Intellect

A primary stat which not only increases your mana pool and maintains a 1-to-1 conversion to spellpower, Intellect also affects crit chance and your total regen (through Watershield, the combat regen formula and Replenishment). Building on a Shaman’s base mana pool of 25,175, each point of Intellect will provide:

  • 1 Intellect = 1 Spellpower
  • 1 Intellect = 16 mana
  • 1 Intellect = 0.002% crit (or 648.91 Int per 1% crit)
  • 1 Intellect = 0.08mp5 (through replenishment) + 0.01mp5 (through the regen formula) + XX (through Hymn of Hope, assuming 1 per encounter) + a variable amount through Watershield procs

 

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Spirit

As of 4.0.1, Shamans have become a class dependant on Spirit for in-combat mana regen (although it should be noted that our Watershield operates independently of our spirit-based regen, restoring a finite amount of mana every 5 seconds, scalable with your level). While your Spirit does affect the benefit you gain from Mana Tide, it does not affect any other regen sources or stats. Your Spirit value directly corresponds to in-combat regen, through the following formula:

  • Additional Spirit regen = 0.016725 x sqrt(INT) x SPI

(For more amazing reading on Spirit and regen, please do check out this write-up from Danner on MMO-Champion’s Priest forums)

 

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Crit

A secondary stat, crit (short for critical strike rating) increases our probability to score a critical hit with any healing or damage spell. Crit is therefore tied to higher throughput, on both direct and indirect (hot) heals. But, crit also provides secondary benefits to resto shaman in that it assures us increased regen through Improved Watershield, and it provides supplemental healing through Ancestral Awakening. Lastly, resto shamans’ direct critical heals will apply Ancestral Fortitude to the target, reducing physical damage by 10% for 15 seconds. When considering crit on gear, remember:

  • 1% critical strike = 179.28 critical strike rating
  • Crit’s benefits to mp5 are variable and depend on total crit rating and spell distribution

 

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Mastery

Our newest type of secondary stat, Mastery rating enables shaman to receive increased benefit from their unique class mastery, which increases the healing a target receives from a direct heal. I’ll go into greater detail about the qualities, benefits and limitations of Mastery in the subsequent Talents section.

For quick reference, the following apply to Mastery and its effects:

  • 179.63 Mastery rating = 1 point of Mastery = 3% Max Deep Healing %
  • % Healing Increase = (-1 x Max Deep Healing % x HP of target) + (Max Deep Healing %)

 

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Haste

Resto Shamans’ favorite stat in the latter half of Wrath, haste‘s effects are twofold—first, it decreases the GCD to a minimum of 1 second, and second, it increases the speed of your spell casting. It’s important to remember that this latter effect does not operate in a blanket fashion—if you have 15% haste that does not mean that every spell will experience a 15% reduction in cast time. What it does mean is that you can cast 15% more spells in the same time frame. The following example illustrates this effect:

  • Base cast time: 2 second
  • In a 10-second interval, this would mean you could cast 5 total spells
  • With 15% haste, this would mean you could cast [5 x 1.15] = 5.75 spells
  • Your reduced cast time would therefore be [10 / 5.75] = 1.74 seconds

With the increase of the level cap to 85, the amount of haste per % haste gain has increased, meaning that the following conversion applies:

  • 1% haste = 128.11 haste rating

More technically, this conversion of haste is represented as the following:

  • New Cast Time = [Base Cast Time / ((( 1 + (Haste Rating / 128.11 x 100 )) x 1.05)]

Because Shaman cast times are some of the greatest of all of the healers, this means that high haste values have historically been tied to greater throughput. However, haste’s negative effects on mana regen (because the more you cast, the more mana per second you need to sustain your rotation) combined with a low overhealing environment, mean that it may not be as powerful in starting Cataclysm raids.

 

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Stat Priorities for 4.0.3

For discussion of Stat Priorities, see the Gearing, Gemming and Enchanting Section.