@ Earl Grey - next Mimiron, see if it breaks there for you as well, as that seems to be a common fight for failure. Anyway, this may all be academic if this is the issue the PTR patch note is aimed at, though I don't see how the wording of the patch note correlates to what we're seeing - the paladins in all these logs have Divine Shield up when they cast Divine Sacrifice so by implication they're not taking any damage during Divine Sacrifice that could cause it to cancel.

Where are you having mana issues on any boss in Ulduar?

In my expierence, nearly every boss allows for SoW melee abuse to keep your mana pool extremely high for most of the fights duration. At least on normal modes. I haven't had enough expierence on hards to know what's needed to heal them, but if there was ever a fight that required 100% non stop HL spam I could see swapping back to 4p7.5.

I'm looking forward to finishing 4pT8 personally. I've been exclusivly running 51/20 as my build since Ulduar came out, and haven't had any issues with mana at all. Ending most fights with plenty of mana left in the tank. So i don't really see the benefit to 4pT7.5 on most encounters.

Razorscale is trivial to heal, and there is no reason you dont go into Phase2 at 100%, or close to it in Mana. XT on normal allows for plenty of opportunity to re-fill your mana bar during heart phases. Ignis you can melee/heal the entire time. Iron Council allows for the same amount of melee freedom to grab ticks of SoW between casts if ur mana bar is hurting. Kologarn is the same, you can melee/heal the entire fight. Aryia you can melee the entire fight. Freya allows you to melee for the majority of the fight if ur mana is an issue. Same with Thorim depending on your comp and chain lightning. Hodir allows for lots of time to melee/Divine plea between flash freezes. Mimiron you can't really melee, but the phase changes allow for plenty of time to use Divine Plea, OOC regen.

I haven't seen the other bosses yet...

But anyways. I don't really see mana being an issue for any Paladin on ony of the Normal modes in Ulduar. So all things considered, 4pT8 is just a bonus to your overall ability to heal. I really wish they had a +spellpower Libarm for Sacred Shield, as I'm really looking forward to replacing my HLight mana regen libram, but haven't found anything better.

The 213 plate pieces are far outclassed by the well itemized 226 and 239 pieces. Whether they're accessible or if taking them would cause loot problems in your guild is, for the most part, an entirely different story.

I think his problem is Rawr didn't have the items included in his database. I frequently had to go out and get the latest known drops for Rawr. With that said, there are quite a few pieces it says are better that have lots of mp5....needless to say I am skeptical still.

You can translate crit straight into a mana regen value through rawr, so I don't see why it's unbelievable. When you translate haste into mp5 and still have the crit, the fight value goes sailing through the roof while the burst either drops a little or not.

Really depends on what value you're looking at when using rawr. Be it fight healing, burst healing, or the total summation of both. It's a tool, you're supposed to make your own decision on what's best for you.

I do agree with the shield and weapon's superiority, I'll note those down. I was unaware of the weapon's existence until you posted it here.

I personally avoid mail/cloth pieces, I wore cloth bracers in vanilla and since then have sworn off using them altogether. That leaves me with the choices I placed in the model above, or until more hard mode loot is discovered.

My post was more aimed at questioning the superiority of the tier sets, rather than the off-set items.

It will be upgraded to ilvl 232 so it most likely will beat TTT.

Speaking from experience of Hodir/Thorim hard modes completed, you wont have the luxury of meleeing with SoW. You might get a couple of chances on hodir at a flash freeze, but because you need to stack so much dps and you are better off stood next to a fire means its really not worth it.

Ok guys, I`m a bit confused about how to upgrade my [Waistguard of Divine Grace].

RAWR is pointing me towards [Belt of the Fallen Wyrm] but point for point, [Plate Girdle of Righteousness] seems better, mainly due to the sockets.

I`m an int-stacking guy, and I`m fine on crit (43% holy crit, selfbuffed.) Is this another one of those occasions where raw stats beat itemization? I would like to know whether to tell our shamans that I`m going to take their loot, or should I ask my GM (and guild blacksmith) to craft that belt for me?

I just keep debating with myself over this, so I could use some extra opinions. Thanks in advance.

I'd say that could also depend on if you're a jewelcrafter or not. As a JCer, the blue socket can be considered a 16 int gem, otherwise its a 8 int 3 mp5 (or 9 sp 3 mp5) gem. Professions aside, its gonna come down to the standard "is mp5 useful" debate. If it were me, I'd go for the belt of the fallen wyrm because of the haste, 22 haste vs 16 (or 8 for non-JC) int isn't worth it especially if you already are using haste in any gems at all.

I am indeed a JC, but anyone can just shove any gem into any socket. The only reason one would match socket colours, is to get the socket bonus which in this case is 7 spellpower. That same 7 spellpower is gotten back from just stacking int gems in the three sockets (2 standard, + 1 from belt buckle).

Then there`s haste.. yeah, I`d lose a bit of haste on this. how best to cover for that? 2x16int, 1x16haste? That would more or less make it a straight upgrade (the int compensating for the crit).

Or go 3x16int, and cast a little slower? both are valid options in my book at the moment. but as i said.. debating.

Rawr agrees with my assessment, Fallen Wyrm < Plate Girdle < Blue Chaos. However, if you are going to use Orbs for your BiS belt, try the [Blue Belt of Chaos], while it is mail, it has great stats.

I've recently been trying to make this decision myself. Based on Rawr and generally accepted gearing practices, it's pretty clear that either the Plate Girdle or Blue Belt are early-BIS until we start clearing some hard modes, thanks to the gem slots if nothing else. So I'm on the prowl to get one of the two crafted.

The thing that's been giving me pause is the choice between Haste/MP5 and Crit/MP5 (as we've long since discussed to death). I prefer the stats on the Blue Belt, but Crit+MP5 is doubling up on regen, while Haste+MP5 offers more noticeable throughput increases coupled with regen. Put simply, I'm not sure if I really want to downgrade from my Divine Grace to slower heals just to sink more itemization into mana longevity. Although arguably, that's all you're doing with the extra two 2 Int sockets the belt provides.

Traditionally when gearing, I've held to the general ideology that Int > Crit = Haste > Spellpower > MP5, and have tried to pursue a weighted balance of the stats. Having the GCD capped at 1-second is something of a necessity in Ulduar and I'm quite comfortable with my Holy Lights cast in my current gear. That makes me very reluctant to retrograde to slower casts in pursuit of mana.

You could liken the situation to something like a tank gearing himself around the defense cap. If he's at 545 defense, he may trade 5 defense for 500 health on a piece of gear. However, he would not trade 10 defense for even 1500 health, because it would drop him below the cap. Maintaining the cap weighs in heavier than the gains he would receive from the extra health.

This is very much how I feel about haste. Past a certain point it's less desirable, and further past that it's down right useless, but until that point it's very close to mandatory. If I can get enough haste on the rest of my gear to keep me at or above my 3.0 BIS levels, then I'll definitely jump for the Blue Belt of Chaos. If, however, I'm not planning on getting extra haste from some other resource to offset the loss on Divine Grace, I would prefer the suboptimal Plate Girdle of Righteousness so that I can maintain my haste status quo while upgrading my mana longevity, rather than trading one for the other.

It's something to keep in mind when gear planning. Determine for yourself the level of haste on your gear that you feel is necessary, plan how you're going to obtain it, and then go gonzo with the "infinitely" stackable resources of Intellect, Spellpower, and Crit.

(Note: Obviously crit is not infinitely stackable, and there's been much discussion surrounding crit's DR, but we can all agree that Haste becomes a useless stat far earlier on than Crit. Crit has a much more "bottomless" nature to its stackability.)

And what, if I may ask, is the point where haste becomes less desirable? I`m at 539, and would like to know what to aim for.

edit: I just ran the latest RAWR, with JC gemming template, rest default, and it shows the [Blue Belt of Chaos] as being super awesome. 143 points as opposed to [Plate Girdle of Righteousness] which has 86, and [Belt of the Fallen Wyrm] which scores a 63.

Tankred: My personal goal with haste is 676 haste rating, which is the soft cap where our GCD is down to 1s. Further haste will only reduce cast time and not GCD, making it not nearly as desirable.

Is that with, or without the 15% from judgements?

Depending on your raid comp, you may also have 3% from a Retribution / Moonkin Aura, as well as 5% from Wrath of Air Totem.

Since you need 50% haste to cap the GCD at 1-second, you can extrapolate this handy little table for the haste soft cap:


Total Haste Rating Needed to Cap GCD at 1 Second...

...Without Judgements of the Pure: 1640

...With Judgements of the Pure: 1148

...With Judgements of the Pure + Wrath of Air: 984

...With Judgements of the Pure + Wrath of Air + Retkin Aura: 886


I'm not sure where the 676 number is coming from. If my calculations are correct, 676 Haste Rating grants you 20.62% Haste. Add 23% Haste from full buffs and you come out with 43.62% Haste, which should reduce the GCD to 1.04 seconds.

Granted, we're only talking about an extra four hundredths of a second, which is almost unnoticeable. The only case where you would notice the difference would be if you refresh your buffs (Sacred Shield, Beacon, Judgements) in bursts together, as I do. Then you would notice 3.12 seconds of buffing time as opposed to a straight 3 seconds. Of course, the obvious solution is to space out your rebuffing. Fortunately, this is easy to do since they're all on different cooldowns. Simply make a habit of refreshing each one ~10 seconds before it expires and you shouldn't run into many buff conflicts.

This is, however, where personal judgement comes into play. Even though you may technically need 886 Haste Rating to get the tooltip on your Flash of Light to read "1 second cast" exactly, is it worth stacking an extra 210 Haste Rating when you could get by with "1.04 second cast" just as well? If you do decide 1.04 seconds is more than acceptable for GCD, what about the casting speed you miss out on from Holy Light with that extra 6.4% haste?

We've been discussing Haste since launch, and no one still agrees on how much you actually need. We can tell you not to go over 886, but whether you need 886, 676, or 500 depends entirely on your own experience or playstyle. That's why players should weigh how important haste is to themselves when picking their own "haste cap" around which to gear.

EDIT: To further explain the impact of a player's personal experience on the gearing philosophy, I have 542 haste in my Int-gemmed holy gear. This gives me a GCD of 1.07 seconds, which I consider acceptable although I'd like it to be lower. Thus, I may be willing to maintain this level of haste and make do with it as I upgrade more important stats on my gear (like Int), but I'm not very willing to actually drop haste and raise the GCD for anything short of a phenomenal upgrade.

If I swapped out my Waistguard of Divine Grace for the Blue Belt of Chaos, I would be moving from a 1.07-second GCD to a 1.09-second GCD. If I swapped out my Waistguard of Divine Grace for the Plate Girdle of Righteousness, I would be moving from a 1.07-second GCD to a 1.08-second GCD. I'm still not very pleased about doing even that, but the massive Int gains from the two extra sockets would make it worth my while.

In short, +32 Int is probably worth 0.01 seconds of GCD time to me, but I'm not sure if it's worth 0.02 seconds of GCD time. At least, not while I'm still so far below the actual cap. If I was comparing a 1.00-second GCD to a 1.02-second GCD, it would be a different story.

Of course, Int's not the only upgrade that Blue Chaos offers over Divine Grace. It also brings a substantial amount of crit to the table, while Righteousness eats up so much of its item budget with a cumbersome 6 extra MP5. So the comparison I'm in fact looking at is losing 0.01 seconds of GCD time for 32 Int, or 0.02 seconds of GCD time for 32 Int and 0.4% Crit.

This is the perfect example of a decision that Rawr cannot make for you. You have to use your own expertise and intuition to determine what stats you need the most depending on your current gear, your planned gear, your raid composition, your encounters, and your assigned role in those encounters.

And on a sidenote, I am personally leaning towards the Blue Belt of Chaos--partially because it feels like the best use of stats, but more because I like the idea of being my guild's only Blood Elf Shaman.

You should be able to get enough haste to dip below the soft cap and still make it effective for your FoL because of lag, from personal experience, the best I've ever seen my latency was 200 ms so, even with a much better connection Id expect 100 ms unless you're standing right next to your server. If we wanted to find the 'perfect' haste value to stack, we'd probably want to include latency into the calculation. This past week I moved and now am getting 300-500 ms if I'm lucky, so where before I didn't really feel the need to stack haste. Now I'm gemming more and more for haste because of how much lag I'm getting.

Those numbers are totally wrong, your error was in computing how the buffs stacked. Haste buffs stack multiplicatively, so having JotP up essentially also increases your haste rating by 15%.

Haste Needed / JotP Haste / WoA Haste / Ret Aura Haste = Gear Haste Needed
1.5 / 1.15 / 1.05 / 1.03 = 1.206

So 20.6% (675.6 rating) haste is needed from your gear to be at 1sec GCDs.

Aha, thank you for sorting that out. So the correct table would look something like:


Total Haste Rating Needed to Cap GCD at 1 Second...

..Without Judgements of the Pure: 1640

...With Judgements of the Pure: 998

...With Judgements of the Pure + Wrath of Air: 795

...With Judgements of the Pure + Wrath of Air + Retkin Aura: 676


So, let's update my arguments around my gearing debate. 542 Haste Rating should in fact translate to 1.03-second GCDs. Thus, I'm looking at a 1.05-second GCD with Blue Chaos or a 1.04-second GCD with Righteousness. At this point, the differences are far less pronounced and the Blue Belt of Chaos is the pretty inarguable choice.

It would be apt to mention that getting haste capped isn't mandatory, but it is important to know the greater benefits of being haste capped.

I have had several paladins on my server questioning the basis of the ideal and my answers to them have included these points:

1. Haste rating is the most effective healing stat per point on paper, till the haste cap

2. The haste cap allows the paladin to establish how much spellpower (and even crit) is 'better-off' than Int

3. Being haste capped (or nearing it) allows the paladin to gear logically and consistently

4. Haste complements advanced healing styles, whereby HL can be staggered more accurately and effectively

Since a large majority of your time is spent spamming HL(especially in the hard modes), haste remains at virtually the same value after the "haste cap". I really don't see the point of gearing around the 676 number as it is largely arbitrary.