Loot Rank Forums

Stats can be broken down into two categories, Mana Regen and Throughput, to put it simply. Spellpower & Haste are primarly throughput stats. Mp5 and spirit are pure mana regen stats. Int is a mana regen/longevity stat that moonlights as throughput, and is certainly our best scaling stat. Critical strike rating is a throughput stat that moonlights as a mana regen/longevity stat.


You can kind of group the stats into little sub categories then :

Throughput :

Spellpower
Haste
Crit

Regen :

Spirit
Mp5
Int

Starting to weigh stats :

I simply chose our strongest, best scaling stat : Int. Int is a good starting point because it's easy to pinpoint the gains from it and see how it scales in relation to other stats. You could choose just about any stat as a starting point.

I valued int @ 1 point. It's a strong mana regen stat - 1 point of int (unbuffed) for us is equal to APPROXIMATELY (bear with me, doing this in my head) 1.15 points of int, which is equal to 17.25 points of mana. This = .43 increase in returns from rapture, .215 MP5, and .0087% crit.


1 point of critical strike rating is equal to about 2.2% of a critical strike. In accordance with ADP calculations, that makes it equal to about 0.0044 DA procs per minute.

Spirit to MP5 is actually an interesting calculation. The difficulty with spirit to MP5 ratio is that it changes with your intellect, so it's different for almost everyone.

For these purposes, spirit will be equal to 50% of a point of MP5. I think as of this morning on my character it was more like 33% multiplier needed for one MP5. You'll have to check to be accurate for your own character, sorry.

Spellpower is easy, 1 point of spellpower is = 1.61 increase on Penance, 1.81 on greater heal, .807 on Flash Heal, 1.027 on PWS ... you get the idea. The interesting part is that the scaling of spellpower also increases mana returns on Rapture and shield amounts on DA, thus mana returns from Rapture (or will after the patch.) This clearly makes spellpower our second 'superstat' - another stat that scales extremely well to multiple purposes. Not quite as well as int because it isn't affected by as many percentage increases in a raid setting, but it does have SOME percent based scaling, and scales well on it's own.

Haste is a more interesting calculation. 1 haste rating is currently approximately equal to 3.1% of 1% haste. Haste scales in relation to spellpower in a similar but less obvious manner to the int to spirit ratio. However, it is CLEARLY less valuable point for point. It's great to pick up when it's actually in a worthwhile value on an item. I chose to value it ABOVE pure mana regeneration for our purposes, but below critical strike rating. Critical strike rating due to our talents scales with BOTH spellpower and Int, and has additional throughput and mitigation based benefits. Haste rating really only scales with spellpower, and is a 'pure' throughput stat for all purposes.

Part of the logic behind weighting these stats is HOW gear is actually allotted. Caster items look like this :

Int, Stam, Spirit, Critical Strike Rating, Spellpower
Int Stam Spirit, Haste Rating, Spellpower
Int Stam MP5 critical strike rating, spellpower
Int stam mp5, haste rating, spellpower
Int Stam Haste Rating Spellpower Critical Strike rating

So essentially, stat weighting boils down to choosing the strongest possible item for each slot out of the top of each of these choices. Because the values differ so much, there is no rule such as ALWAYS take critical strike rating over other stats, etc. For example, Torch of Holy Fire is CLEARLY the best in slot mainhand, because the spellpower on it is SO high over other options. It's worth more in the slot than an item with higher int is, even though int is valued > spellpower in the weights.

If you're curious about why MP5/spirit rank so low, it's because they place low in your priority list if you look at int as your primary mana regen stat. @ 25,000 max mana, you start seeing gains in mana from casting Penance, and additionally with Replenishment up, you have 312 mp5. Any MP5 or spirit you add is supplementary - nice, and good if you're trading a small amount of int for a large amount of MP5 or spirit, but not so good in equal portions as a tradeoff.

The weights i came up with after considering all of these factors, and certainly scaling -

Int @ 1
Spellpower @ .95
Critical Strike rating @ .8
Haste @ .5
Mp5 @ .4
Spirit @ .2


Really, weighting can be fairly variable. In accordance with scaling, power, and budgeting, i think this is very accurate for a raiding discipline priest.