The Not So Evil

[Brilliant Wizard Oil] has always given 14 crit rating. It would seem to be slightly better for healing.

 

Nefsi

I did a AQ20 Run yesterday (which was REAL fun!), where I was in the lucky position to have an oomkin aura up.
Got 27% holy crit rating @ 14960 mana (something about 870 int)
IT REALLY KICKS ASS! Absolutly awesome!

Sadly I had no kings buff, which would have made the whole thing even more exciting!
(With sdk I go up to ~950 Int @lvl70)

I really can't wait to go up to lvl80 and stack some int / crit gear.
I believe, someting about ~1500 int will be obtainable quite easily, which will absolutly blow your mind!

Reminder to self: Enchant Chest with +6 stats instead of 15spirit

 

Incoherence

It looks like there's a hidden level limit on existing weapon buffs: I can't get [Blessed Weapon Coating] to stick to my current level 80 weapon (Beguiling Scepter), but it sticks to [Light's Justice].

 

Sletznikova

On the subject of stats weighting. Does anyone have a theorycrafting based stats weighting scheme yet for disc and holy? Only one I found so far are from Patch 3.0.2 Priest Survival Guide A Dwarf Priest:

disc lootrank
holy lootrank

But he doesnt give the reasoning behind these schemes.

I haven't found the time yet to come up with mp5 equivalent points for int with the new refreshment/Rapture mechanics, nor new spellpower equivalent points for crit with the new Aegis mechanic. I also don't think it's in this thread yet? These kind of simple models really help me determining relative value of gear, enchants, gems and consumables.

 

Tashia

This was just posted on MMO Champion as a quote from blizzard staff:

"Mandatory talents and potential changes to all trees
What we would like to do with all of the trees is give you options where possible. Cookie-cutter builds may always be a reality in a game like this to some extent, but ideally you could get the core of what you need to be competitive (in dps, CC, healing or whatever) and have a few talent points left over for fun talents.

Now I'm being candid here, which is a little risky, because mean players tend to turn it into "ZOMG they are shipping the game before it's perfect." But I think rational people realize that with a game the scope of WoW and a team as creative as ours, there are always more things you want to do. So there is the preamble. If this comes back to bite me, I'll just be less forthcoming with our thought process in the future.

We do think there are parts of the priest tree that are too bloated, and we aren't 100% happy with some of the decisions you're forced to make. Getting Meditation is one. Another is trading off Imp DS or Guardian Spirit. This involves a major change to probably all three trees though, so it's probably not going to happen before LK goes live. We are trying to minimize sweeping changes right now, just to minimize introducing potential bugs into the game. But it's something you will probably start seeing before too long, perhaps in bits and pieces or perhaps not. A lot of that will be informed on how priests do in PvP and PvE once Lich King ships as well. (Source)"

I think the changes will be most welcome from my first assesement.

 

Thorongil

You should be well aware that this is more of an announcement for a far future. I do not seriously believe, that Blizzard will revamp all 3 talent trees directly after shipping the addon. It´s nice to know they´re trying to reduce this dependancy on the 13 points in disc, however, do not expect this to go live in the next months. Also, without anything specific there´s no possibility to seriously discuss this topic.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Idril.png

 

gia

That stuff is probably 6-12 months away at a minimum, if not even scheduled for next expansion. Tanking hero class, tanking for all classes gets reviewed. If healing gets reviewed, then we get a healing hero class? I'm calling it.

 

Havoc12

I have found this formula for spirit regen at 80: mp5 = 0.027875 * Spi * sqrt(Int), can anyone verify if its correct.


If this is the case then at I intellect 1 spi returns 0.027875*SQRT(I*1.1)*1.15 = 0.033620879*SQRT(I) mp5 ooFSR regeneration.

At S spirit we get 0.033620879*S*(SQRT(I+1)-SQRT(I)) mp5 ooFSR regeneration from 1 intellect. 1 Int also adds 1.65 mana. Replenishment adds 0.25% max mana per second. Shadowfiend adds 0.24% of max mana per second. Lets round it to a total of 0.5% max mana per second. 16.5 mana thus also returns 0.4125mp5.

Therefore the formulas for holy priest regen with blessing of kings and SoR are

0.033620879*SQRT(I) mp5 ooFSR per point of spirit at I int. Taking %FSR into account it becomes

0.033620879*SQRT(I)*(1-0.7*%FSR)



0.033620879*S*(SQRT(I+1)-SQRT(I)) ooFSR + 0.4125mp5 per point of int at spirit S. Taking %FSR into account it becomes

0.033620879*S*(SQRT(I+1)-SQRT(I))*(1-0.7*%FSR)+ 0.4125

At 1000 int 500 spi the values are

1.063185546 ooFSR -- 0.318955664 FSR per point of spirit.

0.678229971 ooFSR -- 0.492218991 FSR per point of intellect.

What kind of %FSR would we need to make spirit the better stat?

1.063185546*(1-0.7*x) > 0.265729971*(1-0.7*x)+0.4125

This gives us (1-0.7*x) > 0.517270194 ==> x >= 0.689614009

At a 2:1 spirit to int ratio it would take 70% FSR to make int equal to spirit for regen.

The same calculation at 1500 intellect 1000 spirit gives

1.302131045 -- 0.390639313 for spirit
0.846471365 -- 0.542691409 for int

FSR = 0.749795705 required to make int = spirit for regen.

Raising this to 2000 intellect 1500 spirit

1.503571418 -- 0.451071425 spirit
0.97626882 -- 0.581630646 int

FSR: 0.801540055

Taking it to extreme 5000 int 4500 spirit

2.377355153 -- 0.713206546 spi
1.482256334 -- 0.7334269 int

FSR: 0.977908958

Taking it even further 8000 spirit 7000 int

2.812924552 -- 0.843877365 spi
2.019828056 -- 0.894698417 int

FSR: 0.939779601

I have not added the effects of crit and mana tide to mana regen. These boost the power of int further.

In terms of throughput however spirit also gives spellpower, which is much better than crit for holy.

The values pretty much suggest that holy priests should maintain spirit at level 70 values (~500-600) and stack intellect all the way to 80 until they reach a value of about 1100-1200 intellect. From then on any intellect increase should be accompanied by an equal increase in spirit.

Discipline is different however. Discipline should pretty much ignore spirit completely and focus exclusively on intellect. Spirit is all but worthless for discipline.

I really really dislike the current state of things for priests and spirit. We are back to the old days where we really cannot stack spirit anymore. What a sorry state of affairs.

[e] I actually made a mistake. Shadow fiend is now a 5 minute cooldown not a 3 minute cooldown. That means it now returns 0.15% of total mana per second and hence the total with replenishment is 0.4% not 0.5%. However when you count in mana tide at 24% every 5 mins you get 0.08% per second, which sets the total to 0.48% per second. So the values above are only correct with mana tide in the equation. The formulas without mana tide in the equation are

0.033620879*SQRT(I)*(1-0.7*%FSR) per point of spirit

0.033620879*S*(SQRT(I+1)-SQRT(I))*(1-0.7*%FSR) + 0.33 per point of int.

I will post numbers hwen I can.

 

The Not So Evil

If we are to trust Whitetooth's Post, that formula seems correct.

And yes, Intellect has become severely inflated for every class in 3.0 due to Replenishment and the fact that many class specific mana regeneration mechanics work on max mana. Mana Tide Totem, Shadowfiend, Evocation, Divine Plea, Dispersion... list goes on.

Also, ironically enough, the class that Spirit now seems to do most for is now Warlocks, the class that shunned Spirit the most pre-3.0. And Spirit is very dead for the Priest class without talents for making Spirit into Spell Power and Meditation.

Rawr - Coder of HolyPriest (Healer) and ShadowPriest (DPS) Modules.
Get Your Rawr 2.2.20!

 

Squishypants

I'd be interested in seeing more information about more buffs/consumables/chants that we should change now with the 3.0 changes.

I know [Kreeg's Stout Beatdown] seems less appealing now.

Also I was thinking about switching my Boar's Speed to Surefooted for the crit heals and hit for Shackle/Mind Soothe and occasional dps attempts.

 

Xtian

Depends on how often you have to run out of the stuff that hurts you.

 

Squishypants

Well if you have the raid awareness you SHOULD have, run speed isn't really neccessary. I only found it very helpful on Felmyst air phases and Archimonde in TBC. However maybe it's worth keeping two boots around with 1 Surefooted and 1 Boar's Speed. =)

 

hexpoll

Discipline stat point weights are difficult to model (I'm working on it) because of the 2.5% cutoff for rapture. If we take the maximum heal rewarded by rapture to be 6380, then stacking crit will be most important relative to spellpower around 4200, as crits would then result in a maximum reward from rapture, plus double-dipping from DA. As your heal increases past 4200, the relative mana regen weight for crit decreases, encouraging more spell power. There are several more such cutoffs, and at some point crit becomes more powerful again. I am working on a model in Octave (effectively matlab) but it may take some time as have a tendency to bight off more than I can chew with this stuff.

 

Havoc12

However do note that the mechanisms increasing the value of int are static. I.e. they always add the same amount. The difference in power between spirit and int on the other hand keeps increasing. Holy priests want spirit to be at 500-700 less than intellect, so once you reach 1100-1200 you actively need to start raising your spirit.

I think it does not take much to make spirit a bit more worthwhile. Hopefully blizzard will either give us something to further improve spirit or they will just buff the regen formula and nerf replenishment slightly to make it worthwhile for holy priests to maintain a 1:1 spirit to int ratio. My vote is to make improved holy concentration increase clearcasting chance by a % of your total spirit. That would own as spirit is exactly the stat you want to take when maximising clearcasting chance.

I think I am going to sit down and calculate whether spirit is better than crit for clearcasting.

My gut instinct is that maximising gear for priests is going to be very messy.

That 6380 value is at level 70. At level 80 its something like 9.3k for 2.5%.

Calculating rapture is easier if you model it in a more clever way. The mana return from it is dependent on your effectve HPM. I will post a model when I have time.

 

• constantius

I'm not planning on having Tuskaar's Vitality (the new Boar's) on my boots until *after* the T7 content. Having a deathknight in the raid with a 15% runspeed aura will suffice for any fight I really care about moving on, at least for Naxx / Sarth / Malygos. Once we get to a 'real' raid zone, then I'll re-evaluate. 18 spirit is going onto my T6 boots and will probably go onto my first pair of Naxx.25 boots as well. Post-Naxx.25, fully geared, I'll re-evaluate my regen and see what I think I need.

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein

 

Havoc12

Well with these values at 1000 int 500 spirit

1.063185546 -- 0.318955664 for spirit
0.595729971 -- 0.409718991 for int.


%FSR at int = spirit 0.837405493

Its nowhere near as bad without mana tide. 84% should not be hard to achieve.

Past 1500 intellect you might in fact want to start adding more spirit. It really would not take much to get spirit ahead. Something like a 10% boost to the regen formula would be a super boost.

 

• constantius

Remember that hitting 1000 int, 1000 spirit is trivial to do in Naxx.10 gear, not to even mention Naxx.25 stuff. Any theorycrafting should use that as a jump-off, because it's almost a "default" from raid buffs and gear. The question of what to do with the remaining 300-400 stat points is really what we should be concerned with. That's gems, enchants, and a bit of minor min/max on the actual items you're taking. When it's +/- 5 int on any given item, the gains are fairly small, at least compared to 16 int vs 16 spi (gems).

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein

 

Iwachiten

I've found that casting PW:S + Renew on the tanks in between Penance CD's provides a disc priest with a much higher healing output.

::In between Penance CD's ~6sec time frame:::
With ~1300 spellpower, A Gheal gets at most a 7-8k crit (there are almost 0 talents that add a bonus to Gheal as Disc, unlike holy). And even then, more than half of that heal is an overheal on the MT (no mana return from Rapture). This makes Gheal an inefficient and ineffective heal.

Meanwhile, I could cast 4 renews (on tanks or needy raid members) in that time span that tick at 1k (4 ticks with the glyph)...totaling 16k to the raid. This is ~a 8.5k healing increase over Gheal. Not to mention the healing is done incrementally, so as the tanks take dmg it is healed, instead of as one lump sum resulting in wasted mana.

Or I could Shield + Renew 2 targets for almost the same amount of "healing" (many argue whether or not PW:S is a heal....I believe it is a preemptive heal). Penance the MT then Shield+Renew 2 more targets. The shield/penance/renew the MT again to start the rotation over.

The problem with this is that Renew does NOT take advantage of Rapture which results it in draining mana significantly.
What I am currently trying to do is make blizzard consider adding Renew to Rapture's mana return spell list.



(This is not taking into account everything else a Disc Priest does....including throwing a shield up on a dying raid/party member to allow the mainhealers enough time to land a cast...or in extreme cases throwing a penance at them to bring them to full hp which is what I do if a "HEALER" is about to keel over.)

 

Supermerkicus

I'm not so sure about this - the very acknowledgment, positive at that, gives me optimism.

And I really don't think meditation and bloat is going to take them 6-12 months to get around to - maybe a few months after WoTLK is released as part of one of the first major patches.

Speaking of Disc bloat, does anyone bother picking up enlightenment?

In a PVE -or- PVP build it just isn't worth it. Kinda sad for a 5 point talent at that position in the tree, I can't think of an equivalent 5 point talent that deep for any of my other characters that isn't a no-brainer for at least one playstyle (pvp or pve).


I don't really use renew much as Disc spec because it isn't synergized with my Disc talents - I'm ok with that, personally, and I try to stick to spells that benefit from crit and deep disc talents.

(fh, penance, shield, gheal, holy nova).

I use the Holy Nova glyph and with about 1k spellpower it's healing for around 1100 - considering it's instant cast nature, it's not bad at all for an instant group heal...too bad it doesn't heal raid members

 

Iwachiten

Imagine if we could get Renew to take advantage of Rapture as well as to add in a crit chance similar to a Shadow priest's DoTs being able to crit.

Also...With the nearly all +Spellpower, INT/Crit gear I have.... Holy Nova is AWESOME. I didn't take up the glyph because quite simply, it's superb in damage dealing as well. For trash mob aoe pulls (like Hyjal) you don't need +hit, Holy Nova places me around 1-3 in DPS/Damage Done, and 1st in healing done. Just make sure you're grouped up with the tanks so it heals them.

 

• constantius

This is @ Shaara above, with the comparison of Int / Spirit. First, on a purely gear-pickup-related note, as I mentioned before, getting items with no spirit on them will be difficult at best. I honestly doubt you could keep your spirit totals down to 500 once you replace all the items with Naxx.10-level gear. In fact, a rough benchmark, as I mentioned, is to assume a baseline of 1000/1000 for any computations you're doing, and figure out the gains from that point on.

Now, some numbers and considerations. Holy gains spellpower and regen from spirit, and crit and regen from intellect. Discipline gains regen from spirit, and crit and regen from intellect. In both cases, the crit actually ends up contributing even more to the regen, although obviously in different (Rapture vs IHC) ways. For the purposes of this argument, it's not worth discussing Serendipity, or possible overhealing loss to Rapture. It's just too complicated, and messes up what should be an otherwise simple (ish) picture.

If we assume 1000 intellect as a baseline, this is what I found for some numbers:

1. 1% crit = 166.67 intellect
2. 1 intellect = 0.0188 Mp5 (Replenishment)
3. 1 intellect = 0.208 Mp5 (6 minute fight, mana pool size)
4. 1 intellect = 0.083 Mp5 (6 minute fight, shadowfiend)
5. 1 intellect = 0.114 Mp5 (Holy, 6 minute fight, IHC procs from crit, assumed GHeals)
6. 1 intellect = 0.017 Mp5 (Disc, 6 minute fight, Divine Aegis absorb crits procing Rapture)
7. 1 intellect = 0.194 Mp5 (Meditation, 1000 spirit assumed, 80% I5SR)
8. 1 spirit = 0.388 Mp5 (Meditation, 1000 intellect assumed, 80% I5SR)
9. 1 spirit = 0.25 spellpower (Holy, Spiritual Guidance)

You have to remember that nothing is in a vacuum, and adding one spirit to an already completed gear set will increase your Meditation-based regen based on the amount of intellect you had. Thus, the assumption of 1000 as a starting point.

I assumed 80% I5SR when I computed the regen numbers for spirit above.

Now, none of these numbers are absolutely fixed. I'm certainly willing to discuss any of them on their own. Basically, though, I'm not really interested in test cases. Saying "well, if I have 800 spirit, this number is wrong" is completely meaningless for now. What I'm really interested in is a model for each of the listed items above. When we can agree on a model, we can build an overall comparison which will work for input starting values of spirit and intellect.

Models

Model 1: Crit from Int
No model needed, fixed value of 166.67 intellect = 1% crit. Known absolute.

Model #2: Regen from Int (Replenishment)
No model needed, fixed value of 0.25% mana / second, known scaling of int to mana.

Model #3: Regen from Int as a function of Mana Pool
Here we could discuss what an optimal choice for fight length is. 6 minutes seems pretty reasonable to me. Many of the Naxx fights are shorter, which increases the value of mana pool size, but 6 minutes is a reasonable, all around number to throw around. If we go too short, then on the fights it really matters (basically, the hard long fights), the numbers will have been skewed and you'll think you have more regen than you really do. If anyone wants to argue 6 minutes, make your case.

Model #4: Regen from Int as a function of Shadowfiend & Mana Pool
Same as #3: just need to know how long the fight is. I made the assumption of 1 shadowfiend, 10 hits @ 4% each. Obviously if your shadowfiend dies or you don't get all the hits due to sloppy use, your regen will drop. This is 1 int => 15 mana => 40% is 6 mana => over 6 minutes => 0.083 Mp5.

Model #5: IHC procs giving 'free' mana, as a function of crit
This is an interesting one to model. Here's my rough model, feel free to suggest alternatives or do a better one.

Every percent to crit grants 0.45% chance to proc IHC. Best case, we cast ~ 42 Binding Heals per minute, which grants us 84 chances to gain IHC. Worst case, let's ballpark and say we only cast 10 GHeals, no FHs and no Binding Heals over a minute. Thus each percent to crit grants us a ballpark of 0.21 IHC procs per minute, or roughly 1.3 procs per boss fight (6 minute length).

Since Serendipity cannot proc off IHC heals (unfortunately nerfed), our mana return from these 1.3 free casts can be maximized by using it on Greater Heal, which gives us a mana savings of ~ 1054. Thus we can approximate each point of intellect as 1/167th of 1370 mana, or 8.2 mana, which works out to 0.114 Mp5.

Model #6: Divine Aegis absorption shields restoring mana through Rapture, as a function of crit
This is the one where I'll admit that my math is a bit spotty. I had to make some assumptions, since I don't remember what the finalized version of absorb vs Rapture is for DA. I'm also unsure whether the DAs are rolling or not, since there was some bugs the one time I did test it.

Here's my rough model, feel absolutely free to suggest modifications or fix any errors in my logic.

Every percent to crit grants a 30% of heal shield through Divine Aegis. 2.5% of maximum mana is granted back to the healer as mana return, assuming full absorption (see below). Let's go "best case" and assume that all shields are used fully (full absorption), so every single time you crit, you get back the maximum possible. Disc is going to have higher number of total casts than Holy due to Penance, so let's ballpark it at 40 casts per minute, i.e. 40 chances to crit and proc a Divine Aegis shield which is then absorbed and returns mana through Rapture.

Shaara found that
which I am going to assume, for the moment, applies to the absorption amount as well. In that case, with base mana being ~ 3875, and 20k max mana, a 1500-point Divine Aegis shield would restore 84 mana. You will get (from 1% crit) 2.4 of these shields per fight, or 2.8 mana. Now, divide this again by 166.67, and get 0.017 Mp5 per point of intellect.

Model #7: Regen from Meditation through increase in Intellect
Here we should again assume some value of spirit, and know the baseline intellect:
and then assume 80% I5SR and work from there.

Model #8: Regen from Meditation through increase in Spirit
Here we have to assume an intellect value to determine the value of increasing one point of spirit. I chose 1000, for reasons I mentioned above. Obviously the model is simple to scale to any actual Intellect value.

Also, assume 80% I5SR for scaling purposes. 30% regen 80% of the time, 100% regen 20% of the time.

Model #9: Spellpower from Spirit
Trivial to model: add BoK and SoR, multiply by 0.25.

Conclusion: if we take all of these separate sub-models, and agree on them, then for any particular starting values of intellect & spirit, we can determine which is most valuable to add: int or spirit. Since their ilvls are the same in terms of gear / gems / enchants, this will be quite useful in, say, taking our current gear and looking at a piece that may/may not be an upgrade. It should be possible to work all of this into Rawr 2.0 as well, so that you can get a feel for regen changes that don't just involve Meditation.

Just to reiterate: I'm completely uninterested in trying to model overheal as a function of crit re: Rapture and Serendipity. Let's just ignore that, and assume that you're a wonderful healer who can manage that on your own. If you can think of any other factor that intellect or spirit will modify, let me know.

Also, assumption: you don't get Mana Tide totem. Sorry, but in a raid with 1-2 resto shamans, the warlocks, mages, boomkins, shadow priests, etc. will get priority on the Tide. You'll get Spring, sure, but it'll come from the Enhancement or Elemental shamans. DPS casters have priority on use-effect mana return things. Also, I'm assuming you don't bother casting Hymn of Hope. If you do, bravo. It's a horrible tool in terms of mana returned for time spent. You'd be better off just standing still, OO5SR for 8 seconds, than channeling the spell.

Let me know what you think. And again, try to concentrate on the model, not specific test cases.

[e] I made a spreadsheet! Some interesting conclusions (which match with what Shaara said above):
1) There is never a situation where Spirit gives more regen than Intellect ... for a Disc priest. At least, not a situation you will reach in this expansion. It takes 2275 intellect before adding +1 spirit is more regen than +1 intellect. At that point, you'd be running over 50% crit.
2) There are numerous situations where Spirit = Intellect for Holy priests. This is especially so if you allow for the Spiritual Guidance gains from spirit, which is something Intellect does not provide. In fact, Spirit directly pulls ahead 1:1 at ~ 1800 Intellect, and when factoring SA, pulls ahead around 1250 Intellect (of course, this depends on how much you value Spellpower).

I'm hoping people can help with the models to firm this up. Discipline really is shaping up to be the "gear like a paladin" tree so far, though: there's almost no point in 'stacking' spirit, or even actively pursuing it. My point about cloth gear holds, though: aside from the sub-optimal pieces that are Mp5 + spellpower + stam/int + <one more stat>, almost all the pieces have either spirit or hit or both. It's hard to actively avoid spirit as a priest in WotLK.

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein

 

Lambi

Does channeling Hymn of Hope actually put you in the 5SR? Surely it doesn't since it doesn't cost mana? So when channeling Hymn of Hope you're actually gaining 8 seconds of no casting worth of mana and giving ~1000 (dunno the wotlk number) mana to each party member. It's not super, but I can definitely see it getting used.

 

• constantius

That could be, actually; I was misremembering HoH to have a mana cost, so the channel was I5SR, effectively. I mean, I'm not saying I won't use it. I will, and do all the time on Beta. It's just suboptimal, and any time I do it I feel like I'm sacrificing something for the benefit of my party. I don't like that.

Also, can anyone confirm/deny the Int<->Crit ratio at 80? Whitetooth had it listed as 80:1 on his Combat Ratings page, so I assumed he was right, since he's normally pretty accurate about this stuff. If it's not 80, that changes the relative weighting of Intellect by a *lot*, which will help make Spirit more attractive.

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein

 

Dagma

I have always seen it as 166.67 per 1% crit.

[Formulas] Combat Ratings at level 80 - Theorycrafting - Wowhead Forums

Changes to Priest Combat Ratings in WotLK A Dwarf Priest

 

Observer

If it costs nothing and doesn't interfere with the 5-second rule, how is it suboptimal? You're sacrificing a global cooldown -- that's it. After that, you can cancel it whenever you need to, and you've still come out ahead.