Banana Shoulders has a first look at the Holy Paladin Tier 8 gear.  The first thing I notice is that Tier 8 has about double the Mp5 of Tier 7, but actually has quite a bit less Crit than Tier 7.  Tier 8 does give us a modest boost to the rest of our stats, including Spell Power, Intellect, Haste, and Stamina.  Our Crit right now is really high and Blizzard is probably trying to take it back down to more reasonable levels.  They’re also giving us more mana regen since they’ve been consistently nerfing mana regen in the recent patches.

I’m not one who thinks Mp5 is completely worthless.  An equal budget of Mp5 does give you more mana overall even compared to Intellect on very long fights.  Mp5 is also a better mana regen tool compared to Crit if you use Flash of Light more often than Holy Light, which I usually do.  It is a good idea to have some Mp5, because if you’re completely out of mana and Divine Plea is on cooldown, Crit and Intellect aren’t going to help you at all.  If you have no Mp5, you’re just going to have to sit there until Divine Plea is off cooldown.

The problem is, Mp5 only does one thing… mana regen and its only useful on very long fights.  On the other hand, the up-front mana you get from Intellect is useful even on short fights, and Crit is one of the best stats for a Holy Pally for a number of different reasons.  I have a ton of Haste right now, and I would have really preferred more Crit over more Haste, and more Intellect over more Mp5.

This is especially true considering the Tier 8 2-piece set bonus, which gives us a HoT on the target when our Holy Shock crits.  I was kind of excited when I heard about it, especially since I love Holy Shock, I love Crit, and I love HoTs (I actually enjoyed using the old glyph of Flash of Light).  But lowering our Crit on the set pieces reduces the value of this set bonus.  The HoT is a little weak too, as is the Tier 8 bonuses overall compared to Tier 7.  It will be fun having the 2-piece set bonus from Tier 7 and Tier 8 at the same time, but I’m sure I’ll eventually upgrade to the 4-piece Tier 8 just because of the stats.

The 4-piece Tier 8 bonus is a little weak (10% buff to Sacred Shield).  It will be more useful for me and others who stack Spell Power, compared to those who stack Intellect.  Nerfing Sacred Shield to only be useable on one target makes the bonus less useful than it could be.  I would have liked to have that set bonus now.

When I get a chance, I’m going to try to look at all the new Holy Paladin gear that’s coming out and pick out which ones I’m going to go for and compare it to the Tier 8 pieces.  I’ll be sure to fill you in on what I find out.