I'm no wizz but I suspected it was some sort of scripted event. A quick look at wowhead:

I think since the damage is scripted, it might not follow the kind of mechanic that allows SS to proc. Does any other class have a damage triggered proccing spell(similar to SS) that they would normally expect to proc, that doesn't, that anyone knows of? Or is the thing just bugged?

I checked WWS logs from our poke in the eye achievement and while MT had SS more or less always up and I had SS each vortex there is 0 damage absorbed. It doesn't work there at least for 25man version. As Arfea pointed out, vortex is not a dot. Warlocks can avoid vortex completely by placing their portal underground and port there. It isn't a classical AoE either. It has its own weird mechanics. Probably SS not working is just a bug, that could be fixed if we point it to Blizzard.

Does anyone have a best in-slot wish list short of using Rawr? Been digging around this thread to no avail.

Rawr can make one for you, and even take your own gear into account... Why should it be posted?

Unlike dps classes, where after you reach a cap on a stat it becomes worthless (so that means there are few right ways to gear), healing and tanking classes do well continue collecting their favorite stats.

Therefore, since some healers like crit while others want lots of int, so there can never be a best in-slot wish list for healing. Same for tank, some may like lots of stamina, others may like lots of avoidance.

What there does exist is a few best in-slot items for a slot no matter what stats one prefers, for example the KT heroic mace is BIS and for shield using tanks the KT heroic shield is BIS.

That makes perfect sense, thank you for that bit of wisdom.

I think I will try to use Rawr again. I get a little frustrated with it because I feel like I'm not using it properly. Does it require a lot of setup or what? Does there exist or could someone write a quick how-to for someone to get the most out of it?

If you're going to use LOH in a non-emergency situation, won't you get a lot more effective returns by talenting it at least 1/2 and putting it on the tank? Most fights it ends up not mattering and I usually forget to use it on the fights that do matter (and btw with 16-20m cd it won't even be available on all fights that are not progression and for progression you will most likely use it on the tank anyway). That said I wouldn't count it for more than the 1950 mana. Overall from WWS spiritual attunement doesn't seem to match it at all.

The FoL's glyph value can be determined from rawr, and will most likely depend a lot on your setup (which will then determine how much HL and how much FoL you get to do), but remember that if you do something like set activity % too high rawr can say you're using a LOT more flashes than you are in reality. If your real activity % is lower, you will cast slightly more HLs and a lot less FoLs to use the same mana over the same duration. I'm still not sure how to handle that issue (where a small change to activity % creates a big change in spell usage) - note that this isn't just a rawr issue it's a general thing I see in game too (that is, how aggressively I get to spam vs how much I have to move having a very significant effect on how much HL vs FoL I use).

Galzohar,
I think your response is a little off target of what I was trying to say. I'm talking about the scenario where you ARE going to use Glyph of Flash of Light. You've already made up your mind. Now you have to decide which glyph you are going to replace.

Glyph of Holy Light would definitely stay. At that point, you lose either Glyph of Seal of Wisdom or Glyph of Divinity. Both glyphs are purely mana regen related, so the decision gets based on which glyph provides the most mana. It has nothing to do with Spiritual Attunement, since self-healing returns no mana. Also, with the minor Glyph of Lay on Hands, LoH will return an extra 20% mana, bringing it up to 2,340 mana.

Also, I'm talking about using Lay on Hands on yourself purely for the mana return (or on another healer). For current content, I really don't need to use it on the tank. I do in rare occasions, and in those fights I would have to be more conservative with mana after using it. In the fights where I don't need to LoH the tank, I usually don't need to LoH myself until well towards the end of the fight. At that point, I feel a lot more comfortable about not having it available for tank emergencies since the boss might be at his last 10%.

There is no way I would ever consider dropping Glyph of Seal of Wisdom for Glyph of Flash of Light. Glyph of Seal of Wisdom is strictly better mana wise. GFoL reduces the cost of your average Flash of Light by 9.21 mana, while GSoW reduces it by 16. The extra 2.5% healed on average by FoL can no where near make up the difference of mana reduction GSoW offers with HL.

I might drop Divinity for it, since I rarely use LoH for its mana return. Its more for an "oh shit" moment on a tank, or the premptively to put up the Armor buff for an enrage (or similar mechanic). With 110k+ effective mana pools (pre-Illumination), I find its better used as utility then mana return.

I only have access to my Mac laptop for the next few weeks, so I won't be able to make any updates to Rawr currently. You can simulate GFoL now by setting the FoL bonus crit value on an item. When I get back though I will try to get a version out with the changed Glyph, and a better way to compare them.

what makes [Torch of Holy Fire] BIS over [The Turning Tide]? They both seem pretty equal in stats, the only difference being one has mp5 and one has crit, and 1 more int. rawr ranks torch slightly better than the sword, but from what I've seen it seems to favor mp5 a little more than some people do.

15 MP5 is 180 MP60. 0.81% additional crit generates a return of 0.5% of your mana expenditure. So unless you're spending 36k mana per minute - in other words, spamming HL without pause - the Torch provides greater mana return. The 0.4% increase in throughput from crit is scarcely worth mentioning.

Following your logic mp5 is a better stat than crit, because on those items they have about the same budget.

In these cases, you should really think of loot distribution as far as your raid is concerned. The Torch is BIS for Druids/Shamans/Priests (That's a lot of specs, too). Adding Paladins on top of that makes for a very competitive item. On the other hand, TT is Mages/Warlocks. Adding Paladins on top of that makes somewhat more sense. However if you have a heavy population of a particular class, then you should factor that into your decision logic.

You can't just come and say which one Rawr ranks better on two close items, because it is different for each person and there gear. Like for me and my gear it ranks [The Turning Tide] better then [Torch of Holy Fire]. I am going to try to get both of them, and just stick with whichever one I get first.

I don't see how 0.41% throughput is not worth mentioning at all. Of course if you only consider the mana portion of crit then it won't stack up to other mana stats almost all the time. When we are talking about the difference of the items that are the same ilvl, .41% isn't really that small. At my gear level 0.41% throughput is roughly 32 hps, which takes around 18-22 sp to get. So with that logic there is no point to even compare sp difference on items if it is less then 18.

People also need to get away from the idea that extra mana is worthless if you don't go OOM. Unless you are spamming HL the whole time, you can make use of more mana. This current raid tiers fight aren't that difficult (by design), so they really aren't going to test your mana pool and gear if you are in a high end guild anyway. When we are doing 3-5 min entry level fights, no your mana isn't going to get stressed.

GC posted today in regards to Guardian Spirit.

Yes you can. Turning Tide is better for all Paladins

And even in this case, as other people mentioned, sword from heroic KT is better than mace in quite a few encounters that I modelled. Not always, of course, but quite often.


What I found out (and hope the same trend will be kept in T8-9): there are 2 more or less equal plate items for each slot. Usually it's one with mp5/something and one with crit/haste. It is quite usefull for gathering 'effectiveness' gear and 'HPS' gear like avoidance/sta sets for tanks. Those 2 pieces per slot cover BIS for the whole range of available encounters. Just combine them to reach the desired degree of effectiveness/HPS.

Crit Holy Shocks make Holy Paladins something something.

I think it's happy.


Unless you never Holy Shock during raids (if you don't then you're way behind on times, try it) then MP5 may be worth considering as a pure regen stat instead of crit. In a real situation however, where your Holy Shock is the only reliable heal to be cast while moving and to be used help raid heal with Beacon on the tank, crit from gear will eclipse MP5 simply because of Infusion of Light procs.

You are right, but quite often you choose not between crit and mp5 but rather between haste and mp5 (examples - [Shroud of Luminosity] vs [Cloak of the Dying], [Girdle of Unity] vs [Waistguard of Divine Grace]). in both cases rawr values mp5 items quite higher than crit/haste ones and I wouldn't just throw mp5 out of the window completely. Rawr may overvalue it, but it still has non zero value. If I would have to choose between 2 extra HL during the fight or 0.03sec faster HL cast I would probably choose 2 extra HL.

Let's rephrase, then. You can say it, but you will not necessarily be right. Crit is only of use when you can cast spells that crit. On fights like Loatheb, where you don't cast heals and so receive far fewer Illumination procs, the Torch with its constant regen will give better returns. The same goes for mobility fights, heavy mana draining opponents and silencers.

I personally would prefer Turning Tide over the Torch if all other things are taken to be equivalent, but part of that preference is the added flexibility granted to choosing my other gear.

Now one can see why one cannot write up a list of BIS for healers (similar issue with tanks), everyone has an opinion on what is best.
Also you have to take into account that normally gearing dps > healers, so while TT could be BIS it is better to have Mages do more damage (unless you are Manly!).

However, this discussion does show that is appears to be a good idea to collect ilevel 213 haste or mp5 gear normally that you don't want, because later it may become more useful in T8.

The 2 weapons are extremely close with my gear, with the sword coming up slightly on top. However they're close enough that I would not take it away from a dps (that's skilled enough to deserve it), since the mace really sucks for them while for me it's pretty much the same thing.

Keep in mind that the better gear you have, the better crit is going to be in relation to mp5, so if your gear is better than mine, the sword will only become better, while if your gear is quite lower than mine, the mace will probably be better. But all in all it's a very small difference.

In terms of burst for emergency healing ability, they both have the same sp and haste (with the negligible difference of 1 int), so the only real difference is efficiency which is handled by rawr. Keep in mind that just because people rank their gear different than rawr doesn't make those people right and rawr wrong. If anything, it's most often the other way around (although I do add a factor for burst differently than rawr, as I don't count crit towards emergency healing ability).


If you think you already have too much mana and don't need anymore, think again, as you most likely also have too much spellpower and haste and don't need any more either, so saying you have enough mana makes no sense unless you're casting HL as much as you'd like (which you're most likely not, as I'm not even sure it's achievable with current gear, and even if it is it requires very high levels of gear (of course the level of gear needed is greatly dependent on your activity %)).


Glyph of seal of wisdom/light seems to be by far the best glyph, absolutely no point in dropping it especially not for 5% FoL crit. Glyph of HL also seems to be doing too much healing on the average fight to drop. Since spiritual attunement is generally not good enough, it's up to divinity vs the FoL glyph. I think it's alright to assume you will get the mana from divinity, as even if you're reaching the end of a hard fight without using it, you can always use it on the tank as a free heal that boosts armor and thus (probably) saves more total healer mana than using it on a healer. So it still ends up as a "would you use enough FoLs to make the glyph worth more than 1950 mana in a hard fight or not?"


What I don't understand is why pretty much everyone pick SoW over SoL no questions asked. While SoW does provide almost 3% more efficiency with my gear, SoL does provide 5% more burst. That's kind of like preferring ~107 crit rating over ~209 haste. You have to value 1% efficiency increase as >= 1.67% burst increase in order to pick SoW over SoL, which just doesn't seem like a worthwhile tradeoff (although it does somewhat depend on the fight and other varying factors). And yes, this is already taking into account all the pretty things that help SoW be more than a plain ~5.26% efficiency increase. Burst in my terms is the HPS of a non-crit HL.