I would say the Int version of the Darkmoon Card from the Nobles Deck is a great Int trinket.

I agree that that trinket seems really nice. I do wonder how the proc act from a mana point of view:

a) Your current mana remain the same, even if your max mana increase by a lot.
b) Your current mana and your max mana increase by the same amount.
c) Your % of mana remains the same, meaning that if you are at 50% mana when it procs you will be at 50% mana even after the proc, meaning you gain the same % of the proc as you currently have in mana when the proc occurs.

Its obvious that it is A, same thing happens when you gain an Arcane Intellect buff.

At what point do you guys consider the whole Int stacking to be redundant?

I'm at the stage now where I rarely dip below 40% on healing intense bosses (Patchwork 25 for example), and I'm starting to want to lean towards replacing some of my mp5 gear with higher Crit and Haste, since I like to use HL more than FoL most of the time anyway, and with my Int stacking i'm getting close to 25k mana raid buffed, so mana isn't an issue anymore for me with DP returning so much mana and Replenishment also doing the same.

I wouldn't ever stack mp5 anymore. Ok, I didnt even like the stat in TBC but at the moment mp5 holds absolutely no value for me. It got even worse in wotlk.

As for int stacking, you're probably able to maintain a full HL spam cycle for long enough to matter with that mana pool, so your alternatives would be sp/crit/haste. I personally am not a big fan of haste since JoTP came into play. If mana were absolutely no issue for me, I'd probably stack crit in the current endgame for the great synergy between HS crits and HL spamming (or instant flashes on the move).

Yeah I'm running 310mp5 with Imp Wisdom currently, and with Replenishment and Divine Plea, regen is really a joke, and I really am not a fan of Mp5 with that being said. I've been wanting to focus more on SP stacking vs pure crit just because there's really only so much crit will do since its still somewhat of an RNG factor IMO, and SP will overall help with just how much my heals can actually do, plus it buffs up sacred shield's absorption amount, but maybe that is really only effective in 5 mans =\

How is it not intended? Every other class brings much more versatility and AoE healing capability, Holy Paladins have sheer throughput. If they are hesitant to give us other healing mechanics, then chain-casting HLs it is! I don't think mana is of "no concern" - this content isn't particularly challenging without going for specific achievements so it's hard to say how much of a fight you can spam HL. Killing Patchwerk in 3 minutes isn't very indicative of future raiding. You cannot spam HL doing 3 Drake Sartharion for example as you will surely go dry without mixing in FoL for efficiency.

MP5 still gives enough mana so that you can't just ignore it on items. Heck it gives quite more mana than crit rating for the same itemization cost according to rawr. But yeah, int is a much, much better use of itemization points.

While MP5 is weaker than before, but you can't remove it from a lot of the itemization. Just don't gem/enchant for it.

If you are feeling crazy, there are many holy pallies on the official forums crying about not having an AoE heal. While that issue comes from not knowing how to Beacon, Shield, and gear properly, if Divine Plea is nerfed those facerollers will really stuff to complain about.

I don't expect any Divine Plea nerfs unless Holy is dominating Arenas.

Currently I am trying to get two gear setups. One for max total healing in a fight, as evaluated by Rawr. Another for max burst throughput (haste, sp, crit), while keeping a healthy mana pool (~30k buffed). Both gear setups have their uses depending on the fight.

I am going to make some changes to Rawr so you can see your max HL spam throughput easier.

I don't understand how paladins are feeling it's actually beneficially to stack int. My mana pool holds out quite well just using divine plea on CD without using autumn's glow gems, and when the shit hits the fan, (or lava wall hits the tenebron tank) not putting +30 int on your weapon seems to work better than the reverse.

I'd like to see the math where 50 extra sp provides more healing then n + 2 holy light casts.

Might be nice to expand on the Meta Gem section and include all gemming. Probably don't need to add much, but just point out that Intellect gems will almost always be the best gem in any slot, regardless of socket bonus. In rawr models, I'm finding that the best gemming possible is to have all Intellect gems, and a single purple gem (spell power, mp5 gem) to get the meta requirement. Then just pick a piece where the purple gem will give you the best set bonus by adding it.

I think this is probably true. I heard they are changing mana drain abilities to be a % of base mana instead of a set amount to balance ret pallys vs. mana users with 15-20K mana. I would HOPE they set it so that it drains x% of mana from target and restores x set amount back to the caster instead of giving the caster the % of the targets mana. But thats neither here nor there, my point is that I think with these types of changes to mana drain abilities, I don't see any reason for them to need to change DP for Arenas, which should hopefully save us from DP nerfs.

I think you'll find its a percentage of total mana, not base mana. Otherwise you'd find a ret paladin with 6k mana being burned for the same amount as a holy paladin with 20k mana... which is a bit silly.

Also given that DP can be dispelled I would hope it won't be changed simply because people who previously played drain teams, and enjoyed any combo with a paladin healer, complain too loudly.

I'd like to peruse the annals of paladin theorycraft that you are privy to as well; I had no idea that I would be able to use two additional holy lights per fight by enchanting my weapon with +30 intellect. Forgive my ignorance on the subject for I am a neophyte in the ways of the holy paladin and assumed that my mana pool was sufficient, it's now embarrassingly obvious I was completely wrong and I am truly indebted to you for showing me the light (pardon the pun). I now know that if you enchant your weapon with +30 intellect you may look woefully incompetent, but you'll be able to ignore the sneers of your raiding companions while pumping those two further holy lights into the main tank to save the day while everybody else is out of mana and crying on vent for an innervate.

Now that this snippet of wisdom has been imparted to me by the ones who delve into holy research, perhaps someone could explain to me how any paladin could run out of mana to begin with.

From what I understood of your original post, you were denouncing the value of stacking Intellect, period. This post makes it sound like you're only attacking the value of the Intellect weapon enchant. I'm not sure which side of the fence you're on here.

Remember that the thing making all these comparisons so sticky is fight duration. The value of every single one of these stats changes drastically depending on if you're blowing through a 3-minute Patchwerk or 25-minute Arthas kill. I think it's pretty foolhardy to say that any stat is worth forsaking all others for--rather, we should continue to create and maintain multiple sets of gear that optimize different stats for different encounters.

In other words, the question is not "Is Int the best paladin stat?" but instead "In what scenarions is Int the best paladin stat?"

Let's say you have a decent amount of haste and spam HL. You'll get around 40 casts in a minute.
Assuming 1050 HL cost, 764 return from illumination and 50% crit that's 26.5k mana used in a minute.

Alright, now under practical conditions how could you possibly go out of mana.

Alright, now under practical conditions how can someone possibly die after they get healed for 9-10k non-crit?

Just to show you the argument really goes both ways, and at the end it's choosing between having some more temporary burst to being able to use that burst more freely. Int is obviously much much superior for being able to use it more, while haste and SP are clearly superior for making that burst bigger and faster.

Keep in mind that (based on almost-haste-capped pally) 1 haste rating gives ~0.02% more burst. 1 SP gives ~0.17% (with around 2k sp to start with). 1 MP5 (again based on some decently gear paladin) increases the amount of healing you can do until oom by ~0.093%, 1 int increases it by ~0.076% and 1 sp increases it by ~0.032%. So as you can see it's much easier to scale your "spamability" up than how strongly you spam, for what it's worth. Doesn't mean you should just ignore all burst, but it's something to keep in mind. But I don't think the strength of your burst should be given any additional weight (aside from 1% increase in burst being probably more or less as good as 1% increase in spammability), at least until we find situations where we actually both feel our HL is just too small/slow and don't need to spam it.

"Alright, now under practical conditions how could you possibly go out of mana."

"Alright, now under practical conditions how can someone possibly die after they get healed for 9-10k non-crit?"

I'll go back to my above statement:

If your throughput is "high enough" and your mana regen is "high enough", haste is the only stat you should be stacking.

Haste is powerful, not because it increases your average throughput by 0.02%/point, but because it lets you react faster - e.g. when coming out of a lagspike, or an interrupt, or after stopping moving, or when another healer has had a lagspike and you have backed-up damage to top up. You can cap throughput. You can cap efficiency. You can't cap speed.

I'd contend that if it *is* the case that our throughput and efficiency are both "high enough", then we should stack haste even past the soft-cap - based on the fact that once we're at that point, adding one more SP/crit/int/mp5 "does nothing".

(I'd also contend, however, that it's very unlikely to be the case that we're capped on throughput and efficiency with hundreds of item points to spare come 3.1)

How does haste stack up with LG and IoL? Specifically, if I've got enough haste to give me a 1s FoL, how fast is my LG + Holy Light? How fast is my LG + IoL Holy Light?

1sec FoL means 1.(6) sec HL cast pre-LG and 1.(3) sec HL cast postLG. LG + IoL Holy Light will have 0.(3) sec cast.

P. S. edited since I realised that haste applies to 2sec HL cast time under LG instead of 2.5sec base time. Otherwise haste would give exponential return for LGed HL.