This is a guest post by Hitty the Pally. Be prepared for heavy math towards the end of the post (well, at least, it was for me :D).
I recently went back to becoming a full time Holy Paladin for 3.1.0 for many reasons including having some of our healing raiders leaving the guild. Just to give you a quick history lesson on Hitty the pally, I started as holy hybrid in 1.0 dispelling my way through MC and switched to protection spec in 2.0 to fill a large gap left by our MT taking some time off. Eventually he came back and ended up being a ret paladin in the late stages of TBC and stuck with it for 3.0. I’ve always enjoyed being a dependable raider filling in all three roles when needed.
So here I am, most of my core training was from healing lava packs in Molten Core and boy was I in for a holy shock. There are so many new toys to play with outside of the simplistic trio of Holy Light, Flash of Light and Cleanse. So here I am getting the crash course on healing by a fellow holy paladin teammate with all these fancy terms like Bacon, Sacred Shield and JotP. My pally friend has this enact ability to top healing charts with his eyes closed. Now I know and understand thoroughly that being a healer you are part of a team. Everyone on this team plays a role in which if everyone succeeds the raid will have a good chance of winning (its NHL playoffs isn’t it Matticus?).
Editor’s note: Playoffs ended when the Canucks were eliminated.
Not to take anything away from my counterpart. He is just that good and dependable (except with buffing… I can win there!). The common joke in our guild is he has a big red button that he presses when he wants to top the healing charts. Anyways he plays a major part in our guilds progression and we love him for it. But there’s a dps fire inside of me I want to become number 1! Talk about ego and insecurity problems /sigh.
The goal is to beat my friend and wins the heal meters among pallys! So with every raid night the past 3 weeks, I start by pumping myself up to prepare for the challenge. I put on some classic energy songs before raids such as Welcome to the Jungle by Guns n Roses to “Remember the Name by Fort Minor to Crowd Chantby Joe Satriani. Hungry like a dps machine to test myself against my competition I wait for the perfect opportunity. The chance arrived in my lap, there was no danger to the raid and I went for it. FAIL. Next boss to try again, FAIL.
It seems that I have a gear issue in that my mana isn’t as infinite as my counterpart. This was to be expected as my gear is inferior to my opponent but there was a few interesting findings in Recount and WWS logs. I was able to keep up my effective healing on three conditions. 1, the fight must be short as I am chaining holy lights till I’m oom or 2, there are enough ppl who required healing or 3, stand in the fire and selfishly heal myself. The short story is I need to boast my mana regen capability which means I need more Cowbe- err Crits!!!
Mana regeneration for Paladins have always been interesting compared to the other healers. The bread and butter of our mana regen are through Divine Plea and critical proc heals with the Illumination talent. Generally speaking we are never out of the 5 second casting regen not to mention Spirit doesn’t do pally’s any good. In combat mp5 regen isn’t much better as it is very hard stat to stack as most cases the preference would be to increase Int for divine plea, +spell, and +crit. Illumination is a talent that has a 100% proc rate to gain 60% of the base cost of FoL, HL or HS. Looking specifically at spell crit, I have a lot of work to do. Generally speaking, my sworn enemy will have more crits than normal spell casts in every category with a crit rate of BLAH. My numbers really show as I would be opposite with more normal spells than crits. Alright! Time for science. Divine Favour allows me to crit one of my spells every 2 minutes, which spell would be optimal to use in conjunction with Divine Favour to return the most mana.
Please keep in mind that all these numbers and calculations are very simple math equations without factoring many different buffs, procs, talents and environments.
Illumination Rank 5
After getting a critical effect from your Flash of Light, Holy Light, or Holy Shock heal spell you have a 100% chance to gain mana equal to 60% of the base cost of the spell.
Divine Favour
3% of base mana
Instant cast 2 min cooldown
When activated, gives your next Flash of Light, Holy Light, or Holy Shock spell a 100% critical effect chance.
Holy Light Rank 13
29% of base mana
2.5 sec cast 40 yd range
Heals a friendly target for 4888 to 5444.
Flash of Light Rank 9
7% of base mana
1.5 sec cast 40 yd range
Heals a friendly target for 785 to 879.
Holy Shock Rank 7
18% of base mana
Instant cast 6 sec cooldown 20 – 40 yd range
Blasts the target with Holy energy, causing 1296 to 1402 Holy damage to an enemy, or 2401 to 2599 healing to an ally.
Okay, starting in 2.4 there were certain spells that required a percentage of the base mana. With 3.0, it’s pretty much the norm. Now this basically means the amount of mana a certain class has before any modifiers such as int, racial or buffs. So I got nekked for the purpose of science and found that for a Paladin, your base mana will always be 4394 at level 80. I tried to ask a blood elf to help me confirm my findings but all I got was a slap.
Divine Favour = 4394*3% = 132 mana to cast.
Holy Light = 4394*29% = 1275 mana to cast.
Flash of Light = 4394*7% = 308 mana to cast.
Holy Shock = 791 mana to cast.
With these values now, we can find out how much mana it cost to cast both spells plus how much mana is returned.
DF/HL 132+1275 = 1407 mana cost. 1275*60% = 765 mana return for 2.5 second cast.
The net cost to cast a HL would be 1407-765 = 642.
DF/FoL 132+308 = 440 mana cost. 308*60% = 185mana return for 1.5 second cast.
The net cost to cast a FoL would be 440-185 = 255.
DF/HS 132+791 = 923 mana cost. 923*60% = 475 mana return for 1.5 second cast. T
The net cost to cast a HS would be 923-554 = 448.
Woot! Let’s break this down to mana regen per second.
HL would be 642/2.5 = 257/1,
FoL would be 255/1.5 = 170/1 and
HS would be 475/1.5 = 316/1.
The winner is… Holy Shock!
So here we go, I found a new trick to add to my trade and hope it’ll help me inch closer and closer to my formidable opponent. Here’s a new trick for an old dog. If anyone has any other tricks to share, please do!! I can’t wait till the next opportunity I get. Nothing’s wrong with a little competition, ya?
Post edited with updated values May 27, 09