What does "up to" mean?Follow

Looking at healing gear, I see two different wordings on the stats - some say they increase healing by x, but others say they increase healing 'by up to' x. Does this mean there is a variable amount of healing they provide - like it is random on each heal, or is this wording really meaningless and it actually provides the full amount?

If it is some variable, then it seems pretty obvious that there would be some tipping point where a lower fixed value would better than a higher variable value (based on the average of the variable value).

I can't find any items which state a straight bonus to healing (other than gems, but I think that's just to keep the description brief).

Basically different healing spells receive different amounts of benefit from bonus healing. Say your Flash Heal heals for 100 on average, equipping items with +50 healing won't make it heal for 150 average because it doesn't have a 100% coefficient.

More info about different class spells and their coefficients can be found here: http://www.wowwiki.com/Spell_Damage_Coefficients

Edit (for a bit more info): So, the amount of healing gained depends on which spell you are casting. Also for damage or healing over time spells the bonus healing is split over the duration of the spell.

E.g. Renew has 100% coefficient, but that doesn't mean you get the full +healing on each tick.

Say you have 1000 +heal, your renew ticks 5 times on the target (every 3 secs for 15 secs), so each tick will gain 200 extra healing from what it normally does (1000/5).

Edited, Sep 22nd 2008 5:56am by Tynuv