True, but I thought we were talking in general, not about one fight in heroics. He said "I'm running out of mana after a few trash pulls", so 'fight' length isn't that low.

If you're HL heavy and not using DP on CD or close to on CD, you aren't pushing yourself to the full extent of your regen/output capabilities anyway. There is not a major HPS difference in using FoL vs using HL during a DP, especially if you're INT stacking and if you use something like the Talisman trinket on use or Avenging Wrath to partially mitigate the healing debuff. Plus, in a heroic you're just going to be popping plea between pulls anyway so more starting mana and more plea return is what you want.

In terms of regen 1 INT is worth about 0.9 mp5. In terms of gear itemization 1 INT=0.5 mp5. This is not factoring in the SP and crit gain from INT on top of this. The Solace trinkets are something like 10-15% better in terms of regen compared to Talisman of Resurgence and Pandora's Plea. However, for HL spam, the SP on them is of marginal use (and the INT trinkets provide some SP too). You'd also need the fight length to be something like 8-9 minutes before the Solace trinkets outweigh the INT trinkets' benefit to starting mana.

Also, the biggest thing is while the Solace trinkets are arguably BiS for holy pallies, they are only marginally so, and we have easily obtainable alternatives that are better to close to as good. For priests and druids, they are BiS by a huge margin, so it really is kind of selfish for pallies to take them until all the priests and druids in the raid have theirs. It would be like a holy priest or druid taking Pandora's Plea or Meteorite Crystal over a holy pally.

Using DP on cooldown is not realistic. I would say 1:30-2 minutes is what you're looking at if you're very liberal with its use. As for 1 int being equivalent to .9 mp5, that's simply not true. I'm going to use the 100 item points numbers, since I already have them handy:
Intellect:

• 1815 Mana at the start of the fight
• 37.8mp5 from Divine Plea, if used on CD. (.25 * 1815 * 60 / 5)
• 18.15mp5 from Replenishment (.01 * 1815)

for a grand total of 55.95mp5, if you account for arcane torrent, that's 60.45mp5. Now, you also get 0.726% crit, and assuming you're casting a HL every 1.3 seconds, that's 10.7 mp5. So, in these ideal conditions, 100 intellect gives you 71.15mp5, not 90mp5 as you said.

Now, let's compare the trinkets:

[Meteorite Crystal]: 111 intellect + 128mp5 = 207mp5.
[Solace of the Defeated]: 168 spell power + 144mp5.
[Solace of the Fallen]: 150 spell power + 128mp5.
[Tears of the Vanquished]: 84 intellect + 25% chance to get 500 mana, 45 seconds ICD. 84 intellect is 60mp5, assuming the proc is every 47 seconds (it has a chance to proc every second off BoL), 53.2mp5 for a total of 113.2mp5.
[Talisman of Resurgence]: 128 intellect + 599 spell power for 20 seconds every 2 minutes. 128 intellect is worth 91mp5.
[Pandora's Plea]: 108 intellect + 25% chance to get 751 spell power for 10 seconds, 45 seconds ICD. 108 intellect is 76.8 mp5.

Now about the fight's lenght, and when the Solace trinkets become better. The 245 version becomes better than the badge one after 6 minutes and 14 seconds, 258 version after 3 minutes and 39 seconds. It's obviously worse for [Pandora's Plea], but [Tears of the Vanquished] becomes worse than Solace after 8 minutes and 35 seconds and 4 minutes and 7 seconds respectively.

Edit: On a completely unrelated note, it seems that our BiS craftables in Icecrown will be the mail feet and cloth leggings.

You're missing a couple of other factors in the calculation of the value of INT to mp5

100 INT=1800 mana
18 mp5 from replenishment
37.5 mp5 from divine plea used on cooldown
18 mp5 from seal of wisdom (assuming 3 procs/minute)
4.5 mp5 from arcane torrent (for blood elves)
7.2 mp5 from mana tide totem (with a resto shaman in your group used on CD)
as per your math up to 10.7 mp5 from the crit gained by 100 INT

total: 100 INT = 95.9 mp5

If you don't have a resto shaman and take out the mana tide totem calculation, its 88.7 mp5, which I believe is where my ~0.9 mp5=1 INT assumption was coming from

Actually, I'll adjust for Real World numbers.

• 16.33 mp5 from 90% replenishment
• 25.2 mp5 from using Divine Plea every one and a half minutes.
• 12.1 mp5 from two procs per minute (this can go much higher if you actually melee the boss, but from judging, this sounds closer to the truth)
• 9 mp5 from crit for casting HL every 1.4 seconds and accounting for refreshing BoL, SS, and judging.
• 4.5 mp5 from arcane torrent
• 7.2 mp5 from mana tide totem

That comes to about 74.33mp5. I know that if all things were perfect intellect would look twice as good as mp5 in terms of regen, but in most fights it doesn't really work out that way.

I'm not new to healing, have been doing it for some it now, but I'm not a numbers guy. I have been reading this forum on and off for some time but the truth is I just don't have the time to keep up with it. But I have noticed some things that have helped my healing and in turn helped my guild progress. I was hoping if someone could tell me if they are using the same playing style and if the numbers support my gut that this is a solid style. I have not found anything in this forum about this but i may have missed it.

For Max optimized output I run BoL and S. Shield on my tank. Before the pull I use FoL to put a hot on my tank.
I then cast a JoL on target.
Then I cast a HoL on off tank to get JoP, LG and to get Libram of Veracity(LoV) to go.
I then use what ever heals I need to keep Jol, JoP, LG and LoV going for max flexibility. This is also when I will use DP if I need too.
When my hot runs out on my tank after about 6 sec I put a new FoL on and return to my off tank.


I started doing this to maximize my t9 set bonus. Otherwise I was loosing my HoT on the next incoming heal. My raids usually have two paladins so we are both using this atm, it seems to be healing our tanks and our numbers have become more even and smooth. Has anyone done any running of numbers on this type of playing style verses the style of BoL the off tank and then healing your own tank? If so please let me know what you came up with.
Thank you for the input.

So I have been reading this thread off and on and I was concerned with the new changes to DS and DG as we are approaching 3.3

I apologize in advance if this has been covered, but I couldn't find anything in a completely detailed post yet.

So, let's look at a few changes.

As of right now, 3.2

• Divine Sacrifice - 30% of all damage taken by party or raid members within 30 yards is redirected to the Paladin (up to a maximum of 150% of the Paladin's health). Lasts 10 sec.

• Divine Guardian - Improves the effectiveness of your Divine Sacrifice spell by an additional 10% and increases the duration of your Sacred Shield by 100% and the amount absorbed by 20%.

Upcoming changes in 3.3

• Divine Sacrifice - 30% of all damage taken by party members within 30 yards is redirected to the Paladin (up to a maximum of 40% of the Paladin's health times the number of party members). Damage which reduces the Paladin below 20% health will break the effect. Lasts 10 sec.

• Divine Guardian - While Divine Sacrifice is active, your party and raid members within 30 yards take 20% reduced damage. In addition, increases the duration of your Sacred Shield by 100% and the amount absorbed by 20%.

The other big thing I noticed was the raw mechanics change to Divine Sacrifice itself which was considered a bug fix. The patch notes read:

Divine Guardian: This talent no longer increases the amount of damage transferred to the paladin from Divine Sacrifice. Instead it causes all raid and party members to take 10/20% reduced damage while Divine Sacrifice is active.

Divine Sacrifice: Redesigned. The effect of Divine Sacrifice is now party-only and the maximum damage which can be transferred is now limited to 40% of the paladin's health multiplied by the number of party members. In addition, the damage transferred to the paladin is now reduced by 50% before being applied to the paladin. Finally, the bug which allowed Divine Sacrifice to sometimes persist despite reaching its maximum damage has been fixed. Divine Sacrifice will now cancel as soon as its maximum damage value is exceeded in all cases.

So, lets look at a breakdown of some numbers. Bear with me here, this is in complete theory because I haven't been able to test real numbers as of yet. It would be reasonable to assume that a PvE Holy Paladin raiding H ToC 25 will have around 25k HP raid buffed. So we'll take (25,000/100) * 40 = (10,000*4) = 40,000 DMG. 40,000/2 = 20,000 DMG being the maximum damage we can have transferred to the paladin in this situation. Now I am using these numbers, assuming that you would not include yourself as a party member benefiting from Divine Sacrifice. If you were, it wouldn't be too much of a difference, (50,000 dmg wiped off the table and 25,000 redirected to the paladin).

With this change being done to Divine Sacrifice, anyone can agree DS will be still an attractive talent for raid damage mitigation if used properly as opposed to retribution talents for healing.

Additionally, I had the thoughts of raid situations where perhaps your party isn't taking much damage however the tanks are, (not enough to exceed the allowed damage for redirection to the paladin). We would also make sure the paladin's using Divine Sacrifice are not in the same group(s) as the tanks. Heck, I wouldn't even be surprised if raid leaders just decide to throw the DS paladin in their own group by themselves around the time they'll use DS that way raid damage would be reduced by 20% guaranteed for the next 10 seconds. Although that's not very likely, it's just a thought.

Now lets assume there will be both situations in IC where raid damage would cause your DS to fall off short of its duration of 10 seconds and where it will not. In theory, you can still reduce all the raid damage incoming by 10/20% for a maximum of 10 seconds if your party doesn't soak up your maximum damage allowed by DS in that 10 second window. So within limits, this may act as a good extra CD to keep tank dmg less spikey on fights such as Anub where the majority of inc dmg is tank damage. Tanks could have a 10 seconds of 20% damage reduction if needed just as having the use of 2/2 LoH except raid wide and much more convenient without being at the cost of your Divine Shield.

Of course, we could only hope in the new content there will be situations to make this viable.

Please keep in mind this is all theorycraft and I have not yet got to test out the DS and 2/2 DG spec on the PTR so if you have any comments or real data please feel free to shatter my thoughts.

I don't know how everyone else feels about these changes, but I will most likely stick with Holy/Prot in 3.3 :P.

Post your thoughts.

DS is still a nice group-wide shield wall. Soaking 40k of group damage is equivalent to soaking 200k of raid damage with current DG, that means that almost everywhere where DS rocked for raid damage mitigation it will still have the same effect within the group (I haven't seen it absorbing that much per pop). However the new version can safely be used much more often and for full 'duration' even when not healed, since absorbing 40k damage translates into 20k damage to paladin that brings you to about 20%. If you heal yourself more, you can use it each tantrum instead of only once in 5 min, etc.

I would say that talent was rather fixed and buffed, instead of being nerfed. I think if you do the math, then the amount of absorbed and mitigated (20%) damage using new DS each CD will be bigger than the amount of absorbed damage in current version of DS used only once per 5 min. And if people want raid wide shield wall badly - get 5 paladins, I think retri can get the basic unimproved talent without gimping themselves much. You will receive about the same effect as todays DS and 20% extra mitigation (though probably multiplicative) on top of that.

I wouldn't be too worried about maintaining the FoL HOT. Even with 4 pc T9, if you have the tank beaconed and SSed, using a GCD to cast a direct FoL on the tank to get the HOT refreshed is a loss of raw HPS. It's something I only worry about if there is no raid healing that needs to be done at all. In extreme tank damage situations (I am thinking P1 of Beasts and Algalon for example), don't be afraid to flat out spam HL non stop while using DP on cooldown. I find doing this, using cooldowns to mitigate the healing debuff (AW, on use trinkets, etc) is safer during high tank damage fights then trying to use FoL or reduce HL usage to not have to use DP as much.

For Divine Sacrifice, the 20% health of the paladin causing the effect to break can almost be considered irrelevant in evaluating the talent, because as long as you can throw a heal on yourself, the 20% threshold will almost certainly not be triggered.

Right now, I am at around 25k raid buffed HP. Casters/healers have similar HP; melee DPS have a few thousand more. Lets assume being in a group with 4 other 25k HP healers. You can receive a maximum of 50,000 transferred damage (reduced to 25k when transferred to you). That's 12,500 per party member. That means unless the party is taking over 41,600 damage per member within a 10 second period, the effect will not break. Aside from popping DS during an enrage timer or during something else that is supposed to cause an instant wipe (for example everyone in the raid eating an Algalon big bang), there is almost no way it will break early. Even things like Mimiron P2 and pre-nerf XT Tantrum did not have that amount of extreme raid damage.

Sorry for being cheeky, but you can use DiSac twice in 5 minutes for that specific case. Tantrum is physical, so you can use HoP coupled with DiSac. But you're perfectly right about not depending on immunities that much, although it'd still be viable to use it during immunity (thinking about Anub last phase)

I think you should see your options checking on Rawr - Release: Rawr 2.2.24. as for the mp5 values, it's just on this very page that a nice practical (rather than theoretical) calculation was made for how intellect converts into mp5. click below:
http://elitistjerks.com/f76/t64649-h...8/#post1436767

It's probably better to use them on cooldown or when there is a good chance to use them instead of waiting for the proc.

Well it has a 45 sec Internal CD and about a 33% uptime so it is up just about if not every minute

Right, but the point is that sometimes you'll have DP off of CD and DMC:G won't have procced yet - at that point waiting for the proc before you DP is going to be a loss of mana.

Ah yes, this is a very good point to be brought up because with minimal to no use of Divine Shield to use DS we could possibly be using this talent more often.

Depending upon the fight, you could use it maybe 2-3 times in an encounter rather than just once with the help of Divine Shield. Not to mention the Retribution paladins in the party/raid would be able to use their Divine Sacrifice without having to worry about using a bubble as well. This would also possibly free up your Divine Shield to solely be used with HoS making Holy/Prot slightly more attractive or also allowing you to have Divine Shield in sticky situations where you will have otherwise died without it being available.

Thank you for the input btw. I had not yet been able to test out the DS mechanics on the PTR but it definitely sounds nice for raids and even attractive for any future 5 man heroics.

The breaking of DS, and there by also DG, do to the damage cap seems to be a problem. I agree with jdh79 it's not the 20% health minimun limit that is the problem, the the group wide 50K limit. If the group is taking 3K dps aoe, DS/DG will end in 5 sec. As i see it the only way you can be 100% sure to get the full duration of DG, is to place the paladin alone in the group and use bubble.

It's 50k transferred, not dealed to group. That is around 125k dealed. So you need more than 4k DPS aoe to break it early.

Have you proven this to be true? I was pretty much assuming it worked this way too but I wanted to be sure. I know it sounds a bit silly but I am curious to know whether blizzard calculated in the total damage to be redirected as being before or after the 50% damage reduction. I thought about factoring it in this way but I was not sure of the mechanics and if Blizzard redesigned the talent to work in that manner (although it makes a lot of sense). This would mean your group would have to redirect somewhere around 80,000 - 100,000 dmg (4k-5k dps depending upon the paladin's HP of course) to the paladin for the group to remove DS unless of course you dipped below 20% hp.

Seeing as how only 30% of all the damage taken is redirected to the paladin and assuming you're using 2/2 DG for 20% raid wide damage reduction during DS, I can't see DS being removed due to the damage taken from your party. Most likely it would be due to the paladin casting DS dipping below 20% health.

Relevant to this discussion: MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Divine Sacrifice

For every other on-use mana restore trinket, it's best to use them on CD in the long run rather than waiting for a best benefit moment. If best benefit moment can be met on that CD, that's a plus. So as soon as you are lacking 2-3k mana, you can pop it. If you can spam FoL with beacon, nice; otherwise, don't worry about it.

Interesting post. If you remember my claim (can't find my post, lost in pages) that people could abuse this putting several people in the same party but outside the raid instance, here's GC's "idea" about working a way around it, and I believe it's unacceptable. Only 6 seconds raidwide damage reduction?! They are just out of their minds. Trying to punish players for being smarter than their implementation team? They are already fixing the talent giving the raid only 20% reduction instead of 40%. Making it last yet shorter is imo what we'd refer to as "...to the ground". The solution should be by checking range of the party members (say 100 yards?) or if it's a fixed duration, definitely longer than 6 seconds.

Here's his post. He leaves a door open for change in the end of the post.