Last Updated 12/09/08, patch 3.0.2
Weighing Priest Healing Stats WotLK and beyond…
How we think about healing gear greatly changed with the introduction of patch 3.0.2 and the impending onset of WotLK. Here is an analysis of what we are looking for. If you don’t want the math or the assumptions it is based around, just skip to the end of the post for the conclusion.
Balancing
The first question that we need to answer is how we balance healing throughput and mana pool. Throughput is how strong your healing spells are and your mana pool is how much mana you have to spend on them. Haste, +heal, +crit, int, and spirit affect the strength of your heals. Intellect, mp5, and spirit affect your amount of usable mana. There are various talents that affect each.
Let me illustrate the throughput-vs-mana decision-making dilemma with an example:
If one item gives you 20 spellpower and another 20 mp5, which do you choose to use?
Well, hopefully you answered “it depends.” If you have 2500 spellpower and zero mana regen, then the mp5 is a better option for you, and vice-versa. We cannot definitively say one would be better than the other in any given situation, or create a simple, linear model equating them. What you get out of your gear largely depends on your other gear.
Assumption #1: Your gear is fairly well balanced.
Gearing isn’t a linear task. It is a balancing act. Which stats you look to increase should depend on what you are lacking.
If we were to make the assumption that you weren’t clueless when it came to gear, we could set up a simple model to determine how you equate stats. We wouldn’t have to worry about balancing bonus healing and mana pool in a cumbersome, cryptic equation. We could just weigh them and sum them to get a score.
Sometimes, simpler is better.
What Do We Want?
Do we want to know how much healing we do until we go out of mana?
Hell no! What use would that do us?
What we want to know is how much healing we can do in the allocated time of the fight. Time is the most important variable.
A number that gets thrown around a lot is five minutes … and it’s not a bad number! Five minutes is a nice, round value and the average length of many fights. Longer fights tend to have transitions built in to account for their extended length, giving you a chance to gain a lot of mana sitting out of the five second rule. However, that isn’t the case 100% of the time.
Assumption #2: You will know when to switch your gear.
Please understand that there will be some longer fights (and some shorter fights) that require you to wear more (or less) mana regen stats. This is similar to how there are fights that require higher stamina, or fights that require spell resistance gear. It never hurts to hold on to a few extra pieces of gear to tailor your stats to the needs of the fight. Be flexible.
Back to the issue of time, figuring five minutes for length of fight is perfect in some regards. However, we want to have a little extra padding built in to our stat weights to allow for the tougher fights that “accidentally” go on a bit longer than they should. We don’t want to go into a mana crisis if a DPSer dies too early and the fight goes on a little too long.
Assumption #3: Average fights may be five minutes, but we need to be geared for longer.
When looking at how we think about intellect especially, we’ll be computing it for fights of 6 minutes in length (20% longer). I have found that is was better to undervalue mana stats to allow for increased longevity in a pinch. As always, your results may vary.
Spellpower vs. Mana
How much more healing can you do with +1 spellpower? How much with +1 mana?
It’s the age old debate, being rehashed again. Looking at the mechanics of one spell to model this, or how Blizzard has gems itemized, or the mechanics on one talent will NOT cut it. I have seen so many people make these mistakes.
As I stated before, we aren’t looking to see how much healing we do before we run out of mana. That isn’t our goal. We want to maximize our healing potential in the time allotted.
It’s obvious how spellpower would play into that, but how would mana?
Overhealing. If you have enough mana, you can toss that extra heal that’s 80% overheal. You can burn that extra mana topping someone off that you wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. You can put that extra stabilization spell up. You can cut your IFSR time a little shorter. The short answer: more mana lets you cast more spells.
Using my prior model and converting +heal to spellpower, we would weigh spellpower at 0.49. Mana-related stats would be converted into their equivalent amount of mp5 for the fight, which would then be weighed at 1.0. With patch 3.0.2 (the pre-WotLK patch), we see mana coming from different (and more frequent) sources. Rather than adjust the mana stats accordingly, I adjusted the spellpower-related stat weights instead, weighing them 23% higher than before. Yes, even despite the change to downranking.
Spellpower is now weighed at 0.60 per point.
This aspect of the weighings is not something I feel completely locked into, and it is the most likely to vary depending on playstyle and raid composition.
Assumption #4: You will adapt your gear to your playstyle and your raid conditions.
There are innumerable ways of playing the game. The objective of the game is to have fun. If you have more fun stacking mana regen and chain casting more, but healing for less, than so be it. There are certainly less effective ways of healing, yes, but I hesitate to really call anything outright “wrong.”
My assumptions about playstyle and typical raid composition when making stat weights are my perceptions about how priests heal and how raids function. Your results may vary.
Feel free to balance things differently, especially if you feel things aren’t working for you. Experiment and adapt.
Spirit/Intellect-Based Mana Regen
This is the big ticket item in terms of your mana.
Your mana will regenerate when you are out of the five second rule (meaning, after you have stopped casting for 5 seconds). This is your out-of-combat mana regen, otherwise referred to as out-of-five-second-rule (OOFSR) regen. If you have 3 points in Meditation (which all PvE healers really, really should … you cannot spend three talent points in any better way), 30% of that OOFSR mana regen will continue while you are in the five second rule (IFSR).
Assumption #5: You have spent your talent points in logical manner.
Let me repeat: Meditation is a tremendous benefit to any PvE healer. All gear weights listed here will assume you have this talent. Certain other “core” talents are assumed in the weights at the bottom of the page. See the test cases in the “Putting it All Together” section.
Our OOFSR mana regen (measured in MP5) is expressed by the following equation:
MP5 = 5 * (0.001 + sqrt(Int) * Spirit * LevelRegen)
LevelRegen is a coefficient based on your level. At level 70, it is 0.009327. At level 80, it is 0.005575.
To figure your mana regen gain from spirit or intellect, you need to know your spirit and intellect values. At the bottom of this post I outline a few gear assumptions. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll mention up here that I’m assuming a level 80 priest with 1k int and spirit (early T7 content levels).
Given those assumptions, the OOFSR mana regen from a point in each stat becomes:
MP5 from Spirit = 0.8815
MP5 from Int = 0.4406
Those are the OOFSR values. Say you spent about 80% of your time IFSR. These weights then become:
MP5 from Spirit= 0.3879
MP5 from Int = 0.1939
That is per point of each stat. If you have buffs or talents that modify your intellect multiplicatively, for example, you should take those into consideration as well (Blessing of Kings, Mental Strength). Humans, with their Human Spirit racial trait, get a 3% better return on spirit (which is not taken into account).
Intellect
For a holy priest, 1 point of intellect gives you 15 mana (16.5 if you have Blessing of Kings on you). Thinking about mana gained, per point of intellect, we divide the amount mana from intellect by the length of the fight in seconds, then convert that value into mp5 by dividing by 5 (we’ll be factoring in the OOC/Meditation mana gain later). We convert into the unit mp5 as it remains the defacto unit of measure for mana over time.
Mana from Int = { [ Intellect x 15 ] / Time } / 5
Where: time is measured in seconds
Again, this is not figuring for Improved Blessing of Kings, or the fact that the priest is deep disc. Those both will increase the value of intellect in terms of mana gain.
With Improved Blessing of Kings (10% increase to all stats):
Mana from Int = { [ Intellect x 16.5 ] / Time } / 5
Speccing deep into discipline, you (must) pick up the talent Mental Strength, which increases your intellect by 15% (at max rank).
Mana from Int = { [ Intellect x 17.25 ] / Time } / 5
… and Imp. Kings on a deep disc priest, the benefits to intellect get multiplied, giving you 18.975 mana per point of intellect:
Mana from Int = { [ Intellect x 18.975 ] / Time } / 5
Now, if you look at stretching that mana over six minutes, one point of intellect gives you the equivalent of:
1 int = 0.208 mp5
1 int, w/Imp Kings = 0.2292 mp5
1 int, w/MS = 0.2396 mp5
1 int, w/Imp Kings & MS = 0.2635 mp5
And this isn’t taking replenishment, shadowfiend, rapture, or mana regen into account. Just its mana pool benefit.
Other Items Affecting Mana
There are spells and buffs that affect our spendable mana pool:
- Replenishment - When you have the Replenishment buff (from a shadow priest, ret paladin, or survival hunter), you gain 0.25% of your max mana back every second. Increasing the intellect on your gear increases the effects of replenishment. This will be a very common buff in raids.
- Shadowfiend – It restores 4% of your max mana per hit (it’s return is no longer based off of your spellpower or how much damage the little guy does). Analyzing a number of combat log aggregators (such as WoW Web Stats) since patch 3.0.2 shows Shadowfiend to not be 100% effective. That number is closer to about 90%. On most fights, it will be used only once (as the spell has a five minute cooldown).
- Innervate – Increases your regen by 400% while not casting and allows 100% of that total regen to occur while casting (for 20 seconds). In most usual cases, the mana return from an Innervate would exceed your mana pool, making optimizing stats for its return somewhat irrelevant. In any given fight, other casters or healers may have greater need of this buff than you, and it remains something not consistently cast on holy or disc priests. The mana gain from this buff is not taken into account in any calculation, for those two reasons.
Spirit
From above, we know how much spirit is worth in terms of mana. Holy priests with Spiritual Guidance get 25% of their spirit added to their spellpower (4 spirit = 1 extra spellpower).
Haste
How you use haste really depends on your playstyle and raid role, and similar to spellpower, will vary based on your personal preference. While not high on your priority list of stats, once basic needs are met (such as having enough mana regen to comfortably make it through a raid encounter), you’ll want to focus more on collecting haste (potentially making the stat value of haste increase with gear level).
Having haste is like having finesse. It can allow you to pull off miracles of the speed-healing nature. Fast healing can save a raid from a wipe.
For holy priests, haste is almost as significant as spellpower. It lets you lands those heals quicker. In burst situations especially, haste will allow you to keep up with heavy damage easier, and will let you top people off faster (allowing for more time out of the five second rule). One point of haste is equal to about 75% of what 1 spellpower is worth.
For disc priests, having haste allows you toss out more healing spells between PW:S and Penance cooldowns, thus making it more core to your healing ability. You may need it to be able to fire off a large heal, or extra stabilization spells, when necessitated, and still keep Penance and PW:S going frequently. For disc priests, I value haste higher (80% of spellpower).
Crit
Crit rating will increase the chance that certain spells will deal 1.5 times their regular healing. It will also increase our mana savings through Improved Holy Concentration, Divine Aegis, Rapture, as well as chance happenings of larger heals that don’t overheal much, and procs of Serendipity that would not occur naturally.
At level 80, 167 intellect is equal to a 1% bonus chance to crit and 45.91 crit rating equals 1% bonus crit as well.
Base crit rating weight: 0.0480 (prior weight, adjusted for crit rating change at level 80)
Talents have modifiers that increase the value of crit:
-
Rapture and Divine Aegis (disc): 0.0317
Critical spells cause the Divine Aegis effect on the target, which grants a direct mana return from Rapture every time this happens. As a disc priest, if you are casting about 25 spells that can crit a minute (Penance has two ticks, remember). An increase in crit by 1% would give you about 0.2 more procs of DA per minute. With max absorption from the shield, I was seeing about 80 mana returned per proc of Divine Aegis (in T7 gear). That works out to be a benefit of 1.3 mp5 per 1% crit, or 0.0317 weight per crit rating.
-
IHC (holy): 0.0486
Improved Holy Concentration gives you a 45% chance of entering clearcasting (mana free spell) upon having a critical hit. Every 1% crit you gain will give you an extra 0.45% chance of clearcasting on healing spells that have a chance of proccing IHC (Flash Heal, Binding Heal, Greater Heal). Assuming a low cast frequency of those spells (36 over the course of a encounter), we would see about 0.13 extra clearcasting procs over the fight. Greater Heal is the highest mana cost spell to be usable by clearcasting. Assuming that, we gain an equivalent of 2.23 mp5 for the fight per 1% crit gained. Additional benefits can be gained from cheating the FSR with IHC, but that is difficult to model, and not always an option, hence not taken into consideration.
-
Serendipity (holy): 0.0031
Serendipity will return a 25% of a Flash Heal or Greater Heal’s mana cost if it overheals. Damage is a little more predictable in WotLK, so we estimate that only about 25% of heals will not overheal. Each 1% crit gained will increase the chance that the spell crits and mana is returned. As before, assume a low cast frequency of Flash Heal and Greater Heal (33 over the encounter). This would save the equivalent of 0.14 mp5 over the fight.
Total disc crit weight: 0.0797
Total holy crit weight: 0.0997
Intellect, since it grants crit, also increases in stat weight value due to these weights. For its benefit to crit, Intellect gains 0.0219 for disc priests and 0.0274 for holy priests. Modifiers to intellect (such as Blessing of Kings and Mental Strength) increase this weight.
Situational Stats
Stamina, spell resistances, hit, and other situational stats are not taken into account, as they are fight-dependent and something you do not often have to gear for. See previous assumption about knowing when to switch your gear.
Gear Priorities
Gearing up, you have a number of priorities in order to reach your goals.
Priority #1: Enough spellpower to heal through burst damage and enough mana-related stats to not go out of mana.
The first priority is a bit of a tie, as neither spellpower or mana-regen is more important than the other. In terms of balancing spellpower and mana, I use the general rule of thumb: at lower levels of gear (level 70 raiding gear), I am looking for about a 4:1 spellpower to IFSR mana regen. At higher levels of gear (level 80 raiding gear), I aim to stack spellpower a bit more, and aim for more of a 5:1 ratio.
Priority #2: Get crit! Goal: 20% unbuffed.
This priority works to augment your priorities in #1. It increases how much you heal by and your mana return from large heals (through talents like Serendipity). The 20% seems to be a bit of a magic number. At that point, raid buffed, you should go up to about 25% crit which is where certain talents (such as IHC) start to see competitive returns for their talent point investment. Crit is something you continue to benefit from the more you stack it.
Priority #3: Grab some haste.
It doesn’t hurt to start picking up haste while reaching your other priorities, but I wouldn’t go too much out of your way for it. Starting out, aim for about 5%-10%. When you feel comfortable in your previous two goals, try to get somewhere in the 10%-20% range. I am giving broad ranges for this as haste is a matter of taste to many people. Players who continuously cast-cancel heals may see less benefit from it than players who spam heal certain spells (like CoH) through burst damage. Try some haste on and see how it feels.
Setting Goals
Let’s quickly lay out what we are aiming for to start content (unbuffed):
-
T4 Content
- Spellpower: 635
- IFSR MP5: 140
- Spirit: 340
- Int: 320
- Crit: 11%
- Haste: 0%
-
T5 Content
- Spellpower: 910
- IFSR MP5: 185
- Spirit: 360
- Int: 350
- Crit: 12%
- Haste: 2%
-
T6 Content
- Spellpower: 1120
- IFSR MP5: 225
- Spirit: 400
- Int: 400
- Crit: 14%
- Haste: 4%
-
T7 Content
- Spellpower: 1500
- IFSR MP5: 300
- Spirit: 850
- Int: 850
- Crit: 15%
- Haste: 6%
-
T8 Content
- Spellpower: 2200
- IFSR MP5: 450
- Spirit: 1100
- Int: 1100
- Crit: 20%
- Haste: 8%
Standard disclaimer: These are general goals. If you are short in one area, but exceed in all others, you’re likely in fine shape to tackle the content. Skilled healers (and raids) can get by with a lot less.
T4-T6 content is listed for purposes of aiding the transition from TBC to WotLK. Understanding where you are coming from to where you are headed can be important for some people.
Putting it All Together
At this point, in order to get some stat weights, we need to create some test cases.
In both cases, the priest is assumed to not be human, and to have the talent Meditation.
Deep Holy Priest (Test Case)
(w/Spiritual Healing, Spiritual Guidance, IHC, Serendipity, Test of Faith, Empowered Healing, Circle of Healing)
- Use “T7 Content” goals for stats
- 80% in FSR
- 75% heals proc Serendipity
- 25% of heals proc Test of Faith
- 85% of time w/Replenishment
Deep Disc Priest (Test Case)
(w/Mental Agility, Mental Strength, Rapture, Borrowed Time, Divine Aegis, Penance)
- Use “T7 Content” goals for stats
- 78% in FSR
- Heals give 75% of Rapture returns
- 85% of time w/Replenishment
T7 content level goals are assumed for weighing stats as that is the goal (with slightly higher int and spirit, 1k each). Ending T7 content, your IFSR mana regen from spirit and intellect will be slightly higher (a few hundredths of a stat weight each, if even).
Using the various stat weight models, test cases, and assumptions listed above, we have for following values for stat weights:
EDIT: These weights updated on 12/02/08
Holy Priest
Crit 0.1497
Haste 0.4000
Int (crit) 0.0361
Int (mana) 0.2295
Int (regen) 0.2133
Int (replen) 0.1753
Int (sf) 0.0825
Spellpower 0.6000
Spirit (regen) 0.3879
Spirit (spellpower) 0.1500
Disc Priest
Crit 0.1197
Haste 0.4200
Int (crit) 0.0301
Int (mana) 0.2635
Int (regen) 0.2530
Int (replen) 0.2016
Int (sf) 0.0949
Spellpower 0.6000
Spirit (regen) 0.4002
And in summary:
Deep Holy Priest Stat Weights:
- Spellpower: 0.60
- Spirit: 0.54
- Intellect: 0.74
- Crit: 0.15
- Haste: 0.40
- MP5: 1.00
Deep Disc Priest Stat Weights:
- Spellpower: 0.60
- Spirit: 0.40
- Intellect: 0.84
- Crit: 0.13
- Haste: 0.42
- MP5: 1.00
This gives you a starting point. Tweak these stats to your own personal situation (example: human priests get 3% better benefit from spirit, not having Imp. Blessing of Kings decreases intellect’s weight by 10%, etc.).
Final Thoughts
This is my first real look at healing stats in WotLK. This model and its resulting stat weights will likely change as gear gets better, raid compositions evolve, encounters/strategies change, and more theorycrafting. I’ll give this all a good second pass once Wrath is actually released.
I’ll have gear lists based on these stats up shortly (next day or two). They will include WotLK gear, and all gear released prior. (in the meantime, here is a LootRank list for holy priests, and here is one for disc priests).
Just read only the conclusion and I will start now by reading the whole piece, I just want to say up front: wow, just … wow! :-)
Thank you very much for breaking this down. I’ve hardly played my priest since the beginning of BC so it’s good to have some new numbers to use in helping out other players.
[...] Dwarf Priest has a very detailed writeup on Weighing Priest Healing Stats for Wrath. I’ve pulled out some bottom line numbers but the whole thing is worth a read (also [...]
Awesome work :)
Will quote you on our guild forum asap :)
I am trying to redo your numbers to better understand them. But i get confused when you (and most other sources) say 1 int equals 15 Mana. The numbers on my charcter (and old armoury report) seem to indicate that its more like 1 int = 14.46 Mana.
My current manapool is 10125 and Int according to tooltip 519 (145 + 374) adding 7505 mana.
Base mana of 2620 and 7505 do add up to 10125. But 519 Int should give me 7785 mana?
No debuffs, can’t figure out what’s wrong?
Cheers for the post btw! Been looking out for it.
I was wondering the following (read the whole piece now). I consider my priest having T6 content or equal gear (check my site). And most of my stats are close to what you estimate for T6:
T6 Content
Spellpower: 1120
OOFSR MP5: 285
Spirit: 460
Int: 450
Crit: 19%
Haste: 6%
My char
Spellpower: 1224 (+)
OOFSR MP5: 521 (++)
Spirit: 424 (-)
Int: 508 (+)
Crit: 12.77% (-)
Haste: 4.25% (-)
The big difference is that you estimate a lot less OOFSR and a fair bit more Spirit than my priest has. I know it’s just a guideline, that’s not my point. But the stats are a bit contradicting. According to your list, I should have a lot more spirit and a lot less regen, so I was wondering if I missed something in your piece or you made an error in your numbers somewhere, as it’s not very hard to achieven 500+ OOFSR with T6 gear. I got 77 raw mp5 and more Int ofc, but I don’t know if that makes up for the big difference :-)
Small thing, but priority #1 when gearing is probably:
Enough spellpower to heal through burst damage and enough mana-related stats to NOT go out of mana.
@Shiz
You forgot the first 20 points of int only add one mana each.
With 519 int that means
The first 20 int gives 20 mana (1 mana an int)
The next 499 (519-20) int gives 7485 (499*15) mana (15 mana an int)
The ending result is 7505 mana.
I believe this was done for low level chars. If a mana class with 20 int had 300(20*15) + base, they would have double the amount of mana at level 1.
Haha, theres the increase in haste value I was expecting, but wow its even higher then I’d ever think to weigh it!
Also the intellect break down is very appreciated. I didn’t want to do all that math myself and your analysis brings it all together nicely. I knew it was better then spirit since 3.0 but I had no idea it was -that- much better.
Your crit rating is still too low for my liking, but I assume that .10 value is taken into account after you hit the 20% mark. The model for wotlk gear seems to be about making priests choose between crit or haste in the T7 level. Your numbers certainly pulls towards the haste area but I’ll be going along the crit route. I’ve hit 40% buffed crit in sunwell and when you reach values that high getting chain-procs of IHC becomes a strong reality, not to mention the free flashes from Surge of Light. I’ll be carrying that experiment into Naxx with me to see if its as viable as I think.
~Perceived of Rage
I love you
@ Perceived of Rage – I felt a little weird about crit, too. My deepest gut feeling on it is that is should be at least 3x what I worked it out to be. I’m thinking that I may want to reexamine my base crit value. On the other hand, a lot of our crit will be coming from intellect, making it a lot better to stack than crit as due to its lovely mana properties. Haste you can’t get anywhere else…. It’s something I’ll have to put more thought into.
This is fabulous! thank you so much. ummm, i don’t suppose you’d do something similar for shadow?
I seem to spend half my time as shadow and half holy now, swapping depending on the mix of guildies on at the time.
I’m not going to do shadow. The fine folks at shadowpriest.com are all over it. They have a great post with stat weights and the best raiding gear available (in WotLK). It’s awesome.
From their post, they recommend the following stat weights:
* 1 spellpower = 1.00
* 1 crit rating = 0.61
* 1 haste = 0.63
* 1 spirit = 0.21
* 1 int = 0.19
* 1 hit = 1.14 (when not capped)
[...] interesting thing I want to mention, as I’ve seen some discussion on it, is the use of PW:S. General consensus seems to be that PW:S figures heavily in Disciple [...]
This is awesome
Thanks a lot, MK, this is a wonderful guide!
And here are Pawn (downloads/wow-addons/details/pawn/download/296730.aspx) scales for each test case:
⢠(Pawn: v1: “Holy”: SpellPower=0.60, Intellect=0.74, Spirit=0.54, CritRating=0.10, HasteRating=0.45, MP5=1.00)
⢠(Pawn: v1: “Disc”: SpellPower=0.60, Intellect=0.84, Spirit=0.40, CritRating=0.08, HasteRating=0.48, MP5=1.00)
[...] should all have at least a cursory understanding of how our gear choices affect us. Go read it! Weighing Priest Healing Stats by A Dwarf Priest. I’m hoping she writes on for Shadow Priests… hint, [...]
I’m a choirboy: this is a rocking great post.
One thing to add. I’m deep disc, penance pve, and have been toying with crit-stacking since the patch, currently hovering around 25% unbuffed. Crit benefits disc priests most profoundly via Divine Aegis, as you mentioned, but not just in how DA procs Rapture. DA also acts as a crit-heal bonus factor, similar to Ruin or Shadow Power. I.e., DA brings our crit-heal bonus from 50% to 95%. So the power of DA is not only in terms of the regen, but in the form of additional (quasi) spell power.
(The bonus is in the form of the 30% additional mitigation of course. So a 1000-hp heal crits for 1500, then creates a 30% bubble for an additional 450, grand total of 1950 healing+mitigation.)
And to drive the point to the ground, DA procs are even better than a straight 100% crit heal bonus, because the overhealing is deferred. A GH with a 100% crit bonus will often be wasted from overhealing. But a DA proc, because the healing is in the form of mitigation, is additional healing waiting to happen. Of course it might go unused (like a PoM tick), which then behaves just like an overheal, but you have more of a chance to make use of the additional healing because of the 12-second grace period.
Love this; I’ve been looking for solid theorycrafting like this for a while.
Also just a note, in addition to lootrank (great tool, by the way), wowhead also has a beta stat weights search which you can use slot-by-slot, for example here are your holy weights plugged into wowhead’s beta tool for wotlk gear. You can quickly find what your next upgrade will be in wotlk!
http://www.wowhead.com/?items&filter=sl=9;ub=5;wt=61:23:51:24:102:49;wtv=1:0.74:0.6:0.54:0.45:0.1
Great work, thank you!
Quick comment, I think in the setting goals section, you meant OOFSR to be IFSR yeah? Those numbers are too low for outside but would be right for inside.
Just curious, where did the 0.45 value for haste come from in the holy stat weights? It’s not listed in your breakdown of the stats, but shows up at the end. I ask because it feels like it’s disproportionately high compared to crit given the benefits each stat gives.
I’m just starting on T4 (as Disc).
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Nagrand&n=Turkelife
Here are my unbuffed stats:
Current – Spellpower: 564, IFSR MP5: 154, Spirit: 365, Int: 540, Crit: 11%, Haste: 1%
Your sugeested targets T4 – Spellpower: 635, IFSR MP5: 200, Spirit: 340, Int: 320, Crit: 11%, Haste: 0%
I mainly gear for Spirit and SP. I post this because of the difference in Int. I wonder if i’m a gearing freak Int wise or if your numebrs are a tad low for Disc priests?
[...] Stat Targets Just a short(ish) post to highlight an interesting post over at DwarfPriest.com. She has a great post about the relative value of various stats to healing priests, even if I [...]
“When you have the Replenishment buff, you gain 2.5% of your max mana back every second”
It’s 0.25% actually so ~10x less than the numbers you used.
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=57669
Spirit for holy seems off.
You list
Spirit (regen) 0.3879
Spirit (spellpower) 0.5400
but then give the total as
Spirit: 0.54
I assume it should be
Spirit: 0.93
Nice catch, but it looks like a typo in Spirit (spellpower).
4 spirit = 1 spellpower.
1 spellpower = 0.6 weight.
1 spirit (spellpower) = 0.15 weight
So 0.3879 + 0.15 = 0.54
[...] The Dwarf Priest wrote an entry on WoTLK healing stats. It addresses both Discipline and Holy routes and breaks down the effective value of the different spell stats for each spec. He also goes as far as providing some final weighting numbers that in my opinion are pretty solid. I wanted to get some input from other raiding Holy/Disc priests to see if they agree/disagree (and why if so). Weighing Priest Healing Stats A Dwarf Priest [...]
Excellent break-down, nice work.
In the spirit of keeping things simple, what wieght would you give to stamina?
Or do we vanquish Stamina all together via assumptions #1, #2, and #4?
I think If I was using your numbers over at lootrank I’d give stamina .1 per point.
Best read of the day as always… thanks for the wonderful posts!
Also, I think there’s a typo in the T7 Content… “Crit: 5%” — I think you mean for this to be 15%.
Keep up the excellent work!
[...] priests on this forum, to see if they agree/disagree with it (and why, if it applies). Link: Weighing Priest Healing Stats A Dwarf Priest I’m also curious about this. I’ve been tentatively using her weights as guidelines for Holy gear [...]
Replenishment – When you have the Replenishment buff (from a shadow priest, ret paladin, or survival hunter), you gain 2.5% of your max mana back every second. Increasing the intellect on your gear increases the effects of replenishment. This will be a very common buff in raids.
as you probaly already know it’s 0.25%. otherwise it would be near imposible to ever go oom.
My stats, are they any good??
I am Level 80, have had little gears from no more than Kara…due to the fact I had a baby and didnt run raids.
Current – Spellpower:1455, MP:599/IFSR MP5:179, Spirit:789, Int:753, Crit:5.91%, Haste:2.5%
This is unbuffed, without Inner Fire which will bump up SP to 1629.
Please advise me of what area I may be lacking as we are aiming to do Nax soonish.
Thank U
Can you fix the lootrank link to match your updated stats, it looks like it’s using different values for crit and haste.
How can the IFSR MP5 goal for T7 be 450? I’m T7 and heroics geared, and not even close to that (around 300). I got 900+ int and spirit, 6% haste and working on my crit (14% atm). Sure, there are room for improvements, but getting 150 more mp5? That’s a lot.
I agree with “A” above me here.
Im currently heroic geared and the I5SR is nowhere near, but the O5SR looks to be right.
Can you clear up for us? :)
PS: Thanks for a great writeup!
[...] lootrank) for the various priest talent builds? I personnaly use the weighting from Dwarfpriest: Weighing Priest Healing Stats A Dwarf Priest The author say that he lastly updated it 02.12.2008. Anyway, from my disc point of view, I think [...]
Are your goal numbers for starting T7 content even remotely achieveable?
I’m mostly in high-70′s blues, but with 2 Naxx epics already. The gear level you’d expect to be at to start T7 content (and I’ve done fine in Naxx with this gear).
But my spellpower is 1285 (you recommend 2100!), IFSR MP5 is 202 (you recommend 450!), spirit is 621 (you recommend 950!), intellect is 912 (finally one close your recommendation of 950), crit is 12.97% (you recommend 18%), and haste is 4.51% (you recommend 6%).
Must agree with the above poster, those goals are impractical and unnecessary for Naxx.
Many of the fights in Naxx, while still heal dependent, are based on the raids ability to communicate and interact rather than simple statistics. Naxx is, of course, an entry level raid.
If my recollection serves me well, those ‘starting goals’ are approximately what my stats were at while raid buffed in my first Naxx run.
I’m working on retweaking it.
if you have any time to add Surge of light to your post calculation, it will help alot as this is a very mandatory talant for any holy priest.
By the way it proccs from anything that can crit… even your PoM and CoH.
also, haste looks too high in my taste too, crit is far better then haste the longer the fight is, and in a 6 min fight, it should effect more then haste.
i’m having a hard time understanding why you value the mp5 so highly.
I run with 1-2 ret pallys, 1 shammy and at least one druid.
I dont’ much spam COH, except when the melee dps is not getting out of the aoe’s.
I am finding intel/crit much more valuable. I’m returning mana, getting free casts, and proccing free insta flash heals off of the crits.
yet not having mana issues… unless the dps sucks.
anyone else experiencing the same, or have some feedback?
for me its crit is king. I don’t know how that will work in progression fights, as i’m only doing heroic naxx and poking my nose in Eye. aka maylgos. but somehow still looking at haste and crit and intellect my regen is more than suitable thus far, and guildies are similarly geared or less geared.
Some thoughts on weighting for priest builds;
- Shadow priest, hands down, HIT is the biggest stat until the cap, and then spell power. I would say Crit > Spi > Int as your follow up stats.
- Holy priest, I have a bit different feeling about the stat values. Priests and Druids are built specifically to get additional benefit from spirit (and even warlocks now, too). My order for stats would probably be Spell power, Int (for mana pool, Spirit (regen/sp bonus) followed by Crit and haste. Most healing pieces are geared toward having additional spirit/haste combinations, whereas the dmg caster gear has hit/crit combos. Not all, but a lot.
-Disc priest. I think this is very similar to the holy priest, with an emphasis on spell power, but i think a focus on crit is really important. I;ve seen on sources like Elitest Jerks discussion about approaching the 20% crit mark to really make some deep Disc talents shine. Using Penance, PW:S and Prayer of Mending as our bread and butter spells for supreme dmg mitigation (throw in Pain Suppression), our crits will create Divine Aegis for 30% the value of the heal. And its stackable! Penance has a chance to crit 3 times and puts on a full stack of grace on the target. So, big spells and frequent crits are really important to preventing dmg, but then Rapture returns up to 2.5% mana based on how big our heals are (and how many talent points). Seeing some test on this a crit of ~10,000 returns 481 mana, almost paying for the cost of the spell (with 5/5 Rapture)!
It’s a ramble, but I love this theory crafting stuff. :) I enjoyed reading your article, even if my experience is a bit different.
Kolm, Divine Aegis is not stackable.
Blizzard have stated that it should stack with PW:S, and will when they fix it, but that it will not ever stack with itself, as that “gets into crazy situations.”
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/27/13393391678-disc-issues-revisited.html
Your valuation of MP5 is way, way, way off base for Disc. In fact, most of your numbers for Disc are screwed up.
I don’t know where you came up with these values but they are very misleading and simply wrong.
Cal, the reasons for the numbers are clearly explained. You’re a TLDR monkey that belongs on wow forums.
@Cal – Your comment might be more helpful if you would include some facts/theorycrafting of your own to back up your statements. I’m not disc and I’m not a theorycrafter (I usually let MK do all of the work for me!), so I can’t say whether you’re correct or not, but it doesn’t further the discussion or help anyone else out unless you state what you think is wrong about MK’s numbers and what you think they should be. I’m sure many of us would be happy to consider your take on the numbers as food for thought if you’d lay it out for us.
I am currently raiding Naxx 10 mans with well geared tanks, and mostly 1500-2300 dps dpsers. I have 3 pieces of t7 and mostly badge and naxx epic drops. In some fights even with wisdom and a shammy I find my mana running low, and on occaion have ended up healing on mp5. I am gemmed according to the intended color gem for the socket, IE: red slot= spell power, blue= spirit ect, however I am currently in the process of replacing all my gems with spirit. Ive found that with the ammount of aoe damage taken by the raid, and the length of many of the fights, esspecially while your guild is still learning and gearing that the regen is a must. Much more important than spell power when it comes to 10 man naxx, and malygos. Obsidian sanctum, and the wintergrasp raid not so much, take your spell power gear to replace pieces as you see fit as the fights are shorter and much less of a drain.
Great reading, I think the weightings are very well thought and I’m almost at 100% agreed with them. But… haha! there’s always a flaw, you append to Intellect some weight for it’s enhancement to spirit regen. I think that is correct, but I too think that must go both ways, intellect enhances spirit regen, but more spirit gets a better enhancement as your spirit increases thanks to intellect (and intelect regen gets to large diminishing returns too soon). So the 0.25 (or a part of it) value to intelect thanks to the regen it adds, must be given too to spirit; and also enhanced spirit regen because of intelect is affected by DR on the intellect counterpart, so stacking intellect would lower the spirit regen benefits on intellect.
Yeah… I’m a spirit lover :P
Cal, or anyone has doubt for mana regen differences between Holy and Disc spec, you can go read Regeneration section on Elitisjerks (/f77/t35208-wotlk_healing_compendium_v3_0_theorycraft_specs_etc/). It has very detailed explanation with example, which is very helpful.
MK, can you link to the place where you start this math?
“Using my prior model and converting +heal to spellpower, we would weigh spellpower at 0.49.”
I’m interested in reworking this from the beginning, and the assumptions on spellpower play a key role. It’d be easy, of course, to just futz with the numbers – but I’d like to do this right.
If you really do spend a handful of seconds outside of the five second rule a couple of times per boss fight, – and are raiding 10 man with varying replenishment uptimes raid to raid – deep holy numbers should be closer to this:
int 0.99
crit 0.37
haste 0.70
spirit 1.20
mp5 2.93
power 0.84
stamina 0.15
I like to include a token weight for stam at loot rank.
[...] would be superior, but check out the LootRanks. Dwarf Priest’s is based straight off her excellent post. Mine is a slight modification of hers with less weight given to Haste, more to Crit and a [...]
[...] like Sarth 3D and Malygos. The stat weights I use are from dwarfpriest.com. She has a lengthy post HERE about them. This leads to this gear list Discpline Gear List. IED v. Other Metas: This is a tough [...]
[...] stat weighting is heavily based on DwarfPriests excellent work. I have tinkered with some bits of her weightings though. Her values (at time of posting) [...]
[...] Changes & Blue Posts – Compilation of changes with blue posts Weighing Priest Healing Stats – Dwarf Priest’s take on healing stats (pre 3.1 nerf) Priest Regen for Dummies, without [...]
Has anyone looked into the 3.1.0 changes? We’re losing 40% OOFSR mana regen but retain the IFSR mana regen completely, which in my opinion was done to (1) make replenishment more needed to bring in those classes, and (2) halt mana regen for priests/druids that generously used OOFSR mana regen.
It seems to me that int/spi has become even more important since IFRS mana regen needs to be maintained even more – if you previously spent regaining most your mana not casting you’ll find yourself getting 40% less mana, and so it’s a lot more interesting now to just keep casting mana-efficient spells and ignore the IFSR…
I’d love to see a remake of above theory and numbers.
Another concern is that overhealing no longer returns mana, and HC instead grants mana through a spirit increase. This definately upsets the numbers above significantly and voids the current lootrank numbers IMHO.
dying for a good recap ;)
[...] happened with 3.1 and snowballed into this wall of text. It ended up being a complete reworking of DwarfPriest’s excellent post from pre-3.0.2 regarding gear stat weightings. These posts also contain some [...]
[...] any evidence for this or any other ratio between HEP and MEP. DwarfPriest alludes to having previously calculated this somehow (see Spellpower vs Mana section), but I am unable to discover how she did [...]
[...] the works) The current list for Discipline Priest Gear uses some outdated stat weights from Dwarfpriest.com. I’ve been looking for an updated stat weight and come across two seperate [...]
[...] if you will. A (slightly outdated) overview of the math used to come up with this list can be found in this post. If you have a vastly different playstyle, raid composition, talent selection, gear, etc., your [...]
is there any in LAMENS terms on what i should stat on my priest im not a mathmatician i just want to play my chara and have it play good. SO thats said..what are the caps i should look for in my stats so he can raid as holy and as disc