The Five Second Rule

[savaughn]

They didn't have time to adjust the items accordingly.

Why do people feel that having all items be class specific is a good thing? I keep hearing people complain about "item X is a mage item, but warlocks keep rolling on it" or whatever. A priest item is whatever works well on a priest. Period. As far as I'm concerned having to make hard choices is what makes this game fun. If a given leather item is great for a hunter because it has scads of agility (the trade off being the much lower armor) that's a nicely balanced item that works for hunters. It is not a "rogue item". Making an eigth of the items only useful for priests by creating an uber stat they can't live without does not help the game.

[MongoJerry]

Making an eigth of the items only useful for priests by creating an uber stat they can't live without does not help the game.

On the other hand, making it so that all the characters like the same item means that there will only be a few items everyone wants and everything else in the game is "junk." I like having variety so that different people like different items and fewer items are considered junky.

[playingtokrush]

On the other hand, making it so that all the characters like the same item means that there will only be a few items everyone wants and everything else in the game is "junk."  I like having variety so that different people like different items and fewer items are considered junky.

All the more reason to improve spirit for everyone as much as for priests. That way, mages and maybe even some warlocks will at least want to consider getting spirit. Also consider that if priests were the number one reason spirit was nerfed in the first place, why would they buff it more for priests than for other classes?

[MongoJerry]

All the more reason to improve spirit for everyone as much as for priests.  That way, mages and maybe even some warlocks will at least want to consider getting spirit.  Also consider that if priests were the number one reason spirit was nerfed in the first place, why would they buff it more for priests than for other classes?

Priests weren't the reason for the "nerf." The main reason for the change as stated by the developers was that they wanted spirit to be different from intelligence. The way it was before, spirit was numerically about five times less effective than it is now but it would work all through combat. In addition, one could also drink in combat. Effectively, spirit and intelligence were equivolent stats in that they both increased your effective mana pool during a battle. Priests tended to hoard +spirit items, because it was difficult for them to sit down and drink for any length of time and because they needed to have a large effective mana pool when fighting tough bosses. Mages, on the other hand, tended to focus a lot on +int items and then drink in combat, since they could regen mana fast that way, and nobody's going to die if a mage takes a break for a bit.

What the Blizzard developers decided to do was to seperate out int, spirit, and drinking. Int, as always, increased your mana pool and they numerically increased its effectiveness from 10 mana per point to 15. Then, spirit had its numerical effectiveness *increased* dramatically (five times!) but made it so that it wouldn't work until five seconds after you cast your previous spell. In effect, spirit took over the old role of drinking in combat. Finally, drinking was disallowed in combat, so it was changed so that drinking was only there to reduce the downtime between fights -- and drinks were improved somewhat in the process.

I thought these were good changes. The problem that people are experiencing, however, is the fact that because these changes were introduced so late in the beta -- like less than a month before retail -- the numbers haven't been properly tweaked to make them work. In particular, spirit should really be doubled in its effectiveness for everyone and maybe even more for priests (or maybe give priests bonuses to healing ability for more spirit?). In addition, drinks need to be improved dramatically to compensate for the large mana pools of level capped players. I now have to drink twice to regen a full mana tank, and that's a long time to hold up an instance party.

By the way, Bolty may have been mislead a little by some earlier discussions. First, no priest or any member of another class ever had enough spirit to be able to chain cast their spells for little or no effective cost. I had one of the highest spirit numbers in the beta -- well over 350 spirit -- and I ran out of mana all the time. The comments from the Blizzard developers on this was that they were worried that this could be a problem in the *future* when more powerful items would come out. As people collect elite sets and as higher level raid instances get introduced with their more powerful items (legendary items anyone?), one could imagine someone putting together a set of gear with 700 or even 1000 spirit on it. At that point, you could have the situation where someone could chain cast their spells for little effective cost.

[MongoJerry]

Also, I believe the chance to crit with spells is tied to intellect, not fixed at any percentage. Unfortunately the game does not display spell crit chance anywhere, only melee crit chance, so it's hard to tell.

Getting back to this, my understanding is that you about +1% chance to crit for every 30ish intelligence. So, if you have 300 intelligence, that gives you +10% to crit rate over whatever the base rate is plus your gear and talent choices. I also believe the 5% crit rate is a myth, as I believe Lem and I did some tests with rogue crit rates and it seemed like the base was only 1%. If the 5% number is real, maybe that's like the minimum crit rate. That is, maybe the game does some calculations that say, "If the calculated crit rate is less than 5%, then give the person a crit rate of 5%."

[playingtokrush]

I thought these were good changes.  The problem that people are experiencing, however, is the fact that because these changes were introduced so late in the beta -- like less than a month before retail -- the numbers haven't been properly tweaked to make them work.  In particular, spirit should really be doubled in its effectiveness for everyone and maybe even more for priests (or maybe give priests bonuses to healing ability for more spirit?).  In addition, drinks need to be improved dramatically to compensate for the large mana pools of level capped players.  I now have to drink twice to regen a full mana tank, and that's a long time to hold up an instance party.

These are much more agreeable changes. I'd like to see spirit improved for every class. Doubling might be a little excessive, but I think a 50% increase over the current rate would be a great start. Rather than simply give priests more of an extra mana regeneration bonus from spirit, I think it'd make more sense to give them some form of improved healing from spirit (perhaps by having spirit increase the critical effect chance of healing spells rather than intellect).

And, like you said, drinks really do need an improvement. Food probably does as well, with high stamina builds giving characters more health than can be resoted by the best food in a single eating.

And before all that, Blizzard needs to remove or significantly increase the purported soft cap on spirit (assuming it exists). What better way to gimp an already mediocre stat than to soft cap it at a relatively easily obtainable level?

[Artega]

This post served no purpose in a discussion about spirit vs int. Please refrain from dong this. Thanks.

[LordJaeden]

Getting back to this, my understanding is that you about +1% chance to crit for every 30ish intelligence.  So, if you have 300 intelligence, that gives you +10% to crit rate over whatever the base rate is plus your gear and talent choices.  I also believe the 5% crit rate is a myth, as I believe Lem and I did some tests with rogue crit rates and it seemed like the base was only 1%.  If the 5% number is real, maybe that's like the minimum crit rate.  That is, maybe the game does some calculations that say, "If the calculated crit rate is less than 5%, then give the person a crit rate of 5%."
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It's been my understanding that Blizzard designed spells to crits much less than weapons. Generals concensus seems to be that it takes about 100 in to produce 1% crit chance. My checking with the DPSplus addon of Cosmos seems to confirm this when I check my Mind Blast stats. The Gloves of Spell Mastery have a good example of such a discussion of spell crit rates.

And before all that, Blizzard needs to remove or significantly increase the purported soft cap on spirit (assuming it exists). What better way to gimp an already mediocre stat than to soft cap it at a relatively easily obtainable level?

There are two thoughts on this subject. Some people belive that Spirit has a softcap at 300 and follows a formula of (Spirit/3=mana regen), this will fit most regen figures Cosmos reports. However if you use (Spirit/4+13=mana regen) then the data Cosmos reports seems to fit nearly all instances. Other classes have a different +x, Warlocks recieve +7 I belive.

Personally I'm inclined to think that Spirit is not softcapped, mana (and health) regen increases at a linear rate based on your spirit. You do however have diminishing returns, but that is because your overall mana pool increases much faster than your Spirit regen rate.

[Malakar]

When I first started playing WoW (at release), I thought it was a great idea to make non-combat regen ridiculously fast. That way it wouldn't unbalance combat, but you also wouldn't have to sit around doing nothing waiting forever to regen. Little did I know, that was just the early game misleading me. Now it takes me quite a long time to regen a full bar, even with good food/water.

I guess they wanted to make certain classes/builds kill faster but have higher downtime, for an overall balance of kill/recovery time... but it's still very boring sitting down, and I still feel mislead by the early game. I wish they considered this an important issue in their early design, because I think at this point it'd be hard to make faster food/water without disrupting the balance. Higher maximum recovery at the same rate wouldn't hurt though.

[Ruvanal]

But that's the thing: spirit WAS important until just about a month or two left in beta (correct me if I'm off on the timeline).  Blizzard saw how with enough spirit, Priests were too uber, and came up with a way to nerf it.

They didn't have time to adjust the items accordingly.

-Bolty
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Your timeline is in the right area. It was not just priests that were getting a great benefit out of it, the mage could too if they were not blinded by wanting mega INT. My mage had just prior to that change done an Uldaman run and throughout the whole thing I had only to stop and drink 5 or 6 times. During many fights I was actually able to recover mana faster than I was expending in casting spells. It was just a matter of which set of spells I was using; low mana cost spells while tank built some aggro and I gained mana then switch to a quick burst of higher spells to wipe the current target burning only a moderate amount of mana. Then just repeat again for the next mob that was part of the same pull.

"...and came up with a way to nerf it."
The problem is in a sense the same as it usually is with the Blizzard development team. The over compensated when appling a fix. In this case they slapped a diminishing return if you tried to really max out spirit AND reduced the amount of recovery you did get for a set amount of spirit AND added the no mana recover in fight and for 5 seconds after the fight. Too many different things done to reduce spirit in one pass, such that it turned the stat into almost a joke for its usefulness.

[playingtokrush]

When I first started playing WoW (at release), I thought it was a great idea to make non-combat regen ridiculously fast. That way it wouldn't unbalance combat, but you also wouldn't have to sit around doing nothing waiting forever to regen. Little did I know, that was just the early game misleading me. Now it takes me quite a long time to regen a full bar, even with good food/water.

I guess they wanted to make certain classes/builds kill faster but have higher downtime, for an overall balance of kill/recovery time... but it's still very boring sitting down, and I still feel mislead by the early game. I wish they considered this an important issue in their early design, because I think at this point it'd be hard to make faster food/water without disrupting the balance. Higher maximum recovery at the same rate wouldn't hurt though.

I know the feeling. I've always been kind of disappointed in how the gameplay shifts between the early game and the late game. I've noticed I'm strongly affected by "altitis" in WoW just because I really enjoy the gameplay at the low levels.

[acidjax]

If you see your role in the raids (MC) as a primary healer, I think that a Discipline/Holy build would be great. The higher your spirit, the less healers would be needed for healer rotations. Flash heal and Renew will probably be the healing spells you'd use most often with a bit of group healing trash mob AoE if your group consists of primarily melee.

IMHO, mana regen is king in the raid game. The longer the fight, the less of an advantage int becomes. I am assuming you will still have a decent amount of int regardless. Although your healer rotation groups may have enough healers to keep the main tank forever, the secondary target system that many MC mobs have can add some unexpected randomness. The fights are generally longer such that I feel spirit would help to deal with it better.

However, your stat decision need not be limited to int and spi either. There are also various mana restoration gear that ignore the 5-second rule. Using gear such as a Resurgence Rod and Ghostweave armor you can get around 70 mana/restoration tick with blessing of wisdom (or a little less with a shaman).

I feel sta for priests provides little benefit beyond being able to live a human bomb blast or the fire DoT + silence debuff. IIRC, even the entrance giants hit my 60 rogue with about 22% damage mitigation for 1.4-1.7k per hit (regular attack). It takes so much stamina to increase life expectency a few seconds that I don't think it's worth it for non-heavy armor classes beyond a point.

I've found the following site to be a useful resource on MC which you can check out if you're interested. It's a spoiler to the zone though as it details mob/boss AI and map positions.

http://conquest.teamgbu.com/strats/moltencore/why.php