Should we be avoiding MP5 in our holy paladin gear? It’s in our holy tier gear and all over the place on casting plate items. It’d be work to balance upgrades to try and avoid it.
Siha, as described in her “Best In Slot Holy Paladin Gear List, v.1″ post on Banana Shoulders, generally thinks so.
In my opinion, ideal paladin gear has intellect, crit, haste (within reason; excess haste is useless) and spellpower, and doesn’t waste item budget on less valuable stats like spirit or mp5.
OK, but just how much less valuable are we talking about? In 25-man raids we get mana regen from all sorts of places, how much of that comes from MP5 from our gear?
In the last few days our guild’s 25-man raiding schedule has included Patchwerk, Sapphiron, Sarth 2D, and Malygos kills. Let’s take a look at WWS reports generated from the combat logs. We’re most interested in the ‘Energies and Dispells’ tab which lists the sources of our mana regen during the fights. Here’s an example screenshot from the Patchwerk fight.
That mysterious Mana Restore entry is the proc effect from the [Insightful Earthstorm Diamond] meta gem.
The WWS table lists the total amount of mana gained during the fight. For each fight, let’s divide that by the number of seconds in the fight and multiply by 5 to express each source of regen as MP5 for the duration of the fight.
Take a break for a quick second to marvel at the amount of mana we can get back from Seal of Wisdom if we manage to position ourselves properly. Notice that I didn’t gimp my healing with Divine Plea when I was able to hug the boss’ hit box. Get in there, healadins! OK, right, back to MP5.
Let’s choose 1500 MP5 as an average amount of mana regen from external sources.
Next, the MP5 that I was getting from gear in those runs:
[Pendant of Lost Vocations]: 12 MP5
[Valorous Redemption Spaulders]: 2 MP5
[Girdle of Unity]: 22 MP5
[Abetment Bracers]: 12 MP5
[Seized Beauty]: 15 MP5
A grand total of 63 MP5 from gear. Finally, we consider our talented Greater Blessing of Wisdom. It gives 91 * 1.20 = 109 MP5, bringing our total casting mana regen in the character sheet to 172.
Bring this all together and we see that, while casting, MP5 from our gear amounts to (63 / (172 + 1500)) * 100 = ~3.7% of our mana regen.
3.7%. That’s a pretty small number. Let’s put it in perspective. What could we get instead if our gear spent its stat budget on the other stats that we like instead of MP5? Stat budget 101. Gems of the same level and quality have the same stat budget. We can use them to compare different stats.
[Lustrous Sky Sapphire] = 6 MP5
[Smooth Autumn's Glow] = 16 Critial Strike Rating
[Quick Autumn's Glow] = 16 Haste Rating
[Runed Scarlet Ruby] = 19 Spell Power
For that 63 MP5 we could have 63 * (16 / 6) = 126 haste or crit rating or 63 * (19 / 6) = 189 spell power. How significant a portion of our haste, crit, or spell power would that be?
We should probably add the 15 * 32.79 = 492 haste rating from Judgements of the Pure. After raid buffs that 3.7% mana regen comes to roughly:
126 / (541 + 492) * 100 = 12% more haste
126 / (42.03 * 45.91) * 100 = 6.5% more crit
189 / 2211 * 100 = 8.5% more spell power
With the possible exception of that crazy amount of haste, I would gladly trade a measly 3.7% of casting mana regen for any one of those stats. Especially considering that more crit will lead to more mana regen from Illumination.
That’s what seals the deal for me. We get so much mana regen in raid encounters that the MP5 on gear gets lost in the noise. The stat budget that is spent on MP5 would be better spent on greater relative increases in our other important stats.
No gemming or enchanting for MP5 for me. [The Turning Tide] over [Torch of Holy Fire], every single time.
I’m not convinced that the fundamentals of this are going to change with patch 3.1. It seems like we’ll still have a significant gulf between the amount of MP5 on gear and the amount of mana we regen from other sources, even if they shake up the other sources a bit. I guess we’ll see. There’s certainly a lot of plate in 3.1 with MP5. I hope all those nice pieces don’t end up wasting their stat budget on MP5.
