Trogdor

I've been reading all these threads, and it seems to me that there is too much tout over spell crit as a stat to focus on. I'm not saying that it's bad, but I worked out some simple math and I still don't get why people think it's so incredibly good.

Holy Light Rank 7: 495 mana (refunds 297 mana when the spell crits)

A 12k mana pool will cast 24 HLR7 (and lets just say we're spamming it and not taking any mp5 in account).
30% spell crit = 7.99 crit heals = 2373 mana refund; 2373 mana = 4.70 heals @ 30% crit = 1.59 crit heals = 472 refund
40% spell crit = 9.60 crit heals = 2851 mana refund; 2851 mana = 5.75 heals @ 40% crit = 2.30 crit heals = 684 refund
50% spell crit = 12.0 crit heals = 3564 mana refund; 3564 mana = 7.2 heals @ 50% crit = 3.6 crit heals = 1069 refund

So a reasonable estimate would be:
30% grants 2845 (2373+472) mana on a 12k mana pool
40% grants 3535 (2851+684) mana on a 12k mana pool
50% grants 4633 (3564+1069) mana on a 12k mana pool

50Mp5 = 600 mana/min : 3600@6min fight
100Mp5 = 1200 mana/min : 7200@6min fight
150Mp5 = 1800 mana/min : 10800@6min fight


I can't say it's easy to answer "is X spell crit better than Y Mp5?", but when you take a look at the target stats you wish to achieve, I would think that it makes more sense to ensure sufficient Mp5 than spell crit from the standpoint of mana return. Being in officer chat and participating in raid discussions (healing included), the consensus says consistency is key. Tanks die when Paladin healers are expecting their crits to be the consistent healing value. The consistent healing value is the non-crit healing amount of the spell. If that amount will be sufficient to support the tank, then the healing crits are those guarantees that the tank will be topped off as much as possible, and also cover any spike damage taken. But it's an alignment thing. It's only overhealing when a crit doesn't match up with a damage spike. Either way, any excessive healing is just that commitment to keep the tank alive through the end of the fight.

This is not to say that spell crit should be ignored, but looking at the values the spell crit is more effective with more casts, fueled by Mp5. So in my mind, I see holy pally stat priorities as:

+healing > Mp5 > Int > spell haste > spell crit

Int begets a larger mana pool and more spell crit, and scales with kings. It just seems to make more sense that way. I'm still playing around with spell haste. I don't think it's strictly a PvP stat. I do think that a reasonable pinch is perfect, like gemming some spell haste when applicable while picking up a spell haste piece or two. For me, it has overcome those slight little lag spikes and some really really close calls where those extra fractions of a second made the difference. Either way, the entire fight has to be weathered and illumination doesn't make healing spells cheaper, regardless of that PoV. It just gives back mana for another spell.

Thoughts?



Edit: I've read this entire thread, page 1 to current, at least twice. I do recognize the posts that call for a balance of stats and synergy (pretty much the way I lean too), but I am commenting that as a whole, people seem to think that stacking spell crit as high as you can go is the thing to do. 12k was just a number I threw out, it can be any mana pool value. The basis of my comment is the value of Mp5 coupled with healing consistency versus trying to heal by stacking spell crit and expecting the crit heals as the consistent amount. /discuss

Edit2: gg me, oops late-night math

 

Endoscient

Who only has a 12k mana pool? You get the benefit of crit on all mana including the amount gained from mp5, pots, and such. On most fights you should have at least 50k with all regen, pots, and consumables. You really should read a lot more of this thread first.

In Sunwell with appropriate gear crit can provide more mana item point for item point then mp5. Totally discounting any extra healing done.

 

Palados

In Sunwell, 60-80k mana should be your lower estimate for good geared pala pool.

No one says crit is better than mp5 for pure mana restoring purpose, it happens only under special conditions (though it's possible). But you can't ignore +healing effect either, as Recount shows in sunwell crit overhealing is close to usual heal overhealing means crit effectriveness is close to 140-150%. It doesn't help to counter the worst case scenario, but hey, thats why you have haste now. And that high effectiveness of crit shows that it is indeed usefull (as avoidance on tanks is usefull even if they go max stamina).

I am rating now +haste > +healing > spell crit = Mp5 > Int

Int isn't bad, but usually you have enough of it on items up to the point, when socketing int gems and doing int enchants isn't worth it. At least calculations show that while int can be good overall stat, it always slighly loose to other stats both in terms of effectiveness and hps.

 

Malleus

Trogdor, why are you theorycrafting in the Healadin Thread when you've rather obviously never played a healadin?

@Endoscient: Trogdor was talking about base mana pool, not mana pool including all MP120 effects. However, as we've already discussed, crit is a stat that returns more as you spend more. The figures and formulae don't change if we apply them to the refund benefit of crit from expenditure of 12k mana over 24 HL casts.

@Palados: the value of Int is variable and increases the more of it you get at once. Flasking for 65 Int is worth 25 +heal, 1.1% crit and gives me 1065 mana up front. That's a lot of stats made up for when you're in T5 content. Later on when you have plenty of crit rating on gear, Mighty Resto is probably better.

Enchantments aren't quite so good, but there's only three slots that take a pure Int enchant. +30 Int on weapon is a significant amount, and there's not really anything better for a shield. If you can give figures that show +30 healing or +6 MP5 is straight up better than 12 Int on bracers then I'll listen, but otherwise I'm in a happy place with my gear so I'm waiting for a better pair before I start messing around.

Gems, though... I agree they aren't ever going to give the same punch. 10 Int is 165 mana, 4 +heal and 0.16% crit. A 10 spellcrit gem will provide more mana and healing, a +22 heal gem will save more mana and outbalance the crit on average. I'd use a Luminous Pyrestone gem for socket bonuses, but I'd be thinking of the 11 heal/4 spellcrit gem from Sethekk.

 

cammauta

you have right, i missed that post.

i wonder now that, when you posted it, you get only two reply about this topic. galg claimed that we can't bring crit change to high level in such a way that the ^2 became important ... this is not true in my case...i explain why.

my guild started MH with 2.4 and soon (today or next week) archimonde will be down. with the 2* bonus tier6 i'll get 5% crit.

then i have a lot of choise to push my crit (between same quality item):
ring of calming waves (24cs) / trash BT, badge, ZA with haste ...
hammer of atonement (23sc) / badge mace
felstone shield (27sc) / MH shield
archi chest (46so) / ZA chest
girdle of hope (41cs with gems) / BT haste waiste

so i can easily (content in farm now) get around 6.4% from all that.
if i go for crit i'll have to change also my playstile because HL will have 11% crit more than FoL.
so all together i can have 17.4% if i chose to go HL and crit ; otherwise i can go for FoL-spam and sometimes HL (as i do now), and for equip choise i focus on haste, healing, mp5.
if i do maths in "simply way" 17.4% crit means around 10% more mana back, while if i do maths in the "complicated" but correct way i'll get , going from 26% to 43% , 25% more mana back.

then, i am also able to equip more crits with lower quality item (xi'ri gift, pvp 40spell crit trinket ...).

the odd thing now is that i think that i wont be able to sustain HL spam if i don't have a shadow priest in party (because crit acts as a mana multiplier so i need a good mana base...or a short fight)...so i can't really choise by myself, but i have to ask my raid leader to know "my way" .

 

Palados

You are contradicting yourself. If 10 int < 22 heal, then of course 12 int < 30 heal. 12 int is 198 mana, 5 +heal, 0.165% crit. So the question is - what will be better, 25 heal or 198 mana and 0.168% crit. In most situations (not all, but most) I would choose heal.

My experience tells me, that int on bracers and wep is worth it in only 5-10% encounters, where they outperform +healing one. I do have int enchant on Zul'Jin wep, but usually use MH hammer with +heal enchant. Also, if you mostly FoL, then +heal is your stat. Heal and haste outperform crit and mp5 (I have yet to see the fight, where you have mana problems while FoLing).

Int flask isn't bad for short fights. For longer fights mp5 flask is usually better, at least for T6 geared pala, since it increases effectiveness of crit better than int flask.

 

Andrast

Feel free to go and talk to your tanks about avoidance. I'm sure they'll be interested to hear that they should stack HP and armor above absolutely everything else.

The fact that we gain significant amounts of mana through crits and also increase our average throughput means that crit is significantly valued by every decent paladin I've talked to and from my reading virtually every paladin who posts here. Finally the number of times I've seen my crits save the tank is unbelievable. Does this mean the other healers were sleeping? Perhaps. But every time it has happened it has saved the raid.

I'll continue to value crit highly even though a hunter tells me I'm doing the wrong thing.

 

Malleus

My hypothesis was that the utility of Intellect scales with quantity against that of specific stat boosts. I might be wrong about the location (or indeed, existence) of the breakpoint, but I wasn't contradicting myself.

Thinking on it further, I'm getting the impression that Int for a Pali healer is much like defence for a tank. Int increases +heal, crit and available mana in the same way that DR increases dodge, parry and block. It's a very good stat to have, essential up to a point, but only up to a point. Once you've reached that point, the boosts to a single stat provide greater overall benefit than the smaller cumulative boosts across the board.

The next question is of course, "What's the Healadin equivalent of 490 defence?"

Clarification as to what constitutes "mostly", please. I know I'm mostly casting Flashes, but HL still generates the majority of my healing done (55-70%, depending on the fight).

That's what I surmised, thanks. I do believe it's dependent on T6 gear, though. I'll have to try it tonight on Vashj; I have a Mighty Resto about to use when the hour of FoDW I have left over expires.

 

Palados

You can not compare def and int. Since cap on def is connected to uncritability and not to the point when single stats start rocking. If you have resilence in your usual tanking gear (that you shouldn't to be honest, save prolly a few rings/necks), then def cap is lower.

Utility of int indeed scales, but it scales lower than, for example, crit utility imho. There should be no breakpoint, since when we talk about 50-100k mana used over MH/BT/SP fight, then 8k, 10k or 12k starting pool doesn't make a big difference while extra crit and heal from int would be better to get via crit/heal items.

Just look at simple math: you have 100 iPoints to invest.

1) 100 int = 110 with BoK = 1650 mana, 1.374% crit, +39 healing.

2) +41.8 healing (19 iPoints), 31 spell crit (31 iPoints) = 1.403% crit, 20 mp5 (50 iPoints)

20 mp5 give 1650 mana in about 6 min and 50 sec.

From here you can see, that for long fights you can imagine the gear of the same ilvl with every single parameter better than int heavy gear would give. Only plus of int is that it gives you a little bit of everything without any big loss.

 

Palados

Basically, 'mostly' means you cast them enough to not be under 20-30% of your mana over the course of the fight. As soon as oom isn't real issue (and in many t5 fights it indeed isn't), all you want is +haste and +heal.

 

Andrast

However I'm finding for Sunwell fights that OOM is a real issue. It was also an issue for a few fights in BT too (Bloodboil and Council and up to p3 on Illidan). Therefore I'd still recommend that any tier 5/6 paladin still seek out and stack crit but also look at gathering haste items for the fights which don't need so much regen.

 

Palados

Aye, my remark was about FoL fights. In BB you shouldn't be oom, just put pala in a group that eats 2 BB. It's insane amount of mana restored via spiritual attunement. Same goes for Illidan p2. Healing restored a lot of mana. You will have problems in P2 if you are only healer on FR tank though (I had such experience after priest DCed) and there crit really rocks. You gonna burn 15-18k mana at the very least over just a few min phase, so crit is VERY effective.

Council, due to big enrage timer, is 'mp5' fight.

 

Andrast

My remark was merely to illustrate that there are several good reasons for highly valuing crit as you move onto the more mana intensive fights in BT/Sunwell. While learning Council I found my critrate to be very handy in preventing tank death. It's much less important now that our MT is much better geared although so am I.

I honestly feel there is little reason to optimise gear for certain fights that are extremely FoL friendly - although this may make learning them easier I found very little difficulty with any fight until Bloodboil without trying to gather an extra set for +healing and +haste. If the tank is dying due to lack of heals you can still use holy light in your rotation which is what I did healing the harder hitting mobs in SSC when I was learning them. Perhaps I've become so used to overhealing and possibly overusing holy light the only place I find I don't use it now is Karazhan where I try to go entire runs without drinking.

Having said that I am slowly gathering a haste set at the moment mostly for testing purposes/trash.

 

Pownstar

As far as haste is concerned would the Mystical Skyfire Diamond be better than the Insightful Earthstorm Diamond? I've seen many spread sheets, but not one said a thing about the meta gem comparison. Wasn't sure if it was over looked or perhaps just ridiculous to even consider it.

 

Endoscient

damn, double post .

 

Endoscient

Then what is the point of his post? It is totally useless then.

You just contradicted your self. Here is some math: 8.25mp5 vs 1% spell crit. Presume initial crit rate of 30.

70,000 * 1 / (1 - .6*.3) = 85,365
70,000 * 1 / (1 - .6*.31) = 85,995

That is a gain in 630 mana, which over a 6 minute fight is equivalent to 8.75mp5.

I really want to hear why you weight haste the best. I would say my rankings are the same but with haste between mp5 and crit. Int can be all over the place (even the top) depending on fight length, but because of that I it isn't worth actively trying to get. I showed already how heal is better then haste point for point. While, you might have more consistent hps, you won't be able to HL nearly as much so you will have lower burst hps.

If OOM isnt an issue then your gear doesn't matter. You can always utilize the extra mana you have by casting more Holy Lights instead of Flash of Lights. If you don't need the extra healing for HL then you really don't need higher HPS on FoL, and the fight is trivial for your gear. Sure you can optimize your gear for easy fights where your gear doesn't matter, but at least I want to optimize my gear for Sunwell fights, and the more difficult ones at that.

 

Trogdor

I forgot to mention that I have a 70 holy pally and wouldn't mind helping lesser guilds in SSC/TK or something. I didn't realize that I needed a "Paladin" badge to signify interest in the thread to spur on more posts; if all my questions were answered from the previous 43 pages I wouldn't have bothered :P

But I'm not saying that spell crit isn't valuable. It just sounds overvalued, at least when I hear of people trying to push it to 50%+ by ignoring other stats (if 50%+ happens w/o ignoring other stats, then it's not an issue). When does the spell crit % become comfortable where one would consider more Mp5 or spell haste, or maybe just more raw +healing... say, in the cumulation of socket tweaks?


Everyone loves flawless boss kills, but stuff happens sometimes and a secondary MT healer can die. Quick communication can redirect a raid healer to help, but if they're ill-equipped it means the paladin MT healer is going to step it up and weather it out to succeed. So under strain, considering healing consistency, how does excessive (by whatever value it's generally defined) spell crit benefit more than sufficient Mp5?

 

Endoscient

What was the point of your first post? Your math was totally useless, and did nothing to compare mana restored from spell crit to mp5. I am glad that on healing on your alt in SSC/TK you have uncovered the secrets of Paladin healing that mains in Sunwell can't understand. Paladin's shouldn't rely on spell crits to keep there tanks up that is just stupid, there is no reason a pally in SSC/TK would ever need to.

You act that when we are talking about spell crit we all stack it to huge amounts disregarding any other stat, That is a stupid way to gear with how itemization works. There are a lot of choices besides that, especially in Sunwell gear where there is a lot of gear that has either Spell Haste or Spell Crit on it. Raid buffed (with wisdom) I have 2600 healing, 190mp5 and 40% holy light crit, do you call that stacking any particular stat? On fights where I have shadow priest a crit gem is the best for me currently, without a shadow priest a healing gem is. But, currently I have a lot more issues when I don't have a shadow priest (which happens fairly frequently) so I gem to improve that the most.

 

Malleus

Lesser guilds? Pardon me if I seem a little cynical, but I don't believe anyone who thinks he can preach from the pulpit to the Paladins when he doesn't even know the correct percentage mana return for Illumination has any business calling anyone else "lesser". I don't profess to know everything about Paladin healing myself - which is why I'm here - but at least I know the correct mana cost of my third most commonly used healing spell.

@Pownstar: there are two main reasons nobody considers MSD over IED. First, while neither gem's proc is predictable MSD's proc is one you need to go off at the right time. The 300 mana from IED is only wasted when it takes you above full mana; you can always use it later. The second reason is that the benefit of IED is so vastly superior. Someone may be able to provide a more exact figure, but spamming Flashes it's frequently regarded as worth between 25 and 35 MP5. 20% spell haste for 5 seconds cannot compete.

 

Trogdor

Not you, specifically (or many in these forums), but those [everywhere] who'll support the claim. The math was only spell crit as a mana-regen, not including the healing benefits it offers, on a set pool to determine the return value.. and then compared to the return value of Mp5. If healing and healing consistency is commitment, then Mp5 seems to serve better than spell crit for endurance to keep a tank alive (but not in an all-or-nothing type of situation though). I wanted to see if someone was going to demonstrate how spell crit succeeds over Mp5, in my above-mentioned criteria/scenario, because it doesn't not appear to me that way. There are LOTS of uninformed paladin healers everywhere, so that's why I'm reading here.

Your stats sound balanced to me. Full raid buffs [on any class] help smooth things out too. Unlimited mana is a luxury we all (hunters too) don't get all the time, and I prefer to think towards worst-case-scenario and succeeding that.. hence my questions on mana return for endurance and "oh crap" situations.

 

Firecrest

I recently left a SSC/TK guild for a BT/SW one and am trying to take my proficiency up a notch to match my progression. To that end, I've been slowly reading this entire thread and working to wrap my head around some of the more advanced mechanics of the spec.

One question I have though is regarding Righteous Fury. When I first saw Holy Pallys spec’ing into it I was pretty baffled. But once I tried it myself, I found that the extra threat was still not enough to cause me to have aggro issues. So I thought I'd determined it to just be -6% damage with no real drawback until I saw on wowwiki that, under the entry for this skill, it expressly says that Holy Pallys should not use it.

Is this just a case of someone posting bad info or am I missing something? Currently I only use the ability during boss fights when I raid (I leave it off on trash or when doing instances with pug tanks I'm not confident in).

Another question I have is concerning intermediate heal spells. For the longest time I only used max ranks of FoL and HL. Recently I've added a HL9 to my bar and use it as a "Medium Heal" in between "Big Heal" and "Little Heal". My overall healing has gone down (as I haven't quite figured out when to Big vs when to Medium) but my overheal has also gone down significantly and I run into far fewer mana issues. Is there another rank that's better for this though? Should I have more options available to me? I could probably handle four, but I'm kinda liking "Big, Medium and Little".

 

Endoscient

That math was useless, you compared arbitrary numbers that had no realistic basis. Does it matter that spell crit is worse then mp5 when you only spend 12k mana? No, because if you are only using that much mana your gear sure as hell doesn't matter. In most situations without a shadow priest mp5 will provide more mana then crit. But you still need consider the extra healing crit does as part of it. Can't just say that since it restores less mana then mp5 and does less healing the +healing that it isn't a good stat.

When healing you can't just think of worst case scenarios, because if they happen your tank will most likely die regardless. They are drastically different then what normally happens, or even what normally happens during unlucky streaks in middle of a fight. It is much more useful to think of how it effects your probability of keeping your tank alive, which is what ultimately we want to maximize. Just because crit isn't "reliable" doesn't mean it doesn't increase that probability more then +healing or haste.

 

Monolitax

I must confess I did not read the entire 45 pages of this thread, so if this has already been covered, please (for my benefit) direct me to a post and purge the post, but I'm the paladin CL of a late T5, early T6 raiding guild and I want to drop one of our customary 8 healers (-.-) for a dps by having one of my holydins chain cast downranked HL on the MT (often myself, I've never been holy so you might call me/my guild n00b in that regard). In a nutshell my question is:

"Does downranking HL actually make it superior to flashbotting, particularly for hard hitting encounters? If so, by how much? Additionally, how do I go about telling someone how to do this successfully, if it's even viable?"

I would appreciate a comprehensive and substantiated reply, as I will eventually have to make a case for dropping a healer from the raid. Btw, I think the biggest reason we have 8 healers to begin with is that almost NONE of them use downranking, but from whatever little I read, it sounded like downranking isn't even an option anymore... not for pallies anyway.

EDIT: typo

 

Andrast

I tend to use Righteous Fury (talented) all the time unless I know threat is a serious issue. I use it on trash because I'd rather random trash mobs come to me rather than other healers. It also lets me aoe "tank" to give some breathing room. I find myself doing this for Bloodboil and Mother trash.

The downside of running RF is I've occasionally pulled aggro with rather large heals. Lay on Hands after a thread dump becomes particularly dangerous. I remember landing a 15k LoH on Nightbane just after he'd landed and as soon as divine shield wore off he casually walked over, smacked me then went back to the tank. I've also had Illidan run over right at the beginning of an attempt but thus far he hasn't killed me.

It wasn't until I hit Sunwell that I really started using downranked Holy Lights. Mostly I did this due to Brutallus. However I do find it rather useful on other fights I would have previously done with a 2xFoL 1xHL11 rotation or similar.

 

Andrast

First of all as I said in my previous post I do use downranked HL (I downrank to 8 mostly). It provides more HPS but still provides nothing like the efficiency of FoL. Whether that makes it superior to chain casting FoL entirely depends on the fight in question, the gear of the people involved and the makeup of the raid.

In my mind at the level you're at most paladins probably find it just as easy to choose between an efficient small fast heal or a slower big and inefficient heal.

Honestly your question is very difficult to provide a definitive answer to. Is it superior for hard hitting encounters? It's part of the toolkit bit I'd hardly describe it as superior. I'd also say with the bosses you're facing it's hardly required. How would you go about telling someone how to do this? You can indicate to them that the average hit from a particular boss is XXk which is roughly equal to rank Y HL. But again this doesn't take into account avoidance streaks or bad luck with avoidance. Nor does it take into account other healers on a tank.

Finally I don't understand why you need to "make a case for dropping a healer from the raid". Some fights require more healers. Some fights are easier with more healers. Some fights are easier with more dps and the healers have to suck it up. Why not balance your raid around the boss you're going to be fighting and not an apparently arbitrary theory that 7 healers is fine all the time. Finally if you're looking at overhealing numbers and remember your pre-BC days where you were told that overhealing is a bad thing and that healers should downrank to exactly match the amount of damage they are healing then simply get over it. Overhealing is what tank healers do and it's that overhealing that keeps you alive during a spike.