v4.0.x
Don’t do it!
Currently mastery for discipline priests adds 2.5% additional absorption power to your shields and Divine Aegis and about 1.25% healing for holy (holy is more complicated but lets just run with that). I’ve just started the theorycrafting for 4.0.x and mastery is by far the weakest stat for healing priests.
If you want to be trendie when 4.0.x goes live intellect is the new black. In fact, although it’s early days yet, i’d say healing priests of both flavours will be basing gear selection primarily on how much intellect an item has on it. We will also be gemming and enchanting for intellect.
Things may change but that’s my preliminary finding. More theorycrafting to follow sometime.
Gobble gobble.
BobTurkey's blog 
Bob,
Don’t you find this all a bit too premature? GC has stated that none of the classes have received a numbers sweep yet. Doesn’t that imply that any theory you come up with today changes tomorrow?
Yeah.
I’m hoping that a bit a of noise might encourage changes before it goes live.
wow, I wasn’t sure if you were going to continue to do the theorycrafting, I’m psyched! Thanks in advance for saving me the trouble of trying to figure it all out 🙂
Good to see you posting again 🙂
Ive been tinkering around on the PTR a bit, and like you, I find Mastery to be a bit lackluster. Granted the numbers are nowhere near final. My question is if Int is the new black, which reforgeable stat is going to be THE trendy accessory?
As disc, I have been tinkering around with reforging haste for crit and spirit but with disc looking to be more of a battle healer with lolsmite, I really hate to give up haste.
I hate to give up crit because of DA but thats just the WotLK mindset talking.
Thoughts?
Me either Virika 🙂
Yeah in a mana conservative environs haste is going to be weaker than in Wrath, but it will remain useful for Smiting. Depends how much we get to smite.
The battle healer idea is actually quite a good one and the idea we might spend a chunk of our time smiting is more interesting to me than shield spamming.
I haven’t really looked at reforging yet, but crit up to about 25 or 30 percent (unbuffed) is pretty powerful.
Gobble gobble.
Find the stat that applies to your playstyle. I like reactive healing and since all the spells have pretty massive cast times, I will be going for a lot of haste on my gear. This also allows me to easier build up my evangelism stack in between heals.
However, if you prefer the slower style you can simply go for more bigger heals and go for crit. You then have to time your heals better, and you won’t always be able to build up your evangelism(and darkangel with it of course). But since you went for bigger heals you will have to cast less of them, so you have less need for evangelism.
Everybody will be going for Int, and I think mastery is just the cream on top, not a stat to absolutely go for.
Don’t forget however, that shielding does give you a sizeable chunk of haste through borrowed time talent. So if you do chose for the haste method…well, shielding is a good thing 😉
I have heard so many mixed reviews on Mastery but the more I read into the additional shielding it offers the more this option excites me. I just reforged soem of my haste and crit to mastery ( 31% ) to see how this plays out in ICC this week. It should be interesting. I have not had any chances to play beta so if someone has already tried this please let me know. I will try to reply post by Tuesday and let you all know how it played out.. Likes and Dislike I see.
BTW Bob, I appreciate your websitye, I have been readin this for a long long time and have turned many onto you and your easy to understand information. Thanks for taking hte time : )
Sym
Sorry for the typo’s…
BTW I am Symantha on Thunderhorn. Take a look and throw out some feedback while I am testing over the next 2 weeks my spec will be changing for both Disc and Shadow.
: )
Sym
I am not sure BT. Right after the patch dropped, our guild was able to do a few bosses in ICC25 and the holy mastery was #4 on my effective heals list doing about 10% of my overall healing. It seems pretty strong to me… at least now at 80. But maybe it’s just a perception?
[…] There is some discussion about the value of mastery going on at the moment so I thought i’d put out a quick post rather than have my replay get lost in the comments on one of my other posts. […]
Thanks Symantha. Sorry I don’t have to time to provide feedback ATM.
Instead of replying to this thread here i;ve posted about it: https://bobturkey.wordpress.com/2010/10/16/more-on-mastery/
[…] how things were. I did not reforge either, partly because of the same reason, and partly because BobTurkey had warned that Mastery was not a particularly desirable stat. He has since expanded on that, explaining that […]