Spirit Vs. Mastery builds

[Koltira]

Hey everyone, now I have been playing Holy pally for years now and since the release of mastery I have always wanted to build for it. I find the play style to be much better than the spirit build for healing, but my real question is; Is building straight mastery(skimping socket bonuses) better than building for spirit and socket bonuses or even straight spirit at this time in Heroic ToT? If you guys can give me some math or any kind of theory crafting that would be great. I've spoken to several top US holy pallys about the issue but none have been truly helpful in making my final decision to either stick with mastery or go back to the spirit build. If anyone wants to look me up on the armory my paladins name is Ðann on US-Illidan

[Deleted]

There's no maths as everybody is geared differently and have different raidcomps. Do you need more mana to stop going oom? Get more spirit? Do you not need it? Get more mastery.

It's really that simple.

[Koltira]

More or less I'm asking about the long term benefit to both builds. I understand that more spirit = more casts per fight while mastery = stronger casts per fight. But I want to know for ToT will i get more throughput out of stacking spirit and free casting more or less.

[Hypasonic]

Well like oggyowl said, it's more a personal thing as there is no "spirit cap" as such. Since you are still progressing in ToT I would still go for spirit though (not all-out but you can gem spirit+xx to get socket bonuses etc) this will give you a nice balance without losing too much mastery. Unless you can melee bosses and use divine plea effectively you're probably going to go oom rather fast on some fights and no amount of mastery will help you there.

Small note, you reforged your chest from crit to haste but I think it should be spirit (I use the same chest xD) so that's some extra spirit for you there :P

I'd still go for the 120 int socket bonuses though, like on legs etc.

Oh and you probably know anyways but try get the gloves off durumu and legs from animus as the 4 set is very poor (can be nice on some fights while progressing, primordius hc for example but mastery>trumps it tbh) and those will give you a lot of extra mastery (I've been so unlucky never seem those, or the legs off ra-den yet.....:>)

[Koltira]

I haven't run into mana issues yet in ToT i micromanage my Divine Plea and my mana pot usage with my talisman very well that I rarely if ever run out of mana and still keep everyone alive and top meters lol. But as for my chest piece, I reforged the crit to haste simply to push me over the haste break point for the eternal flame tick. It's rare to see the full duration on anyone as I constantly refresh the hot but until 5.4 when they remove mastery from our only HoT that's an extra tick that I'm getting without sacrificing anything.

[Lithiyum]

Hey guys, i will weigh in some of my own testing here. I just joined a 13/13H 25 man guild this past week after never having raided 25 man since BC. Very fun experience! On to my setup.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...hiyum/advanced

That is my advanced armory link. As you can see I gemmed sort of straight mastery, using green/orange superior quality gems to fill socket bonuses that were +int and ignoring any others. This left me with 11.5k spirit(Human buff included) without any flask, however here is the kicker, with mastery buff I sit at a 45.66% mastery. I will be testing it in tonights clear. I think the amount of spirit you need isnt really that high once you understand where the damage comes from in fights. In order to offset the amount of burst healing you need to put out, simply use a throughput cd to boost throughput and save on mana. When you have downtime, pop plea, and whatever other mana items you may have, in my case, valor trinket, and a mana pot.

Essentially what it comes down to is an experience thing. Spirit until youre comfortable healing the fight and understand where the damage comes from. Once you understand that you can run with as low spirit as you would like.

Side note: I do not have my meta or cloak yet. I had a major setback during my legendary quest so I am pretty far behind. Sitting at 9 Secrets currently.

[Dubalicious]

I haven't run into mana issues yet in ToT

If this is the case, why are you considering adding more spirit?

[Deleted]

If you are progressing in ToT and not running into any mana issues you are using too many healers.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

If you are progressing in ToT and not running into any mana issues you are using too many healers.

Have to agree with this, if your healers (regarless of specs) are not having issues keeping people alive and you struggle with dps then drop a healer and get one more dps. Depending on which healers you have you can replace one that you feel is replacable, in many cases more dps = less healing as well.


as to spirit vs mastery, our holy paladins both went mastery builds. With the legendary meta gem and horridon healer trinket your mana should be fine, after they got the meta gem the both dropped like 4k spirit. Mastery is a throughput increase but you can also go int which might be better next tier because hots no longer get the mastery shield.

[Theholypally]

You can never have enough spirit, with better gear your spirit will go up. I would never personally reforge out of spirit. Nor would i personally gem for mastery, but some do. Heroic farming healers generally let off on spirit for mastery.

Progression should always be spirit priority, though. im usually at 16-17k spirit unbuffed, and i wouldnt complain if i could get more.

[Ethes]

You can never have enough spirit, with better gear your spirit will go up. I would never personally reforge out of spirit. Nor would i personally gem for mastery, but some do. Heroic farming healers generally let off on spirit for mastery.

Progression should always be spirit priority, though. im usually at 16-17k spirit unbuffed, and i wouldnt complain if i could get more.

In my opinion, this man speaks the truth. I experienced the same (11/13hc guild)! The more spirit you have, the more heals you can throw out per fight. Which means other healers will be strained less

[Freia]

Nope you only have so many spells that you can cast and if you chain casting and still ending the fight with a ton of mana left then you are wasting stats.

[Ethes]

Nope you only have so many spells that you can cast and if you chain casting and still ending the fight with a ton of mana left then you are wasting stats.

Then you're casting the wrong spells

[Freia]

Then you're casting the wrong spells

No I'm not. I was at 16800 spirit chain casting HR between shocks and EF like everyone else was and finding I didn't need to use Divine Plea on cooldown and would end up with a ton of mana. So I gradually dropped down to 13k. We don't stack haste, we aren't casting the spells fast, so you do cap how much mana you can actually use in a given time, especially when it is farm and the fights are just going faster and faster. If I need more spirit when progress starts again. I have stacks of all gems in my bags and am a JC so I can regem on the spot if needed.

[Ethes]

No I'm not. I was at 16800 spirit chain casting HR between shocks and EF like everyone else was and finding I didn't need to use Divine Plea on cooldown and would end up with a ton of mana. So I gradually dropped down to 13k. We don't stack haste, we aren't casting the spells fast, so you do cap how much mana you can actually use in a given time.

Unless you're 13/13hc you've got everything cleared. Sure you can get away with it on some fights (most fights most likely) but for cutting edge progression you're better off with more spirit.

[Freia]

Unless you're 13/13hc you've got everything cleared. Sure you can get away with it on some fights (most fights most likely) but for cutting edge progression you're better off with more spirit.

I am 13/13hc. Cutting edge progression is in the very beginning doing the fights when everyone is undergeared using the previous tier's gear. It isn't taking your time and farming gear from the previous bosses like most of us on this forum. You definitely do not need to be stacking that much spirit then.

[Colmadero]

As a paladin who hasn't healed since TBC, how much spirit should I aim for?

[Rayocell]

As a paladin who hasn't healed since TBC, how much spirit should I aim for?

As much as you feel comfortable with. I was rocking about 18.1k spirit last week, but I decided to go full out mastery this week. I'm at 13.2k spirit with flask and, on our farm bosses, I noticed that my mana is close to out at the end of the fight, but my throughput is way higher. I'm not struggling for mana in either way, though, so realistically, I could've dropped spirit for mastery way earlier.

Next patch, if a lot of holy pally changes stick, I'll be going for more of a haste/spirit build instead of mastery.

[Lucyrotten]

A
Next patch, if a lot of holy pally changes stick, I'll be going for more of a haste/spirit build instead of mastery.

Haste still won't be better than mastery most likely. I haven't mathed it all out but my napkin doesn't see how haste can be worth the trade off.

[Dubalicious]

Math won't show anything when it comes to Mastery vs Haste. With haste reducing the CD of Holy Shock it gives us more mobility, and higher holy power generation. If you pick SS, haste increases the healing done by SS (there are breakpoints for # of ticks), mastery does not at all. If you pick SH, again, it increases holy power generation with a lower Judge CD. Mostly regarding it's affect on holy shock and judge, it actually helps holy pallies in the one aspect that they're worst at; mobile healing. Being a better mobile healer isn't something that can be quantified and compared with other numbers. And plus healing isn't DPS, the maximum amount of throughput ignoring overhealing isn't a measure anyone should look at to base stat weighting on.

It just seems like a huge price to pay for these things, having to pretty much stack haste to reduce the cd by 1.5 seconds. That's only 3 extra holy shocks per minute. If haste is going to work, I definitely think it will be combined with SH, but I'm still pretty skeptical it's going to perform well in raids (speaking from a 25 man raid point of view)