1) for the type 5 augs from tbm vendors, is wis the ideal stat to focus or are there some surprise benefits of getting agi or sta after a certain break point? I read shamans focus on sta over wis and wanted to be sure I wasn't missed something by assuming wis is ideal for a cleric. 2) similar question for type 7/8s. Better to focus purely on mana and heroic wis or get some ac/agi Augs mixed in too?
Aside from mods, there is no real benefit beyond mana and mana regen. Ie: you won't be healing more or better*. If you're running out of mana cause your mana pool is very very low, then go for hwis / mana. That being said, unless your gear is extremely poor it's pretty hard to run out of mana just cause you exhausted it all. Most will run out of mana because: 1) They died 2) They have poor mana management (ie: not using AA yaulp, VP / QM, rods, lacking buffs, lacking spec augs / shawl, etc) Having more mana than you need provides no benefit**. It just becomes a superfluous stat. I'd go for more AC / HP / hSTA. Situational awareness is still the most important factor in survival of both group and raid content, but the extra stats do help. You're not suddenly going to be MT'ing raids, to the use the most extreme example, but being able to take a little more punishment from melee and spells can sometimes make the difference between living or not. It may not happen a lot, but even rare benefits are better than no benefits. Returns will vary depending on if we're talking group gear and changing just augs, vs raid gear and changing augs plus non-vis. All this being said, most clr will go for mana / hwis. A not insignificant portion will not, but I'm not going to pretend it isn't the minority opinion. * Yes, technically those augs / gear choices will tend to have more "heal amount". The return on them sucks and I mention it only for completeness. **Exception being if you're close to the next percent point of a mod, in which case it would be the good choice to finish it out
Everything Tour said is correct, personally I like HAGI/AC augs on my cleric, for the avoidance/defense bonus.
Overall I agree with the premise that mana management isn't very difficult for Clerics in the modern raid/group. I end up feeding my QM's to high DPS players in a lot of events. Really the only time I run out of mana is when I first run out of hit points. Is there any kind of a soft cap we can hit from AC benefit of HAG? Also any rule of thumb still apply for HP over AC?
All players blow past their AC softcap after putting on 1-2 pieces of gear. So its just more is better. As far as choosing AC vs HP, there is little opportunity too. Each tier of gear that increases one also does the other (and the difference between 3 ac of 20hp is irrelevant). About the only place you can really choose AC vs HP is on augments. If your a grouping cleric, I'd recommend AC, since you will be taking more hits. A raiding cleric ... the hp gains by ignoring AC augs add up to 1-2k hp. Its soo tiny (less than 1% total AC), I'd say focus on hagi then ac.
the mana regen from hwis/hint is a sad joke. 1000hWis gives you 400 regen mana per minute (40/tick). Which means it takes several minutes for you to get the mana regen for a single spell.
Exactly. So, beside not wanting to change all your augs or wanting to look good on Magelo, there really isn't much of a point on loading on hWis. Perhaps if they nerf something other than QM it could us, but at the current time hWis is not that useful.
Heroic Wisdom also adds to your total mana pool. Many of the clerics i know havent had much in the way of mana issues on raid events in the last couple years. QM and Veriturka's certainly made things easier while we had them in their previous form but i suppose it depends on your casting and spell load habits. Personally ive spent the last several expansions gearing to have as large a mana pool as possible. Some years back when we could cast light, a remedy, a single target elixir, and expect to be doing a good job efficiently with our mana and timing heals to land at their most effective opportunity, management of our tools seemed the best way. Things have changed. Raid bosses went crazy with the immunity or near immunity to slows or debuffs of any kind, ignoring tank mitigation with high levels of strikethru, etc etc. Now a days, its all about keeping the tank from getting rounded. More heals faster is better. The way i see it is if you arent casting you arent being productive. Multibind your spells and spam heals as hard as you can for as long as you can. This requires a tremendous amount of mana. On longer events, if you just dont have the dps to easymode stuff or if a moderate amount of mana drain from whatever effect cripples your ability to cast what you need to when you need to then you need more mana. Or you can slack. i'm a tryhard, that's not an option for me. Maybe you want to tank stuff soloing in group content. Awesome for you, but cleric AC is an irrelevant stat on raid events. The cleric in my guild with the best AC gets one rounded just like the cleric in my guild with the least AC when they get the attention of a raid boss. if your clerics are getting hit , by bosses or adds or anything other than spell/aura damage, then your raid force is doing something wrong. That's just my interpretation though. Your mileage may vary. There is certainly room for different styles on a heal team that is successful. On the other hand, i would challenge you to get heal parses from your tanks and spell cast activity parses as often as you can and compare what you are doing to what your contemporaries are doing. If you find yourself regularly on the low end of either of those things, you might be getting carried by your teammates.
I look at Heal Amount, Mana Regen, HWis, MP, HP, AC in roughly that order. But once you are surviving your routine raid encounter it really doesn't matter much what you equip because it's all good. I like to cast a LOT during encounters so I really like the Mana Regen to help keep me going. Any mana left over at the end of an event is a waste.
