I don't understand something that GC said lately about mp5 and int/crit.

Spirit, which I understand to be the regen stat of druids and holy priests, acts similiar to int in that it has side bonuses other than regen. I know priests get spellpower from spirit the same way holy paladins get spellpower from intellect.

Do priests and druids gear for mp5?

MP5 is pure regen and it doesn't even regen very well compared to the mechanics of replenishment with a high mana pool.

Personally I like gearing for int but I consider the crit garnered from it to be a regen stat, and the spellpower is just a bonus. I don't consider crit a useful throughoutput stat because while you do heal for more it isn't consistent or something you can count on. Personally I think the problem for holy paladin might not have so much to do with regen but actually that we don't really have to gear for throughoutput and can instead focus totally on regen, through int and crit.

I just know for holy paladin I am afraid that if they change our regen without changing other mechanics, like our reliance on holy light, that even our 'niche' of tank healer will be called into question.

Also, how would this effect other classes that use int for regen?

I was confused by this as well. Both int and spirit are superior to mp5 in every way (this includes shaman, for the bad shaman who think mp5 is better than Imp. Watershield procs) for their respective classes. Int provides crit/sp/regen for paladins and shaman; spirit only provides sp/regen for the other two classes but its regen works very well in conjunction with intellect.

In all cases mp5 is strictly worse than int or spirit and provides no other bonuses.

And I'm pretty sure all the high-end paladins out there plugging int gems and int trinkets do so for the regen, and not the throughput (even though int does provide some fairly solid throughput stats with raid buffs).

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As for gearing for mp5, honestly? Yes I would. Crit is near worthless and haste gets less and less important the more I have. Preferably I would have 550-600 haste, then the rest of my gear would have stam/int/spirit/spellpower/mp5. But there simply isn't any spirit/mp5 gear in Ulduar.

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Int provides more mp5 for you than mp5, itemization point for point.

Even as a druid.

Just FYI.

In any case, druids are the only class that really does not put haste to good use past a certain easily-obtainable point (1s GCD on HoTs) and also do not benefit from crit (again, focus on HoTs). Saying you would gladly take mp5 is a moot point when the other two stats available for you in its place do pretty close to nothing at all. :]

It is a regen stat, but not just a regen stat. Its the strongest regen stat (by far) while also providing crit. For paladins in particular, int provides globs of sustainability and even a decent amount of spellpower.

Spirit, only provides regen for two classes and on top of that it provides a paltry amount in comparison. The only redeeming quality for the spirit classes is that our talents either increase its amount, provide spellpower from spirit, or both. Even with both benefits from talents, intellect comes out, point for point, better than spirit for the spirit classes. A second negative effect is that most casters also share the same gear as the spirit healers and spirit does almost nothing for them (except some specs of warlocks). This leads to the (accurate) perception that spirit is a curse Blizzard throws upon cloth and leather gear.

So, between int which provides great benefit for paladins and spirit, which most casters would prefer other stats, int looks fantastic. Great. I think regen stats are supposed to be bad. They're really burdensome and far from fun. The fun from playing a healer and actively managing your mana in BC and Vanilla was destroyed in WotLK causing all regen decisions to be made long before an encounter even begins.

Maybe another way to look at it is that spirit is assumed to be a regen stat because that's the only thing that it's guaranteed to do. Sure, it can give spellpower if you talent for it or use certain abilities, but the only thing it does for everyone is regen. Int, on the other hand, always impacts regen, crit and mana pool irrespective of talents.

The thing is int is it's way better than any other stat for mana sustainability.

As a Holy Priest I have absolutely no buffs or synergies with int, and yet point for point my stat priority is Intellect > Spirit > MP5. Now MP5 is actually more potent than spirit, but I don't gear for MP5 because usually I have to choose between something like 12 MP5 or 49 Spirit. That works out to same amount of regen, but I have talents that give me bonuses from spirit.

So to me it seems unfair that Paladins get buffs and synergies with the stat that is undeniably better. If my unbuffed int is better than my buffed spirit, it must be phenomenal for Paladins.

I'm not sure what the problem is exactly. I don't want to see int or replenishment get nerfd (without buffs somewhere else) because then my regen would be even worse. I have to put an ass load of my stat allocation into regen as it is.

Edit: I posted this before I read GC's post. Leave me alone.

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Q u o t e:
It's not a problem that Int is a more attractive stat that Spirit. You are rarely choosing between the two directly. There are not +50 Int legs that you drop your +50 Spirit legs to equip. If you are a Spirit-using class (especially a priest or druid) you will most likely have some Int and some Spirit almost no matter what you do.

It is a potential problem when one class can ignore Spirit while another class is required to pick it up. Because Int is more rewarding in the long run, being able to go with just Int means your mana pool and crit are also increasing compared to the dude who has to give up those stats in order to have enough Spirit.

It works if the classes are balanced assuming you don't have Spirit, which is the case for say Resto shamans. It does bad things to the game if we assume you have certain amounts of a stat but players manage to find ways to do without that stat which result in them being more powerful than other classes. Make sense?

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Yeah, but I do like choice. I think choice is a good thing. I will choose between Spark of Hope and Pandora's Plea (for instance). Which do you think I will choose? If I'm having mana troubles in hard modes, I will choose between intellect and spirit to gem for, and the choice is clear.

I honestly feel like I get spirit "because its there." I am pretty sure that if I could equip plate and use paladin gear my job would be just the same. Spirit just feels... bad. Its kind of like the argument moonkin give--spirit is not where they come from. If I had 28,000 mana like I've seen some paladins get the 200+ mp5 and larger base mana pool would leave me in the same spot I am now.

So *I*, at least, think it *is* a problem intellect is so much more attractive than spirit.

EDIT: I'm not saying nerf replenishment or nerf intellect, but the more interesting features of healing have steadily been taken away. I used to have to actively plan when to take a break in healing to regen mana. I used to have a spirit staff the get the little extra oomph from my innervate. I used to downrank Healing Touch so I didn't go oom in four casts. I used to have to swap shadow priests in and out of my group. All healing is (these days) is chain casting spell after spell even when healing isn't required. all regen choices are made before an encounter ever begins (which i think is detrimental).

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Q u o t e:
It's not a problem that Int is a more attractive stat that Spirit. You are rarely choosing between the two directly. There are not +50 Int legs that you drop your +50 Spirit legs to equip. If you are a Spirit-using class (especially a priest or druid) you will most likely have some Int and some Spirit almost no matter what you do.

It is a potential problem when one class can ignore Spirit while another class is required to pick it up. Because Int is more rewarding in the long run, being able to go with just Int means your mana pool and crit are also increasing compared to the dude who has to give up those stats in order to have enough Spirit.

It works if the classes are balanced assuming you don't have Spirit, which is the case for say Resto shamans. It does bad things to the game if we assume you have certain amounts of a stat but players manage to find ways to do without that stat which result in them being more powerful than other classes. Make sense?

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Last time I checked, priests and druids are not reliant on crit for regen while paladins and - to a lesser extent - shamans are. Priests have a crit--> regen talent, but it's nearly guaranteed to always stay up due to CoH hitting six (glyphed) targets, in conjunction with Prayer of Mending and possibly PoH crits.

We must utilize int and crit to keep our mana pools afloat, priests and druids utilize int and spirit to keep their mana pools running.

I always thought the 3.0 WotLK design was intended to be this way. The classes still have equal numbers of highly desired regen stats - spirit and crit are simply swapped out between the two groups.

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Imo the problem with int is it's way better than any other stat for mana sustainability.

As a Holy Priest I have absolutely no buffs or synergies with int, and yet point for point my stat priority is Intellect > Spirit > MP5. Now MP5 is actually more potent than spirit, but I don't gear for MP5 because usually I have to choose between something like 12 MP5 or 49 Spirit. That works out to same amount of regen, but I have talents that give me bonuses from spirit. I don't get anything extra from Mp5.

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You're looking at int from a priest point of view.

Sure, int provides a lot for paladins. But have you ever looked at how poorly a paladin scales with spell power? Haste is still strong, but at 1.32s raid buffed I'm not quite sure if I really need that much more.

If I wanted larger heals, I would drop Glyph of Seal of Wisdom for Light, drop more points into Divinity, or switch out my Libram. It's significantly better to get regen through gear and throughput through those talents/glyphs/libram, once your mana pool can sustain them.

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Maybe another way to look at it is that spirit is assumed to be a regen stat because that's the only thing that it's guaranteed to do. Sure, it can give spellpower if you talent for it or use certain abilities, but the only thing it does for everyone is regen. Int, on the other hand, always impacts regen, crit and mana pool irrespective of talents.

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Yes that does make sense and it also makes sense that int is a "new" regen stat.

I guess my real issue is maybe with calling crit a throughoutput stat. In my mind, Crit is important for healers not because it makes them heal for more but because it makes things proc.

You can't count on a crit heal so if you get one it is either overheal or prehaps if you are fast enough you could cast cancel your next heal. In non-spam situation there might be time to react and notice that you got a huge crit and not use another heal.

For healing we need to do a certain amount of healing, and randomly doing more isn't always that useful.

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Q u o t e:
It's not a problem that Int is a more attractive stat that Spirit. You are rarely choosing between the two directly. There are not +50 Int legs that you drop your +50 Spirit legs to equip. If you are a Spirit-using class (especially a priest or druid) you will most likely have some Int and some Spirit almost no matter what you do.

It is a potential problem when one class can ignore Spirit while another class is required to pick it up. Because Int is more rewarding in the long run, being able to go with just Int means your mana pool and crit are also increasing compared to the dude who has to give up those stats in order to have enough Spirit.

It works if the classes are balanced assuming you don't have Spirit, which is the case for say Resto shamans. It does bad things to the game if we assume you have certain amounts of a stat but players manage to find ways to do without that stat which result in them being more powerful than other classes. Make sense?

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but how it ends up working out is some classes gain a benefit of some kind from their regen stat. holy priests get spell power as do druids. shaman should get something other than regen from their mp5 and disc priests (who basically gear like paladins) should get some benefit from it as well. paladins stack int because it gives us so many different things. more spellpower, more crit, larger mana pool, and more gains from replenishment. as such there is a reason it is stacked. mp5 is ignored because stacking it actually hurts a paladin rather than helping him.

by stackin mp5 as a paladin you lose out on haste and crit. haste is very important for things like beacon healing as well as getting heals to targets as you're moving around. as it stands right now paladins with a lot of mp5 are in worse standing than ones that stack pure crit/haste gears. why? because you designed the class in such a way that it is advantageous to utilize haste to cast more and crit to get more out of each spell you cast.

druids haste? its good to a point but then u're below the gcd and after crits nourish is below gcd so haste is of limitied effect. it also doesnt make hots tick faster.

priests and haste? they have so many options that haste is not as awesome as it is for other classes due to serendipity/borrowed time the effect of haste is somewhat limited.

shaman and haste? chain heal spammers stack haste/mp5 its needed because right now chain heal is sort of a forgotten spell because if there are priests/druids in the raid you will most likely be overhealing as the cast time is so slow. haste doesn't help lesser healing because its below gcd because of tidal waves. perhaps trying to get shaman to cast something other than chain heal only made chain heal a worse spell but thats another topic.

paladins and haste? the fastest way to get heals to a target, the is basically the only way to utilize beacon in a raid if u aren't just putting it on an off tank. it is super important if you expect to do anywhere close to as much healing as a priest/druid in a fight.

crit is our life blood and game mechainics made it more so. at present we are valuing int and crit where they should be because they are good stats. mp5 is a bad stat and replenishment made it that way. any changes to paladins should really be buffs if anything due to the idea we have one heal worth casting that costs 1044 mana after the mana reducing gear you gave us.

perhaps the best way to nerf us(if u still believe it is needed) is to make illumination work of the cost of the spell rather than the base cost. that way you dont need to go overboard and make some of us completely regear (because mp5 is actually that bad and will still be without significant game changing reworking)

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Q u o t e:
It's not a problem that Int is a more attractive stat that Spirit. You are rarely choosing between the two directly. There are not +50 Int legs that you drop your +50 Spirit legs to equip. If you are a Spirit-using class (especially a priest or druid) you will most likely have some Int and some Spirit almost no matter what you do.

It is a potential problem when one class can ignore Spirit while another class is required to pick it up. Because Int is more rewarding in the long run, being able to go with just Int means your mana pool and crit are also increasing compared to the dude who has to give up those stats in order to have enough Spirit.

It works if the classes are balanced assuming you don't have Spirit, which is the case for say Resto shamans. It does bad things to the game if we assume you have certain amounts of a stat but players manage to find ways to do without that stat which result in them being more powerful than other classes. Make sense?

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I just wonder if it's ok for the spirit stat to exist as it is currently in game. Right now, it remains the only stat that to get any kind of actual bonus from besides it's out of casting regen, you must spend talent points. Some classes even spend more talent points than others. Think about it. Holy priests spend, what, 8 talent points to make a stat that takes up a lot of our item budget even somewhat useful. And because Discipline can only spend 3 points to make spirit useful, it's not nearly as good of a stat for them as mp5 would be. Is that a good thing GC?


While yes, we don't have to decide between the two usually, we do on enchants and gems. It's also my personal belief that a class that focuses on too many different stats to varying levels over others could be weaker, in terms of a pure gear standpoint.

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Priests have a crit--> regen talent, but it's nearly guaranteed to always stay up due to CoH hitting six (glyphed) targets, in conjunction with Prayer of Mending and possibly PoH crits.

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Just fyi Holy Concentration doesn't proc from CoH, PoH, or ProM. It only works with direct heals (Renew, FH, BH, GH), which is kind of odd because direct heals are mostly used on the less mana intensive fights.

Yes give disc priests an int -> sp conversion.

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Just fyi Holy Concentration doesn't proc from CoH, PoH, or ProM. It only works with direct heals (Renew, FH, BH, GH), which is kind of odd because direct heals are mostly used on the less mana intensive fights.

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Whoops, I'm stupid and never read the tooltip and assumed it to work like SoL.

Regardless, I don't see holy priests jumping all over crit gear :]

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Last time I checked, priests and druids are not reliant on crit for regen while paladins and - to a lesser extent - shamans are. Priests have a crit--> regen talent, but it's nearly guaranteed to always stay up due to CoH hitting six (glyphed) targets, in conjunction with Prayer of Mending and possibly PoH crits.

We must utilize int and crit to keep our mana pools afloat, priests and druids utilize int and spirit to keep their mana pools running.

I always thought the 3.0 WotLK design was intended to be this way. The classes still have equal numbers of highly desired regen stats - spirit and crit are simply swapped out between the two groups.

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You're missing the point entirely.

Int/Crit gives you longer base lasting power, higher throughput, spellpower through talents, and regen through illumination

Spirit gives us spellpower and regen.

Do you not see the disparity in between these stats? The fact of the matter is that crit should not be the de facto regen stat for ANYONE, and I'm glad bliz is finally realizing this.

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Q u o t e:
It's not a problem that Int is a more attractive stat that Spirit. You are rarely choosing between the two directly. There are not +50 Int legs that you drop your +50 Spirit legs to equip. If you are a Spirit-using class (especially a priest or druid) you will most likely have some Int and some Spirit almost no matter what you do.

It is a potential problem when one class can ignore Spirit while another class is required to pick it up. Because Int is more rewarding in the long run, being able to go with just Int means your mana pool and crit are also increasing compared to the dude who has to give up those stats in order to have enough Spirit.

It works if the classes are balanced assuming you don't have Spirit, which is the case for say Resto shamans. It does bad things to the game if we assume you have certain amounts of a stat but players manage to find ways to do without that stat which result in them being more powerful than other classes. Make sense?

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How exactly are paladins stronger then other classes? I can heal a tank on my discipline priest just as well as I can on my paladin.

However if I need to do raid healing if we have another tank healer my disc priest can cover that, not as well as say a holy priest but you can do it. My paladin on the other hand can not raid heal, it's just a futile process.

So how again are we more powerful then other classes? We use tons more mana then any other healer so our regen has to be massive. I also can nearly run out of mana in certain encounters.

I'm afraid if you change our regen and lower it too much we'll turn out to be gimped in the one role we can do well now. A non BIS holy pally will be hurting badly if you lower our regen.

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Q u o t e:
It's not a problem that Int is a more attractive stat that Spirit. You are rarely choosing between the two directly. There are not +50 Int legs that you drop your +50 Spirit legs to equip. If you are a Spirit-using class (especially a priest or druid) you will most likely have some Int and some Spirit almost no matter what you do.

It is a potential problem when one class can ignore Spirit while another class is required to pick it up. Because Int is more rewarding in the long run, being able to go with just Int means your mana pool and crit are also increasing compared to the dude who has to give up those stats in order to have enough Spirit.

It works if the classes are balanced assuming you don't have Spirit, which is the case for say Resto shamans. It does bad things to the game if we assume you have certain amounts of a stat but players manage to find ways to do without that stat which result in them being more powerful than other classes. Make sense?

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Makes perfect sense. How about just giving us more stamina since it falls into the same blue gem slot category as mp5 & spirit? Paladins are supposed to be defensive hybrid who can outlast. Yet despite being well geared we're nearly always the players with the lowest health. Not only significantly lower than other plate wearers, but also lower than most cloth wearers as well.