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Spell Power, +Healing, and Coefficients
Published on September 1, 2008 by Phaelia 
Analysis, Featured, Lunar Guidance 
20 Comments
By now, you’ve almost certainly heard about the change to itemization whereby the +Healing and +Spell Damage stats are being retired for the less specialized Spell Power stat. What, exactly does this mean, though, and what can you expect at the release of Patch 3.0?
Converting +Healing to Spell Power
Balance Druids should see a direct translation of their spell damage into spell power at a 1:1 ratio. (This doesn’t account for the loss of spell power due to the reduction being made to Lunar Guidance, however.) Restoration Druids – or anyone wearing their healing kit – can expect to see their +Healing converted to Spell Power in the following manner:
Spell Power = +Healing * 0.532
In other words, players can expect to see a 46.8% reduction in their +Healing when converting to Spell Power. Note that this change will not affect your effective healing as spell coefficients are being adjusted to account for this reduction (more on this below). 0.532 was derived by comparing the ten staves with the highest +Healing values available in TBC:
| +Healing Before |
Spell Power After | +Damage Before | Conversion Ratio | Spell Damage Gain | |
| [Nightstaff of the Everliving] | 348 | 185 | 116 | 0.532 | 59% |
| [Rod of the Blazing Light] | 348 | 185 | 116 | 0.532 | 59% |
| [Exodar Life-Staff] | 364 | 194 | 122 | 0.533 | 59% |
| [Crystalheart Pulse-Staff] | 382 | 204 | 128 | 0.534 | 59% |
| [Staff of Dark Mending] | 407 | 216 | 136 | 0.531 | 59% |
| [Ethereum Life-Staff] | 415 | 221 | 138 | 0.533 | 60% |
| [Staff of Immaculate Recovery] | 443 | 236 | 148 | 0.533 | 59% |
| [Apostle of Argus] | 486 | 259 | 162 | 0.533 | 60% |
| [Crystal Spire of Karabor] | 486 | 259 | 162 | 0.533 | 60% |
| [Golden Staff of the Sin'dorei] | 550 | 293 | 183 | 0.533 | 60% |
| Average | 0.532 | 60% |
At the same time, you can expect to see your Bonus Spell Damage (in the form of spell power) increased by approximately 60%. This increase in fire power – or Arcane/Nature power, as the case may be – should make leveling in your Resto-kit a lot more viable than it would have been otherwise.
Adjusting Coefficients
While it was Blizzard’s intention to streamline spellcaster gear by having DPS and Healer casters use the same items, it wasn’t their intention to nerf the effectiveness of our spells. Therefore, the +Healing coefficients for Healing spells pre-WotLK will be increased to compensate for the reduction of +Healing. In order to keep the effective amount healed for a given spell the same, we’d expect the original coefficients to be multiplied by 1/0.532 or 1.88. To verify this, I returned to Outlands on the Beta server (no small feat for someone bound in Borean Tundra) and did some coefficient testing for the HoT portion of Rejuvenation and Regrowth. In both cases, using the same gear and same level of +Healing, each spell ticked for the same amount on beta and live (there was a very small difference in a few HoT ticks, but that is no doubt due to rounding issues).
Note: At some point, I hope to publish some revised spell power coefficients for Wrath, but haven’t had the time to perform data collection, yet.
Talent Implications
In Wrath of the Lich King, the Spell Power afforded by Lunar Guidance will be reduced from 25% to 12%. This is a reduction of 52% which is, not coincidentally, about the same percent reduction being applied to +Healing. I believe this talent was reduced in effectiveness to avoid making it too desirable to Healers (as it otherwise would have afforded more than twice the benefit that it did in TBC). This had the unfortunate side effect of harming Balance Druids in the process, however. I suspect that the relocation of both Nature’s Grace and Moonglow to much higher in the Balance tree was similarly meant to discourage Restoration Druid’s from dipping so deeply into Balance. Blizzard probably didn’t want to repeat the perceived mistake of making a hybrid build like the Dreamstate healer even close to as viable as a deeply Restoration-specced Druid.
At first glance, it might appear that the effectiveness of Empowered Touch is being doubled from its previous value of 20% to its post-Wrath value of 40%:
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However, the wording of the bonus afforded by Empowered Touch is significant. Note that its description reads, “gains an additional X% of your bonus healing effects.” This means that the bonus is applied additively (X + 0.2). This is in comparison to the bonus from Empowered Rejuvenation whose description reads, “The bonus healing effects of your healing over time spells is increased by 20%.” From its description, we can tell that Empowered Rejuvenation’s bonus is applied multiplicatively (X * 1.2) and will, therefore, automatically scale with the conversion to spell power. With the change to spell power cutting +Healing almost in half, the HT spell power coefficient had to be increased to compensate. The increase to 0.4 is actually a slight buff over the value of 0.38 that would have been necessary for Empowered Touch to maintain its effectiveness.
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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.
Much love for the info, Phae. The empowered touch change had me confused.
(also Golden Staff of the Sin’dorei links to Benediction >.>)
Thanks for the info, Phae. I already had heard this change would be good for my spelldamage, but now I know it for sure. It will go up by 400 points and since my healing output won’t suffer I’m one happy druid
Keep up the good work
I have a question.
In terms of item budgets in BC, +heal is worth less than +spell damage (this is obvious, since similar items will have a lot more +heal than a comparable item will have +spell damage).
So how do the healing coefficients from Spell Power compare the the spell damage coefficients from Spell Power?
Hope I phrased that correctly.
Thanks for the math Phae! I was concerned about the change. Still am a bit, but feel much better with some real numbers here.
One thing I noticed on the beta is that my +healing and +spell damage numbers still don’t quite match. Is this because of specific enchants? The difference is about 30 extra healing.
@Poley: Oh, thank you for the correction. You can see that I didn’t start out with the top 10 +Healing staves.
@Arwen: I noticed a HUGE difference just walking into Wrath. At first I wasn’t sure how I wanted to talent so I just ran around blowing things up with no talents. ^^ Then I found out that respecs were only a copper and specced Balance.
@Beathooven: If I understand your question, I believe that the coefficients for damage spells are considerably lower than the coefficients for healing spells, even more so now that healing spell coefficients have nearly doubled.
@Emee: I’m glad - hopefully I’ll have some coefficients figured out to post soon.
@Sydera: I’m afraid that I’m not sure. I guess it could be because of an enchant. The best way to test would be to remove items one by one and see if your spell damage and healing values change at different rates. For me, both values have been the same.
This is the only part of Wrath that I hate. Seeing as I’ve just gotten into raiding a few weeks ago, I’m enjoying being a healer as I have less competition for gear. But if spellpower does what it sounds like it will do, then all 10 or 25 people in raids will be fighting over each piece of gear. But then again maybe I’m just overreacting and it won’t be all that bad.
Thanks for the magic number, Phae! Not that it means a heckuva lot at this point, but at least now I know what it is.
@Gelaende: That’s true, but only partially. Even healers and DPS casters tend to chase different stats. For instance, we aren’t going to see a lot of Fire Mages loading up on Spirit. Similarly, a Resto Druid isn’t going to be stacking crit (since +Healing is still relatively more valuable in terms of itemization points). I just hope that this change means there will be a greater number of LEATHER options since Moonkin and Trees will want more or less similar gear. Otherwise our 100% armor bonus in Tree of Life from 3/3 IToL becomes MUCH less attractive.
@Kestrel: Haha - you’re welcome. May you SMITE your enemies with holy … smite.
Not that it really matters…but you say top 10 healing weapons, then appear to list only staves with the exception of crystal spire of karabor (if you were doing all heal weapons, you’d need archon’s gavel, hammer of attonement, gavel of naaru blessings, and some pvp options). Definitely interesting to know how they’re working this though, thanx Phae!
@Kalaghan: Whoops. You’re right. I meant to say the ten staves with the highest +Healing values. Fixed, thanks!
Phaelia, have you done a healing touch vs nourish assessment yet?
I just looked at our healing touch spell, and realized that it’s been changed from 3.5 seconds to 3 seconds. Thus, talented, it would be 2.5 seconds, and with the glyph of healing touch, it would be a 1 second cast. Holy crap, a 1 second heal! I think that’s better than any other healer.
My first glance at it seems to suggest that a glyphed healing touch is going to be far superior to nourish.
nourish = 2000/1.5 = 1333 hps for 22% mana
healing touch = 4000*0.5/(3-0.5-1.5) = 2000 hps for 25% mana (33%*0.75)
In addition, healing touch seems to have a higher spell coefficient, which means that at higher gear levels, nourish is going to fall further behind.
Have you been able to do any testing on beta yet to confirm this?
Oops, I’m a day late and a dollar short. I just read your post from yesterday or so, where you noticed this exact behavior.
Have you tested a rank 1 or rank 2 glyphed healing touch yet? I know it’s still about 25% base mana, but are they really instant cast spells?
And if they are instant cast, is the spell coefficient being reduced for downranked spells? Basically, do we have an instant cast, spammable spell, that’s actually useful, because at first glance, that looks like the case.
@Treeboi: No, I’m afraid that I haven’t. Thaelia is still 73 on the beta server, and the lag has been too terrible for me to do much leveling.
I’m sad to say that I don’t have particular interest in playing a male Night Elf or male Tauren Druid for the sole purposes of testing Nourish. The Rank 1 HT heals for something like … 35 HP? It’s pretty horrendously unusable. 
Won’t this be a problem in instance/raid encounters where we will have to compete with other casters for both weapons and armor? Before, we were generally guaranteed certain items, such as the selection of staffs above. However, now, we will be faced with the age old “battle of the roll” in PUGs. How will this be addressed, assuming that everyone will not be willing to pass up their gear just for the healer?
Don’t forget the mana reduction for HT from Tranquil Spirit (10%), Moonglow (9%)
@Primalurge: If by “problem” you mean that there will be a lot more people rolling on “caster” items, then yes, probably. However, there will be that many more items that drop that we can use so hopefully things should balance out. It will be a big change to attend 5-man instances and not be the only person to roll on “healing” loot, though.
@Januar: I’m afraid that I don’t understand what you mean to imply about mana cost reductions as that doesn’t seem especially relevant to spell power changes.