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12/21/2012 07:52 PMPosted by Ceresc

i can pull 50k hps with minimal effort on my paladin without having mana issues. My priest couldn't do that till she hit 474 (back when i played holy for a week or so cus disc was abysmal without overgearing stuff)

Just dinged 90 on my priest tonight. Bought all the 450 crafted, respec'd to disc and jumped into my first dungeon. Holy Hell was that stressful. I must have spent half of the first dungeon looking for my, "WHERE THE HELL DO I GET MANA BACK?" button.

Imagine before the buffs to divine aegis... try using mindbender on cooldown from 80% mana on. use inner focus with greater heal and cascade, not halo.

I'm not sure how well you know me, so I'll start with a few things, and you can decide how much you value my input based on that information.

I do things differently than most.

I don't care about math or spreadsheets in regards to healing. They don't matter.

When I healed HM progression (Cata through Firelands), I healed with some of the best healers on my server, and perhaps in the game as a whole. I was told by several people who had raided with both of us, that I was very close to Blossoms (now Blossomz) in skill, which may or may not mean anything to you. My viewpoints are, in part, based on this experience, and not everyone is in that same boat.

If your paladin is just going to be an LFR toy, then a lot of things don't matter at all, but you already know this. That said, it's always good to be the best you can be, even in LolFR.

Here is how I would gear, if I were still raiding HM's:

Regen - a paladin that gears for regen is very powerful. At some point in this expansion (probably towards the end of the next tier), your paladin will pass the point of diminishing returns, so to speak, on static Regen. Obviously, at that point, you would start to push Throughput, which leads us to...

Right now, I would probably just leave Crit and Haste wherever they ended up after my Mastery reforges, regardless of what Talents I was using. The only time this would be different would be regarding Haste breakpoints, but you also already know this, so I won't dally on that topic. If I were going to favor one, it would be Crit, assuming I had enough Haste to meet my cast time requirements when raid buffed.

In the last Tier, or perhaps late in the next one, I would start pushing Crit/Mastery really hard, barring some fundamental change to our Mastery. It's very likely (speculating here, since I have no idea what the content will be like at that time) that I would be reforging out of Spirit, probably into Crit. The Crit/Mastery build, imo, trumps any other build for a Holy Paladin, but this doesn't become true until you can stack Crit high enough to make that swing.

Take it for whatever you feel it's worth.

Edit: Missed the Glyph - I don't think I would use it until I started pushing Crit, even if I had 4pc.

Riôt

Glyph of Illumination is useless unless you have the PvE 4pc set bonus. With the 4pc set, it is better until ~13000 spirit, but that is based around 12 shocks per minute, practically using it on CD. The math based on the 4 set can be found here:

Just wanted to elaborate on this portion here with some numbers. While, yes, the Glyph of Illumination is better than going without until 13k spirit... you have to sacrifice a glyph to gain the small bonus.

Assuming that you have 10k Spirit, 25% crit (raid-buffed), the PvE 4-piece, AND that you get 12 Shocks per minute (takes a lot of focus to get that high), there's only a net gain of 370 Mp5, or 35,520 mana over the course of an 8 minute fight. Glyph of Divinity will return 30k, potentially even 60k if you have Unbreakable Spirit and you have to blow it early.

The glyph also becomes greatly weakened if you can't make 12 Shocks per minute, if you have less than 25% crit (I've only got 17.3% raidbuffed, and that's with 2k Crit), or if you have more Spirit (don't forget to take food, flasks, and spirit-proc trinkets and enchants into account). The only thing that improves the glyph is longer fight durations. Shorter fight durations also stymie it.

So yeah, I agree with Hainiryuun. The glyph is a wash at best, and terribad at worst.

As was stated before, don't bother with the glyph since there are much more effective glyphs to use. Stack spirit wherever you can, then mastery. Generally speaking, you'll go for haste next but it depends on your play style. Faster heals are always nice, break points, more EF ticks, etc, but then again so is critting more, but obviously haste stacks faster.

12/21/2012 06:44 PMPosted by Tailias

P.S. If you're snooping through my logs, I die on Lei Shi every week. It's a ritual. Don't hate. :-P

I can't wait to die on Lei Shi every week. We start Terrace today and so far my mana has been fine without stacking spirit gems. But it was really tight on Empress on Thursday. I couldn't say if it was because I was off my game or the regen was just low, as it was our first time seeing her. Surprisingly she was much easier than the other bosses. I think we only had 8 wipes on her before she went down.

Honestly, I just picked up the 4 piece PVP set and my healing is literally through the roof now. Went from third healer with a druid and monk over me (they both outgeared me by over 10 ilvls, still do) and now I am crushing them.

Just stack mastery and EF blanket the raid with the pvp 4 piece. You shouldn't have mana issues if you use Divine plea early and on CD. Granted, I have only done this in normal and LFR. Not sure how different it plays in heroic.

Due to the change to HR haste is not viable for holypaladins. if you want to maximize your heals/HPS you will want to stack/reforge mastery, as illuminate is our number 1 heal 100% of the time.
Glyph of illumination is only viable if you have the 4 set.

Glyph of Illumination is useless unless you have the PvE 4pc set bonus. With the 4pc set, it is better until ~13000 spirit, but that is based around 12 shocks per minute, practically using it on CD. The math based on the 4 set can be found here:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AovDZYcya2YudG84MlIyVkVIMTd6ZzBUcllXNzkxMUE#gid=0The math without the 4pc set bonus can be found here:http://joeego.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/theorycraft-paladins-options/It is only viable in this case until ~5100 spirit, which you should be wayyy over.Stacking haste after mastery is still the way to go, but you probably won't be running into any situations where it would matter, unless you run into a crit/haste ring or something like that.

(sorry for quote formatting)
Don't take this by the book, the link and the original post there was made back when the 4pc bonus was only reducing HS cooldown by 1s instead of 2s (which is why the copy pasted comment about 12 HS/min whilst 12*4s is only 48 seconds leaving a huge room for human mistakes).

It doesn't consider the synergy with sanctified wrath either. Now at optimal uptime, sanctified wrath gives fewer free shocks than the old 4pc bonus so the logic and maths used for the post still stand for anyone without 4pc bonus.

On the other hand, for anyone WITH 4 pc bonus, you have to draw the conclusion that the glyph is optimal significantly beyond 13k spirit since the optimal use isn't 12HS/min like back when this post was made but 15HS/min.

12/21/2012 09:18 PMPosted by Wards

The only thing that improves the glyph is longer fight durations. Shorter fight durations also stymie it.

What? No the fight duration has absolutely no impact on the value of the glyph...unless you were still talking about the glyph of divinity...

^ThisI also have a theory that crit > haste with pve 4p.Since Holy Shock will be down to 4 sec CD, with absolutely no haste you will be able to squeeze in one cast (without procs) between holy shocks, that is, 1.5sec GCD + 2.5sec cast. No matter how much haste you have, you will not be able to squeeze in another hard cast between each holy shock. On top of that, having more holy shocks also increases the value of crit through infusion of light proc. Just a rough theory though.

Bad theory thanks to Infusion of light, raid haste buffs seal of insight - especially infusion of light...

Keau, you're, well, I'm not sure what you're doing. You're being helpful, but also not seeing certain issues. Let's address all three posts.

On the other hand, for anyone WITH 4 pc bonus, you have to draw the conclusion that the glyph is optimal significantly beyond 13k spirit since the optimal use isn't 12HS/min like back when this post was made but 15HS/min.

First. The math in the original post is completely correct for 12 shocks per minute... the chart just doesn't extend to the potential 15, that's all. And while theory is good, healers have to deal with reality, and getting 15 is completely unrealistic (and if you're able to get 15, it means you're not casting anything else and the boss is probably a cakewalk anyways). 12 is a good, solid high-average, with 13 if you micromanage every single spell you have (at the cost of the raid and spell selection). To put it a different way... yes, the glyph does return you a certain amount of mana if you can manage X number of procs per minute, and if you can manage more than 12 it will return ever so slightly more, but it's still not a wonderful amazing value. (If you somehow go to the full 15, your mana return over an 8 minute fight would jump from 35.5k to 44k.)

It doesn't consider the synergy with sanctified wrath either.

You do make a valid point for Sanctified Wrath, however. That is something that has not been addressed. I will do so now, and theorize that I do not believe there will be many paladins that will sacrifice their DP or Holy Avenger for... a chance to use Holy Shock a few extra times every 3 minutes? With the set bonus, choosing SW instead of a different Talent will gain you... +2.5 Holy Shocks per minute on average if you do nothing but spam Holy shock for the full duration of SW (which means being idle the .75-1 second wait period between casts and wasting your HP once you cap). This, compared to +5-6 Holy Power per minute from DP, or the amazing HR/LoD/HS/LoD cycle from HA. Hmm! That's a little above 1 average bonus crit per minute, which I'll estimate at +3.6k mana per minute... 300 Mp5, or 540 spirit. Certainly nothing to scoff at, but I doubt it's worth the cost of a glyph and a Talent, especially since I high-balled it. If you're using Avenging Wrath, it means you need raid heals nowz. So you're more likely to cast HS + DL/HR + HS + LoD/EF... repeat. So maybe only +1 bonus HS's per minute, on average.

What? No the fight duration has absolutely no impact on the value of the glyph...unless you were still talking about the glyph of divinity...

Second post. No, I wasn't specifying Divinity itself, merely the gain from the Glyph. A shorter fight duration absolutely reduces the effectiveness of the glyph because nothing is had in a vacuum. I said that over 8 minutes you would gain about 35k mana. If the fight were 1 minute long, you would spend a glyph in exchange for 4.5k mana. Would someone do that? Would anyone select such a glyph when they could have additional utility or a chance at Divinity which would still return you the full 30k? Of course not. Conversely, if you were in an hour long fight, the glyph would gain you instead more than 250k mana. Divinity would likewise improve, as would other glyphs. An hour is certainly unreasonable, though we can use the same numbers to compare a 5 minute fight (22.2k) and a 12 minute fight (53k). Longer fight = stronger glyph... just maybe not as strong as other glyphs, which is where intelligent decision-making comes in.

EDIT: Though yes, the Mp5 gain doesn't change, apart from a longer fight reducing RNG on crit rate.

12/24/2012 01:11 AMPosted by Keau

^ThisI also have a theory that crit > haste with pve 4p.Since Holy Shock will be down to 4 sec CD, with absolutely no haste you will be able to squeeze in one cast (without procs) between holy shocks, that is, 1.5sec GCD + 2.5sec cast. No matter how much haste you have, you will not be able to squeeze in another hard cast between each holy shock. On top of that, having more holy shocks also increases the value of crit through infusion of light proc. Just a rough theory though.

Bad theory thanks to Infusion of light, raid haste buffs seal of insight - especially infusion of light...

The third post is a bit awkward. The problem is that both haste and crit affect the usage of the special. So the quoted theory is wrong, but still right. Let me explain.

Firstly, she's wrong in that you can't get in three spells. If you were to have 20% haste, you could cast Holy Shock (1.25 seconds) + Infusion of Light proc (1.25 second Holy Light or Divine Light) + Instant spell such as Word of Glory, Eternal Flame, or Light of Dawn (1.25 seconds) for a total of 3.75 seconds. You could also use Flash of Light for when you don't get such a proc (completely mana inefficient, even taking the 1 second savings into account).

She's also wrong in another, more subtle method. Even without the procs, more haste means more spells per minute which means that instead of finishing a Holy Shock + Holy Light + Holy Light without procs at 5.25 seconds, you could get it down to 5.1 or even 5 seconds. In other words, more haste DOES mean more holy shocks... per minute/fight. with less haste, we might get 1 Holy shock every 5.25 seconds, and with more Haste we could get 1 Holy Shock every 4.9 seconds.

Which brings me to Crit. She's completely correct here. Crit value does increase because there are more Holy Shocks which means more chances to proc Infusion of Light which means more effective Haste. Every Holy Shock crit saves you 1.5 seconds.

The problem is that this is more difficult to compare. Which is better?

Improving your Holy shocks per minute from 5.25 seconds down one every 4.9 seconds?

...or having a 5% greater chance at being able to go HS + Proc HS + Instant and thus use more 4 second cooldown Holy Shocks per minute?

Fortunately, while we can math it out with all the odds of casting which spells in which order included, pragmatism says that you're not really going to see much of a difference either way because our top stats are Spirit and Mastery... Haste and Crit fight over the leftovers, and there's not much to be had (this will change slightly in later tiers as we reforge out of Spirit, but in later tiers we'll be using a different tier set, so the point becomes largely moot except for those with Heroic T-14).

Still, certainly an interesting theory, and it makes me wonder if I can get some ballpark numbers.

In summary, Keau, yes, thank you for pointing out both the fact that the chart ceases at 12 shocks (though that is more than enough for many of us), and the idea of SW (if you're a paladin with the 4-piece PvE and you enjoy using SW, consider grabbing the glyph).

All of the original points still stand, however. It's simply not a very strong glyph, not when we have other, more viable options.

I'm not sure how well you know me, so I'll start with a few things, and you can decide how much you value my input based on that information.

Riôt

First off. Way to try and sound like a big shot.

12/21/2012 08:11 PMPosted by Riôt

Here is how I would gear, if I were still raiding HM's:

2nd: Not much HM Exp. Now I don't have as much FL HM exp on this toon because I raided on my Druid from beginning of Cata to DS.

Now that I have that out of the way.

I personally wouldn't bother running the glyph. Crit is by far your weakest stat as a H Pally.

Stat Prioirty- Spirit<Mastery<Haste<Crit

Stack as much spirit and mastery as possible then when you do get the gear go for the 3506Haste Breakpoint. With the 5% Haste buff from a Boomer/Spriest/Hunter that will give you an extra tick on EF.

As well running the 3506 Haste will take your cast time to roughly 2sec on HL HR and DL. With the 4set depending on HP your rotation would HS-filler-filler-HS. That is a rough rotation on what it would be like and it does change with how much HP you have. NOTE: Haste does effect the GCD therefore for some that will be wrong and that was to just give an idea on what the 4set would be like.

Now if you wanted to go straight crit and not worry about spirit mastey or haste mathematically it is the most efficient healing spec for a pally. However when it comes down to it Crit is still base on RNG no matter how much crit you have. If you do run a crit spec it is useful to run IH glyph.

@Wards
I'll refrain from multi quoting I'm affraid it would be hell to read through.

The main points I was making about 4pc bonus fix (or buff) to 2s reduction on HS were
1. People always think what is written with details is right never questionning if there were any major changes that could alter the math shown. For instance, I've had a major argument with 7-8 players last season that kept saying resillience had a cap because wowwiki said so yet wowwiki infos were dated since S8

2. The reasoning for not taking the glyph once you have 4pc for this tier is that since it capped out (theoritical) at 12 HS ~13k spirit break even. Now pointing that it actually capped out at 15 was so that people could think "nice so 12 HS/min is really manageable over the course of a fight even w random infusion procs affecting the timeline etc". The follow up conclusion is - You won't hit 13k spirit till ilvl 504-505 ish and even then, hpals happen to have outstanding mana this current tier. Their 4pc bonus already dips in favor of efficiency because of the increase in HP gen. This glyph allows to double dip, allowing them to reallocate stats elsewhere while still running good on mana. Aka at the very least, because of 4pc bonus in conjunction with this glyph, a hpal that used to run 12.5k spirit pre 4pc could very well fully regem his spirit into int and still have better mana than pre 4pc.

Next, I'd like to point out that sanctified wrath had marginal contribution so it could be overlooked (w some quick numbers too).

Then, the comment with regards to fight duration impacting the glyph itself. The "net mana from glyph" over the course of the encounter is irrelevent to determining it's gain as you, in return, lose a lot of spirit based mana regen. You are basically trading some spirit based mp5 for "crit% rnd mana per4-6s (depending on your skill level, infusion luck etc etc etc). Aka mana regen wise, there will always be an optimal choice. Then, giving away another utility does depend on the encounter but not really on the encounter duration...

12/24/2012 10:02 AMPosted by Wards

She's also wrong in another, more subtle method. Even without the procs, more haste means more spells per minute which means that instead of finishing a Holy Shock + Holy Light + Holy Light without procs at 5.25 seconds, you could get it down to 5.1 or even 5 seconds. In other words, more haste DOES mean more holy shocks... per minute/fight. with less haste, we might get 1 Holy shock every 5.25 seconds, and with more Haste we could get 1 Holy Shock every 4.9 seconds.

I'm actually quoting this part. This haste theoritical approach is now disregarding Infusion of Light procs. Stacking haste past a certain breakpoint (around 12.5%) means that every time you do HS+IoLproc+holy power finisher, you will land all 3 casts sub the 4s CD mark thus either having to wait (wasted haste) or queue something else which would then delay your next HS significantly further than having no haste.

Aka haste benefits aren't as clear cut as "it will always make HSs line up fasters".

This being said, the sole reason for my short and sweet comment about her major mistakes is that it was sufficient to disproove it. I'm a mathematician, "prooving" something is a long and detailed process. Refuting on the other hand can be as simple as "you forgot X and it's enough for your whole theory to be flawed".

So anyway for everyone else who is finding my comments AND Wards' to be
tl;dr

The glyph has super strong niche in that it can allow you to reallocate secondary stats out of some spirit for "more reliable" throughoutput while retaining similar regen as prior to giving out spirit. In the current tier setup, it means really only gemming int instead of spirit but it's still a nice niche. Esp in 25m where roles are better defined helping mana management a lot.

Would I use it or recommend it? No, I run 10m and prefer the versatility of spirit to overcompensate mistakes by raiders. If I were to run cutting edge progression like in old days? Probably swapping in and out and reforging for various encounters. Definitely not disregard it.

Haste > Crit. Incidental crit isn't so bad, but you're still more then likely going to reforge it to haste or mastery after you're comfortable with spirit. I aimed for about 8.5k-9k spirit, haste to the 1st breakpoint, and mastery to around 30% buffed. I personally feel pretty comfy with the glyph choices I've made, but I do swap them around a little bit sometimes depending on the raid and who I'm healing with.

I noticed that you are stacking heavy into spirit

I thought all healers were "stacking heavy into spirit" at this point in the expansion. Surely we aren't at that point yet where people can start reforging all their spirit into haste or mastery?

No, Illumination is not really a good choice. I usually go with Divinity/Divine Plea/Protector of the Innocent.