Now that Arthas’ loot table has been released and we know the entirety of Wrath of the Lich King loot, I thought it’d be fun to look back at the trinkets that raiding Holy Paladins have at their disposal. I often find myself looking at subsets of trinkets for a given task or tier, but I’m not sure that I’ve ever sat down and taken a broad view of the trinkets that we used throughout Wrath. Let’s do that.
Trinkets, by design, are hard to categorize. Their variety is intended to add some flavor to our gear sets. Sometimes we might want a constant effect, other times we might want to trigger a proc at just the right time during an encounter. Depending on what you want, the best trinket for the job might be a weird drop from three or four tiers back.
To bring some order to this mess let’s group the trinkets by their primary passive effect. Then we’ll list the secondary proc effects of the trinkets in each list. We’ll use a bit of shorthand to describe the procs. Something like “15s/45s Chance:” means that every 45 seconds there’s a chance of triggering the proc which lasts for 15 seconds. “20s/2m Use:” means that every two minutes you can chose when to trigger the effect which lasts 20 seconds.
This isn’t an exhaustive list. There are a decent number of trinkets which have an effect that we’re interested in that is paired with an effect that we don’t really care about for healing raids. PvP trinkets, trinkets with hit, and trinkets with secondary effects that proc on “harmful” spells are examples of trinkets that fall into this category. Sure, using one of these would be better than using no trinket at all. We wouldn’t search them out as a valuable raiding trinket, though, so they’re not included in this list.
This list won’t tell you what to use. It’ll let you glance at what’s available and maybe, hopefully, help you come up with fun ideas for when to use which trinkets.
Intellect
- [Talisman of Resurgence]: 128 Int, 50
20s/2m Use: 599 SP - [Meteorite Crystal]: 111 Int, Algalon 10
20s/2m Use: stacking 60 MP5 per cast - [Pandora's Plea]: 108 Int, Mimiron 25
10s/45s Chance: 751 SP - [Darkmoon Card: Greatness]: 90 Int, Crafted BoE
15s/45s Chance: 300 Int - [Tears of the Vanquished]: 84 Int, Black Knight, ToC5
45s Chance: 500 mana (~55 MP5)
Personally, I use the talisman and pandora’s plea in my day to day healing. Tears of the vanquished stands out for being a strong trinket that is very easy to farm.
MP5
- [Bauble of True Blood]: 76 MP5, Lana’thel 25
2m Use: ~8000 direct heal - [Binding Light]: 57 MP5, Faction Champs 10
20s/2m Use: stacking 66 SP per cast, up to 8 stacks - [Living Ice Crystals]: 54 MP5, Malygos 25
1m Use: 2710 direct heal - [Energy Siphon]: 54 MP5, Flame Leviathan 10
20s/2m Use: 408 SP - [Ephemeral Snowflake]: ~100 MP5, Marwyn, Heroic HoR
20s/2m Use: 464 haste
For lack of a better place to put it:
Am I the only one who thinks that the direct heal procs are underwhelming? My resto tree BFF and I routinely sustain thousands of HPS in 10-man ICC. A single heal proc with a cooldown measured in minutes, even if there was no overheal, is a drop in the bucket. If I were to value a passive MP5 trinket, I think I’d aim for the spell power procs. I’m also having fun triggering the snowflake just after popping out of the emerald dream in the Valithria encounter.
Spell Power
- [Purified Lunar Dust]: 179 SP, 60
15s/45s Chance: 304 MP5 - [Althor's Abacus]: 179 SP, Gunship 25
45s Chance: 6k smart heal - [Sliver of Pure Ice]: 158 SP, Marrowgar 10
2m Use: 1625 mana (~67 MP5) - [Solace of the Defeated]: 150 SP, Jaraxxus 25
16 MP5 for 10s per cast, up to 8 stacks (~128 MP5) - [Show of Faith]: 140 SP, Yogg-Saron +{0,1} 25
152/45s Chance: 241 MP5 - [Scale of Fates]: 125 SP, Thorim 25
20s/2m Use: 432 Haste - [Nevermelting Ice Crystal]: 111 SP, Tyrannus, Heroic PoS
20s/3m Use: Crazy crit stacks - [Forethought Talisman]: 111 SP, Naxx 25
45s Chance: ~4k HoT - [Sif's Remembrance]: 110 SP, Thorim 10
15s/45s Chance: 195 MP5 - [Je'Tze's Bell]: 106 SP, BoE world drop
15s/45s Chance: 125 MP5 - [Embrace of the Spider]: 98 SP, Naxx 10
10s/45s Chance: 505 haste - [The Egg of Mortal Essence]: 98 SP, 40
10s/45s Chance: 505 haste
This expansion is crammed full of spell power and regen trinkets. There’s a few decent throughput options, as well.
Critical Strike Rating
- [Soul of the Dead]: 95 crit, Sapphiron 25
45s Chance on crit: 900 mana, ~100 MP5 - [Eye of the Broodmother]: 87 crit, Razorscale 10
25 SP for 10s per cast, up to 5 stacks
These were a lot more compelling before Illumination’s regen was cut in half. These days a Holy Paladin would be teased for wearing these.
There we have it! I think that covers most everything that we’re likely to see in the wild. Enjoy!
What formula did you use to calculate the MP5 on the Snowflake? It looks like you might have used Druid numbers for it, because I doubt healadins would be able to get 9 procs every 5 seconds.
Hah, I guess that I can’t get away with using “~” to keep people from getting too excited about the accuracy of the MP5 estimate. I love that someone’s paying enough attention to raise an eyebrow at that unjustified number, though! Thanks for keeping me on my toes.
I haven’t tested it, to be perfectly honest. My reading of the wowhead comments makes it sound like it procs off of direct heals, beacon heals, and the FoL hot ticks. The FoL hot alone is 5 heals in 5 seconds without casting anything. That leaves 4 more heals, including beacon duplicates, to hit in 5 seconds of casting? That certainly sounds doable.
Maybe I’ll throw it on for one of our icc10 farming runs and see what the logs tell us. That sounds fun.
From what I’ve read and noticed from raiding, the snowflake procs from JoL heals as well. It’s a nice trinket to use for long, healing intensive fights.
BTW, Meteorite Crystal drops off 10-man Algalon.
Still outranks Solace and Lunar Dust for Holy Paladins, I think. Straight spellpower just doesn’t stand up to all of the intellect/mana that Meteorite and Talisman offer. Having said that, Algalon is still inaccessible for many.
If you can get in a 25-TOC, Solace is better bang than Lunar Dust until you have all of the other Frost emblem pieces you need.