Klutch

Great points mentioned so far. I feel as though my dreams of a real duel spec are fading to become an optimal pve healer (something I've been doing anyway).

At this point 51/20 makes sense as my secondary.

I guess I'll have to play with 51/5/15 to see if my mana is really effected by this significantly, if not, it seems more of an ideal spec, even though losing PoJ will be missed.

 

Klutch

sorry double post

 

Malleus

We've discussed this to exhaustion before, though I think it may have been in the last thread.

To summarise: most of our spells will overheal, so bonuses to throughput don't help all that much. Whether or not you need it, 1.8% additional mana is still better than the nothing you will frequently gain from Divinity.

 

gcbirzan

By that reasoning, we should never enchant spell power, we should never consider the talents that increase our healing power. If most of your heals overheal, then that means the target was close to full health. If it doesn't overheal, then it means the target was low-ish on health. That's when you actually need the extra healing, not when you get a crit from that extra 8% crit.

I'm not saying 8% crit is worse, I'm just saying that you shouldn't dismiss 5% extra healing based on some simplistic explanation like "we mostly overheal anyway, why would we ever want to heal more".

 

thedudeabides

There were some hard numbers on this debate, but i cannot find the exact post using the search tool. From what i remember, divinity (51/5/15) barely eeks ahead of crit (51/0/20) for HPS. However, the 51/0/20 included PoJ. there is also the debate of (51/5/15) being more consistent HPS, versus (51/0/20) having spikes. additionally, your level of gear will determine whether you need more mana or throughput. i would love to see some more definitive numbers.

in my limited experience in Ulduar (specifically in 10 man with fewer healers), the tanks is often being hit with 20k or more damage. With my gear, my HL crits hit for around 16-18k (1954 unbuffed spell power). I don't have a WWS, but i often HL the tank during damage spikes + AOE attacks where he does not get fully topped off. I am thus forced to heal the tank again, and cannot afford to raid heal during an AOE situation (i.e. XT temper). i don't know what the ideal "spell power soft cap" is, but i have not reached it.

Lastly, how often do people use Hand of Sacrifice/beacon on the tank and heal themselves? Divinity will clearly shine through here, assuming you get 10% heal (5% by you + 5% on you).

 

AlcapwnedYou

I don't think that is the reasoning that was being presented. I think the reasoning presented was thus: mana regen / mana pool is generally more important than pure throughput. That is not the same as, "avoid spell boosting items/talents". Your proposed reasoning would be the equivalent of someone taking 1% Crit over 100SP, which is a complete fallacy as the values matter too.

Really, it comes down to how you are geared and the conditions of the fight. Divinity for throughput, Critical Chance for mana regen. If you are running out of mana during long fights, go with the extra critical. If you have no mana issues and need more bang to your spells, go with Divinity. Ultimately, Retribution Paladins benefit the most from this talent as it equates to 10% more on AoW self-heals, and higher JoL returns (assuming a group with more than one paladin).

PoJ is really a wild card based on play style and different encounters. For movement intensive fights, worth every point. For "stand here and spam" fights, not so much.

 

gcbirzan

That's how I read it, and why I considered it wrong. Maybe I misunderstood the original post, sorry.

Yeah, PoJ is a great talent, especially considering most of the harder Ulduar fights involve a lot of movement.

Later edit: As a sidenote, during the Tympanic Tantrum, XT doesn't melee.

 

• Mex

Just a quick note -- if you're switching regularly between 3 specs (2 holy specs and a ret), it would make sense to have ret as one spec, and then respec as normal between the two holy specs, so that you don't have to change glyphs all the time! 51/20 and 51/0/20 should really both be using the same glyphs, or at least the differences are minute enough for it not to matter.

Regarding overheal as a paladin though, don't simply look at your overhealing at the end of the fight and think that you don't need more SP / throughput just because it's at 60%. Tank healing is unique in that damage is avoidable through RNG, and also the fact that it's generally potentially quite deadly. This is why HL bombing the tank is so good; it's a huge counter against the RNG of avoidance. It doesn't matter if your tank dodges or not, because there's a ~12-18k heal hitting him every ~1.5 seconds. Sure, if the tank has 0 avoidance, eventually the damage will overwhelm you, but that'll give other healers enough time to help out.

In any event, the point is that 60% overheal doesn't mean that you only need 40% of every HL you cast. It's more likely to mean that the tank's avoiding 60% of all incoming swings, and your heals are simply landing as 100% overheal in those situations. Of course it's not quite as cut and dry as that, but be very careful when evaluating overheal metres for tank healing -- an overheal approximately equal to the tank's avoidance is a very healthy thing, and extra throughput shouldn't be discounted just because your druids are sitting at 30%.

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. ... this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.

 

Wullie-Aszune

I can't see half of those being useful. Especially [Spark of Hope], why would any pally want that ? +100 Sprit, ok the mana reduction would be handy, but I certainly wouldn't waste DKP on it.

[Pandora's Plea] & [Sif's Remembrance] are certainly worthy of being added to the original post.

 

gcbirzan

Vezax. And it's from Ulduar 10, my guild doesn't go with DKP in 10 mans, so I just got it for free.

 

TimWischmeier

Firstly, this trinket drops in U10, so distributing it is often easier than U25 trinket.

Secondly, it works similar to Glyph of Wisdom and 4T7, though not as powerful (I am at work and don't have numbers at hand, but the mana cost reduction of Spark of Hope should be somewhere in the ballpark between 2% and 3%). Likewise it is useful when chaincasting HL, which is often the case in hardmodes.

It is clearly more interesting if you are focussing 10 man raids and don't have access to 25man trinkets.

And it is especially useful for Vezax. Dropping FoL manacost from ~300 to ~250 (again, don't have exact numbers at hand) is a 16% reduction.

While this trinket is not gamebraking, it is a valid choice, frankly even the +100 Spirit are completely useless!

 

Arfea

Hello.

I run 10 mans almost exclusivly (pugged my 25m naxx gear). This is what I have come up with:


Holy light costs 1210 mana
Illumination returns 726 on critical strike
with naxx 4 set + [Libram of Renewal] + [Spark of Hope] + [Glyph of Seal of Wisdom] holy light costs me 1007 mana

Therefore on a crit Holy light costs me 281 mana.

Factor in whatever raid buffed mp5 I have, say 130mp5(gear and BoW).= 26 mana/sec. Factor in replenishment on 25k mana pool 0.25/sec=62.5

62.5+26=88.5 a second.
Holy light spam is around 1.4 sec cast in 10m
0.4sec of regen is 35.4
35.4+88.5=124mpsecond~ I know MP5 doesn't work exactly like that, but for the purpose of this exercise assume it does (as you do get the mana back at a different interval)

281-124=157

Holy light costs me 157 mana on a crit, assuming I crit.

Spark also reduces the cost of judging, beacon, rebuffing, sacred shield, flash of light and holy shock.


I have almost 41% crit to holy light selfbuffed. I have around 55% in a 25 man raid setting and quite a variable crit rating in 10 man depending on group.
------------------
Is this correct?

Aka Meaniemoo.

 

• frmorrison

There is not spell power soft cap. More spell power is always useful, if for nothing else than having stronger SS, topping people off better with Shock, and harder hitting Judgements. However, other stats can be more useful than spell power.


If you are in a 25 man where tanks can take 40k hits every 2 seconds, HoS could kill you, so many people bubble or shield wall before using it. 10 mans it isn't that much of an issue to Shock yourself after a HoS.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Saladin

On the subject of spellpower, I've discovered an interesting little tidbit after playing with gear and talent configurations for several hours.

The maximum amount of spellpower currently obtainable in game is about 3,580. This is (of course) with full hardmode gear, completely gemmed and enchanted with spellpower, fully talented raid buffs, and necessarily a sheath spec.

In reality, none of us will be speccing sheath, it'll be a while before we're decked out in full hardmode, we won't be gemming for spellpower in the foreseeable future, and we may or may not have a raid comp that gives fully talented versions of every buff under the sun. So don't expect to ever actually achieve those kind of SP numbers, but do notice that it's basically impossible to exceed them.

Assuming Divine Guardian + 4PT8, this translates to roughly 3,222 damage absorbed every 4 seconds. Again, the same caveats apply. You will probably never see a sacred shield this big. But until the next tier of content, this is the theoretical "limit."

I'd be interested in seeing some numbers on the theoretical max that disc priests can absorb in comparison to this. Can a Discipline priest prevent more/less damage than 48,330 in 60 seconds under their hypothetical optimum circumstances?

 

Roknroll

In a heavy damage fight with a disc priest factoring in Divine Aegis, I think they'll still mitigate more damage when just looking at the MT. Raid wide, the disc priest is mitigating MUCH more. I believe Divine Aegis stacks now (up to a 10,000 dmg shield), but doesn't take into account over healing when calculating how much of a shield the person gets. So putting up PW:S every 15 seconds along with constant crits (assuming not a lot of overhealing), the disc priest should be able to easily top that out in their max gear.

 

PeF

A little off-topic, but we just dropped a pretty nice new trinket from our algalon 10 men kill :



Looks like a new BiS trinket (and mp5, yay ! )

 

Saladin

Okay, we'll let's work backward from this then.

I've seen reports of Disc priests getting 7k power word shields (although the vast majority lay claim to 6k figures), so we'll go with that for our top end.

7k shielded every 15 seconds -> 28k shielded in 60 seconds. So that leaves 20,330 damage absorption to be covered through heals in a 60 second time frame to match paladin max theoretical mitigation.

20,330 damage absorption means that the disc priest has to put out 67,767 non-overheal critical healing in 60 seconds. Otherwise known as 1,130 HPS from non-overheal crits.

The number sounds very doable. However, it's highly dependent on overhealing, while Sacred Shield provides its absorption regardless. I'd still like some numbers or parses from actual disc priests to deduce how much critical healing they can produce in 60 seconds, then back off some overheal percentages from that. Perhaps a visit to the priest forum is in order.

It would be nice to be able to say "a paladin can mitigate one-third/half/twice the damage that a disc priest in," especially when rationalizing a prospective buff to SS.

 

gcbirzan

True, but SS only costs one GCD. Fire and forget.

 

Saladin

This is a largely irrelevant point when comparing the tank mitigation prowess of a discipline priest and holy paladin over a given time period. It's only one GCD and requires no maintenance, sure. But disc shielding comes with the side effect of actually healing while shielding.

The fact that SS takes care of itself is something I personally like, but other players don't. Regardless, it has nothing to do with the argument that "disc priests prevent more/less damage done to tanks."

 

Sven

Warning: the math in this post is still very much under consideration! Use these numbers as you would eat Brussels sprouts – warily and with a lot of salt.

To get the most mana regen out of this, you'd have to be haste capped and spamming FoL once per second.

As MP5 ticks every 2 seconds, your stacking regen would be something like this: (s60) * (2 / 5) = m //where s is the number of stacks and m is the mana returned.

The theoretical maximum would be 20 casts in 20 seconds and a 10-tick breakdown of:

/1: 120 mp5 /2: 240 mp5 /3: 360 mp5 /4: 480 mp5 /5: 600 mp5 /6: 720 mp5 /7: 840 mp5 /8: 960 mp5 /9: 1080 mp5 /10: 1200 mp5

This would net you a theoretical maximum of 2,640 mana returned. However, you'll probably miss a few ticks, so the number's probably going to be closer to 2k in most situations.

For every time your stack number does not increase once per seconds, you this much mana: t(60 * 2 / 5) = l //where t is the number of seconds until the buff wears off and l is the mana lost.

So, for instance, if I skipped stack 3 and stack 6, the trinket would net me 2,640 - [14(60 * 2 / 5) + 8(60 * 2 / 5)] = 2,112 mana. The earlier you hit your stacks, the better. You'd lose 480 mana (almost 20% of the theoretical max) just by missing your first stack.

As a reference point, Soul of the Dead gives you something along the lines of 1k mana per minute (assuming you proc it 5-10 seconds after each internal cooldown). This is about equivalent to around 80 MP5. The theoretical maximum of 2,640 mana per use equates to 110 MP5, and the expected return of 2k mana per use equates to 80 MP5.

In short, even without the use, the Meteorite Crystal is AWESOME. With it, it's the best trinket in the game for holy pallies, hands-down.

 

tiberion02

The on use effect is just gravy. 111 Int on a trinket is impossible to pass up, and I suspect this will be the trinket of choice until at least late Icecrown Citadel. Meteorite + Pandora's Plea are going to be an amazing combo and I'm impressed at the design of both. Though, I think the 160 MP5 is inflated since getting a full 5 FoL in 5 seconds requires next to 0 lag, and may not even be possible.

Redo the math with 4 + 5 + 4 + 5 and I think we'd get a more realistic idea of how much mana return we will have.

Borderlands: tiberion02, add me.

 

Sven

(This is what I get for not showing my work!)

My math was completely wrong. I've fixed it in the original post.

 

• Mex

Spamming FoL for 20 seconds straight isn't necessarily realistic though, at least not every 2 minutes on the dot. Still, assuming ~3 HLs per 5 seconds for the duration, you're still looking at a good chunk of MP5. As others have said though, the 111 int means that the use could be +4 ArPen and it'd still be Godly, but it's probably best not to evaluate the full worth of the trinket based on ideal circumstances (worst case, you could pop it and get gripped / grav bombed / whatever and waste a portion or even all of it).

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. ... this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.

 

kingleonardo

I'm not too sure if regen from MP5 works the way you've illustrated since 3.0. This though could be tested quite easily with a naked Paladin.

Secondly, an experiment I did for Pendant of the Violet Eye years ago showed that the last tick of regen was not endowed upon. So instead of 4 ticks of regen, this trinket might only give mana at 5th, 10th and 15th seconds.

But yes this trinket is BiS imo

 

Terlig

I was getting easily 3,100 absorptions - this is with [Illustration of the Dragon Soul] trinket and Divine Guardian. This is stable absorbtion number as long as i keep all trinket stacks. Now i have a bit more SP and i think i am getting higher numbers, but i didn't recorded logs from last raid.

To clarify, Trinket, SP Totem, MotW, Flask, Food. Together i have usually around 2850 SP. I could get more with regemming a little and choosing another gear. And of course changing Saphirion trinket to another one with SP.