(HT: WOW Insider)

In a break with Blizzard tradition, Ghostcrawler spoke on the official forums today to give us specifics about the upcoming mana regen changes. As it stands now, Spirit-based mana regeneration is being reduced by 40%, and the various talents (like Meditation in the priests’ Discipline tree and Spirit Tap in the Shadow tree) are being buffed by 67% to compensate. The end result is that casting mana regen – within 5 seconds of casting a spell – will remain roughly the same, and non-casting regen – more than 5 seconds after casting a spell – will be reduced by almost half. (X non-casting regen:0.3X casting regen::0.6X non-casting regen:0.5*0.6 = 0.3X casting regen, for those of you who remember the SATs.)

For many priests, this won’t really make much of a difference. Non-Shadow priests who don’t have Spirit Tap will see a slight increase in downtime between fights when they’re soloing, but other than that, nearly every build I’ve seen relies on Meditation, Spirit Tap, or both to preserve mana regeneration – unlike druids, who have had to dance in and out of the FSR for a while now in order to keep up their mana regeneration. Some priests do the same gimmicking of the mechanics to get as much non-casting time as possible during a fight so that they can hammer people who are taking damage with Greater Heal, but I suspect that that’s a tactic to allow priests to continue a BC healing strategy that simply isn’t as good in LK.

Will this make Spirit a weaker stat, and +mp5 and Intellect stronger? Not really. Anyone who insists on gimmicking the FSR as mentioned above might think it is, since the difference between non-casting and casting regeneration has been lessened, but part of the point of the change was to make it so that healers would stop cast-dancing. Players who insist on continuing to game the system in that fashion may, in fact, continue to find that Spirit is better for their staying power – I haven’t done the math, to be honest – but I actually still prefer +mp5 to Spirit. Here’s why:

At the moment, with 984 Intellect and 697 Spirit, I gain 609 non-casting mp5 (183 casting) from my Spirit. My Spirit therefore gives me about 0.27 casting mp5 per point of Spirit. (I talk in terms of casting mp5 because that’s where straight +mp5 shines and Spirit can be compared directly, and because it’s not changing at all in 3.1.) Straight +mp5′s item budget is 2.5 times that of Spirit (2.5 points per mp5, 1 point per Spirit); therefore, Spirit needs to give me 0.4 casting mp5 (1/2.5) before it reaches the item-budget efficiency of pure +mp5.

This is, of course, as a Discipline priest. Holy priests can take Spiritual Guidance, a talent that gives them up to 25% of their Spirit as spell power, which may modify their preferences somewhat. Without the added benefit of the Holy talent, though, give me mp5 over Spirit any day. (The same is true, incidentally, of food buffs; the best Spirit food (Cuttlesteak) gives me +40 Spirit, which works out to about 11 mp5; the second-best mp5 food (Rhino Dogs or Pickled Fangtooth) give me 12 mp5 and don’t even require Northern Spices.

Woo, tangent.

Want to really get good at healing? Find a group in their low 70s, strip naked, and heal Nexus. (Consider offering to pay their repair bills to assuage their fears and really put the pressure on you.) Oh, use your highest-ranked spells – you don’t get any benefit from downranking anymore. But other than that, don’t give yourself any buffs, don’t eat any food, don’t wear anything that gives you any primary or secondary stats. (I have a Frayed set from the human starting area, plus a white Quarterstaff from the vendor in Stormwind.)

When you’ve shown that you can heal Nexus without any benefits from gear, food, or other buffs, move up. Heal Azjol-Nerub naked. Then Old Kingdom or Drak’Tharon Keep. Continue onward. If you reach a point where you truly can’t move on, find the minimum you can do it with. If you find that you can successfully heal Utgarde Pinnacle, start over with heroic Nexus. Again, keep going until you can’t anymore.

Find your minimum for each instance. Keep figuring out new ways to lower that minimum.

If you really think you’re up to it, try healing 10-man Naxx in the buff.

Then, when you actually put all your gear back on and go heal Naxxramas or Obsidian Sanctum or Eye of Eternity, bask in the pure luxury of all that mana, all that spellpower, all that crit and haste and regeneration, and stick to the habits you’ve ingrained from instance after instance of having to be as efficient, adaptive, and free-thinking as possible.

(As a side benefit, you’ll discover that you’re more likely, when gear for you drops in a raid, to say “…do I really need to spend the DKP on that?”.)