The future of Holy Paladin Gear - Mp5, Spirit, Strength?
The Holy Paladin community has been up in arms over Ulduar gear itemization ever since we saw the first pieces of gear drop on the PTR. The problem is that most of our Ulduar gear is full of Mp5, which is mostly worthless for a Holy Paladin. In fact, its very worthless. Zabery has a couple of great posts about just how worthless Mp5 is for us Holy Paladins. We get so much mana regen from other sources, our heals are so mana-efficient, and our mana pools so large, that the amount of mana we get from Mp5 is really inconsequential, especially considering it is a stat that does nothing except generate mana. You could make a very strong argument that Embrace of the Spider is a much better trinket for us than the Energy Siphon, despite the 19 item level difference.
Blizzard says they do not want to remove Mp5 from our gear. Here’s a recent quote from Ghostcrawler about Mp5 being worthless for Holy Paladins:
“Yes, that is exactly what I said. You are saying you’ll just use the shaman gear. Why? Because you don’t care about the mana regen. Why? Because your mana regen is so good based on things like Illumination that mana regen stats are not attractive. That doesn’t mean we stop putting regen stats on plate. That means we nerf Illumination. An even better solution would be to get rid of MP5 and make Illumination return mana based on your spirit. Now not only do you want a regen stat, but you want the same stat that other healers want.”
So Blizzard wants mana regen stats on our gear. In fact, its possible they may consider nerfing Illumination or changing it to be based off of Spirit instead of Crit. I’m assuming that Blizzard is thinking this way because they want to be able to offer a greater variety of gear. Limiting our secondary stats to just crit, haste, and spellpower would make for a boring set of gear in their minds.
I’m very interested in seeing how Holy Paladin itemization is going to change in the next expansion, considering all the problems Blizzard has had with us this time around. There’s a strong case for changing our talents so that we get bonus healing and mana regen from Strength and other melee stats. That way we can wear the same gear as all the other dps plate classes without needing our own specific set of gear. There also seems be rumors now that we may be getting spirit based talents and plate gear with spirit on it so that we share mana regen stats with other healers, although that will leave us with the same problem we have now of being the only class with plate healing gear. Maybe Blizzard is adding another plate wearing healing class in the next expansion that we can share gear with. Who knows? Its fun to speculate.
Obviously Blizzard hasn’t said that any changes to Illumination are coming in the near future. There’s no way I can see that they could start adding Spirit to our gear before the next expansion. But, its possible an illumination nerf might be incoming before the next expansion as well as some kind of talent change that will make Mp5 more attractive to us. We’ll see what happens. The only thing I can recommend is to not throw out all your Mp5 gear just yet. Store it away in case someday it might actually become useful.
Update:Â Ghostcrawler went on to say the following:
“Many mana-users can get regen out of Int and crit, but those also improve other aspects of casting. If it benefits you too much to stack those and ignore MP5 or Spirit, you are going to end up being too effective a healer compared to other classes. The design of the Holy paladin is not that you get all your regen from crit and Int. A typical raiding Holy paladin probably gets double from Illumination what she gets from DP or Replenishment. It aint trivial. If a paladin stacks say nothing but crit, then not only is Illumination better, but you heal for more too. We run the risk that as your crit rises, you outstrip the shamans, priests and druids who are having to use MP5 and Spirit too. That’s why you can’t just say “We do use regen stats, but crit is our regen stat.” If none of the healers care about regen stats at all, then mana regen is probably still too good.”
In other words, Blizzard is saying that Illumination is too powerful and that Holy Paladins were never designed to recieve so much mana from crit. If Holy Paladins don’t need any Spirit or Mp5, then that means we can stack our healing stats more than other classes, making us more powerful healers overall. Other healers have to “waste” itemization points just to keep up their mana, whereas we don’t. This reminds me of a similiar Illumination nerf that happened in BC. Enjoy that crit while you can Healadins.
I know ima get laughed at for this but i gem like a mofo for mp5 and sp every piece of gear i have except trinkets and weaps have mp5 on them i only have a 20k mana pool but the mp5 i have expands that mana pool over the course of the fight i also have over 2200 sp unbuffed so my heals are still very effective. im a flash mostly pally but don’t hesitate to shock or HL if needed and top charts in almost every 25 or 10 man i’m in without going oom.
I’m kinna’ new to the whole healing gig…so I may not be right on track with this, but it seems to me that other healing classes have certain advantages that we dont have ie…AOE heals and that sort of thing. I dont quite understand why they would nerf Illumination while other classes continue to AOE heal and heal over time.
mp5 is the most useless stat, we’re never not casting long enough to take advantage of it. i’m annoyed with blizzard’s stance on mp5 for holy pallys. NONE of the geared/good holy pallys are using gear with it as a stat.. some using leather shoulders or merlins robe (cloth), and so on. no mp5 - haste pls!!
i’ve quit healing as my main spec now anyway in favour of ret and just dabble in some holy pvp.
If you stay and think for a second how useful would be stacking some mp5 you’ll end up saying:useless to add 20-30 mp5 to the 350 mp5 from the gear,what do I get?380 mp5 instead 350 mp5?meaning I’ll get one more flash of light once 20 seconds?bullshit..to not talk about holy light(that would be 1 saved once 2 minutes);completely avoid it
Reimur thats the same as saying “i have 2600 SP whats a 20SP gem gonna do” but it adds up. if you dedicate your gear to mp5 you can spam just as many HL as if you have a 35k mana pool (kinda). i’m not saying mp5 is good for pallys but its not stupid if your playstyle can use it to help you out. i’m a semi-new 80 pally and i use the Spark of Life trinket which procs often and grants 220mp5. as my mana pool is only around 20k right now, it helps immensely.
I’m a geared Holy Paladin with about 35,600 mana unbuffed, and I just can’t see myself sacrificing my Int gems and my Crit + Haste on gear for Mp5. As nice as it is I just can’t see it being as beneficial as Int + Crit + Haste. The ways things are going though is I’ll probably be forced to go down the Mp% route in Cataclysm.
I think MP5 is all about your choice of playing. But i think we can all agree, that pallys with more than 30k mana could easily skip the mp5 stat. For a pally in the 20’s it might be a very helpfull stat. If you stacked mp5, only mp5. It would have the effect that you would never ran out of mana, but our flash of lights would hit like a baby, if we reverse it, we got a paladin that eats mana, but with really powerfull heals.
As i said, it’s a way of choice.
stack enough Mp5 you could spam holy light and then get mana using flash of light but as artzanic said it is all a way of choice
its very simple……people QQ too much about pally heals and yet when a druid can stack some hots and /dance while the raid heals fully its okay…its also okay with a 30k mana holy priest runs around and holy novas the entire group to life, its rediculous that peoples constant bitching over paladins being OP in some way or another is actually starting to affect the game. now illumination is 30% mana instead of 60%. there goes literally half the mana i usually get. not too big of a deal but still it hurts. i have an 80 rogue, shaman, druid, warrior, and of course my main is my pally. however on ANY OF MY TOONS i can beat a pally, just as on my pally i can BEAT any of my other toons, for once blizzard actually has created an equal gameplay and toon spellbook, but yet because of a 6 year fued with pallies, the bitching just never ends. everyone is EQUAL, DEAL WITH IT. pallies rely on intellect. PERIOD. int = spell power, crit, and mana. to change that really is gonna screw up the entire system and mechanics of whether or not pallies will be wanted in a raid anymore. if your going to complain about pally heals, then might as well complain over priests and there AoE heals, Druids and there massive arsenal of Hots AND REGULAR HEALING SPELLS, and just life in general. blizz and everyone needs to accept the classes for what they are, equal, players choice in what they choose, and players skill level for how they play it. done deal.
word
an extension of my previous post on artzanic you can gem in MP5 purely but i think that is stupid so i gemmed in int/Mp5 haste/Mp5 SP/Mp5 sure none would be as powerful as if i just gemmed that purely but then i wouldnt have much mana which is essential to healers. the haste helps me get my heals of faster and the SP makes my heals not hit “like a baby”. but that is how i play
[...] it does currently. Healing paladins and shaman will benefit more from Spirit than they do currently.Its no longer speculation, Holy Paladins will definitely be using spirit on our gear in the next expansion. Mp5 is being [...]