Mastery, is it really worth stacking? [Holy]

[Lithiyum]

Ok so i had a thought and PLEASE do not flame on this post, it was just a thought and an idea i played around with. I am using round numbers to give a basic understanding. I could be 10000% in the wrong about this but i was just wondering cuz i noticed a pally in the top guild on my realm gemmed and reforged all crit after 20% mastery without might and he had about 20% crit but very low haste. (his name is Lipsticks on Mug'thol US if you would like to Armory him)

If you have 20% mastery without Might and you holy shock for 40k your mastery bubble on that person is 8k. If i crit with holy shock for 80k my mastery bubble is roughly double ~16k. My question is, is it worth stacking mastery? If crit allows me to essentially double my mastery bubble, why not stack more crit then after reaching a certain threshold of mastery. My understanding with this is more crit leads to larger shield in a shorter time. I 2 heal most of ToT with a disc priest, although my top healing spell is my mastery i feel like after a certain point its wasted. we are 1/12Heroic and we are working on Ji'Kun Heroic. I know technically haste is still #1 throughput stat but it causes mana issues. I dont really ever have mana issues due to my 13.7k Spirit. I feel like we can actually get a lower cast time by still going for crit instead of haste because if you crit with holy shock u get infusion of light and your holy light and other spells become .8 seconds to cast.

Does anyone have a kindly worded thoughts on this? Is it viable? Do i have any thoughts that could potentially be game changing here or is it all just appearance?

Please weigh in if you have any advanced knowledge of pally secondary stats. Players that are extremely elitist and will call me an idiot need not reply here. If you are going to post PLEASE know what you are stating, do not come in say OMG I SAW THE STICKY POST AND AMG NOXXIC SAYS THIS AND EJ SAYS THIS...I know what those websites say, i would like to know what other players have found and if this is actually viable. Please show some sort of evidence or way of thinking to assert your posts.

Thank you so much for your time!

Alesso

[Gilthresa]

Honestly even if your dropped mastery for crit you would just see a decrease in your healing power, crit is so unreliable in any scenario, mastery is mana free heals and will always be used.

[Freia]

Mastery is consistent, while crit is rng. Mastery will give you bigger shields on all your heals, not just the ones that crit.

Also Lipsticks is probably an alt or even friends/family rank because they have mostly raidfinder gear and have only downed 1 ToT boss. The actually raiding holy paladins in that guild go mastery.

There is no reason to caveat your posts with an " Elitists don't reply" because such posts are not allowed here anyways.

[Lithiyum]

Well then is there a point where mastery becomes less useful? like after a certain threshold?

[Freia]

Well then is there a point where mastery becomes less useful? like after a certain threshold?

Right now, no. It is your best secondary stat after spirit. Unless we get to the point where we are always capping the mastery shields on the raid during combat, it will not be less effective.

[Kaeth]

Even if there is a theoretical threshold where a point of crit rating boosts throughput more than a point of mastery rating, crit (for anyone other than post-5.2 Disc priests) generally results in a lot of overhealing, and it still can't be relied upon (because it's RNG) to save someone from spike damage when you need it. Illuminated Healing has the clear advantage of being extremely efficient -- you have to AoE heal your butt off during a low-damage phase to waste much of it.

And that's disregarding the fact that at currently available gear levels, mastery scales better than crit outright. In the OP's example, throughput is lower in that 20% crit situation than it would be with any amount of that stat budget shifted to mastery, completely ignoring overhealing (which overwhelmingly works against crit's favor). This is true with or without taking into account the 25% crit bonus on Holy Shock (which devalues crit relative to mastery -- yay marginal utility). If we were talking about Holy Light, mastery would still come out ahead.

[Deleted]

Personally I have weighed it at (my gear level being 510ish) for secondary stats Spirit > Haste to 3500 no more (technically 3496) > Mastery.

Mastery is very good currently. Making our limited mana go further is very important, but don't underestimate the 3496 breakpoint if you can easily reach it without sacrificing too much.

[monikasun88]

Why is the breakpoint 3496 rather than the 3506 as stated on http://www.totemspot.com/vb/entry.php?b=41 ? Just some rounding issues?

[Deleted]

I would assume that's rounding issues. To get to 25% haste (which is the breakpoint) you need to get 3496 haste with the 5% Haste Buff. To give a little buffer room I prefer to be on 3500.

[Glorious Leader]

It's horseshit but yea mastery is king. Fixed mana pools mean you basically need to squeeze as much efficiency as you can per heal. The mastery bubble is king for efficiency. However mastery itself is dog shit. It still doesn't work with beacon and beacon can add up to ALOT of your healing done.

[Glasses]

However mastery itself is dog shit.

I disagree that mastery is shit.
It is still my number one source of healing on nearly every fight, Eternal Flame + Mastery synergise extremely well with each other, since each tick will add to and refresh the 15 sec shield, meaning that even if its over healing you are still stacking up a shied on players. This is useful when the boss will do an AoE every x amount of seconds.

I do agree that it should work with beacon, but that would make us really OP.

[Xs]

The cap of mastery is when you can stack it in 2 spells, IE, cast DL + HS = 1/3rd of your health, but even then it still stacks on everyone that you didn't hit with those spells, so it just loses minor value at that point

[Glorious Leader]

I disagree that mastery is shit.
It is still my number one source of healing on nearly every fight, Eternal Flame + Mastery synergise extremely well with each other, since each tick will add to and refresh the 15 sec shield, meaning that even if its over healing you are still stacking up a shied on players. This is useful when the boss will do an AoE every x amount of seconds.

I do agree that it should work with beacon, but that would make us really OP.

It's shit. Honestly. If it wasn't for fixed mana pools you wouldn't take it. You'd be stacking haste. As you were in cataclysm. It's only that the developers have forced efficiency on you that you want it.

It doesn't have to be 100% mastery transfer BUT SOME OF IT SHOULD. Otherwise it's just shitty taking a stat that doesn't impact such a large chunk of healing ( beacon on most fights it's in my top 3 of healing done).

[Lithiyum]

The cap of mastery is when you can stack it in 2 spells, IE, cast DL + HS = 1/3rd of your health, but even then it still stacks on everyone that you didn't hit with those spells, so it just loses minor value at that point

Where is this information coming from?

[Xs]

Where is this information coming from?

Its coming from logic, if you cap out what mastery can give you in two spells that hit in a single second, it loses some value

[Dubalicious]

It's shit. Honestly. If it wasn't for fixed mana pools you wouldn't take it. You'd be stacking haste. As you were in cataclysm. It's only that the developers have forced efficiency on you that you want it.

It doesn't have to be 100% mastery transfer BUT SOME OF IT SHOULD. Otherwise it's just shitty taking a stat that doesn't impact such a large chunk of healing ( beacon on most fights it's in my top 3 of healing done).

What would fixed mana pools have to do with it? Mastery is competitive as far as HPS and wins outright regarding HPM. You're basically saying "if mana didn't matter you would be going for haste". Sure, but you would also have ZERO concern for efficiency which is something that healers SHOULD be concerned with, and Blizz wants us concerned with it.

Also, the blanket statement that "mastery is shit" is false. It's generally accepted that absorbs are extremely powerful healing, so unless the mastery per rating was greatly reduced, mastery is an excellent stat/healing mechanic.

Beacon is still pretty situational and while it would be nice to have mastery transfer via beacon, that would just make mastery even more powerful. If anything we have beacon to thank for making haste and crit at least look a little more attractive.

[Aquilesmagno]

It's shit. Honestly. If it wasn't for fixed mana pools you wouldn't take it. You'd be stacking haste. As you were in cataclysm. It's only that the developers have forced efficiency on you that you want it.

It doesn't have to be 100% mastery transfer BUT SOME OF IT SHOULD. Otherwise it's just shitty taking a stat that doesn't impact such a large chunk of healing ( beacon on most fights it's in my top 3 of healing done).

Are you serious?

Mastery is, by far, the best stat. You can reforge every bit of mastery out of your gear and it will heal more than every other spell.

This is our kill of Magaera: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r.../?s=706&e=1343

As you can see, Illuminated Healing is my top heal by a 30% at 34% mastery rating. Absorbs don't overheal, Mastery converts otherly wasted overhealing in shields. Yoyu have a serious case of l2p

[Korosive]

Mastery is really good, but I'm fully gemming for spirit. With how fights are right now and with how overhealing is with certain compositions. Using feedback from my friends running in 25s versus me in 10s It just seems like not running out of mana the entire fight is better than more mastery. It just seems like being able to heal the entire time versus healing some of the time but having really big mastery shields from gemming with Zen Wild Jade is not the way to go.

Personally what I'm doing is reforging Spirit > Mastery and gemming Spirit > Mastery to the point of missing socket bonuses for the most part. As you gear up you're mastery just gets higher in general. I suggest against stacking it. Healing output with illuminated healing has alot to do with gear, its not just how good you are at EF blanketing and using HS on every cd.

I'll probably switch over into a more spirt/mastery balanced gear setup around ilvl 520+. With the new gear its just advantageous to do so from what I'm seeing in fights. This is all personal opinion, so feel free to take it with a grain of salt, just thought id put my two cents out there based off what I'm seeing from my numbers and what fellow hpallys are telling me from what they are seeing in their raids.

In conclusion: Stacking Spirit > Stacking Mastery at least for now.

[Xs]

snip

In conclusion: Stacking Spirit > Stacking Mastery at least for now.

The argument isn't about Spirit though, I've no doubt that stacking Haste you still need to gem + min/max spirit

Also just to point out, we gain a huge amount of base Mastery % compared to other class/specs, the fact that it comes high on meters isn't due to it being our second priority entirely, since even if you stacked Haste it would be very high up due to just how our class is designed, you wouldn't use things related to Haste on a meter based sim in an argument about haste, it all comes down to raw numbers and situational requirements.

TL;DR: Haste is better throughput than Mastery, thats how its designed, Mastery is almost equal but adds bonus Mana, and when you're stacking Spirit already, thats like being able to double gem/reforge Spirit onto gear

[Aquilesmagno]

Yeah, we work under the assumption that we are gemming and enchanting for spirit.