So in 8.0 I read the Icey Veins holy pally guide to brush up on the class. If I remember correctly, the guide said that Crit was my main stat and Mastery was my second. So I tried to max those two stats out best I could.
Then I found an Addon called “Pawn”, which basically tells you which piece of gear is better than another in percentage format. The only problem is that the priority was different. But I stuck with it.
Now I’m reading the Icey Veins guide for 8.1 and it’s saying that Crit is still my main. Which I understand why… But now Haste is the second stat I want to try and aim for. Which to me doesn’t make any sense. My FoL is a 1.5s cast, which is basically a GC. Do I really need the haste for Holy Light?
Can someone give me a stat priority and a little bit of an explanation as to why it’s ordered that way?
Thanks!
A few tips:
Pawn is a great addon to quickly compare two pieces of gear but don’t trust the built-in stat priorities, they are often wrong.
I use an addon, I think it’s called “Healer stat weights”, it records your fights and dynamically calculate what your stat priorities should be based on your build and playstile, you can then generate a string to import directly into Pawn and use those stat priorities instead. (Stat priorities will change from fight to fight depending on many factors but with good understanding of your class you should be able to figure it out).
For Holy Paladin in particular, from what I understand I think the value of mastery depends on if you are using Avenging Crusader or not (it doesn’t benefit from mastery).
Your GCD is also reduced by haste, I believe it’s the same scaling as your spells so you can look at your flash of light as always a 1 GCD cast.
Yeah, Pawn is a handy addon but you should scrap the default weightings. Healers are notoriously hard to sim as the incoming damage profile changes so drastically from fight-to-fight and raid-to-raid, so you’re better off looking at real weights from your actual encounters.
Healer Stat Weights is a good option for in-game feedback, or you can use wowanalyzer to analyze logs from warcraftlogs.
Our weights will vary considerably from fight to fight (for example; tightly stacked raid = high mastery value, short fight = high haste value, etc.), but as a very broad rule we tend to favour crit > haste = vers = mastery. Avenging Crusader isn’t affected by mastery, so if you take that (as most raid pallies do), then mastery is bumped down a notch. However I can’t stress enough that you should look at your own results.
As others have already said you really need to input your own stats weights into pawn for it to be effective. With standard talents you can generally go Crit>haste=vers>mastery. If mana is an issue haste becomes less desirable.
I can’t post links on the forums but hammer of wrath discord has a spreadsheet that is pretty reliable for weights IF you take the time to configure it properly for your character.