How good is Rapture?

Edit: Ver 3.0.9

Recently I was wondering how useful Rapture actually is. When playing I see lots of little blue mana numbers come up as it returns mana to me, especially from PW:S.  But I have to admit they are often very little blue numbers and “+1 Mana” is not uncommon.  So I did some research and discovered that there isn’t that much information available about Raptures mana return.  No serious theorycrafters have pointed their brain at it yet (i’m certainly not in that field).

I did discover in the comments tab of WoWHead’s entry for Rapture there were some numbers, mainly for level 70 priests. One poster Earti did edit their post to suggest some rough numbers for level 80 toons.  Here is his/her formula:

Mana Gained = (2.1x10^-6)(amount healed or absorbed)(maximum mana)

Based on this I pretended to be a theorycrafter and plugged these into a spreadsheet.  Voila!

L80 base mana = 3836
Max mana = 20,000
Max mana return = Max mana * 2.5% = 500 mana.


Spell Cost Heal Rapture Net Mana Cost Mana Saving
Greater Heal 32% 8000 336 892 27%
Flash Heal 18% 4000 168 522 24%
Penance 16% 9000 378 236 62%
PW:S 23% 4200 176 706 20%


Spell Cost Heal Rapture Net Mana Cost Mana Saving
Greater Heal Crit 32% 14000 500 728 41%
Flash Heal Crit 18% 6500 273 417 40%
Penance Crit x 3 16% 15000 500 114 81%

“Cost” is the percentage of base mana the spell costs to cast.   The “Heal” numbers are approximate values from my healing with about 1700 buffed spell power.  More SP means more mana return from Rapture (up to 2.5% of max mana) as you’ll heal for more for the same effort.  This assumes that you have zero over-heal and excludes talents which reduce spell mana cost.

“Rapture” is the mana return from Rapture. This maxes out at 2.5% of your max mana or 500 mana in this case.  “Net Mana Cost” is the mana cost of the spell after Rapture.  “Mana Saving” is how much of that spells base cost Rapture will save you.

So what does this tell us?  Well for normal non-critical heals it will return about 25% of the mana cost of casting Greater and Flash Heal.  Penance returns up to about 60% of mana cost.  PW:S has its mana cost reduced by about 20%.

Criticals with the heals return about 40% of the spells mana cost and Greater Heal actually hits the mana return cap (500 in this example).  If you score three Penance criticals (each missile crits separately) then you save a whopping 80% of the spell mana cost.

If we look at a more realistic situation where all the heals over-heal by 40% (i.e. only 60% of the heal actually makes the health bar go up). For PW:S assume that some of the casts are going on players other than the tank and aren’t being 100% utilised.  In this scenario we have these numbers.

40% Over-heal


Spell Cost Effective Heal Rapture Net Mana Cost Mana Saving
Greater Heal 32% 4800 201 1026 16%
Flash Heal 18% 2400 100 590 15%
Penance 16% 5400 226 387 37%
PW:S 23% 2520 105 776 12%


Spell Cost Effective Heal Rapture Net Mana Cost Mana Saving
Greater Heal Crit 32% 8400 352 875 29%
Flash Heal Crit 18% 3900 163 527 24%
Penance Crit x 3 16% 9000 378 236 62%

15% mana savings for the heals and 35% for Penance.  25% mana savings for criticals with the heals and 60% for Penance.  About 12% mana reduction for PW:S.

So what’s the take home message?  The 5 points you put in Rapture (a Disc Tier 8 talent) reduces the mana cost of Greater and Flash Heal by 15-25%, Penance by 35-60% and PW:S by 12-20%.   Compare it to Improved Healing (Holy Tier 4 talent) which covers pretty much the same spells, also gives 5% mana saving per talent point, but is lower in the talent tree.  Improved Healing is a flat 5% per point, where as Rapture scales with big heals for more saving.  Not a bad use for 5 talent points IMHO as long as you’re not over-healing too much.

Gobble gobble.

PS Yes I know there is a bug with Rapture and PW:S and that it is soon to be fixed.


One Response to How good is Rapture?

  1. […] Base on my estimates of the old numbers for Rapture my gut feeling is that the mana return/saving on PW:S will be about the same under the new Rapture, […]

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