Holy Paladin: how much Spirit in 25 normal/heroics?

[LSPrimigenia]

Last tier, gemming straight spirit seemed to be the way to go, since only with this could you achieve enough spirit. However with gear levels increasing, it seems like this leads to too much spirit, and I find that there is a point where mastery becomes more desirable to gem.

How much spirit is considered necessary for 25 man heroic and normal modes? My guild will be beginning heroics next week, wrapping up normal modes this week.

[Pvpimpin]

Myself and most of the other pallys I've talked to are shooting for between 13k-14k spirit, you of course may need more or less depending on healer comp, and whatever other buffs you may or may not be getting (innervates, hymns etc) using 4pc t15 with the offset chest off Lei Shin leaves you in a great spot with around 14k spirit and enough haste to hit the 3506 threshold without reforging out of mastery on any pieces. Personally Im gemming int/sprit in red sockets, spirit mastery in blues and yellows.

[Lucyrotten]

It depends if you have the legendary meta and/or Horridon trinket. I'm sitting at around 15k with just the meta and that gives me plenty to work with during Lei Shen progression but if I get the Horridon trinket (OH PLEASE LET ME GET THE TRINKET) then I'll likely drop some of that.

The T15 4pc isn't better than 2pc head and shoulders with off pieces from Jin'rokh, Durumu and Dark Animus.

[LSPrimigenia]

I understand that logs are certainly never everything, and often the top spots are somewhat fluke-ish, but I notice that the majority of the paladins with top parses for Lei Shen 25N (found here), all have gemmed mostly mastery, and only have ~10k spirit. Note that these are paladins progressing through heroic content with Lei Shen on farm.

Does this represent another option of playstyle, conserving mana and melee'ing more often, and casting during heavy AoE phases with massive amounts of mastery? The throughput generated by it is certainly considerable.

[mcbubble]

If you're talking about Kmy, Psiduck, or LantAArn, they're full mastery with 10k spirit.
They have the top parses. What I found when looking at their guides: most stand in melee and get a LOT of mana back from seal of insight.
I was looking at a few parses, namely http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...+%3D+%22Kmy%22
What I find interesting is how often he casts crusader strike. I'm not sure how he does that since it costs so much mana.

[LSPrimigenia]

If you're talking about Kmy, Psiduck, or LantAArn, they're full mastery with 10k spirit.
They have the top parses. What I found when looking at their guides: most stand in melee and get a LOT of mana back from seal of insight.
I was looking at a few parses, namely http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...+%3D+%22Kmy%22
What I find interesting is how often he casts crusader strike. I'm not sure how he does that since it costs so much mana.

I know, that was my point. It seems that they're making up for lack of spirit by melee'ing a large amount of the time. I think the trend is let the other healers heal when the healing is less "ideal" (i.e., less healing to go around/spot healing phases, when a large portion is overhealing), and use this time to gain back mana, and then when massive AoE damage is dealt, use the over-inflated mastery to blow up the charts and cover almost all of the healing. This obviously wouldn't work if all six of your healers do this, but as a primary holy paladin healer in a 25 man core, this might be a really viable strategy.

[nightfalls]

Last tier, gemming straight spirit seemed to be the way to go, since only with this could you achieve enough spirit. However with gear levels increasing, it seems like this leads to too much spirit, and I find that there is a point where mastery becomes more desirable to gem.

How much spirit is considered necessary for 25 man heroic and normal modes? My guild will be beginning heroics next week, wrapping up normal modes this week.

Personally I would go all spirit for a while, to be honest, any overkill mastery basically is designed to look good on logs but not be really ideal for progression, not until you've trivialized how to do the fight anyway. Even with full spirit numbers-wise for instance, you can go above 100k HPS on Durumu with (in my opinion) a lot more stability.

[LSPrimigenia]

Personally I would go all spirit for a while, to be honest, any overkill mastery basically is designed to look good on logs but not be really ideal for progression, not until you've trivialized how to do the fight anyway. Even with full spirit numbers-wise for instance, you can go above 100k HPS on Durumu with (in my opinion) a lot more stability.

Yeah, that's sort of what I inferred as well. If you read the post before, I mention that it's a selfish strategy, that certainly wouldn't work if all six healers decided to do it. However, looking THAT good on logs can't exactly be terrible for progression. I'm going to experiment with some re-gemming for Lei Shen specifically tonight and see how it affects my healing, and if I hurt for the lost spirit too much. I'll try some attempts at 12k, 11k, and 10k spirit and see how the mastery trades off.

[Lucyrotten]

Since I've healed with Psiduck I can speak on that point to a degree. He does melee more than average, he also gets more innervates and is supported by good strong mana tides. He does an amazing amount of healing during progression as well as farm but it's not really feasible to have more than one paladin adopting that style in a raid. You can also look at Eloderung and Juicyjonny for ridiculously low spirit, high mastery builds.

One of the reasons those builds have worked is because of the ability to stack a lot of EF around the raid and build really nice shields on a lot of people and that's aided substantially by generating HP through the short HS cd on T14 4pc and using CS for HP generation. I think the style is still viable in 5.3 with T15 gear but probably less powerful.

There is a range between 5k and 18k spirit that you'll find in paladins that are achieving good results so it's really up to each of us as individuals to find what works. As I noted in my earlier post right now 15k with my 526 ilvl is working. Give me a trinket and I'll want less. Take away my meta and I want more.

[Freia]

You can also look at Eloderung and Juicyjonny for ridiculously low spirit, high mastery builds.

Eloderung actually doesn't run a high mastery build(compared to others like Kmy), he runs a high crit build and uses Glyph of Illumination. His mastery is still decent at 25% unbuffed while his crit is at 30%

[Lorilaith]

I'm currently running 15k spirit fully buffed but interested by the idea of a crit/mastery build. Might give it a go this week (more dark animus hc progression yay!)

[LSPrimigenia]

Since I've healed with Psiduck I can speak on that point to a degree. He does melee more than average, he also gets more innervates and is supported by good strong mana tides. He does an amazing amount of healing during progression as well as farm but it's not really feasible to have more than one paladin adopting that style in a raid. You can also look at Eloderung and Juicyjonny for ridiculously low spirit, high mastery builds.

One of the reasons those builds have worked is because of the ability to stack a lot of EF around the raid and build really nice shields on a lot of people and that's aided substantially by generating HP through the short HS cd on T14 4pc and using CS for HP generation. I think the style is still viable in 5.3 with T15 gear but probably less powerful.

There is a range between 5k and 18k spirit that you'll find in paladins that are achieving good results so it's really up to each of us as individuals to find what works. As I noted in my earlier post right now 15k with my 526 ilvl is working. Give me a trinket and I'll want less. Take away my meta and I want more.

Okay, that's kind of what I figured. As the healing core leader I sort of already play the lead position, although my mana management is usually good enough that I don't gobble up innervates - I might try out that style somewhat and see how it goes. EF blanketing and high HP generation has been a style I've enjoyed, but it seems it's better for some fights than others, and was arguably more viable last patch than this one.

It's interesting that paladins are viable across such a wide range of the Spirit-Mastery continuum, but I like the flexibility it gives. I know for progression, I will be keeping a stack of Fractured and Sparkling gems in my bags, and with just my Bracer, Glove and Belt prismatic slots I have a pretty cheap 1k spirit switch for fights that require more or less mana regen.

All good responses though, they were exactly what I was looking for as an answer.

[Lucyrotten]

Eloderung actually doesn't run a high mastery build(compared to others like Kmy), he runs a high crit build and uses Glyph of Illumination. His mastery is still decent at 25% unbuffed while his crit is at 30%

Yup, my bad. It's been a while since I looked at his armory and just remembered seeing a lot of yellow gems and no spirit.

---------- Post added 2013-05-22 at 01:50 PM ----------

I'm currently running 15k spirit fully buffed but interested by the idea of a crit/mastery build. Might give it a go this week (more dark animus hc progression yay!)

Assuming Dark Animus heroic, you'll want to be able to heal real hard for about four minutes in this fight. I would be very wary about dropping spirit until you're seeing long pulls and know your mana will survive.

[Deleted]

Haven't been playing hpala long but I just take the same approach as I do on my dudu.

If I end fights with more than 10% mana then I have too much spirit, if people are dying through unavoidable damage and I'm optimally healing then I have too much spirit.

A dispell heavy fight or where mechanics prevent us meleeing (damn you blizz) generally need more spi than fights without these caveats.

Many healers seem to want hard and fast spi numbers but I just suck it and see really. I do everything I can to prevent dry firing at the end of the fight and won't sacrifice optimal healing to conserve mana but other than that I take int>mast>crit>spi.

As hpala I look at how many overheal casts I make, whether I can improve hopo generation, whether I can use my cd's more efficiently and how I used plea/focus pot. Sometimes have hymn or mt but if healing throughput was a reason for wiping I'd reforge according to what's available. Would add I 10 man/2 heal, perhaps in 10 man it's easier to determine whether throughput, fuck ups or regen is issue. We also aren't healer limited generally, it's very rare that I don't get a lot of goes at an unknown boss due to tanks and dps fails (casual guild with peeps of mixed ability), so I tweak if needed.

[Xs]

To give a general idea, I'd recommend 16k as a base to aim for, then knock off about 2-2.5k for Horridon's trinket and the meta, if you want to try for the 10k builds you can but they're a lot less self sufficient and can run into problems that have been explained above, so make your own choice

Personally I'm running 14.5k with LFR Horridons (QQ terrible RNG in toes and ToT) and most of the challenging fights are at the sweat spot of hitting Jade Spirit's 25% marker the majority of the fight without being at serious risk of going oom, just make sure you go into fights with a good idea of the dry spots to use Pleas/Focus pots and keep an eye out for the raid's cooldown usage

[Lantern214]

If you want to play it safe and not have so much of a worry... then 13k-14k is fine. Just keep in mind if you run the "10k build" you have to watch how and what you cast, and melee the boss for mana often, but you have to factor in what comp you have. We have one resto shammy, so i can get away with things. However, when he's not present for fights like Magerea. I'm within melee range swinging my club like a crazed caveman. Also like Eloderung, I like to utilize Glyph of Illumination. Many may talk down about it, but i average 120k mana return from that thing alone.
And btw...its Lantêrn!

[Lorilaith]

Yup, my bad. It's been a while since I looked at his armory and just remembered seeing a lot of yellow gems and no spirit.

---------- Post added 2013-05-22 at 01:50 PM ----------



Assuming Dark Animus heroic, you'll want to be able to heal real hard for about four minutes in this fight. I would be very wary about dropping spirit until you're seeing long pulls and know your mana will survive.

I have legendary meta gem and 15k spirit ATM and we're seeing sub20% wipes. I do favour a bit more spirit here but I'm currently not ooming

[Freia]

I am at 16804 spirit with upgraded heroic Horridons and the meta (15400 spirit before the patch with the t14 4p), so I am probably going to start skipping out on spirit at this point once I am completely used to the increased number of HRs I cast now. I already switched to int flasks a long time ago. I keep joking with one of our boomkins to make a macro to intervate on cooldown so I can try gemming full mastery but I don't think that is going to happen. Our shaman also doesn't stack spirit for increased mana tide regen, she hates spirit.