Raid Rx: Throughput, regeneration and secondary stats
by Matt Low 
Apr 15th 2011 at 4:00PM
This ends up being the same question that new players keep asking that has spanned multiple expansions. The war between throughput and regeneration continues to be debated. Really, though, there isn't much to discuss because you can't really compare the two on the same scale.
Throughput refers to the strength and impact your spells make. Intellect, critical strike rating, mastery and haste affect that to some degree, depending on your class. Regeneration is largely about your mana pool and the rate at which you gain mana back. Without mana, no spells can be cast. Intellect and spirit are the main stats here. They both affect different parts of your game, and I hesitate whenever I'm asked to pit the two against each other.
There are two routes to victory when deciding on a raid composition strategy:
- Sacrifice a healer slot in favor of a DPS player for additional damage. This means bosses will die faster, meaning your healers don't have to heal as much or as long. That's about five to six healers in a 25-player raid.
- Go for the endurance race and pull in an extra healer in order to run a controlled strategy that involves gradually chipping away at boss health. This tends to involve seven to eight healers in a 25-player raid.
The case for throughput
The boss you're taking on has a tight enrage timer. Your DPS is going to have to play loose with a variety of environmental mechanics and will be taking extra damage. They're largely doing it to try to squeeze a little extra DPS. That means an extra tick of fire here or getting hit by an AoE there. No big deal. As healers, we prefer players who minimize unnecessary damage. As realistic healers, we know that isn't always the case. We'd be delusional in expecting crisp and perfect play, unless you're in a top-ranking world guild.
Anything that makes your healing hit harder and faster is appealing. If you can keep a player alive with one spell instead of two, you can use that second cast on someone else who is caught in a similarly bad situation. It also means you need to heal smarter in the long run and pay attention to your addons if they have an incoming heal indicator -- no sense waste healing spells on someone who is about to get some (which you shouldn't be doing, no matter which way you lean).
The case for regeneration
You're learning the ropes of an encounter. The enrage timer is a non-issue. This is the kind of fight in which you need to stretch out your mana. The DPS players you have with you are slightly below average. When it comes to endurance healing, this is the favored approach, since it allows you to last longer. Additional intellect and spirit are weighted more compared to other secondary stats.
Okay, to be fair, intellect is always going to be the must-have stat, no matter what.
You might even want to consider talents that provide additional ways for you to get mana back, like Telluric Currents. Personally, I've debated grabbing Veiled Shadows on some fights. Having a Shadowfiend a full minute earlier when I'm gasping for mana would be a life-saver. My guild is taking shots at heroic Maloriak. After exhausting all my mana cooldowns and potions, I find that I'm about 30 seconds away from having a Shadowfiend available when I have nothing left in the tank. So I'm going to modify my holy spec to incorporate it, to see if it'll generate positive results.
The next time you're placed in a situation comparing throughput and regeneration, take a minute and say that the two can't really be compared since they serve different aspects of your character. If secondary stats (such as mastery, haste or critical strike) are the ones being compared, that's a different story that has different answers based on your class.
Vive la difference
Speaking of secondary stats, are you in a guild where you are not the lone healer representative of your class? For example, you might be one of two holy paladins. I have a question for you: Do you deviate slightly in your spec or reforges? I want to know how many healers match each other spec for spec and reforge for reforge. It seems that healers have been conditioned to favor a specific spec and stat allocation. In guilds where there are more of your class, would it not make sense to have a slight variety in playstyle?
I have two holy paladins in my guild. One has expressed interest in favoring critical strike and mastery (which is getting modified in patch 4.1), while the other is opting for a haste approach. One paladin would be perfect for exclusively tank healing, while the other paladin is a healing turret in plate going wild on players within the raid. Seems like an interesting idea, and I'm curious to see how it'll play out after the patch. I'm not sure if that same duality approach can be applied to other classes.
Let me know in the comments if this is a practice your raid group does and if your group engages in 10- or 25-player content. I'm curious to see what your thoughts are on the matter.
Need advice on working with the healers in your guild? Raid Rx has you covered. Send your questions about raid healing to mattl@wowinsider.com. For less healer-centric raiding advice, visit Ready Check for advanced tactics and advice for the endgame raider.
Filed under: Raid Rx (Raid Healing), Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
jfofla Apr 15th 2011 4:05PM
Until 4.1 Mastery is low man on the Totem Pole for Holy Pallies.
Then we will see.
Vorken Apr 15th 2011 6:26PM
I agree with the Holy Pally columnist here that our mastery will ALWAYS be garbage until they allow the bubbles to stack like Valynaar.
Finnicks Apr 15th 2011 4:16PM
In my raid group, we have two druids (myself and another) and a shaman healing.
At the beginning of our raiding adventures, I was a "Spirit stacker" and Ganjja (the other druid) was an "Intellect stacker".
I had something like 2500 spirit and 85k mana, and he had something like 1800 spirit and 110k mana.
As we were first learning encounters, he was going OOM a great deal faster than I was, but had stronger output until that point. He was convinced that more mana meant more regeneration because Innervate scales with maximum mana, but was finding that his lack of spirit-based regen was preventing him from stretching his mana to the end of the encounter.
Meanwhile, my output was a little weaker, but I was having relatively few mana issues. Of course, once he would go OOM, we would loose a lot of our raid healer capability and wipes would follow in those cases due to my weaker personal output.
As raiding went on, the two of us have slowly shifted to a more balanced approach. I regemmed to Intellect and started only keeping spirit in blue slots (was using a lot of Int/Spirit gems in red slots and mastery/spirit gems in yellow slots). He started enchanting, reforging, and gemming for more spirit (using Int/Spirit in blue slots instead of gemming straight int, for example).
He still had more intellect than I do, and I still have more spirit than he does, but now he lasts much longer and my throughput is much higher: I generally do the most healing in encounters out of the three healers now, and my mana lasts longer.
TL;DR: Don't stack intellect or spirit. In general, a balanced approach is your best bet. Spirit is your #1 secondary stat as a healer (surpassing mastery, haste, and crit), but if you can put intellect on it, do it. That means red slots get Int, yellow slots get Int/(haste/mastery/crit) or pure int, and blue gets (Int/Spirit). Enchant for int whenever possible. And reforge for Spirit whenever possible.
Darren Apr 15th 2011 4:44PM
Going OOM is often as much or more playstyle and spell choices than the stats on your gems. In my raids we have 2 holy paladins. The other has superior gear to mine by a decent margin (probably 4-5 ilvl higher) yet my throughput is almost always much better. As a result I usually have to make much higher use of my mana regen cd's. Although it's rare that I'll go OOM prior to the end of a fight, I'll often be very close at the end. The other Paladin will have 50%+ most of the time by comparison... though he does 10% less healing during the fight. I'll spam my strong heal and big aoe where he hits a lot of holy lights that are cheap. We both gem int though, no spirit unless it might be a sweet socket bonus.
I guess in a long round about way, what I'm saying is that what you're seeing may not be int v. spirit. IMHO int is always the better choice though as it provides throughput and regen (evne if its less regen). Perhaps your other healer was going OOM not simply because of spirit but also with your lower throughput, he felt forced to use more expensive heals to get the job done while he could. If both of you had high (int) throughput (and didn't heal snipe) maybe you'd find that both of you casting less, but more powerful spells, neither went OOM.
Syxia Apr 15th 2011 4:19PM
Is that MSBT for your damage?
amnbrownie Apr 15th 2011 4:54PM
We're too short for 25 mans, and have 2 10s running. We don't have quite the same issue you are asking about, as in 2 of a particular class, but we tailor our specs to fill gaps. Right now we have a holy pally, finally a shammy back (boy was I missing mana tide) and myself in a holy raid healing spec.
Our pally focuses on spirit and haste, shammy on spirit mastery, and I have spirit and a few pieces of mastery or haste that I switch in, depending on the fight (I like mastery except for H. Chimaeron- in most cases it's not really necessary to get everyone topped up asap, so mastery lets me take it easy)
I am primarily the raid healer, and I do have issues with mana if I go all out the whole fight. I generally take it easy on the low damage times and just use my most efficient heals. Our pally will primarily cover the tanks, and our shaman will cover the accidental emergencies up until big raid damage (feud, maloriak's red phase, nef electrocute, etc) then I go all out with all the throughput I can. Works well for us.
Revynn Apr 15th 2011 4:57PM
Off topic, but . .
- "My guild is taking shots at heroic Maloriak."
I are jealous. =\
We're stuck at 11/12 and instead of pushing for a Nef kill and getting into hard modes we've spent the last few weeks trying to get our 25 progression caught up with 10s and 25 attendance is sketchy enough that we basically have to start over and reteach people fights every week.
I really want that title . . .
rlspaulding Apr 15th 2011 5:12PM
Heh I'm also a little off topic.....but as a priest healer I wanted to say Disc on maloriak is a much less mana consuming choice. I heal everyone, not just raid or just tanks, and normally am holy but not for this fight. I recommend trying it out ;) Atonement is the shyt.
Mycroft Apr 15th 2011 5:58PM
I've been wondering if I have too much spirit, as opposed to other secondary stats. With buffs, I have 120k mana and 3000 spirit. The Darkmoon Card Tsunami is a big part of that, and Heartsong procs often. I innervate early and often, usually trying to time it with a Mandala of Stirring Patterns proc.
I still go oom, but usually after I've spent some time in full-on panic mode, making bad decisions about spell choices. Like using regrowth spam in treeform. If I could work to train myself out of that, I'm sure I could do with cutting back on the spirit, and/or retalenting out of the efficiency talents in balance.
Already I know when I get a non-blue weapon I'll throw power torrent on instead of heartsong.
Continuous Apr 15th 2011 6:38PM
Off topic but Veiled Shadow links to Teluric Currents.
Necromus Apr 15th 2011 8:02PM
In regards to your question about reforging to match a guildie with the same class and spec, I basically choose my own spec based on online research and taking my own play style into consideration. If I notice someone with similar gear, class and role is outperforming me substantially then I will take a look at their talents and glyphs to see what they are doing different than I am and see if I can change anything to improve. I do go out of my way to take talents that I know no other people the same class and the same role as me have to add more utility to raids.
Shepherd57 Apr 16th 2011 12:58PM
For us druids, one natures swiftness, and one without. The MS druid also has living seed for tank healing
njs132 Apr 19th 2011 11:13AM
As a resto shammy, I have seen 2 trains of thought on the secondary stat stacking for healing, and both are effective - stacking haste/spirit and stacking mastery. The stacking of haste past the 916 threshold allows for quicker chain heals and snipe healing on raiders, although the effectiveness of each heal is less than a shaman who stacks mastery. Obviously, this type of healing has to focus on more spirit, as quicker throughput leads to more mana usage. Stacking mastery, on the other hand, allows for more effective heals but slower, especially on fights like chimaeron, which balances out the slower throughput. This will get a big boost when 4.1 hits, but it's pretty effective right now. Having a mix of these 2 healers is pretty nice, and I've seen it effectively used. I'm sure this can be related to the other healing specs as well.