Questions & Feedback #14
The feedback and questions have been coming hard and fast lately. I love it. Keep it all coming. Every Friday we're going to post Questions and Feedback!
Feedback: What a bunch of bullcrap. If your focusing your healing towards the meters rather than towards your focus/job your doing something terribly wrong imo. And if you can get by with FoL spamming for major parts of the fight then halleluja. Even a retspecced holy paladin can do that and manage pretty well on certain encounters. Measuring healinskills by healing meters is about as bad as measuring player skill by gearscore. Now the later has infected this game recently, pls don´t fill players with "healing meters measures skill" crap as well. Any paladin can HL spam his ass of, it aint hard. That has nothing to do with beeing good or not.
Response: Oh wow, talk about someone who hasn’t read much of what I’ve written.
You can be skillful and top the meters but I think you need to actually read what I’m writing instead of jumping on some imaginary non-existent bandwagon. Too many holy paladins believe that if you only cast holy light on your tank you’re doing a great job. Skillful healing is more than mindless holy light or flash of light spamming.
Let me be crystal clear, just because you top the meters doesn’t mean you’re skillful, it means that you topped the meters.
Don’t get me started on the gearscore mod. That mod is bad on a few different levels. Can you tell me why?
Feedback: That´s EXACTLEY my point!!!! Now talk about who´s not reading who´s text. My point was that the article you wrote, makes an impression of "if your not topping your the meters you suck!" and the amount of people reading your articles, might be exactley the kind of people who doesn´t need to hear that. Wow is already filled by way to many gear-obsessed, dps-obsessed, meter-obsessed people, and all I want is for you to maybe consider who your audience are and how they read into what you put there. I doubt that many paladins, without this knowledge themselves, realize to read between the lines of some of your statements. I’ve played a healing paladin for a long time now, and I hardly need a meter to tell me if I’m doing my job correctly, and neither should any other healer of any other class.
And the gearscore thing, we dislike it as much so why do I need to tell you why it’s bad? Trying to change subject are we?
Response: I like you. Go figure. You think things though and take the hard line. The hard line part isn’t entirely a good attribute, but it’s not bad. Ok, I’ll agree to disagree, so it seems ;)
What is an element of the game where the rules of the game aren’t entirely followed?
The people element.
This is the reason that some good under geared players who perform poorly on the meters but do their job correctly cannot get into some groups. You ever wondered why pugs don’t often put a high value on disc priests? Because they suck on the meters and a lot of people don’t understand them.
Ever wonder why social values or laws change over time? It’s not because the clock ticked over, it’s the will of the people (or the politicians who you voted in, but that’s another topic). The reality of it is healing meters and gearscore mod, however much they are bad tools in the wrong hands, they can be good tools in the right hands.
If someone is applying for a social raiding guild and they suspect that the healing lead will pass or flunk them based on their performance on the meters, does the paladin fail if they also play to the meters to get accepted? Kind of, but it’s called reality. I tend to look at things as how they are, not how they should be.
Oh, and by the way, regarding the meters. If you bottom out on the meters as a holy paladin, you’re often failing to do your job.
…. And for my audience. I don’t want them to be a bunch of brain dead mindless autonomons, I want them to think for themselves. I assume they’re smart people looking to improve their performance on multiple levels.
Question: I am just curious about some topic concerning the paladin healer. Lately I have found on the internet mmo-champion->paladin, some articles/forum topics that seem to consider some new approaches to the paladin healer. Especially when it comes to consider that mp5 is better than crit. I am reading french/english web sites, and it seems that only the english ones are putting an eye on this. Quite a lot paladin healers from big guilds, seem to prefer spell/mp5 when it comes to the glyph of shoulders/head. The theory behind this would be that with the gear improving, we do stack so much crit, and because 10mp5 would be better then 10crit. Have you read these topics too? What is your point of view?
Response: When Blizzard nerfed the mana returns of crit by 50% this topic came up.
Now this is an interesting topic, however I find it’s full of personal opinions everywhere. Now I admit, I haven’t looked at this topic for some time now but my opinion hasn’t changed.
Int > Haste > Spellpower > Crit > Mp5
While I’m not going to say how I weight each of these within it, but that’s my opinion the stat priority.
Since Intellect is the more chased after stat, it changes how important the other stats are for us. It comes down to why intellect is so important: Divine Plea and Replenishment. While replenishment is passive, Divine Plea isn’t.
Next point to consider is balance. Imagine what would happen to a holy paladin who only stacks on Intellect. What would be the point of intellect without a single point of spellpower?
Scaling is also important. Mp5 does not scale like the other stats. While it can be argued that Mp5 improves with value with your other stats, Mp5 on its own does not scale.
As a mana regeneration stat, crit isn’t that great anymore, but it’s still important and it still gives you mana returns each time your healing spells crit. Crit is both a mana regeneration stat and a stat that increases your heals per second. Crit along with haste scales well with the rest of your gear. When you have a low amount of crit, you don’t feel the improvements compared to when you do have a lot of crit.
Working out what is right for you: The most important thing is what you already have and what you’re needing.
Questions:
Do you run out of mana without the Mp5?
Are you using Libram of Renewal of using mp5 to compensate for using another libram?
I’m sure there are more questions, but these are what came to mind immediately.
Last but not least, the math is virtually impossible to determine, since you’re comparing apples and oranges. It can come down to your own personal situation but I say if you’re doing everything else correctly and have decent gear, crit > mp5.
Feedback: Hmmm, selfish? Doesn’t bring anything to the raid? I have to disagree on that. I think the fact that it's longevity brings a lot to the raid. You still have hand of protection, sacrifice, hammer of justice and probably a few more that I can't remember right now. But to call it selfish, and not bringing anything to the raid is short sighted and selfish in it self. I have both ret/holy and ret/prot talents set up. Yes, a pally that is all about healing on both talent trees. I have extensively used both, switch between both quite often depending on the fight. I think they both bring something to a fight that the other doesn’t. It just depends on what is needed.
Response: Yeah kind of true, but over stated. Pallies bring longevity to the raid, regardless of spec. While it’s true that Holy/Ret does come out a little longer than the holy/prot version, the difference isn’t as big as most believe. Off the top of my head, 8% crit gives you about 2% mana back on average and the 5% you get from benediction will discount you maybe 70 mana per minute. In the end it’s about 1000 mana per encounter unless I’ve totally screwed up my napkin math. Just by switching from Spell power to Intellect on your bracers would do more than that over an average encounter.
Back in the day, it was ret who had to spec into prot to get 5 points in Kings. There was a point in time where it was looking like I was going to be the only raiding paladin for a little while. I was asked to switch 5% crit to get improved kings. I had to look at what Kings would bring the entire raid over my own personal 5% crit. It was going to make me personally perform worse, but as a whole group perform better. If I was to refuse, the group as a whole is able to do less given their choice, thus selfish.
While it’s not quite as obvious between holy/prot vs holy/ret since holy/prot is only needed in certain situations (and a benefit if used correctly in a lot of other situations) the benefits aren’t as clear cut.
Holy/Ret doesn’t bring any unique abilities to the table, where Holy/Prot does.
I have to admit that Heart of the Crusader is also a nice benefit to DPS in a DPS race but there are a few classes who also bring this buff so this discounts the unique buff that Holy/Ret brings.
If you’re being judged by incompetent raiders (often those who pug) who judge by the meters alone, then you’d be best to go with Holy/Ret since it’ll perform better on the meters. Deep down, Holy/Prot used correctly performs better.
Further Feedback: Didn’t think I was going to get a reply, but thanks. Its good to hear from another holy pally. I belong to a good guild where meters are not looked at, unless its needed. I have both specs set up. I think the big thing i am trying to say is that it all depends on the fight. If I need quick heals, I will use my ret spec, with some good haste and crit gear, I can keep a tank and some raiders up for a long time with that spec. For a fight where a bit more is needed and lots of damage to go around i will work it with my holy prot spec. You are right in that the holy/ret spec has no unique abilities that the holy/prot spec does, but it does have abilities that I dont ever see anyone use. I think most of the pallys i have seen in the pugs are more concerned about numbers. Very rarely do a see a holy pally help out by using his hand of sacrafice, stun a add on the run, there are many abilities we do have and yet most think its all about numbers. I have seen too many pallys worried about there place on the meters that they constantly spam JoL to get there numbers up. then you look into what they actually did and they hardly have healed there target.
Anyways, I can go on and on. thanks for the reply, I really enjoy your site and too be honest my game really improved when i did start reading it and digging into what you were saying.
Response: Well the size of my response took a little while to write ;)
All too often, too many people are looking for the “holy grail” instead of working out what’s best for each situation. You’re absolutely correct what’s best can change from encounter to encounter.
I try to reply to every piece of feedback.
Epilogue:
Keep the feedback and questions coming. Believe it or not, it makes me go out and research some things. Sometimes the results surprise me and we'll all learn something new together!
Be sure to send them in, if you're asking the question, others are going to be asking too.
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