Nostalrius Begins - Quality wow vanilla realm (1.12)

Surely as a priest you are going to want more Int over Spirit so you don't OOM as quick?


Maybe this does not apply in raids where you will be battling bosses for long periods of time and inevitably you are eventually going to run out of mana, so spirit would be best.


But just for the sake of levelling up and dungeons, where you can drink every 10 seconds, surely you would want the INT so you don't OOM on camps/groups of mobs. You can just drink afterwards before the next pull?

Spiritual Guidance means your spells heal more with stacked Spirit, so you have to cast them less, or can cast a lower level version for less mana. Couple that with Meditation, which lets your mana recharge while casting, and it's all about the Spirit.

Depends on your build I guess. I've always favoured Spirit over Int and I've had no ragrets.

Why do you have to choose? Usually caster gear has both spirit and intellect. Before spiritual guidance talent (% of your spirit increases your spellpower) you can ignore spirit if you want, especially if you dont mind drinking after. Generally, you are right, more int for short fights can be better as you can heal more (and at lower levels spellpower bonus is negligable). Still, its best to find some balance there, if possible. You dont want to drink all the time, it is time consuming and boring. Also you dont have to spam heals as a priest if encounter allows it - burst heal - regen with your spirit once you are out of 5 seconds.

Fatherjames wrote:Before spiritual guidance talent (% of your spirit increases your spellpower) you can ignore spirit if you want, especially if you dont mind drinking after.

Er..."before spiritual guidance" you should be Shadow to level, and Spirit is one of the best stats for leveling because of Spirit Tap.

You should never be "ignoring spirit", it's a great stat for Priest.

Actually I've been working on a graph that shows how much mana a stat is worth depending on how long you are casting for. It's not the most accurate and I'm still working on it (math isn't my strongest side).



As you can see, if you're casting for more than 3 minutes 1 spirit gives you more mana than 1 int (This is taking into account the Spiritual Guidance talent (25% of your spirit as spelldamage/healing) and Meditation (15% mana regen when casting)).
Keep in mind that this might be wrong - I'm still working on it - but It should give you a general idea.

So yeah, if you can drink every 10 seconds then INT is king... But keep in mind that spirit increases your mana regen when not casting (like when you're drinking) by a fair bit more than this graph shows, so it will always help you regenerate mana faster, but int will only be useful once you're all filled up!

Also, there are three more factors to take into account:

• 3/8 T2 bonus which allows additional regeneration while casting. This stacks with the talent. ( not sure if additive or multiplicative though)
  
• Possibly having a blue dragon darkmoon card which can proc 15 secs of full mana regeneration while casting.
  
• Planning out your playstyle and coordinating with other healers so that you can stop casting during damage lulls in order to regen more.

These 3 factors should definitely bump up the weight of spirit by a substantial amount and place it well above intelect. I blindly trust Res to calculate how much.