Gearing discussion.Follow

This post is to provide an in-depth discussion of gearing decisions for priests. Specifically, I want to address issues of statistical priorities, and therefore gemming/looting goals.

HOLY PRIESTS

My take is that spirit is still king for Holy. Even with the mana return adjustment, Spirit still provides good amounts of both power and endurance. Spellpower is also important, though not to the point that other stats should be lacking; but only in gemming do you have to give up a stat in order to get more spellpower. With rare exceptions, spellpower scales linearly with item level.

Crit, for a holy priest, doesn't serve to increase your HpS; its function is to increase your HpM by providing SoL procs and Holy Conc procs. SoL, as I've discussed before, actually *lowers* your HpS, but it provides very good mana efficiency. However, the long-standing anti-crit argument is still relevant-- namely, that crit heals are typically mostly over-heal. So long as you have enough crit to keep Holy Conc rolling, you have enough crit.

Intellect is a decent choice. Intellect boosts your regen from spirit, boosts your crit, and boosts your maximum mana. This last is important because Replenishment works as a percentage of base mana, and Replenishment is both widely available and very powerful. However, Intellect is still not terribly strong for a Holy priest.

I'm not a fan of haste. Most healing stats benefit both your HpS and your HpM, but Haste only helps your HpS. Haste provides the most benefit to DPS classes that chain spells together; for healers, unless you're chain-casting, you don't see nearly the same rewards. Sure, it gets your heal off faster, but the amount of haste required to provide a substantial boost to your healing speed is crippling to your other stats. (Note: this is further proof that the Prophecy 3-piece bonus was wicked overpowered... though not as much as 3-piece Transcendence.)

Mana/5 is, by my reckoning, the weakest stat for a priest. Spirit is what we use for our regen, and it has numerous advantages-- racial and talent scaling improvements, multiple talents to boost spirit's contribution, and Blessing of Kings, to name a few. You get much more mileage out of spirit, even post 3.1.

So, the upshot: I would emphasize spirit and spellpower in my gear, followed by intellect and crit, and trailed by haste and mana/5. For gems, I would go with Purified gems in my red slots and half my blue slots, Seer's gems in some blue and yellows, and either Luminous or Potent in my other yellows.

DISCIPLINE PRIESTS

Many of the arguments for Disc priests are similar to Holy, except that intellect is far more important and spirit significantly less. Rapture, which along with Meditation provides Disc with its endurance, is based off of your total pool. Plus, Mental Strength provides Disc priests with exceptional scaling.

Disc priests get considerably less out of spirit, though it remains an important stat to power Meditation and (with Enlightenment) scales well. Crit remains a good secondary stat for Disc because it powers Divine Aegis. Post-patch it is no longer the end-all stat for Disc priests because Divine Aegis was uncoupled from Rapture. Still, crit provides much-needed power for Disc priests.

I still don't particularly like haste. I have Penance. I have strong Shields. I have Borrowed Time. How much faster do you want? If I *really* need haste, I have Power Infusion in my back pocket.

So, for gearing priorities: spellpower, int, and crit is focus areas, followed by spirit, and trailed by mana/5 and haste. For gems, I like to put Brilliant in yellow slots, either Purified or Seer's in blue, and Luminous in red.

SHADOW

I'll admit, I'm kinda fuzzy on shadow gearing. I know spirit is good, but crit is now very tasty and it stands to reason that haste is powerful as well. And you can't forget good ol' spellpower, even though it's no longer the basis of the build's regen capabilities. I don't know.

I think for disc priests it simply doesn't matter whether your gear has mp5 or spirit, but as far as I understand it, you're better to stack either spirit or mp5 rather than to have a mix of both. You'll be looking to stack plenty of intellect; if you're relying on spirit based regen the more spirit you have, the more regen you get from your intellect and vice versa. If you go for a mix of spirit and mp5, you won't get as much spirit-based regen per point of spirit. Replenishment does not depend on spirit, so you'll still get good regen from intellect if you choose mp5. It seems dps clothies benefit more from spirit than they used to, they're not really trying to stack it, but it feels to me that there is more competition from other clothies for spirit items than there is mp5 items.

Haste - I quite like it! Worth taking if you feel that you have enough regen.


Edited, May 1st 2009 11:48am by Helluna

Edit: I was getting myself confused, it doesn't really matter if you mix spirit/mp5

Edited, May 13th 2009 7:02am by Helluna

I don't see that tbh. The thing is that having loads of either doesn't make the value per point of the other less worth. As disc you've got no talents that rely on spirit at all. Correct me if my maths are wrong, but;

I currently have 783 spirit which gives me 448 mana regeneration every 5 seconds while not in combat, which equals 448/2=224 mana regeneration in combat purely through spirit. Which means that 783/224=3,49 (or 3,5) points of spirit are needed for one point of mp5. Whereas you need 1mp5 for.... 1mp5. And seeing as the two don't influence eachother, that would mean that mp5 > spirit unless the item in question has 3,5 times as much spirit as the other one has mp5.

tl;dr Skip to the last paragraph for your assignment =D

I've done some reading on other forums (mainly EJ and shadowpriest.com) and have come across stat weights that have been mathematically derived based on throughput and efficiency (hps and hpm). I won't review the math here; I would think that is outside the scope of this thread. I think the OP has listed the benefits and drawbacks of each, but I would like to address the issue of mp5 vs Spirit.

For Holy and Shadow, Spirit provides an addition to both throughput and efficiency, allowing an excellent choice for balancing the two main concerns of any tree -how much damage/healing you can provide, and how long you can sustain it. You can stack Spirit until your regen is enough to fuel you through a normal boss encounter and then forego that stat in favor of pure throuhghput. (In a perfect scenario, the boss would die just as you use the last of your mana after shadowfiend and potting.)

Mp5, while widely cosidered a "healing stat" is probably a hindrance for Holy in developing a well rounded kit. But, realistically, it cannot be avoided while upgrading equipment. There are many pieces of equipment that can either be for dps or healing (sans mp5 or hit), but unless you are in a group that is gearing you up specifically, odds are good that some of your upgrades will have mp5 on it.

For Discipline, mp5 has less consequences. Since Spirit is only a regen stat, equal amounts of mp5 can be swapped out for Spirit. The only question becomes, "How much is equal?" Spirit scales with talents and buffs, so the ratio becomes a bit blurred. Enlightenment and BoK are percentages, and scale with Spirit. So the ratio can fluctuate depending on your group. For the most part, I have used a 10:3 ratio of Spirit to mp5, to lowball the comparison. For the record, most standards use somewhere between 3:1 and 5:2 ratio, but I prefer to undervalue mp5.

The one thing about mp5 that stands out among the other stats is its static nature. Barring a Blizzard change to actual gear, this stat will never be affected by anything! It may be minimized or maximized by events and gear, but since it is a rate and not a rating, it is not affected by level, buffs, patches or procs. In a game where RNG holds your fate in its hands and all values are variables, 10 mp5 is always 10 mp5.

Enough of this talk... let me pose a situation and a "What would you do?" You currently have this necklace. You're tooling around Ulduar and this drops. As a discipline priest, I know I would upgrade it without a second thought. What about Holy or Shadow priests? (I know folks would look at you funny if a Spriest rolled, but just for the purpose of comparison here.) What would you consider when deciding?