06-03-2008, 08:43 PM
Quote:I'm not sure I agree that mp5 needs to be prioritized more, but I'm going to take some time to think about it and let others comment on the subject before I explain my thinking too much. : )
I suppose that I should get off my butt and actually post what is going through my mind. I start with thinking of the fights where I have been best used in a heal role. Maiden, Nightbane (situationally depending on group comp), Eagle boss, Whoever that spine throwing boss in BT is, Leo the blind...thats all that comes to mind right this moment.
Maiden: I'm pretty much useless on this fight. I'm usually told to help dispel and heal so as to minimize the number of people in melee. With my fps I'm rarely fast enough to dispel before somebody else does. I can throw heals to help out some, but typically the fight is so easy that I could just stand and do nothing and things would go mostly the same. Basically we are just too over-geared here for this fight to matter.
Nightbane: Occassionally it is decided that a raid group is a bit light on healing and so I should help out healing on this fight instead of tanking. Generally I also am asked to gather up the skeletons while he flies as well, but I can do that fine in healing gear. The last time I helped heal on this fight I was pretty much able to spam FoL on the tank for the whole fight without running out of mana. This is probably due to how much mana I regain from being healed through the skeleton phase. So the most useful thing here is making my FoL hit for as much as possible. Course it is kara and so it doesn't really matter anyway. Runs are generally just straight stomps of the place anymore unless we are really over-loaded with 2nd or 3rd alts.
Eagle Boss: Typically there are two tanks and two healers in a ZA run. The general feeling for eagle is that it is best to have the other tank tank him and for me to assist on healing. There is enough damage going around in this fight that I can drop FoLs pretty much forever. Last time I did this fight there were some learning issues as well though which meant I had to drop bigger heals more than I would like in order to keep people up. So thus I did find myself running out of mana near the end of the fight. Normally I don't think that should be an issue, but it does point out that it isn't a bad thing to have some extra mp5 tp recover from that.
Leo: The last time I did this fight I recall not having any mana problems at all. There is probably enough damage going around from inner demons or whatever that I get plenty of mana back to FoL forever. Plus we have so much extra healing typically that I end up spending some time not even casting cause nobody needs healed. Its basically a fight where there are periods of healing and then periods of doing nothing. So bigger heals would be the most helpful here for the periods of healing. Its doubtful that it makes much difference either way though.
Spine throwing boss in BT: This is yet another fight where I can pretty much FoL forever and in fact can even throw some big heals in once and a while without running dry. This is basically due to the amount of damage going out in this fight. Everytime he does the whole everybody takes 9k thing I'm going to end up topped off on mana from getting healed. Not to meantion if I happen to get a spine in me which means I get healed even more. So mana is a non-issue in this fight. The biggest benefit for me here is being able to keep people topped off so that we can break the shield as quick as possible. This probably means bigger FoL to keep people full and faster ones to bring them up faster if they are marginal (meaning not needing a big heal).
So looking at the situations where I end up healing it would seem that mana is normally not an issue. Now this is partly due to the kind of healing I am doing. If I sit there and throw big heals then I will go dry. That is pretty pointless though expect for odd emergencies. Pretty much all I do is spam FoL endlessly and dispel where necessary. Now these fights also seem to all have a raid damage component which means that I'm going to be gaining enough mana back to be able to cast FoL forever. So thus all the experience I have had so far seems to say that +heal is the most important thing and mp5 is useful for emergency recovery, but generally not too important. So with all this being said, I'm going to go through the ratings one by one.
10 +heal = 8 haste = 4 mp5 = 30 crit = 20 sta = 30 int
10 +heal: I use this as my baseline stat. So no real thought into it by itself. It is used for comparing to everything else.
8 haste: This one I really don't have much of a feel for. I have pretty much 0 experience with it. I read somewhere that for a dps class +1 haste is better than +1 spell damage. Does this relate to healing? I'm not really sure. I figure faster heals are more thoroughput though. So I ended up deciding to just call it even with +heal. So that would be 10 +heal = 10 haste. Now thinking about my heal experence so far I find myself mentioning emergency moments some. In an emergency I need to be able to dump as much healing as possible in as little time as possible. With having no holy talents, my big heal is really slow and can be stuttered to be even slower. So my thinking is that maybe haste should be valued slightly better than +heal just for those emergency moments where it can help counteract that lack of talents a small bit. Thus why I knocked a few points off of the scale so it became 10 +heal = 8 haste. Is this what it should be? I really don't know. For me this stat is the biggest question mark. Both wimpy and GG said I was over-valuing it. So I'm really wondering if I should rethink this one some. I'm really unsure here.
4 mp5: My experience so far has been that in fights where I need to heal, I can pretty much spam FoL for the whole fight with my current gear. This makes me think that mana regen isn't all that important for the role I play healing. I do believe that a baseline level is required though. So the trick here is what value of mp5 gets me to that baseline. So I ask myself...if I had a choice between 10 heal and 3 mp5 which would I choose? For some reason it helps me to look at bigger numbers so..how about 100 heal vs 30 mp5? Looking at that, I'm drawn towards the 100 heal. How about 100 heal vs 40 mp5? Here I really start to be more torn. So thus it seems to be about the break even point for me. So taking it back to the small numbers that gives us 10 heal = 4 mp5.
30 crit: Crit pretty much does nothing for me other than add a little bit of throughput. Since my heals tend to be smaller, quite often my crits aren't overheals...or at least not as often as happens with big heals. So there is still some use to crit, but it isn't valued anywhere near as much as for a holy paladin. I'm actually tempted to devalue it even more than it currently is. Maybe something like 10 heal = 40 crit. Doing the same exercise as with mp5 is where I end up at the 30 though. If I were given the choice between 10 heal and 40 crit, I'd take the crit every time. Given the choice between 10 heal and 30 crit I start to be more quesitonable. So thus it feels like the value is somewhere around there.
20 stam: I've heard conc rant many a time about how people undervalue stam (especially priests..which I'm guilty of myself on mine hehe) and so this is a bit of a nod towards that. The times when I have felt the most useful healing as prot are the times when the other healers have found themselves dead for some reason and my tiny heals ended up being enough to finish things off. So basically it seems to me an important part of being a healer is actually staying alive. Now GG is right that being prot I do have some built in advantages and so may not need to value stam quite as much as I do. What it really comes down to though is the same question as the previous examples. If I had to choose between 10 heal and 30 stam which would I choose? Probably the 30 stam. If I had to choose between 10 heal and 20 stam which would I choose? Possibly the heal, but I'm not really sure. So thus I feel the value is somewhere around there. Maybe inch it up to 25 instead of 20, but something around there seems right.
30 int: Int tends to be a stat that I often ignore. I'm going to end up with enough of it on items to not really even have to consider it. I also am not sure I really care much about it adding extra casts of a heal. This is because I feel that I'm not going to run dry anyway. I kind of look at my mana as something where as I heal people it drops, but then I also take some damage and so it goes back up. So it kind of fluctuates between 60-80%. Its rarely ever full, but it rarely ever runs out either. Still...it doesn't hurt to have it and while I say that I'm going to end up with it anyway, its probably good to account for it some. So thus I ask the usual question and the place where I seem to be questionable in the choice is 10 heal = 30 int.
So that is the reasoning behind the numbers I've been using. As I said above, haste is the stat that I really have the least clue about. The rest of them I can see going a bit one way or the other, but haste I could see being completely wrong (or completely right).
Also, since the meta gem choice was brought up, I should mention that I've been convinced that Insightful earthstorm is in fact the way to go if you have a helm with a meta in it. While I do devalue mp5, its not to a degree that I can neglect the fact that that gem is insane.