My feeling on Haste is that once you find yourself at ~20% Holy Crit, ~2200-2300 +heals and enough mp5 that you don't run out of mana - then all the extra "space" can go to Haste.

What's the big deal with mp5? I've never itemized for it (Been itemizing for crit ever since I stepped foot in Karazhan) and never really have paid attention to it other than consumables (Sporefish, Mageblood and Mana Oil). I understand mp5 doesn't apply to the 5SR, and that more mp5 means I regen more mana while casting (we almost never stop casting, anyways), and it helps. I've never not been in a group where there wasn't some synergy (Chickens crit, drums, spriests VT, resto shammys manatide, spellsurge) in one way or another. And on top of that I seem to get enough I5SR mp5 through buffs that it doesn't make a difference. Apparently I should have been looking at it as a main stat in Karazhan?

Crit isn't that hard to bump up, I think I went in to Kara with about 23% holy crit. We crit, we get mana back. Insightful Earthstorm procs like crazy, theres mana, and mana pots give about 100mp5 chained. Is it really just preferential to each paladin or was I missing something back in the day?

I think you're missing something now. Crit is preferential to MP5 in short fights, but as the fights wear on longer MP5 becomes stronger and stronger. Paradoxically, MP5 is also better on fights where you aren't casting all the time - after all, crit returns zero mana when you're not casting.

Example: let's take two Holy Paladins with equal +heal and baselines of 10k mana, 20% Holy crit and 100 MP5. Paladin A then gets an additional 5% crit, while Paladin B gets an additional 25 MP5. Each Paladin shall be deemed to cast spells with base cost 12k mana per 120 seconds; for ease of calculation, let's say they have no bonus crit to Flash or HL from talents or gear.

Every two minutes, Paladin A receives 2400 mana from MP5, 2400 mana from potions, and 1800 mana from Illumination: total 6600, for a net expenditure of 5400 mana over that period. His time to OOM is 222 seconds.

Over the same period, Paladin B receives 3000 mana from MP5, 2400 mana from potions, and 1440 mana from Illumination: total 6840, for a net expenditure of 5160 over the period. His time to OOM is 233 seconds.

Factoring in increased heals from crit, Paladin A is healing at 102.5% of Paladin B's HPS, but can only do so for 95.3% as long. If the fight duration lasts as little as six seconds after Paladin A has gone OOM, Paladin B will overtake him in healing done. And it's a lot easier to get 25 MP5 on gear than it is to get 5% crit.

However, that doesn't mean you should gear for MP5 forever. There comes a point somewhere in late BT where the incoming damage reaches the point where you need to be spamming big heals. That's where crit gains its maximum value as a regen stat, as the more mana you spend the more it returns.

TL;DR version: crit is good in Kara because the fights are so short, it's good in late BT because you spend so much mana, but in between MP5 has it beat.

The value of mp5 vs. crit also depends heavily on what spells you are casting, and your HL:FoL ratio. For pure max rank FoL spam, mp5 handily outperforms crit in most every situation just because the cheap mana cost of the spell in the first place. Generally speaking in Kara-level gear/raiding, you're just going to be spamming max rank FoL with some occasional HL, and that's why the emphasis is put on mp5 for that gear level.

If by 'back in the day' you mean pre-illumination nerf, yes. Back then spell-crit healing styles were a good deal more efficient given the 100% mana-return.

In any case, both Mp5 and Crit stacking have been, and currently are viable gearing strategies. Full Stop. There are reasonable arguments that given certain preconditions, (gear/tanks/content) one is -preferable- to the other, but both are workable.

Most paladins nowdays base there gear around chainpoting.
It's true mana/5 gives more mana while spaming Flash of light. But if a pala need mana/5 gems to not go oom while spaming flash there is a problem.

While spaming holy light crit is indeed better then mana/5 due to the larger manachost and the return.
but stacking only crit will give you low non crit heals and unreliable healing.

For whole SSC / TK and most part of BT a paladin only spam max rank FoL. Since a paladin spaming flash dont have much of a manaproblem when chainpoting i sugest stacking / geming pure healing.
Going for healing instead of mana/5 and crit will even save mana becouse you can get away with flash heal instead of fire that holy light.

Many seem to ignore the fact that geming for healing is also a way of saving mana aswell as making ur healing less spiky.

However in late BT and sunwell you will drop flash of light for holy light and then evrything changes.

Edit: with alot of +healing you can downrank holy light and get even more stable healing.

You would need too much haste to lower your HL to 1.5 (more than 375). Without having access to all SWP items it is hardly possible, unless you use a lot of T5-lvl badge rewards that will gimp other stats too much. HL downranking is viable without haste too, if you have 2PT6. However, flash spam works OK till basically Illidan/SWP.

Haste doesn't make HL-spam more viable, since it lower the FoL casting time (thus increasing HPS) as well. Only haste applicable to HL alone does (as it was with pre-nerf T5). Right now T5 set bonus isn't worth much. So stick to your T6.

i think that engineering and blacksmithing have some good benefits for holy palies example of them [Justicebringer 3000 Specs] also the [Sunblessed Gauntlets] and [Sunblessed Breastplate]. i know they drop from sunwell but you can farm sunwell trash and in most servers like mine sunmotes are on ah always for 1.5k of gold and i seen some people selling the engineering pattern for 5k. this also depends on your server pve progressions and how skilled people is. so i can get my paladin to 70 buy those items plus the healing ring [Design: Ring of Flowing Life] and also i got the [Plans: Dawnsteel Shoulders] and [Dawnsteel Bracers] cheap on the ah the shoulders for 190g so i think they are pretty good profesions for a holy paly. overall farming the stuff like ores and primals gearing him up will cost me about 25k of gold but he will have almost best in slot gear. so i can start getting into kara with 1.4 healing without even trying :P

can anybody comment about those items especially the blacksmithing ones and tell me if they are really that good?

Tier 5's set bonus got nerfed a while ago, don't read all those early posts .


In BT you want to always cast a HL every 15 seconds, so your 11% extra crit does not go to waste.

The best holy paladin proffesion is with no doubt Alch for Alch stone 40% more mana on pots and alot of healing.

Second best would be LW for Drums.

BS gives some items but u can get better without it anyway, same goes for engineering.
go alch and LW instead.

You can't get better items pre-Kara, Folcred. Gloves and chest are second best plate one in game. So it is worth going BS assuming you have enough money to buy plans and motes. After you crafted everything you could, you can drop BS for LW or whatever.

Hello,

This is a though one in my opinion.
I have been trying to find facts about spell haste and paladin healing, but basicly I can only find some random post here and at the offical forum with mostly specalation and weak arguments. So I thought if someone out there can find a spread sheet or some facts about this, please post it here.

Questionmarks I got about haste and my healing is:

*How much shall I get?
(looking at other endgame paladins with stacked haste they got between 170 - 260 haste rating)

*Purpose and which spell to cast?
(haste should in theory give an overall smoother preformance with less overhealing but is FoL still viable to cast with haste stacked or shouold you only go with downranked Holy Light)

*Does haste really increase my HPS with a trade off of healing bonus and crit?
(I am not sure about this, but atleast haste should lower overhealing, with faster casts)

*How does this effect my mana cycle?

Lots of questions and no good answers to this point, please help out.

PS. I don't wanna regem just to find out it sucks

/steel

Well, you want any strong arguments in questions that sound like 'what is better, apples or bananas'? You would hardly get them tbh. But, well, some guidelines:

1. There is no hard haste cap and soft cap depends on support and the gear that you currently have. Many SWP paladins follow this rule: socket haste in yellow slots and the rest of haste comes naturally by items (plus they prefer Twins offhand to M'uru shield). This is the most balanced approach.

2. FoL HPS is increased by haste by exactly same % as HL HPS. FoL is more viable with haste than without it, it is just too weak in SWP. But in preSWP instances hasted FoL is very nice spell to use. What is true, hovewer, that haste increases absolute value of HPS for HL much more than for FoL, while +healing increases HPS of FoL and HL by the same amount.

3. It was proven here mathematically, that for T6 gear haste increase HPS by a lot more than equivalent crit and healing. Just watch somewhere around pages 30-40. Point is, that +healing adds constant HPS while haste (as well as crit) adds some % of HPS. Naturally, the higher your HPS already is, the better is haste compared to +heal. And in equal conditions adding 20 crit rating (less than 1% crit) will add less HPS than adding 20 haste (1.3% more casts per unit time).

4. Can you please explain what do you mean under 'mana cycle'?

Quick math to illustrate haste vs +healing:

Imagine that you chain-cast 2k FoL on tank with non socketed chestpiece. And there is a choise - get three +22 healing gems or three +10 haste gems.

a) +66 healing will add 18,86x(1+0.5xcrit) HPS (assuming 0 latency, less with non 0 latency).
b) +30 haste rating is equal to 1,91% haste and it means that you will cast 101,91 FoL in 150sec (assuming 0 latency again). This will add extra 25,47x(1+0.5xcrit) HPS.

Thus you see, that haste is better than +healing even for FoL. For HL difference is much bigger in favor of haste.

First off all thanks for a good answer.

The matematics are interesting, think I'll try regem with some more haste now.

So lookng at the matematics haste scales most if chain casting, due to the extra casts.
Is that true that haste scales best even in slower fights?


I am quite comfortable with keeping my mana for about 10-15 min while more or less chain casting FoL and HL rank 9 and 11 even with no raid support (henche MT grp). Talking about my current gear 4xt6 t5 chest/saiviors grasp with more or less only stacked + healing (around +2500 healing buffed).

So question is can I keep my mana for around 10 - 15 min if I go for +170 haste while chain casting w/o raid support?
I got achemist stone.

/steel

My guild just recently downed Illidan (yes very late I know) and have started Sunwell this past Monday. We went in to clear trash to Kalecgos and get in a few attempts to see what he was like.

Only a few of us knew what to expect so we did wipe a few times before calling it, as it was the end of our scheduled raid time.

From the moment we began pulling I noticed that healing was a lot more intense and that I was using HL to a greater extent, to the point of composing roughly 85% of my heals.

I was told to begin re-gemming for spell haste by the co-gm of the guild, and I can see how haste would benefit me, especially from the WWS that have been posted in previous pages of this thread, however my stats pre-haste are 26% Holy crit, 120 mp5, and 2300 bonus healing.

I calculated my stats post haste gemming, as well as getting the Battlemaster haste trinket, and I would have 150 haste, 24.5% crit, 108 mp5, and 2120 bonus healing.

Given that I am normally not grouped with a shadowpriest as the raid leader reserves them for CoH priests and shamans, would haste gemming be a viable choice for me with the stats I would have post re-gemming? (I do however have the alchemist's stone and I chain pot.)

Thanks.

Ok, long fights = mp5>crit, I get that... Netherspite and MAYBE Nightbane come to mind. Everything else is pretty short. I experienced this last night as our guild was doing Azgalor trash. We were chain banishing a Stalker as to keep the NPC's occupied for the 6th wave. I couldn't drink and coincidentally being the night that my group and no spriest or brain heals that padded mana. It would have been some help to have a little more mp5 but yeah... Once we stop casting, if we can't sit down and drink it takes us nearly double the time to regen the same amount of mana as a priest.

On another note, more back towards the trash for Azgalor. We had one spriest last night and was put in with 2 priests, a druid and a paladin. Should the spriest be grouped with paladins to help out with the chain banish wave as we can't drink and don't have much of an option for regen? I ate through about 20 pots last night over 5-8 attempts right around those specific waves.

Only once you need haste. Before then, it is of course a huge downgrade. So the issue here isn't whether he can convince the co-GM that he needs BBoK - it's whether he can convince the co-GM of the utility of haste in SWP.

For myself at 4/5 3/9 (plugging for Teron tonight), BBoK is on my shopping list to replace [Naaru Lightwarden's Band], but once we go back to kill Kael and Vashj and I get my SotS ring it drops to a far lower priority. Right now I'd bid 20-25% of my accumulated DKP for it, but with Eternal Restorer and Anveena's on I wouldn't go above 10%.

Even with no other haste, it is a better than the badge ring.

BBoK is pretty much the best ring in the game for Pallies, the itemization is done so well. Technically the crafted ring from Sunwell is better, but no one will waste Sunmotes on that.

Would you mind elucidating? I'm not denying BBoK beats out Anveena's when haste is a factor, but I thought we'd hammered out a rough consensus here that unless and until you need haste, it's of little value. Without the haste, BBoK vs Anveena's boils down to 7 +heal vs 5 MP5 - and that contest favours the badge item.

(Which was my point, BTW ... unless you convince someone that haste is of value, they're bound to rate Anveena's over BBoK.)

Whether you are in Sunwell or not, haste is still going to have "value". It's going to increase HPS simply by definition, and it will help cut down on overhealing.

Aye, even if you FoL - haste increases the HPS thus allowing to cast less HL thus saving more mana.

@ SirSteel

usual amount of haste (around 10% haste) will lower your time from 10-15 min to 9-13min. If it is good or bad for you I dunno. But for most fights in T6 it is OK. Having increased HPS and less overhealing is a good trade off for faster mana usage. I think till 250-300 haste you shouldn't have mana problems assuming chainchuggin pots with alchemist stone (all more or less long or very healing intensive fights in T6 have a lot of damage on raid that translates in mana via SA).