Yesterday was my first night playing WoW and my first night raiding in more than two weeks. Can I say painful? Too much Star Wars, perhaps, but at the same time not-raiding makes me rusty.
1. I took off my weapon and shield to take pictures of my latest transmog (two posts down). Well, I kinda forgot to put them back on before the raid. After the first couple of bosses, one of my healers whispered me and asked if that was a glitch or if I really didn't have a weapon and shield?
2. I searched through my inventory and put on the gear that looked right. Except, I put on the gear-to-transmog instead of the transmogged gear. Two fights later, said healer whispers me, are you sure you're wearing the right gear yet?
No, I'm not sure of anything!
3. The Sorcerer speed boost in SW beats the pants off of the paladin speed boost. I kept popping Divine Protection and was disappointed at how far I didn't go.
4. With my shiny new graphics card, WoW looks much better and my FPS is even higher. Perhaps SW will get that sorted out, but right now, WoW wins in the performance-on-average-computers contest. Hands down.
5. I keep telling myself I'm going to stop talking about SW on my WoW blog but the amount of Star Wars chatter in mumble is kinda scary. On one hand, it's fun because I know what's up. On the other, we've never derailed mumble like that for any other game. Again, I don't think this is here nor there for the future of WoW. But I do think this is a bad sign for bigger guilds. And it can't be good for those who don't care about Star Wars, to hear nearly half the guild making jokes that exclude them.
6. I was pretty bad overall. It's like I forgot how to heal. I let judgments fall off and I don't think I hit a special cooldown all night long. Wait. I did use Divine Plea because I was so bad at managing my mana that I was going OOM when I really shouldn't.
7. Ultraxion continues to be the bane of my guild. Even with going to 5 healers we didn't have the DPS last night to down him. It makes me want to rage.
8. Saddith for President.
Showing posts with label tank healing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tank healing. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
my beef with infusion
Mmmm infused beef. Delicious, eh?
I'm going to rant about Infusion of Light, but first I'm going to ramble about Serendipity.
Different talents are different. Different trees are different. Different classes are different. But... I didn't realize how much I disliked IoL until I played my priest enough to fall in love with Serendipity.
What I love about Serendipity
Procs by casting Binding Heal or Flash Heal. Combined with Surge of Light (great talent synergy!), I generally find opportunity to use Serendipity procs at least a few times a fight. And I have choices: I can either use it on a Greater Heal or a Prayer of Healing. And if that wasn't choice enough, I can either spend 1 stack or wait and cast at 2 stacks!
But it gets better. Priest healing spells are so diverse that I can hold my Serendipity charges, casting a ton of other heals: Prayer of Mending, Circle of Healing, Renew, Heal, Sanctuary, PW: Shield, etc. I can save my Serendipity stacks if I know a big thing is coming up: a pulse AoE where I'll need to heal the raid, or a big tank heal for a tank swap or timed ability.
Why Infusion Sucks, In Comparison
Infusion procs by Holy Shock crit so it's a chance instead of a guaranteed proc. I'm cool with that. An Infusion procced with a non crit, every 6 seconds would be ridiculously overpowered. So how it procs isn't a problem IMHO.
The problem is how we spend it. See that list of stuff up there, stuff I can do as a priest while saving my Serendipity stack for something I know is coming up? Here's the list for what paladins can do that heals that won't eat my IoL buff: Holy Radiance. Oh, I might be able to spend Holy Power, if I have three stacks.
So, we have one--maybe two--spell choice(s) we may or may not even want to use before our IoL proc gets eaten up by our next cast. There's no choice here. I cast Holy Shock (and half the time I'm already casting my next heal before my UI even registers I've gotten IoL), my next heal is short. Whether or not I need it that fast. Whether or not I want to use it right away, it gets spent. The only way I can save it is to stop casting, which I think we can all agree is a terrible idea.
Did I mention that a holy priest, after choosing to hold her Serendipity proc a few seconds, can also choose to use it on either a group heal or a single-target heal? Paladins get... a single target heal.
I don't think I have the answers. I'm not suggesting that IoL should be more limited in how we can spend the proc because that would just make the spell clunky. And Serendipity is arguably a minor part of priest healing, while Infusion of Light is a major component of paladin healing (though I could argue that it's only major because paladin spells are so limited).
Managing daybreak procs and Infusion is also a bit clunky. Using Daybreak to Holy Shock back-to-back can waste an Infusion proc if you double-crit. But critting Shock > hasted Divine Heal (.7-.8 seconds at our gear level) > Holy Shock is awkward to time. I can't chain cast it near as fast as I should. It breaks my casting rhythm (though I realize how personal and small of a complaint this is. My big beef is the no-choice-to-spend-or-hold argument above).
But that's why I don't like Infusion of Light. There's no choice in using it. It happens, then it gets spent almost immediately. It's a passive RNG-based HPS boost. I can't hold it to save a tank, I can't rely on it to proc when I really really want it to. And even if it does proc at a good time there was no Enlynn-saving-the-tank. It was a lucky proc, is all. Unlike Serendipity where a well-placed hasted GH could actually be smart play.
I'm going to rant about Infusion of Light, but first I'm going to ramble about Serendipity.
Different talents are different. Different trees are different. Different classes are different. But... I didn't realize how much I disliked IoL until I played my priest enough to fall in love with Serendipity.
What I love about Serendipity
Procs by casting Binding Heal or Flash Heal. Combined with Surge of Light (great talent synergy!), I generally find opportunity to use Serendipity procs at least a few times a fight. And I have choices: I can either use it on a Greater Heal or a Prayer of Healing. And if that wasn't choice enough, I can either spend 1 stack or wait and cast at 2 stacks!
But it gets better. Priest healing spells are so diverse that I can hold my Serendipity charges, casting a ton of other heals: Prayer of Mending, Circle of Healing, Renew, Heal, Sanctuary, PW: Shield, etc. I can save my Serendipity stacks if I know a big thing is coming up: a pulse AoE where I'll need to heal the raid, or a big tank heal for a tank swap or timed ability.
Why Infusion Sucks, In Comparison
Infusion procs by Holy Shock crit so it's a chance instead of a guaranteed proc. I'm cool with that. An Infusion procced with a non crit, every 6 seconds would be ridiculously overpowered. So how it procs isn't a problem IMHO.
The problem is how we spend it. See that list of stuff up there, stuff I can do as a priest while saving my Serendipity stack for something I know is coming up? Here's the list for what paladins can do that heals that won't eat my IoL buff: Holy Radiance. Oh, I might be able to spend Holy Power, if I have three stacks.
So, we have one--maybe two--spell choice(s) we may or may not even want to use before our IoL proc gets eaten up by our next cast. There's no choice here. I cast Holy Shock (and half the time I'm already casting my next heal before my UI even registers I've gotten IoL), my next heal is short. Whether or not I need it that fast. Whether or not I want to use it right away, it gets spent. The only way I can save it is to stop casting, which I think we can all agree is a terrible idea.
Did I mention that a holy priest, after choosing to hold her Serendipity proc a few seconds, can also choose to use it on either a group heal or a single-target heal? Paladins get... a single target heal.
I don't think I have the answers. I'm not suggesting that IoL should be more limited in how we can spend the proc because that would just make the spell clunky. And Serendipity is arguably a minor part of priest healing, while Infusion of Light is a major component of paladin healing (though I could argue that it's only major because paladin spells are so limited).
Managing daybreak procs and Infusion is also a bit clunky. Using Daybreak to Holy Shock back-to-back can waste an Infusion proc if you double-crit. But critting Shock > hasted Divine Heal (.7-.8 seconds at our gear level) > Holy Shock is awkward to time. I can't chain cast it near as fast as I should. It breaks my casting rhythm (though I realize how personal and small of a complaint this is. My big beef is the no-choice-to-spend-or-hold argument above).
But that's why I don't like Infusion of Light. There's no choice in using it. It happens, then it gets spent almost immediately. It's a passive RNG-based HPS boost. I can't hold it to save a tank, I can't rely on it to proc when I really really want it to. And even if it does proc at a good time there was no Enlynn-saving-the-tank. It was a lucky proc, is all. Unlike Serendipity where a well-placed hasted GH could actually be smart play.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
I wish I were something else
Class envy happens quite a bit.
I'm actually quite happy to be a paladin right now. And yes, I am sober. Though I do wish we had a couple more AoE healing options (or rather, that Holy Radiance was a choice instead of a fire-and-forget, perhaps?), we're in a good place. I still miss having a raid-wide bubble (Divine Guardian), and I sure as hell miss Divine Intervention.
It makes me wonder, though, if I had less experience on my other characters if I would feel the same way.
Because I feel like I field a whole lot of "I'm not this" complaints lately. A druid vows that he's rolling a paladin because he's tired of tank healing with hots (tank-healing assignments are by player, not by class, my usual tank healers are AFK to RL lately). A shaman complains that he doesn't have group heals if people aren't stacked up (hello, ALL healing classes suffer from this). If only I had this spell. If only this spell did this effect instead of this. If only my iconic signature healing spell was actually as good as everyone says it is.
I know the truth: it's all close enough. Vixsin has a great write-up for the bench and the top 1% guilds and class balance therein, but I think it's safe to say that for the rest of the world, class balance is "close enough."
When I hear class complaints (from regular mode players), I always get the sense that it's the grass being greener on the other side than any real technical problems. And I'm biased, I know, having experience with all four healers makes me feel pretty confident I could be an asset to my raid no matter which I brought. (Isn't Enlynn so arrogant?!)
I think it's that time of the expansion, though. We hit brick walls on bosses, a key player we got used to having steps out for real-life issues and the void hurts. But instead of saying we miss the person, we say we miss his class mechanics. Sorry, I'm not buying. We miss the player who know to pop a cooldown at the right time. Him being a paladin, a shaman, a priest, not so much the issue. (Though the one night we raided with no priests was a bit weird. Fast forward two weeks and we have 6. Huh?)
And in retrospect, we made it through the summer only having to cancel a couple of raids. I think a few months ago the tones of a lot of my posts were on the verge of grim. We didn't know if we were filling the next raid, but somehow we pulled through. We've even had a waitlist for the past couple of weeks, and been able to let some players take the night off because they needed it without it being too painful for us. So things are looking up, even though we're still stuck on Beth. We got so close.
I hate fights like Beth'tilac not because of Phase 2 (which I'm doing better on, admittedly) because for Phase 1 I am stuck up on top so I have no sense for what the ground phase looks like. We had some (I hate to place blame here, but I saw some healers pull miracles out of their asses so...) DPS who would rather make excuses for why the adds don't go down than to just make the adds go down. But anyways. We're almost there.
Though, if you aren't paying attention to who has died and who has casted Brez, and you have no idea when the phase change is coming, you perhaps are not the best candidate to demand who brezes who. Just sayin'. Let someone who's actually using raid frames and situational awareness take care of that, hmm? Or maybe a RAID LEADER?
Oh, and our ranks are strictly attendance based, so when you take a demotion it is absolutely, positively, 100% NOT PERSONAL. Making it personal and threatening to quit gets you nowhere.
/rant off
We could still stand to recruit a few more people, but I think that's standard fare in a 25-raid, there's always a bit more room. We're raiding this week, and that's great. And if the worst problems I have to deal with this week are "I wish my class had this", then that's not a bad place to be at all. :)
I'm actually quite happy to be a paladin right now. And yes, I am sober. Though I do wish we had a couple more AoE healing options (or rather, that Holy Radiance was a choice instead of a fire-and-forget, perhaps?), we're in a good place. I still miss having a raid-wide bubble (Divine Guardian), and I sure as hell miss Divine Intervention.
It makes me wonder, though, if I had less experience on my other characters if I would feel the same way.
Because I feel like I field a whole lot of "I'm not this" complaints lately. A druid vows that he's rolling a paladin because he's tired of tank healing with hots (tank-healing assignments are by player, not by class, my usual tank healers are AFK to RL lately). A shaman complains that he doesn't have group heals if people aren't stacked up (hello, ALL healing classes suffer from this). If only I had this spell. If only this spell did this effect instead of this. If only my iconic signature healing spell was actually as good as everyone says it is.
I know the truth: it's all close enough. Vixsin has a great write-up for the bench and the top 1% guilds and class balance therein, but I think it's safe to say that for the rest of the world, class balance is "close enough."
When I hear class complaints (from regular mode players), I always get the sense that it's the grass being greener on the other side than any real technical problems. And I'm biased, I know, having experience with all four healers makes me feel pretty confident I could be an asset to my raid no matter which I brought. (Isn't Enlynn so arrogant?!)
I think it's that time of the expansion, though. We hit brick walls on bosses, a key player we got used to having steps out for real-life issues and the void hurts. But instead of saying we miss the person, we say we miss his class mechanics. Sorry, I'm not buying. We miss the player who know to pop a cooldown at the right time. Him being a paladin, a shaman, a priest, not so much the issue. (Though the one night we raided with no priests was a bit weird. Fast forward two weeks and we have 6. Huh?)
And in retrospect, we made it through the summer only having to cancel a couple of raids. I think a few months ago the tones of a lot of my posts were on the verge of grim. We didn't know if we were filling the next raid, but somehow we pulled through. We've even had a waitlist for the past couple of weeks, and been able to let some players take the night off because they needed it without it being too painful for us. So things are looking up, even though we're still stuck on Beth. We got so close.
I hate fights like Beth'tilac not because of Phase 2 (which I'm doing better on, admittedly) because for Phase 1 I am stuck up on top so I have no sense for what the ground phase looks like. We had some (I hate to place blame here, but I saw some healers pull miracles out of their asses so...) DPS who would rather make excuses for why the adds don't go down than to just make the adds go down. But anyways. We're almost there.
Though, if you aren't paying attention to who has died and who has casted Brez, and you have no idea when the phase change is coming, you perhaps are not the best candidate to demand who brezes who. Just sayin'. Let someone who's actually using raid frames and situational awareness take care of that, hmm? Or maybe a RAID LEADER?
Oh, and our ranks are strictly attendance based, so when you take a demotion it is absolutely, positively, 100% NOT PERSONAL. Making it personal and threatening to quit gets you nowhere.
/rant off
We could still stand to recruit a few more people, but I think that's standard fare in a 25-raid, there's always a bit more room. We're raiding this week, and that's great. And if the worst problems I have to deal with this week are "I wish my class had this", then that's not a bad place to be at all. :)
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Tower of Radiance
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.
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.
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. :)
Thursday, July 14, 2011
et tu, enlynn?: mastery build
I imagine you've already seen some hullabulloo about the changes in 4.2 to mastery. Buffs, yes. Changes, yes. But enough changes to warrant a dramatic playstyle and gearing change for Firelands?
Maybe.
I read the Holy Paladin: Mastery thread over on the Blizzard forums and thought to myself that going Zaroua's route was probably a great idea for 25 HM raiders. But, I'm not a HM raider, not yet. We're shooting to get normal modes down for Firelands but it didn't happen in T11 and quite frankly we had enough on our metaphorical guild plate without them. So I did think, when I read through this, that it didn't apply to me.
Then I saw that Rohan had joined the Mastery Club. Again, HM raider.
And then Adgamorix threw in his vote and I realized something: tank deaths on Shannox were wiping us. Back-to-back Arcing Slashes and melee attacks in .12 seconds were dealing 120k and 95k damage faster than my UI could display it. And if this build is supposedly very good for crazy ass spikey tank damage like this, then why wasn't I at least willing to give it a try?
I spent some justice points and got 4 pc set bonus (not so much for the bonus, but the two pieces with mastery were the best deal for the JP I had). I reforged and regemmed (all my Reckless became Artful), and picked up the pieces of gear with Mastery from the Firelands Rep Guys (vote: pathetic or not pathetic that I don't even know the faction I'm grinding for right now?).
I cobbled together a 23% bubble with hardly any effort. Previously, I had 77 mastery (so basically a 12% bubble).
And so after almost 50 attempts at Shannox over the last few weeks, we went in last night and killed him the second time. Our RL takes full credit for the first wipe, but the second pull was beautiful, pitch-perfect, and the loot flowed.
My meters were borked. According to Skada, my bubbles were... 44k. Which is actually the bubble I had on the MT when we pulled (which is crazy). I was disheartened, but I had several healers whisper me saying they felt the difference, that whatever I had done was a good thing.
Fortunately, WoL has the story. But I'm going to drag this out and first talk about my healing before, since I think that's important. Here's a picture of last night, a very-close Shannox attempt. My assignment is the same for both: Luxinterior, Shannox tank. He, I believe, made some minor to his gear over the weekend but I'm fairly certain the only change between last night and tonight was me.
Before, my haste-stacking paladin self:
Lots of Word of Glory, and lots of Divine Light spammed on my Beacon target (Lux) to generate Holy Power. Holy Radiance popped just about every Magma Burst, and I made a point to be inside the raid when it happened to maximize my AoE healing.
And now, with Mastery:
I made radical changes to my healing style. Beacon of Light jumped to my highest healing done because I set it on the other tank and basically forgot it for the fight. But check out my bubbling- a solid fifth of my healing done.
But did you catch the overheal on my direct heals? Oi.
A thought on Holy Radiance: Because my goal for this fight was to spam Holy Light on the tank the entire fight whether or not he needed it, I spent less time positioning myself to help with AoE. The numbers here are deceiving, because not only did I get less in-range ticks with this change and those ticks healed for less, but I was off by myself or sometimes just in the melee. I used Holy Radiance 10 times for both samples, but the data can't be compared because I behaved differently.
I might have lost a tick with the haste I lost, but I didn't lose any intellect so in theory each tick would have healed the same if I had played the same.
What didn't change
Judging on cooldown, plea and trinkets early and often, hitting AoE heal button every XX seconds in response to AoE pulses. Tank healing like it's going out of style.
I healed for a bit less overall with a mastery build, however, my ranking within my raid didn't change. The healing done page looked fairly similar for both in terms of what other healers were doing.
What did change
Everything else! Who I healed and what spells I used. I went from favoring Divine Light to being afraid of it. I lost several hundred spirit to make this change, pigeon-holing me into favoring Holy Light and using DL and Flash of Light for oh-shit moments (even that oh-shit moment that I used an instant-cast FoL while running ended up being 100% overheal because others beat me to it). Beacon became a fire-and-forget buff on the other side of the raid instead of an active tool to help me raid heal and generate Holy Power while keeping my assignment up.
(BTW, raise your hand if you forgot Infusion procs insta-cast FoLs again! Cause I sure did till last night).
Beacon probably deserves its own post since I find I'm using mine differently than other paladins in the raid. But before I derail entirely, I had to mention the Beacon change because it did change how I healed the tank. When Beacon isn't on my assignment, I am restricted. With a mastery build, I am further restricted to healing my target. Raid healing with this setup doesn't heal my target, and those raid bubbles aren't likely to get absorbed in a fight like Shannox. Also, time spent not healing the tank is time not spent building up bubbles. So this build really, really pigeon-holes a paladin into one thing and one thing only: spamming Holy Light on the tank whether or not he needs it.
Pardon me. I could have sworn I just heard a skeleton screaming "Bone Storm!" from across a chamber of ice.
TLDR:
This build is effective for crazy tank damage fights. I can not deny it. For 25 raiders and both 10 and 25 HM raiders, I can see why stacking mastery would be a benefit to the raid for specific fights.
However, (and of course there's a however), a paladin really ought to take a long look at her playing habits and raiding roster. There are a lot of situations where a mastery build would be a great idea, but I also believe there will be a lot of situations where a haste-spirit build would be stronger.
After Shannox, we went and did a few attempts on our next boss target, Lord Ryolith, and holy cow had we not gotten Shannox down I would have felt useless for Ryolith. Heavy raid damage fights are not not friendly to the mastery build. (However, after comparing myself to the other holy paladin in my raid, I could have tried a lot harder so the verdict is most certainly not out yet for how best a mastery build paladin can use her abilities in this kind of fight. I'll post more once I figure it out.)
Should you go mastery? If and only if you play with a regular group of folks so you can be a designated main tank healer and work with the rest of your raid to help you get the most effectiveness out of this playstyle. I'm not so sure that 10 regular modes require a stacking setup, either, my experiences with 10s isn't near as great as 25s, but I just don't see the tank damage as crazy enough to warrant it. 10's, to me, seem to encourage staying general (ie, flexible) instead of going specialized, and with 10 mans that loss of spirit to focus on mastery is going to hurt.
But in 25s (even regular), volunteering to be that paladin might not be such a bad idea, especially if your group is solid enough that it's just assumed you're going to be one of the main tank healers. Does your 25-raid need 2? I have no idea. I'm not going to recommend that the other healadins in my raid make the switch.
Why?
If my snark earlier was not obvious enough, spamming a heal on a person whether they need it or not... is not FUN. I have squirmy feelings about casting with no regards to overheal. I half-wonder if we're going to see nerfs since the mastery build encourages spam-casting that goes against design intent.
Did I mention it's not fun? Sure, it felt real good to get the boss down but being a Holy-Light-Metronome (too bad paladins can't be Gnomes, har har!) will get real old, real fast. I mean, I'll do it, I like getting bosses down just like any other gal, but I lost a lot of flexibility to gain tank healing stability. Especially since I got feedback from the other healers saying it made their jobs less stressful. For me, sticking with a mastery build will be taking one for the team.
And a HM raider will have different experiences, since they will have a lot less overheal.
TLDR, for real this time
If you're struggling with keeping up tank damage that, by the logs, looks impossible to heal, going with a mastery build might be the ticket to downing those bosses.
But I would say, if you don't heal with a steady raid group, if your raid roster is constantly changing and your focus within the raid is different every night, then a more balanced approach might be better. And if you value your flexibility within your raid group, then you probably will not enjoy this specialist build.
Maybe.
I read the Holy Paladin: Mastery thread over on the Blizzard forums and thought to myself that going Zaroua's route was probably a great idea for 25 HM raiders. But, I'm not a HM raider, not yet. We're shooting to get normal modes down for Firelands but it didn't happen in T11 and quite frankly we had enough on our metaphorical guild plate without them. So I did think, when I read through this, that it didn't apply to me.
Then I saw that Rohan had joined the Mastery Club. Again, HM raider.
And then Adgamorix threw in his vote and I realized something: tank deaths on Shannox were wiping us. Back-to-back Arcing Slashes and melee attacks in .12 seconds were dealing 120k and 95k damage faster than my UI could display it. And if this build is supposedly very good for crazy ass spikey tank damage like this, then why wasn't I at least willing to give it a try?
I spent some justice points and got 4 pc set bonus (not so much for the bonus, but the two pieces with mastery were the best deal for the JP I had). I reforged and regemmed (all my Reckless became Artful), and picked up the pieces of gear with Mastery from the Firelands Rep Guys (vote: pathetic or not pathetic that I don't even know the faction I'm grinding for right now?).
I cobbled together a 23% bubble with hardly any effort. Previously, I had 77 mastery (so basically a 12% bubble).
And so after almost 50 attempts at Shannox over the last few weeks, we went in last night and killed him the second time. Our RL takes full credit for the first wipe, but the second pull was beautiful, pitch-perfect, and the loot flowed.
My meters were borked. According to Skada, my bubbles were... 44k. Which is actually the bubble I had on the MT when we pulled (which is crazy). I was disheartened, but I had several healers whisper me saying they felt the difference, that whatever I had done was a good thing.
Fortunately, WoL has the story. But I'm going to drag this out and first talk about my healing before, since I think that's important. Here's a picture of last night, a very-close Shannox attempt. My assignment is the same for both: Luxinterior, Shannox tank. He, I believe, made some minor to his gear over the weekend but I'm fairly certain the only change between last night and tonight was me.
Before, my haste-stacking paladin self:
Lots of Word of Glory, and lots of Divine Light spammed on my Beacon target (Lux) to generate Holy Power. Holy Radiance popped just about every Magma Burst, and I made a point to be inside the raid when it happened to maximize my AoE healing.
And now, with Mastery:
I made radical changes to my healing style. Beacon of Light jumped to my highest healing done because I set it on the other tank and basically forgot it for the fight. But check out my bubbling- a solid fifth of my healing done.
But did you catch the overheal on my direct heals? Oi.
A thought on Holy Radiance: Because my goal for this fight was to spam Holy Light on the tank the entire fight whether or not he needed it, I spent less time positioning myself to help with AoE. The numbers here are deceiving, because not only did I get less in-range ticks with this change and those ticks healed for less, but I was off by myself or sometimes just in the melee. I used Holy Radiance 10 times for both samples, but the data can't be compared because I behaved differently.
I might have lost a tick with the haste I lost, but I didn't lose any intellect so in theory each tick would have healed the same if I had played the same.
What didn't change
Judging on cooldown, plea and trinkets early and often, hitting AoE heal button every XX seconds in response to AoE pulses. Tank healing like it's going out of style.
I healed for a bit less overall with a mastery build, however, my ranking within my raid didn't change. The healing done page looked fairly similar for both in terms of what other healers were doing.
What did change
Everything else! Who I healed and what spells I used. I went from favoring Divine Light to being afraid of it. I lost several hundred spirit to make this change, pigeon-holing me into favoring Holy Light and using DL and Flash of Light for oh-shit moments (even that oh-shit moment that I used an instant-cast FoL while running ended up being 100% overheal because others beat me to it). Beacon became a fire-and-forget buff on the other side of the raid instead of an active tool to help me raid heal and generate Holy Power while keeping my assignment up.
(BTW, raise your hand if you forgot Infusion procs insta-cast FoLs again! Cause I sure did till last night).
Beacon probably deserves its own post since I find I'm using mine differently than other paladins in the raid. But before I derail entirely, I had to mention the Beacon change because it did change how I healed the tank. When Beacon isn't on my assignment, I am restricted. With a mastery build, I am further restricted to healing my target. Raid healing with this setup doesn't heal my target, and those raid bubbles aren't likely to get absorbed in a fight like Shannox. Also, time spent not healing the tank is time not spent building up bubbles. So this build really, really pigeon-holes a paladin into one thing and one thing only: spamming Holy Light on the tank whether or not he needs it.
Pardon me. I could have sworn I just heard a skeleton screaming "Bone Storm!" from across a chamber of ice.
TLDR:
This build is effective for crazy tank damage fights. I can not deny it. For 25 raiders and both 10 and 25 HM raiders, I can see why stacking mastery would be a benefit to the raid for specific fights.
However, (and of course there's a however), a paladin really ought to take a long look at her playing habits and raiding roster. There are a lot of situations where a mastery build would be a great idea, but I also believe there will be a lot of situations where a haste-spirit build would be stronger.
After Shannox, we went and did a few attempts on our next boss target, Lord Ryolith, and holy cow had we not gotten Shannox down I would have felt useless for Ryolith. Heavy raid damage fights are not not friendly to the mastery build. (However, after comparing myself to the other holy paladin in my raid, I could have tried a lot harder so the verdict is most certainly not out yet for how best a mastery build paladin can use her abilities in this kind of fight. I'll post more once I figure it out.)
Should you go mastery? If and only if you play with a regular group of folks so you can be a designated main tank healer and work with the rest of your raid to help you get the most effectiveness out of this playstyle. I'm not so sure that 10 regular modes require a stacking setup, either, my experiences with 10s isn't near as great as 25s, but I just don't see the tank damage as crazy enough to warrant it. 10's, to me, seem to encourage staying general (ie, flexible) instead of going specialized, and with 10 mans that loss of spirit to focus on mastery is going to hurt.
But in 25s (even regular), volunteering to be that paladin might not be such a bad idea, especially if your group is solid enough that it's just assumed you're going to be one of the main tank healers. Does your 25-raid need 2? I have no idea. I'm not going to recommend that the other healadins in my raid make the switch.
Why?
If my snark earlier was not obvious enough, spamming a heal on a person whether they need it or not... is not FUN. I have squirmy feelings about casting with no regards to overheal. I half-wonder if we're going to see nerfs since the mastery build encourages spam-casting that goes against design intent.
Did I mention it's not fun? Sure, it felt real good to get the boss down but being a Holy-Light-Metronome (too bad paladins can't be Gnomes, har har!) will get real old, real fast. I mean, I'll do it, I like getting bosses down just like any other gal, but I lost a lot of flexibility to gain tank healing stability. Especially since I got feedback from the other healers saying it made their jobs less stressful. For me, sticking with a mastery build will be taking one for the team.
And a HM raider will have different experiences, since they will have a lot less overheal.
TLDR, for real this time
If you're struggling with keeping up tank damage that, by the logs, looks impossible to heal, going with a mastery build might be the ticket to downing those bosses.
But I would say, if you don't heal with a steady raid group, if your raid roster is constantly changing and your focus within the raid is different every night, then a more balanced approach might be better. And if you value your flexibility within your raid group, then you probably will not enjoy this specialist build.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
23-manning progression
We're working on Alakir.
A part of me wants to be embarrassed that we haven't completed on 25, what many, many guilds on our server have completed on 10.
However, we've called a whole bunch of raids due to attendance. And I don't say that QQ-like because it's just a fact. Sure, we've done alternate things like Ulduar runs and nostalgia achievement runs to keep ourselves busy, and we've done BoT and BWD with like 22 and 23 people.
Instead of calling it this week, we've gone and tried Alakir with 23. In some ways, it's great that we can do that. It seems pretty unlikely that a 10-man guild could 9-man a progression fight. But with enough heavy hitter DPS in a 25, it's kind of possible.
I say kind of because we haven't gotten it yet. Though, we are getting closer. It's certainly not going to take us as long to get Alakir as it took to get down Nef. With 4.2 on the way, it's pressure. We really want to have the tier completed before it's time for the next one.
It's a hard spot to be in, knowing we were 9/12 25 HM in Icecrown... and we haven't touched a heroic mode yet this tier. Maybe Firelands will be better for us. It will be, if we can actually get into the content every night we're scheduled to.
It's unfortunate because I do love 25-man raiding. There is, I believe, only two guilds that use the larger format on our server (regularly). It's hard to be #2. Why join a 25-man guild that may or may not do a full clear this week when you can join a 10 that can? I mean, we have great personality! But in terms of time invested versus rewards, I feel like the players of WoW have spoken and 10-mans are the future, with a handful of elite 25s, maybe 1 or 2 on the larger servers.
Oh, and I should weigh in a totally-opiniony opinion that has absolutely no basis in math or fact on our new 4.2 mastery. Still not a stat I want. But hey. The nerfs we take in mana cost will make up for it, right?
Snark aside, it's not a bad time to be a paladin. Tank healing is sweet now that I've found a groove. With more crit than I had a few months ago, it's gotten crazy with IoL procs. And more crit for holy shock in the next patch? Yes, please!
I'm pretty excited about Holy Light doing full transfer, as well. I had resorted into a bad habit of using Divine Light more than was probably necessary to make sure that my Beacon target was getting enough of a heal. Though, on some fights I'm getting a ton of use on Tower of Radiance. Big heal on tank + 1 holy power? I'm okay with that, especially to build up holy power for the next boss ability.
With the cooldown reduction on Holy Radiance in 4.2, I'll be a bit more free to use it more often. One of my biggest complaints with that spell was how much it was just a one-answer button to specific abilities. I'm not sure that using it more will be the answer, but having the option to is a start.
Because I think that's the root of all holy paladin QQ everywhere. No options = no fun.
And, um, Speed of Light gives a run speed bonus to Divine Protection? Oh, oh, yes! That'll be fun. I love Body and Soul for for the run speed on my priest, and always feel like my boost is wasted on my paladin. After all, if I want to heal the most, I'll already be parked for maximum efficiency. So that's really nice, because it feels like a terrible and bad thing to use Holy Radiance for the speed boost alone (at least in combat!)
A part of me wants to be embarrassed that we haven't completed on 25, what many, many guilds on our server have completed on 10.
However, we've called a whole bunch of raids due to attendance. And I don't say that QQ-like because it's just a fact. Sure, we've done alternate things like Ulduar runs and nostalgia achievement runs to keep ourselves busy, and we've done BoT and BWD with like 22 and 23 people.
Instead of calling it this week, we've gone and tried Alakir with 23. In some ways, it's great that we can do that. It seems pretty unlikely that a 10-man guild could 9-man a progression fight. But with enough heavy hitter DPS in a 25, it's kind of possible.
I say kind of because we haven't gotten it yet. Though, we are getting closer. It's certainly not going to take us as long to get Alakir as it took to get down Nef. With 4.2 on the way, it's pressure. We really want to have the tier completed before it's time for the next one.
It's a hard spot to be in, knowing we were 9/12 25 HM in Icecrown... and we haven't touched a heroic mode yet this tier. Maybe Firelands will be better for us. It will be, if we can actually get into the content every night we're scheduled to.
It's unfortunate because I do love 25-man raiding. There is, I believe, only two guilds that use the larger format on our server (regularly). It's hard to be #2. Why join a 25-man guild that may or may not do a full clear this week when you can join a 10 that can? I mean, we have great personality! But in terms of time invested versus rewards, I feel like the players of WoW have spoken and 10-mans are the future, with a handful of elite 25s, maybe 1 or 2 on the larger servers.
Oh, and I should weigh in a totally-opiniony opinion that has absolutely no basis in math or fact on our new 4.2 mastery. Still not a stat I want. But hey. The nerfs we take in mana cost will make up for it, right?
Snark aside, it's not a bad time to be a paladin. Tank healing is sweet now that I've found a groove. With more crit than I had a few months ago, it's gotten crazy with IoL procs. And more crit for holy shock in the next patch? Yes, please!
I'm pretty excited about Holy Light doing full transfer, as well. I had resorted into a bad habit of using Divine Light more than was probably necessary to make sure that my Beacon target was getting enough of a heal. Though, on some fights I'm getting a ton of use on Tower of Radiance. Big heal on tank + 1 holy power? I'm okay with that, especially to build up holy power for the next boss ability.
With the cooldown reduction on Holy Radiance in 4.2, I'll be a bit more free to use it more often. One of my biggest complaints with that spell was how much it was just a one-answer button to specific abilities. I'm not sure that using it more will be the answer, but having the option to is a start.
Because I think that's the root of all holy paladin QQ everywhere. No options = no fun.
And, um, Speed of Light gives a run speed bonus to Divine Protection? Oh, oh, yes! That'll be fun. I love Body and Soul for for the run speed on my priest, and always feel like my boost is wasted on my paladin. After all, if I want to heal the most, I'll already be parked for maximum efficiency. So that's really nice, because it feels like a terrible and bad thing to use Holy Radiance for the speed boost alone (at least in combat!)
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
from silence, an update
Happy Hump Day Everyone!
Bloggy Stuff
No news is good news, right? Okay, that's a terrible excuse for disappearing off the planet for a few weeks. My blog nagged at me, whispered to me to come back, but then I told myself I didn't have anything to write about, and with all the social media stuff I've been reading I felt like I didn't have anything to offer the community and Oh-dear-god I just talk about myself and how I'm frustrated with holy paladins alllll the time. (I'm not. It just sounds like it).
I have a knack for making things harder than they are.
Raiding Stuff
In recent news, we got Nef on 25 down last week. That was a really hard one for the guild. We've had some attendance problems of late--hasn't everyone?--but things are okay for now. We lost two of our tanks while learning Nef. Not from Nef, of course. Just while. So we had quite a few re-learning nights.
Can I say right now that I love tanks who love mitigation?
No, really. It's absolutely amazing the difference between correct gemming and reforging and not-so-correct. And worse, why it does it reflect on the healer when I can't keep up a tank who is still living like it's Icecrown?
Guild Stuff
A funny story, back from an old guild.
Several times while I was the healing officer of another guild, the GM called together a meeting of officers and asked if we thought we had room for another officer. All three times, I shot it down. We had enough, in my overly humble opinion, and I also had a few people whispering me telling me that they wanted the position. So when the GM asked, I thought I knew who he had in mind.
And quite frankly, if you take 40 minute AFKs to change desks because you raid at work, at least once a week, you should not be vying for a raid leadership position. Hell, you shouldn't even be upset when we bench you.
Also, if you've spent the last two days bitching about two-thirds of the guild and how you wish they weren't in the guild and you'd love to kick them. You're not getting my vote either.
So, a week or so after we left that guild, the GM decides to whisper me and tell me that all those times he was trying to get another officer into leadership, he was trying to get Luxinterior. But each time the officers shot him down so hard he never got a chance to name the name.
Fortunately, my boyfriend wasn't upset that I voted against him three separate times.
Fast forward. Our tanking officer in my current guild takes off for some real life stuff, and we go back and forth on whether we even need a tanking officer (the tanks we had at the time were real low-maintenance). So then, I voted, no, no tanking officer.
Then we lost our other low-maintenance tank, leaving only Lux, a guy who quit the game for four months and suddenly showed up wanting to tank, and a new guy who had only done 10s.
I felt a bit awkward changing my opinion, and even more awkward voting for my boyfriend, but everyone laughed about it because he was the natural choice. I was all "Well, he's doing the work so he's got the burden of leadership without the benefits..." and the GM was all "Geez, Enlynn, it took you long enough".
So, make that four times I voted no. But the fifth stuck, and Four Lights now has the Lux-and-Enlynn tanking/healing leadership team!
It's handy in a lot of ways. We talk about things before we put 'em in vent and raid chat, and I feel less like an idiot when I have to ask the same question for the third time in one night. Lux already knows I'm a little dense sometimes. :)
Writing Stuff
I'm well on my way to meeting my goal for writing this year, having completed my second book a few days ago. I'm floored about Camp Nanowrimo starting this July. I had an idea I was saving for November NaNo, but I also wanted to write it in the summer to fully appreciate the oppressive dog days of August in the midwest for the story. So that'll be neat.
The other project, that actually has something to do with WoW, is a story about a gamer girl and her raiding guild. I've had this idea rolling around in my head for a year, and I was afraid until now but it's time to stop being afraid and RAR! Gonna do it.
Reading Stuff
Like books about druids? I meant to plug Hounded by Kevin Hearne a few weeks ago when I read it AND FELL IN LOVE. An Iron Age druid living in modern day Arizona? Oh, yes! I heartily recommend this book.
Bloggy Stuff
No news is good news, right? Okay, that's a terrible excuse for disappearing off the planet for a few weeks. My blog nagged at me, whispered to me to come back, but then I told myself I didn't have anything to write about, and with all the social media stuff I've been reading I felt like I didn't have anything to offer the community and Oh-dear-god I just talk about myself and how I'm frustrated with holy paladins alllll the time. (I'm not. It just sounds like it).
I have a knack for making things harder than they are.
Raiding Stuff
In recent news, we got Nef on 25 down last week. That was a really hard one for the guild. We've had some attendance problems of late--hasn't everyone?--but things are okay for now. We lost two of our tanks while learning Nef. Not from Nef, of course. Just while. So we had quite a few re-learning nights.
Can I say right now that I love tanks who love mitigation?
No, really. It's absolutely amazing the difference between correct gemming and reforging and not-so-correct. And worse, why it does it reflect on the healer when I can't keep up a tank who is still living like it's Icecrown?
Guild Stuff
A funny story, back from an old guild.
Several times while I was the healing officer of another guild, the GM called together a meeting of officers and asked if we thought we had room for another officer. All three times, I shot it down. We had enough, in my overly humble opinion, and I also had a few people whispering me telling me that they wanted the position. So when the GM asked, I thought I knew who he had in mind.
And quite frankly, if you take 40 minute AFKs to change desks because you raid at work, at least once a week, you should not be vying for a raid leadership position. Hell, you shouldn't even be upset when we bench you.
Also, if you've spent the last two days bitching about two-thirds of the guild and how you wish they weren't in the guild and you'd love to kick them. You're not getting my vote either.
So, a week or so after we left that guild, the GM decides to whisper me and tell me that all those times he was trying to get another officer into leadership, he was trying to get Luxinterior. But each time the officers shot him down so hard he never got a chance to name the name.
Fortunately, my boyfriend wasn't upset that I voted against him three separate times.
Fast forward. Our tanking officer in my current guild takes off for some real life stuff, and we go back and forth on whether we even need a tanking officer (the tanks we had at the time were real low-maintenance). So then, I voted, no, no tanking officer.
Then we lost our other low-maintenance tank, leaving only Lux, a guy who quit the game for four months and suddenly showed up wanting to tank, and a new guy who had only done 10s.
I felt a bit awkward changing my opinion, and even more awkward voting for my boyfriend, but everyone laughed about it because he was the natural choice. I was all "Well, he's doing the work so he's got the burden of leadership without the benefits..." and the GM was all "Geez, Enlynn, it took you long enough".
So, make that four times I voted no. But the fifth stuck, and Four Lights now has the Lux-and-Enlynn tanking/healing leadership team!
It's handy in a lot of ways. We talk about things before we put 'em in vent and raid chat, and I feel less like an idiot when I have to ask the same question for the third time in one night. Lux already knows I'm a little dense sometimes. :)
Writing Stuff
I'm well on my way to meeting my goal for writing this year, having completed my second book a few days ago. I'm floored about Camp Nanowrimo starting this July. I had an idea I was saving for November NaNo, but I also wanted to write it in the summer to fully appreciate the oppressive dog days of August in the midwest for the story. So that'll be neat.
The other project, that actually has something to do with WoW, is a story about a gamer girl and her raiding guild. I've had this idea rolling around in my head for a year, and I was afraid until now but it's time to stop being afraid and RAR! Gonna do it.
Reading Stuff
Like books about druids? I meant to plug Hounded by Kevin Hearne a few weeks ago when I read it AND FELL IN LOVE. An Iron Age druid living in modern day Arizona? Oh, yes! I heartily recommend this book.
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?
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
i'm a crit monster
Here's a crit I did of myself for our second Atramedes kill. I actually wrote this up last week but since we didn't raid last night I haven't had much new to talk about.
Well, like every other 25 man raiding guild on the internet, we are recruiting. We need healers who can make it at least 3 (of 4) nights a week. Why choose FL over all the others in the world? There! Are! Four! Lights!
Check out this Star Trek Cookie Jar.
I am starting healer evaluations this week so I did this one as an example (though I promised that good things would show up on other evals, since this was my own I didn't feel the need to pat myself on the back or anything). And even then it was weird addressing myself as you. But hey.
Survivability
Died early in the fight to too much sound. Yeah, someone dragged something bad through the raid and it wasn't technically "your fault", but you could have tried harder to avoid it. In a personal responsibility fight such as this one, everyone is accountable for their own actions and that does mean that CYA is your first and utmost priority.
Damage Taken
#7 on damage taken. Other than the incident mentioned above, you're taking comparable damage to the other raid members. Specific to Atramedes, you gained 80 sound from air phase bombs and and 35 sound from discs. There's definite room for improvement, there.
Buff Uptime
I look for 100% uptime on buffs like Beacon of Light, Judgements of the Pure, and Auras. Save the moments while you were dead, you had that, though you probably could have judged and started healing sooner after taking the brez. You have 90-some % active time, so you're staying busy when you're alive.
Cooldown Management
For the first half of the fight, it looks like you ignored your cooldowns. The air phase is a great time to use Divine Plea, from the looks of the Damage Taken log above, so instead of two uses, you potentially had time for four. The JC Owl trinket has no drawback to using, and can be used on cooldown. I would recommend trying to push for five uses on a fight this long.
For Aura Mastery, Divine Favor, Avenging Wrath, and Ho-Sac: The same thing as above. Ho-Sac is pretty situational since there's no gib-protection, but Avenging Wrath and Aura Mastery on a 2 minute cooldown. That's at least 4 if not 5 uses on a fight like this, and with times of predictable, raid-wide AoE damage, there are opportunities to use these more often.
For the banana man (Guardian of Ancient Kings), well, you haven't used this in a week now. Please look for opportunities to summon your helper. It may not be a ton of healing, but it's cheap healing. I don't see a LoH for this fight either, which is 10% mana as well as a big heal on the tank. That's something you've dedicated glyph spots so that it's available for every attempt.
Spell Selection
Divine Light is a great tank healing spell. With 21% overheal, you could probably weave in a few other types of heals to save some mana when a DL isn't entirely necessary, but there were no tank deaths and you didn't run OOM. I see a few more places where you could really help out with raid healing using Holy Radiance. Mathematically, you can run higher than 50% overheal on Radiance and it is still a "cheap" spell.
For Holy Shock, for a fight as long as this one, you had the potential to cast 81 times. In actual, you cast 50 shocks, which means you lost out on upwards of 30 holy power. You generated 69 holy power in the fight, so this is a non-trivial amount you're missing out on. Your LoDs have fairly low overheal, so not only is it a free heal, it's an effective one. LoD also transfers to the Beacon tank so it's a very safe heal to use while still keeping your tank in mind.
Mana Usage
You judged approximately once every 28 seconds, or 36 times. For a fight this long, you had a potential of 61 judges. While I don't see any other holy paladins in WoL judging on cooldown, I do see them averaging closer to 4 a minute, instead of 2 a minute. I think 4/minute is a good target.
Your holy lights are averaging 50% overheal. If there isn't much damage to heal, I would look to judge or use holy shock instead (see below, assignment survivability).
Encounter Awareness
This is a hard thing to evaluate objectively. In the wipes for this fight we had last night, you did a lot better at flexing your encounter knowledge. This kill is the "worst" snapshot for your sound gain and survivability, but this just reinforces the importance of being consistent and persistent.
Communication
There are times when you are unable to heal the tank, or you died, or silenced, and you didn't call it out over mumble. There are times you did. But there are more times you didn't. When we don't communicate with each other, players often assume the worst when things go south. If we are communicating, we as a team have an opportunity to salvage a wipe, and our fellow raiders are less likely to be frustrated when they understand what's happening to us.
Please remember to sign up for raids!
Assignment survivability
Your assignment ("the tank") didn't die in hardly any of the Atramedes attempts, but you could have pushed Beacon of Light a bit harder since there were three healers assigned to the tank and spot healed the raid more. In a one-tank fight, BoL is often more healing done a healadin's direct heals. Almost half of your Divine Light casts went straight to the tank which generated holy power, but had you casted more shocks and spread those DLs through the raid, you could have ended up with the same holy power and more healing done on the raid through Beacon transfer.
Summary
Focus on managing your cooldowns, using them earlier in the fight. Squeeze in judgements and holy shocks whenever you can, again, earlier and therefore more often. Be more willing to talk in mumble when something is going to keep you from your assignment.
(Now that I've terrified my healing team...)
Well, like every other 25 man raiding guild on the internet, we are recruiting. We need healers who can make it at least 3 (of 4) nights a week. Why choose FL over all the others in the world? There! Are! Four! Lights!
Check out this Star Trek Cookie Jar.
I am starting healer evaluations this week so I did this one as an example (though I promised that good things would show up on other evals, since this was my own I didn't feel the need to pat myself on the back or anything). And even then it was weird addressing myself as you. But hey.
Survivability
Died early in the fight to too much sound. Yeah, someone dragged something bad through the raid and it wasn't technically "your fault", but you could have tried harder to avoid it. In a personal responsibility fight such as this one, everyone is accountable for their own actions and that does mean that CYA is your first and utmost priority.
Damage Taken
#7 on damage taken. Other than the incident mentioned above, you're taking comparable damage to the other raid members. Specific to Atramedes, you gained 80 sound from air phase bombs and and 35 sound from discs. There's definite room for improvement, there.
Buff Uptime
I look for 100% uptime on buffs like Beacon of Light, Judgements of the Pure, and Auras. Save the moments while you were dead, you had that, though you probably could have judged and started healing sooner after taking the brez. You have 90-some % active time, so you're staying busy when you're alive.
Cooldown Management
For the first half of the fight, it looks like you ignored your cooldowns. The air phase is a great time to use Divine Plea, from the looks of the Damage Taken log above, so instead of two uses, you potentially had time for four. The JC Owl trinket has no drawback to using, and can be used on cooldown. I would recommend trying to push for five uses on a fight this long.
For Aura Mastery, Divine Favor, Avenging Wrath, and Ho-Sac: The same thing as above. Ho-Sac is pretty situational since there's no gib-protection, but Avenging Wrath and Aura Mastery on a 2 minute cooldown. That's at least 4 if not 5 uses on a fight like this, and with times of predictable, raid-wide AoE damage, there are opportunities to use these more often.
For the banana man (Guardian of Ancient Kings), well, you haven't used this in a week now. Please look for opportunities to summon your helper. It may not be a ton of healing, but it's cheap healing. I don't see a LoH for this fight either, which is 10% mana as well as a big heal on the tank. That's something you've dedicated glyph spots so that it's available for every attempt.
Spell Selection
Divine Light is a great tank healing spell. With 21% overheal, you could probably weave in a few other types of heals to save some mana when a DL isn't entirely necessary, but there were no tank deaths and you didn't run OOM. I see a few more places where you could really help out with raid healing using Holy Radiance. Mathematically, you can run higher than 50% overheal on Radiance and it is still a "cheap" spell.
For Holy Shock, for a fight as long as this one, you had the potential to cast 81 times. In actual, you cast 50 shocks, which means you lost out on upwards of 30 holy power. You generated 69 holy power in the fight, so this is a non-trivial amount you're missing out on. Your LoDs have fairly low overheal, so not only is it a free heal, it's an effective one. LoD also transfers to the Beacon tank so it's a very safe heal to use while still keeping your tank in mind.
Mana Usage
You judged approximately once every 28 seconds, or 36 times. For a fight this long, you had a potential of 61 judges. While I don't see any other holy paladins in WoL judging on cooldown, I do see them averaging closer to 4 a minute, instead of 2 a minute. I think 4/minute is a good target.
Your holy lights are averaging 50% overheal. If there isn't much damage to heal, I would look to judge or use holy shock instead (see below, assignment survivability).
Encounter Awareness
This is a hard thing to evaluate objectively. In the wipes for this fight we had last night, you did a lot better at flexing your encounter knowledge. This kill is the "worst" snapshot for your sound gain and survivability, but this just reinforces the importance of being consistent and persistent.
Communication
There are times when you are unable to heal the tank, or you died, or silenced, and you didn't call it out over mumble. There are times you did. But there are more times you didn't. When we don't communicate with each other, players often assume the worst when things go south. If we are communicating, we as a team have an opportunity to salvage a wipe, and our fellow raiders are less likely to be frustrated when they understand what's happening to us.
Please remember to sign up for raids!
Assignment survivability
Your assignment ("the tank") didn't die in hardly any of the Atramedes attempts, but you could have pushed Beacon of Light a bit harder since there were three healers assigned to the tank and spot healed the raid more. In a one-tank fight, BoL is often more healing done a healadin's direct heals. Almost half of your Divine Light casts went straight to the tank which generated holy power, but had you casted more shocks and spread those DLs through the raid, you could have ended up with the same holy power and more healing done on the raid through Beacon transfer.
Summary
Focus on managing your cooldowns, using them earlier in the fight. Squeeze in judgements and holy shocks whenever you can, again, earlier and therefore more often. Be more willing to talk in mumble when something is going to keep you from your assignment.
(Now that I've terrified my healing team...)
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.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
random tuesday thoughts: wednesday edition
There's maintenance this morning so now it feels like a Tuesday even if my clock's computer saying it's Wednesday.
I want to experience more of the game before I blog about it because everything I do ends up teaching me something. A lot of my initial thoughts have been changed, though some have been reinforced.
We went into our first raid (Halfus in BoT) last weekend, and I was hoping to go back in there one more time but with Christmas this weekend it's likely to be another full week and a half before we do it again.
I gotta say, though. I was feeling pretty good about myself before we went in there. Most of my gear is heroic blue and I am a few upgrades away from BiS. I didn't go in expecting us to kill a boss or anything, but I certainly didn't expect to feel so... powerless. Humbled. Unable.
The tank damage for Halfus Wyrmbreaker is insane. That's the only word for it. 50k hits, and that was on 10 man.
(Though that leads me to another discussion point entirely: is one raid format going to be harder than the other? I'm running on the assumption that tank damage will be even higher in 25, but that's purely speculation on my part until I can look at WoL.)
I mean, I know that damage taken by both the raid and tanks will be affected by the dragons/whelps we get. And maybe we didn't get that part of the fight down, but even when we had it, I only barely 'had' it. I felt like I couldn't solo-heal the tank. And maybe that's part of the design, but the other tank healer was having problems as well. Are we supposed to bring three healers and have all of them focused on the tanks?
It's possible that when we go back in, our tanks will have a couple more upgrades (though only a couple. Our tanks are in GREAT shape to raid). And to be fair, I have a couple of things now that I didn't have before: a helm with a meta, two crafted epics, and the plan to get two more from rep before January 4th and at least one new shiny from valor points. (Thanks, random daily!)
With the upgrades we've both gotten the "easier" heroics have gotten a lot faster. Two days ago we went into Lost City for the first time, only we thought we'd already done it. So we didn't talk about fight strategies or even know what we were getting into, and it wasn't until the second-to-last boss that I realized this was new stuff. The achievement confirmed it. Yesterday, we got it for the random again, didn't bother with CC, Lux chain-pulled and I drank once.
To be fair, it was a guild run.
I keep hearing that pallies are OMG overpowered but I really feel that no matter what healer I had, I would have been able to keep up with him. I'm getting away with mostly HL spam, which any healer should be able to sustain.
And I'm also using Divine Plea between pulls and my JC spirit trinket on cooldown. Other abilities like the banana man, HoP, HoSac, and DS are all seeing liberal use as well. So it's not like I'm playing poorly. Or maybe I am because in a good group the healer's job is pretty easy and how can I trouble-shoot myself in a group that never goes south?
(I'd promise to pug more, but even my pugs have been awesome. Most often we've been placed with three other DPS from the same guild on another server, and they are just as prepared to play as we are. And believe me, I'm not complaining that I can't find any PuGs from hell. I am not, I swear!)
Sometimes I wonder if I am holding my blue bar too tightly, afraid to use anything other than Holy Light/Shock. I use WoG far more than LoD (in five mans, there often aren't enough people clumped together to make good use of LoD), and I only pop Radiance as a response to whole-party damage auras specific to a few boss fights (like the first boss in SFK, the sunbeam boss in lost city, the control room boss in HoO, etc.) I am loathe to use AoE heals in too many circumstances. On a 30 second cooldown, I don't want to use it before the boss's mechanics, and using it more than twice a fight means I'll run out of mana.
So I definitely wonder if I'm not having mana problems because I refuse to let myself spend, but I'm still learning. Our raid date is January 4th. In some ways, that feels like a long time, though it will be here before I know it.
I'm hoping to get into a 10 man or two in the meantime (something more than Baradin Hold. I don't really feel like that counts since on the first try we hit the enrage timer). But anyways. I'm devouring any and all posts that bloggers make about raiding the new content. If you've been writing, I appreciate it!
I want to experience more of the game before I blog about it because everything I do ends up teaching me something. A lot of my initial thoughts have been changed, though some have been reinforced.
We went into our first raid (Halfus in BoT) last weekend, and I was hoping to go back in there one more time but with Christmas this weekend it's likely to be another full week and a half before we do it again.
I gotta say, though. I was feeling pretty good about myself before we went in there. Most of my gear is heroic blue and I am a few upgrades away from BiS. I didn't go in expecting us to kill a boss or anything, but I certainly didn't expect to feel so... powerless. Humbled. Unable.
The tank damage for Halfus Wyrmbreaker is insane. That's the only word for it. 50k hits, and that was on 10 man.
(Though that leads me to another discussion point entirely: is one raid format going to be harder than the other? I'm running on the assumption that tank damage will be even higher in 25, but that's purely speculation on my part until I can look at WoL.)
I mean, I know that damage taken by both the raid and tanks will be affected by the dragons/whelps we get. And maybe we didn't get that part of the fight down, but even when we had it, I only barely 'had' it. I felt like I couldn't solo-heal the tank. And maybe that's part of the design, but the other tank healer was having problems as well. Are we supposed to bring three healers and have all of them focused on the tanks?
It's possible that when we go back in, our tanks will have a couple more upgrades (though only a couple. Our tanks are in GREAT shape to raid). And to be fair, I have a couple of things now that I didn't have before: a helm with a meta, two crafted epics, and the plan to get two more from rep before January 4th and at least one new shiny from valor points. (Thanks, random daily!)
With the upgrades we've both gotten the "easier" heroics have gotten a lot faster. Two days ago we went into Lost City for the first time, only we thought we'd already done it. So we didn't talk about fight strategies or even know what we were getting into, and it wasn't until the second-to-last boss that I realized this was new stuff. The achievement confirmed it. Yesterday, we got it for the random again, didn't bother with CC, Lux chain-pulled and I drank once.
To be fair, it was a guild run.
I keep hearing that pallies are OMG overpowered but I really feel that no matter what healer I had, I would have been able to keep up with him. I'm getting away with mostly HL spam, which any healer should be able to sustain.
And I'm also using Divine Plea between pulls and my JC spirit trinket on cooldown. Other abilities like the banana man, HoP, HoSac, and DS are all seeing liberal use as well. So it's not like I'm playing poorly. Or maybe I am because in a good group the healer's job is pretty easy and how can I trouble-shoot myself in a group that never goes south?
(I'd promise to pug more, but even my pugs have been awesome. Most often we've been placed with three other DPS from the same guild on another server, and they are just as prepared to play as we are. And believe me, I'm not complaining that I can't find any PuGs from hell. I am not, I swear!)
Sometimes I wonder if I am holding my blue bar too tightly, afraid to use anything other than Holy Light/Shock. I use WoG far more than LoD (in five mans, there often aren't enough people clumped together to make good use of LoD), and I only pop Radiance as a response to whole-party damage auras specific to a few boss fights (like the first boss in SFK, the sunbeam boss in lost city, the control room boss in HoO, etc.) I am loathe to use AoE heals in too many circumstances. On a 30 second cooldown, I don't want to use it before the boss's mechanics, and using it more than twice a fight means I'll run out of mana.
So I definitely wonder if I'm not having mana problems because I refuse to let myself spend, but I'm still learning. Our raid date is January 4th. In some ways, that feels like a long time, though it will be here before I know it.
I'm hoping to get into a 10 man or two in the meantime (something more than Baradin Hold. I don't really feel like that counts since on the first try we hit the enrage timer). But anyways. I'm devouring any and all posts that bloggers make about raiding the new content. If you've been writing, I appreciate it!
Monday, December 6, 2010
the real shattering
If you thought Azeroth being rent in two was painful and full of burnination, I have news for you. My guild is going through a shattering of its own. Months ago our healing officer announced that Wrath was his last WoW. His final raid was last week.
Which means. Ahem. They had to promote someone... Or something. So, "enlynn is an officer", take two!
I'm excited, I really am. I mentioned last week I had missed being healing lead. I enjoy it, even at its worst. You'd think being a leader when you're wiping all night is harder, but it's actually easier (for me at least) to keep plugging away and stay positive when I can hold myself to my ideal leader-like self. I say leader-like because, let's be honest, most healing teams really do take care of themselves once cooldowns, dispels, and buffs are coordinated. So I get all the perks of officery-ness without having to purge the grays from the g-bank or deal with the website. Sounds like win to me.
I look forward to blogging from an officer's perspective. And I really look forward to pushing Hard Modes in Cataclysm and writing about that. We finished up this expansion (and raided until the very last week, which should be an achievement in and of itself) 9/12 HM ICC 25, #2 on our server (yeah, yeah, Malf is marked for new players. Doesn't change my Lady D/Dreamwalker kills!).
I'm excited for Cataclysm because I've never hit the ground running with an expansion in an MMO like this before. When Wrath came out, Mayhem and I were still leveling up on this server/faction. I don't even think we purchased Wrath right away, we didn't need it until we were 68 and it was time to leave the Outlands. It's funny to think about how much has changed in the last two years.
It all changes tomorrow. Farewell, Lich King, The frozen wastelands of Northrend are soon to be wastelands again!
Which means. Ahem. They had to promote someone... Or something. So, "enlynn is an officer", take two!
I'm excited, I really am. I mentioned last week I had missed being healing lead. I enjoy it, even at its worst. You'd think being a leader when you're wiping all night is harder, but it's actually easier (for me at least) to keep plugging away and stay positive when I can hold myself to my ideal leader-like self. I say leader-like because, let's be honest, most healing teams really do take care of themselves once cooldowns, dispels, and buffs are coordinated. So I get all the perks of officery-ness without having to purge the grays from the g-bank or deal with the website. Sounds like win to me.
I look forward to blogging from an officer's perspective. And I really look forward to pushing Hard Modes in Cataclysm and writing about that. We finished up this expansion (and raided until the very last week, which should be an achievement in and of itself) 9/12 HM ICC 25, #2 on our server (yeah, yeah, Malf is marked for new players. Doesn't change my Lady D/Dreamwalker kills!).
I'm excited for Cataclysm because I've never hit the ground running with an expansion in an MMO like this before. When Wrath came out, Mayhem and I were still leveling up on this server/faction. I don't even think we purchased Wrath right away, we didn't need it until we were 68 and it was time to leave the Outlands. It's funny to think about how much has changed in the last two years.
It all changes tomorrow. Farewell, Lich King, The frozen wastelands of Northrend are soon to be wastelands again!
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
week 2 of 4.0
Well, we survived the first week of patch 4.0.1, congratulations!
Last week I didn't get much raiding done because Tuesday was canceled, Wednesday we called early (too many people DCing every time they zoned), so we maybe got 3 good hours of raiding. Holy Paladin is... interesting. I jumped into it knowing I had a lot to learn, trying my darnedest to ramp up holy power and get as many Word of Glorys as humanly (spacegoatly?) possible.
It's hard, though, because even busting my ass I feel like I'm just not as useful as those priests and druids. Granted, druids didn't get drastic changes, but I giggle every time I proc replenishment. Hots are neat! Yesterday, I went into a 25 man run with my priest and I HAD SUCH A BLAST WITH CHAKRA. You mean they have a spell that changes depending on what chakra state you go into?! HOLY WORD CHASTISE IS AMAZING OMFG.
Muradin muses about holy paladins in 4.0 in her post "4.0 Healing is a Joke and Paladins are the Punchline." She pretty much sums up exactly how I feel about paladins right now.
Ghostcrawler talks about the present and future of holy paladins here. The long and short of it is, paladins are balanced at 85, not 80, and the spell we get in a couple of levels will make it all better (oh and the MS on Divine Plea is staying. Dfrnt classes r dfrnt!). I don't agree. I have a hard time swallowing that one spell will make the difference. Not when priests and druids have an entire arsenal of cool things. I'm not wishing for nerfs on either of them (I still play them after all), but you could take away one single spell from either of them and it wouldn't change the playstyle too much. Sure, it would suck to not have Prayer of Mending, but I don't think it would "break" priests. Right now, I feel like pallies are broken. The addition of one spell can not--and should not--fix that.
I don't mean for this to be QQ. I can envision the future, where mana is constrained. My paladin does have a lot more mana efficiency than my priest- I ran dangerously close to OOM yesterday on my priest several times, but on my pally I was able to heal heroic Saurfang using all Flash of Light and still couldn't put a dent on my mana pool. I'm not saying mana won't be a consideration for holy paladins, but having two cheap heals and a second resource could end up being more powerful than it is now. Currently, WoG is nice but not necessary. If it becomes necessary (and I think it will), that does change things.
But I just can't compare the fun I had playing my priest to the awkwardness I felt on my paladin. AND SERIOUSLY WHY IN THE HELL DOES DIVINE PLEA STILL HALVE MY HEALING?!?!?!?!
Sorry, I'm done now.
In the next few weeks, I may not be posting very often. Every year I do an excessive amount of cookie baking, and there's about 8 weeks left until Christmas, which means I'm already behind compared to last year. Yeeps. With Cata coming out in about 6 weeks, I'll need to have most of my baking done to start leveling. So, I'll be playing less, and at this point in the expansion I can't think of too many (pressing) blog topics anyways. Things may be quiet around here, but I'll be back to talk about my experiences in Cataclysm. And of course, I'll be passing along links from my favorite paladin bloggers!
Last week I didn't get much raiding done because Tuesday was canceled, Wednesday we called early (too many people DCing every time they zoned), so we maybe got 3 good hours of raiding. Holy Paladin is... interesting. I jumped into it knowing I had a lot to learn, trying my darnedest to ramp up holy power and get as many Word of Glorys as humanly (spacegoatly?) possible.
It's hard, though, because even busting my ass I feel like I'm just not as useful as those priests and druids. Granted, druids didn't get drastic changes, but I giggle every time I proc replenishment. Hots are neat! Yesterday, I went into a 25 man run with my priest and I HAD SUCH A BLAST WITH CHAKRA. You mean they have a spell that changes depending on what chakra state you go into?! HOLY WORD CHASTISE IS AMAZING OMFG.
Muradin muses about holy paladins in 4.0 in her post "4.0 Healing is a Joke and Paladins are the Punchline." She pretty much sums up exactly how I feel about paladins right now.
Ghostcrawler talks about the present and future of holy paladins here. The long and short of it is, paladins are balanced at 85, not 80, and the spell we get in a couple of levels will make it all better (oh and the MS on Divine Plea is staying. Dfrnt classes r dfrnt!). I don't agree. I have a hard time swallowing that one spell will make the difference. Not when priests and druids have an entire arsenal of cool things. I'm not wishing for nerfs on either of them (I still play them after all), but you could take away one single spell from either of them and it wouldn't change the playstyle too much. Sure, it would suck to not have Prayer of Mending, but I don't think it would "break" priests. Right now, I feel like pallies are broken. The addition of one spell can not--and should not--fix that.
I don't mean for this to be QQ. I can envision the future, where mana is constrained. My paladin does have a lot more mana efficiency than my priest- I ran dangerously close to OOM yesterday on my priest several times, but on my pally I was able to heal heroic Saurfang using all Flash of Light and still couldn't put a dent on my mana pool. I'm not saying mana won't be a consideration for holy paladins, but having two cheap heals and a second resource could end up being more powerful than it is now. Currently, WoG is nice but not necessary. If it becomes necessary (and I think it will), that does change things.
But I just can't compare the fun I had playing my priest to the awkwardness I felt on my paladin. AND SERIOUSLY WHY IN THE HELL DOES DIVINE PLEA STILL HALVE MY HEALING?!?!?!?!
Sorry, I'm done now.
In the next few weeks, I may not be posting very often. Every year I do an excessive amount of cookie baking, and there's about 8 weeks left until Christmas, which means I'm already behind compared to last year. Yeeps. With Cata coming out in about 6 weeks, I'll need to have most of my baking done to start leveling. So, I'll be playing less, and at this point in the expansion I can't think of too many (pressing) blog topics anyways. Things may be quiet around here, but I'll be back to talk about my experiences in Cataclysm. And of course, I'll be passing along links from my favorite paladin bloggers!
Thursday, October 7, 2010
random mistakes and patchiness
Last week was a pretty bad week for raiding. Anything that could have gone wrong, did. DC's? Check. Computer problems? Awesome! Silly mistakes made by players who otherwise know whats up? Please, sir, can I have some more?
Yeah. We were struggling on Halion from silly things, we finally got him down to like 2% this was going to be it, we had this, and...
Divine Intervention.
On. The. Tank.
There are a ton of things I have done to wipe the raid in the past, and until last week, I could proudly say that DI was not one of them. Sure, I've had Beacon drop. I've cast FoL when I totally had the mana to HL. I've hit DP right at tank-takes-a-beating-phase. I've eaten goos, and I've even killed myself falling from the dream (or was it a nightmare?). But last week I DI'd the tank and wiped the raid. I guess there's a first time for everything.
(Ironic, too, that soon™ enough this won't even be a spell in my book. I almost made it!)
On a more positive note, we got Lady D on Heroic down yesterday, and I was able to complete Saurfang H too (the guild had it, I just hadn't gotten it with them). So we have three left! Although if 4.0 drops as soon as next week, that does throw a wrench into our progression plans. I'm trying not to be scared about the new paladin healing. I replaced my cloth chest with a plate one (my first piece of heroic gear on my main!), so I have two more pieces of mail then I'm wearing all plate.
Speaking of preparing for 4.0, Tarinae has some recommendations for in game currency if there's any BOA gear you've been thinking about picking up (do it soon!). Anything else you've been doing to prepare for the patch?
Yeah. We were struggling on Halion from silly things, we finally got him down to like 2% this was going to be it, we had this, and...
Divine Intervention.
On. The. Tank.
There are a ton of things I have done to wipe the raid in the past, and until last week, I could proudly say that DI was not one of them. Sure, I've had Beacon drop. I've cast FoL when I totally had the mana to HL. I've hit DP right at tank-takes-a-beating-phase. I've eaten goos, and I've even killed myself falling from the dream (or was it a nightmare?). But last week I DI'd the tank and wiped the raid. I guess there's a first time for everything.
(Ironic, too, that soon™ enough this won't even be a spell in my book. I almost made it!)
On a more positive note, we got Lady D on Heroic down yesterday, and I was able to complete Saurfang H too (the guild had it, I just hadn't gotten it with them). So we have three left! Although if 4.0 drops as soon as next week, that does throw a wrench into our progression plans. I'm trying not to be scared about the new paladin healing. I replaced my cloth chest with a plate one (my first piece of heroic gear on my main!), so I have two more pieces of mail then I'm wearing all plate.
Speaking of preparing for 4.0, Tarinae has some recommendations for in game currency if there's any BOA gear you've been thinking about picking up (do it soon!). Anything else you've been doing to prepare for the patch?
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
tank healers and vent
There's a school of thought I've run into more than once that healers don't have to be as aware of timers as DPS and tanks because they should be staring at bars. I have to say, perhaps my perspective is unique as I've only really been raiding in 25 man content for less than a year now, and I have since learned how to communicate in vent.
I know, it sounds so simple--just push the button and talk, right?--but there are lots of ways to communicate well and many more ways to communicate poorly. I remember trying to help my man RL 10 man raids, and complaining to him about all the things that people weren't doing, as they weren't doing them, yet I would refuse to just open my vent channel and say "please switch to the kobolds ASAP" or "remember to move the fire away from the raid" or "phase transition, get ready to run". I was, and still am, afraid of being the Bitch.
I'd like to think I've gotten better. It took getting to know the group I played with, and learning that sometimes I really do need to impart information right now. I call out timers. I remind the raid that stuff on the ground is coming up or to get ready for the big fear. I announce my status: I say "Enlynn's valked, big heals on the tank" or "Enlynn's dropping stacks, big heals on the tank" or "Enlynn's silenced, big heals on the tank" (recurring theme here, yes?).
I struggled with calling out my status for a long time. I don't wish to be perceived as self-important, but tank healing and tanking are the most communication-sensitive parts of the game. It's a natural thing to coordinate tank-swaps, adds, debuff management, and anything else that endangers the tanks. It's the first check of the game, keeping the tanks alive to soak the beating. Healers and damage dealers come second.
(I'm not suggesting that tanks and healers and damage dealers are more or less valuable in a group. Tanks are a single point of failure in an encounter, we won't get to the enrage timer if the tanks can't stay alive to see it).
Part of tank healing is not hps or gear or skill, it's reliability. It's not very exciting that our peers are talking about hypothetical damage per second, set bonuses, and pew pew, while I'm maximizing... my reliability factor. How many times have I been incapacitated by an encounter mechanic and thought I didn't need to call it out on vent, only to have the tank go splat because, get this, no one knew to help me heal.
How many wipes could I have prevented if I just pushed the button and said "big heals on the tank"?
There's another huge upside to learning to communicate with the team. My silence means that all is going well. If I want the raid healers to trust me to heal the tank, I really do want to call it out when I can't, otherwise we have three raid healers twitching tank heals because they can't trust me to ask for help when I need it. If they trust me, they can focus on what they need to do, knowing that if I get unchained magic, frost beaconed, or sucked into the sword, I'll ask them to heal the tank.
In a pug, it's even more important. Assuming that the raid leader is paying attention can be a dangerous mistake. I joined a pug LK10 last week, and I unabashedly called out each time I needed help. It covers my ass. If I'm asking for heals on the tank and the tank dies, I did the best I could do and I am not the only one to blame. If I ask for heals on the tank and the tank lives, I've saved us from a wipe. Was it actually necessary? It's hard to say, if they other healers were good they saw it on their raid frames that I was valked or in the dream or in the sword, and were adjusting before I called it out. But again, that's making some pretty serious assumptions.
I'm not an expert on when to call out and when not to. I'm sure that I've called out the most unnecessary things, while keeping my mouth shut when I shouldn't have. Most of the time, it wouldn't wipe the raid if I didn't (or would it?). It's not a chance I want to take. I'll call it out just in case.
I'm sure half the raid thinks "ugh I wish she would just shut up sometimes", but they can deal. I'm not trying to be self-important, I'm trying to give us the best shot we have of boss kills and shiny lootz. Given the choice, I'm sure they'd prefer that I'm calling out my status than calling them out. How many times do you have to be mind controlled before you learn to bite, hmm? (Whoops, the Bitch came out after all!)
What do you call out in your raids? Do you help announce timers, remind players to focus an add, or speak out when you are locked down by a raid mechanic? Do you appreciate it when your tanks and healers are proactive in vent, or does that healadin drive you crazy?
I know, it sounds so simple--just push the button and talk, right?--but there are lots of ways to communicate well and many more ways to communicate poorly. I remember trying to help my man RL 10 man raids, and complaining to him about all the things that people weren't doing, as they weren't doing them, yet I would refuse to just open my vent channel and say "please switch to the kobolds ASAP" or "remember to move the fire away from the raid" or "phase transition, get ready to run". I was, and still am, afraid of being the Bitch.
I'd like to think I've gotten better. It took getting to know the group I played with, and learning that sometimes I really do need to impart information right now. I call out timers. I remind the raid that stuff on the ground is coming up or to get ready for the big fear. I announce my status: I say "Enlynn's valked, big heals on the tank" or "Enlynn's dropping stacks, big heals on the tank" or "Enlynn's silenced, big heals on the tank" (recurring theme here, yes?).
I struggled with calling out my status for a long time. I don't wish to be perceived as self-important, but tank healing and tanking are the most communication-sensitive parts of the game. It's a natural thing to coordinate tank-swaps, adds, debuff management, and anything else that endangers the tanks. It's the first check of the game, keeping the tanks alive to soak the beating. Healers and damage dealers come second.
(I'm not suggesting that tanks and healers and damage dealers are more or less valuable in a group. Tanks are a single point of failure in an encounter, we won't get to the enrage timer if the tanks can't stay alive to see it).
Part of tank healing is not hps or gear or skill, it's reliability. It's not very exciting that our peers are talking about hypothetical damage per second, set bonuses, and pew pew, while I'm maximizing... my reliability factor. How many times have I been incapacitated by an encounter mechanic and thought I didn't need to call it out on vent, only to have the tank go splat because, get this, no one knew to help me heal.
How many wipes could I have prevented if I just pushed the button and said "big heals on the tank"?
There's another huge upside to learning to communicate with the team. My silence means that all is going well. If I want the raid healers to trust me to heal the tank, I really do want to call it out when I can't, otherwise we have three raid healers twitching tank heals because they can't trust me to ask for help when I need it. If they trust me, they can focus on what they need to do, knowing that if I get unchained magic, frost beaconed, or sucked into the sword, I'll ask them to heal the tank.
In a pug, it's even more important. Assuming that the raid leader is paying attention can be a dangerous mistake. I joined a pug LK10 last week, and I unabashedly called out each time I needed help. It covers my ass. If I'm asking for heals on the tank and the tank dies, I did the best I could do and I am not the only one to blame. If I ask for heals on the tank and the tank lives, I've saved us from a wipe. Was it actually necessary? It's hard to say, if they other healers were good they saw it on their raid frames that I was valked or in the dream or in the sword, and were adjusting before I called it out. But again, that's making some pretty serious assumptions.
I'm not an expert on when to call out and when not to. I'm sure that I've called out the most unnecessary things, while keeping my mouth shut when I shouldn't have. Most of the time, it wouldn't wipe the raid if I didn't (or would it?). It's not a chance I want to take. I'll call it out just in case.
I'm sure half the raid thinks "ugh I wish she would just shut up sometimes", but they can deal. I'm not trying to be self-important, I'm trying to give us the best shot we have of boss kills and shiny lootz. Given the choice, I'm sure they'd prefer that I'm calling out my status than calling them out. How many times do you have to be mind controlled before you learn to bite, hmm? (Whoops, the Bitch came out after all!)
What do you call out in your raids? Do you help announce timers, remind players to focus an add, or speak out when you are locked down by a raid mechanic? Do you appreciate it when your tanks and healers are proactive in vent, or does that healadin drive you crazy?
Monday, August 9, 2010
Tanking Pet Peeves: The Accidental Out-Threat
There is no "I" in tank team.
Actually, there might be a couple of pet peeves coming out today.
1. When your raid leaders go on vacation and someone else steps in to handle a run, please don't bitch at her for something that happened on that run weeks ago that she had nothing to do with.
2. Oops, I just out-threated you.
My biggest pet peeve from tanks is this. Fights that aren't tank-swaps, but they are still swapping because there's not enough team work. Sure, it's a farm boss and a tank swap isn't a wipe, but it's obvious there's one player who wants to be the star of the show even though we've told him that he's the third tank (when you have 24k hp unbuffed to tank ICC25, I feel the correct response is grateful humility, not taunting off the other tanks and calling it an accident).
I've been the super undergeared second/third tank before. It's hard to pick up aggro off someone who has three times the attack power and mitigation than you do (especially if you're still gemming for def cap). You have to do something snotty like taunt and pretend you didn't.
If it's not a tank swap, don't take the boss. If it IS a tank swap, no need to taunt before the swap time. There's a reason we agree on encounter specifics like "X stacks" or "X boss cooldown" to swap, and not "I'm bored and I want to see the boss swinging at me instead". And if we ask you to DPS, the correct response is "ok, let me switch" and not "ok but I'm going to stay in tank spec and gear in case something goes wrong".
No, you're not.
I'm sure there is such a thing as an accidental out-threat, but I don't believe it happens more than once. Certainly, not seven times in one fight.
Actually, there might be a couple of pet peeves coming out today.
1. When your raid leaders go on vacation and someone else steps in to handle a run, please don't bitch at her for something that happened on that run weeks ago that she had nothing to do with.
2. Oops, I just out-threated you.
My biggest pet peeve from tanks is this. Fights that aren't tank-swaps, but they are still swapping because there's not enough team work. Sure, it's a farm boss and a tank swap isn't a wipe, but it's obvious there's one player who wants to be the star of the show even though we've told him that he's the third tank (when you have 24k hp unbuffed to tank ICC25, I feel the correct response is grateful humility, not taunting off the other tanks and calling it an accident).
I've been the super undergeared second/third tank before. It's hard to pick up aggro off someone who has three times the attack power and mitigation than you do (especially if you're still gemming for def cap). You have to do something snotty like taunt and pretend you didn't.
If it's not a tank swap, don't take the boss. If it IS a tank swap, no need to taunt before the swap time. There's a reason we agree on encounter specifics like "X stacks" or "X boss cooldown" to swap, and not "I'm bored and I want to see the boss swinging at me instead". And if we ask you to DPS, the correct response is "ok, let me switch" and not "ok but I'm going to stay in tank spec and gear in case something goes wrong".
No, you're not.
I'm sure there is such a thing as an accidental out-threat, but I don't believe it happens more than once. Certainly, not seven times in one fight.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
being official
The last couple of weeks have been strange ones. In WoW, the healing officer in our guild quit the game for some real-life complications, and nominated me to replace him. So, I'm the healing officer of Colorful Metaphor.
I've already failed:
We were short one of my core healers the other night when we were trying to do Valithria 25. I could feel the difference through the first wing, but when we got to Valithria I realized we only had two players who knew how to do the orbs. I asked a shaman to do the orbs (he'd taken a long break and had never been past the first wing. Also, he was a DPS with a healing offset that is healing to fill in the gap of our leaving tree), but I neglected to mention ANY of the important information on how to do the fight. The ready check came up, people stamped their feet and I hastily whispered the shaman to take a portal and do his best! Needless to say, he didn't know he had to go into every portal each time, and I never even made it clear that Valithria was his healing assignment.
Anyways, despite my spectacular fail leadership we still made it through the encounter. We talked about it in vent and I apologized. I made it clear that it was my organizational ineptitude. I'm going to ask that the shaman go up again next week (hopefully he'll watch the video, and I'll make the time to give him better explanations!). We could probably do it with three healers, but I'd prefer that we get more players who know how to do it. I guess I should be thinking of these kinds of things, now.
Raid Healing Vs. Tank Healing
Doing assignments for the guild hasn't changed, because our RL has a beautifully simple mantra for our raid compositions. "Do what you did last week." When a fight is on farm, I don't fuss on assignments. We do what we always do. I'm not interested in "changing anything up" because they way we are doing things works (when we have the A Team, of course. We're suffering from the last-tier problem of full attendance for farm content and calling the raids for attendance problems the other nights).
Although, in all honesty, I have given a little bit of thought in diversifying but not because we need change. The incident with Valithria made me realize just how difficult a fight can potentially be when the one person who performs a specialized role is gone. I've debated switching up assignments this week in the first wing - having more healers experiencing different aspects of a fight.
We did have a problem with Festergut a few weeks ago with the DPS on the outside dying more frequently than they should have. I realized the crux of the issue when I did ICC10 as my resto druid - many aoe heals land localized in the group stacked up on the boss - Wild Growth, Chain Heal, and Circle of Healing, all smart target the player who needs the heal. None of these splash heals make it out to the ranged on the outside (who are spread out 12+ yards to avoid sharing the puke). The ranged DPS on the outside need direct heals or targeted hots/shields, and more of them to compensate for not getting splashed.
I would have never thought of this myself had I only played my paladin. I had to bring a different character/perspective to the fight to understand it. If we run into problems again with Festergut, I have a better idea of what's happening, and what I can do to help.
I've already failed:
We were short one of my core healers the other night when we were trying to do Valithria 25. I could feel the difference through the first wing, but when we got to Valithria I realized we only had two players who knew how to do the orbs. I asked a shaman to do the orbs (he'd taken a long break and had never been past the first wing. Also, he was a DPS with a healing offset that is healing to fill in the gap of our leaving tree), but I neglected to mention ANY of the important information on how to do the fight. The ready check came up, people stamped their feet and I hastily whispered the shaman to take a portal and do his best! Needless to say, he didn't know he had to go into every portal each time, and I never even made it clear that Valithria was his healing assignment.
Anyways, despite my spectacular fail leadership we still made it through the encounter. We talked about it in vent and I apologized. I made it clear that it was my organizational ineptitude. I'm going to ask that the shaman go up again next week (hopefully he'll watch the video, and I'll make the time to give him better explanations!). We could probably do it with three healers, but I'd prefer that we get more players who know how to do it. I guess I should be thinking of these kinds of things, now.
Raid Healing Vs. Tank Healing
Doing assignments for the guild hasn't changed, because our RL has a beautifully simple mantra for our raid compositions. "Do what you did last week." When a fight is on farm, I don't fuss on assignments. We do what we always do. I'm not interested in "changing anything up" because they way we are doing things works (when we have the A Team, of course. We're suffering from the last-tier problem of full attendance for farm content and calling the raids for attendance problems the other nights).
Although, in all honesty, I have given a little bit of thought in diversifying but not because we need change. The incident with Valithria made me realize just how difficult a fight can potentially be when the one person who performs a specialized role is gone. I've debated switching up assignments this week in the first wing - having more healers experiencing different aspects of a fight.
We did have a problem with Festergut a few weeks ago with the DPS on the outside dying more frequently than they should have. I realized the crux of the issue when I did ICC10 as my resto druid - many aoe heals land localized in the group stacked up on the boss - Wild Growth, Chain Heal, and Circle of Healing, all smart target the player who needs the heal. None of these splash heals make it out to the ranged on the outside (who are spread out 12+ yards to avoid sharing the puke). The ranged DPS on the outside need direct heals or targeted hots/shields, and more of them to compensate for not getting splashed.
I would have never thought of this myself had I only played my paladin. I had to bring a different character/perspective to the fight to understand it. If we run into problems again with Festergut, I have a better idea of what's happening, and what I can do to help.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Yet Another Paladin Preview Post
Am I the only one who thinks our new shiny AOE is going to be a huge mana drain, and that we'll still only be tank healers? I mean, I'm actually okay with being a tank healer, but we're going to be paying an arm and a leg for this new hands spell.
World of Warcraft Cataclysm Class Preview: Paladin
World of Warcraft Cataclysm Class Preview: Paladin
Monday, March 8, 2010
Hands on II
This is Part II of a post I started last week detailing my experiences trying to add Hand of Sacrifice into my healing. It's long so if you want the TL;DR version here it is: HoS is still a work in progress for me, but there are some really good opportunities to use it in current tier raiding.
I had big dreams before we started raiding on Thursday nights. I thought I could work in this ability on cooldown through every fight in Icecrown. I did manage to get some uses out of the ability but not nearly as often as I had planned.
Let's just say that for Marrowgar and Lady Deathwhisper, I totally forgot. Because I did. I fell into the terrible habit of thinking that because this fight won't be hard, I don't need to be on my toes.
However, I had been prepared to use HoS on Marrowgar right after Bone Storm, but before Spike Graveyard. This ability could be dangerous to the user if you get spiked before the effect wears off, as you'd be unable to do anything and completely at the mercy of your other healers. A good time to use it would be right after a Spike (when it's still on cooldown).
Lady Deathwhisper doesn't have severe tank damage to the point where a paladin would find trouble keeping up. It brings up an interesting question for theorycrafting, since most discussions we have for paladin healing are for progression. When a fight is easy and situational-use cooldowns aren't necessary, is it bad play to not use them, or is it overkill?
For Deathwhisper, I wonder if the disadvantages of HoS outweigh the benefits. The tank isn't in danger from the damage he's taken, however, I am in danger from encounter specifics. DnD, Frostbolts and Ghosts all eat a decent chunk of health and could be fatal in combination with HoS, or even with each other.
For the Airship, I remembered to use HoS and I got in four uses. (If you just did the math of four uses every two minutes and are wondering how we managed to have an airship fight that long...). We had some serious lag. Everyone in the raid suffered five second delays for the first half of the fight. After the away team hopped over for the fourth time, I realized something was severely amiss. Both ships were at 50%! I shuddered in fear - how embarrassing to wipe on the airship, even if we could blame lag (but blaming lag is weak). Somehow, we all started lagging less and started killing more. The plus side is, I did manage to HoS the away tank as he flew over a few times. The downside? We lagged so bad I had no idea if it actually helped and I never really saw if what kind of damage I took from it. Bah!
(As an aside, the range on healing spells is forty yards, while the range on Hands is 30. To HoS your tank across the way, you'll need to pop it while he's in the air or fly over yourself. Sadly it means we won't be able to mitigate when the tank is taking more damage).
For Saurfang, I got in two uses of HoS and it worked just like I thought it would. Once on the tank, early, and one later in the fight on a Mark at Frenzy. We all lived!
For Festergut, I believe I snuck in two uses of HoS although the second one was the "we're at 5% like hell the tank is dying now" type of use during the second inhale phase (I did that, Divine Sacrifice, and bubbled). Otherwise, using HoS during Phase III (massive tank damage) works like a charm. I had the active tank Beaconed, HoS, and spammed myself twice with Holy Light before resuming HL spam on the tank.
Rotface was still a newer fight for us so there were more than one attempt. Our first attempt, the MT died due to some RNG (my very own pet ooze during ooze explosion). Anyways, HoS works pretty well for this fight especially later when there are more oozes out and the tank will be eating more than 5 oozes. Sometimes it seems like he takes no damage at all earlier in the fight, but later as Rotface is throwing out oozes faster and faster, HoS and DS are very handy tools and you'll have the opportunity to keep both on cooldown.
Our next attempts were on Valithria Dreamwalker. As I'm more focused on my orb stacks, I am less in touch with what's happening in the raid. I find I don't have time to do anything but spam holy light. I'll save that rant for another day.
Ophelie (one of my blogging paladin idols) commented on my first Hands post asking when I would consider using HoS in place of DS. Since I'm always in the healer party and no amount of begging/pleading/cajoling has been able to change the RL's mind, I've resorted to focusing on the raidwide mitigation aspect of the talent and using it during things like Bonestorm and Festergut Phase I. I still do use it as a tank mitigation cooldown but I rely on the 20% reduced damage (raid-wide) instead of the 30% damage transferred (party only). 20% reduced damage on tanks for six seconds is still not a bad cooldown, and saves me worrying about my dipping health. With this in mind, for fights with heavy tank damage, they can be used back to back. For example, Festergut. Each inhale phase lasts 30 seconds, which means the total cycle is one and a half minutes. The "OMG HEAL THE TANK" phase lasts thirty seconds. Divine Sacrifice lasts six. Hand of Sacrifice can last up to 12. For progression, I think there's enough time to use both.
Hand of Reckoning: I found a use for it!
In our ten man this week we had two new ranged who had never even seen ICC. For Saurfang, we had a couple of tense moments. Our feral tank had forgotten to unglyph Maul so he attracted the attention of a beast. He called it out on vent, I used HoR, and calmly replied "It's ok, I taunted." I found it extremely satisfying. From then on, I helped the ranged by taunting the beasts on the far side when I thought they might get hit. Being a paladin is fun!
I had big dreams before we started raiding on Thursday nights. I thought I could work in this ability on cooldown through every fight in Icecrown. I did manage to get some uses out of the ability but not nearly as often as I had planned.
Let's just say that for Marrowgar and Lady Deathwhisper, I totally forgot. Because I did. I fell into the terrible habit of thinking that because this fight won't be hard, I don't need to be on my toes.
However, I had been prepared to use HoS on Marrowgar right after Bone Storm, but before Spike Graveyard. This ability could be dangerous to the user if you get spiked before the effect wears off, as you'd be unable to do anything and completely at the mercy of your other healers. A good time to use it would be right after a Spike (when it's still on cooldown).
Lady Deathwhisper doesn't have severe tank damage to the point where a paladin would find trouble keeping up. It brings up an interesting question for theorycrafting, since most discussions we have for paladin healing are for progression. When a fight is easy and situational-use cooldowns aren't necessary, is it bad play to not use them, or is it overkill?
For Deathwhisper, I wonder if the disadvantages of HoS outweigh the benefits. The tank isn't in danger from the damage he's taken, however, I am in danger from encounter specifics. DnD, Frostbolts and Ghosts all eat a decent chunk of health and could be fatal in combination with HoS, or even with each other.
For the Airship, I remembered to use HoS and I got in four uses. (If you just did the math of four uses every two minutes and are wondering how we managed to have an airship fight that long...). We had some serious lag. Everyone in the raid suffered five second delays for the first half of the fight. After the away team hopped over for the fourth time, I realized something was severely amiss. Both ships were at 50%! I shuddered in fear - how embarrassing to wipe on the airship, even if we could blame lag (but blaming lag is weak). Somehow, we all started lagging less and started killing more. The plus side is, I did manage to HoS the away tank as he flew over a few times. The downside? We lagged so bad I had no idea if it actually helped and I never really saw if what kind of damage I took from it. Bah!
(As an aside, the range on healing spells is forty yards, while the range on Hands is 30. To HoS your tank across the way, you'll need to pop it while he's in the air or fly over yourself. Sadly it means we won't be able to mitigate when the tank is taking more damage).
For Saurfang, I got in two uses of HoS and it worked just like I thought it would. Once on the tank, early, and one later in the fight on a Mark at Frenzy. We all lived!
For Festergut, I believe I snuck in two uses of HoS although the second one was the "we're at 5% like hell the tank is dying now" type of use during the second inhale phase (I did that, Divine Sacrifice, and bubbled). Otherwise, using HoS during Phase III (massive tank damage) works like a charm. I had the active tank Beaconed, HoS, and spammed myself twice with Holy Light before resuming HL spam on the tank.
Rotface was still a newer fight for us so there were more than one attempt. Our first attempt, the MT died due to some RNG (my very own pet ooze during ooze explosion). Anyways, HoS works pretty well for this fight especially later when there are more oozes out and the tank will be eating more than 5 oozes. Sometimes it seems like he takes no damage at all earlier in the fight, but later as Rotface is throwing out oozes faster and faster, HoS and DS are very handy tools and you'll have the opportunity to keep both on cooldown.
Our next attempts were on Valithria Dreamwalker. As I'm more focused on my orb stacks, I am less in touch with what's happening in the raid. I find I don't have time to do anything but spam holy light. I'll save that rant for another day.
Ophelie (one of my blogging paladin idols) commented on my first Hands post asking when I would consider using HoS in place of DS. Since I'm always in the healer party and no amount of begging/pleading/cajoling has been able to change the RL's mind, I've resorted to focusing on the raidwide mitigation aspect of the talent and using it during things like Bonestorm and Festergut Phase I. I still do use it as a tank mitigation cooldown but I rely on the 20% reduced damage (raid-wide) instead of the 30% damage transferred (party only). 20% reduced damage on tanks for six seconds is still not a bad cooldown, and saves me worrying about my dipping health. With this in mind, for fights with heavy tank damage, they can be used back to back. For example, Festergut. Each inhale phase lasts 30 seconds, which means the total cycle is one and a half minutes. The "OMG HEAL THE TANK" phase lasts thirty seconds. Divine Sacrifice lasts six. Hand of Sacrifice can last up to 12. For progression, I think there's enough time to use both.
Hand of Reckoning: I found a use for it!
In our ten man this week we had two new ranged who had never even seen ICC. For Saurfang, we had a couple of tense moments. Our feral tank had forgotten to unglyph Maul so he attracted the attention of a beast. He called it out on vent, I used HoR, and calmly replied "It's ok, I taunted." I found it extremely satisfying. From then on, I helped the ranged by taunting the beasts on the far side when I thought they might get hit. Being a paladin is fun!
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