Being discussed here:

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t21280-intelle...orycrafting_hq/

Regen outisde FSR:
(0.001+SPI*BASE_REGEN[LEVEL]*(INT^0.5))*5 = MP5 out of FSR

Class no longer affects regen.
base regen for level 70 = 0.009327

so for most practical calculations (level 70 raiding):
(0.001+SPI*0.009327*(INT^0.5))*5 = MP5 out of FSR

Apparent gains with no gearing changes are around 40-60 MP5 inside FSR for typical raiding priest / druid and ~150 outside FSR for typical raiding priest / druid

There is also significant talk of how beneficial this is for arcane mages. That stacking and gemming INT basically makes Arcane Blast sustainable at 70+% cast rates, which starts bringing arcane back in line with the other specs for damage even with the sacrifice of +damage gear.

One very interesting note is that this apparently affects innervate quite substantially as well. This screenshot of a T6 geared priest using trinkets during an innervate is particularly interesting, receiving over 7000 mana per 5 for the trinket and innervate duration overlap, essentially making it possible to regenerate over 100% of mana with innervate.

http://i28.tinypic.com/24grvp1.jpg

With the previous change to meditation / intensity it already seemed like regen was not terribly important. Now it seems as if regen is really not important. It definitely pushes pretty much any reasonable raid spec priest / druid over the line where spirit > MP5 on gemming and such. It also means that rejuv flasks are fully degraded to 'only when I don't have the money to use Draenic + Mastery'

I had been used Draenic Wisdom + Mastery most of the time already, mostly because I find the stam extremely useful in surviving dumb mistakes (I got blown up by 3 birds my first time in Phase 2 Al'ar, and survived all of them), and while dumb mistakes hurts our chances, dumb mistakes that result in death hurt a LOT more. On significant reaiding servers I'd potentially expect Terocone prices to increase if serious raid healers are going to potentially be using 4 terocone per wipe.

Here is an example of how things have changed when considering gearing:
Chest enchant: 6MP5 or +15 spirit for a priest (because I'm most familiar, druids now are even better because they get more spirit from talents than preists)
Previous model:
15 spirit = 17.25 spirit (10% for Kings, 5% from talents)
100% inside FSR = 3.25 MP5
70% inside FSR = 5.49 MP5
due to talents, also get +5.18 heal
so MP5 was almost always better for pure regen, but spirit offered a small +heal benefit.

Current model at 400 spirit / 600 int (what I figure is a pretty conservative estimate for a T4+badge-ish geared priest):
15 spirit = 17.25 spirit
100% inside FSR = 5.99 MP5
70% inside FSR = 10.19 MP5
due to talents, also get +5.18 heal

100% inside FSR in 2.4 is about as much as the raw 6MP5.

Even +6 stats becomes a good option for a healer chest enchant:
6 spirit = 6.9 spirit
6 int = 6.6 int
6 sta = 6.6 sta

100% inside FSR = 3.13 MP5
70% inside FSR = 5.32 MP5
It's much less MP5, but the stamina may be more useful than the extra regen with how much regen spirit based healers will have in 2.4.

Been following the EJ discussion closely, since as a raiding holy Priest the change impacts me greatly.

Right now it's looking like the Purified Shadow Pearl may be replacing the Royal Nightseye as the standard non-epic blue-socket gem for PvE. I just can't see Blizzard's new regen formula going through, though. With no changes whatsoever to gear, my PvE regen power gets a ridiculous boost the moment 2.4 goes live. I've always favored spirit on my gear, but still socketed Royal Nightseyes because they're just better under the current formula even factoring in the benefits for spirit to a holy Priest. In 2.4, it's all spirit...stack it up like mad and laugh.

Uh, anyone got any Shadow Pearls? I kind of sold mine a long time ago...

-Bolty

I can help you out. =)

I think Delindra has about a stack or so of those...

Heh, as if finding Shadow Pearl's for Tori's longstanding spirit addiction wasn't hard enough to begin with!

The only way I see this change going through is if for some reason they feel that the encounters' in Sunwell require it, and if they do... /shudder.

~Frag

The funny thing is, it impacts Druids even more. It's completely ridiculous how much more regen Spirit based Druids will get, mostly because before they got less out of spirit than priests, and now they are on the same level.

Just for kicks, I checked what Torenia would get, our resident spirit based Druid.
Unbuffed she's at ~470 INT / 540 Spirit
Buffed she's up to ~630 / 675 (assuming Draenic + Mastery)

With that she gains 68 MP5 inside FSR and 227 outside FSR
fully raid buffed she gains over 110 inside FSR and over 380 outside FSR.
Currently innervate will restore ~8200 raid buffed... on PTR she'd gain over 15.5k mana on an innervate.

So in full raid buffs she's gaining at least a chain chugged pot without chain chugging pots... if she never uses innervate and is 100% inside FSR. Mind boggling.

I can't expect the current formula to go live, it's way too good. Unless Blizzard is just trying to make mana a relative non-factor and just rely on burst damage and burst healing reflexes and take mana management mostly out of consideration for healers? Or maybe sunwell requires so much healing that priests are expected to CoH non-stop for 10 minutes and they needed to give them the means to do that?

Well, I can talk only about the first two encounters at this point, but the first one seems to require at least eight minutes of straight group heals, be they PoH or CoH or shamans with Chain Heal, and the second one is flat out max-rank single-target heal spam (possibly requiring spell haste gear, thereby increasing mana consumption).

Yeah, I just started looking at the gear that's dropping in Sunwell and it seems like ALL the cloth healer pieces are stacked with spell haste.

Perhaps they are beefing up regen to make up for the additional consumption. It is nice that priests are being given a reasonable regen model that doesn't involve doing nothing but standing, sitting, and/or jumping.

Is it possible they want to give healers a break on having to chain-chug mana potions, and are being more forgiving about healing longevity? I can't think of too many other raid roles where it's required that you chain-chug potions. The MT with ironskin potions, sure. And DPS wanting to spike their damage with haste and destruction potions, but the latter is optional.

It certainly would have that effect for pre-Sunwell content.

For Sunwell, I'm pretty sure everyone is chain chugging potions of some variety.

Any input from the mages?

I see this opening a couple potential options for mages:
1) re-opening up arcane to those willing to stack the hell out of INT, which in that build gets you +damage and regen, potentially allowing very high arcane blast usage.

2) creating a potential alternate fire build without icy veins but with Arcane Meditation that would be a longevity focused build. Less burst DPS for sure. Sustained though might be higher if the regen would allow for more fireblast usage or just not running out of mana on a very long fight.

I haven't done any of the math on this, just wondering if any of the mages have looked into it?

2 things:

1) Shadow pearls aren't strictly necessary. Unlike Royal Nightseye, the 'pure' gems of each type are exactly the same as 2 of the 'combo' gems (a +8 spirit gem + a +18 healing gem = 2 shadow pearls) This potnetially 'spreads' the economy on these gems. Nightseye on Terenas is significantly more expensive than elunes or rubies, so you can kind of pick and choose what makes the most sense

2) Heroic Botanica suddenly becomes a staple with +5 spirit / +9 heal gems that are no longer to be unique-equipped

The thing I have to wonder, with all the changes to mana regen since the original beta ended in Nov '04, are they going to return to the way mana regen worked in the beta (ie, you always regened at all times).

People are working out the math on this right now. The general consensus appears to be that it's definitely giving arcane builds a shot in the arm, but even max-stacked AB is only about 5% more DPS than firespec fireball spam. One particular issue is 2-piece T5; we don't know enough about the caster gear in Sunwell to tell how much of a sacrifice it might be and whether it's worth it or not. Still, there are definitely possibilities on that score: Arcane Mind and Arcane Meditation make for a potent combination.

An 18/40/3 fire build isn't really in the cards, though. Even in 2/47/11 +1, most mages can fireball effectively indefinitely in raid content. I haven't cast evocation in a raid for a while, even on Kaz'rogal where I occasionally eat mana drains. Obviously people in earlier gear may have some trouble, but not huge enough to rate this kind of build.

I wonder some about this. You look at the healing classes and tehre are HUGE differences in how each gain longevity:

(holy) Pallies: gain longevity from INT, Crit and MP5 spirit works, but not well with no talent for regen inside FSR
(resto) Shaman: gain longevity from MP5. Spirit works, but not well with no talent for regen inside FSR
(resto) Druids: gain longevity from MP5 and spirit. PTR patch gains from INT too.
(holy / disc) Priests: gain longevity from MP5 ans spirit. PTR patch gains from INT too.

With this patch going live, Shaman again get screwed. They gave shaman some one time bumps with the boost to mana trickle totem (whatever it's called, the one that's not mana tide... I call it mana trickle) and water shield.

My feeling is that regen is reasonably well balanced between healing classes in 2.3. Scaling was reasonably similar, with pallies gaining a slight edge.

However if 2.4 goes live as-is, priests and druids get crazy regen and Shammies get very little from the change. It DOES make innervating a shaman or paladin something that isn't a total waste of a 6 minute cooldown, but other than that, shaman are clearly going to be severely out-scaled in terms of mana regen.

I predict some small talent change to shaman that either:
- gives them some spirit / int regen inside FSR
- gives them some regen from int (similar to the elemental talent that you can't get if you're full resto.)
- scales their MP5 somehow

likely piggybacked on another resto talent, because as it stands Shaman can already spend 55+ points in resto without really wasting any points, they don't need more important stuff in resto.

The alternative is scrapping the system and creating a new model (or going back to something based on the REALLY OLD model), but I doubt they have plans for that with this model introduction.

There are many things about WoW that are either outdated or just plain obsolete in the current environment, and have yet to be brought up to speed. It wouldn't surprise me if they change something back to the way it was in vanilla or even beta.

Hell, think about the 10% increased damage taken modifier in return for 3% crit on Berserker Stance - it was a significant buff to crit back in the days of 60, and the extra damage wasn't too bad, but now the 10% extra damage taken is plain not worth the 3% crit if you're taking damage with any level of consistency (think arenas.)

I recently realized one important side effect of this change for any and all classes concerned about mana-regen.

Darkmoon card: Blue Dragon will be among the best mana regen trinkets in the game. It was already good, but now it's RIDICULOUS. It apparently does not have a cooldown so math is exceedingly easy as proc trinkets go.

Compare my stats before / after patch.
CoH spam mode uptime (note this is what it would be for pallies too) = ~35 casts per 60 seconds = 15 / 86 = 17.4%
Normal casting uptime = ~20 casts per 60 seconds = 15 / 150 = 10%

Proc rate assumes that each cast of CoH can trigger. If each individual heal of CoH can trigger, umm, uptime will be extremely good.

The nature of the trinket means you can just take the uptime percentage times your out of FSR MP5 minus your inside FSR MP5.

CURRENT PATCH:
Buffed in FSR MP5 = 256
Buffed out of FST MP5 = 529
Difference = 273

Effective MP5 = 47.5 (spam) / 27.3 (normal)

For reference Alchemist's stone was worth 35 MP5 to me on our last Void Reaver kill where I am quite mana-taxed by spamming CoH. Alchy stone also provides 15 INT / SPI / STAM so this is essentially on a par when spamcasting and worse when not. Still more powerful than a L60 trinket should be, but not grossly overwhelming

PTR MODEL:
Buffed in FSR MP5 = 304
Buffed out of FST MP5 = 808
Difference = 504

Effective MP5 = 87.7 (spam) / 50.4 (normal)

50 MP5 when not casting all that often? 87 MP5 when spamcasting?

Uhh... WTB Beast deck, PST.

I Imagine this is also going to be reasonably decent for Shaman and perhaps even pallies as well...

Let's look at one of our shaman:
CURRENT:
Buffed in FSR = 290
Buffed out of FSR = 468
difference = 178

effective MP5 = 31 (spam) / 17.8 (normal)

PTR:
Buffed in FSR = 290
Buffed out of FSR = 618
difference = 328

effective MP5 = 57.1 (spam) / 32.8 (normal)

Still decent even for a non-spirit based class (this was based on Jenjan, who has 176 spirit), but defeinitely not the OP crazy regen trinket it would be for priests / druids.

They have to nerf something. A L60 trinket worth like 80 MP5?

Interesting Concillian. I have both the Alchemist's Stone and the Blue Dragon trinket. In BT on the live realms, I usually pair the Stone with the Earring of Soulful Meditation. On the PTR, I'm not sure what the ideal combo would be. Stone + Blue Dragon might make for some powerful mana regen. But then the spirit change buffs the Earring proc a heck of a lot more as well, so Earring plus Blue Dragon might be equally as good.

I've copied my character over to the PTR, but I don't know if I'll get a chance to test it in any of the more mana intensive raid encounters like Naj'entus or Bloodboil.

Now that I've been raiding this week under 2.4's new spirit regen model, I have one thing to say:

I really, really feel sorry for Paladin and Shaman healers.

The new mechanics are ridiculous. There are fights where, if there's a shadow priest in my group, I can't spend my mana quickly enough. I'm literally TRYING to spend my mana and can't, so I'm even dps'ing around in some raid fights when there's nothing to heal just to try to blow my mana.

Without a single piece of T6 set raiding gear, I'm still hitting 1000+ mp/5 out of the five second rule when fully raid buffed + elixirs. I'm back to using my Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon that I've had in the bank for almost two years (never, ever throw out a percentage-based item). When it procs, that's 3000 mana returned in the next 15 seconds...just about a Fel Mana Potion. It's insane.

My only beef is the itemization hole that currently exists in gems. Priest raid gear doesn't have red slots. +heal only gems are red, so most Priests will look around for Purple gems to throw in their blue slots to get +heal and +regen...but there's no high-end +heal/+spirit gem, just +heal/+mp5.

Another Priest in my raid last night realized that any food buff that gives +20 spirit was giving them the same regen as the Blackened Sporefish +8 mp/5 buff. And a Paladin cried.

It's not that I don't LIKE the changes...the regen is great. I just don't know if it's balanced now between Priest/Druid raid regen and Paladin/Shaman raid regen. When the raid buffs start stacking in, boosting Int and Spirit to the stratosphere, the benefits start going off the deep end. Paladins and Shamans don't gain those benefits nearly as much.

-Bolty

I guess you are talking about ones that can be made by a jewel crafter since I know a few druids and priest that were hitting heroic Bot to stock up on Imperial Tanzanite or is that not even high end enough? I realize that it is only 1 spirit better than a purified shadow pearl but I also admit I still only operate in the blue and heroic drop world when it comes to gems.

I threw two such Tanzanites in my T5 shoulders on patch day, but I don't like how you have to drop down to +9 healing to get the +spirit. And yes, I realize that with Spiritual Guidance and the like, the +5 spirit makes up the difference, but...

You can get +22 heal red gems, and +10 spirit blue gems. Thus, there really should be a +11 heal/+5 spirit purple gem, and there isn't. Just not sure why Blizzard didn't do this. The Hyjal/BT/soon-to-be-heroic-badge gems are higher itemlevels than the heroic instance gems, yet the best gem for healing Priests is a heroic instance gem. That ain't right. That's the crux of my argument, basically.

-Bolty

I expect to be getting a shadow priest less in future unless the fight is really, really, really demanding on healers. Fully buffed I think was around 1100/400-something mana regen last night.

Gem-wise, unless the socket bonus is particularly desirable I think I'll be choosing mostly Teardrop Crimson Spinels. The regen gems simply aren't as desirable at the moment.

Earring of Soulful Meditation? The thing is like a "mini-vate" right now. In Hyjal I was using it between trash pulls instead of drinking.

Next week in Hyjal, equip earring + bangle for Rage trash, then stand next to Jaina and ask for an innervate, then use both trinkets...

...and be human for the +spirit racial...

It would make a nice screenshot.

-Bolty

My priest is human, but I don't have the Bangle. I still may try to get an OMGREGEN screenie next time I'm there though.

We were in Hyjal last night, so I got my screenie. I think the results speak for themselves.