Int regen mechanics

Posted by on December 2, 2010 Leave a comment (5) Go to comments

So a thought in the back on my mind for a while now has been regarding int and healers (for those of you who don’t know, I seem to be drawn to healing on alts >.> I’d like to think I’m ‘ok’ at it at least) , being more specific, the “amazing” stat that int is for healers.

So here today, while bored at work I’m going to share my thought’s regarding this, make some minor conclusions and then talk about whats next. (yes, despite warlocks obvious superiority, I will occasionally talk about something not so warlock related >.>)

For healers, int provides 3/4 things

  • Throughput, bigger heals
  • Longevity, you can heal for longer with a bigger mana pool
  • Regen, it effects spirit regen, although apparently this is diminished level 85
  • Regen, several classes have some form of mana regen based on mana pool

My fear is that in later tiers spirit will (similar to wotlk) be  disregarded as the (minor) regen and longevity from int will be ‘enough’.  So I decided to try and list all of those effects, mostly to satisfy my own curiosity, but also to be able to see just how much regen there was from these effects. Am I worrying about nothing? So without further ado:

Paladin

Druid

Shaman

  • Telluric currents (very weak, its gaining mana based on damage done which is influenced by int…)

Disc priest

Holy priest

All

I’m fairly sure I’ve missed some out, this is just after a quick inspection. So if I’ve missed one and you know of it, please poke me either on twitter or via comments.

Edit; forgot hymn of hope. Also to note, holy priest and archangel, while reachable, this isn’t as optimal for holy priests, who can’t reach atonement.

Brief conclusion thingo?
Paladins and druids seem to have very strong int<->regen mechanics, meanwhile shamans seem to be rather weak in this regard. Although worth keeping in mind is that a druids innervate can be used on anyone, not just themselves, while paladins can only use DP on themselves, and the LoH mana is returned to them regardless of who its used on.

So what am I expecting? Paladins will similarly to wrath be able to “mostly” ignore spirit, more so in later tiers, especially from what I’ve heard (second hand) that the raid encounters have plenty of ‘low healing’ phases, to encourage the use of heal. This could also lead to paladins simply using DP during those phases, especially with tank deaths not happening in a matter of seconds like in wotlk, 15 seconds might be an acceptable window of not being able to heal the tank.

Granted all this purely speculation based on my play around on the beta, what I’ve read, and my own intuition.

Going further?
I recently picked up on wowhead what appears to be some testing only high end (Ie deathwing raid level) cataclysm test epics

http://www.wowhead.com/item=58684
http://www.wowhead.com/item=61766

In fact looking on wowhead reveals a mass of these test items

http://www.wowhead.com/items=4.1?filter=minle=400;maxle=500

With this information we can (mostly) reconstruct what a end game healer will look like. The items we don’t have we can take rough educated guesses at, we know the item levels, item slot budgets etc. Using this information we can put numbers to these mana return ability’s, and start to see if anything is going to be markedly OTT.

But without the context of the raid encounters we’ll be facing in this gear we won’t be able to tell much. Especially as ability’s like divine plea and archangel are situational, you need down time to use them. If you can’t stop to smite, if the atonement heal from smite is such a loss in throughput that people will die, then archangel is useless. If all we do in those encounters is spam heal and archangels mana return is positive (eg it returns more mana than it consumes (I’m fairly sure in heroics gear its not mana positive)) then it will have a much higher likely hood to be over powered. Will it be interesting to try and figure all this stuff out

So whats next? Crunching numbers, ensuring I have all the mana return ability’s. Crunching more numbers. Get beaten up by healers because I missed one/got one wrong. Crunch more numbers.

Wait. This was meant to be a short whats next. Now I have a whats next in a whats next thats longer than my conclusion. Oh god.

(and yes, that was over 1000 stamina on a cloth piece of gear)

(Yes thats a fuck load of stamina for a clothy)

(now imagine how much a tank will have)

(Ok, I gave in, I looked, and It has the same stam as the caster helm o_O)

(weird)

(Does talking to myself in brackets at the end of a blog post count as crazy? Probably)

Cataclysm, Healing, , , , , , , , , ,