Varuk

The amount of net healing added by crit can be calculated.

My holy light hits, on average, for 12k and crits for 18k, for a net increase of 6000 healing. 1 critical strike rating increases the chance to crit by 0.02178%.

0.0002178 * 6000 = 1.307 additional healing per holy light.

I have around a 45% crit rate fully raid buffed. Holy light has a 1.66% spellpower coefficient, scaled by Healing Light (12%) and Divinity (5%) to 1.95% of spellpower. Adding 1 point of spellpower increases my healing to 12001.95216 on a hit and 18002.92824 on a crit, for an average of a 2.391 additional healing per holy light. However, 1 spellpower is only a 6/7th of an item point, so to compare it to crit I'll have to multiply that amount by 7/6, so 1 item point of spellpower is worth 2.790 additional healing per holy light.

Before considering overheal at all, 1 item point of critical strike rating adds 46.84% as much raw healing as an item point of spellpower does.

Even in a fairytale world where crit never results in more overheal than you would normally receive, is a stat that is worth ~35% of a good stat and 47% of a bad stat worth wearing? I'd still argue no. Before even considering that the contribution of crit is much more likely to result in overheal tha the contribution of spellpower and also considering that crit is a random stat that occasionally underperforms expectations, something I really don't like about the stat, (I cannot stand going OOM on a fight because my effective crit was 10% under my paperdoll crit) I'd still say that, right there, is not worth it.


Edit: This post ignores Beacon of Light and Glyph of Holy Light because they affect both stats equally. BoL acts as a 2x modifier and GoHL acts as a 1.5x modifier but they still function off the size of the base heal so the relative values remain identical.

 

Nexiom

This is my first bit of contribution, but I'm debating heavily on whether I should be going for SP/Haste/MP5 or SP/Haste/Crit as I know many of us are also. I had an idea that would kind of be a balance and I want to know your opinions.

So lets say we don't focus primarily on crit and go the Haste/MP5 route and build crit based on what we happen to pick up from gear that isn't better itemized. If we changed our gems for red/yellow to [Luminous Monarch Topaz] and used [Dazzling Forest Emerald] in our blue slots, we would gain all the needed socket bonuses while maintaining a fairly decent amount of intellect and getting an increase in throughput from spellpower. Also if you're a jewelcrafter you could use a combination of int and spell power JC gems.

Viable option?

Edit: I would link the epic gems but lets pretend that I used the epic gem equivalent since I dont think I can link those yet.

 

Std

Question:

A)Target Beaconed (tank for example)
B)a raid member

If I have Sacred Shield and Beacon on A and I FoL B will the HoT of the FoL proc to the target A?

 

◊ madsushi

No. The heal on A is called "Beacon of Light". It doesn't duplicate the heal, it creates a new "Beacon of Light" heal that matches the first heal's value. In addition, even if it did give A a HoT, you don't want to spam FoL on B because it will reset the ticks of A's FoL HoT. You'll want to cast 1 FoL to get the HoT rolling, then either HL or BoL heal until the HoT wears off.

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

 

gcbirzan

Not only that doesn't work, but the sacred shield HoT (that's what the FoL HoT is called) doesn't work with BoL at all. I thought it might be because HoTs don't tick if you're at full health, but even if I used BoL on someone and used it on myself (the HoT ticked), he didn't get any healing from the HoT. I don't know if this is intended, but it wouldn't really make sense for it to be.

Edit: However, I didn't test with the target at less than 100% health, but I doubt the Beacon of Light heal is treated as a HoT if the original heal is a HoT.

 

Belladin

Although I'm interested in the SP/Haste/MP5 route, I'm very good friends with another holy paladin on my realm who has recently switched to full SP. Every single gem slot is filled with +19 SP, enchants are SP, etc etc etc.

In heroics with me he is getting close to 9k FoL crits, and raids he is reaching 12k when the planets align (Trinkets, wings, perfect raid comp etc). There is enough Mp5 on our current Ulduar gear to make FoL spam sustainable with raid buffs, without stacking INT, and only with rare DP usage.

This kind of FoL approaches HL non crit values, and it is highly efficient. I have yet to tank anything that he cannot heal me through in heroics, like 4 or 5 packs on me, or the time we pulled the Timed boss + Mal'Ganis in CoS heroic. Both at the same time

I'd like to hear opinions on this, as of course this is only a tale of personal anecdotes. Thanks!

 

Sepher

Well this sounds like protection spec with touched by the light, which means he doenst have BoL.

 

gcbirzan

Heroics can be healed with almost only FoL by an int stacking paladin that doesn't have to sacrifice BoL either. Heck, you could heal it half naked. Once you go into more serious content, with harder hitting bosses/adds, you need more and more HPS. And that's where his spec/gemming loses compared to the 'proper' holy spec.

 

Belladin

He is Holy.

The World of Warcraft Armory

..is his profile, but at time of posting seems to be bugged.


EDIT: I'd say again, he is approaching around 7k FoL non-crits in raids. This is effectively 7k HPS given raid buffs bring FoL down to 1s. Moreover, this is without crits. With a Prot Sub-tree, his Shield absorbs are HUGE with such spellpower, which will synergize well with the FoL HoT in raids.

Imagine: You put Beacon + Sacred Shield up on the tank.
Then you spam FoL's until you get a crit (which should be almost immediately, given the SS crit buff)
After the crit has landed and you are receiving the HoT effect, you spam FoL on the raid to keep the constant stream of HPS on the tank, without taking off your FoL HoT.

When the tank damage gets heavy, you can put your SS/FoL HoT up, and then proceed to hit the tank with enourmous Holy Light bombs, while FoL ticks. These HL's would not be sustainable, but rather for emergencies or predictable spikes, like Frozen Blows.

2ND EDIT : Removing inproper quoting format

 

gcbirzan

I call bullshit. You'd need about 4500 spell power for that. Last rank FoL has a base healing of maximum 879, coefficient of FoL is 1, you get .05 from divinity, .12 from healing light, .06 from improved devotion aura, .05 from glyph of seal of light.
(879 + X) * 1.12 * 1.05 * 1.06 * 1.05 = 7000 => X = 4469

The shield absorbs are not 'huge', SS scales worse than FoL, at his gear level it's (500+2652*.85)*1.2 = 3305.

The problem with that is that his crits will be 7.5k. 7.5k/12seconds = 625HPS. His raid FoLs will not be guaranteed crits, so that's (assuming he gets lucky and crits 50% of the time), 6250 HPS. Being very generous here, he gets 7k HPS on the tank, assuming the planets align. Compare that to the 8.5k HPS my holy light is doing, without factoring crits.

End of rough napkin math.

 

superfula

In addition to what gcbirzan stated above, your guy doesn't even have Beacon.

 

Belladin

For Superfula:
I believe he is dual specced PvP without Beacon

For gcbirzan:
You are forgetting the Deadly libram, which is another 263 SP for the FoL's. This gets him close to 3000 SP on the FoL, with no external buffs. And when the planets do align, we've got Pandora's Plea dropping 850 Spell Power, along with raid buffs, which can easily account for 400 Spell Power, if not more. Just from the top of my head that is 263+850+~400 SP, which puts him over the 4000 mark.

Given the diminished usefulness of Pandora's next patch perhaps dual-SP trinkets will be better, as the INT is less worthwhile.

I concede the HUGE SS point, as that was an indefinite.

Also I may have been a bit confusing, let me try again
Heroics: Approaching 7-8k Crits
Raids: Approaching 9k crits
Planets aligned: Above 10k, highest he's seen was 12k.

I hope that clears things up.

EDIT: Not Furious Libram, Deadly. Changed in text.

 

Nodrak

Warning: The logic behind this may be hard to follow since it is focused on the difference between 3.1 Crit and 3.2 Mp5 assuming all Crit from gear is now Mp5. The difference is thus calculated based on the rate of mana expenditure, measured in the only spell that has the potential to return more mana in 3.1 then compared to mp5, Holy Light. It will be assumed that the Badge Libram and SoW glyph are used, and the T7pc is NOT used.

The more I run my numbers, the more it seems like the only loss is the throughput from all our gear, talents and buffs. Well, that assumes you switch your crit gear to mp5 gear. The core of the issue, (if you swap gear), is that the comparable changes between 3.1 and 3.2 mana regen is totally based on your casting rate of Holy Light. I checked a few of the WMO top parses for healing output and not one paladin there was casting Holy Light fast enough for 3.1 Illumination to provide more mana then 3.2 Mp5 (assuming gear swap).

The real loss is from the 50% bonus healing on crits that, if you assume they do not overheal, essentially account for a 50% Illumination itself, in terms of mana. The extra 'real' mana from 3.2 Mp5 in this hypothetical gear swap would even make up for the loss from replenishment and DI. At 2000 Int, the losses are ~27mp5 from DP, 88mp5 from Replenishment, and ~5mp5 from MTT.

Checking the top WMO parses for HPS, I saw only a handful of paladins with an Average Holy Light cast time of 2s or less. The lowest was a 3 min Kolo fight with 1.66s Holy Lights. Using this outlier to skew the comparison towards 3.1 Illumination, and using T8 to skew it further still has this paladin comming out with: ~380 mp5 more mana VS loss of gear based Crit Throughput.

I didn't look up their gear, but its probably around 30-40% crit from gear, putting them at 53-63% buffed crit. The loss of 40% crit is a whopping 20% throughput loss assuming no overheal from crits (or an equal ratio of noncrit and crit overheal).

So this hypothetical paladin is now +380mp5 and -20% throughput. Ironically, the beacon changes can obliterate this difference via what I would call 'questionable abuse'. But to be fair, you would have to compare that throughput with crit as well, since it might be a plausible choice to use Crit, haste and SP for maximum output should fight mechanics deem it desirable.

It seems that outside of the loss of throughput, these changes will not lower our total mana at all under current levels of gear. High levels of Haste will cause a reduction in the extra 'mp5' gained from 3.1 and also increase the throughput loss from dropping crit. For our test case of 1.66s avg. HLs, one could drop 380 mp5 worth of mp5 gear for spellpower/crit at no loss of total mana.

Swapping for Crit will give 16.5% crit, keeping us at +16mp5 compared to 3.1 (including Replenishment, MTT, and DP all on CD @ 2000 Int), whilst reducing the throughput loss by almost half. (assuming 40% gear crit)

Swapping for Spell Power is technically impossible outside of gems.

Swapping for Haste or Casting faster would push 3.1 Illumination numbers ahead, but given that we cast HL slower then our maximum haste allows, this is a situation that is more decided by the fight then anything. At a theoretical 1.0s Holy Light, nothing in 3.2 can compare to the results 3.1 Illumination would have given.

So in a short summation, the changes allow for potentially more healing and more mana, via a roundabout method using Mp5 and less frequent castings by 'exploiting' healing modifiers. Using a target standing next to the MT, Holy Light can have a bonus throughput of 21.3% without even exploiting target specific healing bonuses (Hunter Pets being the best choice). The Holy Light Glyph combined with ToL/ImpDevo and Divinity are enough to offset the crit based throughput loss on 40% gear based crit. The loss of crit will provide a total mana surplus compared to 3.1 if the average holy light interval is 1.5s or greater (no T7 bonus). Flash of Light and Holy Shock usage is irrelevant because their returns from Illumination are overshadowed by equivalent Mp5.

Usage of a Hunter pet for extra double dipping will result in a total increase in all aspects of Holy Paladin healing from Throughput to Longevity. Should the beacon be changed to not double dip these bonuses, the Overheal change will still allow us an extra 10% throughput on a limited choice of targets from the HL glyph.

Whats your average HL interval? (fight length/HLs cast)
Or more technical, whats your total Mana/Second spent that is affected by Illumination? If you spend less then 765 mana/second on spells effected by Illumination, 3.2 has the potential to be a buff. If you spend more then 765 mana/second on spells effected by Illumination, 3.2 will be a nerf in all departments unless negated by 'pet healing'.

EDIT: The numbers in this are not accurate, most of the concepts hold true, but the cast rate break point will be significantly slower.

 

gcbirzan

That still puts holy light ahead. This has been discussed quite a few times in previous threads, the addition of the FoL HoT will not change the fact that FoL is clearly inferior to HL and that the way to minimise the chances of your tank dying are to spam HL on him.
What would _maybe_ change that would be if the current BoL went live, including the healing multiplication. Then it would be close, your FoL crits on a 50% increased healing giving you a lower HPS than HL spam directly on the target (if we keep the numbers from my previous post and assume his FoLs actually do crit for 9k all the time), and you would also lose the ability to raid heal.

 

Palados

Well, look at these numbers:

WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay

Can any FoL spammer be close (in those fights, factoring movenet, damage on raid/tank, etc)? If no then from theorycrafting PoV HL spam build and gemming is better.

 

Varuk

Nodrak: You also have to remember that halving illumination doesn't just reduce the mana gained from gear but also the mana gained from our substantial base crit. Before even considering gear a ret sub-spec paladin has nearly 35% crit from base int, crit talents, and raid buffs -- halving the returns on that will cost 150 to 200 effective mp5 depending on cast rate. The contribution of mana from gear may increase with the mp5 buff but unless we're talking ridiculous levels of gear here it's still going to be a net loss. Also, don't forget the intellect nerf.

Someone on the WoW forums thread asked me to crunch numbers on the mp5 values of intellect per point after 3.2, so I did. I'll post 'em here too:

Int is multiplied by Divine Intellect and Blessing of Kings. 1 Int is actually 1.21 Int. 1.21 Int increases your mana pool by 18.15 mana. Replenishment adds 1% of your mana as mp5, so 18.15 mana is 0.1815 mp5. 18.15 mana will increase the return on your Divine Plea by 4.5375 mana, so if you Divine Plea once every minute it adds 0.378125 mp5 (12 mp5 ticks in a minute, remember). Finally, 1.21 Int increases your critical strike chance by 0.00726%, which, in other words, is 33.33% (not repeating actually) of the contribution of one critical strike rating which, for the sake of simplicity, on average is worth roughly 0.175 mp5 with actual real life levels of spellcasting.

In short, the mana value of 1 point of Intellect is:
0.1815 mp5 from replenishment
0.378125 mp5 from divine plea if used on cooldown
0.0583275 mp5 from additional crit
or a total of 0.6179525 mp5 per point of Intellect.

I personally do not like DP on cooldown. I find I tend to use it closer to once every two minutes in real life situations. Changing that halves the contribution from DP, bringing it down to 0.1890625 mp5 from DP and a total value of 0.42889 mp5 per point of intellect.

mp5 is catching up to//has caught up to intellect, but even if it has passed I still prefer intellect due to the bonus spellpower and the often unstated benefit of having a massive mana pool to start out with, giving you more slack to use when running a deficit in mana spent to mana gained.

 

Saladin

It's not bullshit. I've landed 13k crit FoLs in full SP getup, wings, and vampiric blood on the DK tank I was healing for Steelbreaker.

Many people here are forgetting one more very basic thing when they keep dismissing Sheath/TbtL FoL-based builds: Divine Plea.

The numbers hands down put HL ahead of FoL, certainly. And in the current environment we can keep this up with very few DPs. But even now (and especially moreso post-patch), HL is simply not sustainable without Divine Plea. Sure, we all use /cancelaura macros to keep the debuff off when we really need the extra healing, but the fact remains that in 3.2 it's very likely we'll be DPing on cooldown. MS for 15 seconds out of every 60 can really butcher Holy Light's HPS. 25% of your healing time spent at 50% healing output translates to a general 12.5% reduction in healing done.

Obviously, if you can use SoW or other mana tricks to delay your DP use, you won't take that big of a hit to your overall healing done through DP usage. However, you still won't be able to control those moments when you pop DP and your tank hits a string of missed avoidances--then you're faced with canceling DP to keep him alive and digging yourself further into the mana hole.

The advantage of FoL-based builds, whether as holy, ret, or prot, is not that they can land FoL crits for the same size as HL non-crits--the advantage is that they can land FoL crits for the same size as HL non-crits indefinitely, without ever having to use Divine Plea. The difference is a steady stream of 5k HPS, rather than a stream of 6k HPS at some points and 4k HPS at others.

I'm not convinced that I'll be dabbling in any FoL voodoo until I get my hands on the patch and its new mana environment, but don't write it off simply because HL heals for more. There are other factors to consider.

 

Nodrak

Varuk, reading your post reminded me I forgot to account for BoK... So the numbers from DP, MTT and Illumination will be altered, also since I was too 'lazy' to factor in base mana and base int, which should account for about 5000 mana. Total mana will be reduced by less then the loss from DI, so it might be a close estimate still.

I took into account crit from Talents and Buffs, but I guess I forgot the base 5% spell crit and ~12% crit from Int on 2000 (3.1) Int. All this crit will remain, so the throughput loss is not present, but the loss of mana return is. The total of 'un-swapable' crit will be about 40% (assuming you stay ret-sub). This is a 12% mana return loss.

Since this depends on time, I will use the 1.66s example. At 1103 mana with T8, this is 662 mana/s out. 1% crit will suffer a 10 mp5 loss with the patch at that rate. Switching 1% crit to 23 mp5 will give a 3mp5 increase at this cast rate.

Taking 40% crit that cannot be swapped is a loss of ~397 mp5. This leaves a number more like 20-30% crit from gear, resulting in ~60-90 mp5 gain, or a net total loss of ~300-330 mp5.

It seems like my function might have an error since this does seem more reasonable. Perhaps I started using a different cast speed. I guess in the end we are just trying to find out how bad it will be compared to the relative bonus of abusing Beacon and the FoL HoT if you are looking forward to it.

Also Varuk, SoW and Mana Tide Totem are all bonused by Int, don't forget those.

 

Endoscient

Saying what he gets with Pandora's Plea or with other temporary buffs is quite useless. I have gotten 30k Holy Light crits when the star's align. That is far from the norm or useful in anyway though.

With that said, gearing for SP/Haste to max FoL hps and saving HL for emergencies might be a viable strategy come 3.2. What it is going to depend on is how often is FoL hps sufficient. Which is hard to say for 3.2 content, because they said they no longer need to balance tank damage around a Paladin spamming HL on him.

 

◊ madsushi

A question: Does anyone realistically have 2,000 intellect? AI adds 60, improved MotW adds 50, Kings adds 10%. With Greatness + Pandora's Plea, I would have 1,400 unbuffed, and possibly 1,700 raid buffed. That's in nearly all Intellect gear, with two Intellect trinkets. This also isn't including the 5% nerf to Divine Intellect in patch 3.2. I may be incorrect, but I am fairly certain that 2,000 intellect is not a reachable goal. If you were to lower the value in your formulas for Intellect to something more reasonable, like 1,500-1,750, what would the results be?

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

 

◊ Sparty

I run 2080int raid buffed. With 3.2, that number may still be reachable.

 

ClayMask

I do think that if I wanted to maximize my FoLs for the next patch, I would go for SP/crit, not SP/haste. FoL is already very fast naturally, and even faster once you consider Judgements of the Pure and raid buffs, and it could definitely use the extra hit points healed from critting. Almost all of the new 3.2 gear does look like it has crit on it, so this method of gearing makes the new gear more attractive.

 

Palados

Till soft cap haste adds much more HPS than crit. Also from tanking pov it's always better to have faster stream of smaller heals than slow stream with bigger spikes. 1% haste is 1 % more HPS while crit is slightly above 0.5%

 

Trixia

I haven't seen any discussion on this yet but assuming it doesn't get nerfed before 3.2:

Assuming the presence of a BM Hunter in your raid, there is potential for some serious abuse of the 3.2Beacon of Light changes and talents like these: Blood of the Rhino and Spirit Bonds. Those two talents alone allow for 50% more healing done on a Tenacious pet.

Try adding that into your calculations. It could potentially make a FoL build viable. However, since a pet is going to be sitting in the middle of the melee, the benefits of Glyph of Holy Light would be too good to pass up on any fight with a lot of AE.

http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/9...inptrheals.jpg

Some silly numbers someone was getting on the PTR healing a BM Crab pet with the above two talents. The bottom two frames are just normal heals landing on the pet. 20k Holy Lights, and 30k Crits. The top three were attained with Guardian Spirit. I believe this is the type of added throughput Nodrak was suggesting with double-dipping hunter pets in his post above.

 

Earl_Grey

@ Belladin: The topic of FoL and it's usefulness in raids has been beaten to death already. You can gear for spellpower all you want - mana is not really an issue and FoL will never reach the HPS of HL (not even when capped to 1 second with sp values above 2600). Bragging about your 13k crits "when all stars align" is nice for heroics, but really, really worthless when it comes to raids or even hardmodes (the only standard we should hold ourselves up to). The average crit will still be around 8-9k at best, hits around 5-6k. That's really poor considering the damage output of some bosses, not even talking about Algalon here. Thorim for example will suffice to make you abandon FoL again really quickly.

@ Saladin: The pure math aside (As already pointed out, 50% less healing done 25% of the time results in -12.5% reduced throughput overall, which is still way ahead of FoL HPS): There are very few encounters or situations where you have to actually use DP on cooldown. The point of stacking int is not only to gain more mana from DP (because in most of the fights, you would end up with a lot of mana left when using it every time it comes up), but to be able to skip it sometimes. If you are able to assess your mana pool and the estimated mana needed to fulfill your role in the encounter, you can easily delay or skip DP entirely sometimes, which will reduce the theoretical decrease in overall healing for quite a bit and put HL even more ahead of FoL.
Plus, there are many ways to work around the self-ms. Wings being the most obvious one of course, you can align it with your tanks shield block or use it during the Pandora's Plea-proc. Mindlessly popping DP every time it comes off cooldown is a really bad idea indeed, but since that's not even remotely necessary, the point becomes moot.

@Trixia: You can bet your ass on it getting nerfed. Blizzard is already uncomfortable with us spamhealing the tank, it will be a cold day in hell before they let us spamheal pets to accomplish the same thing, but in a more effective and exponentially more stupid way.