• frmorrison

You can spam Flash if you wish just use it on a random raid member, you cannot spam Flash on the tank who has the Beacon.

Set bonuses are not final, and even if there are it seems the higher item level of T9 will out weigh the better set bonuses in T7 and T8.

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

 

roanexavier

Currently, our ret JoL proc for ~1k.

With the new JoL, someone with 40k hp (tanks only) will only get a 800 hp tick. Everyone else will get proportionately less. JoL took a big nerf.

 

Justizia

Currently, if I use JoL (which I often do since our other holy pally tends to prefer JoW), I get ticks of about 400-500.

Assuming that "maximum health" is based on health AFTER raid buffs, this would remain about the same for me. I agree with you that it would be a substantial decrease for retadins, but it would also become an increase if used by the pally tank.

We tend to raid with 3-5 paladins in the raid (1 prot, 1 ret, and 1-3 holy) so who uses what judgment hasn't been too big of an issue for us holy paladins up to this point. With these changes, I could see our prot pally exclusively choosing to use JoL.

 

Hulabaloon

It should always have been the Retadin judging light - from your own numbers you can see it's twice as effective.

 

Skulldancer

So with the Changes.... haste items carry tend to carry more intelli and spellpower which is needed any ways. And the all now important mp5. They will nerf us but our crit regen abilities are STILL there..... it would probably equal the same with the mp5...... But now we will have more heavier faster heals. I'm thinking about going 75% haste/sp/mp5 now. No time to wait for crit while i'm flashing 4k+ FoL.s

 

• frmorrison

JoL's heal in 3.2 is based off the attacker's health, not the person that cast JoL. So whoever has max Divinity likely should judge Light (it does affect JoL in 3.2).

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

 

GwolfGarona

currently the formula for JoL is (0.1+SP)+(0.1*AP)

5500SP and 2750AP on a Holy Pally = 825HP ticks in 3.1 which is neigh impossible to get.
in 3.2 you just need a 41k HP tank. Much easier and more accessible, because the prot or holy pally can now judge light and get the same ticks that only ret can achieve now.

 

Sansei

I think you misinterpreted the change in JoL. (or I misinterpreted it)
The new version doesn't mean the tick would depend on the paladin judging it, but it will depend on the attackers.
The exact same method JoW works.
When the tank with 50k health hits the debuffed target, she'll get 1k ticks whereas when a 25k health shaman hits the target, she'll get 500 ticks from the JoL. That way, it won't matter who applies JoL.

 

DiamondTear

During situations where you want to maximise your healing, you are putting the tank at risk if you cast FoL instead of HL, which pretty much negates the effect.

I would assume serious raids are all running with a retri paladin to keep up JoL, which means that the patch only increases the strain on real healers, since the retri version was more powerful than the new version. Holy paladins don't judge JoL, since retri paladin doing it is basically an exta healer.

 

Saladin

It would make sense if the FoL hot didn't "build up" as GC says, but at least ticked every second. This way you'd be getting a regular FoL if you spam it on any raid member, but effectively 125% strength FoL if you swap to spamming it on the tank. This won't happen due to PVP balance reasons though.

Trying to balance a class with nothing but direct heals in PVE and PVP makes for a very sticky situation. In PVP, you're looking at healing 6k hits, while in PVE, you're looking at 20k hits. Previously, the distinction was that FoL is for PVP and HL is for PVE--you wouldn't use HL in PVP due to the cast time and mana constraints, while you wouldn't use FoL in PVE due to the limited healing.

I'm not sure how you can viably interweave the two spells between the different game aspects. If you make FoL strong enough to even compete with tanks' PVE damage in, then it'll be unstoppably overpowered in arenas. If you make HL efficient enough to use even sparingly in PVP, it'll be the only spell worth casting in PVE.

Before any talk can be made of balancing heals in both venues of the game, something has to be done about the fact that PVE damage is 4x higher than PVP damage.

EDIT: Also, the plummeting levels of haste on the gear that's been discovered thusfar are rather disconcerting. The vast majority of pieces I see are sp/crit/mp5, with haste on only a few minor pieces. Are we intended to fill all those gem sockets with haste gems to make up for the loss? I'm not looking forward to casting slower Holy Light's in Citadel than I was in Naxx. It's like Sunwell in reverse.

 

Justizia

Oh wow, thank you. I had that all backwards. That makes much more sense now. /facepalm

And to Hulabaloon- Yes, our ret pally has always judged Light. I guess I was trying to say that when you have 5 paladins and only 2 PvE Judgments, all the bases get covered pretty easily.

 

Terlig

I was testing a little FoL HoT on PTR. Bit strange, I casted 4.2k non-crit FoL, and i got exactly four 1.2k Sacred Shield ticks (i didn't try to stack FoLs). I suppose it is a bug, or i am missing something?

 

roanexavier

Terlig:

Do you have divinity on the PTR?

If so, your expected 1.05k ticks likely got bumped that 10% (5% outgoing, 5% incoming) to 1.155k. And if you have the improved devotion aura, and had an aura active, I'd expect it to be around 1.218k.

 

Terlig

Yes, i have both. You are correct then. Little strange behaviour, i thougt that HoT will not be further affected by any talents and it will just be amount of pure FoL healing.

 

Varuk

I posted this on the WoW forums about a week ago, in hopes of getting a little developer attention, but I'm going to re-post it here for the EJ community to go over my math and make sure I'm not missing anything:



Every source of mana can be boiled down to a set amount of mp5. If a fight lasts a certain amount of time, and you gain a certain amount of mana, you can derive how much mp5 you earned from that source. With critical strike rating it is a little more difficult due to the inherent RNG -- I've got 45% crit fully raid buffed, but I've seen fights where I pulled both 30% effective crit and 60% effective crit. So, for the purpose of these calculations, I will be calculating the mana that you should gain from crit, not the mana you always will.

I am going to be calculating the amount of mana gained by 1 Critical Strike Rating, not illumination in general. Even if these changes go through, illumination will continue to be an amazing talent due to all our baseline crit and the crit we gain from raid buffs. The real question is, should we continue to itemize for crit, and this what I intend to answer.

The value of crit is dependent on your cast rate. If you cast no spells, you gain no mana from crit. If you cast a lot of spells you gain a lot of mana from crit. Therefore, I am going to be using the stats HLPM (holy lights cast per minute), HSPM (holy shocks cast per minute) and FoLPM (flashes of light cast per minute) to calculate the returns you're receiving from crit rating with certain rates of spellcasting.

The basic formula is (3.1):

HLPM * 764.4 (mana gained from a holy light crit) * 0.0002178 (additional crit added from 1 crit rating expressed as a decimal) * 1/12 (amount of mp5 ticks in one minute)
+
HSPM * 474.6 (mana gained from a holy shock crit) * 0.0002178 (additional crit added from 1 crit rating expressed as a decimal) * 1/12 (amount of mp5 ticks in one minute)
+
FoLPM * 184.2 (mana gained from a flash of light crit) * 0.0002178 (additional crit added from 1 crit rating expressed as a decimal) * 1/12 (amount of mp5 ticks in one minute)
equals the amount of MP5 one critical strike rating is worth on this particular fight.

This breaks down to this nice and easy formula:
(0.01387386 * HLPM) + (0.00861399 * HSPM) + (0.00334323 * FoLPM) = mana return from 1 crit rating stated in mp5.

In 3.1, 10 critical strike rating is worth as many item points as 4 mp5. This means when plugging numbers into this formula, if you end up with 0.4 or more, critical strike rating is as good as or better than mp5 on a per item point basis. If you end up with less than 0.4, mp5 is outperforming crit on a per item point basis.

Now, to put some numbers in those holes. As you can guess, the value of crit rating is going to change based on which fight you're on. The more you spam, the more it's worth and vice versa. I'm going to start out using some personal parses, and then I am going to take a couple parses from WMO's top HPS list to illustrate both the normal scenarios and the extreme scenarios.

1a. Thorim Hard Mode, personal WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay
21.03 HLPM, 5.52 FoLPM, 2.24 HSPM, total value of 1 crit rating is 0.3295 MP5, or 82.38% as effective as MP5.

2a. Hodir Hard Mode, personal WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay
22.92 HLPM, 1.04 FoLPM, 2.78 HSPM, total value of 1 crit rating is 0.3454 MP5, or 86.35% as effective as MP5.

3a. Assembly of Iron Hard Mode, personal WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay
21.28 HLPM, 2.94 FoLPM, 2.08 HSPM, total value of 1 crit rating is 0.3230 MP5, or 80.7% as effective as MP5.

1b. Thorim Hard Mode, top raw HPS parse on WMO WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay
28.30 HLPM, 4.82 FoLPM, 1.09 HSPM, total value of 1 crit rating is 0.4181 MP5, or 104.53% as effective as MP5.

2b. Hodir Hard Mode, top raw HPS parse on WMO that isn't skewed by JoL WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay
27.3 HLPM, 0.00 FoLPM, 5.32 HSPM, total value of 1 crit rating is 0.4246 MP5, or 106.15% as effective as MP5.

3b. Assembly of Iron Hard Mode, top raw HPS parse on WMO that isn't skewed by JoL WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay
32.7 HLPM, 0.00 FoLPM, 0.38 HSPM, total value of 1 crit rating is 0.4549 MP5, or 113.74% as effective as MP5.

In short: Depending on how much you spam and whether or not you're trying to cheese a WMO top parse, crit rating can vary between 80% as effective as MP5 and 115% as effective as MP5 per item point with 3.1 numbers.

What happens when you apply the 3.2 changes to these numbers? To do that, we halve the effective MP5 of crit, and the value of one item point of MP5 increases to 0.5. If you do that...

Example 1a becomes 0.16475 MP5, or 32.95% as effective as MP5.
Example 2a becomes 0.1727 MP5, or 34.54% as effective as MP5.
Example 3a becomes 0.1615 MP5, or 32.3% as effective as MP5.
Example 1b becomes 0.2091 MP5, or 41.81% as effective as MP5.
Example 2b becomes 0.2123 MP5, or 42.46% as effective as MP5.
Example 3b becomes 0.2275 MP5, or 45.49% as effective as MP5.

In short: At best, post 3.2, crit will be worth half the amount of mana as mp5 is per item point spent. At worst, it is worth a third the amount. Also keep in mind that with less mana, our ability to spam decreases, and with less spam we get less return from crit -- bringing this numbers further. In conclusion, I plan on avoiding crit like the plague.

 

◊ madsushi

The issue is that crit also increases throughput, while MP5 does not.

Simple example:
Holy Light heals for 1,000 and costs 1,000 mana. If you crit (in 3.2), you'll gain 300 mana and perform 1,500 healing. This extra healing (if not overhealing, etc) is then worth some value of mana as you won't have to cast another heal. This is what makes the whole formula difficult to model.

Let's take a Paladin with 40% Holy Light crit. 4/10 casts will proc a 300 mana return. For 10 casts, you'll save 1,200 mana (out of 10,000), or 12% of your total mana cost. This means the average cost of your Holy Light is 880.

If 1,000 healing costs approximately 880 mana, then the additional 500 healing done by the crit has an average worth of 440 mana. As you can see, this is actually a larger contribution to your effective healing than the mana you gained from Illumination (50% v 30%, it used to be 50% v 60%).

For 10 casts of Holy Light, you save 2,940 mana with 40% Critical Strike chance. This is dependent on NO overhealing. Previously, this number was 4,160 mana with 60% Illumination. This adds up to a very plain 30% nerf to the overall value of crit (as expected). Your values expect a 50% reduction in the value of crit, when in fact, it's only a 50% reduction to the REGENERATION value of crit, and a push for the throughput benefit of crit.

Author of the Rogue column on WoW.com: Encrypted Text

 

Hulabaloon

We should be healing with the assumption that our heals will not crit though (even with 50% crit chance every other spell is still a normal heal) but when they do crit, how often is that extra healing actually effective healing? I'd say a very low percentage of the time. You can't rely on crits for your healing.

Yes, it's a 50% reduction to the regeneration value - but I'd argue that is close enough to a 50% nerf to the overall value of crit anyway. First and foremost, crit is a regen stat. If you wanted to increase your throughput, you would be stacking haste or spell power.

 

◊ madsushi

Previously, it was. However, we have to reconsider crit in the new 3.2 environment (point of the thread).

We can't simply ignore the value of crit's extra healing, and let's look at this possibility:

SP adds 1% throughput for every 100 ilvl points spent on it.
MP5 adds 1% regeneration for every 100 ilvl points spent on it.
Crit adds 0.6% throughput and 0.6% regeneration for every 100 ilvl points spent on it.

We need to look at the full picture of what crit provides and how valuable it will be. My parses show that my critical healing performs more effective healing than my critical strike chance (of the parse). If my crit is 40% over the parse, my effective healing via criticals is closer to 55-60% of my total healing.

Author of the Rogue column on WoW.com: Encrypted Text

 

Arthaal

You know I recently had this same argument with a guildie and, after giving it some more thought came out with the conclusion that: now that downranking is no more, is anyone really selecting heals with any expectations? Some encounters or encounter phases may allow FoL to be used over HL for example, but, generally, you're chain casting HLs if heavy damage is incoming.

So I guess what I'm saying is that it's not so much that we can't count on crits when planning our casts so much as encounter designers can't tune damage with the expectation that we'll crit e.g. every other heal. The lone variable then becomes number of healers required to keep a MT up and, I suppose, a single paladin at 100% crit rate might replace 2 paladins at 50%. Still seems like a silly argument to me, which is why I usually ignore the increased throughput provided by crit rating when evaluating it.

Percent modifiers R'US

 

◊ madsushi

The model of "nothing but HL on the tank" is changing. If the raid is taking damage, a crit FoL could mean the difference between two FoLs or one. A crit HL also provides additional throughput via Glyph of HL. If there is any delay between hits, a crit HL can allow you to pause for a moment before casting your next HL. The fact is that it does add throughput, which means you do more total healing with a higher crit chance.

While it may not change your decision making, I would argue that adding SP doesn't change your decision making either. We've only got two real heals, and making them heal for more is a net benefit over the course of a fight.

Author of the Rogue column on WoW.com: Encrypted Text

 

Zaroua

Saying that crit gives Holy Paladins extra throughput is borderline laughable. Your Holy Lights hits for 10 to 12k, and sometimes you'll get a nifty amount of burst healing because you won the dice roll on that particular cast. You can't just look at a parse and say that your Holy Lights averaged 14k per cast - that's how DPS works.

This ideology is something a lot of healers can't grasp and it's along the lines of healers using the haste Scarab from Black Morass and saying that it gave them an increase in HPS: it doesn't because your HPS stays the same and you get a small, random, uncontrollable and unreliable amount of burst every now and then.

Dogma also claims that God has a sense of humor and at times presents Him as a joker of sorts, thus again lowering Him to human level. While I am certain God has a "sense of humor" since He gave it to us, I find it most difficult to believe He finds humor in sin since He will cast the unforgiven sinner into the lake of fire for eternity. Not very funny at all.

 

◊ madsushi

Is a 50% chance considered to be unreliable? There will always be RNG attached to it, but if you're casting 10 heals to top the raid off after an AoE attack, you can rely on a few of those being crits. If a tank is low 16,000 life, and you have a critical Holy Light, this means you won't have to cast another heal to top him off.

A great example is Steelbreaker (regular mode, 10 man). I'm assigned to dispel the Fusion Punch immediately after it hits. I stop casting about 0.5 seconds before Fusion Punch goes off, so that I'll be able to dispel FP before it ticks. If I get a critical heal on my last heal before FP, the tank will likely be topped off. If not, he may be short a few thousand HP. I'm the only healer on the Steelbreaker group, so if I'm not healing him, nobody is.

If a raid takes 1,000,000 damage, a healer must heal for 1,000,000 healing in order to top everyone in the raid off. If crits help you reach that goal of 1,000,000 faster (granted, some may be wasted), then it was a useful throughput stat and will result in a net mana gain. Remember that Paladins will be doing more raid healing in patch 3.2, and this is a place where crit chance will shine as "spamming Holy Light" will not be viable. Doing more healing with the same amount of casts/time is considered to be a higher throughput, and that's exactly what crit does.

You may not like that a large portion of it may be lost to overhealing, or that it's unpredictable (though reliable even in small samples), but you can not ignore the fact that your healing throughput is improved by critical strike chance.

Author of the Rogue column on WoW.com: Encrypted Text

 

AlcapwnedYou

I would argue the fact that any stat can be potentially worthless. Allow me to extrapolate:

MP5 - Is mana regen, and mana regen only. It does nothing for throughput whatsoever.

Crit - The value of crit is two fold. First as a regen stat refunding mana on cast. Second is throughput, which is not "laughable" if the target can accept the healing. During HL "spam" this is not as important, as the overhealing is in the bracket of 75% and above. However, accepting lower tolerances for healing capacity, healing for an additional 5-6k is nothing to laugh at, especially when you take the Glyph of Holy Light into account for raid healing and the intended changes to BoL (i.e. better targeting of DPS groups, whilst still healing the MT). Given that 3.2 is bringing about a higher average cost of HL, it behooves us to cast more wisely by increasing throughput to increase HPM rather than HPS.

Haste - Drains your mana pool faster, but then again, if you can't land the heals when they need to land, the purpose of healing is moot. You can't heal dead. In theory, this is useless if you have a solid rotation that can handle incoming damage. If you can accomplish that, then you are just dumping your mana faster instead of pacing the healing with the incoming damage.

Spell Power - If HL hits so hard, why do we need it on our gear? Yet nearly all caster gear has this stat on it. Generally we favor Int over SP any day of the week, but FoL is getting a slight buff and healing for more is never a bad thing - until it comes to overhealing, which we generally have quite a bit of. So SP isn't really necessary until you get gain enough of it to make FoL more effective, at which point HL would heal for an insane amount it really wouldn't matter.

Int - This is the least argued stat, simply because it provides a massive pool to cast from, gives us wicked regeneration via DP, gives us crit and thus more regen, and even gives us spell power. However, once a certain apex is reached, if you never have to kick off DP during any encounter, the value of this stat could also be argued as wasted.

You have to look at each stat on a per encounter basis, as well as in a vacuum. In a vacuum Int and Crit are the winners. Depending on your play-style and encounter, you might favor another.

 

Palados

I'll post a formula that I posted in 3.1 holydin thread. It shows that effectiveness isn't looking too grim. Currently illumination is increasing our effective mana pool by 1/(1-0.6*crit_value) while after 3.2 it will increase it by 1/(1-0.3*crit_value). Therefore overall effectiveness decrease will be equal to (1-0.3*crit_value)/(1-0.6*crit_value).

For 50% crit raid buffed (crit_value = 0.5) it's 21.4% nerf in our ability to spam HL
For 40% crit raid buffed it's 15.8% nerf in our ability to spam HL
For 30% crit raid buffed it's 10.9% nerf in our ability to spam HL.

One can see that this is NOT drastical decrease in effectiveness as one would 'intuitively' expect it to be based on 50% Illumination nerf.

 

Lovella

Crit may not necessarily be useful when you're holy light bombing the raid as the majority of that will be overheal due to raid members having lost less hp than your holy light will heal for. However it can be very useful in situations where you're healing a warrior with last stand or a druid with survival instincts who can reach up to 75k hp. At that particular situation you could argue that the throughput value of crit becomes much more valuable, since if the tank is taking that much damage, there is a much greater chance that the entire heal value will be effective. It is definately a throughput stat, but it's not something that can or should be relied on, merely an added side effect of our normal healing.

I'd also like to touch on the fact that crit also increases the chance of infusion of light proccing via holy shock, which, although situational, is not something to be ignored totally.