of the HPS/efficiency benefits mentioned above, haste brings. While we know the 1.5s of FoL is quite a clear advantage over even an equal HPS equal efficiency (hypothetical) rank of HL, how important is, say, reudcing FoL from 1.5 to 1.45 and HL from 2 to 1.93? I really can't tell wether that benefit is neglicible (as in, would have such a small effect on the equivalence points of haste compared efficiency as well as the equivalence points for HPS), or actually a significant one that makes haste better than theorycrafted so far. Estimating the value of that aspect of haste, though, will require evaluating (and giving it an actual equivalence value of +healing for efficiency and another for HPS or whatever) having faster spells VS slower spells while keeping everything else (currently calculated HSP and efficiency) constant.

Note again that this is only looking at the benefit of faster spells, ignoring the added HPS of faster spells as we already know the benefits of the added burst HPS - what I'm looking at is the benefit of having an equal HPS equal efficiency but lower cast time spell - for example a 1s cast 1k FoL VS a 1.5s cast 1.5k FoL. While the 1k FoL is obviously better (ignoring GCD minimum for haste), how much better is it and what would we be willing to sacrifice to get it? Same goes for the big emergency heals. Answer that and you will sort of know if haste actually has a noticeable additional value by reducing the cast time or that this effect is simply too small to matter when choosing your gear.

our pallies are either bombers or spammers. FOL spam + react to spikes or precasting bomb heals. If you are FOL spaming, you should not be expected to drop the critical bomb heal to get the tank back up. It might mean your other pallies/healers might not doing their job correctly. FOL spammers buy time for the bombers to drop in those giant heals which will bring the tank back up.

1-2 pallies spamming + druid HOTs are very very very good.

This section I've quoted above has spurred a question. Now Pandel, you're in tier 6 gear and it seems like you have trouble healing heroic MgT. How is a paladin in my gear (1950 +Healing, tier 4/5), or a paladin in the "intended" level of gear (kara/heroic gear) supposed to be able to heal this dungeon? I mean, I outgear the "intended" gear level of the dungeon by a good margin, yet I have a rough time even with decent crowd control. Am I the only one struggling here? Or are paladins just not fit to heal this dungeon without massive regearing?

MgT Heroic is far from hard to heal...

Not as easy as other heroics, but not hard, and im far from 4/5 T6...

Probably people that stack wrong stats are having problems with it... or thats my guess.

A friend of mine once said, "The idiot hunter who stands in cleave range does not make you a bad healer."

I guess this is what I was getting at. In order to heal a heroic instance I should get a set of haste gear, much of which drops in instances above said heroic, or is crafted using BT reagents? I digress; most of the fights aren't bad if the group knows what they are doing, but there are some combinations of the Delrissa adds, for example, that I have a really tough time with.

Hi guys,

I have been reading EJ for a few months and I finally have something to post. I've been looking for some basic stats for the EP system and even an explanation. Since I never found one I just worked it out myself. I have come up with a Loot Rank sheet for a Holy Paladin. I'm only up to about 1850 heals and still in t4/BoJ gear and not to sure how the gear progresses after that. Can some of the experts here take a gander and tell me if it scales properly through t5-t6+ gear? Thanks in advance.

Paladin, Holy

Hello,

On the first MgT runs i was still using my usual FoL spamming and my +healing gear, and even if we had a lot of dead ppl on every boss, we still managed to clean it.
Main problem in MgT is having a lot of Huge dmg on the whole party, and lacking the time to heal everyone (as a paladin i mean, Druids / Priest and Shammans might have some better heals to keep the party running ).

The best i could do about it was stacking Spell Haste so i could spam some Holy Light instead of the usual FoL, and even if this make the fight easier, we're still loosing 1 or 2 players on some bosses (Second boss is still taking his toll on our party ), but i think this is due to some slight mistakes, like killing the boss too fast and not enough focus on the adds.

I don't think MgT is a gear check, 1950+ Healing is more than enough to heal through almost any instances, and MgT is only asking to focus more, watch what's happening, and fast reaction (When the add comes to you on second boss , holy shock it )

We got 5-6 full time paladins in our guild all wearing T6, each of them decided to go a different way (stacking +heal or +crit gear, even got one running after some +mp5, but seems to be working). I was aiming for +heal, but still decided to socket my gear with the right gems (+11 healing and +mp5 / +int), so only got one +22 healing on my sheild, ah, and our tank paladin is using +22 healing gems on his healing gear.

To be honest , there isn't a lot of differences on WWS, Paladins are all around the 9-11% raid healing, seems like the paladin is somewhat "maxed out" and the only way we could make some difference on the charts was to focus more during all instance, so no coffee break if you want to be the top paladin :P

On a side note, using the Spell Haste gear on Kalecgos and Brutallus made me reach the 15% raid healing, but these are new bosses and i never had to spam HL so much before, it's still something i need to monitor and i'll check after a BT/Hyjal run if the gear is making the difference.
Problem is that Spell Haste is hard to get, and it really becomes worth stacking if you get huge ammounts of it (under 100-120 i don't think it will make a lot of difference)

So best is to choose the gear you like the most, anyway you don't have many choices, you can stick to the T5 / T6 sets and keep them correctly socketed, or take the few other items lying around the instance and not part of a set gear, or even go completly havock and gather Mail and cloth for some special purpose. You'll still get the gear you need from the instance you are farming. After that, only skills and focus makes the difference.

The only problem with hast is the mana efficiency...

Hast can be the most powerful stats for pally, but its restricted by the fact that it makes you alot less efficient.

1 point of hast has a potencial HP/S ~4-5 times bigger them 1 point of healing.

But when you increase Heal, you increase your HP/S without any extra mana, but when you use hast, and gain lets say, 1% HP/S. You in fact will cast 1% more Heals in the same time. So you will use 1% more mana.

It's a strong stats for HP/S but it reduce your efficiency in the same porcentage it increases your HP/S.

So, what need to be discussed, is how much efficiency we need?

Hast makes you less efficient...

If u use a Hast gem, your not using a 22 heal or a 10crit one. If u use a hast equip, you are not using that other one with better crit/mp5/heal.

Hast will increase your HPS, but you will need to spend the exactly same % you gain on HP/S, of Mana/Sec.
Hast will not directly decrease your efficiency, but if you actually use the hast to heal more times in a determineted space of time, so generating a increase of HP/S because of the Hast, you will need to use the same % of extra mana.
If u stack heal or crit, you will increase your HPS without the need to spend more mana them you do right now.]

Ex: Your HL costs 840 Mana, you have 0 Crit, and 0 Mp5 (Just to make the math easy here) You have LG up so its 2sec cast time.
Lets say your average HL hits for 4000, generating a 2000 HP/S.
If you stack 10%(151) of Hast, you will end with HL's that Hits for 4000, and now generates a 2200 HP/S
But before the Hast, you was using 840 / 2 Sec = 420 Mana/Sec
Now you are expending 840 / 1.8sec = 466 Mana / Sec

Lets say now that you increase your Heal, not your Hast.
If you stack 600 of Heal, you will end with Hl's that Hits for 4438, and now generates a 2219 HP/S
Now your expending the same 840 / 2sec = 420 Mana / Sec


The amount healer / point of mana expended will not decrese, i know. But its a mistake consider that hast didnt affect your efficiency just cause of this. The real problem is that hast dont make your heals bigger, it makes them faster, so you will need to cast more heals, and expand more mana.
If you can magically add X of hast to your gear without loosing anything, it would be a great improvement, but you cant. You will loose something... Heal, int, or Crit.


Heal vs Hast = Hast gives you near 4x the HP/S of +Healing, but +Healing will make your total healed by your mana pool increase, and hast not. If you go OOM, hast failed to you.

Crit vs Hast = Hast gives you about 2.5x the HP/S of Spell Crit, but Spell Crit will make your heals ~0,027% more mana efficient, and the extra heal from crits will increase your total healed / Mana pool, and hast will not.


In my opnion hast is a stats that you only need to look for if you never go OOM.
Its the best stat to stack if you can spend that amout of Mana/Sec, but if your party composition isnt favorable, like some pallys that play without SP or Shaman, on Tanker party, i dont think hast will be as viable as +Heal/Mp5.

Hast is a stats that you should look for if you end every fight with alot of mana. It will burn your mana, but with a great reward of huge HPS increase.

How exactly are you measuring that 151 haste is equal to 600 heal? That's my only problem with your math.

Of course if you lose an efficiency stat for haste you lose efficiency if itemization points spent for both stats are equal... However it's much easier to compare how much you gain with one stat using your current stats as a baseline and then how much you gain with each of the other stats, and find some equivalence point between them.

Just saying haste for itself reducing your efficiency is misleading, as it actually increases efficiency but by a lot less than +healing does, so if you give up equal itemization of +healing for haste you'll lose efficiency of course.

To calrify why it's easier to just look at gains and then compare the different gains of different amounts of different stats, try answering "what gives more efficiency, 30 haste rating or 10 healing?" or "what gives more HPS, 30 healing or 20 haste?" and "is the loss of efficiency by switching 30 healing to 20 haste rating worth the HPS gain?"
All of these are much easier to answer if you figure out the efficiency gains of each stat and the HPS gains of each stat compared to your current stats.

Hum, Mirk. Actually it increase efficiency in gal meaning and decrease in your meaning. You just use the same word with a tad different meaning. That was and is the reason for misunderstanding between me and gal too.

Gal, my point is somewhat close to some of the latest posts. Theorycrafting works fine, but as soon as you enter T6 (and tendency seems to be even bigger in sunwell), you realise that you need actually more HPS and that FoL simply can't cut it. Your calculation don't take into account the tendency of underhealing encounters by bringing more DPS that is more and more popular in T6 (we almost halved number of healers for Najentus and in a month will reduce the number of teron healers by 50% from initial value). Idea is that by shortening fight duration with more DPS you need less time to heal and thus can (and should) use powerfull heals instead of FoL spam.

Sunwell bosses are DESIGNED in a way, that you need really insane HPS to make things rolling. Look at WWS, many paladins in Brutalus fight EXCLUSIVELY HL. Just because FoL won't cunt it. Because you would better bring other healer instead of FoL paladin. Raiding environment changes. Believe me, almost no hastedins use haste to increase effectiveness by casting more FoL and less HL. They do it because they really need increase in HPS/bursts.

Your main conception used in your calculations (I guess) is that paladin should spam FoL with HL when you have to cover some burst. As soon as this conception won't work (due to very low number of healers or very intensive damage on raid) your calculations are misleading. Imagine absurd situation where raid constantly takes 6k damage each 5sec and tank gets 10k hits each 4 sec on top of that. Can you imagine any assignement for FoL paladin (aka assignement where he would be better than other healing classes)? I can't. While assigning him on tank and letting cast big HL each 4 sec would work perfectly (plus about 0% overhealing from crits in this case).

You said that keeping casting HL more or less regularly is a no go in real raid environment. Well, Bruallus WWS shows that many paladins cast HL (9-11) each 3.5-4.5 sec for 6 min non stop.

In fact, the concept stays true as long as you can cast any number bigger than 0 of FoLs. More HPS will slightly increase that number of times where FoL is enough HPS and thus save you mana, even if it just means you cast 2 FoLs in a fight instead of 1 FoL you still gained efficiency (assuming you actually needed every drop of efficiency). Even if you never ever cast a single FoL, you can say the exact same thing about using more lower rank HLs and less higher rank HLs, using the same kind of math (although will give different HPS->efficiency gains due to the lower efficiency of HL).

Of course you don't gear haste for efficiency, why would you? Healing/mp5 do it so much better. I was just pointing out the efficiency benefit of haste is not zero nor negative, and thus an item with 20 healing and 10 haste provides clearly higher efficiency than an item with just 20 healing, on top of the significantly higher HPS it gives which is the main benefit of haste.

My way of calculating doesn't assume anything you're claiming it does. Only thing you have to assume in advance is the most efficient heal you're willing to use (generally FoL but doesn't have to be if you insist not to) and what your approximate mana distribution on the different spells is like. I don't see how your definition of "higher requirements of sunwell fights", even if true, breaks any of the theorycrafting.

To top it off I'd love to see a WWS of a fight where you casted 0 FoLs, lasted through the fight, spent the majority of the time casting AND could not cast a single FoL without risking a death. Especially what the <time spent casting>/<fight duration> looks like (and if WWS would've supported it (did 2.4 do anything to help?) to see how much time you spend between your "spammed" HL ranks - but WWS doesn't show ranks of heals used).

One page ago I posted a Brutalus fight, where 2 our of 3 palas casted 0 FoL and one pala casted 3 FoLs. Wow Web Stats 99 HL casted in 360sec fight means HL was casted about each 3.5 sec. Isn't it majority time spent casted? About could not cast a single FoL without risking a death - I can not say it. But probably it's true, since Brutallus hits very hard (10k fire damage and 8k hit on armor capped druid in a split sec, meaning even more damage on warrior/tankadin) and quite possible that even healing 1-2 k less by 1 healer could risk a tank death.

I can assure you, if I would participate in an encounter where tank can get 18k bursts, even rarely, I wouldn't FoL (it really means I risk a tank death). Posts above about Brutalus prove it - paladins shifted from FoL to HL spam and managed to kill him.

Also seing very high average HL values of those 3 palas I doubt they ever used HL with rank less than 9. Probably it was HL11 all the way. Amount of mana restored in most WWS for Brut are about 75k, adding 12k of initial mana you have 87k mana to spend in 6 min. that is about 100 HLs.