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Blessing of Kings vs. Blessing of Wisdom
Published on December 14, 2007 by Phaelia 
Analysis, Obsolete, Spells and Talents 
12 Comments
Bellwether of Dark Iron (US) writes in with this great question:
I often run with a Protection-specced Paladin tank, and he recently asked me a question I don't know how to answer. It was a question of Blessings, and he didn't know if it would be better to give me Blessing of Wisdom (mp5) or to increase my Spirit through Blessing of Kings. I was unsure which would be better. I do most of my healing in Tree Form with constantly refreshing Lifebloom stacks. Would this make BoK more appropriate overall then?
Bellwether sent me this question in October, and I originally intuited the answer from my own experience and personal preference for mana regeneration. However, dusting off Excel for the recent Thorns post inspired me to do a little math to flesh out my response so that I could share it. Like most stat/gear/spell comparisons, it's helpful to convert them so that they speak as close to the same language as possible. Since Blessing of Wisdom grants pure mana regeneration, I converted the Spirit component of Blessing of Kings into the equivalent MP5 it would grant. This, of course, ignores its auxillary benefits (additional HP from 10% more Stamina, additional mana from 10% more Intellect, and any additional +Healing if you use it while in Tree of Life), but it does give us a good starting point.
MP5 from Blessing of Wisdom
The MP5 value for BoW is pretty straightforward:
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Paladins can also pick up a 2-point talent from their Holy tree called Improved Blessing of Wisdom. This talent increases the MP5 from BoW by an additional 20%, from 41 MP5 to 49.2 MP5. Since this Blessing grants pure MP5 it is unaffected by Spirit or percent time inside the Five Second Rule, thus making our lives a great deal less complicated.
MP5 from Blessing of Kings
To find the MP5 value of BoK, I'm assuming 3/3 Intensity (30% mana regeneration while casting). We don't need to take Living Spirit into account since BoK is multiplicative; we need only look at the "base" Spirit on our character sheet. We can then modify the formula from the earlier Spirit vs. MP5 article to derive its corollary, the formula for determining how much MP5 is required to match the value of 1 Spirit:
Mp5 required to match 1 Spirit =
Using this formula, we can determine the MP5 contribution of Blessing of Kings, assuming we know the following information:
- Base Spirit (SPI)
- % Time in the 5SR
- Casting Regen (assume 30% from Intensity)
Blessing of Kings vs. Blessing of Wisdom
I've calculated and graphed the MP5 contribution of Blessing of Kings at 50%, 75%, 90%, and 100% inside the FSR:
Then I performed the same calculation as above assuming that I used Innervate once every six minutes:
Note: For those who are curious, I can factor in Innervate by assuming that I'm under its effects (regenerating at a rate of 500%) 5.6% of the time and outside of its effects (regenerating at my normal rate) 94.4% of the time. For simplicity's sake, this assumes it's used once every six minutes. This should be considered a conservative estimate since it can sometimes be used at one minute into a fight and again at seven minutes — or once at one minute into a shorter fight (3 minutes).
From the above graphs, note the following:
- Because BoK gives Spirit, its MP5 equivalent decreases as the amount of time spent in the 5SR increases.
- Because BoK is percentage-based, its MP5 equivalent increases as the amount of base Spirit increases.
- Without considering Innervate, even at extremely high values of Spirit (700+) and at 50% of the time in the 5SR, the MP5 contribution of Blessing of Kings is less than half that of Improved Blessing of Wisdom.
- Once you take Innervate into account, however, a very conservative FSR percentage of 90% yields approximately half the value of MP5 from an Improved Blessing of Wisdom at very high values of Spirit.
Comparison and Conclusions
Clearly, Blessing of Wisdom is going to grant much greater mana regeneration than Blessing of Kings since Kings spends a portion of its "spell budget" on other effects (increasing your Intellect and Stamina along with other stats which are mostly worthless to a Restoration Druid). Given my preference for mana regeneration, I'd almost invariably choose Wisdom over Kings unless the encounter was really Stamina-dependent (in which case, I'd be more likely to put on a few pieces of PvP gear). In general, my order of preference for Blessing requests is as follows:
- Trash Fights: Salvation, Wisdom, Kings
- Boss Fights: Wisdom, Kings, Light *
* Of course if the boss fight is an aggro-sensitive one, you might interpose Salvation before or after Wisdom.
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Pallys are great trash tankers but might face problems with spellers due to OOM or just a lack of spell defend abilities. If your group is about to kill raid boss with some spell abilities, high constant melee damage and bleed/spell resistances better get decent warrior.
Yay! Maths are back again! I love it.
Even though my mind is quite tired now to dive into the math (damn work), I agree completely based on my experience.
The only times I choose kings is on chaotic fights like Aran and in new bosses where I prefer to have a bit more stam to compensate for nooby mistakes. And salvation only for fights (usually trash) that require lots of tanking and cc like Shattered Halls or the trash before Jan’Alai and Akil’Zon in ZA.
This haw always been a fairly easy choice for me. I just have to ask one question. Do I need mana?
As a moonkin I proritize the pally buffs this way.
Raid/boss: Salvation, Wisdom, Kings, Might, Light.
Instance/Trash: Salvation, Kings, Wisdom, Light, Might
Salv is always my first choice since threat is always an issue otherwise. Second I would take wisdom in a raid because I am usually almost out of mana at the end. In instances I take kings because the fights arn’t long enough for mana to be an issue. Lastly, In raids I lke Might over Light for the rare occation that I use the Moonkin Melee for Mana mechanic.
As usual I agree - great post! I think you should expand on your * regarding boss fights though. For resto druids there are actually a decent number of boss encounters in 25-man raiding that have one or more of:
1. A requirement to heal through a threat reset
2. Adds that spawn that you are in danger of aggroing (i.e. may not easily be picked up)
3. A tricky threat-sensitive pull
I’ve only got experience through the front half of the T6 zones, but I prefer salv second after wisdom for at least Maulgar, Hydross, Morogrim, Vashj, Al’ar, and Akama. You’re pretty much wanting salv second for all of Hyjal except Archimonde with the bosses following the trash. Sure, an intervene from a tank might save you - from an add anyway - but I’d rather not have to rely on that.
Normally we have 3 or 4 paladins in our raids so it doesn’t matter, but we’ve run with 2 before and I think it is worth knowing which buffs you’ll want for which fights.
This can allso depend alot on your own Mp5. Ushually during allmost any raid i prefur kings or salv over wisdom since i never run out of mana anyway (i have WAY too much Mp5 >.<). Alot of these kinds of choices are allways situational depending on your healing technique, your own Mp5, what fight or fights you are encountering and how many pallys are in the raid.
BTW kudos on the charts, i allways love the breakdowns. Thanks! ^_^
Aw. I got a mention. ^^ Thanks for answering my question so long ago; I passed it on to my Guild Leader and he’s never had to ask me again. Just one little thing to help runs go a bit more smoothly. Pally buffs can get really confusing!
@Nebelmond: Haha. Glad you enjoy the math posts! It can be really hard to think of things to number crunch (that aren’t so abstract as to be impossible).
@Graylo: I understand that most DPSers often need to prioritize Salvation over any other Blessings. Luckily, we healers only rarely have aggro issues. I wouldn’t have thought about Moonkin using Might, but that’s an interesting point. Maybe you could determine the MP5 contribution of the additional AP based on your swing timer. That would be really interesting!
@Treibh: You make good points on all those threat-based encounters. Unfortunately, the only one I’ve seen has been Maulgar, and threat is certainly a problem with the Fel Pups. We generally station one Warlock with our tank/Mage healers and one with the DPS healers for just such an occassion. But thank you for this list; it will be helpful when we DO attempt those bosses. =)
@Zackoria: Interesting point about having too much MP5. I wish I knew what that were like!
@Bellwether: You are very welcome, Bell. Thank you for sending it in. Questions like these are a great source of blog topics so I don’t have to wrack my brain (or put up a piece of Featured Artwork)!
Bell copied this article into my guild forum too. I commented about:
>>Boss Fights: Wisdom, Kings, Light
but she didn’t see it or didn’t have a reply. So, do you?
I can’t think any way Blessing of Light is useful for a tree druid. It will increase the heals FROM the paladin TO the druid. It does not increase the druid’s heals. If it’s a paladin tank, they won’t heal the healer. If it’s a paladin healer, paladins can’t group heal at all so probably you won’t get a heal from them because they are focusing on their target. So, why do you ask for Light? My opinion is Salvation is absolutely better for a tree druid.
@Ves: Well, because the point being that it’s rare to pull aggro on a boss fight so Salvation doesn’t really matter in that case. On the other hand, if I get in trouble a Paladin can heal me for extra. Really in those cases, I only care if I have my Wisdom and my Kings, but I do see your point. =)
When you take into account that spirit gives bonus healing to tree and the spirit increase, is BoW still worth it over BoK?
The second graph above takes into account the increase to Spirit which affects the mana return from an Innervate every 6 minutes. The +Healing from 1/4 the Spirit value isn’t considered, but even at 600 Spirit, you’d only be deriving 15 +Healing from the addition of BoK.
Redo this analysis for 2.4 and I think you’ll find BoK is better than imp. wisdom for 2 reasons:
1) for well geared priests / druids you just plain get more total regen + you get stam too.
2) for less well geared priests / druids, well, there is so much of a boost to regen in 2.4 that I would consider the stam boost from BoK as more valuable than a small amount of extra regen.