I don't understand why we're comparing numbers that nobody knows how they were derived, especially when you have rawr to derive numbers in a much more personalized and adjustable manner.

Actually, shouldn't the fact that MP5 is the most expensive stat on an item's budget diminish its value relative to other cheaper stats? That is to say, since 20 MP5 eats up the budget for 40 crit, we're taking a sizeable "opportunity cost" for the wasted MP5.

It would seem that MP5 should be valued equal to crit/spellpower so that the naturally pricier item budget prioritizes itself beneath crit and the other stats.

Value MP5 any way you want.
But it is still doing what it always did.
And it still benefits your healing just as much as it always did, just now Int does so much more in efficiency.
As has been stated it "looks" high but you get so much less of it due to its' high item budget cost.

Right now I'm using the JC Owl with 2xIntellect Dragon Eyes and the 42 Int trinket from Kara (lol). I'm a big intellect whore, and I have nearly 23k mana unbuffed. I don't have mana or healing issues ever in any content, but my question is this:

Is the Egg of Mortal Essence better than the 42 Int kara trinket at this level?

Thanks in advance

People need to stop posting questions like this.

"Is X better than Y?" is not a valid question for a healer. We are not DPSers, we cannot derive exact values / weightings for specific stats, and as far as I'm concerned, trying to do so just shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the role.

What you can do is learn to understand which stats are better in which circumstances and why this is the case. In doing so you'll learn to be able to make changes to your gear (usually trinkets / rings / librams / etc) in order to maximise your potential (because at the end of the day you have a very limited amount of control over the fight. No matter how high your SP or int, you can't prevent a tank from mistiming a CD or another healer from DCing) for the specific encounter that you are about to attempt.

Once you have an understanding of which stats you find desirable, and want to focus on for a particular encounter, then you can use tools such as rawr or spreadsheets to derive exact values comparing various stats for a specific purpose, but you will never be able to say that one is flat out "better" than another. This is even the case with intellect, which would be almost completely useless on a 12 second fight (extreme example, but it can be extrapolated with currently attainable int levels and fight lengths).

You can make rough generalisations, such as "intellect will increase the total healing you are capable of on a bossfight by more than any other stat," but if you don't understand why, and in which situations this statement does not hold true in, then you're just shooting yourself in the foot.

Raw numbers will only get you so far, if you don't understand the ideas and reasoning behind them, then there's no point.

I think you misunderstood me or how Rawr represents Relative Stat Value. MP5 is relatively worse than the other stats in terms of StatMod cost on an item, but those ratings aren't based off StatMod. They're an indication of how much relative gain I'd get from 1 additional point of each stat. However, 1 point of each stat has different StatMod costs on an item.

If I wanted to numerically compare the stats based on their StatMod cost, I'd just divide the values Rawr is giving to me by their StatMod cost, like this:

MP5: 2.63/2.5 = 1.052
INT: 2.35/1 = 2.35
CRIT: 1.65/1 = 1.65
SPELLPOWER: 1.63/0.86 = 1.89
HASTE: 1.28/1 = 1.28

When you do this, you can see that MP5 is giving me the least gain per StatMod cost, as expected.

However, all this really helps me do is rank the stats based on their StatMod value, not compare one item to another. This is because when you look at the tooltip of an item, you don't see how much item value is used on a stat; you see how many points of that stat are there. It's these stats that loot ranking addons or websites use to calculate their 'score'.

What could you possibly have two healing sets for (save PvP)

Unless you mean you have a different trinket set up, I can't imagine changing out some of my gear for something else. Do you mean MP5/Crit/Haste set? And why?

The only difference I have atm is changing into alch stone for S3D.

I routinely swap out pieces, once for max crit/ raw power (shorter fights) and another for longevity (4 piece T7 bonus, libram etc.).

While currently I don't have much alternative gear, I am trying to keep items I would equip if I wanted to maximize either burst over efficiency or the other way around, as most of the time I gear around maximizing both added together, which may or may not be the best thing to do in future content, and can even be good on one fight and bad on another.

As for all the mp5 hate, remember a lot of items are simply higher item level and thus are still good regardless (malygos boots and shoulders for example). Also in current encounters it seems like if I have low healing it's more because I had to use too many FoLs rather than because I was having too low burst HPS, making it probably better to gear more towards efficiency than burst. For example doing naxx-20man after the DP nerf I found myself having to resort to FoL (or HL spamming with DP up) a few times, but never really felt that my heal size/speed was lacking.

Bottom line is make sure you gear for what you need based on the tota efficiency and burst bonuses granted by the item, rather than just picking items that have stats you think you like. Any stat can be broken down to "efficiency benefit" and "burst benefit" - call these your new stats and choose between them based on what you're actually fighting, ignoring what actually gave them.

Galzohar's right on the mark here. An excellent example is our T7 gear. Currently, only the shoulders and gloves are "best in slot" according to the Haste/Crit-centric school of healing--the frosty blue off pieces are better in ever other slot that T7 covers. However, the 4-piece bonus of T7 does wonders for Holy Light efficiency.

I've been lucky enough to collect both full T7 and full Frosty Blue Offset--I've divided them into two separate suits. The T7 for endurance, Frosty Blue for raw healing power.

For example, on Patchwerk, I use the Frosty Blue Offset. This is because Patchwerk is a short yet healing intensive fight when you're running light on healers as most guilds like to do. Thus, I can sacrifice "infinite mana" for more powerful healing where it's needed.

On the other hand, whenever we're going up against Kel, I swap to T7 since the damage output isn't so much of a challenge as surviving the long fight + mana burns. Thus, conversely to Patchwerk, I can sacrifice more powerful healing for infinite mana.

You'd be very wise to take Galzohar's suggestion of building twin healing sets optimized for efficiency vs. burst, since we still don't know what a lot of the Ulduar fights will entail. Even when we do, your role could change drastically based on your healing assignment (i.e., MT or raid healing on Hodir).

Exactly.

I am about finished with both of my sets just collecting the last pieces collecting the pieces for my "power healing" set. Having two different healing sets will always be more effective rather than a general and hybrid-like set.

I have been looking around quite a bit and searched here on the forums, but no luck:

Can anyone point me towards a holy paladin guide written in German? I have a Paladin in my guild who really whats to go holy, but doesn't have a clue, howto. And on top of it, doesn't speak english.

Most of the guides I have found so far are either from before WotLK or discussions where I am unable to verify if anything being said is true (like the offical forums).

Thanks in advance

My german is´nt what it once was but i reckon you might already have tried this page but ran it thru google´s translator?

German version of http://elitistjerks.com/f76/t35975-holy_paladin_guide_wotlk/

Great Idea. Haven't laughed that hard in a long time. The german translation is so garbled....

I didn't know i.e. that Spells have something to do with Spelling ;-)

Honestly though - I have never seen a good translation into german that was done by a machine.

Well, MMO-champion just put up a list of the Emblem of Conquest loot from Ulduar 25, and paging through the holy paladin selections...I'm pretty put off.

I hope these are just really poorly itemized items because they're "badge loot," and that the tier gear and Ulduar drops are more intelligently itemized. A problem I see on every piece so far is not just the massive amounts of MP5, which we could learn to forgive and utilize in light of the new Divine Plea. Unfortunately, these pieces are also loaded to the brim with stamina.

Just check out these crazy pants. See what a downgrade they are in every useful stat to [Legguards of the Apostle]?

-1 Intellect
-3 Spellpower
-14 Haste
-58 Crit
+37 Stamina
+29 MP5
+Two Sockets

The best you could hope to do with this piece is make up for the downgrades with gems, in effect coming out with the same pants (or arguably weaker) with an additional 370 health tacked on. Most distasteful.

I really don't know why so much stam is being stacked on healer gear, unless we're looking at severe raid damage in Ulduar fights. And if that's the case, I'm all the more concerned about our limited and newly-nerfed AOE healing capabilities.

One push of 3.1 is to make Healers care about mana, so the badge item devs got the idea and put MP5 on all the SP plate. Paladins can still chain HL in 3.1, so maybe changes are coming.

The additional stamina is not eating the item budget, and with all the AoE around you will want more stamina (from higher item level gear).

If I was to purchase the 3 new Ulduar pieces and remove the equivalent pieces I currently use (T7.5 Gloves and Legs and Waistguard of Divine Grace) the stat change would be:

+74 Stamina
+75 Mp5
+50 Spell Power
-14 Int
-94 Crit
-42 Haste

This also excludes the loss of any T7 bonuses. The Int loss is the result of the socket bonus in the T7.5 gloves.


The new neck piece appears weaker thant the Life-Bender's Locket, with a stat change of:

+17 Stam
+1 MP5
+5 SP
+6 Crit
-21 Int


It appears the buff to stamina and Mp5 is going to come at a significant cost. Makes me wonder what change are coming to make these costs worth being paid.

Right, which is why I say that we can be somewhat forgiving of that--somewhat. Intellect is our prime regen stat, followed by MP5 or Crit based on your holy-to-flash ratio. We can assume from these pieces that Blizzard doesn't want our regen capabilities to scale much further than they already are. At the very least, it's disappointing to see that we won't be "progressing" very much in terms of efficiency as we upgrade our gear (unlike in burning crusade, where a crit-laden T6 paladin could blow a kara-geared FOLer out of the water). Maybe we'll see a big jump with T9, but for right now Blizzard is basically saying, "This is where your mana regen is staying--get used to it."

...I must really misunderstand how item budgets work. Are you saying that a piece can have 2 or 200 Stamina and it won't affect how much Intellect it has on it? I really didn't think it worked that way. If that's true, then I'm even more puzzled as to how an iLevel 226 item downgrades Intellect from an iLevel 213.

As I learned things, I thought that an item could have 40 stam and 60 int, or 60 stam and 40 int, but they all came from the same iLevel budget pool, so that you couldn't have an item with 60 stamina AND 60 int.

In any case, we can agree that this much stamina does beckon heavy raid damage in the future. With a downsized and neutered GHL, we may have to try to work FoL into some sort of raid healing rotation much more often.

Valorous Redemption Tunic:
1155 Mana.
2.04 Haste
20 Mp5
99SP

Valorous Redemption Headpiece.
1155 mana
99 SP
20 Mp5

Valorous Redemption Greaves:
1155 Mana
1.11 Crit
2.01 Haste
99 SP


Combined:
3465 Mana
4.05 Haste
40 Mp5
297 SP
1.11 Crit.



-
Fallout impervious Tunic
1080 Mana
1.33 crit
1.77 Haste
99SP

Faceguard of the Succumbed
1080 Mana
.91 crit
1.86 Haste
99 SP

Bone-Inlaid Legguards:
1080 Mana
1.09 Crit
99SP
22Mp5

Combined:
3600 Mana
3.33 Crit
297SP
3.63 haste

With offset you gain:
135 Mana
2.22 Crit

Lose:
.72 haste
18Mp5

Atm, the Gloves and shoulders are BiS for T7.5

It's not letting me use the wowhead link, for some reason, I'm probably doing it wrong.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

Edit: I did however take your advice, and I'm grabbing the frosty blue sets for quick fights, and Uld. Thank you.

What are the items in that frosty blue set(offset) you guys are talking about?

Its the Ilvl 226 items that has a frosty blue colour looks like they are giving the new badge gear the same colour.
[Elevated Lair Pauldrons]
[Boots of Healing Energies] etc ..

What he means to say is that Stam is cheaper than other stats in iLevel budget. Meanwhile, MP5 is probably the weightiest stat you can get on loot.

In the comparison you made between the two items, the extra stam does not eat the item budget nearly as much as the two sockets and the 29 MP5.

Edit: Besides, increasing stamina is a required part of the raiding game going forward. As healers get better gear that will enable them to heal vastly more, one of the ways to challenge healers is by giving them more to heal. This can either be done by increasing the frequency of damage (which leads to spam-oriented playing style) or by increasing the size of damage. Of course, if they increase the size of damage, then players will have to have more stamina in order to survive those strikes and the healers have an opportunity to heal it up.

So in away, increasing the stamina on raid pieces is another tool Blizzard can use to help challenge healers on future fights. Who knows, if damage gets large enough then even paladins may have to start gemming/enchanting for throughput when our HLs only heal 25% of a person's health rather than the 50% or so it heals now at 2K spell power.