Mp5 and Crit ramblings.

If you took a peek at my paladin's armory (and I can't link it here, alas-work is silly) you'd see that I have around 300 mp5.

While casting.

Those strictly following the current paladin trend of "omg CRIT!" would probably pull back in shock and horror at this number. Why do I have so much mp5? And only 27% crit!?!?

Well the short, lazy answer is: the shiny purples had it on there.

Since said shiny purples completely outclassed my previous gear in every other way, well, it seemed the obvious choice. I usually took slight hits in crit for each upgrade, but gained a large amount of int and +spell power. Certainly the benefits granted by the increase in those other stats was worth the hit taken in crit. A lot of people also forget that the mp5/crit debate is influenced in part by playstyle and group makeup. Is crit important? YES. Is mp5 bad? NO.

My fellow healers in 10 man raids are usually a resto shaman and a CoH priest. That's a good bit of raid healing coverage. I stay mostly on the tank, and cast Flash of Light more so than anything else. FoL benefits more from mp5 than crit-the opposite of Holy Light. I also get inflated crit from Sacred Shield, which I keep up on the tank where rage starvation isn't an issue.

Once over a certain amount of crit, then spamming Holy Light becomes viable. I believe that 30/35% crit is the current magic number. It also seems to be the number everyone is shooting for. Certaintly, being able to toss around more than one or two HLs per fight is important. It'll happen, trust me. But I argue against rushing towards that level of crit, which seems to be what I'm seeing.

Mp5 is considered the stat for "lesser geared" holy pallys. I don't fully agree with that, either. I'm not at that magical crit point yet...and honestly, I'm not worried about getting there. Unless your raid is set up in such a way that you need to be spamming HL outside of Patchwerk...why? Keep on hand some extra crit gear for Patchwerk, perhaps. Do you really need OMG CRIT all the time? ...no, not really.

Since I am light on crit, gear-wise, I chose to gem for it (though Int would be my preferred choice otherwise and I do have int gems). I'm also trying to swap over to crit trinkets, rings, and neck. I do fine in both 10 and 25 man Naxx as is, however. I do fine in 5 man situations as well, barring those clearly meant to rape all will to live from a paladin*.

I really don't understand the paladins who stack crit to the point of having only 30 mp5 casting. While I've never operated at the level of crit they also carry, I have to wonder if they're not gimping themselves. The key to being a good paladin healer is to not be a FoL or HL spammer. Both are bad. Healing is situational. Learn to adapt. As I said, mp5 is better for FoL than crit. You will, sometimes, want to be tossing around plently of FoLs. So why not balance your stats?

Mp5 isn't bad!

Balance is good!

...which is why I am going to TRY to lessen that crazy mp5 amount for some more crit. But...but the shiny purples, they have it by the metric shit ton!

*Another rant in and of itself.