The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
Spirit Vs. MP5
by Vonya
I’ve been getting a lot of comments lately about my bias towards MP5 with regards to mana regeneration for a healy priest.
Firstly, I KNOW that they’re buffing spirit in 2.3. I plan on revamping my list of enchants and consumables to compensate for this AFTER THE PATCH IS LIVE.
There is a reason that I don’t even comment on patch notes until they’re made live, it’s because they aren’t REAL yet. They do not affect ME yet, and so I’m not going to change all of my posts and soforth to reflect a change that could, at any moment, get severely nerfed or removed altogether by the time the patch hits live, whenever that might be.
Secondly, I am not a mathhead. I have never pretended to be, and my inaugural post actually flat out stated that I’m not going to do number crunching.
The decision to go with spirit vs MP5 is a NUMBER CRUNCHING decision.
You have to evaluate how much time you spend inside of the five second rule during your healing in order to determine how useful spirit is as a mana regen stat. It’s situational. It’s not just a little bit situational, it’s EXCEPTIONALLY situational.
Yes, we get the Meditation talent which allows us 15% of our mana regen to continue while casting. And yes, they are reportedly buffing that to 30% with the patch, which will change a lot of the math behind which is more important.
Quoted from Lux Et Umbra, here is some math on the spirit vs MP5 :
“Spirit or MP5?” is a common question. The answer is to take whatever grants you the most total regen. This can be tricky to answer definitively, but start out by putting the Spirit in terms of how much it gives you over 5 seconds. Let’s compare 25 Spirit against 10 MP5 on gear.
25/4 * 5/2 = 15.625 over 5 seconds from the Spirit gear while not casting
15.625 * 0.15 = 2.344 over 5 seconds from the Spirit gear while casting (with Meditation)So comparing that against 10 MP5 all the time will depend on what percentage of a fight you spend inside vs. outside the FSR. Another thing to consider is that anyone with Blessing of Kings gets a 10% Spirit bonus and Humans get a second 10% Spirit bonus. MP5 is improved by neither. Let’s say one bonus is in play and figure out what percent of the time you would have to spend outside the FSR (not casting) to get the same total mana regen from the Spirit item as you would from the 10 MP5 item:
15.625 * 1.1 = 17.19 every 5 sec while not casting
2.344 * 1.1 = 2.58 every 5 sec while casting10 = 17.19(x) + 2.58(1-x)
10 = 17.19x + 2.58 - 2.58x
7.42 = 14.61x
x = 50.78% of the time spent not casting to match the 10 MP5 itemWhich is an unrealistic amount of rest time in a lot of fights, but not all. There are two more benefits to Spirit over MP5 to consider. Innervate & Spirit Tap work off of Spirit only. Spiritual Guidance and Improved Divine Spirit grant a bit of Spellpower for Spirit.
For those of you who, like me, don’t really want to spend an hour digesting the math, the long and short of it is that as of RIGHT NOW, healing priests in Heroic and Raid environments will get a much larger benefit from MP5 than from Spirit.
Does that mean we get nothing from spirit? No. And the Improved Divine Spirit talent means we get extra healing, and a few other scattered talents in the Holy tree will also boost the benefit we get from spirit.
I’m specc’d that way currently, as a matter of fact, and am not having any problems healing, nor was I when I was specc’d for maximizing the effect of my +heal gear.
But as of right this instant, if you are spending the majority of your time healing inside of the Five Second Rule, then you should weigh Mana Per 5 far more heavily than spirit. That’s the TLDR version of the math.
I’m not here to argue your effectiveness as a healer with spec and gear that nets you 1k spirit when you pop your trinkets. If you and your raid/group is happy with that spec, then it’s working and I’ll be the first to congratulate you. Kirk over at Priestly Endeavors has done some nice wishlisting on how to evaluate healer performance. Currently, I don’t have a definitive way to evaluate the efficiency of one spec versus another. If it works, then it works, and I’m not going to say you’re doing it wrong.
But both math and common thinking support MP5 rather than spirit as a mana regen stat for healy priests. I will be watching the math changes after the patch comes out so that I can report the changes to this thinking after our Meditation gets its well-needed buff.
But until that time, and until I can find out from qualified people who love doing the math, I will not change my recommendations for consumables or gear.
Yes, we get a benefit from spirit. Yes, we get a bigger benefit from it than some of the other healing classes do. Yes, we can gear and spec around spirit and still be effective healers.
But I am still advocating MP5 over spirit in terms of weighing stats when comparing gear upgrades. You will get more benefit, ON AVERAGE, from 10MP5 than from 25 spirit (borrowing the example from Lux Et Umbra).
October 18th, 2007
I’ll write a longer post, but for you the short response. For now, I agree. The 30% meditation, however, appears to be pretty well locked in AND throws a big monkey wrench into the process. To simplify, assume the ONLY change to numbers in the Lux et Umbra post is 15% from med becoming 30%.
x= 21.655%
That is, the priest with 25 spirit need only spend 22% of time OFSR to get more mana than the priest with 10 mp5.
Note she didn’t choose those numbers completely arbitrarily. In general, your choices of spirit v mp5 is just about 2.5:1.
October 18th, 2007
@Kirk
*love for the mathhead*
I’ve no doubt that the change to 30% is going to cause significant ripples in the gear choices.
For now, at least, I leave it out of my recommendations and equations, since we don’t even know when it’ll be going live and it only recently hit the PTRs.
October 18th, 2007
I agree with the two of you. I don’t spend a lot of time raiding NOT casting spells of some sort, so I don’t have the luxury of getting a nice mana return. There’s a fine balance between tank survival and your mana. I’m leaning towards tank survival on this one.
October 18th, 2007
I am a math head and love spreadsheets. I have already done my own math and I am excited to see others.
But at the same time Egos stance is correct….its not real yet and subject to change. (But I still did the math for myself anyway)
/wishing and hoping for the PTR changes to become a realization on Live.
Calandris - Priest
Necroleanan - Mage
October 18th, 2007
And if you aren’t a priest it would seem you still want to stack MP5, especially if you are shaman still.
October 18th, 2007
Another chime in agreement with Ego here. MP5 is king… until after the patch.
I will admit that as a shadow priest, I tend to skew towards MP5 in heal gear anyway, because I spend more time in the FSR than healy specced priests who get better heals due to talents that give them bigger, more efficient, and quicker heals. However, the change to Meditation will definitely make me look at my gear differently, and I’ll definitely be looking at spirit on my gear in a different light once the patch comes live.
October 18th, 2007
I’m a big math and spreadsheet freak, so here goes.
From gathering data on WoWwiki and the forums there are some formulas to compare spi vs mp5. The only numbers you need are you meditation numbers (15%/30%) and time outside five second rule. That second one is kinda hard and as Ego said changes from fight to fight. I found an addon that will track that time during each fight. RegenFu (It will work even if you don’t have FuBar)
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info4717.html
After using that addon over a few typical fights in Kara I found that I spend 30% of my time outside the FSR. Try it out and see what you get.
I put that information into a spreadsheet and for me found that 1 mp5 = 4 spi, roughly. Here is the sheet.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p-L2Md-ZZ1JCp_67XNj7DLg&gid=1
You can also compare this to int adding just a bit more math. What you need for this is the average length of your fights. I tracked this as well and came up with five minutes. Put that number in the spreadsheet, work the math, and for me 1 mp5 = 4 spi = 4 int. Here is the sheet.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p-L2Md-ZZ1JCp_67XNj7DLg&gid=0
Feel free the copy the spreadsheets and enter your own numbers. Google Docs makes it pretty easy to do.
Since Blizzards weights the stats as 1 mp5 = 2.5 spi, mp5 is king for me, as everyone above has said. But I have found that you are never comparing apples to apples so it has been handy to have the numbers that fit for me.
Sulkar - Priest (mostly PVE healing, though PVP specced right now)
October 18th, 2007
If you took the time and effort to make the most out of spirit (human,Improved Death,Meditation,Improved Divine Spirit,Spiritual Guidance,Primal Mooncloth Set Bonus)Would it be worth the effort??
October 19th, 2007
I am looking forward to this change to my priestly alt. Even without doing the maths, the bottomline is, that we will get twice the manareg out of something we already have
Depending on one’s spec, we will have to take a combine approach towards (+heal; +spell dmg; MP5) on one hand, and spirit on the other.
I can’t wait trying this:
* Chastise (NEW) is now available to Dwarf and Draenei priests at level 20. Chastise causes Holy damage and incapacitates the target for 2 seconds
and that:
* Pain Suppression (Discipline Talent) is now usable on friendly targets, instantly reduces the target’s threat by 5%, reduces damage taken by 40% and its cooldown has been reduced to 2 minutes.
October 19th, 2007
There is one aspect you should not underestimate:
Your influence of how MP5 works is: *none*, so you get always the same amount of regeneration (this is the big advantage of MP5).
The opposite is true for spirit because this is totally depened on the situation, my priest heavenly focus manareg and in that, favors spirit over MP5.
The reason is simple:
If you know the weakness of spirit, you know its strength. You can maximize the output of spirit with you gameplay.
And this is true for in battle and out of battle situation.
I like it when running thru a dungeon and my mana regens *really* fast because of my high spirit (if the group is decent I very seldom need to drink to refill mana). It is true, that with focus of MP5 you will stay somewhat longer with mana but this completely changes if you are OOM, in this *holy crap!” situations spirit really shines because when having no mana you are within MP5 by definition. You will be surprised how fast spirit can generation mana out of nothing.
And it makes quite a difference casting a greater heal instead of a heal (not to mention: if greater heal crits you will have time enough to heal a additional group member beside the tank. You healing reputation will crit too
)
With the awesome buff of meditation this will even more a difference.
MP5 has its strength but spirit is more flexible and as you know:
The name of flexibility in healing is: holy priest
October 19th, 2007
Totally agree with your position, Ego!
The thing (some) people tend to overlook is that the final number, when 2.3 goes live, may only be 20 or 25%. And if that’s the case, then all the math being done today is so much wasted time.
Some folks live for the PTR; I don’t. (And, I suspect, neither does Ego.)
October 19th, 2007
I think the point was that she’s made her stance in favor of one, and while it may be faulty after the patch, she really sees no reason to change it for the time being. Partisanship for MP5 or Spirit is up to the reader, but she herself will be supporting mp5 for the forseeable future.
This is all a kingdom built in conjecture and opinion, in terms of what about after the patch. Let it happen and then state your beliefs. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, after all.
October 19th, 2007
[...] tool. I found a decent (though it has weaknesses) tool. Even better, I can tie it to Ego’s Recent post on that perennially favorite topic: spirit v mp5. The tool is RegenFu. It’s technically a [...]
October 19th, 2007
you know, i try hard NOT to be a math head…but every once in a while i cant help myself to try. i should know better, i never got very good grades in math in any level of education. whenever i do try, i always manage to out-think myself and wind up making a mess (see my recent post about trying a respec based on erroneous math).
the thing with theorycrafting is that no matter how many scenarios or variables you try to account for…you simply cannot translate into mathematical formula all of the intangibles that go into each and every situation.
it’s a game, and a game should be fun. whether it be theorycrafting and mathing or just figuring it out as you go…if youre having fun, youre doing more than just something right.
October 19th, 2007
I’m glad to see someone in the big endgame scene that sits back and says “the math isn’t super important, the way I’m specced works for me and I have fun.” Too much number crunching, and I found back in pre-BC raiding that micromanagement of 5-10% didn’t seem to change 95% of the outcome.
That being said, I know everyone focuses on the boundary of the FSR, but since MP5 is present on either side of that boundary, wouldn’t it still be more beneficial to gear towards MP5 rather than spirit, as you’ll continue to regen mana at the MP5 rate AS WELL AS your regular spirit regen rate once you’ve passed 5 seconds anyway? I always assumed they stacked in a “resting” state.
October 19th, 2007
Pathos, re gearing only mp5 - sorta (which is Ego’s point). The thing is, if your FSR is low enough then the huge return (relatively) spirit gives exceeds what you can get for mp5 — given that your normal choice for gear gives about 2.5 spirit for every mp5 offered. If your normal boss fsr is about 70% (like mine) then only if the return is about 4:1 would I prefer spirit to mp5. (Well, excluding other benefits of spirit due to IDS.) If your FSR is 40%, on the other hand, your decision point is 2.4:1 - meaning you’ll go spirit just a little more often.
I want to make one side comment, though. Pretty much every ‘big endgame’ blogger I read makes the same point: rule one is have fun. All the number crunching and spec comparisons and everything else are SECONDARY, and while they may make you “better” if they kill the fun then they’re worse than useless.
October 20th, 2007
Worth while post, Ego. Good job done.
I just like to add:
Spirit is somewhat underestimated because MP5 gives you more reqen if you minimize the time outside battle.
So with massive plus mp5 gear you will have longer mana than with spirit gear, I do not argue against that.
But the weakness of spirit is its strength because you can manipulate the output of spirit gear thru you gameplay (well, not always of course).
My holypriest has heavy focus on spirit for regeneration and works very well.
And there are advantages for the spirit driven model:
1) consider the “holy crap” situation: OOM. Then you will realize, that spirit focus regen will give you more mana in faster time because you are forced to stay out of combat. And it makes really a great difference if you can cast greater heal out of mana instead of heal. If this crits you normally had saved the tank (expect a crit for you healing reputation).
2) most gear that has +MP5 normally has +spirit too, so even when focus on spirit by using +mp5 gear you will get both, it is not that hard to accumulate +spirit and additionally get +mp5 gear
3) I love it when my regen between the combats fully regens my mana without drinking (this will happen on a decent group, you are very seldom forced to sit down)
4) with a good group (where you can really pause for initiating spirit regen) spirit regen generates ridiculous amounts of mana (expect coments from irritated group members thinking, that you do not heal because of full a manabar). The meditation talent is very valuable for a spirit build. And this awesome thing will be buffed in next patch.
5) you can turn spirit into +heal if you skill the talent in the holy tree.
6) the tailor primal mooncloth set bonus will give you even more regen for your spirit. With 2.3 + meditation + mooncloth you will yield 35% REGEN WITHIN COMBAT - this will be awesome - I can’t wait for that…
The downside is, that you will loose some flexibility because you are forced to create long “out of battle” periods to regen redicolous amounts of mana
Unfortunatly it is not easy as +mp5, which always gives you the same amount of mana no matter what you are doing (and, of course, you can try to get additionally mana by staying out of the battle with MP5 gear too). A bad group will make impossible for you to regen mana within the fight because you are forced to heal and you do not have the time for spirit regen.
The MP5 gear is working more reliably but spirit can make you shine when used in the right way.
October 21st, 2007
rofl…
October 21st, 2007
Okay, this might be a little off topic, but I was reading this post think of spirit versus mp5 for a Shadow Priest. As a raiding shadow priest, I have 1238 unbuffed Shadow Damage and I only regenerate my mana through vampiric touch and mp5. But I, like almost every other raiding shadow priest, take meditation.
With the changes in patch 2.3 that give meditation a 100% buff and also make all the healing equal to 1/3 spell damage, will it be worth it as a shadow priest to take a few pieces of healing gear for the spirit. Before it would be unheard of because of the loss of shadow damage, but now it might be something I would consider. When you take into consideration the percentage of killing blows that can be had with shadow word death and the bonuses of spirit tap, there might be some shadow priests competing for healing gear with the healing priests in the near future.
October 21st, 2007
I really don’t think spirit can make you shine in any way.
You can not forget that we are in competition with other classes for raiding spots.
It shouldn’t be that way, but it is too often the case. Because we don’t have a strong ‘buff’ benefit (besides Fortitude that could be done by a shadow priest anyway), we have to do better than other healing classes. And we hopefully have the tools to do so… BUT the mana regen is kind of broken so we can’t do it for long unless we go MP5. Here we are. End of story if you are not competitive. A shaman, a paladin will take your spot.
I am a COH priest. I value MP5 more than spirit or even + healing. It could show up as 50% of my healing on TK or SSC. My COH has a HPS of 8400 so I need to feed it with MP5 while keeping it low enough to be able to shake the threat just with a fade. 1600 healing, 295 MP5 fully buffed (365 virtual MP5 with metagem, spellsurge, T5 bonus and trinkets procs).
I did try several times a spirit build for the Alar and Void reaver fights, but I was always limited by the 5SR even if those fights have a few ‘down times’. It didn’t work for me. MP5 = comfort really.
I guess … its all MP5 unless you go seriously deep into spirit, but really deep. Not worth it and too painful (and costly) IMO.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Silvermoon&n=Vernia
October 22nd, 2007
While I do not roleplay for some reason that sort of factors into alot of my Priest decisions.
I prefer Spirit over MP5 simply because I like battling the FSR and it’s neat. I like the idea of how spirit works.
I rolled a priest because I liked the history of them Blizz presented.
I have never actually RP’d though.
October 22nd, 2007
Sorry for the dual post, but my first post never appear for somethime and I thought the interwebz has eaten it.
Well, I must admit that I only had recently hitted level 70 and as thus, there is no raid expierence or dungeons >5 and no heroics as healer.
All what I see, that spirit works very well on every instance I meet, From your point of view (speaking as a endgame raider) I can see that you follow Egos point in just stacking MP5.
I understand that I may end in doing that too, but I will give spirit a try and honestly: it is impossible to avoid MP5, even when I tried to focus on spirit I ended with 70 MP5 and my current regeneration is 130 5SecRegen in battle/359 5SecRegen out of battle (that is, what the character screen of blizzard says). As you might see, these are so overwhelming and will improve with better gear and the next patch will raise my in battle spirit regen to 35%, so maybe this is enough to feed a kara raid as healer - we will see (got attuned last weekend).
So hey, I will give it a try because MP5 sounds so boring and spirit has much more flexibily.
Maybe I end with stacking up MP5 too, no problem (I was not so dumb to sell all this stuff ^^).
October 22nd, 2007
so overwhelming -> not so overwhelming
need first coffee.
October 23rd, 2007
I have read your forums a bit and this topic of Spirit v MP5 interests me. This may be sacrilage/blasphemy but I have a Troll Mage as my main and a mid lvl priest alt. I have looked at the issues regarding Spirit and MP5 and found that, IMO MP5 was probably created with mages in mind. Evocation even with my low Spirit regens over half my mana pool, and MP5 means I can with mage armor cast that extra Fireball. As my Priest I cast way more HOT’s than bombs and since I am discipline heavy instead of holy the Fortitude buffs and and shields I drop allow the tanks and dps to carry on while I regen my mana. Also Bandages are key for those who are not in direct combat with the enemy, say those who get caught in an aoe but don’t have the aggro, this allows my regen to start ticking while my HOT’s are working away.
October 23rd, 2007
I believe that there is a way for a pure high spirit priest to get a better regen than mp5 priests while doing almost the same thing. You stop casting for 30s and you pop every spirit trinket you have and you let it regen super fast like a personnal innervate (well 30s or the time of the trinket).
I am convinced there is a way to achieve this but only with the top spirit gear you can see on that page:
http://www.wowwiki.com/BC_healing_equipment_(cloth)
So, far far away at 700-800 spirit, the spirit priest regen line is crossing the MP5 line.
I also believe that blizzard wants to lower that limit to a more accessible level. 600 spirit ?
Anyway, reaching that limit today means that you need to replace all your gems with +8 pure spirit gems, everywhere. Also +20 spirit enchant on your weapon.
If i had gold, would be crazy enough to try, but i usually passed spirit gear in favor of druids, was making more sense at that time. But if someone did that, please share you experience and the new style you invented. That must very unique. I am curious!
October 25th, 2007
Please forgive me if i repeat what already has been said.
I strongly think that MP5 / spirit really depends on both your playstyle and progress. If you look at itemisation this also seems to follow this a bit.
If youre just 70 till Karazhan and SSC/TK you will try to focus more on MP5. MP5 is indeed better if you spam. However once you progress you tend to know fights better and learn to anticipate bosses’ abilities better. Bosses in these zones are a bit more forgiving and you wont go OOM that fast regardless of your playstyle. These fights will allow you to slowly take more frequent breaks from healing thus getting a lot better at manipulating the 5SR. Leave the spamming up to the 1 button healers and start changing your playstyle.
Then you get 2 pieces of T5 and your whole gamestyle changes. Spirit is king from then on and you should make it your primary stat combined with healing. Im sure someone can do the math but with that setbonus i only tend to use 2-5 potions during an entire raidweek and hardly ever get mana problems unless the fight is designed for it.
Imo it is all a bit learning curve, even if you have been playing your priest for a long time. Enjoy your progress as a player. The priest is the most fun healer because of our wide range of spells and clever usage of 5SR.