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  1. #1
    Stood in the Fire lukyl's Avatar
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    Holy Priest, spirit or int gemming..

    how much mana regen within combat should i have before i can stack intelect as my best option?
    currently i have 3407mp5 and have the spirit meta and all blue slots with spirit gems, others with combo gems mastery/spirit and 2 with just intelect, but i have seen priests stacking intelect but im not sure how much regen i need first, so yeah advice please

  2. #2
    Int provides regen as well as greater output, for a marginal loss of mp5. In a raid setting when factoring in both replen & your mana regen cooldowns I believe it equates to more or less a 1:1 tradeoff for int to spirit, perhaps a small bit in favor of spirit. So unless you find your self constantly going oom while making efficient use of your cooldowns, I'd prob just opt for Int red Int/haste or mastery (preference) yellow & int/spirit blue.

  3. #3
    Blademaster GoochamusPrime's Avatar
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    As far as combat regen I'm not sure, but it seems to be a very comfortable plateau for a lot of healers to be sitting around 2500 spirit nowadays. It allows you to start gemming primarily for Int and Haste then. If you can get around there you should be more than comfortable with your regen

  4. #4
    You should be stacking Int. Stacking Spirit will indeed give you a bit more regen, but that regen will always be excessive for the content you are geared to do. It will never allow you to do harder content. Instead it will just make you need to drink a little less often. This is nice, but stacking Int instead will actually allow you to perform above what your gear normally would allow. The more you can budget towards Int the better.

    ps: Don't ignore Spirit. Spirit is good. Int is just better.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by harky View Post
    Stacking Spirit will indeed give you a bit more regen, but that regen will always be excessive for the content you are geared to do. It will never allow you to do harder content. Instead it will just make you need to drink a little less often. This is nice, but stacking Int instead will actually allow you to perform above what your gear normally would allow.
    I'm sorry but this statement utterly confuses me. I have read most of what is on the EJ forums and most of what I could find here. The consensus seems to be that int is better for this reason or that reason and that socketing for spirit is not a good idea. I seem to remember you yourself saying that math points to spirit being the better regen stat but reality says it's intellect.

    Danner's regen calculator CLEARLY shows that spirit is far superior to int for regen. I don't see how anyone can realistically argue with that. When it comes down to gearing choices we won't see any conflict except for gemming and the weapon enchant. For gems seeing as how nearly every stat scales well for us it would make sense to follow the socket color, at which point the real question seems like it would be do you want haste or mastery in yellow sockets?

  6. #6
    Blademaster GoochamusPrime's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Aiurwyn View Post
    I'm sorry but this statement utterly confuses me. I have read most of what is on the EJ forums and most of what I could find here. The consensus seems to be that int is better for this reason or that reason and that socketing for spirit is not a good idea. I seem to remember you yourself saying that math points to spirit being the better regen stat but reality says it's intellect.

    Danner's regen calculator CLEARLY shows that spirit is far superior to int for regen. I don't see how anyone can realistically argue with that. When it comes down to gearing choices we won't see any conflict except for gemming and the weapon enchant. For gems seeing as how nearly every stat scales well for us it would make sense to follow the socket color, at which point the real question seems like it would be do you want haste or mastery in yellow sockets?
    He might be thinking of Disc where Int is a much closer stat for regen to Spirit, but I dunno, maybe he just worded it poorly?

  7. #7
    Data Monster Simca's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Aiurwyn View Post
    I'm sorry but this statement utterly confuses me. I have read most of what is on the EJ forums and most of what I could find here. The consensus seems to be that int is better for this reason or that reason and that socketing for spirit is not a good idea. I seem to remember you yourself saying that math points to spirit being the better regen stat but reality says it's intellect.

    Danner's regen calculator CLEARLY shows that spirit is far superior to int for regen. I don't see how anyone can realistically argue with that. When it comes down to gearing choices we won't see any conflict except for gemming and the weapon enchant. For gems seeing as how nearly every stat scales well for us it would make sense to follow the socket color, at which point the real question seems like it would be do you want haste or mastery in yellow sockets?
    Quote Originally Posted by GoochamusPrime View Post
    He might be thinking of Disc where Int is a much closer stat for regen to Spirit, but I dunno, maybe he just worded it poorly?
    He's saying that stacking Spirit gives you too much mana and not enough throughput for your content, whereas Int gives you some mana and quite a lot of throughput.

    He's right too. If you have a need for an extreme amount of Spirit, then you're probably trying WAY too hard to pick up the slack for your other healers by casting low HPM spells or something. At a certain point, bad DPS or tanking (bad tank switches in Halfus) and many other things your RAID is doing wrong is causing the problem that makes you think you want Spirit badly.

    That's why he's saying stacking Spirit is excessive and unneeded.

    TL;DR: Don't gem Spirit... like ever, unless you are matching a good socket bonus (example: red/blue with 20 int bonus). Reforge for it if you have mana problems. Gear for it if you want to.
    Last edited by Simca; 2011-01-23 at 07:17 AM.
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  8. #8
    So the spirit from the ilvl budget on gear is enough to do the fights properly. Assuming no enchants or sockets it could be done with that lvl of regen so the sockets are strictly for throughput?

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Aiurwyn View Post
    So the spirit from the ilvl budget on gear is enough to do the fights properly. Assuming no enchants or sockets it could be done with that lvl of regen so the sockets are strictly for throughput?
    The thing is, when you gem for intellect, you gem for both throughput and regen at once.

  10. #10
    Blademaster GoochamusPrime's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Aiurwyn View Post
    So the spirit from the ilvl budget on gear is enough to do the fights properly. Assuming no enchants or sockets it could be done with that lvl of regen so the sockets are strictly for throughput?
    Like I said in my first post, some healers think that 2500 Spirit is their sweet spot; depending on your play style you may want less than that. Once you get comfortable with managing your CDs and maintaining strong heals you should start gemming for throughput. You should be able to fairly easily reach that value with just gear, and like Simca said, you should never gem for Spirit unless it's a fantastic set bonus

  11. #11
    I understand the mechanics of the class, and know a lot of the nuances. I was just confused by one particular statement which seemed parroted by many people with no mathematical or repeatable backing.

    Simca did a much better job explaining it and I get it now. I just have a problem with thinking others will do everything they can to make my job easier. But your right, in the long run it isn't up to me to make sure they do their job the right way.

  12. #12
    Data Monster Simca's Avatar
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    I'm glad I could help.

    I have another example I was thinking of... nobody may need it, so it may be a completely useless post, and it may be confusing, but it works in my mind (and I just feel like typing right now):

    Think of it kind of like Hit for a dual wield class. Once a dual wield class reaches the special hit cap, Hit falls in value for them by quite a bit. It's useful, and getting more Hit gear is never a bad thing, but other stats become better. So for them, it's like

    Hit (until special cap) > STR/AGI (whatever) > Hit (until dual wield cap)

    Spirit is similar, but somewhat different. There are a few big differences:

    1. With Spirit, everyone has a value where they become comfortable. For me, I like ending fights and thinking - "Wow, I almost ran out of mana there. It was close, but I used all of my cooldowns, mana pot'd, used my trinkets very often, and we got through it". Some people prefer more leeway so that if something goes wrong, they can better adapt, and things like that.

    2. Also, everyone has different raid members and compositions and numbers of healers and stuff. With this point though, don't let other people's bad performance bog you down. Make sure you consider ALL possibilities before you accept blame for something. Tanks getting too many stacks on Halfus is a good example of a tank failure, and a good example of a DPS failure would be not killing the drakes fast enough. Healers will blame themselves sometimes - "Damn, I'm OOM and it's only the first drake, we needed to kill him fast to free Time Warden but I couldn't do it." - when it actually is the fault of really bad DPS (like 6k). Don't over-blame DPS though - just keep an open mind. Often things are a combination of factors, and there is usually never just one person to blame. I only mention this in-depth because I have serious issues blaming myself for every wipe even if I top healing by a large amount - "I could have done X better and we would have won, damn!".

    So, since you need a certain amount of mana regeneration to sustain your healing, Spirit > Int until a certain point. The thing is that this certain point is obtainable via Gear and if needed, Reforging. This leaves your sockets open for Intellect, which you can't pick to gear for or reforge for since it isn't a secondary stats and Intellect increases automatically by itemlevel on gear.

    To establish the last part of the relationship - there is one last thing to note. Spirit does have a throughput value, contrary to popular belief. It's very hard to quantify with numbers, but imagine this: You have 2500 Spirit (or whatever) and heal like normal. However, another Priest in your raid has much better gear than you and has 3000 Spirit. Since they have more Spirit than they need to sustain their normal healing style, they can start throwing in additional expensive heals that they don't usually add. In two otherwise identical Priests, one with 2500 Spirit and the other with 3000 Spirit, the one with 3000 Spirit will heal for more since they can cast really really low HPM but high throughput spells more often than you can. However, at that stage of Spirit, the other secondary stats usually become superior (well, at least some of them do).

    Therefore:

    Spirit (until you feel comfortable and can sustain your normal healing style; you can meet this through gear and reforging) > Int (in sockets and maximizing Int bonuses and enchants) > Spirit (for extra expensive spells to increase throughput)

    Adding Crit and Haste and Mastery into that comparison makes things a lot more personal and subjective, but I think most people will agree on the above.
    Last edited by Simca; 2011-01-23 at 09:01 AM.
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  13. #13
    If you use the EJ numbers and formulas, Int actually provides more regen than Spirit *if you include Hymn of Hope and Shadowfiend and assume a 5 min fight*. However, not having Spirit on your gear (wearing say, a piece with Haste/Mastery) is throwing mana out the window. Which is *fine* if you don't think you need it, but if you're running out of mana make sure every piece of gear you're wearing has Spirit on it.

    And then gem for Intellect.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Aiurwyn View Post
    I'm sorry but this statement utterly confuses me. I have read most of what is on the EJ forums and most of what I could find here. The consensus seems to be that int is better for this reason or that reason and that socketing for spirit is not a good idea. I seem to remember you yourself saying that math points to spirit being the better regen stat but reality says it's intellect.
    Many of those statements came well before we knew what kind of stat balances we would have in T11. If you had read more closely you'd see a few things.

    1. We didn't know what our Int:Spirit ratio would be. We now know that it is beyond 2:1, which means Spirit is clearly better regen.
    2. We didn't know how much regen we would actually need. We now know that after ~2.4k Spirit we don't have serious mana issues.

    If you don't keep up as the game changes then discussions will not make a lot of sense. This is especially true when dealing with theory. Int is a better functional regen stat and therefor should never be given up in favor of Spirit. This is a point I disagree with Simca on in that she is recommending Spirit > Int until a certain Spirit value. I consider this wrong because if you are gearing for Spirit as your first Secondary stat you will always have enough regen for the content you are geared to do. This means Spirit > Int is never a good option.

    Because you can only trade Int for Spirit in a few places the difference between 'Spirit Stacking' and 'Int Stacking' is a very small amount. The largest swing from Int to Spirit that you could get is around 1k. If you're going from 5k/2.5k to 4k/3.5k you'll gain ~35k mana over the course of a 5 minute fight. This might sound like a large amount in comparison to your total mana, but it's minor compared to your net regen. We're talking about going from 455k to 490k. It's just 7% more regen. This is not a major difference and you're sacrificing a massive amount of throughput for it. If your Int and Spirit were already close and you did this you would not gain any noticeable mana. You may gain an extra 1k per 5 minutes in exchange for 1k SP.

    Also, for Spirit to have a throughput value it must provide enough additional regen for you to alter your spell selection. Spirit stacking does not feasibly do this and as such the minor theoretical gain is not realistic. As gear improves you will find yourself with more freedom on your casts. However, if you shift your Int:Spirit ratio in favor of Spirit it is unlikely that you will be able to alter your efficiency enough to impact your output. Realistically in the above scenaro going from 5k/2.5k to 4k/3.5k the 'extra' 35k mana would simply mean you end the fight with more leftover mana. You won't be going oom at 5k/2.5k anyway. This means that you already did not use your entire mana bar. In the case that extra throughput is required you could have already ramped up and had leftover mana still. The additional 35k in that sense is irrelevant.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Simca View Post
    TL;DR: Don't gem Spirit... like ever, unless you are matching a good socket bonus (example: red/blue with 20 int bonus). Reforge for it if you have mana problems. Gear for it if you want to.
    I assume you're talking about Sparklings, and not Purifieds, because I don't see a single Holy Priest in any guild worth mentioning not filling Blue sockets with +20int/+20spi, regardless of socket bonus.
    Last edited by TwistedCross; 2011-01-23 at 07:02 PM.

  16. #16
    I personally do not use Int/Spirit unless I get an Int/Spirit bonus, or a large Haste/Mastery bonus for doing so. I'm currently using Int/Spirit in all my blue sockets, but this is purely because the socket bonuses I have are good.

  17. #17
    If you are holy Spirit is what you need, it is far greater then int for mana regen. Now with you sitting at the mp5 you are you can cut back on your spirit. Id say starting gemming int/spirit for your blue socket. Now you also want 12.5% haste raid buffed according to EJ which is very easy to get to. If you are comfortable with your mana regen and haste then just start reforging crit to mastery and gem more for int. Also everything is gonna change with the next patch so be prepared for a 10% loss in mp5

  18. #18
    The math for why Intellect is better than Spirit is fairly intuitive. Yes, Spirit provides better regen point for point, but Intellect also provides Spell Power and Crit. As such, Intellect is also your single best throughput stat, so it increases both your HPS and HPM in addition to your MP5.

    The other issue is, as someone else pointed out, Spirit for Healers is very much like Hit is for other classes, except a bit more flexible. If you have enough regen to support your casts throughout an encounter, additional Spirit is borderline useless. If you don't have enough regen, you have several ways to approach it. I currently run with around 2500 Spirit (more if you count Trinket stacks/procs), and it's plenty of regen, where any situation where I've run out of mana, it's probably because someone screwed up (me with my spell selection, or the raid with taking excessive damage). By having more stats that increase HPS and HPM, it further assists any additional regen needs because it makes the spells I choose more efficient.

    The other thing to keep in mind is that there are few places to choose Intellect vs. Spirit, except with gemming, trinnkets, and an enchant or two. In these choices, it always makes the most sense to go for the stat that gives the most bang for the buck. If you feel you're lacking Spirit, you have tons of other places where you can get it at the expense of less efficient stats like Haste, Mastery, and Crit through gear selection and reforging. So, in essence, by trading Intellect for Spirit rather than a secondary stat for Spirit, over the course of your total gearing, that works out to having lost some Intellect for some secondary stat, which is clearly a poor trade.

  19. #19
    I love how the OP asked a simple question and people are coming back with essays on the theory-crafting of Int Vs Spirit.

  20. #20
    Just gem spirit on blue sockets but with a purple (int + spirit) imo.

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