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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsRaid Rx: Is that DPS gear or healing gear?
by Matt Low 
Aug 5th 2010 at 6:00PM
Thanks to Dawn and Allison for filling in for me while I was away at Laguna Seca. Dawn did an excellent job discussing pointers about paladin-less healing. Maybe the next time I join a raid that doesn't have a holy paladin, it won't take hours to get off the ground. Then Allison comes along discussing what is considered good and bad when applying to guilds. What's scary is that some of those seem familiar. It's as if she looked at one of my guild applications years ago.
Got an email this week from a reader. We'll call him G. I'm sure it's a question that many raid leaders or loot masters had to struggle with over the years.
[...] When cloth item A drops, our caster DPS and healers always /roll on it; the caster DPS doesn't seem to mind if it's MP5 or spirit. Let's take an example of the Cord of the Patronizing Practitioner. Our warlock says spirit is good for him and he /rolls; our priest says it's healer gear [because] of the spirit [as] regeneration for him; and our mage of course wants this also.
The healer complains the caster DPS gets to roll not only on items like this but also on cloth stuff with +hit, effectually rolling on everything cloth in ICC. I can kinda see what he means. My question is what's an easy way to differentiate "healer" gear from caster "DPS" gear, or is it all rolled into one big pot now?
Thanks for any help you can give me, I am not the guild leader but I am the full time loot master, the guild leader has given it to me to decide, as he's never played any caster at all.
Well, G, I don't have a lot of DPS toons myself, but I'll do my best to explain it. The loot system I use is loot council for my raiding guild, and this is a situation we deal with in an ongoing basis as loot drops from bosses.
- Paladin loot is self-explanatory.
- MP5 is generally a healing stat.
- Crit and haste are beneficial for both roles.
- attendance
- performance
- gear needs
- level of content
- seniority in guild or raid group
- spec
If you're deciding gear on the fly, then use the following purely as a rule of thumb.
- Hit If it has hit rating, it's generally used for DPS players. They need that hit rating to hit mobs. Contrary to whatever you may hear in trade chat, you don't need hit gear to heal people. If a healer says to you he needs the hit in order to heal, get yourself a new healer right now.
- Spirit Usually, the healers will want to claim priority on it first. But I believe mages and warlocks have abilities that convert spirit into a desirable stat, such as Molten Armor and Fel Armor.
- MP5 If you see this on gear, option it to your healers first. I can see situations where extremely undergeared DPS would want it since it could possibly be an upgrade no matter what.
- Crit It's universal for both roles. It's not necessarily wrong for a healer to take a crack at it. It's an item that will benefit either.
- Haste Like crit, haste is also beneficial. Having more haste means you can do stuff way faster, the more haste rating you have. Who doesn't want to do things faster? DPS players want haste so they can fire off more spells. Healers want more haste so they unload heals more quickly.
Gear for paladins
This is fairly straightforward. Protection- and retribution-specced paladins want nothing to do with spell power. Holy paladins can't seem to get enough of it. Your gear will have varying amounts of MP5, haste and crit depending on the level of content you're doing. Since you don't have any competition, feel free to go nuts.
For stuff like trinkets and weapons, if mana isn't a problem for you, then you'll typically want to lean toward something with haste and crit over MP5. A perfect example would be Belt of the Lonely Noble.
Don't let me catch you going after spirit weapons (until Cataclysm, at least).
Gear for shaman
Unlike paladins, there are two shaman specs that both utilize spellpower. Elemental and restoration shamans want spellpower, but the wishes of the preferred secondary specs are going to vary. Follow the same outline as above. At higher levels when mana isn't an issue, it's not uncommon for a resto shaman to want mail gear with haste and crit rating. If you're the loot master, keep in mind that both will benefit from an item like a Split Shape Belt. There's no hit rating on it, so it doesn't scream "DPS," but there is a ton of haste and crit.
An item like the Mail of Crimson Coins is going to garner more interest from a resto shaman than anyone else.
Gear for druids
While spirit isn't entirely useless for balance druids, you may wish to pass it off to a resto druid first in case they need extra regeneration. While I admit I'm not as well versed with healing druids as I should be, from what I understand, they value haste more than crit. Get that global cooldown all the way down, right?
Gear for priests
Last but not least, this is the trickiest, as there is an abundance of cloth-wearing classes. There always seems to be some type of feud going on, especially when it comes to gear drops. Follow the same rules as outlined above.
Let's use the item that was mentioned in the original question. A belt like the Cord of the Patronizing Practitioner will benefit a mage, a warlock or a priest. It does have spirit on it, and normally that would go straight to a healer. But don't forget that those DPS classes have talents which convert spirit into an offensive friendly stat.
Hope that helps with the gear resolution!
Want some more advice for working with the healers in your guild? Raid Rx has you covered with all there is to know! Need raid or guild healing advice? Email me at matticus@wow.com and you could see a future post addressing your question. Looking for less healer-centric raiding advice? Take a look at our raiding column, Ready Check. Filed under: Druid, Mage, Priest, Shaman, Raiding, Raid Rx (Raid Healing)
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 5)
Kittens Aug 5th 2010 10:49PM
Better make that: 'if your warlock is using Glyph of Lifetap'
It is one of the best glyphs available for locks, and pretty much all affli locks you come across should and will have it. It can give an insanely good buff, and all of the oomph of that buff comes from spirit.
http://www.wowhead.com/item=45785
theRaptor Aug 6th 2010 2:45AM
What are you on Kittens? That gives you 20% of your spirit as spellpower. So in other words each point of spirit on gear is worth 0.2 spellpower. If you go look at gear itemisation you will notice that 1 point of spellpower is not worth 5 points of spirit.
Those sorts of buffs are to cover SUB-OPTIMAL gearing. My spriest has +spirit pieces and gets at least 0.3 spellpower for every point of spirit, but it is totally sub-optimal and if I could replace those pieces with non-spirit gear my DPS would benefit much more.
Spirit isn't GOOD for mages/locks/spriest it just isn't completely WASTED like +hit is for a healer.
krko Aug 6th 2010 6:14AM
@theRaptor
So you're going to completely ignore Fel Armor and Demonic Aegis, huh? Those three combined make for 59% spirit to SP conversion. Basically as long as a Warlock is using the glyph of life tap, Spirit is a good stat for them. In particular, Demo locks really like spirit since it makes their Demonic Pact larger while Destro wants it until their gear make Glyph of Imp/Immolate better than Lifetap. I dunno about afflication though.
supracom Aug 5th 2010 6:59PM
Hunter drop. Clearly.
Redielin Aug 5th 2010 8:06PM
Yes that is true Brett. However, Say you are a resto Shammy and you've got, say, all ilvl 325 gear (w/e on the ilvl just a number to work from). Except your leg slot is currently ilvl 300. Now, the benefit from wearing a piece of ilvl 325 cloth with the right stats may actually outweigh the drawback from wearing a piece of cloth instead of wearing a piece of mail. A cloth wearer will always have that problem, while a mail/plate/leather wearer has that problem to much less of a degree.
Its an unaviodable consequence of homogenizing stats. Eventually, there's an ilvl difference where the cloth is better.
They'll have to make the mail benefit pretty high, and put a warning in for nubs who might not realize what they're doing when they roll on off-armor class pieces.
elkar67 Aug 5th 2010 7:31PM
As of patch 3.3.3 "Life Tap: This spell no longer scales with spirit, and instead scales with spell power." Spirit still benefits Fel armor, but spell power > spirit for a lock...especially of the demo variety.
Pauguster Aug 5th 2010 8:09PM
Yes but the bonus to spellpower received from glyphing Life Tap still comes from spirit.
mor8idhomogenosuicide Aug 5th 2010 9:48PM
You don't have Warlock do you?
And if you do, why aren't you glyphing Life Tap for 20% of your Spirit back as Spellpower?
It really isn't the extra mana from life tap that makes/made Spirit good for 'locks, it's the 20% Spellpower conversion from GoLT. :P
netty Aug 6th 2010 8:40AM
For priests, Holy generally would want Spirit, not MP5 because of the Spiritual Guidance talent, while MP5 works out marginally better for Disc (very littledifference in that though, and a lot of disc prefer spirit because of the utility for their Holy or Shadow off-specs).
No other cloth wearers would want MP5 gear, and spirit comes third behind haste and crit for all cloth dps except Demo warlocks with Demonic Pact, who get over 60% of spirit converted to SpellPower, which helps DP become such a hugely OP raid buff.
Demo 'locks also love haste, so that belt is has the perfect stats for them. It's not ideally specced for any other dps - at best its going to just be a gap filler until they find a haste/crit alternative.
Pacem Aug 5th 2010 7:32PM
I understand why Blizzard nerfed the +healing and +damage, and made the gear usable for more classes. That was a good idea in my opinion. I just wish the caster dps would start realizing this...that it makes it available for more than just one class. Instead they mostly seem to say that anything that doesn't have mp5 isn't healing gear.
These items are supposed to be sort of a "free for all" for clothies ...right?
Can anyone suggest a way for me to tell those people in my raids that those certain items are NOT caster dps only...without me sounding like I am blowing smoke out of my ...well you know.
I can for now refer to this topic here...but not sure if they will all read this.
Pyromelter Aug 5th 2010 7:50PM
Seeing as how no cloth in current tiers have mp5, I really don't understand how people can make that argument. Any cloth with intellect and without hit is potentially a good piece for a healer. I mean, look at items like Trauma and Royal Scepter of Terenas. Pretty much BiS healer items right there, no spirit, no mp5 on either of them. Why it would be different for any other item slot is beyond me, and I'd just have to guess if you are being denied those items without a chance to get them over dps, you have a bad loot system.
Those items are indeed meant to be free for all for all clothies.
Just remind people that there is no mp5 on any cloth. (Spirit, yes, but mp5, no.) And if they are still not allowing you to roll on stuff, just find people who are not so stupid with loot distribution.
Terethall Aug 5th 2010 7:44PM
Spirit is better for warlocks than crit. It is neutral for clothies, like haste or crit. Hit is dps, mp5 is healer. SP, haste, crit, and spirit are neutral on cloth.
Sumadin Aug 5th 2010 9:54PM
Being a holy paladin i would say that there are at least 2 cases where the ”hit for dps” rule is … well up to debate.
Seethe from the Devourer of Souls heroic is the best healing weapon a holy paladin can currently find in a 5-man, period. The mage and warlock can rage as much as they want, it is not going to stop us from rolling on it.
Rigormortis from Putricide is the best paladin healing weapon in icc 25man BEFORE LK. While i do agree that the guild officers should give the dps priority on this sword, they should give it to the paladin before they let it roll for offspec.
What i want to say here is that there may be unwritten rules for what makes a caster weapon a caster weapon. But what to do when all the suposed healing weapons are pure trash (looking at you Trauma)?
Alfred_Von_Roflburger Aug 5th 2010 11:39PM
The holy paladin gearing choices are incorrect there. Haste/Mp5 is better, no matter what your mana is like, simply because it means you have to divine plea less - crits mana returns are also roughly 50% that of MP/5 as it stands, and the spiky healing can't really be measured per se. So crit is pretty much what MP5 was in Ulduar.
brian.lanciki Aug 6th 2010 9:53AM
Why try and gear Mp5 so you have to Divine Plea less? You limit yourself by bypassing crit to get Mp5 on gear. Haste/Mp5 gear limits you to HL spam style, Crit/Mp5 gear limits you to FoL spam (basically. It's a little more complicated that that obviously). Holy Pallys benefit most from crit/haste/sp gear (which is not found on a lot of plate). With that itemization, you can pretty much use both HL spam and FoL spam styles without having to swap gear. You just have to learn when to DP to keep your mana up.
gamerunknown Aug 5th 2010 11:38PM
Lots of holy priest underestimate the value of spirit. In PUG raids and 5 mans you cannot guarantee an emergency coordinated hymn of hope + innerv + shadowfiend/mana tide to get you straight back to full mana in any situation. In guild raids if you're forced to channel a full duration hymn of hope that will reduce your healing output dramatically for the duration.
With a 30k mana pool it took me just over 1 minute to go out of mana spamming holy nova. I was not getting replenishment for this time, but it is entirely possible to run out of mana in WotLK - though obviously not as large a concern as in BC.
Its hard to find one catch all PP value for Int, Spirit, Spellpower, Haste and Crit but the best I can offer you is that Zhinn of Paragon chooses spirit/haste items. An appeal to authority, but I can only imagine that people do not take into account that about 28% of the spirit they see on items will be converted to spellpower, or Holiday's Grace would not be more popular than Bone Sentinel's amulet.
Géhenne Aug 6th 2010 2:47AM
I, as an ex-raid healer (didn't play WoW in the lest 6 month), have always been on the lazy side (c: There are tools out there that help you with loot distribution, so why not use them? Here is what I did :
l posted this link on my guild forum : http://www.wow-loot.com/
Then I gave everyone the opportunity to react and to disagree with this list (which is not fault-free), and listed the discussed changes
After that i used the list + discussion as a guideline for loot distribution. Too lazy to read the forum? Too lazy to participate in the discussion? Do not complain now, its too late.
G.
PS : No native speaker here, sorry about the english...
Ghengie Aug 6th 2010 3:23AM
I understand G is in a pretty casual guild as they are using /roll to distribute loot. There is no penalty to grabbing an item, which means everybody will probably roll on every single drop that is slightly beneficial and a tiny bit better than their current item.
What is happening (and always happens in pugs) is that mr. random Warlock wins a pair of boots with spirit on it. Next boss some nice spirit gloves drop, which mr. Warlock also wins. After the raid, he is gemming/enchanting the stuff and then he realises he has dropped 60 hit below the cap. Therefore, next week, he'll be rolling again on a pair of gloves/boots that have hit to compensate.
Effectively, your raid is wasting a lot of gear by not optimalising the distribution.
Force all your raiders to research their best gear combination (for endgame HM guilds, you can find lists on elitist jerks). Otherwise, create the list based on available drops + expected progress on the short term. www.wowstead.com is a good resource for drops.
Allow raiders to roll only on gear on their list and only pick up the smaller upgrade if nobody else has a priority on that item. A cloth dps will end up with a mix of spi/hit/haste+crit items and a healer will end up with spi/mp5/haste+crit. There will be overlap as some items are good for both. (Spirit weapons kan be good for caster dps btw)
In my opinion swapping to a DKP system would be even better, but this requires some maintenance and starting this up late in the expension might cause more trouble than it is worth. A loot council is also an option, but unless you are in a really stable guild with experts on all classes, it is a potential guild-killer.
wonderjeff7 Aug 6th 2010 6:35AM
Matt, let's not forget that shadow priests get a bonus from Spirit too.
Araeyn Aug 6th 2010 2:33PM
I play a boomkin / resto druid, I think as far as itemization goes people dont realize that at times there is horrible itemization on leather in some specific slots. Take for example bracers in icc, I was really trying to reach the haste cap for my resto set and I couldnt find any that didnt have crit on them instead of haste. In general I make it a rule to only roll on cloth items after a suitable amount of time raiding somewhere, usually I will only take a cloth item if no other clothie wants it. Reasoning being you always run into a sitution where your next tier of armor wearing class rolls on the lower tier and then the next week their own armor class drops...waste of a piece.
Best advice is put some rules on loot if you are in a roll loot system. Imposing limits on loot makes people a lot more selective when rolling and a lot less likely that its going to go to waste and get disenchanted the very next week. It also helps when everyone is clear on what the rules are.