I'm running two specs now, a Tower of Radiance spec and an Eternal Glory spec. The difference between them is fairly minor. My "main spec" for OMFG-TANK-DAMAGE fights has Eternal Glory. I spec out of Tower of Radiance because I put Beacon of Light on the off-tank and spam Holy Light on the main tank like it's 1999.
For fights like Beth'tilac, I wanted ToR because BoL doesn't transfer between levels. I figure if I have to Bacon the tank I'm healing anyways, may as well generate some extra holy power? And I wanted to have Pursuit of Justice, because, well, I like being fast. Perhaps it's not entirely optimal, but for the fights where I'm using BoL for Holy Power, I figure I may as well not bother with Eternal Glory. In theory, I'll be using Light of Dawn a whole lot. (My glyphs reflect these choices, too, one for each spec).
I don't know what I would do, if I only had one spec to choose to be a healadin. I feel tugged in two directions, with mastery demanding one play style and haste another. Each has it's own build and strengths and weaknesses, and every encounter seems to demand something different.
We got Beth to 1% last night but ran out of time to go in for that one last attempt. I feel pretty darn useless in Phase 2, but I think that has more to do with my being a paladin than being a mastery-stacking paladin. Hit Holy Radiance on cooldown, spam the raid. Those bubbles get absorbed, at least, but without haste my direct heals are painfully slow.
I guess, even with haste, my direct heals are still painfully slow. =P
TL;DR: Paladins need a third spec so healadins can have 2 healing specs AND an offspec. Because not everyone is crazy enough to do holy/holy like me.
Showing posts with label gear itemization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gear itemization. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
I looked at Magmaw funny
A foray into 10 HM...
Now that we're doing t12, my guild put together a 10-raid for HM Blackwing Descent. Perhaps regular modes have been nerfed all to hell (and they have, they have) but HMs are still--wait for it--hard.
The group was really cobbled together with the folks who happened to be on on Saturday. So it was my absolute favorite healing composition (two holy paladins + anything else) (sarcasm alert!), but we made it work. Only kinda, though, since we didn't get any bosses down. But I had expected as much, since we hadn't touched a single Hardmode yet this expansion and none of us had really researched the fights yet.
But even so, it gave me a chance to see my mastery gear working in a 10-group. At first, I went in my hybrid gear (17% mastery, 1000+ haste, more crit) and used my Tower of Radiance spec, but after a couple of wipes I switched to my "main" set and to my non-ToR spec.
A couple of reasons why: In a raid with the haste buff, the difference between 970 haste and 1200 or so haste is... not noticeable. Perhaps you get an extra Holy Radiance tick (a handy chart would be neat, but I digress), but the cast time on direct heals is the same either way. And in 10-raids, Holy Radiance isn't quite the I-Win button it is in 25's.
My "off spec" gear is lower i-level. I ran into this problem before, in Icecrown Citadel, trying to keep up a FoL set (haste to soft cap, stack spellpower) with random pieces of gear. Except, I never had a full offset so some of my pieces were still gemmed for intellect. So it wasn't a true specialist set, it was entirely cobbled together, and the real kicker: lower average i-level. I lost so much to put that gear on. I ended up using it Saurfang while we were progressing and that's about it. Once it felt on farm, I didn't bother.
I feel much the same way with my "haste and spirit" set now. I lose 4-pc t11 bonus, several thousand intellect, and 7% bubblage for... a couple hundred haste, an extra % or so crit, and... wait for it... all those i-level drops actually give me less spirit. Because this all off-set gear, old gear, lower i-level. All my new stuff is part of my mastery set.
A part of this is that it isn't a true offset. I still have too many pieces that are reforged for mastery, so instead of being a second specialist set, it still favors mastery while not favoring it enough.
And I do believe that I would be saying the opposite, if I had cobbled together a mastery offset, if I had half-assed it and coming up with 15% bubblage instead of 24%, I would not be the mastery cheerleader that I am right now.
A part of me dies every time I cheerlead for mastery. But the point is: your best gear will probably give you the best results. And why this is news for me, well, I haven't had my coffee yet.
Is there a point to all this? I really thought I had one but now that I'm here, I don't. I was able to "compete" with the other healers in my mastery gear, though we had to do healing assignments to work around me and I do not like being in that position. We had the other healadin beacon the tank, focus the raid, while I beaconed the adds tank and focused on the main tank. Sometimes I was a bit overwhelmed by the damage, but for the most part I wasn't. I never thought "whew, glad I got all this mastery" or anything.
I'm going to have to do some research for next weekend. I'm really not motivated to reforge my gear for one run on the weekend just to switch it back for the week, but we'll see what happens.
Now that we're doing t12, my guild put together a 10-raid for HM Blackwing Descent. Perhaps regular modes have been nerfed all to hell (and they have, they have) but HMs are still--wait for it--hard.
The group was really cobbled together with the folks who happened to be on on Saturday. So it was my absolute favorite healing composition (two holy paladins + anything else) (sarcasm alert!), but we made it work. Only kinda, though, since we didn't get any bosses down. But I had expected as much, since we hadn't touched a single Hardmode yet this expansion and none of us had really researched the fights yet.
But even so, it gave me a chance to see my mastery gear working in a 10-group. At first, I went in my hybrid gear (17% mastery, 1000+ haste, more crit) and used my Tower of Radiance spec, but after a couple of wipes I switched to my "main" set and to my non-ToR spec.
A couple of reasons why: In a raid with the haste buff, the difference between 970 haste and 1200 or so haste is... not noticeable. Perhaps you get an extra Holy Radiance tick (a handy chart would be neat, but I digress), but the cast time on direct heals is the same either way. And in 10-raids, Holy Radiance isn't quite the I-Win button it is in 25's.
My "off spec" gear is lower i-level. I ran into this problem before, in Icecrown Citadel, trying to keep up a FoL set (haste to soft cap, stack spellpower) with random pieces of gear. Except, I never had a full offset so some of my pieces were still gemmed for intellect. So it wasn't a true specialist set, it was entirely cobbled together, and the real kicker: lower average i-level. I lost so much to put that gear on. I ended up using it Saurfang while we were progressing and that's about it. Once it felt on farm, I didn't bother.
I feel much the same way with my "haste and spirit" set now. I lose 4-pc t11 bonus, several thousand intellect, and 7% bubblage for... a couple hundred haste, an extra % or so crit, and... wait for it... all those i-level drops actually give me less spirit. Because this all off-set gear, old gear, lower i-level. All my new stuff is part of my mastery set.
A part of this is that it isn't a true offset. I still have too many pieces that are reforged for mastery, so instead of being a second specialist set, it still favors mastery while not favoring it enough.
And I do believe that I would be saying the opposite, if I had cobbled together a mastery offset, if I had half-assed it and coming up with 15% bubblage instead of 24%, I would not be the mastery cheerleader that I am right now.
A part of me dies every time I cheerlead for mastery. But the point is: your best gear will probably give you the best results. And why this is news for me, well, I haven't had my coffee yet.
Is there a point to all this? I really thought I had one but now that I'm here, I don't. I was able to "compete" with the other healers in my mastery gear, though we had to do healing assignments to work around me and I do not like being in that position. We had the other healadin beacon the tank, focus the raid, while I beaconed the adds tank and focused on the main tank. Sometimes I was a bit overwhelmed by the damage, but for the most part I wasn't. I never thought "whew, glad I got all this mastery" or anything.
I'm going to have to do some research for next weekend. I'm really not motivated to reforge my gear for one run on the weekend just to switch it back for the week, but we'll see what happens.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
bacon flavored playstyle
Bacon, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
There's a few approaches you can use to using Beacon of Light in PVE encounters, and your favored approach will likely affect your gut instinct for stat priorities. (This is a mastery post, believe it or not).
The method I've used for most of T11 is to assign myself a tank (ah, the joys of being heal lead, I'm known for giving myself the heaviest tank-healing duty), and Beacon my assignment.
Beaconing Your Tank
For fights like Magmaw, Atramedes, the second half of Halfus, Double Dragons, and Chogall, you've probably already done this. With Beacon on your main assignment, you're free to spam the raid with heals. In 4.2, we can use Holy Light as often as it can cover tank damage (which on one-tank fights can happen, if you've got other paladins using their Beacon the same way and full-rolling hots and shields from other healers).
I like giving my tank my Bacon. It ensures my tank will always be getting a heal (not just the 1/2 direct heal, but tiny heals from PotI and JotP as long as I'm staying active, but on the occassion I do need to land a big heal on the tank, I get Holy Power, which allows me to do even more raid healing with LoD, which transfers a good-sized heal to my tank. More raid healing and solid tank healing. It's win.
This setup favors haste>spirit/crit and employs all spells, potentially favoring Divine Light and Light of Dawn. A paladin has less reason to use Word of Glory unless she's really trying to be mana efficient (crossing her fingers for a HP refund with each WoG use). Casting Divine Light on your tank procs more HP and allows you to spray lots and lots of LoD over the raid, to the point of planning out holy power for big attacks and timers, and regenerating it quickly by spamming the tank with Infusion procs.
This setup makes mastery look like a chump stat. With the changes in 4.2, mastery is better (our bubbles are a little more likely to last long enough over the raid to be absorbed), however, the scatter shot raid-healing approach means a lot of those bubbles can get wasted (phase changes or timed AoE pulses longer than 15 seconds). This approach means we're healing reactively, while mastery really shines with proactive healing.
That's a drawback if you're trying to avoid mastery. We "pay" for it in terms of class balance so for fights we're not able to utilize our bubbles, we're running without one of the tools in our already limited toolkit.
This strategy is solid for fights with moderate tank damage and moderate raid damage, and allows you to switch between direct heal-bombing your tank and raid healing on the fly.
Beaconing Someone Else's Tank
I think a lot of paladins still use this approach (the other two healadins do this unless we agree otherwise). For fights that feature two tanks and limited raid damage, this is a solid way to keep up two targets.
The drawback is, you put your tank in danger when you help heal the raid, because while you aren't healing them, they aren't getting any of your heals. With this setup, WoG shines a teensy bit more than LoD, if a healadin wants to keep constant heals on her tank. (And fights that encourage this type of Bacon may not have raid damage to heal).
Mastery is an amazing stat for this playstyle. I am not yet comfortable with the stat weights for this setup but I have heard other paladins gear for a 1.9 second HL/DL (mine is 2.0 with 790 haste) and enough critical strike rating to keep up solid uptime on Conviction (at 15% crit I kept up 97%). What a healadin gives up in raid-healing flexibility she becomes a beast tank-healer. Constant bubbles on cheap heals. It's ridiculous.
Holy Light takes precedence over Divine Light, since this style is proactive healing, building up bubbles whether the tank needs a heal or not. That means you can get away with less spirit. That means--you guessed it--room for more mastery. Truly a specialist build.
This strategy is awesome for fights with insane tank damage. Your healing team will love you for your mastery and your ability to keep a constant stream of heals and bubbles on the main tank. However, you may feel like the last kid chosen to play at recess for AoE damage fights. For progression-minded raiding groups (and aggressive raid healers who don't care), that may not be a drawback.
Talent Builds
I've had two holy specs for a while now. My off-spec was last tuned for Alakir (Pursuit of Justice, go go!) but I've been contemplating redoing that build to fully utilize a mastery playstyle. I think Tower of Radiance is wasted on a full-on mastery build. That's not to say I would scoff at a paladin who had it, but for players like me who prefer to keep two variants of their main spec instead of a true offspec, I think there's room to play around.
I'm writing this post a bit ahead of its post date so I'm going to go with this build here (31/5/5), and hopefully I'll let you know how I feel about it. I'm not really happy about 1/2 Blessed Life but it was the best I could do without taking the DPS talents in the Holy tree.
I'm further thinking that if I'm going this route of having one specialized tank-healing build and a raid-healing build, I could take out Eternal Glory in my raid-healing build and try Pursuit of Justice instead. In theory, I'd be casting far more LoDs than WoGs, and the extra movement to help position myself for Holy Radiance would be helpful. But I'll keep you posted. I haven't decided yet. :)
There's a few approaches you can use to using Beacon of Light in PVE encounters, and your favored approach will likely affect your gut instinct for stat priorities. (This is a mastery post, believe it or not).
The method I've used for most of T11 is to assign myself a tank (ah, the joys of being heal lead, I'm known for giving myself the heaviest tank-healing duty), and Beacon my assignment.
Beaconing Your Tank
For fights like Magmaw, Atramedes, the second half of Halfus, Double Dragons, and Chogall, you've probably already done this. With Beacon on your main assignment, you're free to spam the raid with heals. In 4.2, we can use Holy Light as often as it can cover tank damage (which on one-tank fights can happen, if you've got other paladins using their Beacon the same way and full-rolling hots and shields from other healers).
I like giving my tank my Bacon. It ensures my tank will always be getting a heal (not just the 1/2 direct heal, but tiny heals from PotI and JotP as long as I'm staying active, but on the occassion I do need to land a big heal on the tank, I get Holy Power, which allows me to do even more raid healing with LoD, which transfers a good-sized heal to my tank. More raid healing and solid tank healing. It's win.
This setup favors haste>spirit/crit and employs all spells, potentially favoring Divine Light and Light of Dawn. A paladin has less reason to use Word of Glory unless she's really trying to be mana efficient (crossing her fingers for a HP refund with each WoG use). Casting Divine Light on your tank procs more HP and allows you to spray lots and lots of LoD over the raid, to the point of planning out holy power for big attacks and timers, and regenerating it quickly by spamming the tank with Infusion procs.
This setup makes mastery look like a chump stat. With the changes in 4.2, mastery is better (our bubbles are a little more likely to last long enough over the raid to be absorbed), however, the scatter shot raid-healing approach means a lot of those bubbles can get wasted (phase changes or timed AoE pulses longer than 15 seconds). This approach means we're healing reactively, while mastery really shines with proactive healing.
That's a drawback if you're trying to avoid mastery. We "pay" for it in terms of class balance so for fights we're not able to utilize our bubbles, we're running without one of the tools in our already limited toolkit.
This strategy is solid for fights with moderate tank damage and moderate raid damage, and allows you to switch between direct heal-bombing your tank and raid healing on the fly.
Beaconing Someone Else's Tank
I think a lot of paladins still use this approach (the other two healadins do this unless we agree otherwise). For fights that feature two tanks and limited raid damage, this is a solid way to keep up two targets.
The drawback is, you put your tank in danger when you help heal the raid, because while you aren't healing them, they aren't getting any of your heals. With this setup, WoG shines a teensy bit more than LoD, if a healadin wants to keep constant heals on her tank. (And fights that encourage this type of Bacon may not have raid damage to heal).
Mastery is an amazing stat for this playstyle. I am not yet comfortable with the stat weights for this setup but I have heard other paladins gear for a 1.9 second HL/DL (mine is 2.0 with 790 haste) and enough critical strike rating to keep up solid uptime on Conviction (at 15% crit I kept up 97%). What a healadin gives up in raid-healing flexibility she becomes a beast tank-healer. Constant bubbles on cheap heals. It's ridiculous.
Holy Light takes precedence over Divine Light, since this style is proactive healing, building up bubbles whether the tank needs a heal or not. That means you can get away with less spirit. That means--you guessed it--room for more mastery. Truly a specialist build.
This strategy is awesome for fights with insane tank damage. Your healing team will love you for your mastery and your ability to keep a constant stream of heals and bubbles on the main tank. However, you may feel like the last kid chosen to play at recess for AoE damage fights. For progression-minded raiding groups (and aggressive raid healers who don't care), that may not be a drawback.
Talent Builds
I've had two holy specs for a while now. My off-spec was last tuned for Alakir (Pursuit of Justice, go go!) but I've been contemplating redoing that build to fully utilize a mastery playstyle. I think Tower of Radiance is wasted on a full-on mastery build. That's not to say I would scoff at a paladin who had it, but for players like me who prefer to keep two variants of their main spec instead of a true offspec, I think there's room to play around.
I'm writing this post a bit ahead of its post date so I'm going to go with this build here (31/5/5), and hopefully I'll let you know how I feel about it. I'm not really happy about 1/2 Blessed Life but it was the best I could do without taking the DPS talents in the Holy tree.
I'm further thinking that if I'm going this route of having one specialized tank-healing build and a raid-healing build, I could take out Eternal Glory in my raid-healing build and try Pursuit of Justice instead. In theory, I'd be casting far more LoDs than WoGs, and the extra movement to help position myself for Holy Radiance would be helpful. But I'll keep you posted. I haven't decided yet. :)
Friday, April 29, 2011
still in the dark: mastery buffs not enough
I promised myself I'm not going to let this go too long, so not much theorycrafting. Also, there may be QQ ahead.
Magmaw WoL for 4-27. Magmaw WoL for 4-19.
I went from 36% "overheal" on mastery to 38. Old mastery was 3-4% of my healing, now it's 6%.
I mean, it's a buff so I shouldn't complain. But here's what I think happened:
Tank healing for paladins hasn't changed. Most of our shields get overwritten before the absorb can happen. My tank absorbs for 4-19 and 4-27 are a bit different from playstyle change (more raw heals done spamming the tank on 4-27 because our other tank healer fell into the lava).
However, the mastery buffs did affect LoD absorbs. My absorbs on the raid on 4-19 were all overheal in the 50-75% range. Those numbers last night went down, or rather, the amount absorbed went up (overheal in the 30-70% range, with more bubbles being entirely absorbed).
So we're a little bit better at raid healing. A little. I don't know about you, but my raid assignments are still like they were in Wrath: pallies on tanks, the rest on raids. Sure, I pop Holy Radiance (which doesn't proc mastery) every minute when the boss does his raidwide-pulse-damage like a good healadin, but let's be honest here:
Why in the hell would I assign myself to the raid when we have shamans, druids, and priests? So I can use half-powered Light of Dawns once every 14 seconds?
QQ. I know my raw healing is often comparable to what other healers do, but I still think healadins are broken.
One spell on a 40 second cooldown does not fix "it".
The way the encounters are designed, we're tank healers who pop a raid-cooldown, then continue spamming tanks. There's really no spell selection, and if we're not clumped up...
And with the damage model in Cataclysm, we can't even tank heal by ourselves. I mean, I know that no 1 healer can, but still. I can, in theory, stop raid healing, and the raid healers would just have less overheal.
I main-changed in the second tier of Wrath, and later called it a mistake because of all the time it wastes. Switching to priest isn't an option (though a girl can dream) because we have so many priests in our raid. Right now, we could use a shaman, but our alt run already has so many shamans that gearing her up would be difficult. Oh, yeah, and she's 72. So when I talk about thinking about not being a paladin anymore, I do mean to say I've been giving this a lot of thought over a long time. Can you believe that 4.0 was six months ago? Holy paladins are still the punchline.
We already have one holy paladin in the raid. I feel at this point having 1 less paladin and 1 more anything would be better than having 2 healadins. Especially since our shaman hangs around the 50% attendance mark.
How is 4.1 treating you? How do you feel about your healadin and her contributions to the raid?
Magmaw WoL for 4-27. Magmaw WoL for 4-19.
I went from 36% "overheal" on mastery to 38. Old mastery was 3-4% of my healing, now it's 6%.
I mean, it's a buff so I shouldn't complain. But here's what I think happened:
Tank healing for paladins hasn't changed. Most of our shields get overwritten before the absorb can happen. My tank absorbs for 4-19 and 4-27 are a bit different from playstyle change (more raw heals done spamming the tank on 4-27 because our other tank healer fell into the lava).
However, the mastery buffs did affect LoD absorbs. My absorbs on the raid on 4-19 were all overheal in the 50-75% range. Those numbers last night went down, or rather, the amount absorbed went up (overheal in the 30-70% range, with more bubbles being entirely absorbed).
So we're a little bit better at raid healing. A little. I don't know about you, but my raid assignments are still like they were in Wrath: pallies on tanks, the rest on raids. Sure, I pop Holy Radiance (which doesn't proc mastery) every minute when the boss does his raidwide-pulse-damage like a good healadin, but let's be honest here:
Why in the hell would I assign myself to the raid when we have shamans, druids, and priests? So I can use half-powered Light of Dawns once every 14 seconds?
QQ. I know my raw healing is often comparable to what other healers do, but I still think healadins are broken.
One spell on a 40 second cooldown does not fix "it".
The way the encounters are designed, we're tank healers who pop a raid-cooldown, then continue spamming tanks. There's really no spell selection, and if we're not clumped up...
And with the damage model in Cataclysm, we can't even tank heal by ourselves. I mean, I know that no 1 healer can, but still. I can, in theory, stop raid healing, and the raid healers would just have less overheal.
I main-changed in the second tier of Wrath, and later called it a mistake because of all the time it wastes. Switching to priest isn't an option (though a girl can dream) because we have so many priests in our raid. Right now, we could use a shaman, but our alt run already has so many shamans that gearing her up would be difficult. Oh, yeah, and she's 72. So when I talk about thinking about not being a paladin anymore, I do mean to say I've been giving this a lot of thought over a long time. Can you believe that 4.0 was six months ago? Holy paladins are still the punchline.
We already have one holy paladin in the raid. I feel at this point having 1 less paladin and 1 more anything would be better than having 2 healadins. Especially since our shaman hangs around the 50% attendance mark.
How is 4.1 treating you? How do you feel about your healadin and her contributions to the raid?
Friday, April 8, 2011
one hand isn't enough
Fact: Priests, Shamans and Druids get staffs, along with an assortment of 1-handed weapons they can use with off hands.
Fact: Paladins of the Self-Righteous variety (*cough* Holy *cough*) only get to choose between a handful of 1-handed weapons.
Totally My Opinion: Blizzard should implement 2-handed caster maces. Paladins would get another option, maces are totally sweet, it makes sense for Shamans, Druids, and Paladins to have a gigantic mace, and, seriously, I have to admit: I would love to not have a shield for just one tier.
We'd get to cross our fingers on weapon drops for more than one boss.
We'd look TOTALLY SWEET. RAR!
With 3 classes and 5 specs being able to use 2-handed maces, adding it to the loot table wouldn't clutter things up so badly.
Did I mention it would give us more options for loot?
Yes, gigantic caster maces would be amazing.
Fact: Paladins of the Self-Righteous variety (*cough* Holy *cough*) only get to choose between a handful of 1-handed weapons.
Totally My Opinion: Blizzard should implement 2-handed caster maces. Paladins would get another option, maces are totally sweet, it makes sense for Shamans, Druids, and Paladins to have a gigantic mace, and, seriously, I have to admit: I would love to not have a shield for just one tier.
We'd get to cross our fingers on weapon drops for more than one boss.
We'd look TOTALLY SWEET. RAR!
With 3 classes and 5 specs being able to use 2-handed maces, adding it to the loot table wouldn't clutter things up so badly.
Did I mention it would give us more options for loot?
Yes, gigantic caster maces would be amazing.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
more shards for you: spellpower plate
News! Discussion! Opinions!
Let's talk about spellpower plate. Or rather, let's talk about what Ghostcrawler said about spellpower plate.
How do you feel about holy paladins being the only spec in the game with gear devoted to it?
I'm okay with it. No, really. The alternatives are far worse, clunky if you will.
We could wear mail. True, but we could also wear tutus and prance around with wands. Can you imagine a flipping PALADIN hopping around with a wand and ballerina slippers? I'll pass, thanks.
We could wear strength plate using conversions of melee stats. Then we'd heal AND be able to throw it down like a melee. Sure, we could be redesigned like cleric in DnD who got the best of all worlds: healing, armor, and power. And then ret and holy alike would have to ride the nerf-coaster while they got us 'balanced'. And by balanced, I mean, not #1 in PvP.
Pass. I'd rather not deal with the rogue tears.
Another problem with the strength plate idea is the gear competition. Right now, things are slated a little in favor of holy paladins. We gear up pretty quickly. Yet, lumping us in with the strength-plate crowd isn't an answer to the loot distribution problem. Warriors, Death Knights, and Paladins are popular classes. Melee DPS is a popular role. At least in my raid, the competition is still pretty fierce for strength plate.
It's anecdotal, but I noticed last night that I'm one of the weakest-geared healers in my raid.
Spellpower plate gets sharded in droves, it's true! But regular raid groups are sharding lots of stuff off the first few bosses. We're sharding the spellpower legs off of Halfus not because spellpower plate shouldn't be in the game, but because we've been sharding every. single. drop. from Halfus for weeks now.
(Three BoEs dropped last night before Chogall trash, 2 agility trinkets and the healer staff. No one seems to be complaining about all the extras of these we don't need...)
The other huge problem I see with a strength-plate conversion is how differently things are itemized across strength classes. Different classes want different things, and that's a good thing. But if holy paladins had a conversion, it would be tricky as hell to figure out what we wanted. (Other than to avoid expertise like the plague if it was converted to mastery!). And then Rohan over at Blessing of Kings brings up an very good point: if we have a conversion for plate, what about non-plate stuff? Do we roll jewelry like healers, or like plate dps? We'd be Ninja Raiders!
I've heard the argument that spellpower plate is wasteful . Okay, IRL I'm all for being green and reusing bags and wearing clothes till the zippers rust and turning the heat down and not wasting gas.
But this is not real. Pixels can not be wasted. We do not need to remove spellpower plate to 'conserve' gear. Waste is not a bad thing in a video game, in fact, it's good. It ensures that the content has repeat value.
I mean, if we're going to remove spellpower plate to make sure that the loot distribution is "more fair", the next step, obviously, is that the game should check the raid composition and only drop things that those classes can use. No druids or rogues in the raid? Guaranteed no leather!
Oh, wait. We still might have repeat drops. Instead, we should have the game not only spec-check, but gear-check. If all the clothies have a 359 helm, no helm would drop off that boss. That way, each boss kill guarantees only useful and necessary things that we need.
So then we need to kill each boss exactly three times before the whole raid is decked out. Then we have no reason to come back, except to push through to the bosses we haven't done three times yet. And what happens when said raid already has everything off that boss already? Does he just drop nothing?
Wait, I know! Every boss will drop tokens, which can be turned into.... anything! You get a token, take it to the npc, then you choose what slot you want it to fit into. Then you choose what secondary stats you want. Every boss is guaranteed loot, and it's exactly what you want... every time!
Does that actually sound fun?
If you're raiding every week, you've probably sharded a whole bunch of gear, and only a tiny amount of that was spellpower plate. Waste and RNG in drops are an important part of raiding. We notice the spellpower plate because it sticks out more obviously, but every week we 'waste' a whole lot of gear.
And again, not a bad thing. We need incentives to keep raiding the fights we've already learned. Large loot tables help keep things interesting.
I agree that spellpower plate is a bit clunky, but the alternatives are more broken than it stands currently.
Let's talk about spellpower plate. Or rather, let's talk about what Ghostcrawler said about spellpower plate.
How do you feel about holy paladins being the only spec in the game with gear devoted to it?
I'm okay with it. No, really. The alternatives are far worse, clunky if you will.
We could wear mail. True, but we could also wear tutus and prance around with wands. Can you imagine a flipping PALADIN hopping around with a wand and ballerina slippers? I'll pass, thanks.
We could wear strength plate using conversions of melee stats. Then we'd heal AND be able to throw it down like a melee. Sure, we could be redesigned like cleric in DnD who got the best of all worlds: healing, armor, and power. And then ret and holy alike would have to ride the nerf-coaster while they got us 'balanced'. And by balanced, I mean, not #1 in PvP.
Pass. I'd rather not deal with the rogue tears.
Another problem with the strength plate idea is the gear competition. Right now, things are slated a little in favor of holy paladins. We gear up pretty quickly. Yet, lumping us in with the strength-plate crowd isn't an answer to the loot distribution problem. Warriors, Death Knights, and Paladins are popular classes. Melee DPS is a popular role. At least in my raid, the competition is still pretty fierce for strength plate.
It's anecdotal, but I noticed last night that I'm one of the weakest-geared healers in my raid.
Spellpower plate gets sharded in droves, it's true! But regular raid groups are sharding lots of stuff off the first few bosses. We're sharding the spellpower legs off of Halfus not because spellpower plate shouldn't be in the game, but because we've been sharding every. single. drop. from Halfus for weeks now.
(Three BoEs dropped last night before Chogall trash, 2 agility trinkets and the healer staff. No one seems to be complaining about all the extras of these we don't need...)
The other huge problem I see with a strength-plate conversion is how differently things are itemized across strength classes. Different classes want different things, and that's a good thing. But if holy paladins had a conversion, it would be tricky as hell to figure out what we wanted. (Other than to avoid expertise like the plague if it was converted to mastery!). And then Rohan over at Blessing of Kings brings up an very good point: if we have a conversion for plate, what about non-plate stuff? Do we roll jewelry like healers, or like plate dps? We'd be Ninja Raiders!
I've heard the argument that spellpower plate is wasteful . Okay, IRL I'm all for being green and reusing bags and wearing clothes till the zippers rust and turning the heat down and not wasting gas.
But this is not real. Pixels can not be wasted. We do not need to remove spellpower plate to 'conserve' gear. Waste is not a bad thing in a video game, in fact, it's good. It ensures that the content has repeat value.
I mean, if we're going to remove spellpower plate to make sure that the loot distribution is "more fair", the next step, obviously, is that the game should check the raid composition and only drop things that those classes can use. No druids or rogues in the raid? Guaranteed no leather!
Oh, wait. We still might have repeat drops. Instead, we should have the game not only spec-check, but gear-check. If all the clothies have a 359 helm, no helm would drop off that boss. That way, each boss kill guarantees only useful and necessary things that we need.
So then we need to kill each boss exactly three times before the whole raid is decked out. Then we have no reason to come back, except to push through to the bosses we haven't done three times yet. And what happens when said raid already has everything off that boss already? Does he just drop nothing?
Wait, I know! Every boss will drop tokens, which can be turned into.... anything! You get a token, take it to the npc, then you choose what slot you want it to fit into. Then you choose what secondary stats you want. Every boss is guaranteed loot, and it's exactly what you want... every time!
Does that actually sound fun?
If you're raiding every week, you've probably sharded a whole bunch of gear, and only a tiny amount of that was spellpower plate. Waste and RNG in drops are an important part of raiding. We notice the spellpower plate because it sticks out more obviously, but every week we 'waste' a whole lot of gear.
And again, not a bad thing. We need incentives to keep raiding the fights we've already learned. Large loot tables help keep things interesting.
I agree that spellpower plate is a bit clunky, but the alternatives are more broken than it stands currently.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
feeling illuminated?
I've been avoiding mastery (Illuminated Healing) on my gear for a while. Skada was estimating my mastery at less than 5% of a boost to my healing, as opposed to the extremely visible boosts that critical strike and haste offer. I figured, without the math, that with only our direct heals causing the bubble, and with the duration being short enough that not every bubble gets absorbed, it's going to be a pathetic amount of healing.
And at first glance it is, because Beacon of Light, Protector of the Innocent, and Holy Radiance don't cause bubbles, and those account for a brickload of my healing.
First, the log: WoL report for Four Lights Conclave Kill
Second, some rough math. I added together all my direct heals, including overheal. We're including on this list: Flash of Light, Holy Light, Divine Light, Word of Glory, Light of Dawn, and Lay on Hands (though I didn't cast any FoL). That's total effective direct healing of 1,302,129 and total direct raw healing of 1,451,189.
Third, my mastery. Like I said, I've been avoiding mastery when possible. According to my armory, I am currently carrying 8.89 mastery rating (8 base, .89 from gear). Each point of mastery rating adds 1.25% to each bubble. 10 base +(.89*1.25)=11.1125. So, each direct heal should in theory proc a bubble of 11.1125%.
In Theory
Total raw direct healing of 1,451,189 should proc 161,227 in bubbles.
In Practice
According to WoL, I had potential absorbs of 161,000 (listed to the far right as Overhealing). So my napkin math and WoL haven't disagreed too much there. Below, I am using 161,000.
However, in practice, I only had 105,818 absorbs via Illuminated Healing, or 65.73% of total potential bubbles. 55,182 (34.27% of every bubble) went to waste. Instead of enjoying 11.1125% absorbs, it's practically closer to 7.3%. Which isn't actually as bad as I had imagined it before, though still nothing to cheer about. WoL ranks Illuminated Healing as 3.9% of my healing because a good half of my heals don't proc it.
Tank Healing And Mastery
If what I've done above isn't convoluted enough, I decided to take a look at absorbs on just the tanks. After all, if Mastery helps us be better tank healers, then it's still a good stat. However, to do the modeling, I had to take a look at all holy paladin heals on each tank, all effective absorbs on the tank, each paladin's mastery, and extrapolate potential absorbs (the things I do for WoW...)
However, what I found is that (and here's a shocker) since most of our direct heals our going to the tanks, most of our wasted bubbles are on the tanks (68% effective, compared to almost 66% overall).
In summary, I am going to keep my eye on my mastery in other encounters, but crit, spirit, and haste are going to offer me far more healing than Mastery (can and) will.
And at first glance it is, because Beacon of Light, Protector of the Innocent, and Holy Radiance don't cause bubbles, and those account for a brickload of my healing.
First, the log: WoL report for Four Lights Conclave Kill
Second, some rough math. I added together all my direct heals, including overheal. We're including on this list: Flash of Light, Holy Light, Divine Light, Word of Glory, Light of Dawn, and Lay on Hands (though I didn't cast any FoL). That's total effective direct healing of 1,302,129 and total direct raw healing of 1,451,189.
Third, my mastery. Like I said, I've been avoiding mastery when possible. According to my armory, I am currently carrying 8.89 mastery rating (8 base, .89 from gear). Each point of mastery rating adds 1.25% to each bubble. 10 base +(.89*1.25)=11.1125. So, each direct heal should in theory proc a bubble of 11.1125%.
In TheoryTotal raw direct healing of 1,451,189 should proc 161,227 in bubbles.
In Practice
According to WoL, I had potential absorbs of 161,000 (listed to the far right as Overhealing). So my napkin math and WoL haven't disagreed too much there. Below, I am using 161,000.
However, in practice, I only had 105,818 absorbs via Illuminated Healing, or 65.73% of total potential bubbles. 55,182 (34.27% of every bubble) went to waste. Instead of enjoying 11.1125% absorbs, it's practically closer to 7.3%. Which isn't actually as bad as I had imagined it before, though still nothing to cheer about. WoL ranks Illuminated Healing as 3.9% of my healing because a good half of my heals don't proc it.
Tank Healing And Mastery If what I've done above isn't convoluted enough, I decided to take a look at absorbs on just the tanks. After all, if Mastery helps us be better tank healers, then it's still a good stat. However, to do the modeling, I had to take a look at all holy paladin heals on each tank, all effective absorbs on the tank, each paladin's mastery, and extrapolate potential absorbs (the things I do for WoW...)
However, what I found is that (and here's a shocker) since most of our direct heals our going to the tanks, most of our wasted bubbles are on the tanks (68% effective, compared to almost 66% overall).
In summary, I am going to keep my eye on my mastery in other encounters, but crit, spirit, and haste are going to offer me far more healing than Mastery (can and) will.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
healers and helms pre-raid
There are plenty of pre-raid gear lists floating around for healers of all stripes, but since I put together this list for my guild I figured I'd share it with you. There are a bunch of helms available, but if you're looking to raid, I hope you'll consider a helm with a meta. The bonuses from the meta gems are just huge, especially at these starting gear levels.
I've only seen one head enchant, available from Hyjal revered. The standard healing meta gem from Wrath does not have a Cata equivalent, so our needs will be changing. I've seen three options that are PVE-centric. Kurn's got a meta gem list here, but I cherry-picked these three from the list as the one that will probably win for PVE.
http://www.wowhead.com/item=52296
http://www.wowhead.com/item=52297
http://www.wowhead.com/item=52292
Paladin
Paladin BiS has a list here, but I only see two options with a meta. Got 2,200 justice points? Otherwise be prepared to spend lots of time in Heroic SFK. http://bis.vilepickle.com/slot-head.php
Shaman
Resto Shaman Flow put together a pre-raid loot list. There are 3 (4 if you're an engineer) options with meta sockets. http://www.restoshamanflow.com/2010/11/19/resto-shaman-cataclysm-pre-raid-loot-list/
Druid
Lissana at Restokin has a boomkin/resto pre-raid gear list here. All three helms have metas. http://www.restokin.com/caster-druid-85-pre-raid-gear/
Priest
World of Matticus has a Quick Priest Gear list. Three helms with metas. http://www.worldofmatticus.com/2010/12/05/priest-quick-gear-guide-for-holy-and-discipline-at-85/
I've only seen one head enchant, available from Hyjal revered. The standard healing meta gem from Wrath does not have a Cata equivalent, so our needs will be changing. I've seen three options that are PVE-centric. Kurn's got a meta gem list here, but I cherry-picked these three from the list as the one that will probably win for PVE.
http://www.wowhead.com/item=52296
http://www.wowhead.com/item=52297
http://www.wowhead.com/item=52292
Paladin
Paladin BiS has a list here, but I only see two options with a meta. Got 2,200 justice points? Otherwise be prepared to spend lots of time in Heroic SFK. http://bis.vilepickle.com/slot-head.php
Shaman
Resto Shaman Flow put together a pre-raid loot list. There are 3 (4 if you're an engineer) options with meta sockets. http://www.restoshamanflow.com/2010/11/19/resto-shaman-cataclysm-pre-raid-loot-list/
Druid
Lissana at Restokin has a boomkin/resto pre-raid gear list here. All three helms have metas. http://www.restokin.com/caster-druid-85-pre-raid-gear/
Priest
World of Matticus has a Quick Priest Gear list. Three helms with metas. http://www.worldofmatticus.com/2010/12/05/priest-quick-gear-guide-for-holy-and-discipline-at-85/
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Confessions of a Haste-Snob
The pre-expansion lull is here and with summer coming, we're recruiting like mad. I've been looking at apps of all kinds and I'm surprised by the interesting things that can be learned from one or two ganders at the armory.
The first thing I look at when I'm looking at a healer app is their haste. That one little (or big) number tells me a lot about how much research a player has done about their character (and is the first clue among many that you know your gearing).
That's not to say I have extremely high requirements or I expect ridiculous levels of gear. My guild is casual, we're still a few bosses away from Kingslayer, so I am realistic. However, I don't equate 'casual' to 'I don't have to understand how haste affects my healing'.
With that in mind, the haste cap for the healing classes (provided with research from some of my favorite bloggers)...
Discipline Priests. Thanks to borrowed time and bubble spam, haste stops being great earlier for disc than most other healers. Penance Priest suggests 150 for a bubble bot with ideal raid buffs. I'd be willing to forgive a bit more (raid comps are often less than perfect) but a haste-gearing (especially -gemming) disco is a red flag to me if that player is serious about 25s.
Holy Priests. After several days of research I have to say I'm still clueless as to what haste "cap" is for holy priests. With lots of instant casts, cooldowns, and serendipity, I understand that haste is valued much lower than other stats for holy priest. Bobturkey has the math in his 3.3 gearing series.
Resto Druids. Restoration Druid has a chart detailing the amounts of haste needed with all levels of raiding and talents spent on haste-goodness (with 775 being the catchall number). Suffice it to say, a resto druid with less than 500 haste is a red flag for me. If that seems steep, I think that less than 700 haste either indicates low overall gear OR prioritizing too much critical strike rating.
Resto Shamans. Since raid healing shamans are supposed to stack haste with their haste cap being a lofty 1269, I look pretty closely at haste for Shamans. Less than 800 is a red flag that gems or itemization aren't in order. Like paladins, I'm looking for enough yellow gems to blot out the sun. Tank healing shamans are another beast, but I have yet to run into one.
Holy Paladins. Ah, this one is tricky. I have almost 1000 haste now. I've admitted I'm a haste snob, and I would really try not to label someone a failadin just because I'm picky about my upgrades. But seriously. If you're a holy paladin and you want to raid, get 700 haste if you don't have it. 676 haste is haste cap for FoL with proper raid buffs, but you can keep stacking haste to get faster and faster Holy Lights - more haste is always better for a HL spammer. But Enlynn, you're wearing cloth and mail!
Yes, yes I am. I'm a haste-snob. The amount of haste on your gear says a lot about how much you read up on your spec. That's not to say that more is always better, considering that there is too much for some classes and not enough for certain others. But I'm not kidding: the first stat I look at is haste. I can make a snap judgment from that one number that will be confirmed by the rest of a character's armory.
The first thing I look at when I'm looking at a healer app is their haste. That one little (or big) number tells me a lot about how much research a player has done about their character (and is the first clue among many that you know your gearing).
That's not to say I have extremely high requirements or I expect ridiculous levels of gear. My guild is casual, we're still a few bosses away from Kingslayer, so I am realistic. However, I don't equate 'casual' to 'I don't have to understand how haste affects my healing'.
With that in mind, the haste cap for the healing classes (provided with research from some of my favorite bloggers)...
Discipline Priests. Thanks to borrowed time and bubble spam, haste stops being great earlier for disc than most other healers. Penance Priest suggests 150 for a bubble bot with ideal raid buffs. I'd be willing to forgive a bit more (raid comps are often less than perfect) but a haste-gearing (especially -gemming) disco is a red flag to me if that player is serious about 25s.
Holy Priests. After several days of research I have to say I'm still clueless as to what haste "cap" is for holy priests. With lots of instant casts, cooldowns, and serendipity, I understand that haste is valued much lower than other stats for holy priest. Bobturkey has the math in his 3.3 gearing series.
Resto Druids. Restoration Druid has a chart detailing the amounts of haste needed with all levels of raiding and talents spent on haste-goodness (with 775 being the catchall number). Suffice it to say, a resto druid with less than 500 haste is a red flag for me. If that seems steep, I think that less than 700 haste either indicates low overall gear OR prioritizing too much critical strike rating.
Resto Shamans. Since raid healing shamans are supposed to stack haste with their haste cap being a lofty 1269, I look pretty closely at haste for Shamans. Less than 800 is a red flag that gems or itemization aren't in order. Like paladins, I'm looking for enough yellow gems to blot out the sun. Tank healing shamans are another beast, but I have yet to run into one.
Holy Paladins. Ah, this one is tricky. I have almost 1000 haste now. I've admitted I'm a haste snob, and I would really try not to label someone a failadin just because I'm picky about my upgrades. But seriously. If you're a holy paladin and you want to raid, get 700 haste if you don't have it. 676 haste is haste cap for FoL with proper raid buffs, but you can keep stacking haste to get faster and faster Holy Lights - more haste is always better for a HL spammer. But Enlynn, you're wearing cloth and mail!
Yes, yes I am. I'm a haste-snob. The amount of haste on your gear says a lot about how much you read up on your spec. That's not to say that more is always better, considering that there is too much for some classes and not enough for certain others. But I'm not kidding: the first stat I look at is haste. I can make a snap judgment from that one number that will be confirmed by the rest of a character's armory.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Farewell, Gorilla!
Blue post containing incoming cataclysm gear changes
We knew it was going to happen sooner or later, but here's a post outlining some of the details we can expect to see with the massive gear and stat overhaul coming with the new expansion. I'm excited... with these changes, paladin and shaman healers are going to want spirit.
Earlier in the expansion I appreciated that shamans and paladins functioned without spirit. It makes for nice contrast that with four healers (and five healing specs) we have five different ways to play and gear (more if you count the ways that shamans and druids can focus on single target healing or raid healing). However, these overhauls are going to redesign the paladin holy tree and I could not be more excited about that. I am optimistic: I do not think that all the problems in the holy tree are going away, but I do think that some of the problems with the holy tree will disappear.
There's some really good news for Boomkins and Elemental Shamans, as well. Caster DPS leather and mail is disappearing because the hit rating on this gear is disappearing. Instead, shamans and druids will have talents converting spirit to hit rating. Less gear cluttering loot tables and more leather and mail being useful for more types of druids and shamans! Hurray!
Oh... and check out this tidbit:
I'm grateful to Blizzard that they have been open in communication regarding these changes. I'm excited to see what they have in store, even if these announcements herald changes we won't see for months. And I do hope it's at least a couple of months away - there are far too many of us still pounding away towards our Lich King kill.
We knew it was going to happen sooner or later, but here's a post outlining some of the details we can expect to see with the massive gear and stat overhaul coming with the new expansion. I'm excited... with these changes, paladin and shaman healers are going to want spirit.
Earlier in the expansion I appreciated that shamans and paladins functioned without spirit. It makes for nice contrast that with four healers (and five healing specs) we have five different ways to play and gear (more if you count the ways that shamans and druids can focus on single target healing or raid healing). However, these overhauls are going to redesign the paladin holy tree and I could not be more excited about that. I am optimistic: I do not think that all the problems in the holy tree are going away, but I do think that some of the problems with the holy tree will disappear.
There's some really good news for Boomkins and Elemental Shamans, as well. Caster DPS leather and mail is disappearing because the hit rating on this gear is disappearing. Instead, shamans and druids will have talents converting spirit to hit rating. Less gear cluttering loot tables and more leather and mail being useful for more types of druids and shamans! Hurray!
Oh... and check out this tidbit:
Many lower-level items with nonsensical combinations of stats, such as Agility and Spirit, will be changed. We're also updating quest rewards, trade skills, and loot drops to support better itemization for class builds that weren't widely available or used prior to The Burning Crusade (such as Balance druids).Hurray for a better leveling experience for hybrid casters! Perhaps our inability to need on cloth will be offset by leather and mail we can use!
Gems - We are changing the gem colors of a few stats as a result of these adjustments. For example, Hit is likely to be blue instead of yellow. We'll have more details on this in the future.It's about time that all those blue sockets got some love for dps!
I'm grateful to Blizzard that they have been open in communication regarding these changes. I'm excited to see what they have in store, even if these announcements herald changes we won't see for months. And I do hope it's at least a couple of months away - there are far too many of us still pounding away towards our Lich King kill.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
"Fun" In Gearing
I remember back in 3.1 or 3.2ish, a lot of buzz was going about the WoW healing forums about paladins and how gemming intellect isn't "fun".I was always a little confused about that (is gemming something else more fun?), even if I myself do enjoy watching my mana pool go up with each new socket. Several tiers ago, I didn't think there was really any fun in gemming or enchanting. You merely pick the best gem and forget about it. Same with enchanting - I've been using the same enchants on upgrades this expansion, and it's usually a no-brainer because if you're a caster, there is no choice many of your enchants (for cloaks there's really only haste, and for legs and gloves there's really only spellpower). My paladin has been ignoring socket bonuses all expansion long. I keep yellow gems on hand for those new upgrades since there's no surprise what I will want to socket when I get them. I don't think this is a bad thing, this is just life for my paladin who specializes in tank healing.
I ran ToC10 with my druid today. She's got some pretty nice gear, and she's getting more (if only I could make myself run a few more randoms every day...). I had a blast in ToC, even if the paladin healer was from a notoriously bad guild and I spent more time taking care of the tanks than he did. It's cool, I do prefer getting my badges and loot than wiping to prove someone is bad. Anyways, I recently got Merlin's Robe crafted, and today I got Enlightenment. Lots of gem sockets, hurray!
I have to say, I had fun gemming my new gear for my druid. It's because she has so many choices and druids enjoy the benefits of a balance of stats, more so than paladins. I happily match socket bonuses for her, and use hybrid gems to give her snippets of spellpower, haste, spirit, and whatever else I'm feeling up for. I feel there's less wrong ways to gem my druid, and that's fun to me. I intentionally don't stack on her, because I do on my paladin. I like the contrast of the two gearing styles, and I enjoy my paladin more now that I've raided on my priest and druid. Each has its weaknesses and it's strengths, and I appreciate those strengths more when I see I play the characters without them (I am so very glad my paladin can cleanse magic debuffs, even if she can't run in circles casting instants like a tree).
While I don't consider stacking Intellect "fun" in and of itself, it enables me to have a lot of fun in the raid because of how much more casting I can do, and how much further it puts me away from going OOM. Out of all of the things in this game, I can definitely say that no mana really does equate to no fun. If that what it takes to make stacking Intellect "fun", then it's mighty fun indeed!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)