06-02-2008, 09:27 PM
Note skip to the last 2 paragraphs if you want my numbers and not my other musings
As I play around with various builds I've not yet healed with a build that wasn't at least 20 deep in holy (I'm currently a build like that but I haven't done any real healing with it) so I've done most of my healing having most of the highest value holy talents.
You are going to run into a couple of issues that paladins with points in holy don't generally worry about. The first is stutter while casting. There is enough AoE damage or random targeted damage in the situations that you look to be healing in that it could matter. Oddly enough when you are dealing with stutter it's probably when your extra healing will help the most for the other healers. :)
No illumination really starts to devalue intellect and spell crit. While int gives your more mana and thus a little more longevity as any spec when you have illumination it directly translate to +MP/5 and then if you get deeper in the tree it becomes +healing too. It's a very nice stat for holy pallies. For you, like you seem to be saying not so much. But as Conc says you should probably get the +12 int / chance on mana when you cast. Keep in mind that when you auto refresh a seal as a paladin just from swinging at a mob that this counts as a cast. So you can get 300 mana just from swinging at a mob that you previously judged. Good deal in my book and since cleansing doesn't reset your swing timer if you are helping out with debuff curing this is even nicer as not only are you spamming a spell every GCD you are also getting extra casts as you whack at the mob that you judged something on.
Oh and yes as a prot pally that is helping with healing you really should be trying to be somewhere where you are keeping some sort of judgement on the mob while throwing spot heals. Nightbane for example in Kara. If for some reason you are on a run with a prot warrior or another prot pally (I know we try not to take to actual tank specs into Kara anymore because there is no point) and you aren't tanking Nightbane, you should be up with the melee keeping judgement of wisdom on him if you are the only pally there or judgement of the crusader if it's another pally tank and they are keeping up wisdom, or whatever. Besides the 150 - 200 DPS that auto attack + seal of righteousness gives is better than not adding any or just the 60 or so of autoattack and running seal of wisdom and if you take extra damage, oh well, heal yourself and it's not really costing the raid anything.
Since you probably aren't being counted on for heals anyway keeping the judgement up can be way more helpful. Even on something like Maiden where too many people get way too nervous about her little chain effect than I think they should, get in there and whack at her and keep judgement of light of up, the healing that gives the melee is pretty significant and it will mean you are always woken up after a repent just in case the other healers don't dance it right. Better that you move out and heal the tank if all the other healers missed the dance than an enh shaman who can do real DPS. Besides you can still generally cleanse even with the silence affect, at least I know I managed it on Girly a couple of times.
Anyway that isn't gear. I agree that MP/5 isn't the biggest need. Your job more often than not is probably to hit your crappy little flash of light (and it's crappy as prot, it's not even that great as holy with over 1500 +heal I got used to my 1.5s cast doing over 2K healing from my shaman, not 1300 or so....) to help stabilize the most injured targets until one of the heal spec folks can get a heal on them. You are basically acting like a HoT that is moving to the most critical target. The other job you might have is to blow your mana with holy light for 20-30s to let a heal spec just sit and regen. Even a shaman will likely pick up 100 - 200 MP/5 while not casting and it can be nice. After you are pretty much OOM for letting them regen you can go whack away with judged wisdom and running wisdom and get some mana back to throw spot heals.
If you actually plan to heal a heroic as prot spec and not take your priest (you really want the rep or there is a drop or something) then yeah you will need MP/5. The pally healing game is quite different for me than the shaman or priest game.
A holy pally can do AMAZING throughput on a single target (2s cast heals that smack for 5K healing without a crit when I'm only at 1500 +heal is very good but it will also suck me dry really fast). A holy pally also has AMAZING efficiency on a single target but it's very poor throughput. I get like 13 HP / mana on flash of light, but it's only like 1K HP/s. Holy Light off the top of my head is like 6 HP / mana but I can get like 3300 HP/s. I'm not holy spec right now so I can't look at what Dr. Damage shows for that, but it seemed to be something like that (and the mod factors in crits and meta gem procs and such). As prot those drop to like 850 HP/s at 7 HP/mana for flash and 1500 HP/s at 4.5 for holy light (remember holy pallies get 2s holy light vs 2.5 after that first cast and I will over 'prime' that buff with a downranked HL early on).
You will not have either of the pally strengths. And I know as a shaman healer, the efficiency of my heals aren't hugely different so I choose the heal based on how much damage I need to heal and how many people may need to be healed and how much time I have, even when I'm enh spec and healing my choices pretty much are the same. As resto if Krash was in gear like Girly has, LHW is around 1400 HP/s and 5 HP/mana. Healing Wave is about 1700 (2000 with healing way stacked) and 6.2 (7.5 with way stacked). Chain (if it hits all the targets) is about 2K and 9.5. Chain still tends to be as mana efficient as HW if you only hit 1 target (and way isn't stacked) but the HP/s drops off a good bit. But the variance on HP/s and MP/HP is a lot smaller for a shaman than for a pally. The same holds true for priests as well. Oh when I'm enh spec the numbers for LHW and HW don't really change much (since I still tend to get improved healing wave talent for more cast speed as enh and I still tend to get the 5% cheaper heals too since I like the 3% hit talent and I don't really care much about cheaper totems, armor from a crit heal or better self rez). Chain Heal loses like 30% of it's +healing so it takes a noticable hit, and actually just ends up being even closer to the others.
So unlike an enh shaman in resto gear (where you have about as much AP as int so you end up with just about the same +healing as if you were resto) and where you don't really change your regen that much and where you don't really change the ratios of HP/s and HP/MP that much a pally really does. If you are going to be doing a real healing job and not just healing because it's better than trying to DPS then you want MP/5 and +healing and who cares about anything else.
It's doubtful you'll have the throughput or longevity to do any serious healing since your longevity gets pretty much cut in half compared to a holy pally and you lose about 40% of your throughput. You'll make up both of those faster via +heal and +MP/5 than you will from anything else. +heal helps the MP/HP and may let you /stopcasting heals a bit more which makes the mana pool go a few more seconds (it's not like a priest where it also gives you more chance at huge regen ticks). You get enough MP/5 and you can keep throwing those little smooth the bump heals out.
I actually think that something like 10 heal = 15 Haste = 4 mp5 = 25 crit = 30 sta = 25 int might be a better way to go. Int is still better than stam. You only really need enough stam to get to an acceptable level and since you will have the prot talents you need even less than a holy pally might. More int = more base time till OOM and a bit more throughput. Same with crit.
Again I agree with Conc on gemming. And while I do like MP/5 more than you, as prot you are generally a bit safer going in and whacking since your job will likely not have you spam healing as much, so extend the mana pool with seal of wisdom/judgement of wisdom.
As I play around with various builds I've not yet healed with a build that wasn't at least 20 deep in holy (I'm currently a build like that but I haven't done any real healing with it) so I've done most of my healing having most of the highest value holy talents.
You are going to run into a couple of issues that paladins with points in holy don't generally worry about. The first is stutter while casting. There is enough AoE damage or random targeted damage in the situations that you look to be healing in that it could matter. Oddly enough when you are dealing with stutter it's probably when your extra healing will help the most for the other healers. :)
No illumination really starts to devalue intellect and spell crit. While int gives your more mana and thus a little more longevity as any spec when you have illumination it directly translate to +MP/5 and then if you get deeper in the tree it becomes +healing too. It's a very nice stat for holy pallies. For you, like you seem to be saying not so much. But as Conc says you should probably get the +12 int / chance on mana when you cast. Keep in mind that when you auto refresh a seal as a paladin just from swinging at a mob that this counts as a cast. So you can get 300 mana just from swinging at a mob that you previously judged. Good deal in my book and since cleansing doesn't reset your swing timer if you are helping out with debuff curing this is even nicer as not only are you spamming a spell every GCD you are also getting extra casts as you whack at the mob that you judged something on.
Oh and yes as a prot pally that is helping with healing you really should be trying to be somewhere where you are keeping some sort of judgement on the mob while throwing spot heals. Nightbane for example in Kara. If for some reason you are on a run with a prot warrior or another prot pally (I know we try not to take to actual tank specs into Kara anymore because there is no point) and you aren't tanking Nightbane, you should be up with the melee keeping judgement of wisdom on him if you are the only pally there or judgement of the crusader if it's another pally tank and they are keeping up wisdom, or whatever. Besides the 150 - 200 DPS that auto attack + seal of righteousness gives is better than not adding any or just the 60 or so of autoattack and running seal of wisdom and if you take extra damage, oh well, heal yourself and it's not really costing the raid anything.
Since you probably aren't being counted on for heals anyway keeping the judgement up can be way more helpful. Even on something like Maiden where too many people get way too nervous about her little chain effect than I think they should, get in there and whack at her and keep judgement of light of up, the healing that gives the melee is pretty significant and it will mean you are always woken up after a repent just in case the other healers don't dance it right. Better that you move out and heal the tank if all the other healers missed the dance than an enh shaman who can do real DPS. Besides you can still generally cleanse even with the silence affect, at least I know I managed it on Girly a couple of times.
Anyway that isn't gear. I agree that MP/5 isn't the biggest need. Your job more often than not is probably to hit your crappy little flash of light (and it's crappy as prot, it's not even that great as holy with over 1500 +heal I got used to my 1.5s cast doing over 2K healing from my shaman, not 1300 or so....) to help stabilize the most injured targets until one of the heal spec folks can get a heal on them. You are basically acting like a HoT that is moving to the most critical target. The other job you might have is to blow your mana with holy light for 20-30s to let a heal spec just sit and regen. Even a shaman will likely pick up 100 - 200 MP/5 while not casting and it can be nice. After you are pretty much OOM for letting them regen you can go whack away with judged wisdom and running wisdom and get some mana back to throw spot heals.
If you actually plan to heal a heroic as prot spec and not take your priest (you really want the rep or there is a drop or something) then yeah you will need MP/5. The pally healing game is quite different for me than the shaman or priest game.
A holy pally can do AMAZING throughput on a single target (2s cast heals that smack for 5K healing without a crit when I'm only at 1500 +heal is very good but it will also suck me dry really fast). A holy pally also has AMAZING efficiency on a single target but it's very poor throughput. I get like 13 HP / mana on flash of light, but it's only like 1K HP/s. Holy Light off the top of my head is like 6 HP / mana but I can get like 3300 HP/s. I'm not holy spec right now so I can't look at what Dr. Damage shows for that, but it seemed to be something like that (and the mod factors in crits and meta gem procs and such). As prot those drop to like 850 HP/s at 7 HP/mana for flash and 1500 HP/s at 4.5 for holy light (remember holy pallies get 2s holy light vs 2.5 after that first cast and I will over 'prime' that buff with a downranked HL early on).
You will not have either of the pally strengths. And I know as a shaman healer, the efficiency of my heals aren't hugely different so I choose the heal based on how much damage I need to heal and how many people may need to be healed and how much time I have, even when I'm enh spec and healing my choices pretty much are the same. As resto if Krash was in gear like Girly has, LHW is around 1400 HP/s and 5 HP/mana. Healing Wave is about 1700 (2000 with healing way stacked) and 6.2 (7.5 with way stacked). Chain (if it hits all the targets) is about 2K and 9.5. Chain still tends to be as mana efficient as HW if you only hit 1 target (and way isn't stacked) but the HP/s drops off a good bit. But the variance on HP/s and MP/HP is a lot smaller for a shaman than for a pally. The same holds true for priests as well. Oh when I'm enh spec the numbers for LHW and HW don't really change much (since I still tend to get improved healing wave talent for more cast speed as enh and I still tend to get the 5% cheaper heals too since I like the 3% hit talent and I don't really care much about cheaper totems, armor from a crit heal or better self rez). Chain Heal loses like 30% of it's +healing so it takes a noticable hit, and actually just ends up being even closer to the others.
So unlike an enh shaman in resto gear (where you have about as much AP as int so you end up with just about the same +healing as if you were resto) and where you don't really change your regen that much and where you don't really change the ratios of HP/s and HP/MP that much a pally really does. If you are going to be doing a real healing job and not just healing because it's better than trying to DPS then you want MP/5 and +healing and who cares about anything else.
It's doubtful you'll have the throughput or longevity to do any serious healing since your longevity gets pretty much cut in half compared to a holy pally and you lose about 40% of your throughput. You'll make up both of those faster via +heal and +MP/5 than you will from anything else. +heal helps the MP/HP and may let you /stopcasting heals a bit more which makes the mana pool go a few more seconds (it's not like a priest where it also gives you more chance at huge regen ticks). You get enough MP/5 and you can keep throwing those little smooth the bump heals out.
I actually think that something like 10 heal = 15 Haste = 4 mp5 = 25 crit = 30 sta = 25 int might be a better way to go. Int is still better than stam. You only really need enough stam to get to an acceptable level and since you will have the prot talents you need even less than a holy pally might. More int = more base time till OOM and a bit more throughput. Same with crit.
Again I agree with Conc on gemming. And while I do like MP/5 more than you, as prot you are generally a bit safer going in and whacking since your job will likely not have you spam healing as much, so extend the mana pool with seal of wisdom/judgement of wisdom.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.