The Light and How to Swing It: How to compare intellect and spirit in Mists of Pandaria
by Chase Christian 
Jan 15th 2012 at 6:00PM
With Mists of Pandaria coming up on the horizon, many holy paladins are looking ahead to the changes that the expansion will bring. Most of the talent and ability info is still very malleable at this point, and as such, I haven't begun to worry or get excited just yet. One thing that we do know is that in Mists, intellect will finish the transformation that it started in Cataclysm. Intellect is going to become a throughput-only stat, as it will stop increasing our maximum mana.
Today, intellect and longevity are nearly synonymous. Replenishment and Divine Plea are two of our largest mana sources, and they both scale off of our intellect. Most paladins are sporting intellect gems and trinkets, and intellect flasks and food fill up our bags. Holy paladins have been leaning on intellect for a long time due to its versatility, and it seemed like the decision to roll spell power into intellect would permanently ensure intellect's role as our best stat. By decoupling intellect and mana, the developers are changing everything we know about gearing a healer.
Forced to choose
Today, holy paladins are able to have their Conjured Mana Cake and eat it too. Intellect gives us everything we could want out of a single stat. Blizzard's developers are forcing us to choose between the two most important aspects of healing: throughput and regeneration.
While I loved being able to socket my gear mindlessly with Brilliant Inferno Rubies, I understand that creating tension between stats ultimately results in a more interesting gearing environment. Our secondary stats are almost to the point now where all three are balanced, and moving intellect and spirit to that same system makes sense. We need to learn how to handle the balance between intellect and spirit now.
Fixed mana pools for everyone
The key change in Mists is that intellect will no longer provide us with 15 mana per point, effectively fixing the size of our mana pools. While we'll still have mana pools up in the six-digit range, they won't see any increase from tier to tier. Every raiding holy paladin will end up with the same amount of maximum mana. We don't know how Divine Plea, Replenishment, or Arcane Torrent will scale under this model, but my money is on spirit becoming a factor here. As a thought, I wouldn't mind seeing Arcane Torrent grant us holy power points instead of mana in Mists.
Because every holy paladin starts with the same mana pool, the only differentiator in our longevity will be spirit. If one holy paladin has more spirit than another, then they have more longevity. It's as simple as that. Rather than trying to figure out whether one paladin's extra intellect makes up for the other's spirit trinkets, spirit will simply be the first and last word. Need more longevity? Get spirit. It will be as simple as that.
Intellect can still save mana
While intellect itself isn't going to increase our mana pool or affect any of our regeneration mechanics, it can still save us some mana. If the increase throughput that we see from intellect allows us to use fewer heals to get the job done, we've saved mana by using less mana. Intellect allows us to deal more healing per mana point spent, which means that the mana we do have goes further.
How do we figure out what we need more of? If our raid members are dying because they're taking too much damage, we probably need more intellect. If people are dying because we ran out of mana, then we probably need more spirit. Outside of those two simply scenarios, we will have to dig into the details of the encounter at hand and the healing environment in order to figure out whether intellect or spirit is the most effective choice.
What do we stack now?
Holy paladins are going to have some soul searching to do when Mists of Pandaria goes live. We don't have to worry about balancing our throughput stats against our longevity stats today, and so it's going to be a tough transition period for us. We are still going to need intellect to strengthen our heals; it's not going anywhere as our primary stat. Spirit isn't even necessarily getting any stronger -- it will just be the only game left in town when it comes to regeneration.
Today, we prioritize intellect and spirit gear over everything else. Haste, crit, and mastery are merely the secondary stats for us. It's not like we can reforge the intellect on our gear to spirit, since intellect is still technically a primary stat. The question is going to come down to the flex spots on our gear, like enchants, gems, and trinkets. The choice between intellect and spirit is going to be a tough one to make, and I imagine that it will depend heavily on the healing environment we raid in and the specific tier we're facing. I can easily imagine swapping in my spirit trinkets for a longer fight and then swapping back to intellect trinkets for a fight with incredibly heavy incoming damage.
The Light and How to Swing It: Holy helps holy paladins become the powerful healers we're destined to be. Find out just how masterful mastery healing can be, gear up with the latest gear, and learn how to PvP as a holy paladin.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
shatnerstorm2 Jan 15th 2012 6:13PM
The best part is that once this change comes, not every class that uses a mana bar will be suckered into buying pure intellect gems/enchants, unlike now. Can't wait to see the prices for spirit gems/enchants even out a bit with the intellect ones. I expect Purified (Int/Spirit) cuts to be quite popular come MoP.
Apple Jan 16th 2012 1:37AM
This is a good point. The market for red gems is absurd, and I'm not eager to spend half my gold on Brilliant Panda Rubies on week three of MoP to get raid-viable.
mamaryno Jan 15th 2012 6:19PM
Well, it wouldn't be a real patch or expac if we didnt have to re-learn our class. And I thought Monk was the new MoP class?
Katherine Jan 16th 2012 3:55PM
The only problem with changing gearing is that they never change the itemisation on lower level gear.
hamsammich Jan 15th 2012 6:36PM
I really wish they'd stop screwing with everything so much. There's always been a hardcore vs. casual fight in this game, and it's becoming more and more a matter of being required to be a min/maxer/semi-hardcore player in order to even be viable in groups.
I don't have time to live, eat, sleep and breathe whether or not I've got a bag full of swappable trinkets, gear and food for any given scenario. If they'd stick with a design and quit screwing it up, the player base would still be at all-time highs.
Ace Jan 15th 2012 7:13PM
You have to be a min/maxer to be viable now more than before?
Its easier than ever to be viable as a casual now. I really don't see where you're getting this logic from...
thawedtheorc Jan 16th 2012 4:09AM
I used to feel the same way you did, but honestly the classes have become easier to balance over the years and look to do so even more in MoP. Plus it really keeps the game interesting and in most of the classes I play, I have found a few to be much more fun to play than 4 years ago.
Plus.. the whole casual vs hardcore stuff mainly comes from a niche group of players who just like to complain a lot. It's a regurgitated 'sound byte'. The fact is, some people call themselves hardcore simply because they have an enormous amount of time to play WoW. But most of the raiders in our guild play less than most, but we focus on raids and have a few realm firsts. Now are we casual or hardcore? We really are pretty casual, but we use our heads and study our classes and strats because we like to do so.
See what I did there?
RyanMN Jan 16th 2012 2:50PM
Oh Ham, you made the foolish mistake of being critical of Blizzard. That simply doesn't fly on this site and it never, ever has. Even the most well reasoned criticism of the great and powerful Blizz will result in a quick rate-down by the sycophants that constitute the readership here.
That being said, I agree with you. Blizzard's approach to changes has been baffling at times as of late. They take mechanics that have often been part of the game since its inception, remove them then replace them with a new mechanic that is often far less logical and intuitive. This is usually done under the pretext that they want to force people out of "cookie cutter" specs and gear. The sad irony is that the game is more simplified and cookie-cutter now than it's ever been.
Before the inevitable mass rate down begins for my post, perhaps one or two of you could actually think about writing a reply with a well reasoned opinion as to why I'm wrong. I very well could be, after all this is just my opinion. But a civil discussion as to why I'm wrong rather than just a mass rate-down for criticizing the infallible Blizzard would be a wonderful surprise.
Don Jan 15th 2012 7:10PM
What a shame. It started out so well. And It can be such a rascal at times as you've shown for after the first few sentences It appeared and your intellect outsmarted Itself. All the while It was wondering how deep we must be mesmerized with all the word wrappings and intertwined warpings of confusion, all under the mask of clarity. Confused?- your Machiavellian clarity, yes. Befuddled?- Your quest for intellect,very likely. Disappointed: For me, Yes I am, as there was such great potential got lost in Itself, once It wandered off on Its own
Alysandir Jan 15th 2012 8:34PM
Wait! I think it's trying to communicate with us!
Everclear Jan 15th 2012 7:21PM
'Cause that' what this game needs: To make healing even more annoying.
Alysandir Jan 15th 2012 8:33PM
Raise your hand if you remember Blizzard saying something like, "We want healers to be able to contribute in ways *other* than healing," or "Damage in encounters will be much more even and manageable compared to Wrath," at the start of Cata. Did either of these really come to pass? No. Damage was as spiky as it ever was and if you stopped healing long enough to "contribute in other ways," your group wiped.
So, honestly? I give a great big "meh" to this latest news. Blizzard wants to muck with the healing model yet again...fine. No matter how Blizzard spins it, It will suck being a healer from the start, ignorant PUGs will scream at you for being a baddie, but eventually you'll adapt and figure out how Blizzard intends for you to heal THIS go around. It's happened to me so many times now I've actually earned the Feat of Strength "Rocket Surgery - relearned healing class in less than one week after content release."
-Alys
Matt Jan 15th 2012 10:25PM
^This!
I absolutely hated the first month or so of the expansion as far as grouping went. It wasn't difficult encounters or not knowing fights that made things frustrating, it was people constantly standing in bad screaming about how they were dying or refusing to CC mobs because it was "unnecessary".
I was really hoping for a bigger change to the current healing model. I really like Disc. priest right now and their ability to cause damage while healing. Obviously the damage isn't as good as a straight DPS'er (except in some groups...), but it felt much more active than just spamming heals the entire fight, barely taking your eye off player health bars. I'd like to see each healer get a similar option. It doesn't even have to be damage, it could be something like applying powerful short duration buffs to party/raid members, or debuffs and other annoyances to mobs. Instead of just constantly healing through wave after wave of damage, force us to be a little more diverse in our actions.
don22u Jan 15th 2012 10:29PM
How about "I feel your pain"
or
"can't we all just get along"
Snowstorm or otherwise
Philster043 Jan 16th 2012 3:44AM
Yeah, I was too afraid to heal dungeons at the outset of Cataclysm so I waited a very long time until I got totally comfortable with the new healing mechanics. I don't even know when it happened, but one day it just clicked, and I was on my way. But it took a while.
thawedtheorc Jan 16th 2012 4:18AM
You pegged it perfectly. The first week of Cata, I spent so many hours just trying to get through healing Stonecore. From tanks that loved to hop and spin.. causing melee to be flayed to death to the Wrath AOE fanatics who turned loose a microsecond after the tank pulled. Let us not forget the bugs... the bugs in that damned place.
I hated that week until I started running with players I know. This time around I am avoiding pugs for the first week or two, so I can save my sanity.
My tank and dps classes have become much more fun to play, but yeah.. healing being my main.. I feel an anxiousness before every run that is just not there on my tank or dps classes.
So please dear God, Blizz... if we are going to go OOM early on.. can you please add a tutorial for CC this time.
Jack Mynock Jan 16th 2012 12:51AM
This is a bad change, imo, but whatever... I'm sure in the end Holy Pallies will still have near infinite mana. The caveat was always: "We want mana to matter for healers... except holy paladins."
Philster043 Jan 16th 2012 3:43AM
I'm not a paladin but a priest, but I did find this article interesting as it helped me understand the changes that MoP is going to bring for our mana. Thanks for writing this.
Imnick Jan 16th 2012 6:26AM
Why would Arcane Torrent grant holy power?
It's a racial! Wouldn't that be fairly overpowered?
Phredreeke Jan 16th 2012 8:20AM
This isn't really healer related but mana classes and manaless classes work fairly different.
Mana classes mana determines how long they can keep casting without going OOM (not counting arcane mage mastery).
Manaless classes consume their resources much faster than mana classes. When was the last time you cast a spell that cost 60% of your mana bar? On the flipside they generate their resources (and in case of warriors and death knights start out empty) much faster than mana classes.
So for a mana class Arcane Torrent just means increased longevity, for a manaless class it means slight extra burst damage every 2 minutes. Of course Arcane Torrent is most powerful in PvP where its 2 sec silence is killer.