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. :)
Showing posts with label raid composition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label raid composition. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
I looked at Magmaw funny
A foray into 10 HM...
Now that we're doing t12, my guild put together a 10-raid for HM Blackwing Descent. Perhaps regular modes have been nerfed all to hell (and they have, they have) but HMs are still--wait for it--hard.
The group was really cobbled together with the folks who happened to be on on Saturday. So it was my absolute favorite healing composition (two holy paladins + anything else) (sarcasm alert!), but we made it work. Only kinda, though, since we didn't get any bosses down. But I had expected as much, since we hadn't touched a single Hardmode yet this expansion and none of us had really researched the fights yet.
But even so, it gave me a chance to see my mastery gear working in a 10-group. At first, I went in my hybrid gear (17% mastery, 1000+ haste, more crit) and used my Tower of Radiance spec, but after a couple of wipes I switched to my "main" set and to my non-ToR spec.
A couple of reasons why: In a raid with the haste buff, the difference between 970 haste and 1200 or so haste is... not noticeable. Perhaps you get an extra Holy Radiance tick (a handy chart would be neat, but I digress), but the cast time on direct heals is the same either way. And in 10-raids, Holy Radiance isn't quite the I-Win button it is in 25's.
My "off spec" gear is lower i-level. I ran into this problem before, in Icecrown Citadel, trying to keep up a FoL set (haste to soft cap, stack spellpower) with random pieces of gear. Except, I never had a full offset so some of my pieces were still gemmed for intellect. So it wasn't a true specialist set, it was entirely cobbled together, and the real kicker: lower average i-level. I lost so much to put that gear on. I ended up using it Saurfang while we were progressing and that's about it. Once it felt on farm, I didn't bother.
I feel much the same way with my "haste and spirit" set now. I lose 4-pc t11 bonus, several thousand intellect, and 7% bubblage for... a couple hundred haste, an extra % or so crit, and... wait for it... all those i-level drops actually give me less spirit. Because this all off-set gear, old gear, lower i-level. All my new stuff is part of my mastery set.
A part of this is that it isn't a true offset. I still have too many pieces that are reforged for mastery, so instead of being a second specialist set, it still favors mastery while not favoring it enough.
And I do believe that I would be saying the opposite, if I had cobbled together a mastery offset, if I had half-assed it and coming up with 15% bubblage instead of 24%, I would not be the mastery cheerleader that I am right now.
A part of me dies every time I cheerlead for mastery. But the point is: your best gear will probably give you the best results. And why this is news for me, well, I haven't had my coffee yet.
Is there a point to all this? I really thought I had one but now that I'm here, I don't. I was able to "compete" with the other healers in my mastery gear, though we had to do healing assignments to work around me and I do not like being in that position. We had the other healadin beacon the tank, focus the raid, while I beaconed the adds tank and focused on the main tank. Sometimes I was a bit overwhelmed by the damage, but for the most part I wasn't. I never thought "whew, glad I got all this mastery" or anything.
I'm going to have to do some research for next weekend. I'm really not motivated to reforge my gear for one run on the weekend just to switch it back for the week, but we'll see what happens.
Now that we're doing t12, my guild put together a 10-raid for HM Blackwing Descent. Perhaps regular modes have been nerfed all to hell (and they have, they have) but HMs are still--wait for it--hard.
The group was really cobbled together with the folks who happened to be on on Saturday. So it was my absolute favorite healing composition (two holy paladins + anything else) (sarcasm alert!), but we made it work. Only kinda, though, since we didn't get any bosses down. But I had expected as much, since we hadn't touched a single Hardmode yet this expansion and none of us had really researched the fights yet.
But even so, it gave me a chance to see my mastery gear working in a 10-group. At first, I went in my hybrid gear (17% mastery, 1000+ haste, more crit) and used my Tower of Radiance spec, but after a couple of wipes I switched to my "main" set and to my non-ToR spec.
A couple of reasons why: In a raid with the haste buff, the difference between 970 haste and 1200 or so haste is... not noticeable. Perhaps you get an extra Holy Radiance tick (a handy chart would be neat, but I digress), but the cast time on direct heals is the same either way. And in 10-raids, Holy Radiance isn't quite the I-Win button it is in 25's.
My "off spec" gear is lower i-level. I ran into this problem before, in Icecrown Citadel, trying to keep up a FoL set (haste to soft cap, stack spellpower) with random pieces of gear. Except, I never had a full offset so some of my pieces were still gemmed for intellect. So it wasn't a true specialist set, it was entirely cobbled together, and the real kicker: lower average i-level. I lost so much to put that gear on. I ended up using it Saurfang while we were progressing and that's about it. Once it felt on farm, I didn't bother.
I feel much the same way with my "haste and spirit" set now. I lose 4-pc t11 bonus, several thousand intellect, and 7% bubblage for... a couple hundred haste, an extra % or so crit, and... wait for it... all those i-level drops actually give me less spirit. Because this all off-set gear, old gear, lower i-level. All my new stuff is part of my mastery set.
A part of this is that it isn't a true offset. I still have too many pieces that are reforged for mastery, so instead of being a second specialist set, it still favors mastery while not favoring it enough.
And I do believe that I would be saying the opposite, if I had cobbled together a mastery offset, if I had half-assed it and coming up with 15% bubblage instead of 24%, I would not be the mastery cheerleader that I am right now.
A part of me dies every time I cheerlead for mastery. But the point is: your best gear will probably give you the best results. And why this is news for me, well, I haven't had my coffee yet.
Is there a point to all this? I really thought I had one but now that I'm here, I don't. I was able to "compete" with the other healers in my mastery gear, though we had to do healing assignments to work around me and I do not like being in that position. We had the other healadin beacon the tank, focus the raid, while I beaconed the adds tank and focused on the main tank. Sometimes I was a bit overwhelmed by the damage, but for the most part I wasn't. I never thought "whew, glad I got all this mastery" or anything.
I'm going to have to do some research for next weekend. I'm really not motivated to reforge my gear for one run on the weekend just to switch it back for the week, but we'll see what happens.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
bacon flavored playstyle
Bacon, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
There's a few approaches you can use to using Beacon of Light in PVE encounters, and your favored approach will likely affect your gut instinct for stat priorities. (This is a mastery post, believe it or not).
The method I've used for most of T11 is to assign myself a tank (ah, the joys of being heal lead, I'm known for giving myself the heaviest tank-healing duty), and Beacon my assignment.
Beaconing Your Tank
For fights like Magmaw, Atramedes, the second half of Halfus, Double Dragons, and Chogall, you've probably already done this. With Beacon on your main assignment, you're free to spam the raid with heals. In 4.2, we can use Holy Light as often as it can cover tank damage (which on one-tank fights can happen, if you've got other paladins using their Beacon the same way and full-rolling hots and shields from other healers).
I like giving my tank my Bacon. It ensures my tank will always be getting a heal (not just the 1/2 direct heal, but tiny heals from PotI and JotP as long as I'm staying active, but on the occassion I do need to land a big heal on the tank, I get Holy Power, which allows me to do even more raid healing with LoD, which transfers a good-sized heal to my tank. More raid healing and solid tank healing. It's win.
This setup favors haste>spirit/crit and employs all spells, potentially favoring Divine Light and Light of Dawn. A paladin has less reason to use Word of Glory unless she's really trying to be mana efficient (crossing her fingers for a HP refund with each WoG use). Casting Divine Light on your tank procs more HP and allows you to spray lots and lots of LoD over the raid, to the point of planning out holy power for big attacks and timers, and regenerating it quickly by spamming the tank with Infusion procs.
This setup makes mastery look like a chump stat. With the changes in 4.2, mastery is better (our bubbles are a little more likely to last long enough over the raid to be absorbed), however, the scatter shot raid-healing approach means a lot of those bubbles can get wasted (phase changes or timed AoE pulses longer than 15 seconds). This approach means we're healing reactively, while mastery really shines with proactive healing.
That's a drawback if you're trying to avoid mastery. We "pay" for it in terms of class balance so for fights we're not able to utilize our bubbles, we're running without one of the tools in our already limited toolkit.
This strategy is solid for fights with moderate tank damage and moderate raid damage, and allows you to switch between direct heal-bombing your tank and raid healing on the fly.
Beaconing Someone Else's Tank
I think a lot of paladins still use this approach (the other two healadins do this unless we agree otherwise). For fights that feature two tanks and limited raid damage, this is a solid way to keep up two targets.
The drawback is, you put your tank in danger when you help heal the raid, because while you aren't healing them, they aren't getting any of your heals. With this setup, WoG shines a teensy bit more than LoD, if a healadin wants to keep constant heals on her tank. (And fights that encourage this type of Bacon may not have raid damage to heal).
Mastery is an amazing stat for this playstyle. I am not yet comfortable with the stat weights for this setup but I have heard other paladins gear for a 1.9 second HL/DL (mine is 2.0 with 790 haste) and enough critical strike rating to keep up solid uptime on Conviction (at 15% crit I kept up 97%). What a healadin gives up in raid-healing flexibility she becomes a beast tank-healer. Constant bubbles on cheap heals. It's ridiculous.
Holy Light takes precedence over Divine Light, since this style is proactive healing, building up bubbles whether the tank needs a heal or not. That means you can get away with less spirit. That means--you guessed it--room for more mastery. Truly a specialist build.
This strategy is awesome for fights with insane tank damage. Your healing team will love you for your mastery and your ability to keep a constant stream of heals and bubbles on the main tank. However, you may feel like the last kid chosen to play at recess for AoE damage fights. For progression-minded raiding groups (and aggressive raid healers who don't care), that may not be a drawback.
Talent Builds
I've had two holy specs for a while now. My off-spec was last tuned for Alakir (Pursuit of Justice, go go!) but I've been contemplating redoing that build to fully utilize a mastery playstyle. I think Tower of Radiance is wasted on a full-on mastery build. That's not to say I would scoff at a paladin who had it, but for players like me who prefer to keep two variants of their main spec instead of a true offspec, I think there's room to play around.
I'm writing this post a bit ahead of its post date so I'm going to go with this build here (31/5/5), and hopefully I'll let you know how I feel about it. I'm not really happy about 1/2 Blessed Life but it was the best I could do without taking the DPS talents in the Holy tree.
I'm further thinking that if I'm going this route of having one specialized tank-healing build and a raid-healing build, I could take out Eternal Glory in my raid-healing build and try Pursuit of Justice instead. In theory, I'd be casting far more LoDs than WoGs, and the extra movement to help position myself for Holy Radiance would be helpful. But I'll keep you posted. I haven't decided yet. :)
There's a few approaches you can use to using Beacon of Light in PVE encounters, and your favored approach will likely affect your gut instinct for stat priorities. (This is a mastery post, believe it or not).
The method I've used for most of T11 is to assign myself a tank (ah, the joys of being heal lead, I'm known for giving myself the heaviest tank-healing duty), and Beacon my assignment.
Beaconing Your Tank
For fights like Magmaw, Atramedes, the second half of Halfus, Double Dragons, and Chogall, you've probably already done this. With Beacon on your main assignment, you're free to spam the raid with heals. In 4.2, we can use Holy Light as often as it can cover tank damage (which on one-tank fights can happen, if you've got other paladins using their Beacon the same way and full-rolling hots and shields from other healers).
I like giving my tank my Bacon. It ensures my tank will always be getting a heal (not just the 1/2 direct heal, but tiny heals from PotI and JotP as long as I'm staying active, but on the occassion I do need to land a big heal on the tank, I get Holy Power, which allows me to do even more raid healing with LoD, which transfers a good-sized heal to my tank. More raid healing and solid tank healing. It's win.
This setup favors haste>spirit/crit and employs all spells, potentially favoring Divine Light and Light of Dawn. A paladin has less reason to use Word of Glory unless she's really trying to be mana efficient (crossing her fingers for a HP refund with each WoG use). Casting Divine Light on your tank procs more HP and allows you to spray lots and lots of LoD over the raid, to the point of planning out holy power for big attacks and timers, and regenerating it quickly by spamming the tank with Infusion procs.
This setup makes mastery look like a chump stat. With the changes in 4.2, mastery is better (our bubbles are a little more likely to last long enough over the raid to be absorbed), however, the scatter shot raid-healing approach means a lot of those bubbles can get wasted (phase changes or timed AoE pulses longer than 15 seconds). This approach means we're healing reactively, while mastery really shines with proactive healing.
That's a drawback if you're trying to avoid mastery. We "pay" for it in terms of class balance so for fights we're not able to utilize our bubbles, we're running without one of the tools in our already limited toolkit.
This strategy is solid for fights with moderate tank damage and moderate raid damage, and allows you to switch between direct heal-bombing your tank and raid healing on the fly.
Beaconing Someone Else's Tank
I think a lot of paladins still use this approach (the other two healadins do this unless we agree otherwise). For fights that feature two tanks and limited raid damage, this is a solid way to keep up two targets.
The drawback is, you put your tank in danger when you help heal the raid, because while you aren't healing them, they aren't getting any of your heals. With this setup, WoG shines a teensy bit more than LoD, if a healadin wants to keep constant heals on her tank. (And fights that encourage this type of Bacon may not have raid damage to heal).
Mastery is an amazing stat for this playstyle. I am not yet comfortable with the stat weights for this setup but I have heard other paladins gear for a 1.9 second HL/DL (mine is 2.0 with 790 haste) and enough critical strike rating to keep up solid uptime on Conviction (at 15% crit I kept up 97%). What a healadin gives up in raid-healing flexibility she becomes a beast tank-healer. Constant bubbles on cheap heals. It's ridiculous.
Holy Light takes precedence over Divine Light, since this style is proactive healing, building up bubbles whether the tank needs a heal or not. That means you can get away with less spirit. That means--you guessed it--room for more mastery. Truly a specialist build.
This strategy is awesome for fights with insane tank damage. Your healing team will love you for your mastery and your ability to keep a constant stream of heals and bubbles on the main tank. However, you may feel like the last kid chosen to play at recess for AoE damage fights. For progression-minded raiding groups (and aggressive raid healers who don't care), that may not be a drawback.
Talent Builds
I've had two holy specs for a while now. My off-spec was last tuned for Alakir (Pursuit of Justice, go go!) but I've been contemplating redoing that build to fully utilize a mastery playstyle. I think Tower of Radiance is wasted on a full-on mastery build. That's not to say I would scoff at a paladin who had it, but for players like me who prefer to keep two variants of their main spec instead of a true offspec, I think there's room to play around.
I'm writing this post a bit ahead of its post date so I'm going to go with this build here (31/5/5), and hopefully I'll let you know how I feel about it. I'm not really happy about 1/2 Blessed Life but it was the best I could do without taking the DPS talents in the Holy tree.
I'm further thinking that if I'm going this route of having one specialized tank-healing build and a raid-healing build, I could take out Eternal Glory in my raid-healing build and try Pursuit of Justice instead. In theory, I'd be casting far more LoDs than WoGs, and the extra movement to help position myself for Holy Radiance would be helpful. But I'll keep you posted. I haven't decided yet. :)
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, April 6, 2011
more shards for you: spellpower plate
News! Discussion! Opinions!
Let's talk about spellpower plate. Or rather, let's talk about what Ghostcrawler said about spellpower plate.
How do you feel about holy paladins being the only spec in the game with gear devoted to it?
I'm okay with it. No, really. The alternatives are far worse, clunky if you will.
We could wear mail. True, but we could also wear tutus and prance around with wands. Can you imagine a flipping PALADIN hopping around with a wand and ballerina slippers? I'll pass, thanks.
We could wear strength plate using conversions of melee stats. Then we'd heal AND be able to throw it down like a melee. Sure, we could be redesigned like cleric in DnD who got the best of all worlds: healing, armor, and power. And then ret and holy alike would have to ride the nerf-coaster while they got us 'balanced'. And by balanced, I mean, not #1 in PvP.
Pass. I'd rather not deal with the rogue tears.
Another problem with the strength plate idea is the gear competition. Right now, things are slated a little in favor of holy paladins. We gear up pretty quickly. Yet, lumping us in with the strength-plate crowd isn't an answer to the loot distribution problem. Warriors, Death Knights, and Paladins are popular classes. Melee DPS is a popular role. At least in my raid, the competition is still pretty fierce for strength plate.
It's anecdotal, but I noticed last night that I'm one of the weakest-geared healers in my raid.
Spellpower plate gets sharded in droves, it's true! But regular raid groups are sharding lots of stuff off the first few bosses. We're sharding the spellpower legs off of Halfus not because spellpower plate shouldn't be in the game, but because we've been sharding every. single. drop. from Halfus for weeks now.
(Three BoEs dropped last night before Chogall trash, 2 agility trinkets and the healer staff. No one seems to be complaining about all the extras of these we don't need...)
The other huge problem I see with a strength-plate conversion is how differently things are itemized across strength classes. Different classes want different things, and that's a good thing. But if holy paladins had a conversion, it would be tricky as hell to figure out what we wanted. (Other than to avoid expertise like the plague if it was converted to mastery!). And then Rohan over at Blessing of Kings brings up an very good point: if we have a conversion for plate, what about non-plate stuff? Do we roll jewelry like healers, or like plate dps? We'd be Ninja Raiders!
I've heard the argument that spellpower plate is wasteful . Okay, IRL I'm all for being green and reusing bags and wearing clothes till the zippers rust and turning the heat down and not wasting gas.
But this is not real. Pixels can not be wasted. We do not need to remove spellpower plate to 'conserve' gear. Waste is not a bad thing in a video game, in fact, it's good. It ensures that the content has repeat value.
I mean, if we're going to remove spellpower plate to make sure that the loot distribution is "more fair", the next step, obviously, is that the game should check the raid composition and only drop things that those classes can use. No druids or rogues in the raid? Guaranteed no leather!
Oh, wait. We still might have repeat drops. Instead, we should have the game not only spec-check, but gear-check. If all the clothies have a 359 helm, no helm would drop off that boss. That way, each boss kill guarantees only useful and necessary things that we need.
So then we need to kill each boss exactly three times before the whole raid is decked out. Then we have no reason to come back, except to push through to the bosses we haven't done three times yet. And what happens when said raid already has everything off that boss already? Does he just drop nothing?
Wait, I know! Every boss will drop tokens, which can be turned into.... anything! You get a token, take it to the npc, then you choose what slot you want it to fit into. Then you choose what secondary stats you want. Every boss is guaranteed loot, and it's exactly what you want... every time!
Does that actually sound fun?
If you're raiding every week, you've probably sharded a whole bunch of gear, and only a tiny amount of that was spellpower plate. Waste and RNG in drops are an important part of raiding. We notice the spellpower plate because it sticks out more obviously, but every week we 'waste' a whole lot of gear.
And again, not a bad thing. We need incentives to keep raiding the fights we've already learned. Large loot tables help keep things interesting.
I agree that spellpower plate is a bit clunky, but the alternatives are more broken than it stands currently.
Let's talk about spellpower plate. Or rather, let's talk about what Ghostcrawler said about spellpower plate.
How do you feel about holy paladins being the only spec in the game with gear devoted to it?
I'm okay with it. No, really. The alternatives are far worse, clunky if you will.
We could wear mail. True, but we could also wear tutus and prance around with wands. Can you imagine a flipping PALADIN hopping around with a wand and ballerina slippers? I'll pass, thanks.
We could wear strength plate using conversions of melee stats. Then we'd heal AND be able to throw it down like a melee. Sure, we could be redesigned like cleric in DnD who got the best of all worlds: healing, armor, and power. And then ret and holy alike would have to ride the nerf-coaster while they got us 'balanced'. And by balanced, I mean, not #1 in PvP.
Pass. I'd rather not deal with the rogue tears.
Another problem with the strength plate idea is the gear competition. Right now, things are slated a little in favor of holy paladins. We gear up pretty quickly. Yet, lumping us in with the strength-plate crowd isn't an answer to the loot distribution problem. Warriors, Death Knights, and Paladins are popular classes. Melee DPS is a popular role. At least in my raid, the competition is still pretty fierce for strength plate.
It's anecdotal, but I noticed last night that I'm one of the weakest-geared healers in my raid.
Spellpower plate gets sharded in droves, it's true! But regular raid groups are sharding lots of stuff off the first few bosses. We're sharding the spellpower legs off of Halfus not because spellpower plate shouldn't be in the game, but because we've been sharding every. single. drop. from Halfus for weeks now.
(Three BoEs dropped last night before Chogall trash, 2 agility trinkets and the healer staff. No one seems to be complaining about all the extras of these we don't need...)
The other huge problem I see with a strength-plate conversion is how differently things are itemized across strength classes. Different classes want different things, and that's a good thing. But if holy paladins had a conversion, it would be tricky as hell to figure out what we wanted. (Other than to avoid expertise like the plague if it was converted to mastery!). And then Rohan over at Blessing of Kings brings up an very good point: if we have a conversion for plate, what about non-plate stuff? Do we roll jewelry like healers, or like plate dps? We'd be Ninja Raiders!
I've heard the argument that spellpower plate is wasteful . Okay, IRL I'm all for being green and reusing bags and wearing clothes till the zippers rust and turning the heat down and not wasting gas.
But this is not real. Pixels can not be wasted. We do not need to remove spellpower plate to 'conserve' gear. Waste is not a bad thing in a video game, in fact, it's good. It ensures that the content has repeat value.
I mean, if we're going to remove spellpower plate to make sure that the loot distribution is "more fair", the next step, obviously, is that the game should check the raid composition and only drop things that those classes can use. No druids or rogues in the raid? Guaranteed no leather!
Oh, wait. We still might have repeat drops. Instead, we should have the game not only spec-check, but gear-check. If all the clothies have a 359 helm, no helm would drop off that boss. That way, each boss kill guarantees only useful and necessary things that we need.
So then we need to kill each boss exactly three times before the whole raid is decked out. Then we have no reason to come back, except to push through to the bosses we haven't done three times yet. And what happens when said raid already has everything off that boss already? Does he just drop nothing?
Wait, I know! Every boss will drop tokens, which can be turned into.... anything! You get a token, take it to the npc, then you choose what slot you want it to fit into. Then you choose what secondary stats you want. Every boss is guaranteed loot, and it's exactly what you want... every time!
Does that actually sound fun?
If you're raiding every week, you've probably sharded a whole bunch of gear, and only a tiny amount of that was spellpower plate. Waste and RNG in drops are an important part of raiding. We notice the spellpower plate because it sticks out more obviously, but every week we 'waste' a whole lot of gear.
And again, not a bad thing. We need incentives to keep raiding the fights we've already learned. Large loot tables help keep things interesting.
I agree that spellpower plate is a bit clunky, but the alternatives are more broken than it stands currently.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Guest Post: Use Your Brrain
Happy Friday! Here's another guest post by Madammayhem!
Wrath of the Lich King brought me from casual player to raider extraordinaire. On the verge of the Cataclysm, these are the most important lessons I can offer.
I can't take all the credit, though. I've learned so much from personal experience, yet so little compared to the knowledge I've garnered from those around me. Take what lessons you can from those who share your World, be they embittered veteran or plucky tyro. Here's a chronological account of what I learned from one prodigious hunter. Lets call him Brrain.
Week Two, 25 ICC:
Brrain: “This is Brrain. I need a heal.”
Healer: “Get out of the slime.”
Brrain: “Who's speaking? Who is that?”
Lesson #1 – Clarity. Be concise and precise. In the example, Brrain introduces himself and declares his need. All pertinent information is realized in his statement. It's important to note that this is Brrain's second week in the guild and his first raid with us.
Week Five, 25 ICC:
Leader: “Everyone switch targets. Everyone, please. I still see some people on the ooze. Hunters...”
Raider: “BRRAIN! GET OFF THE BOSS!”
Brrain: “This is Brrain. Who's talking right now?”
Lesson #2 – Tenacity. Focus on your goal. A single-minded pursuit can only achieve results. Many may try to impede you but if you stay on target, you will certainly prevail.
Week Nine, 25 ICC:
Brrain: “This is Brrain. Does anyone know how to train dogs?”
Tank 1: “Take the boss.”
Tank 2: “Got em.”
Brrain: “Anyone? Rescue...?”
Leader: “Beasts are coming up. Stop aoe.”
Brrain: “Guard dogs...?”
Leader: “Let's focus here people...”
Week Ten, 25, ICC:
Brrain: “Raidleader, this is Brrain. I'm gunna be late. I'm um... I'm bleeding. I got bit...”
Lesson #3 – Know your limits!
Week 14, 25 ICC:
Healer: “I don't know if I'm gunna be able to make it tonight. I feel a migraine coming on.”
Brrain: “If you just take a spoon... or your thumb... and put it in your mouth. There's a spot in your mouth... a pressure point. You can press on it and it... well, it won't make the headache go away, but it'll subside. (pause) This is Brrain.”
Healer: “I just don't think that's going to work.”
Leader: “That's fine, hon. I hope you feel better.”
Lesson #4 – Connect. Wow is a social game, after all. A little understanding goes a long way.
Week 16, 25 ICC:
Brrain: “Raidleader, this is Brrain. I'm missing Arcane Empowerment.”
Leader: “No one gives you Arcane Empowerment. It's an aura. If a person providing the aura is in raid, you get the buff.”
Brrain: “This is Brrain. Everyone else has Arcane Empowerment and I don't. I need someone to give me Arcane Empowerment.”
Leader: “Hmm... so you don't. Well, I don't know why it's happening but it looks like you're getting the same buff from the ret pally. He's talented for it. It's the same buff. It just doesn't show up on your bar. Don't worry—you have it.”
Brrain: “This is Brrain. I still need Arcane Empowerment.”
Week 21, 25 ICC:
Brrain: “Raidleader, this is Brrain. I'm still missing Arcane Empowerment.”
Raider: “Brrain, you have it! EVERYONE HAS IT! You can't not have it!”
Brrain: “This is Brrain. Who was that just speaking?”
Chorus of Raiders: “Brrain, you have the buff.”
Leader: “Brrain, the buff is provi... no... just no. Brrain, I hate to do this but we go over this every week, three nights a week. Please, don't ask again.”
Week 22, 25 ICC:
Brrain: “Raidleader, this is Brrain. I... I uh... (/sigh)... I need Arcane Empowerment.”
Lesson #5 – Caution. Know when to advance slowly. Some situations require finesse.
Week 25, 25 ICC:
Brrain: “This is Brrain. Who just said that?”
Raider: “Nevermind, Brrain. It's a wipe now. You have to stay out of the slime and switch targets when we tell you.”
Brrain: “Raidleader, this is Brrain. How do you turn someone up in vent?”
Leader: “Go to miscellaneous... ”
Brrain: “Raidleader this is Brrain. I can't see the names in vent.”
Leader: “... and then you click volume...”
Raider: “OH MY GOD!”
Brrain: “This is Brrain and I can hear you just fine now.”
Lesson #6 – Be prompt, or don't procrastinate. Remove obstacles to your success as they arise. Handle problems while they're manageable.
Friday, September 24, 2010
10s, 25s, or banana?
Over at WorldofMatticus.com, there's a poll going for who's planning to do 10s or 25s come Cata. The verdict is in: lots of players want 10 man raids, and many players are calling this the death of 25s. In game, there's almost a venom that comes out with this discussion, as if there's a horde of players who have secretly hated 25 man raids and can't wait for them to writhe in a horribly-fiery-painful death.
However, there are a few advantages of 25s that I haven't seen discussed too much. I'm glad that there are a lot of players excited about the change to lockouts (it means that Blizzard made the right choice, and that lots of players are doing 25s when they don't want to). But I don't believe that 25 man raids will die, especially not by fire. There are advantages that larger guilds have in terms of logistics.
1. Maintaining extras in a 25 man roster is easier than 10 man. All raiding guilds want to have at least a couple of extra damage dealers and healers hanging out in the wings. So the guild over-stocks itself, knowing that every raid night, a couple of folks won't make it, and a couple will be benched. It's expected that in a healthy 25 man guild, there's a wait list (perhaps not over this past summer or fall, but, you know). In this case, you have anywhere from 7 to 14% (3 or 4 of 29) of your raid group sitting out each week. Ideally. Odds are, in a 25 setting, it would be less because the larger the group, the more likely there's a meeting/school event/birthday that keeps a raider away.
In a 10 man group, ideally, you still want to overstock but the line between too few and too many is less clear. Suddenly 12-25% (3 of 13) of your raid force is going to be sitting on a given night, if everyone showed (which grows more likely with a smaller group). If your main tank doesn't show, it could spell a cancellation. In a 25 man raiding guild, there's more likely to be someone who can switch specs for the night or be brought in.
2. 10 mans rely a lot more on 100% raider attendance. How many 25 man raids have you done in the past few months, shy a damage dealer or two? Or, even with the most borked raid comp you could think of? I can think of plenty times we've gone and done the easy bosses with 20. Hell, we've progressed with 24.
Try that in 10 man? There's achievements for that, but I doubt it's a healthy thing to try to do new bosses that way, and not consistently. Especially if healer mana is as constrained as predicted, doing a fight shy one raider on 10 man is a risky endeavor that will punish the healers the most. Culling a damage dealer prolongs the fight, dropping a healer could push remaining healers too much.
3. 10 man raids will be tuned for the same gear level and be harder. For the first two tiers of content in Wrath, I never did 25s, and I found 10s to be pretty hard at gear level. I think the strict 10 man progression raiders would agree, too, if you don't outgear the instance, 10s aren't exactly faceroll now. I never did ICC 10 without severely overgearing it. Period. I came in with 245 gear, when it was tuned for 232 gear. That's a big difference in spell power, luxury stats like haste and crit, and blue bar. That's extra gem slots, too! I'll admit, I have no idea what 10 man progression in Icecrown should have felt like, because I was already geared with 25 man ToC gear.
If 10s are being tuned without the lower gear requirement, a lot of players might find 10s harder than anticipated, especially since each player is 10% of the equation, as opposed 4% in a 25.
4. 10 man and 25 man often have different loot systems. I'm a huge fan of EPGP. I think it's pretty darn fair (I'm biased, as a player with 100% attendance who only takes what she needs). Since I do 25s and that's where my "best" upgrades come from, I could care less when I lose a /roll in a 10.
I suppose this statement relies soundly on a few assumptions. Most 10 man runs I've ever seen do a /roll, often limited what you can main spec per wing/per boss. I haven't heard of many 10 man guilds that have a formal loot system, and I have a hard time picturing how something like EPGP or DKP would work. I don't have any experience with loot council, but any system that favors attendance over a /roll is going to put the players is going to put the casual folks recruited to be available when you're short at a severe disadvantage.
ESPECIALLY if there's less loot per boss on 10. That could get nasty. In a 25 man, a casual member just helping out for the night still might walk away with some upgrades despite an attendance system (more drops per boss, the sooner stuff gets sharded/goes to offspec). In a 10 man, it seems less likely, especially if the 10 man is designed to "gear players up" more slowly than 25 mans, then more of your players are still waiting on specific upgrades. The regular raiders would be hurt by a /roll, but the casual would have no incentive to join if they have to pass to the regular raider.
Less loot in 10s also exacerbates the recruitment issue. Less gear going to offspecs could limit your raid's flexibility. It's been easy in Wrath to maintain a viable offspec (how many druids and paladins do you know that have three sets of gear?), because with the dailies, badges from two lockouts AND two/three weeklies, and drops from two lockouts, the gear is out there. In Cata, we'll only get one lockout, and we'll be capped on how many PVE points we can get in a week.
If 10 mans are designed to take more time to gear up, that further delays the drops going to off spec, limiting how many folks are going to be able to switch as needed. Players who value their flexibility may have incentive to do 25 man raids. I imagine that even 10 man raiders will be able to keep offsets, but they might have to mix and match some lower tier gear to do it.
While it's true that healers and casters maybe be able to use a lot of their main gear for their offspec, that doesn't help tanks, paladins, or enhancement shamans. Their offsets will be built from scratch.
5. 25 man raids, in Cata, can shift down to smaller raid sizes on short nights, while 10 man groups can not shift up. A low attendance night won't cancel the larger raid, assuming there's enough tanks and healers, as they can at least do a fight or two at the 10 man size.
6. Problem players and cliques can claim more authority in a 10 man raiding group. Lots of players like 10 mans for the intimacy (I do, too). I have accepted that in a 25 man environment, there will be at least a couple of absolute dicks. If I choose to progress in only 10 mans, I wouldn't put up with even one. I'd want to genuinely like and respect everyone in my 10 man group, while it's expected that in a larger group that just won't happen. Personalities meshing in smaller groups is more pivotal for group success than in larger raids.
Smaller groups can potentially be polarized by issues and personalities. Just like the difference in feel between a small business and a corporation, the comfort and intimacy can become a liability if not carefully handled. In that respect, 25 man guilds can promote emotional distance and professionality, which some players look for in their raiding environment.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to suggest that 25 man raids are less likely to get emotional or have drama explosions, because that's not true at all! What I am trying to say is that it rocks the world of a 10 man guild when 10% or 20% of your raiding force ragequits. That's the potential to call the raid for the night, which is quite a bit of power in the hands of one individual. In a 25 man raiding guild, the individual holds less power and therefore can't emotionally blackmail the group. Granted, these aren't the players you want in your raid anyways, but calling a raid early for a night or not raiding at all is dangerous for guild morale. I've always felt there was a higher potential for fallout in a 10 man group over the 25. It's more intimidating to risk pissing off 24 people than 9.
6. 10 man healers will (likely) be less specialized. This is quite a bit of speculation on my part, but I predict that Blizzard's motto for healers of using the whole toolkit will come out much more in 10 man raids than in 25's. In larger groups, there is more room for specialization, while in small groups there is a need for versatility. Healers who want to specialize could very well be happier in 25 man raiding group, especially healers who expect to be doing the same job all the time. That isn't to say that tank healers will never cast raid heals or vice versa, but I predict that I want to define myself as a tank healer, I'll need to stick to 25 man raids to do it. In a larger group, it's easier to specialize and expect to fulfill that role. A lot of healers will love the versatility of healing in 10 man raids (I like playing my priest and druid more in 10s than 25s) but some will still prefer to specialize.
7. Managing a 10 man really isn't that much "easier" than managing a 25, it's a busy job no matter the group size. I've done both, and obviously YMMV, but personally I've found being an officer in 25 to be simpler even if the volume of tells is always worse. With a larger team of officers, my role was clearly delineated and there was almost always another officer online to confirm policy or ask for support. Going back to the small business analogy, a 10 man officer is going to juggle more hats. The 25 man officer is going to take care of the assignments given to them, and deflect other matters to the correct officer. Established roles make for less stress and less stepping on toes.
If I were offered a leadership position again, I'd rather take it in a 25 man guild than a 10. The argument that no one will want to manage 25s falls flat for me. It's a lot of work and emotional investment to manage a guild, no matter its size.
TL;DR: If Blizzard stays true to their design mission of play the raid lockout you WANT to play, I believe 10 man raids will be a lot more prevalent, but I don't think it's the death knell for 25 man groups. There will still be incentives to do the larger raiding groups, and I think there will be enough players who genuinely want to do 25 mans to do them.
I have yet to see what raiding will be like in Cataclysm, but I have a good feeling I'll be playing with the folks I want to raid with, whatever lockout that ends up being. I voted "banana".
LICH KING UPDATE: I KILLED 25 LK LAST NIGHT, and completed 7 hardmodes this week! (My guild is up to 8 hardmodes, but my internet sucks so I had to step out for Saurfang, which really bummed me out.) BUTBUT shiny new mace and I just broke 43,000 mana!
However, there are a few advantages of 25s that I haven't seen discussed too much. I'm glad that there are a lot of players excited about the change to lockouts (it means that Blizzard made the right choice, and that lots of players are doing 25s when they don't want to). But I don't believe that 25 man raids will die, especially not by fire. There are advantages that larger guilds have in terms of logistics.
1. Maintaining extras in a 25 man roster is easier than 10 man. All raiding guilds want to have at least a couple of extra damage dealers and healers hanging out in the wings. So the guild over-stocks itself, knowing that every raid night, a couple of folks won't make it, and a couple will be benched. It's expected that in a healthy 25 man guild, there's a wait list (perhaps not over this past summer or fall, but, you know). In this case, you have anywhere from 7 to 14% (3 or 4 of 29) of your raid group sitting out each week. Ideally. Odds are, in a 25 setting, it would be less because the larger the group, the more likely there's a meeting/school event/birthday that keeps a raider away.
In a 10 man group, ideally, you still want to overstock but the line between too few and too many is less clear. Suddenly 12-25% (3 of 13) of your raid force is going to be sitting on a given night, if everyone showed (which grows more likely with a smaller group). If your main tank doesn't show, it could spell a cancellation. In a 25 man raiding guild, there's more likely to be someone who can switch specs for the night or be brought in.
2. 10 mans rely a lot more on 100% raider attendance. How many 25 man raids have you done in the past few months, shy a damage dealer or two? Or, even with the most borked raid comp you could think of? I can think of plenty times we've gone and done the easy bosses with 20. Hell, we've progressed with 24.
Try that in 10 man? There's achievements for that, but I doubt it's a healthy thing to try to do new bosses that way, and not consistently. Especially if healer mana is as constrained as predicted, doing a fight shy one raider on 10 man is a risky endeavor that will punish the healers the most. Culling a damage dealer prolongs the fight, dropping a healer could push remaining healers too much.
3. 10 man raids will be tuned for the same gear level and be harder. For the first two tiers of content in Wrath, I never did 25s, and I found 10s to be pretty hard at gear level. I think the strict 10 man progression raiders would agree, too, if you don't outgear the instance, 10s aren't exactly faceroll now. I never did ICC 10 without severely overgearing it. Period. I came in with 245 gear, when it was tuned for 232 gear. That's a big difference in spell power, luxury stats like haste and crit, and blue bar. That's extra gem slots, too! I'll admit, I have no idea what 10 man progression in Icecrown should have felt like, because I was already geared with 25 man ToC gear.
If 10s are being tuned without the lower gear requirement, a lot of players might find 10s harder than anticipated, especially since each player is 10% of the equation, as opposed 4% in a 25.
4. 10 man and 25 man often have different loot systems. I'm a huge fan of EPGP. I think it's pretty darn fair (I'm biased, as a player with 100% attendance who only takes what she needs). Since I do 25s and that's where my "best" upgrades come from, I could care less when I lose a /roll in a 10.
I suppose this statement relies soundly on a few assumptions. Most 10 man runs I've ever seen do a /roll, often limited what you can main spec per wing/per boss. I haven't heard of many 10 man guilds that have a formal loot system, and I have a hard time picturing how something like EPGP or DKP would work. I don't have any experience with loot council, but any system that favors attendance over a /roll is going to put the players is going to put the casual folks recruited to be available when you're short at a severe disadvantage.
ESPECIALLY if there's less loot per boss on 10. That could get nasty. In a 25 man, a casual member just helping out for the night still might walk away with some upgrades despite an attendance system (more drops per boss, the sooner stuff gets sharded/goes to offspec). In a 10 man, it seems less likely, especially if the 10 man is designed to "gear players up" more slowly than 25 mans, then more of your players are still waiting on specific upgrades. The regular raiders would be hurt by a /roll, but the casual would have no incentive to join if they have to pass to the regular raider.
Less loot in 10s also exacerbates the recruitment issue. Less gear going to offspecs could limit your raid's flexibility. It's been easy in Wrath to maintain a viable offspec (how many druids and paladins do you know that have three sets of gear?), because with the dailies, badges from two lockouts AND two/three weeklies, and drops from two lockouts, the gear is out there. In Cata, we'll only get one lockout, and we'll be capped on how many PVE points we can get in a week.
If 10 mans are designed to take more time to gear up, that further delays the drops going to off spec, limiting how many folks are going to be able to switch as needed. Players who value their flexibility may have incentive to do 25 man raids. I imagine that even 10 man raiders will be able to keep offsets, but they might have to mix and match some lower tier gear to do it.
While it's true that healers and casters maybe be able to use a lot of their main gear for their offspec, that doesn't help tanks, paladins, or enhancement shamans. Their offsets will be built from scratch.
5. 25 man raids, in Cata, can shift down to smaller raid sizes on short nights, while 10 man groups can not shift up. A low attendance night won't cancel the larger raid, assuming there's enough tanks and healers, as they can at least do a fight or two at the 10 man size.
6. Problem players and cliques can claim more authority in a 10 man raiding group. Lots of players like 10 mans for the intimacy (I do, too). I have accepted that in a 25 man environment, there will be at least a couple of absolute dicks. If I choose to progress in only 10 mans, I wouldn't put up with even one. I'd want to genuinely like and respect everyone in my 10 man group, while it's expected that in a larger group that just won't happen. Personalities meshing in smaller groups is more pivotal for group success than in larger raids.
Smaller groups can potentially be polarized by issues and personalities. Just like the difference in feel between a small business and a corporation, the comfort and intimacy can become a liability if not carefully handled. In that respect, 25 man guilds can promote emotional distance and professionality, which some players look for in their raiding environment.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to suggest that 25 man raids are less likely to get emotional or have drama explosions, because that's not true at all! What I am trying to say is that it rocks the world of a 10 man guild when 10% or 20% of your raiding force ragequits. That's the potential to call the raid for the night, which is quite a bit of power in the hands of one individual. In a 25 man raiding guild, the individual holds less power and therefore can't emotionally blackmail the group. Granted, these aren't the players you want in your raid anyways, but calling a raid early for a night or not raiding at all is dangerous for guild morale. I've always felt there was a higher potential for fallout in a 10 man group over the 25. It's more intimidating to risk pissing off 24 people than 9.
6. 10 man healers will (likely) be less specialized. This is quite a bit of speculation on my part, but I predict that Blizzard's motto for healers of using the whole toolkit will come out much more in 10 man raids than in 25's. In larger groups, there is more room for specialization, while in small groups there is a need for versatility. Healers who want to specialize could very well be happier in 25 man raiding group, especially healers who expect to be doing the same job all the time. That isn't to say that tank healers will never cast raid heals or vice versa, but I predict that I want to define myself as a tank healer, I'll need to stick to 25 man raids to do it. In a larger group, it's easier to specialize and expect to fulfill that role. A lot of healers will love the versatility of healing in 10 man raids (I like playing my priest and druid more in 10s than 25s) but some will still prefer to specialize.
7. Managing a 10 man really isn't that much "easier" than managing a 25, it's a busy job no matter the group size. I've done both, and obviously YMMV, but personally I've found being an officer in 25 to be simpler even if the volume of tells is always worse. With a larger team of officers, my role was clearly delineated and there was almost always another officer online to confirm policy or ask for support. Going back to the small business analogy, a 10 man officer is going to juggle more hats. The 25 man officer is going to take care of the assignments given to them, and deflect other matters to the correct officer. Established roles make for less stress and less stepping on toes.
If I were offered a leadership position again, I'd rather take it in a 25 man guild than a 10. The argument that no one will want to manage 25s falls flat for me. It's a lot of work and emotional investment to manage a guild, no matter its size.
TL;DR: If Blizzard stays true to their design mission of play the raid lockout you WANT to play, I believe 10 man raids will be a lot more prevalent, but I don't think it's the death knell for 25 man groups. There will still be incentives to do the larger raiding groups, and I think there will be enough players who genuinely want to do 25 mans to do them.
I have yet to see what raiding will be like in Cataclysm, but I have a good feeling I'll be playing with the folks I want to raid with, whatever lockout that ends up being. I voted "banana".
LICH KING UPDATE: I KILLED 25 LK LAST NIGHT, and completed 7 hardmodes this week! (My guild is up to 8 hardmodes, but my internet sucks so I had to step out for Saurfang, which really bummed me out.) BUTBUT shiny new mace and I just broke 43,000 mana!
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Healers Who Don't Wanna
Have you noticed a trend in healers who don't wanna?
I have, but I'm not sure that I qualify to talk about it. Most of my memories from the beginning of the expansion was focused primarily in 10's, where we had a semi-steady group where we would pug at least a warm body or two. We ended up in some pretty strange Naxxs - three holy paladin teams (never again!), hardly ever any heroism, retribution paladins ahoy.
The one thing I remember frustrating the snot out of me was a shortage of 'main spec' healers. We'd always end up finishing the group by inviting another dps and asking the priest/druid/paladin to switch (grumble, grumble) to their offspec. And more often than not, it would sour the rest of the evening because they couldn't just say "I'm here to dps. I don't have fun healing."
(Better yet - don't keep a holy/resto off spec!)
Rant completed, I haven't run into this in a while, but like I said: I do 25s with a raiding guild. A set roster and steady group decrease my chances of running into healers who don't wanna. We have enough (close to it) healers who prefer to heal. The dps who heal offspec riptide with the same vigor of lava burst.
So I'm curious. I've "noticed" that there are less now, but I'm not looking for them either. Lately, have you run into healers who don't wanna?
(Quick note: If you're a dps who enjoys healing and/or tanking too, I love you.)
I have, but I'm not sure that I qualify to talk about it. Most of my memories from the beginning of the expansion was focused primarily in 10's, where we had a semi-steady group where we would pug at least a warm body or two. We ended up in some pretty strange Naxxs - three holy paladin teams (never again!), hardly ever any heroism, retribution paladins ahoy.
The one thing I remember frustrating the snot out of me was a shortage of 'main spec' healers. We'd always end up finishing the group by inviting another dps and asking the priest/druid/paladin to switch (grumble, grumble) to their offspec. And more often than not, it would sour the rest of the evening because they couldn't just say "I'm here to dps. I don't have fun healing."
(Better yet - don't keep a holy/resto off spec!)
Rant completed, I haven't run into this in a while, but like I said: I do 25s with a raiding guild. A set roster and steady group decrease my chances of running into healers who don't wanna. We have enough (close to it) healers who prefer to heal. The dps who heal offspec riptide with the same vigor of lava burst.
So I'm curious. I've "noticed" that there are less now, but I'm not looking for them either. Lately, have you run into healers who don't wanna?
(Quick note: If you're a dps who enjoys healing and/or tanking too, I love you.)
Thursday, February 11, 2010
The Lonely Pally
How often are you the only Paladin in your 10 man raids? How do you feel it affects your raid composition?
For several weeks now, I have been the lonely pally. Thankfully, I come prepared with Drums. The people I run with know they are going to get Might/Wisdom and the ghetto kings buff. It's not as nice as having two paladins in the raid, but it works.
It might seem like the the inconveniences end there, but they don't. I am the only one to offer Judgements to the raid. Judgement of Light is powerful. I do use it as often as I can, but the other specs of paladins are able to judge as part of their rotation. As a holy paladin, I often can only judge when I know its a GCD I can spare. I am able to judge enough to get healing done from JoL, however, I can only have the debuff up at one time, which means any times there are multiple targets, I can't get more than one by myself.
Judgement of Light isn't game-breaking by any means. I'm sure there are plenty of groups who go without it (or go with one of the comparable buffs... Shadow Priests, Feral Druids, and Shamans and Paladins all bring a similar blanket-hot for the raid). These buffs are extremely powerful. It's true that most of the time, the little ticks of healing provided are straight overheal. I agree, if things are easy, these things aren't noticeable and that utility isn't needed.
However, all sources of little heals and mitigation also extend a character's time until death when it's a new and challenging fight. Festergut comes to mind. When we're progressing, the utility of a second paladin (assuming I'm the holy paladin in the raid, a ret paladin will bring replenishment, and a protection paladin will bring Sanc - 3% damage reduction) can be the difference in a really good attempt or a kill.
I know a lot of people three heal that fight but two-healing it is FUN. I did feel the "lonely pally" pressure, though, as I didn't have a cast to spare. I managed to keep up well enough of Judgements during the first inhale but by the time we got to the third I was afraid to do anything but Holy Light. I'm sure that in a few weeks this won't matter because it won't be progression. But therein lies my point - paladins are better in numbers while you're progressing, when our hybrid utility is a competitive edge. Throw in our Hands for the mistakes we all make as we're learning the fights, it means that two paladins are more powerful than one. It's not a problem for paladins, but there are so many other classes whose utility does not grow in numbers.
So what is it, then, about one-paladin raids that feels so lacking? And why? After all, a second rogue in the raid isn't cheered, and no one could care less if we have two mages instead of two casters. In fact, that repetition can be crippling to your raid composition, if all of your melee DPS are rogues. I'm not saying it doesn't work, it surely can, but it's always going to be more ideal to have some variety in the raid. Hybrids get away from this a little bit - Druids of different specs bring special auras and buffs, Shamans bring special spec-specific totems, Paladins bring auras and blessings, and Priests bring unique spec-specific buffs. Bringing a Shadow Priest and Disc Priest to the raid is awesome and not gimp. Even if you brought two rogues of different specs, you're still... bringing two rogues. Again, it's entirely possible but not near as optimal.
So why is there so much room for more hybrids in a raid than pures? With DPS being the majority of the WoW playerbase, and the majority of the raid, it works out. Classes are certainly balanced closely enough that no one is going to get benched because of their class. In that regard, I think WoW is in pretty good shape balance-wise.
But it's still irksome to me that we can be encouraged to stack certain classes. That I feel "lonely" when I'm the only paladin. When I play my priest or druid, I'm happy to be the only priest or druid. I don't feel gimp being the only Druid in the raid, because we can live without excess battle-rezzes (the argument could be made that needing multiple battle-rezzes is just messy playing), and any other utility that I bring as a Druid, I can provide as the only Druid (lol yes you can have my innervate). I don't feel that way when I'm the only paladin.
I am not complaining because I want another paladin in our 10 man group. In fact, I wish I couldn't tell the difference either way. I like how for the most part 10's are flexible enough that most raid comps will work. It's broken to me that a second paladin would be at all considered necessary. A raid without a second paladin feels incomplete to me, and that's a problem, when a raid with two (let alone three!) of any pure class is "too much".
I'm not saying it can't be done. We did Saurfang last week with no knockback whatsoever, and had no problems downing him with only one Mark at the end of the fight. It took some creative use of the abilities we had (crippling poison + fan of knives, lots of stuns, and a rare opportunity for me to use Hand of Reckoning. I enjoy taunting as a healer far more than I should...). Anyways, moral of the story here is that raid composition can be a challenge, and while good groups will overcome it, it's often daunting to overcome those challenges without a second paladin. Maybe I need to be a better paladin if I'm not paladin enough for my raid, but my argument is still valid: multiple paladins bring multiple utilities, while the utility of many other classes is only filled by the first and not multiplied by the second.
It makes me a lonely pally!
For several weeks now, I have been the lonely pally. Thankfully, I come prepared with Drums. The people I run with know they are going to get Might/Wisdom and the ghetto kings buff. It's not as nice as having two paladins in the raid, but it works.
It might seem like the the inconveniences end there, but they don't. I am the only one to offer Judgements to the raid. Judgement of Light is powerful. I do use it as often as I can, but the other specs of paladins are able to judge as part of their rotation. As a holy paladin, I often can only judge when I know its a GCD I can spare. I am able to judge enough to get healing done from JoL, however, I can only have the debuff up at one time, which means any times there are multiple targets, I can't get more than one by myself.
Judgement of Light isn't game-breaking by any means. I'm sure there are plenty of groups who go without it (or go with one of the comparable buffs... Shadow Priests, Feral Druids, and Shamans and Paladins all bring a similar blanket-hot for the raid). These buffs are extremely powerful. It's true that most of the time, the little ticks of healing provided are straight overheal. I agree, if things are easy, these things aren't noticeable and that utility isn't needed.
However, all sources of little heals and mitigation also extend a character's time until death when it's a new and challenging fight. Festergut comes to mind. When we're progressing, the utility of a second paladin (assuming I'm the holy paladin in the raid, a ret paladin will bring replenishment, and a protection paladin will bring Sanc - 3% damage reduction) can be the difference in a really good attempt or a kill.
I know a lot of people three heal that fight but two-healing it is FUN. I did feel the "lonely pally" pressure, though, as I didn't have a cast to spare. I managed to keep up well enough of Judgements during the first inhale but by the time we got to the third I was afraid to do anything but Holy Light. I'm sure that in a few weeks this won't matter because it won't be progression. But therein lies my point - paladins are better in numbers while you're progressing, when our hybrid utility is a competitive edge. Throw in our Hands for the mistakes we all make as we're learning the fights, it means that two paladins are more powerful than one. It's not a problem for paladins, but there are so many other classes whose utility does not grow in numbers.
So what is it, then, about one-paladin raids that feels so lacking? And why? After all, a second rogue in the raid isn't cheered, and no one could care less if we have two mages instead of two casters. In fact, that repetition can be crippling to your raid composition, if all of your melee DPS are rogues. I'm not saying it doesn't work, it surely can, but it's always going to be more ideal to have some variety in the raid. Hybrids get away from this a little bit - Druids of different specs bring special auras and buffs, Shamans bring special spec-specific totems, Paladins bring auras and blessings, and Priests bring unique spec-specific buffs. Bringing a Shadow Priest and Disc Priest to the raid is awesome and not gimp. Even if you brought two rogues of different specs, you're still... bringing two rogues. Again, it's entirely possible but not near as optimal.
So why is there so much room for more hybrids in a raid than pures? With DPS being the majority of the WoW playerbase, and the majority of the raid, it works out. Classes are certainly balanced closely enough that no one is going to get benched because of their class. In that regard, I think WoW is in pretty good shape balance-wise.
But it's still irksome to me that we can be encouraged to stack certain classes. That I feel "lonely" when I'm the only paladin. When I play my priest or druid, I'm happy to be the only priest or druid. I don't feel gimp being the only Druid in the raid, because we can live without excess battle-rezzes (the argument could be made that needing multiple battle-rezzes is just messy playing), and any other utility that I bring as a Druid, I can provide as the only Druid (lol yes you can have my innervate). I don't feel that way when I'm the only paladin.
I am not complaining because I want another paladin in our 10 man group. In fact, I wish I couldn't tell the difference either way. I like how for the most part 10's are flexible enough that most raid comps will work. It's broken to me that a second paladin would be at all considered necessary. A raid without a second paladin feels incomplete to me, and that's a problem, when a raid with two (let alone three!) of any pure class is "too much".
I'm not saying it can't be done. We did Saurfang last week with no knockback whatsoever, and had no problems downing him with only one Mark at the end of the fight. It took some creative use of the abilities we had (crippling poison + fan of knives, lots of stuns, and a rare opportunity for me to use Hand of Reckoning. I enjoy taunting as a healer far more than I should...). Anyways, moral of the story here is that raid composition can be a challenge, and while good groups will overcome it, it's often daunting to overcome those challenges without a second paladin. Maybe I need to be a better paladin if I'm not paladin enough for my raid, but my argument is still valid: multiple paladins bring multiple utilities, while the utility of many other classes is only filled by the first and not multiplied by the second.
It makes me a lonely pally!
Monday, January 4, 2010
Moar BUFFS!
My guild finally downed Lady D and the Airship this week! That left us with a special extra raid night just to get in and take some swings at Saur. I couldn't be happier. One thing my guild leader has done that I think really helped is he got everyone doing 10's this week before we went in to the 25. I think it made a huge difference for everyone else in the raid. Sure, a good 10 of us or so had gone in before it was a scheduled guild event and gotten our clear. But it's safe to say that we were the same 10 (or so) who were also on tankspot watching videos and looking for strats. When we went in as a 25, it showed that we just weren't ready, until now. Last week our guild put together three ICC10s. When we joined in the 25, we pared down the healers to a reasonable number (finally!), and were able to do it with quite a few less problems. We still don't have a DB strat we can use - on our first couple of attempts we wiped somewhere between 30-40% with ridiculous amounts of marks. By ridiculous, I mean 7. We still need to figure out how to get those beasts down without giving Saur 50+ marks each time. We were able to do it in later attempts, but we aren't there yet.
Beacon of Light
Beacon of Light is quite useful for Deathbringer for Marks. I decided to give it a try last night. Usually I beacon the lesser geared tank, but for Deathbringer, the most logical place to put Beacon is on a Marked target. The two tanks in this encounter do not ever take damage at the same time, and the damage the tanks are taking isn't actually overwhelming. The damage the new Mark is taking isn't "overwhelming" either, as long as the target is Beaconed.
After giving it some thought, the reason the Mark is hard to heal not because it deals "so much" damage. If you're a priest, a druid, or a shaman, you might disagree with me. However, as a Holy Light paladin, 10k damage to heal every 1.5-3 seconds on one target isn't huge for me because I heal tanks and that would be trivial damage on a tank.
However, our Mark isn't a tank, and that's where it gets complicated. Our Mark has a fraction of the HP of a tank, and has only one or two survivability cooldowns to help himself. Sure a mage can Iceblock to absorb some of the damage, but after it's over it's right back to where we started, which is a lot of damage on a squishy target, consistently through the rest of the fight. That's how Beacon starts to shine for this fight - I was able to keep a Marked target alive through most of the fight with absolutely no loss at what I do best - healing tanks.
My guild's recently appointed healing officer is trying his damnedest to get our healing team to start acting like a team. He's encouraging us in the healing channel, linking dispel meters and congratulating our priests, and trying to get us to communicate outside of the "paladins heal tanks, everyone else heal the raid". Even if he hasn't been as successful as he would have liked, I'm all for the idea and I'm responding to him. So before we do Saurfang I might send him a message and talk more about how I'd like to try our official strategy as both pallies beaconing the first couple of marks. And after further consideration, I see no reason why a second holy paladin couldn't be assigned to two marks - Beacon one, heal the other. Lots of constant, predictable, simultaneous damage on two targets? If this isn't a fight designed for holy paladins, what is?
Amplify Magic
Last night on Deathbringer, our RL assigned the mages to use Amplify Magic, as all the damage done is physical, so it will buff the healing received. If you remember the days before Pally Power was widely used, with everyone in the raid saying "need kings" "why do the priests have might?" "I want sanc" "I still need kings" "kings" "kings plz" "kings, noob!". Pally buffing can be a nightmare, especially when the people in your raid don't even realize that without a protection paladin, blessing of sanctuary just isn't going to happen. Please stop asking after I tell you this, your use of caps does not change the mechanics of my class.
Pally power made our lives so much easier, even if it's still a pain. My major pet peeve is when someone in the raid keeps screwing with it, even after it's set up so that everyone has what they need. Does it matter if you're doing Kings instead of Wisdom if the other holy paladin is also specced for Wisdom? You just wasted 10 of my reagents (and some of yours) because you wanted to change it around when everyone was already buffed.
Anyways, the real point of my storytelling here is that: Amplify Magic is a single-target spell and it lasts for 10 minutes. It doesn't get used often because it's only situationally useful, which means situations were it is useful become bogged down with five mages in the raid not being able to figure out how to buff 25 people.
The first time Amp Magic was called for, one of the mages called out which mage should take care of which group (five mages, five parties of five... how nice this works out). It should have been easy, except by the time we waited for Mage #3 and 4 to buff their parties, the quicker buffing Mages now only had five minutes on their Amp Magic, and somehow or another one mage had missed the boat entirely and was buffing Dampen Magic on the whole raid. The RL calls for everyone to click off their buffs and start all over again. It took us longer to buff up for this one spell than the spell lasts! Thank goodness this spell doesn't require reagents...
So the next time a mage in the guild says anything about slow buffing paladins, they'll get reminded that five mages can't cast one spell on a raid without it taking less than fifteen minutes. Don't worry, I'm not angry, I just think it's hilarious. "kings, noob!"
Beacon of Light
Beacon of Light is quite useful for Deathbringer for Marks. I decided to give it a try last night. Usually I beacon the lesser geared tank, but for Deathbringer, the most logical place to put Beacon is on a Marked target. The two tanks in this encounter do not ever take damage at the same time, and the damage the tanks are taking isn't actually overwhelming. The damage the new Mark is taking isn't "overwhelming" either, as long as the target is Beaconed.
After giving it some thought, the reason the Mark is hard to heal not because it deals "so much" damage. If you're a priest, a druid, or a shaman, you might disagree with me. However, as a Holy Light paladin, 10k damage to heal every 1.5-3 seconds on one target isn't huge for me because I heal tanks and that would be trivial damage on a tank.
However, our Mark isn't a tank, and that's where it gets complicated. Our Mark has a fraction of the HP of a tank, and has only one or two survivability cooldowns to help himself. Sure a mage can Iceblock to absorb some of the damage, but after it's over it's right back to where we started, which is a lot of damage on a squishy target, consistently through the rest of the fight. That's how Beacon starts to shine for this fight - I was able to keep a Marked target alive through most of the fight with absolutely no loss at what I do best - healing tanks.
My guild's recently appointed healing officer is trying his damnedest to get our healing team to start acting like a team. He's encouraging us in the healing channel, linking dispel meters and congratulating our priests, and trying to get us to communicate outside of the "paladins heal tanks, everyone else heal the raid". Even if he hasn't been as successful as he would have liked, I'm all for the idea and I'm responding to him. So before we do Saurfang I might send him a message and talk more about how I'd like to try our official strategy as both pallies beaconing the first couple of marks. And after further consideration, I see no reason why a second holy paladin couldn't be assigned to two marks - Beacon one, heal the other. Lots of constant, predictable, simultaneous damage on two targets? If this isn't a fight designed for holy paladins, what is?
Amplify Magic
Last night on Deathbringer, our RL assigned the mages to use Amplify Magic, as all the damage done is physical, so it will buff the healing received. If you remember the days before Pally Power was widely used, with everyone in the raid saying "need kings" "why do the priests have might?" "I want sanc" "I still need kings" "kings" "kings plz" "kings, noob!". Pally buffing can be a nightmare, especially when the people in your raid don't even realize that without a protection paladin, blessing of sanctuary just isn't going to happen. Please stop asking after I tell you this, your use of caps does not change the mechanics of my class.
Pally power made our lives so much easier, even if it's still a pain. My major pet peeve is when someone in the raid keeps screwing with it, even after it's set up so that everyone has what they need. Does it matter if you're doing Kings instead of Wisdom if the other holy paladin is also specced for Wisdom? You just wasted 10 of my reagents (and some of yours) because you wanted to change it around when everyone was already buffed.
Anyways, the real point of my storytelling here is that: Amplify Magic is a single-target spell and it lasts for 10 minutes. It doesn't get used often because it's only situationally useful, which means situations were it is useful become bogged down with five mages in the raid not being able to figure out how to buff 25 people.
The first time Amp Magic was called for, one of the mages called out which mage should take care of which group (five mages, five parties of five... how nice this works out). It should have been easy, except by the time we waited for Mage #3 and 4 to buff their parties, the quicker buffing Mages now only had five minutes on their Amp Magic, and somehow or another one mage had missed the boat entirely and was buffing Dampen Magic on the whole raid. The RL calls for everyone to click off their buffs and start all over again. It took us longer to buff up for this one spell than the spell lasts! Thank goodness this spell doesn't require reagents...
So the next time a mage in the guild says anything about slow buffing paladins, they'll get reminded that five mages can't cast one spell on a raid without it taking less than fifteen minutes. Don't worry, I'm not angry, I just think it's hilarious. "kings, noob!"
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