So some of you may be wondering what crawled into my pants and died from my previous post.
Well, basically Ghostcrawler got this bright idea that paladins should want mp5 and actively try to stack it as their mana regen. In short, he wants to mess around with the foundations of what makes a holy paladin tick JUST so we won't bitch and complain about the poorly itemized gear (mp5 heavy) in Ulduar (the T8 bonus is still shat, no matter what, compared to T7).
Why am I so mad that Ghostcrawler is mucking around with paladins? There are a couple reasons.
One has to do with the spells that paladins must use to heal and that we are the ONLY healer class STUCK as single target healers. Another reason is to do with the large contrast between our 2 main spells in terms of effectiveness (HPS) and efficiency (mana cost). Another important reason is how our mana regen works despite the claims of Ghostcrawler to the contrary. Lastly, mp5 is an archaic stat that has lousy lousy scaling but is being foisted on us. I will elaborate further on each of these points and then you'll know why I think Ghostcrawler is a f*cking ignoramus.
I. How Paladins Heal
Paladins only have ONE way of healing, single target direct heals. We have no AOE heals, no HOTs or smart heals. Anytime we land a heal is usually a result of a conscious decision on our parts to target and cast a spell.
We have 3 spells in our arsenal, which are Flash of Light (FoL), Holy Shock (HS) and Holy Light (HL). HS is on a 6 second CD (or 5 if you glyph for it) and is instant cast but is very mana inefficient as well as unreliable since it is on a CD. That leaves FoL and HL.
FoL is our small, quick heal that is very mana efficient. HL is our big, slow nuke that uses alot of mana. So either paladins heal for a lot or a little and only if our heals land on time, which is hard since we are ALWAYS getting sniped by HOTs or smart aoe heals or other healers' heals.
I will mention Judgement of Light (JoL) as it can be thought of as an aoe heal. However, as it scales off of both AP and SP, it is actually best for Ret pallies to judge JoL for maximal HP returns. In any case, JoL is not reliable at all and can be thought of as a raid wide Healing stream totem. Why the hell is JoL better for Ret pallies? Does that make any sense?
Beacon of Light is also there for Holy paladins but it is not a true healing spell. Basically, whoever Beacon is cast on, any effective healing done directly by the paladin will transfer over to the Beacon, which may or may not be the right amount of healing necessary for the Beacon target. Beacon only lasts a minute (1.5 minutes with the glyph) and costs 1460 mana to cast. In short, it is an unreliable and expensive spell to use unless you are very, very good about your overhealing (Give me a break, paladins are KINGS/QUEENS of overheal).
II. FoL vs. HL
FoL is very mana efficient so we can keep spamming it on one target especially if said target has Sacred Shield (SS) (which lasts 30 seconds or 1 minute if talented). However, with the damage in Ulduar, FoL simply can't keep up.
As an example, healing the MT in 10 man Mimiron during Phase 1 during Plasma Blast, my HL can crit for 15-16k and there is basically no overheal. How does that compare to my FoL which heals for ~3-4k normal and crit of ~5k? It will fail to heal the incoming damage despite the shorter cast time even if I spam it continuously compared to using HL to heal.
Now think of the time it takes for FoL to even heal for the same amount as HL, this means that FoL spamming will result in lower HPS than HL spamming. Why is high HPS important? Very rarely are there any fights that have slow reliable damage ticking throughout the raid but rather fights tend to have bursty, spiky damage at certain points. This means that the ability to burst heal during those parts is vital to heal through the damage and high HPS is what it translates to, aka HL spam.
In that same fight later on, we get Rapid Burst and Heat Wave, which mean the raid sees massive amounts of damage in a short amount of time. The only spell that can effectively heal this is HL as FoL will not heal for enough and we will quickly fall behind on healing through the damage. If you have the HL glyph, there is all the more reason to cast HL despite this being a VERY weak alternative to a true aoe heal.
These 2 examples illustrates the problem of FoL vs HL. If paladins can spam FoL in a fight with ease, it usually means the fight is easy as the raid is not taking much damage or there are too many healers. It is when fights call for a frenzied burst of healing, paladins must resort to use HL as is the case in Ulduar since that is the spell that will give us our highest HPS but eats up our mana pool like crazy.
Thus, for maximal HPS, paladins must rely on HL if we are to effectively heal the massive incoming damage in Ulduar. Hence, people calling us HL spambots though we don't have much of a f-ing choice, do we?
III. The cost of HL
At level 80, HL costs 1274 mana and is the 2nd most expensive spell to cast after BoL but is basically the biggest cause of mana usage for a holy paladin.
We paladins do so much crap just to lower the mana cost of HL. Why? We need that spell so we can heal through insane damage. Of course, we also use our other spells such as HS and FoL but when the situation calls for it, we MUST be able to burst heal with HL bombs.
With the Libram, HL costs 1161 mana to cast but with the T7 4 piece set bonus, it will cost only 1102 mana to cast.
So let's see how much mana HL really uses at all the different mana costs I've listed above even with a 30k mana pool, at 0% crit, 0 mp5 and no other means of regen. I will round down since if you don't have the mana, you can't cast it, period.
But direct your attention to the time we will last just casting HL at 30k mana with 0 means of regen. It seems pretty long right? We will last at least 1 min but how much effective healing is that really?
HL is damn expensive but we just can't cast it fast enough. So the reason why it seems paladins are super gods at mana regen even in the face of our very good mana regen is we just can't get out our heals fast enough. Compare that to the priest/druid, how many heals have they gotten off in the time it takes a paladin to get off 1 healing spell? So how much mana have they consumed in that same time? I bet it's a lot more but I also bet they did a shit ton more effective healing than that paladin.
In terms of effective healing/mana usage, I really think paladins got short changed but you see those same priests/druids that are frantically casting along with paladins complain about our mana regen when we simply can't use up our mana pool as fast as other healer classes because we are single target direct healers on a cast time.
All the other healer classes complain about playing whack-a-mole. Go play a pally and you will find out what REAL whack-a-mole is like in the face of instant cast, smart aoes and HoTs constantly ticking in a raid environment. Your mana regen seems like shit compared to ours because of how much freaking raid healing you can do in the same amount of time we cast 1 HL -.-
IV. Stats for a Holy paladin
As healers, there are 2 kinds of stats that we are concerned with maximizing. There are those stats that increase throughput, meaning your HPS is increased. Then there are stats that increase your mana efficiency or regen, meaning you can sustain your HPS for a longer duration of time.
Each healing class has their own foundations for throughput and mana regen. In general though, priests/druids are more similar compared to shamans/paladins. For paladins, intellect/crit/mp5 are for mana regen while SP/haste are for throughput.
V. Intellect/Crit vs. Intellect/mp5
Currently, I love love LOVE to gem for intellect. I also like to gem so I get socket bonuses. Very rarely do I miss out on socket bonuses unless it is utter crap such as 3 mp5 for example. I am also fortunate to be at a high enough gear level that I do not have to worry about have a low SP or haste or crit level. In general I feel as long as I am around 40 - 50% crit and around 1900-2000 SP, I am fine. I am close to the "soft" haste cap (676 haste) at 620 haste but I didn't have to gem for it at all.
Due to Illumination, crit is vitally important for holy paladins. However keep in mind that though this technically makes crit both a throughput AND mana regen stat, for paladins that stack ONLY crit and not intellect to rely on for mana regen, they will run OOM faster than the paladin that stacked intellect. Why is this?
Take for an extreme example a paladin that has 100% crit rating. Even though the paladin continually crits, there is always a net loss of mana since critting on a heal only returns back 60% of the mana cost of casting the heal. This means that the paladin's mana is continually being eaten up despite critting non-stop. The mana returns from the crit, however, effectively increases the effective mana pool of the paladin.
So as you can see from that example, crit is there to mitigate our heavy mana usage and works especially well in this regard for HL BUT it will not return us mana since we will still have a net loss of mana while continually casting. Crit also relies on the paladin to continually cast heals before its mana "regen" effect can activate. Therefore, you can think of crit as a paladin's mana regen while actively casting since that is the only time it will help a paladin's mana efficiency.
Intellect, on the other hand, does not require the paladin to cast for its mana regen effects to activate. By the pure effect of stacking intellect, you gain SP due to Holy Guidance and you also gain crit. Some people scoff at the amount of crit to be gained from intellect, but I gotta tell you, it is nothing to laugh at since paladins will tend to have high intellect just from gear/talents alone even without gemming for it. Let me give you myself as an example of how much extra crit I get from my intellect.
Well, basically Ghostcrawler got this bright idea that paladins should want mp5 and actively try to stack it as their mana regen. In short, he wants to mess around with the foundations of what makes a holy paladin tick JUST so we won't bitch and complain about the poorly itemized gear (mp5 heavy) in Ulduar (the T8 bonus is still shat, no matter what, compared to T7).
Why am I so mad that Ghostcrawler is mucking around with paladins? There are a couple reasons.
One has to do with the spells that paladins must use to heal and that we are the ONLY healer class STUCK as single target healers. Another reason is to do with the large contrast between our 2 main spells in terms of effectiveness (HPS) and efficiency (mana cost). Another important reason is how our mana regen works despite the claims of Ghostcrawler to the contrary. Lastly, mp5 is an archaic stat that has lousy lousy scaling but is being foisted on us. I will elaborate further on each of these points and then you'll know why I think Ghostcrawler is a f*cking ignoramus.
WARNING LONG WORDY POST AHEAD!
I. How Paladins Heal
Paladins only have ONE way of healing, single target direct heals. We have no AOE heals, no HOTs or smart heals. Anytime we land a heal is usually a result of a conscious decision on our parts to target and cast a spell.
We have 3 spells in our arsenal, which are Flash of Light (FoL), Holy Shock (HS) and Holy Light (HL). HS is on a 6 second CD (or 5 if you glyph for it) and is instant cast but is very mana inefficient as well as unreliable since it is on a CD. That leaves FoL and HL.
FoL is our small, quick heal that is very mana efficient. HL is our big, slow nuke that uses alot of mana. So either paladins heal for a lot or a little and only if our heals land on time, which is hard since we are ALWAYS getting sniped by HOTs or smart aoe heals or other healers' heals.
I will mention Judgement of Light (JoL) as it can be thought of as an aoe heal. However, as it scales off of both AP and SP, it is actually best for Ret pallies to judge JoL for maximal HP returns. In any case, JoL is not reliable at all and can be thought of as a raid wide Healing stream totem. Why the hell is JoL better for Ret pallies? Does that make any sense?
Beacon of Light is also there for Holy paladins but it is not a true healing spell. Basically, whoever Beacon is cast on, any effective healing done directly by the paladin will transfer over to the Beacon, which may or may not be the right amount of healing necessary for the Beacon target. Beacon only lasts a minute (1.5 minutes with the glyph) and costs 1460 mana to cast. In short, it is an unreliable and expensive spell to use unless you are very, very good about your overhealing (Give me a break, paladins are KINGS/QUEENS of overheal).
II. FoL vs. HL
FoL is very mana efficient so we can keep spamming it on one target especially if said target has Sacred Shield (SS) (which lasts 30 seconds or 1 minute if talented). However, with the damage in Ulduar, FoL simply can't keep up.
As an example, healing the MT in 10 man Mimiron during Phase 1 during Plasma Blast, my HL can crit for 15-16k and there is basically no overheal. How does that compare to my FoL which heals for ~3-4k normal and crit of ~5k? It will fail to heal the incoming damage despite the shorter cast time even if I spam it continuously compared to using HL to heal.
Now think of the time it takes for FoL to even heal for the same amount as HL, this means that FoL spamming will result in lower HPS than HL spamming. Why is high HPS important? Very rarely are there any fights that have slow reliable damage ticking throughout the raid but rather fights tend to have bursty, spiky damage at certain points. This means that the ability to burst heal during those parts is vital to heal through the damage and high HPS is what it translates to, aka HL spam.
In that same fight later on, we get Rapid Burst and Heat Wave, which mean the raid sees massive amounts of damage in a short amount of time. The only spell that can effectively heal this is HL as FoL will not heal for enough and we will quickly fall behind on healing through the damage. If you have the HL glyph, there is all the more reason to cast HL despite this being a VERY weak alternative to a true aoe heal.
These 2 examples illustrates the problem of FoL vs HL. If paladins can spam FoL in a fight with ease, it usually means the fight is easy as the raid is not taking much damage or there are too many healers. It is when fights call for a frenzied burst of healing, paladins must resort to use HL as is the case in Ulduar since that is the spell that will give us our highest HPS but eats up our mana pool like crazy.
Thus, for maximal HPS, paladins must rely on HL if we are to effectively heal the massive incoming damage in Ulduar. Hence, people calling us HL spambots though we don't have much of a f-ing choice, do we?
III. The cost of HL
At level 80, HL costs 1274 mana and is the 2nd most expensive spell to cast after BoL but is basically the biggest cause of mana usage for a holy paladin.
We paladins do so much crap just to lower the mana cost of HL. Why? We need that spell so we can heal through insane damage. Of course, we also use our other spells such as HS and FoL but when the situation calls for it, we MUST be able to burst heal with HL bombs.
With the Libram, HL costs 1161 mana to cast but with the T7 4 piece set bonus, it will cost only 1102 mana to cast.
So let's see how much mana HL really uses at all the different mana costs I've listed above even with a 30k mana pool, at 0% crit, 0 mp5 and no other means of regen. I will round down since if you don't have the mana, you can't cast it, period.
- 1274 mana per HL : 30,000 / 1274 = 23 HL (57.5 seconds not counting GCD at 0 haste)
- 1161 mana per HL : 30,000 / 1161 = 25 HL (62.5 seconds not counting GCD at 0 haste)
- 1102 mana per HL : 30,000 / 1102 = 27 HL (67.5 seconds not counting GCD at 0 haste)
But direct your attention to the time we will last just casting HL at 30k mana with 0 means of regen. It seems pretty long right? We will last at least 1 min but how much effective healing is that really?
HL is damn expensive but we just can't cast it fast enough. So the reason why it seems paladins are super gods at mana regen even in the face of our very good mana regen is we just can't get out our heals fast enough. Compare that to the priest/druid, how many heals have they gotten off in the time it takes a paladin to get off 1 healing spell? So how much mana have they consumed in that same time? I bet it's a lot more but I also bet they did a shit ton more effective healing than that paladin.
In terms of effective healing/mana usage, I really think paladins got short changed but you see those same priests/druids that are frantically casting along with paladins complain about our mana regen when we simply can't use up our mana pool as fast as other healer classes because we are single target direct healers on a cast time.
All the other healer classes complain about playing whack-a-mole. Go play a pally and you will find out what REAL whack-a-mole is like in the face of instant cast, smart aoes and HoTs constantly ticking in a raid environment. Your mana regen seems like shit compared to ours because of how much freaking raid healing you can do in the same amount of time we cast 1 HL -.-
IV. Stats for a Holy paladin
As healers, there are 2 kinds of stats that we are concerned with maximizing. There are those stats that increase throughput, meaning your HPS is increased. Then there are stats that increase your mana efficiency or regen, meaning you can sustain your HPS for a longer duration of time.
Each healing class has their own foundations for throughput and mana regen. In general though, priests/druids are more similar compared to shamans/paladins. For paladins, intellect/crit/mp5 are for mana regen while SP/haste are for throughput.
V. Intellect/Crit vs. Intellect/mp5
Currently, I love love LOVE to gem for intellect. I also like to gem so I get socket bonuses. Very rarely do I miss out on socket bonuses unless it is utter crap such as 3 mp5 for example. I am also fortunate to be at a high enough gear level that I do not have to worry about have a low SP or haste or crit level. In general I feel as long as I am around 40 - 50% crit and around 1900-2000 SP, I am fine. I am close to the "soft" haste cap (676 haste) at 620 haste but I didn't have to gem for it at all.
Due to Illumination, crit is vitally important for holy paladins. However keep in mind that though this technically makes crit both a throughput AND mana regen stat, for paladins that stack ONLY crit and not intellect to rely on for mana regen, they will run OOM faster than the paladin that stacked intellect. Why is this?
Take for an extreme example a paladin that has 100% crit rating. Even though the paladin continually crits, there is always a net loss of mana since critting on a heal only returns back 60% of the mana cost of casting the heal. This means that the paladin's mana is continually being eaten up despite critting non-stop. The mana returns from the crit, however, effectively increases the effective mana pool of the paladin.
So as you can see from that example, crit is there to mitigate our heavy mana usage and works especially well in this regard for HL BUT it will not return us mana since we will still have a net loss of mana while continually casting. Crit also relies on the paladin to continually cast heals before its mana "regen" effect can activate. Therefore, you can think of crit as a paladin's mana regen while actively casting since that is the only time it will help a paladin's mana efficiency.
Intellect, on the other hand, does not require the paladin to cast for its mana regen effects to activate. By the pure effect of stacking intellect, you gain SP due to Holy Guidance and you also gain crit. Some people scoff at the amount of crit to be gained from intellect, but I gotta tell you, it is nothing to laugh at since paladins will tend to have high intellect just from gear/talents alone even without gemming for it. Let me give you myself as an example of how much extra crit I get from my intellect.
So you can see that I gained 13.84% crit from my intellect alone. This is from a completely raid buffed situation. As you can also see, from my character info sheet, I also have 34.85% crit chance alone, and 39.85% crit chance on Holy spells due to Holy Power. That means roughly 1/3 of my total crit is due to intellect alone!!
I only get about ~21% of my crit off gear alone, which admittedly is alot. However, keep in mind that intellect also increases my SP AND mana pool. My intellect gave me ~26k mana extra, which allows me to do a crapton more healing. The SP contribution is not as obvious and requires calculation so if we calculate according to Holy Guidance, I get 1750*0.2 = 350 SP!
Of course you can get more SP if you just gemmed for SP alone but there is just so much more benefit to be had currently to gem for intellect. This is because you are gemming for throughput and mana regen as well as longevity all at the same time. It is the paladin's equivalent to spirit for priests (before the spirit nerf).
So how does intellect contribute to mana regen? Divine Plea (DP) & Replenishment are what makes intellect a mana regen stat for us. This means that the more mana we have, the more mana we regen translating to more mp5.
Wait, mp5? I thought paladins disliked actively stacking mp5? We do because mp5 stacks really badly since no raid buffs will increase it outside of Mana Spring totem or Blessing of Wisdom (BoW), which does not stack anymore or a flask. Given paladins' really, really large mana pools (generally ~20-25k mana), the mp5 that we can actively stack will FAIL to give us the mana regen that we NEED to heal. Hence, we use intellect since it will translate to mp5 for us but at much greater numbers than if we actually stack mp5 itself.
Intellect is even more powerful as there are multiple buffs that stack it (Blessing of Kings (BoK), MOTW, AI, flasks) and even if we don't have said buffs, paladins can buff it ourselves with BoK! Instead of scaling linearly like mp5, intellect scales much much better and therefore, the benefit we derive from it outscales that from mp5 alone! Get it?
So the whole point of us stacking intellect is BECAUSE paladins care about our mp5. The fact that intellect also does a crapton of other stuff for us is just plain gravy. Also, mp5 ONLY increases mana regen, it does CRAP for SP/mana/crit!
Anyway, back to how much mana we get back from DP and Replenishment. So my intellect gave me ~26k extra mana, 25970 mana to be exact. Therefore, when DP is active I will get back an EXTRA 6492.5 mana over 15 seconds on top of DP's return off my base mana pool. That means for those 15 seconds, I get an extra ~2164 mp5!! Since DP is on a 1 min CD, this means that this translates to ~541 mp5 in that 1 min on top of the extra mp5 we get off our base mana!
Paladins have never been able to stack mp5 that high in TBC or even now. At most we can stack ~2-300 mp5 if we have nice gear (Correct me if I am wrong). Of course, those that stack other stats other than intellect will also still gain DP's effects. So let's assume, that they have the similar gear but instead do not gem for intellect at all. I've seen paladins like that and they generally tend to have ~25k mana pools if that.
Since base mana pool for holy paladins at 80 is 6049 (with talents), that means they have an extra 19k mana but let's round that up to 20k mana to be generous. So DP will restore 25% of total mana, that means there is an extra 4000 mana returned over 15 seconds. This translates into extra ~1333 mp5 for those 15 seconds and ~333 mp5 over 1 min. This means there is a difference of ~208 mp5! Even if you gem for crit/SP, will that really make up the difference?
I haven't even gotten to Replenishment yet! You can see the point already though right? Actively stacking intellect via gems AND gear is much better than actively stacking for mp5. However, this is because the effective mp5 is so much higher this way! (Assuming you are Ulduar/Naxx geared)
As an aside, I crunched some numbers and correct me if I am wrong but assuming 100% uptime of Replenishment, my raid buffed mana pool of ~30.3k will result in continuous 252 mp5 throughout the fight while a mana pool of 25k mana will only see 208 mp5, which is 44 mp5 less than mine. This totals to a difference of 252 mp5 just because you have 5000 less total mana!
So why not just got for int/crit/mp5 gear rather than int/crit/haste?
As paladins, since we are single target direct healers, we need haste so that our GCD gets lowered and our heals can get out in time, therefore increasing our throughput. However, the biggest issue is that a measly 15 mp5 will cost you like 30 crit/haste or some stupid number like that. 15 mp5 is a drop in the bucket when you come face to face with mana pools in the range of 20-30k while having that extra bit of crit or haste will give us more benefit.
In the end, all paladins are concerned about mp5 but we get this by itemization that is very specific. Hence why I prefer intellect/crit/haste but not mp5 since in comparison, mp5 as a stat to actively stack is so poor.
So Blizzard, fix mp5 NOT paladins!
VI. Healer jealousy & pigeon holingI only get about ~21% of my crit off gear alone, which admittedly is alot. However, keep in mind that intellect also increases my SP AND mana pool. My intellect gave me ~26k mana extra, which allows me to do a crapton more healing. The SP contribution is not as obvious and requires calculation so if we calculate according to Holy Guidance, I get 1750*0.2 = 350 SP!
Of course you can get more SP if you just gemmed for SP alone but there is just so much more benefit to be had currently to gem for intellect. This is because you are gemming for throughput and mana regen as well as longevity all at the same time. It is the paladin's equivalent to spirit for priests (before the spirit nerf).
So how does intellect contribute to mana regen? Divine Plea (DP) & Replenishment are what makes intellect a mana regen stat for us. This means that the more mana we have, the more mana we regen translating to more mp5.
Wait, mp5? I thought paladins disliked actively stacking mp5? We do because mp5 stacks really badly since no raid buffs will increase it outside of Mana Spring totem or Blessing of Wisdom (BoW), which does not stack anymore or a flask. Given paladins' really, really large mana pools (generally ~20-25k mana), the mp5 that we can actively stack will FAIL to give us the mana regen that we NEED to heal. Hence, we use intellect since it will translate to mp5 for us but at much greater numbers than if we actually stack mp5 itself.
Intellect is even more powerful as there are multiple buffs that stack it (Blessing of Kings (BoK), MOTW, AI, flasks) and even if we don't have said buffs, paladins can buff it ourselves with BoK! Instead of scaling linearly like mp5, intellect scales much much better and therefore, the benefit we derive from it outscales that from mp5 alone! Get it?
So the whole point of us stacking intellect is BECAUSE paladins care about our mp5. The fact that intellect also does a crapton of other stuff for us is just plain gravy. Also, mp5 ONLY increases mana regen, it does CRAP for SP/mana/crit!
Anyway, back to how much mana we get back from DP and Replenishment. So my intellect gave me ~26k extra mana, 25970 mana to be exact. Therefore, when DP is active I will get back an EXTRA 6492.5 mana over 15 seconds on top of DP's return off my base mana pool. That means for those 15 seconds, I get an extra ~2164 mp5!! Since DP is on a 1 min CD, this means that this translates to ~541 mp5 in that 1 min on top of the extra mp5 we get off our base mana!
Paladins have never been able to stack mp5 that high in TBC or even now. At most we can stack ~2-300 mp5 if we have nice gear (Correct me if I am wrong). Of course, those that stack other stats other than intellect will also still gain DP's effects. So let's assume, that they have the similar gear but instead do not gem for intellect at all. I've seen paladins like that and they generally tend to have ~25k mana pools if that.
Since base mana pool for holy paladins at 80 is 6049 (with talents), that means they have an extra 19k mana but let's round that up to 20k mana to be generous. So DP will restore 25% of total mana, that means there is an extra 4000 mana returned over 15 seconds. This translates into extra ~1333 mp5 for those 15 seconds and ~333 mp5 over 1 min. This means there is a difference of ~208 mp5! Even if you gem for crit/SP, will that really make up the difference?
I haven't even gotten to Replenishment yet! You can see the point already though right? Actively stacking intellect via gems AND gear is much better than actively stacking for mp5. However, this is because the effective mp5 is so much higher this way! (Assuming you are Ulduar/Naxx geared)
As an aside, I crunched some numbers and correct me if I am wrong but assuming 100% uptime of Replenishment, my raid buffed mana pool of ~30.3k will result in continuous 252 mp5 throughout the fight while a mana pool of 25k mana will only see 208 mp5, which is 44 mp5 less than mine. This totals to a difference of 252 mp5 just because you have 5000 less total mana!
So why not just got for int/crit/mp5 gear rather than int/crit/haste?
As paladins, since we are single target direct healers, we need haste so that our GCD gets lowered and our heals can get out in time, therefore increasing our throughput. However, the biggest issue is that a measly 15 mp5 will cost you like 30 crit/haste or some stupid number like that. 15 mp5 is a drop in the bucket when you come face to face with mana pools in the range of 20-30k while having that extra bit of crit or haste will give us more benefit.
In the end, all paladins are concerned about mp5 but we get this by itemization that is very specific. Hence why I prefer intellect/crit/haste but not mp5 since in comparison, mp5 as a stat to actively stack is so poor.
So Blizzard, fix mp5 NOT paladins!
Just because holy paladins have historically been the best surviving healers due to our usage of plate armor and our bubble, other healing classes have QQed about it. This is also the basis for the reasoning of how it makes it fair that we are stuck as single target healers. Then we are brushed off with "tank healing is your niche" when we ask for a way to deal SOMEHOW with raid damage, especially after the SS nerf.
On top of it, paladins as a class can "do it all" since we have 3 viable specs (tank, melee DPS and heal) so other healing classes (mostly priests) state that as the reason why it is ridiculous for us to be able to aoe heal and/or expect to top charts.
Plate or not, in PVE if we take aggro and get hit, we WILL die just as well as other healer classes. Us wearing plate means we can take a few more of those hits and give more time for tanks to grab aggro back but it doesn't mean we can heal AND tank at the same time like some people like to make it out to be, so WTF?
Druids are hybrids too yet they top charts AND have an aoe heal, so WTF?
Druids also have FOUR viable specs but it is considered them normal for them to be one of the best healer classes in game, so WTF?
Shamans are hybrids and even priests (though they like to say that they are THE healer class), so WTF?
Druids get a 1 minute spell called Barkskin, yet our bubble that is dispellable and on a long CD while causing forbearance is considered OP, so WTF?
SS got nerfed on the reasoning that it was mitigating too much damage yet Disc priests can shield whoever they like and mitigate alot of damage, so WTF?
HL glyph is a slow, dumb heal that can only heal up to 5 targets and works off our effective healing, so it in no way can even compare to CoH or WG but it got nerfed when druids/priests complained after CoH/WG got put on CD all because paladins dared to climb a bit higher on charts with it despite the fact that we could never steal a raid spot over a equally talented or geared priest/druid. WTF?
Now in Ulduar, priests/druids are casting themselves OOM due to the heavy raid damage and paladins can't do shit other than cast HL and hope there is some splashover or do it the old-fashioned way and single target FoL. Nevermind that the paladin must expend more mana just to do the same amount of healing a druid/priest does along with taking a slower time of it too.
Now these OOM priests/druids look at these paladins and see them with more mana at the end of the fight and QQ about paladin mana regen even though we can't even compare to the effective healing or HPS a priest/druid can put out due to their aoe healing, so WTF?
Nevermind that gutting our mana regen to make priests/druids/shamans happy means we can't do the one thing we do well, which is burst heal the MT. So should we all just delete our holy paladins so all the QQ by the other classes will stop? WTF!
In Vanilla WoW, paladins could only be holy yet we weren't healers as we were cleanse and buff bots. In TBC, holy paladins were infamously sat out of SWP in raid to just buff and because of S1 arena, Illumination got nerfed. In 3.1, our SS was nerfed to single target as well as a bubble breaker being given to warriors and PVP was made harder for us due to S5's influx of DK/Pally combos. Holy paladins are treated like 2nd rate players just because of our class and spec. Isn't that discrimination?
It looks like there is more nerfs in store for holy paladins because Blizzard has a history with us. They don't like us and ALWAYS make it harder for us to effectively heal in favor of priests, druids or shamans. Yet the reasoning behind it all is that we wear plate, have bubble and are hybrids, which is crap logic. Doesn't anyone see the problem with this?
VII. The solution & their problems
On top of it, paladins as a class can "do it all" since we have 3 viable specs (tank, melee DPS and heal) so other healing classes (mostly priests) state that as the reason why it is ridiculous for us to be able to aoe heal and/or expect to top charts.
Plate or not, in PVE if we take aggro and get hit, we WILL die just as well as other healer classes. Us wearing plate means we can take a few more of those hits and give more time for tanks to grab aggro back but it doesn't mean we can heal AND tank at the same time like some people like to make it out to be, so WTF?
Druids are hybrids too yet they top charts AND have an aoe heal, so WTF?
Druids also have FOUR viable specs but it is considered them normal for them to be one of the best healer classes in game, so WTF?
Shamans are hybrids and even priests (though they like to say that they are THE healer class), so WTF?
Druids get a 1 minute spell called Barkskin, yet our bubble that is dispellable and on a long CD while causing forbearance is considered OP, so WTF?
SS got nerfed on the reasoning that it was mitigating too much damage yet Disc priests can shield whoever they like and mitigate alot of damage, so WTF?
HL glyph is a slow, dumb heal that can only heal up to 5 targets and works off our effective healing, so it in no way can even compare to CoH or WG but it got nerfed when druids/priests complained after CoH/WG got put on CD all because paladins dared to climb a bit higher on charts with it despite the fact that we could never steal a raid spot over a equally talented or geared priest/druid. WTF?
Now in Ulduar, priests/druids are casting themselves OOM due to the heavy raid damage and paladins can't do shit other than cast HL and hope there is some splashover or do it the old-fashioned way and single target FoL. Nevermind that the paladin must expend more mana just to do the same amount of healing a druid/priest does along with taking a slower time of it too.
Now these OOM priests/druids look at these paladins and see them with more mana at the end of the fight and QQ about paladin mana regen even though we can't even compare to the effective healing or HPS a priest/druid can put out due to their aoe healing, so WTF?
Nevermind that gutting our mana regen to make priests/druids/shamans happy means we can't do the one thing we do well, which is burst heal the MT. So should we all just delete our holy paladins so all the QQ by the other classes will stop? WTF!
In Vanilla WoW, paladins could only be holy yet we weren't healers as we were cleanse and buff bots. In TBC, holy paladins were infamously sat out of SWP in raid to just buff and because of S1 arena, Illumination got nerfed. In 3.1, our SS was nerfed to single target as well as a bubble breaker being given to warriors and PVP was made harder for us due to S5's influx of DK/Pally combos. Holy paladins are treated like 2nd rate players just because of our class and spec. Isn't that discrimination?
It looks like there is more nerfs in store for holy paladins because Blizzard has a history with us. They don't like us and ALWAYS make it harder for us to effectively heal in favor of priests, druids or shamans. Yet the reasoning behind it all is that we wear plate, have bubble and are hybrids, which is crap logic. Doesn't anyone see the problem with this?
VII. The solution & their problems
- Buffing FoL - All those Ret and Prot specced paladins healing in arena? Yeah, they're going to be OP now and Blizzard won't like the massive flood of QQ pouring in since WoW players in general harbor a hate for paladins bordering on discrimination.
- Removing DP - Stacking intellect rather than mp5 is still more beneficial due to replenishment.
- Changing DP to work off mp5 (Increase paladin's mp5 by X % when active) - People crunched some numbers in the forums, I don't know what they are, but the mp5 bonus that has to be given due to the mp5 gear available now to us is ridiculous (at least 200%?) to even outshine the benefit of stacking intellect.
- Remove Replenishment - Obviously, Blizzard doesn't want to do this and this will not affect only holy paladins anymore but potentially negatively impact other mana users and causing other balance issues as well as raid make ups.
- Remove mp5 completely - Resto shamans must be given something to compensate if this happens though reportedly some resto shamans report that intellect is also still better for them. In turn, this can cause some homogenization of mana regen mechanics with paladins, which in turn can lead to more QQ as holy paladins already like ele shaman loot.
- Increasing mp5 on available gear - Mp5 is very expensive in terms of itemization allocation points in the item level budget, so making more mp5 available in general on items may make it more attractive and easier to stack. However, the mp5 problem would still exist. Also, intellect would still be favored among holy paladins as our talents make it so we benefit in varied ways from intellect stacking.
VIII. Conclusion
Holy paladins need our mana regen due to the high expenditure cost of HL. Even if you try to switch us to FoL, this will cause balance issues. Mp5 is also a thorny problem in of itself as Blizzard refuses to get rid of it or make it scale better since in WotLK since their goal is to make fights hard for healers.
Holy paladins are deemed the simple class but by changing our fundamental mechanics, you just break us or nerf us to high hell. Blizzard states they want to "fix" us but they really mean "nerf" us and "break" us without addressing the REAL issues that plague our class and hinder our ability to heal.
Just come out and say it, Blizzard, you don't want holy paladins to heal.
That's why as holy paladins, if we don't like all these f-ing nerfs Blizzard throws at us, we have to do what the warlocks did when they were about to stupidly change Lifetap. They all canceled their accounts as a group and forced Blizzard to revert the planned change. Then again, I doubt Blizzard will actually listen anyway.
Ghostcrawler may be stating he is reading the forums for our opinions but the truth is, they have already made up their minds and we are fucked. Otherwise, why insist on us using mp5? There is no easy way for us to happily use mp5 over stacking intellect and would seem to involve very drastic changes to the holy tree. But why do such a drastic overhaul without testing??
Blizzard's track record has been DAMN CRAPPY when it comes to holy paladins so I don't believe it when other people say that we will get nerfed then buffed. If anything, we always get nerfed then nerfed again (like the DP nerf to MS effect but undispellable -> MS effect + dispellable) as the other healing classes gleefully watch. Well, this is what I get for using 2 years of my life to masochistically play a class that is doomed to always play 2nd fiddle.
I am just so sick of this because I LOVE playing my paladin and I hate that feeling of always running uphill on a steep incline because of arbitrary constraints. I am just feeling so outraged that somehow somebody decided that holy paladins don't matter and we have to get treated like crap.
WTF!!!
Holy paladins need our mana regen due to the high expenditure cost of HL. Even if you try to switch us to FoL, this will cause balance issues. Mp5 is also a thorny problem in of itself as Blizzard refuses to get rid of it or make it scale better since in WotLK since their goal is to make fights hard for healers.
Holy paladins are deemed the simple class but by changing our fundamental mechanics, you just break us or nerf us to high hell. Blizzard states they want to "fix" us but they really mean "nerf" us and "break" us without addressing the REAL issues that plague our class and hinder our ability to heal.
Just come out and say it, Blizzard, you don't want holy paladins to heal.
That's why as holy paladins, if we don't like all these f-ing nerfs Blizzard throws at us, we have to do what the warlocks did when they were about to stupidly change Lifetap. They all canceled their accounts as a group and forced Blizzard to revert the planned change. Then again, I doubt Blizzard will actually listen anyway.
Ghostcrawler may be stating he is reading the forums for our opinions but the truth is, they have already made up their minds and we are fucked. Otherwise, why insist on us using mp5? There is no easy way for us to happily use mp5 over stacking intellect and would seem to involve very drastic changes to the holy tree. But why do such a drastic overhaul without testing??
Blizzard's track record has been DAMN CRAPPY when it comes to holy paladins so I don't believe it when other people say that we will get nerfed then buffed. If anything, we always get nerfed then nerfed again (like the DP nerf to MS effect but undispellable -> MS effect + dispellable) as the other healing classes gleefully watch. Well, this is what I get for using 2 years of my life to masochistically play a class that is doomed to always play 2nd fiddle.
I am just so sick of this because I LOVE playing my paladin and I hate that feeling of always running uphill on a steep incline because of arbitrary constraints. I am just feeling so outraged that somehow somebody decided that holy paladins don't matter and we have to get treated like crap.
WTF!!!
Despite being an evil holy priest type, I do think something is currently wrong with paladin healing. Our one remaining holy paladin couldn't raid tonight so we did a couple of hardmodes, Iron Council included with 2 priests (1 holy and 1 disc) and a shaman covering the tank healing. So if tank healing can be done by all the healing classes, surely raid healing to an acceptable level should be doable by all as well. I don't think JoL is the answer as I kinda see that as the paladin version of Leader of the pack and I don't think glyphs are the answer either. They shouldn't be bandaids to fix something as major as that. But if Blizzard want to remain true to their philosophy of "bring the player not the class", they need to do something.
ReplyDelete"In Vanilla WoW, paladins could only be holy yet we weren't healers as we were cleanse and buff bots."
In vanilla wow one of our best healers was a holy paladin, a priest in plate who used to give a lot of the healers a run for their money. Although before they added those pulses that put everyone in combat on boss fights, we used to keep a paladin out of combat all through MC for ressing people (yes we sucked, I think on our first Geddon kill we literally had to ress more than half the raid).
That said my paladin who I raided for most of the TBC with is currently sat half way through lv 70 and likely to remain that way for the considerable future.
Disagree about priests/druids going oom though. I'm pretty sure our priests/druids aren't running out of mana in a raid environment and I know for a fact I'm not. What with shadowfiend, multiple hymn of hopes, replenishment and manatides, I can't think of a fight other than the hated General in which I have mana issues.
hmmm.. I think sections 1 through 5 can stand alone as a some sort of introductory guide to holy pally for people who don't know the class dynamics. It actually made sense to me, and that's saying a lot. I knew int > mp5, only because my buddy told me, but I didn't know why. and I always like to know the whys because i'm Curious George.
ReplyDelete/soothes
ReplyDelete/hands you a cookie
Holy pallys are currently "OP" in PvP, though, so I think until that changes, we're absolutely boned.
You are abolutely correct, though. I happily holy pally'd for four years, starting with hardcore raiding in vanilla WoW. It took Wrath to break paladin healing for me. Even when I survived 5 mans and heroics and got to raiding, where I could tank heal and not HAVE to cry myself to sleep over losing people to AoE, I was so disenchanted that I gave up on being a holy pally.
I don't think you play your class well if you think Holy Shock is worthless. I think the problem with most pally healers in a raid environment is that the number of buttons you use is small and simple, but the situational awareness and keeping things like beacon and SS up became pointless in naxx, you could just stand there and heal. I remember first heading into naxx 25 and people saying that they expected pallies to hit around 60% overheal. Thats absurd.
ReplyDeleteI am seeing quite a few Holy Pallys that are lazy and don't use all their mechanics well and I think the complaints above are all to common of them. On paper you can say all day that different heals etc. are useless but in an actual raiding environment everything is different.
Not being an ass, just tired of the same old bitch sessions.
@pallyheals
ReplyDeleteNo, I DO think you are being an ass.
Obviously you don't pay attention to my glyphs or my spec. Duh, I use HS to heal.
Do I have to tell you exactly how I heal on top of it? Did I even say HS was worthless? So you use HS on every CD, it will be your #1 heal?
Not being an ass, just tired of people not reading and going straight to e-dick waving.
@harpysnest: I actually don't know much of pre-BC holy paladins outside of 2nd hand information, I confess. Thanks for letting me know otherwise but I still feel maybe the root of all the prejudice started in pre BC and has persisted despite obvious changes in paladins since then. And no, I don't think priests are evil but tbh I always seem to find a bad egg priest QQing about paladins some way or another.
ReplyDelete@Jong: TY so much, I'm glad my post was helpful =)
@forthebubbles: I am disenchanted now but I don't want to give up playing my holy pally. I am leveling a priest currently, however.
I agree with most of what was said in thi post. I've even dabbled in the Holy/Prot build to buff FoL with as much +Healing as possible to see if it would be a viable option.
ReplyDeleteAccording to my spreadsheet the numbers and cast times should be there to support FoL spamming in raids, BUT losing 8% crit just by switching builds takes it's toll, and as you mentioned it causes HUUGE balance issues. I tried my hardest to make FoL viable, but it's simply out of scope.
I made the same point that harpysnest mentioned in the official forums they're using for the Q&A sessions, that any class or combination of classes can MT heal in game. So why in the hell are we still a 'niche' single target class, I understand their reason for uniqueness among classes, but what have/are they doing with tanks and hybrid/pure dps?
Theyre 'balancing' them to be comparable with pure builds and homogenizing tanks by allowing them all to have 'similar' abilities.
I'll be happy when a paladin can viably RAID heal during Malygos vortex phase....
God damn it reading this is very discouraging, as a new player, playing a holy pally. Now that I think about it, I havent seen one holy pally the whole time ive been playing, there all ret.
ReplyDeleteAs a holy pally myself, I can definitely relate to everything you've said. I went to my first 25 ulduar the other night as the *only* holy paladin in the raid and on Ignis I was told to *raid heal.* I even argued privately with my gm about it because paladins are, as you stated yourself, single target direct healers, not raid healers. And his answer was that a priest/druid combination on the main tank was better. So I had to attempt to raid heal (luckily I am HL glyphed) and then I got yelled at when it took me a bit longer to raid heal my group than the other healers! It was rather frustrating because we're just not made for raid healing. Even with beacon up, the cast time of HL doesn't make it very feasible when it comes to the sheer amount of AOE damage that is taken during that fight.
ReplyDeleteFunny that I get so many "It's not fair that you got plate and we don't" comments from clothies.
ReplyDeleteEven in Heroics, if the tank dies, my plate doesn't mean shit.
The only benefit you get from wearing plate, is that you are not caught in the mass brawls that occur when Cloth loot drops in a raid, and as we don't share the same gear as other classes, why force us into stats we don't want or need?
I'm ok with you qq'ing as long as you leave out pointing fingers at resto shaman qqing about you. We have our own problems, like going oom while doing less effective/overhealing than other healers, or actually not even having a nich. You are better at mt healing, everyone else is better at raid healing. Wow, sorry, normally I'm not such a crybaby -- in fact, I was ok with everything until you started including shamans in pointing fingers at you, if they do they're dumb. At least your play mechanics are going to help me out since they are buffing mp5, which, unfortunatly, is what I have to stack with int.
ReplyDeleteI can understand where HP is coming from. 3.2 is a real whack in the nuts for healadins, and all we're getting to compensate that is a change to SS and a dubious change to BoL (dubious if only because BoL is an expensive, situational ability). If Blizz is going to make healing harder, give me something to make up for it- like rework FoL or make HL's casttime shorter.
ReplyDeleteThis post said it best: why should we want mp5 when all it does is affect mp5? I'd rather stack stats that actively help me do my job (keeping people from tasting the floor), like int or haste.
Honestly? I'd rather go ret than be forced to take a lackluster stat simply because Blizz says we healadins should be more aware of our mana.
@B-Rab: Shamans WERE calling for a nerf to holy paladin mana regen to try and buff their own class. You can pretend that isn't the case but that is just the case. THIS IS A PALADIN SITE, why would I write about shamans? Use some common sense. If I'm some crybaby, then all of you shamans are worse crybabies for QQing about all your class flaws that 3.2 is trying to address. Kettle, meet pot.
ReplyDelete@kiareisis: Keep in mind that this post was made before 3.2 notes ever came out so yeah, the real extent of the damage was unknown to me at the time. I really do think that holy paladins are fed up because people claim that class equality = homogenization when that is just not the case.
Thank you, thank you, a thousand times thank you. I don't know what's more maddening, the interminable stream of holy paladin nerfs, or the fact that almost every paladin blogger on the planet sucks them up and tries to spin them like they're not so bad. But it often seems like low self-esteem is a class trait of ours, so we take it.
ReplyDeleteMuch as I never thought I would say this to a belfadin, thank you for ranting.