After carefully determining your gear, what spells to use when, and group makeup, you can now prepare to take the final plunge. The boss fight. The apex of WoW. The ulimate showdown.
It doesn't matter who it is, Van Cleef or Illidan. This is the moment you've prepared for. This is the moment that you've spent so much time studying your stats and your spells and you're a mana/rage/energy efficient machine now.
So don't blow it.
What I mean by that is, make sure you are prepared. Unless you are the very first group to encounter this fight, someone somewhere knows what's going on. What abilities the opposition has. How they defeated it.
The key is that their method of success is not always the best method. You have to determine what strategy is best. For the Maulgar pull, where are the positions best for YOUR group? Will you burn-down or outlast? Which target dies first?
You can read all you want, but until you try it you'll never know. But here is where the Theorycrafters will be able to think outside of the box. There are abilities that people have never used before. Mind Soothe comes to mind for a priest. Scare Beast for a hunter. Distract for a rogue (which can be amazing in avoiding mobs or patrols.) Some of the rarely used Blessings like Freedom and Sacrifice for paladins. Everyone has abilities that they don't think about using. You as a theorycrafter need to either rely on someone who has that ability, or you need to know it yourself.
You should be the one deciding what pally buffs get used. What shaman totems will be used. What warlock curse is the best. Sure it's micro-m,anagement, but in a game of numbers where I've seen a tank hit 2 HP and survive (never saw 1 though) every little bit helps.
To summarize how to theorycraft, you need to know the following:
1. How to itemize your gear to maximize your usefulness in a fight.
2. How to setup your spell rotation for maximizing efficiency in a fight.
3. How to setup your raid to maximize everyone's performance.
4. How to setup jobs for everyone in the raid to ensure that the boss is laying on the ground when you leave combat.
If you can master these, you're a master of WoW. No one I know is the master...everyone still has much to learn. The more you read the more you learn. I hope that I can continue to be a source of learning for everyone here.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Friday, June 29, 2007
Theorycraft Part 3 - Group Dynamics
So far we've talked about how to use your gear and your spell rotation to maximize your performance. The last piece of the puzzle is determining how well you play with others. That is, who complements you in a group and who do you complement?
Group makeup isn't the easiest thing if you're trying to maximize everyone's potential. It's easy to say "in the tank's group there should be a paladin for Devo Aura and a warlock for Blood Pact." Now, it often makes sense to have 2 warriors, one for Battle Shout and the other for Commanding. Especially if there are two tanks, this makes sense.
There are far more things to take into consideration. For example, all caster love the moonkin. But who loves the moonkin the most? Fire mages? Warlocks? Elemental Shamans? The real answer is....arcane/frost mages. They have an insane crit bonus. If a normal spell hits for 100, their crits hit for 250. They are the best to be in this group, followed by arcane fire mages, then followed by a lot of casters like elemental shamans, destruction warlocks, frost mages, fire mages, etc. Now during heavy healing fights, it makes sense to place holy paladins in a moonkin's group for their longevity.
Knowing the talent trees and the abilities of every class is essential when you're trying to determine group makeup.
Group makeup isn't the easiest thing if you're trying to maximize everyone's potential. It's easy to say "in the tank's group there should be a paladin for Devo Aura and a warlock for Blood Pact." Now, it often makes sense to have 2 warriors, one for Battle Shout and the other for Commanding. Especially if there are two tanks, this makes sense.
There are far more things to take into consideration. For example, all caster love the moonkin. But who loves the moonkin the most? Fire mages? Warlocks? Elemental Shamans? The real answer is....arcane/frost mages. They have an insane crit bonus. If a normal spell hits for 100, their crits hit for 250. They are the best to be in this group, followed by arcane fire mages, then followed by a lot of casters like elemental shamans, destruction warlocks, frost mages, fire mages, etc. Now during heavy healing fights, it makes sense to place holy paladins in a moonkin's group for their longevity.
Knowing the talent trees and the abilities of every class is essential when you're trying to determine group makeup.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Theorycraft Part 2 - Spell Rotation
So once you've determined what the best stats are, the next best thing to worry about is what spells you are using when. This can be different for different fights. For example, on long boss fights when mana is an issue, I use Greater Heal, Renew, and Prayer of Mending. Depending on how hard the tank is getting hit, I will use a GHeal, Renew, wait, GHeal, POM, wait, and repeat. Or I may do GHeal, Renew, POM, wait. Especially if there's a second tank for the POMs to bounce off of, this works great.
On trash mobs, if I know agro will be an issue, I often use Binding Heal because it's a very low threat spell.
This applies to any class. If you're a mage, and you know agro will be an issue, usually you'll start out with Arcane spells. If it's a mana intense fight, you'll use Fireball/Frostbolt instead. I don't know enough about tanking, but I know that using your abilities in a particular order could mean extra agro while losing out on some mitigation, or vice versa.
Theorycrafters will determine what spell order is best by determining what spells give the most healing per mana, or threat per rage, or damage per energy, or whatever. There are a lot of things to take into account, but it's a way to start actually trying to figure out what you should be casting when to maximize whatever you're trying to do, without getting any gear at all.
Spell rotation is probably the most understudied theorycraft thing, because most people feel it's common sense to be spamming one spell (the most efficient one). But you'd be surprised if you did some research what you'll find.
On trash mobs, if I know agro will be an issue, I often use Binding Heal because it's a very low threat spell.
This applies to any class. If you're a mage, and you know agro will be an issue, usually you'll start out with Arcane spells. If it's a mana intense fight, you'll use Fireball/Frostbolt instead. I don't know enough about tanking, but I know that using your abilities in a particular order could mean extra agro while losing out on some mitigation, or vice versa.
Theorycrafters will determine what spell order is best by determining what spells give the most healing per mana, or threat per rage, or damage per energy, or whatever. There are a lot of things to take into account, but it's a way to start actually trying to figure out what you should be casting when to maximize whatever you're trying to do, without getting any gear at all.
Spell rotation is probably the most understudied theorycraft thing, because most people feel it's common sense to be spamming one spell (the most efficient one). But you'd be surprised if you did some research what you'll find.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Theorycraft Part 1
I don't have too much time this morning, but I'm going to have a series where I explain the different parts of theorycraft that can help make you a better player and raid leader.
The first and most important part in my opinion is knowing what stats do what things for you. For example, how many melee classes know exactly what 1 attack power does for them? Anybody?
Without knowing this, how can you make a gear decision between something that gives you 30 AP and something that gives you 20 crit rating?
This part of theorycraft will help you decide how to gear your character. I've learned as a priest that spirit is a key stat and not one to be ignored, despite what the forums priests would say. Sometimes the stats that you need are affected by your playstyle and spec as well. Knowing that 1 spirit actually gives me 1.05 spirit and +.33 healing because of my spec makes a difference.
Learn what stats do for you. It will help you decide on enchants and gems much easier too.
The first and most important part in my opinion is knowing what stats do what things for you. For example, how many melee classes know exactly what 1 attack power does for them? Anybody?
Without knowing this, how can you make a gear decision between something that gives you 30 AP and something that gives you 20 crit rating?
This part of theorycraft will help you decide how to gear your character. I've learned as a priest that spirit is a key stat and not one to be ignored, despite what the forums priests would say. Sometimes the stats that you need are affected by your playstyle and spec as well. Knowing that 1 spirit actually gives me 1.05 spirit and +.33 healing because of my spec makes a difference.
Learn what stats do for you. It will help you decide on enchants and gems much easier too.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Role Leaders
I've decided that instead of posting about progress (in both PVE and PVP), I'll be trying to post more about what I truly like about the game. And that is theorycraft. I truly enjoy crunching the numbers that make the game what it is, and understanding what underlies.
I guess it's kinda like someone who enjoys physics in real life. They like to know how the world works, and ultimately how to use their surroundings in better combinations to improve their world.
Theorycraft by itself doesn't mean a whole lot, just as physics doesn't mean a whole lot without a real world to prove/disprove with. That's why I don't do as much theorycraft on other classes. I really don't have a chance to test out tanking, or melee DPS, or caster DPS (yes I have a warlock, but he doesn't do serious raiding or PVP). This is why I'm looking for people who share this passion with me. Saro and I were talking, and we are considering starting role leader positions for raids. We would need a tanking leader, a melee leader, a caster leader, and a healing leader. The roles of these people would be to research the fights that we undergo from your particular standpoint, and place people in their assignments and roles. For example, if there's a fight like Shade of Aran where all of the damage is directed at primarily one person at a time, the better healers are paladins and priests, because they have the better direct healing spells. However, if there are a lot of people taking damage at set intervals, like Gruul, tree druids are better because they can toss a HOT and forget about it.
It boils down to this. We will likely be setting role leaders initially who show more dedication and responsibility at the start, but ultimately it will be that person's role to know about the classes it shares (for example the caster DPS role leader will need to know the mechanics of mages, warlocks, shadow priests, moonkins, and elemental shamans) as well as the core abilities that everyone has, their specs, and their best places for fights. If anyone from TN thinks that they are interested in filling any of these roles, let me know. I can't guarantee that Saro will be doing this, but if there is actually interest in this I'd like to know so we can try it out.
I guess it's kinda like someone who enjoys physics in real life. They like to know how the world works, and ultimately how to use their surroundings in better combinations to improve their world.
Theorycraft by itself doesn't mean a whole lot, just as physics doesn't mean a whole lot without a real world to prove/disprove with. That's why I don't do as much theorycraft on other classes. I really don't have a chance to test out tanking, or melee DPS, or caster DPS (yes I have a warlock, but he doesn't do serious raiding or PVP). This is why I'm looking for people who share this passion with me. Saro and I were talking, and we are considering starting role leader positions for raids. We would need a tanking leader, a melee leader, a caster leader, and a healing leader. The roles of these people would be to research the fights that we undergo from your particular standpoint, and place people in their assignments and roles. For example, if there's a fight like Shade of Aran where all of the damage is directed at primarily one person at a time, the better healers are paladins and priests, because they have the better direct healing spells. However, if there are a lot of people taking damage at set intervals, like Gruul, tree druids are better because they can toss a HOT and forget about it.
It boils down to this. We will likely be setting role leaders initially who show more dedication and responsibility at the start, but ultimately it will be that person's role to know about the classes it shares (for example the caster DPS role leader will need to know the mechanics of mages, warlocks, shadow priests, moonkins, and elemental shamans) as well as the core abilities that everyone has, their specs, and their best places for fights. If anyone from TN thinks that they are interested in filling any of these roles, let me know. I can't guarantee that Saro will be doing this, but if there is actually interest in this I'd like to know so we can try it out.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Room for Error
Everyone knows that the first time you do a fight, everything has to be spotless. There can't be any dumb mistakes. Your class balance has to be reasonably good. You're barely eeking out a victory. We've finally gotten past that for both Curator and Shade. We've been past that with Curator for some time now, but it was noticeable today. Mind you we had a shadow priest, but our ranged DPS consisted of a shadow priest, an affliction lock, a hunter, a mage, and a mookie. And they killed the adds very quickly. So quickly, that it reminded me of the first time we had 6 ranged DPS on them. Having three healers helped immensely, but it seemed so easy. I had enough mana to last forever.
Then we went onto the Shade. We got him down to 40%, killed all of the adds. Then I hear Azi say "Oh no!" on vent. He moved during a Flame Wreath. It killed 5 people. Then our other healer died too. We had 4 people to get through 20% of his HP. But we did it.
It becomes amazing when you sit down and realize just how far we've come. This amazing group now has most of Karazhan on farm status. We wiped once on Prince, partially because we had some bad luck with our melee classes, partially because we didn't have the best strategy to start out. But the second time went very well. Then Murien had to leave and we decided to go to Nightbane. And lo and behold, who showed up online, but Orelon the paladin. Boy it was good to have him back. Pally buffs, plus judgement of wisdom were enough to 3 shot him (maybe it was 4, I don't recall). At any rate, I'm quite positive that we can make much better progress this week upcoming, since we will have enough people and enough healers to take a good shot at Curator and Shade. It's hard to say what bosses we'll ideally be doing the first night. We could either shoot for the first four plus Nightbane, or we could shoot for skipping Maiden and getting to Shade's room. I'm leaning toward the latter, since it would mean less clearing of trash for the first night, because clearing to Shade takes forever. But it will all depend on group makeup and how quickly we can get started.
At any rate, I'm looking forward to this week coming, when I don't think we'll need to skip Maiden or Illhoof. Woot.
Then we went onto the Shade. We got him down to 40%, killed all of the adds. Then I hear Azi say "Oh no!" on vent. He moved during a Flame Wreath. It killed 5 people. Then our other healer died too. We had 4 people to get through 20% of his HP. But we did it.
It becomes amazing when you sit down and realize just how far we've come. This amazing group now has most of Karazhan on farm status. We wiped once on Prince, partially because we had some bad luck with our melee classes, partially because we didn't have the best strategy to start out. But the second time went very well. Then Murien had to leave and we decided to go to Nightbane. And lo and behold, who showed up online, but Orelon the paladin. Boy it was good to have him back. Pally buffs, plus judgement of wisdom were enough to 3 shot him (maybe it was 4, I don't recall). At any rate, I'm quite positive that we can make much better progress this week upcoming, since we will have enough people and enough healers to take a good shot at Curator and Shade. It's hard to say what bosses we'll ideally be doing the first night. We could either shoot for the first four plus Nightbane, or we could shoot for skipping Maiden and getting to Shade's room. I'm leaning toward the latter, since it would mean less clearing of trash for the first night, because clearing to Shade takes forever. But it will all depend on group makeup and how quickly we can get started.
At any rate, I'm looking forward to this week coming, when I don't think we'll need to skip Maiden or Illhoof. Woot.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
No posts for a day or two
At the moment, I'm helping one of our housemates move out. Thus, if I even post at all tomorrow and the following day, it will be brief.
I hope that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and you will miss my daily writings here. Until Sunday.
I hope that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and you will miss my daily writings here. Until Sunday.
King Maulgar is king no more
Last night, on our 3rd attempt, we downed King Maulgar. Never mind the fact that we waited for an hour to get enough people to come. Never mind that we had to clear the trash twice. Never mind that we lost Murien, the second healer on Wynri the MT, and picked up a non-holy paladin to take his place. The king is dead.
Everything just clicked. Saro did an excellent job positioning everyone. The DPS did a phenomenal job getting the targets down. The healers kept the tanks up as long as they needed to. And when Maulgar went berzerk, sure he killed all but 7 of us. But we downed him.
It was thrilling for me to witness....I was healing the MT, and he died only at 1%. Then he ran towards me. I Mind Blasted, Shadow Word Deathed him, and prayed. He hit me for 6K and then promptly died. I TANKED HIM!
At any rate, in all sincerity, I don't think many people expected to get him down. I know I sure didn't, but we did. Congratulations to everyone. Now I'm on my way out the door, and I think I'll do a little dance.
Everything just clicked. Saro did an excellent job positioning everyone. The DPS did a phenomenal job getting the targets down. The healers kept the tanks up as long as they needed to. And when Maulgar went berzerk, sure he killed all but 7 of us. But we downed him.
It was thrilling for me to witness....I was healing the MT, and he died only at 1%. Then he ran towards me. I Mind Blasted, Shadow Word Deathed him, and prayed. He hit me for 6K and then promptly died. I TANKED HIM!
At any rate, in all sincerity, I don't think many people expected to get him down. I know I sure didn't, but we did. Congratulations to everyone. Now I'm on my way out the door, and I think I'll do a little dance.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
New arena season
Well, Gullkurack and I opened up our arena season with a bang. We ran 10 2v2 matches, and posted an 8-2 record, finishing the day with a 1589 rating. Not only did I feel really good about the fight, but we beat a warrior paladin combo! Not only did we beat them, we smashed them into the ground! Gully got the initial trap on the paladin, which he bubbled of course to save the warrior. Then, after I feared the pally, and he trinketed out of it, Gully trapped the pally a second time. That time, all he could do was watch his friend the warrior die.
As for me, I was able to kite the warrior, who didn't do all that much damage to me. Interestingly enough, no one did all that much damage to me. Maybe it's because I got 2 pieces of arena gear. I got the headpiece and the chestpiece. The headpiece is just amazing looking. It looks like the tier 5 priest helm, if you want to check it out on www.worldofwarcraft.com under Armor Sets. Not only do I look badass, I felt badass tonight. I have an extra 500 HP, 800 int, 150 healing, and 100 resilience. Amazing what better gear and gems will do for you.
The only losses we had were to a warlock pally combo (drain mana is dispellable.....drain mana is dispellable.....drain mana is dispellable.....) and to a hunter warrior combo (a really good warrior might I add.) They burnt Gully down, and I burnt a lot of mana keeping him alive, and the warrior got a lucky mace stun proc on me after the hunter used his stun on me. Ahh well, 8 outta 10 ain't bad. I'm looking forward to seeing what other matchups give us trouble.
As for Karazhan, we only got 3 bosses down because Murien had to go to sleep...he got a new job and needs to be up early now. So we're gonna start 30 minutes earlier and really start prioritizing our kills. Hopefully we can get back into the rhythm of downing up to the Shade the first night, even if we skip Maiden. Then the second night we can do Chess, Prince, and Nightbane at the very least. Sunday, I hope we can get Curator, Shade, and Chess at least...if we get Prince, then awesome. This will likely end up being an offweek for us, but we'll be back in action and ready to rock next week.
As for me, I was able to kite the warrior, who didn't do all that much damage to me. Interestingly enough, no one did all that much damage to me. Maybe it's because I got 2 pieces of arena gear. I got the headpiece and the chestpiece. The headpiece is just amazing looking. It looks like the tier 5 priest helm, if you want to check it out on www.worldofwarcraft.com under Armor Sets. Not only do I look badass, I felt badass tonight. I have an extra 500 HP, 800 int, 150 healing, and 100 resilience. Amazing what better gear and gems will do for you.
The only losses we had were to a warlock pally combo (drain mana is dispellable.....drain mana is dispellable.....drain mana is dispellable.....) and to a hunter warrior combo (a really good warrior might I add.) They burnt Gully down, and I burnt a lot of mana keeping him alive, and the warrior got a lucky mace stun proc on me after the hunter used his stun on me. Ahh well, 8 outta 10 ain't bad. I'm looking forward to seeing what other matchups give us trouble.
As for Karazhan, we only got 3 bosses down because Murien had to go to sleep...he got a new job and needs to be up early now. So we're gonna start 30 minutes earlier and really start prioritizing our kills. Hopefully we can get back into the rhythm of downing up to the Shade the first night, even if we skip Maiden. Then the second night we can do Chess, Prince, and Nightbane at the very least. Sunday, I hope we can get Curator, Shade, and Chess at least...if we get Prince, then awesome. This will likely end up being an offweek for us, but we'll be back in action and ready to rock next week.
Some quick notes
1. Last night Gullkurack finished out our first 2v2 arena season with a 8-3 night. That put us at a 127-109 record, and more importantly a 1790 score. The highest we've ever been. Perhaps more importantly, I will be getting enough points to get a new headpiece and chestpiece for arena gear. Now mind you, I have a decent headpiece already, and I should probably get leggings and chestpiece. But am I going to pass up the chance to have that kickass tier 5 headpiece? Hell no. It'll cover up my bald head. I'm pumped.
2. It seems that Murien may be getting a job this summer that would require him to be up at 5:00 at the latest. This probably means that he'll only be able to raid until 7 server, which will be rough for our Karazhan progress. I'm not sure what to think exactly, but I hope that we can either move the raid up an hour, or grab another healer to be able to continue our current pace in there.
3. I have no idea what to spend my Badges of Justice on. Should I get the FR gear? Should I get the trinket? Should I get the ring and necklace until Prince and Shade drop theirs? So many decisions that I know I'm going to end up not getting any of them :-/
4. 6 more days until my new Primal Mooncloth Robes. Can't I wear my Hallowed Robes on top of them Blizz? The Primal Mooncloth are SO UGLY. I'm the tailor here, can't I make them how I want to?
5. Speaking of tailoring, I have some Primal Nethers laying around, and I can make the Battlecast Pants and the Resolute Cape. If anyone needs these crafted, just let me know.
Guess that's it for now. I hope we can move quickly in Kara tonight.
2. It seems that Murien may be getting a job this summer that would require him to be up at 5:00 at the latest. This probably means that he'll only be able to raid until 7 server, which will be rough for our Karazhan progress. I'm not sure what to think exactly, but I hope that we can either move the raid up an hour, or grab another healer to be able to continue our current pace in there.
3. I have no idea what to spend my Badges of Justice on. Should I get the FR gear? Should I get the trinket? Should I get the ring and necklace until Prince and Shade drop theirs? So many decisions that I know I'm going to end up not getting any of them :-/
4. 6 more days until my new Primal Mooncloth Robes. Can't I wear my Hallowed Robes on top of them Blizz? The Primal Mooncloth are SO UGLY. I'm the tailor here, can't I make them how I want to?
5. Speaking of tailoring, I have some Primal Nethers laying around, and I can make the Battlecast Pants and the Resolute Cape. If anyone needs these crafted, just let me know.
Guess that's it for now. I hope we can move quickly in Kara tonight.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
2 new bosses downed
Well, I went into Karazhan hoping that we'd get a new boss down, but not really expecting it. Boy was it an amazing night.
On Illhoof, 150 FR made a huge difference, as Patricles hardly needed healed. Sure the fight was long and intense, but the DPS did a phenomenal job, and the healers weren't so bad either.
Then we went to Nightbane, and I expected a lot of wipage. My expectations were true, but little by little we wheedled him down lower and lower. First we got through the first phase 2 with 2 people dead. The next time we had 1 person die and got to the second phase 2. The next time we got to phase 2 again and had more people up. At some point, it finally clicked, and we got him down to 20%, and I had actually died during the first phase 2. I don't remember if we had one more shot before we downed him, but we got a little boost from one of our raiders' pally alts. He gave us a blessing, which helped us get over the hump (we need a pally BADLY). Personally, I'm under the impression that we would have gotten him down without the pally buffs. We'll never know now, but we'll be trying again next week I hope.
The crazy part of tonight was the control that I felt I had over the group. I would see Illhoof at 24% and would say, "Look he's at 24%. Lets kick his ass." "Look he's at 6%...we aren't wiping, are we? Get him." And even if the DPSers weren't doing anything differently, it seemed like they were. It was an amazing feeling.
Nightbane is an awesome fight. We finally figured out how to keep everyone alive, and everyone just gelled. It was crazy awesome.
Congratulations to everyone who took part, and to everyone who helped us get this far. Once we get Netherspite down, we can say that we're totally clearing Karazhan!
(PS: I'm posting tonight because tomorrow is going to be a sickly busy day at work...for once. YAY! Money making time!)
I'll post more on our strats tomorrow night when I feel more coherent.
On Illhoof, 150 FR made a huge difference, as Patricles hardly needed healed. Sure the fight was long and intense, but the DPS did a phenomenal job, and the healers weren't so bad either.
Then we went to Nightbane, and I expected a lot of wipage. My expectations were true, but little by little we wheedled him down lower and lower. First we got through the first phase 2 with 2 people dead. The next time we had 1 person die and got to the second phase 2. The next time we got to phase 2 again and had more people up. At some point, it finally clicked, and we got him down to 20%, and I had actually died during the first phase 2. I don't remember if we had one more shot before we downed him, but we got a little boost from one of our raiders' pally alts. He gave us a blessing, which helped us get over the hump (we need a pally BADLY). Personally, I'm under the impression that we would have gotten him down without the pally buffs. We'll never know now, but we'll be trying again next week I hope.
The crazy part of tonight was the control that I felt I had over the group. I would see Illhoof at 24% and would say, "Look he's at 24%. Lets kick his ass." "Look he's at 6%...we aren't wiping, are we? Get him." And even if the DPSers weren't doing anything differently, it seemed like they were. It was an amazing feeling.
Nightbane is an awesome fight. We finally figured out how to keep everyone alive, and everyone just gelled. It was crazy awesome.
Congratulations to everyone who took part, and to everyone who helped us get this far. Once we get Netherspite down, we can say that we're totally clearing Karazhan!
(PS: I'm posting tonight because tomorrow is going to be a sickly busy day at work...for once. YAY! Money making time!)
I'll post more on our strats tomorrow night when I feel more coherent.
Gear vs. Spec...which matters most?
A lot of the time, people tell me that they can't do PVP very well because they aren't specced for it. I am one person who isn't specced for PVP at all....any PVP talents that I have are only there because they mean something in PVE as well. So how come Gullkurack and I have a 1700 rating? He doesn't have the purest PVP spec either, although he doesn't go all out PVE like I do. It's gear.
Gully and I each have over 10K HP buffed, and he has over 200 resilience (I have closer to 180). This is one of the reasons we've been successful. The same thing goes for in PVE...if you have PVP gear in PVE as a hunter, as Gully says often, you will run out of mana...pure and simple.
By the same token, Azi has some excellent tanking gear, but is specced for PVP and DPS. I don't even know if he has any prot points at all. And he did well tanking in heroic Underbog last night, but it wasn't the same. If he were a prot warrior, we may not have wiped at all.
So yes, spec and gear matter. But which matters the most? I think this is a moot point. There is a third element at work that people don't think about too much. Many people call it skill, others call it reactability. I like to call it playstyle. Skill implies something that cannot change. Playstyle is adaptable. Many people simply don't know the mechanics of their class.
I have explained countless times the number of priests I've had to explain the five second rule to. They were simply unaware of how it worked, and it hurt their healing I'm certain. People who want to be successful at WoW need to understand that yes gear and spec mean something. But their attitude, knowledge of the game, and willingness to learn need to be unrivaled for them to truly master the game. Learning is always a part of my process....I'm still trying to determine what healing style is successful in particular fights. If you feel that there is nothing that you can do to improve yourself, then you're flat out wrong.
This is how you can see MS warriors tanking heroics and shadow priests healing heroics. They know how to play the game. The spec is part of knowing the game, and the gear will fall into place.
Gully and I each have over 10K HP buffed, and he has over 200 resilience (I have closer to 180). This is one of the reasons we've been successful. The same thing goes for in PVE...if you have PVP gear in PVE as a hunter, as Gully says often, you will run out of mana...pure and simple.
By the same token, Azi has some excellent tanking gear, but is specced for PVP and DPS. I don't even know if he has any prot points at all. And he did well tanking in heroic Underbog last night, but it wasn't the same. If he were a prot warrior, we may not have wiped at all.
So yes, spec and gear matter. But which matters the most? I think this is a moot point. There is a third element at work that people don't think about too much. Many people call it skill, others call it reactability. I like to call it playstyle. Skill implies something that cannot change. Playstyle is adaptable. Many people simply don't know the mechanics of their class.
I have explained countless times the number of priests I've had to explain the five second rule to. They were simply unaware of how it worked, and it hurt their healing I'm certain. People who want to be successful at WoW need to understand that yes gear and spec mean something. But their attitude, knowledge of the game, and willingness to learn need to be unrivaled for them to truly master the game. Learning is always a part of my process....I'm still trying to determine what healing style is successful in particular fights. If you feel that there is nothing that you can do to improve yourself, then you're flat out wrong.
This is how you can see MS warriors tanking heroics and shadow priests healing heroics. They know how to play the game. The spec is part of knowing the game, and the gear will fall into place.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Wish List Site
I'm requesting that anyone who knows about any wish list sites around that would allow me to put in pieces of gear and see what stats I would have, to please post. I'm tired of doing all of the calculations myself, and it would save me a lot of time. ctprofiles.net used to allow you to do this, but it doesn't work anymore...do any exist now that armory is working?
Friday, June 15, 2007
Darkmoon Card Part 2
So I was thinking about the whole Darkmoon Card thing, and realized that assuming I proc my bangle spirit trinket, I have a difference between my mana regen in FSR and outside of FSR of 426. (This is buffed with mage, druid, and priest buffs.) This is incredibly high since my mana per 5 is 127, and my regen outside of the FSR is 553. With Kings this would be even bigger.
So you're guaranteed 5 seconds of worth from the card, since it takes a cast to proc it (unless it was a Clearcasting proc...not likely.) So if I spend 60% of my time in the FSR, that's 6 seconds of 10 that this card works. 11 out of 15 seconds on average, this card is working for me. This difference is worth 937 mana total for me. Again this is assuming that I proc my trinket, which I usually do. The Eye of Gruul gives 450 mana. Now it gives a static 44 to healing on top of that, but....I dunno. I like saving my trinkets for mana and not using them to boost my +healing. I like having the tricks up my sleeve, which is why I love the Bangle.
But I was thinking that proc items aren't as good for a priest like me, who is often only casting 3 spells every 10 seconds or so. Unfortunately, they are really the best things to have. The best meta gem is a proc to restore mana on spellcast. This trinket is a proc, as is the bangle. Somehow, somewhere, it's making me think that I'm losing out on something. For now I think I'm gonna stick with what works and use the Bangle and Darkmoon Card. If I get tier 4 headpiece sometime, I'll grab that meta gem and see if it's worth anything to me...why does Blizzard reward the priests who spam heals? /sigh
So you're guaranteed 5 seconds of worth from the card, since it takes a cast to proc it (unless it was a Clearcasting proc...not likely.) So if I spend 60% of my time in the FSR, that's 6 seconds of 10 that this card works. 11 out of 15 seconds on average, this card is working for me. This difference is worth 937 mana total for me. Again this is assuming that I proc my trinket, which I usually do. The Eye of Gruul gives 450 mana. Now it gives a static 44 to healing on top of that, but....I dunno. I like saving my trinkets for mana and not using them to boost my +healing. I like having the tricks up my sleeve, which is why I love the Bangle.
But I was thinking that proc items aren't as good for a priest like me, who is often only casting 3 spells every 10 seconds or so. Unfortunately, they are really the best things to have. The best meta gem is a proc to restore mana on spellcast. This trinket is a proc, as is the bangle. Somehow, somewhere, it's making me think that I'm losing out on something. For now I think I'm gonna stick with what works and use the Bangle and Darkmoon Card. If I get tier 4 headpiece sometime, I'll grab that meta gem and see if it's worth anything to me...why does Blizzard reward the priests who spam heals? /sigh
Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon
I've been wearing this card since level 60, and I haven't really thought much about it. But now I'm seeing some really nice trinkets out there, and I'm wondering if I should be using them. So I've determined just how much mana I get when this thing procs.
The difference between my MP5 inside and outside of the FSR is 305. On average I spend 60% of my time in the FSR, so over 15 seconds, on average I'm regening an extra 549 mana. If I manage to proc my Bangle, this number's a little higher, probably closer to 650.
So is +73 to healing and a proc ability better than 650 mana in a fight? Because usually the card only procs once. So far, I've always thought no. Unfortunately, sometimes the card procs at the beginning of a fight when I'm full on mana. It rarely seems to proc at a critical time. So I'm not really sure if I should grab the Ribbon of Sacrifice, or the Essence of the Martyr, or what. I just don't think that this extra mana is reliable enough. Perhaps having +83 to healing will make downranking an extra GHeal worth it enough to save more than 650 mana in a fight. We shall have to see.
The difference between my MP5 inside and outside of the FSR is 305. On average I spend 60% of my time in the FSR, so over 15 seconds, on average I'm regening an extra 549 mana. If I manage to proc my Bangle, this number's a little higher, probably closer to 650.
So is +73 to healing and a proc ability better than 650 mana in a fight? Because usually the card only procs once. So far, I've always thought no. Unfortunately, sometimes the card procs at the beginning of a fight when I'm full on mana. It rarely seems to proc at a critical time. So I'm not really sure if I should grab the Ribbon of Sacrifice, or the Essence of the Martyr, or what. I just don't think that this extra mana is reliable enough. Perhaps having +83 to healing will make downranking an extra GHeal worth it enough to save more than 650 mana in a fight. We shall have to see.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Black and Blue
I feel like I need to post something on this subject, and I don't have the will to post it on the forums. I don't want to cause drama....I just want to shed some light on the situation.
There are several people who feel that there is tension between Blue team and Black team running Karazhan. Some players on Blue team feel the deck is stacked. Some players on Black feel that there is some animosity towards us. This is something that needs to stop.
We are not Team Black and Team Blue for anything more than to differentiate what nights we go into Karazhan. Sure there are some guilds who have a Team 1 and Team 2, where Team 1 is made up of the guild leaders, and Team 2 is made up of the alts and "nobodies." This is NOT the situation at all.
So why has Team Black downed Prince twice and Team Blue hasn't even attempted Curator yet?
Several reasons. None of them include the word "skill." None of them include the words "better than."
Reason #1: Team Black began running Karazhan before most of Team Blue were even attuned. There was a group of 10 of us who wanted to see Karazhan, and realized that a guild sponsored run would be difficult to manage due to the restricted number of people who were able to go in. Thus, when the guild did indeed institute a method of running that was guild-driven, Team Black had an experience advantage. We were probably looking at Curator by the time Team Blue downed Attumen (and it took us longer to down Attumen I would like to note).
Reason #2: Team Black has more synergy and more practice playing together. Murien and I are the two main healers. We are brothers....we talk about the game outside of WoW. We strategize how we can heal better. I'm sure if Daenerys, Raystora, and Grumps were to do this, they would be working better together. It has taken more time for Team Blue's healers to get on the same page.
Reason #3: Team Black has an extremely well geared tank. From Curator on, a lot of the fights depend on a well geared tank. Wynri has run more heroics than he could probably count. Since he has the time to do it, it helps us as a group. Zeusal and Saro are excellent tanks, but they have families to worry about, so they can't run instances all the time to get the best tanking gear.
Reason #4: Team Blue has had some attendance issues as of late. There were times when they had 9 people online and couldn't find a 10th. Some nights they had 7. Some nights they had no healers. This is because several of their team members have left the guild, dropped off of the face of the earth, or stopped raiding due to RL concerns. Now that they have a crew back to raid again, they can start going 2 times a week, or even 3. This will give them the practice that they need on these fights.
I'm tired of hearing how it isn't fair that Black team has had so much success. Let me say this...I'll be anxiously awaiting Team Blue's successes here in the near future, and I look forward to sharing in that success. We are all a team guild. We want each other to succeed, and we will. Just give it some time...it'll all be worth it when we start downing Maulgor and Gruul together, as Team Black Eye.
There are several people who feel that there is tension between Blue team and Black team running Karazhan. Some players on Blue team feel the deck is stacked. Some players on Black feel that there is some animosity towards us. This is something that needs to stop.
We are not Team Black and Team Blue for anything more than to differentiate what nights we go into Karazhan. Sure there are some guilds who have a Team 1 and Team 2, where Team 1 is made up of the guild leaders, and Team 2 is made up of the alts and "nobodies." This is NOT the situation at all.
So why has Team Black downed Prince twice and Team Blue hasn't even attempted Curator yet?
Several reasons. None of them include the word "skill." None of them include the words "better than."
Reason #1: Team Black began running Karazhan before most of Team Blue were even attuned. There was a group of 10 of us who wanted to see Karazhan, and realized that a guild sponsored run would be difficult to manage due to the restricted number of people who were able to go in. Thus, when the guild did indeed institute a method of running that was guild-driven, Team Black had an experience advantage. We were probably looking at Curator by the time Team Blue downed Attumen (and it took us longer to down Attumen I would like to note).
Reason #2: Team Black has more synergy and more practice playing together. Murien and I are the two main healers. We are brothers....we talk about the game outside of WoW. We strategize how we can heal better. I'm sure if Daenerys, Raystora, and Grumps were to do this, they would be working better together. It has taken more time for Team Blue's healers to get on the same page.
Reason #3: Team Black has an extremely well geared tank. From Curator on, a lot of the fights depend on a well geared tank. Wynri has run more heroics than he could probably count. Since he has the time to do it, it helps us as a group. Zeusal and Saro are excellent tanks, but they have families to worry about, so they can't run instances all the time to get the best tanking gear.
Reason #4: Team Blue has had some attendance issues as of late. There were times when they had 9 people online and couldn't find a 10th. Some nights they had 7. Some nights they had no healers. This is because several of their team members have left the guild, dropped off of the face of the earth, or stopped raiding due to RL concerns. Now that they have a crew back to raid again, they can start going 2 times a week, or even 3. This will give them the practice that they need on these fights.
I'm tired of hearing how it isn't fair that Black team has had so much success. Let me say this...I'll be anxiously awaiting Team Blue's successes here in the near future, and I look forward to sharing in that success. We are all a team guild. We want each other to succeed, and we will. Just give it some time...it'll all be worth it when we start downing Maulgor and Gruul together, as Team Black Eye.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
First night of Kara means 6 bosses down
For the second week in a row, we got the Shade down on our first night in Kara. It's amazing to think about how far we've come. Oncoi looks like he's back in action, and once again we have a shadow priest (and I'm not the only rezzer!) Boy does a Shadow priest make certain fights EZ-mode. Curator for one. Murien and I didn't have to worry about mana at all for healing. It was an easy curator for us.
It's amazing to think about how easy some of these fights would be if we had a shaman or a paladin with us regularly. There are some classes that improve those around them. Shadow priests are definitely one of them.
At any rate, I still have to decide what to do with my gems now. There's no clear answer as to whether I should be putting +healing on them, or putting mana per 5 on them. I'm pretty happy with my current +healing, and would really like to work on my MP5 numbers. We had the Shade's healing boots drop, but I let Oncoi have them because they were a huge upgrade for him. Once I get those, that's another 7 MP5. I'm also only 4 Primal Mooncloth away from my Primal Mooncloth Robes (even though they are ugly tier 1 skins) which will give me an extra 50 +healing and 10 MP5 at the cost of a few stam and a few spirit. Maybe if I can complete that set, I'll have a lot more MP5 because of the set bonus. I used think 20 MP5, meh. Now it's clutch.
Tonight is Chess event and the Prince, and who knows what else. Woot.
It's amazing to think about how easy some of these fights would be if we had a shaman or a paladin with us regularly. There are some classes that improve those around them. Shadow priests are definitely one of them.
At any rate, I still have to decide what to do with my gems now. There's no clear answer as to whether I should be putting +healing on them, or putting mana per 5 on them. I'm pretty happy with my current +healing, and would really like to work on my MP5 numbers. We had the Shade's healing boots drop, but I let Oncoi have them because they were a huge upgrade for him. Once I get those, that's another 7 MP5. I'm also only 4 Primal Mooncloth away from my Primal Mooncloth Robes (even though they are ugly tier 1 skins) which will give me an extra 50 +healing and 10 MP5 at the cost of a few stam and a few spirit. Maybe if I can complete that set, I'll have a lot more MP5 because of the set bonus. I used think 20 MP5, meh. Now it's clutch.
Tonight is Chess event and the Prince, and who knows what else. Woot.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Healing vs. Mana per 5, Part 2
Last time I talked about how I determine what rank of Greater Heal that I use.
Now I'm going to talk about whether it's worth substituting more +healing for mana regen.
Obviously, if you're spamming Greater Heal, downranking is a good idea. If I use Rank 6 right now and start using Rank 5, I lose 178 +healing for 34 mana. If I'm casting every 2.5 seconds, that equates to 68 mana per 5! Of course it's a good idea!
However, say I am one of two healers on a boss fight, and I'm only casting Greater Heal on average every 7.5 seconds or so. That equates to only around 23 mana per 5. Not quite as good.
Considering Blizzard treats 9 +healing as equal to around 2 MP5, it depends on how often you cast GHeal as to what +healing and downranking is worth.
This is one reason that I am still considering grabbing the Whitemend Set. Losing my current headpiece and leggings, I'd lose around 24 stam, 25 int, and close to 60 spirit. However, I would gain close to 60 +healing and 25 MP5. This is amazing for fights when you need to spam lower rank heals (read Prince during phase 2). So, once I have my epic mount and my primal mights for my runed eternium rod, I may start saving up for the Whitemend Pants. We'll see how the cash flows.
Don't forget in the final analysis, that priests don't only use Greater Heal. Renew is big, and Prayer of Mending doesn't get terrible returns on +healing. Also it depends on your talents...I get an extra 12% of my +healing towards my Gheals. Makes it nice.
Now I'm going to talk about whether it's worth substituting more +healing for mana regen.
Obviously, if you're spamming Greater Heal, downranking is a good idea. If I use Rank 6 right now and start using Rank 5, I lose 178 +healing for 34 mana. If I'm casting every 2.5 seconds, that equates to 68 mana per 5! Of course it's a good idea!
However, say I am one of two healers on a boss fight, and I'm only casting Greater Heal on average every 7.5 seconds or so. That equates to only around 23 mana per 5. Not quite as good.
Considering Blizzard treats 9 +healing as equal to around 2 MP5, it depends on how often you cast GHeal as to what +healing and downranking is worth.
This is one reason that I am still considering grabbing the Whitemend Set. Losing my current headpiece and leggings, I'd lose around 24 stam, 25 int, and close to 60 spirit. However, I would gain close to 60 +healing and 25 MP5. This is amazing for fights when you need to spam lower rank heals (read Prince during phase 2). So, once I have my epic mount and my primal mights for my runed eternium rod, I may start saving up for the Whitemend Pants. We'll see how the cash flows.
Don't forget in the final analysis, that priests don't only use Greater Heal. Renew is big, and Prayer of Mending doesn't get terrible returns on +healing. Also it depends on your talents...I get an extra 12% of my +healing towards my Gheals. Makes it nice.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Prince is Down
I'm postponing my Healing vs. MP5 Part 2 post in favor of the newest exciting news. We downed the Prince last night. It took us re clearing once, so it was a lot of attempts. Right around 40%, Wynri was dying over and over again. Apparently, the Prince does a double hit for around 4500 (6500 crit) apiece. Once Wynri took 2 crushing blows for over 14K damage (he has 15K health).
Needless to say, we needed to make some adjustments. I had Nermal (who was healing EXTREMELY well for a moonkin, well done Nermal) and myself always casting a heal and cancelling it if Wynri didn't need it. On the final attempt, this actually worked and saved him through a couple of those double hits.
Amazingly, phase 2 was the biggest problem for us. The first time that we got him to phase 3, we were standing in the middle of the area, and we got pummeled by infernals. I kid you not, pummeled was the word....wish I'd gotten a screenshot.
On the last attempt we were along the wall, and we didn't get an infernal landing on us until around 10% or later...it was wonderful to finally have some luck on our side.
Of course, the rogue/pally/shaman tier 4 item dropped, and we had none of these classes with us. Why does Blizzard hate us like this? We did get the hunter bow and we got the melee DPS/tank ring.
I have to commend the whole group for staying focused through a couple of rough attempts.
I also have to commend our arena 5v5 team for having a good week. Our record was something like 7-3, and we gained a lot of points this week. We had excellent class makeup in there last night, with myself, Nermal, Rubix, Patricles, and Azi. The only loss we had was against a triple mage group, when they all popped arcane power and instacast pyroblasted Azi to hell. He survived surprisingly, but not when they all fireblasted him. :-(
Overall it was a great night last night. Looking forward to downing Prince more often and getting to the point of having him on farm. More tomorrow (or later today) with news on GHeal downranking.
Needless to say, we needed to make some adjustments. I had Nermal (who was healing EXTREMELY well for a moonkin, well done Nermal) and myself always casting a heal and cancelling it if Wynri didn't need it. On the final attempt, this actually worked and saved him through a couple of those double hits.
Amazingly, phase 2 was the biggest problem for us. The first time that we got him to phase 3, we were standing in the middle of the area, and we got pummeled by infernals. I kid you not, pummeled was the word....wish I'd gotten a screenshot.
On the last attempt we were along the wall, and we didn't get an infernal landing on us until around 10% or later...it was wonderful to finally have some luck on our side.
Of course, the rogue/pally/shaman tier 4 item dropped, and we had none of these classes with us. Why does Blizzard hate us like this? We did get the hunter bow and we got the melee DPS/tank ring.
I have to commend the whole group for staying focused through a couple of rough attempts.
I also have to commend our arena 5v5 team for having a good week. Our record was something like 7-3, and we gained a lot of points this week. We had excellent class makeup in there last night, with myself, Nermal, Rubix, Patricles, and Azi. The only loss we had was against a triple mage group, when they all popped arcane power and instacast pyroblasted Azi to hell. He survived surprisingly, but not when they all fireblasted him. :-(
Overall it was a great night last night. Looking forward to downing Prince more often and getting to the point of having him on farm. More tomorrow (or later today) with news on GHeal downranking.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Healing vs. Mana per 5: Part 1
Well, I've already posted something comparing spirit to MP5. Now how does healing work with this equation?
+Healing is invaluable and irreplacable in certain situations. It is the only way to increase your healing per second. If the tank is going down too fast, and threat and mana aren't issues, you need more +healing, pure and simple. (Or the tank needs to put on a shield :-P)
However, for the most part this isn't an issue, and more people are concerned about running out of mana. So how can +healing help this?
Traditionally, +healing has allowed healers to downrank their spells. We have Greater Heal ranks 1 - 7. Here is how they are mapped out (for these numbers, I'm assuming you have 3 points in Improved Healing and 5 points in Spiritual Healing since that's what I have. Check your own numbers to do the calculations for your spec.):
Rank Mana Cost Average Amount Healed
1 315 1052
2 387 1340
3 463 1675
4 557 2092
5 604 2288
6 638 2466
7 701 2849
Now, I use Greater Heal Rank 6 right now. If I were to downrank to rank 5, this would mean my heals would be 178 smaller, but would cost 34 less mana. Since Greater Heals get .83333 of your +healing, (6 +healing = 5 +healing to Greater Heal), My Greater Heal rank 5 with +214 healing would heal for the same amount as Greater Heal rank 6 with 0 +healing.
So I guess the question is, which one should I use? This depends on you mostly. Theorycraft cannot dictate playstyle. First thing you need to do is determine how big you want your heals to be. I personally like my greater heals to hit the tank for around 1/3 of his max HP. This is because I like to use big heals for maximum regen time, but I don't like to have a chance that the tank will be 2 shotted if I don't get there in time. So I shoot for 4K Greater Heal. How much +healing do I need to achieve this? With Rank 7, I'd need 1381 +healing. (I have an increase in 12% to +healing for Greater Heal, since I have 3 points in Empowered Healing, so I technically only need +1229 healing for this) I currently have +1569 healing self buffed. This makes my Rank 6 Gheal hit for on average 4223, so that's why I use rank 6.
Next post, I'll talk about how to determine whether you should seek out more +healing, or if you should seek out more +MP5 and spirit, and what ratio makes the most sense.
+Healing is invaluable and irreplacable in certain situations. It is the only way to increase your healing per second. If the tank is going down too fast, and threat and mana aren't issues, you need more +healing, pure and simple. (Or the tank needs to put on a shield :-P)
However, for the most part this isn't an issue, and more people are concerned about running out of mana. So how can +healing help this?
Traditionally, +healing has allowed healers to downrank their spells. We have Greater Heal ranks 1 - 7. Here is how they are mapped out (for these numbers, I'm assuming you have 3 points in Improved Healing and 5 points in Spiritual Healing since that's what I have. Check your own numbers to do the calculations for your spec.):
Rank Mana Cost Average Amount Healed
1 315 1052
2 387 1340
3 463 1675
4 557 2092
5 604 2288
6 638 2466
7 701 2849
Now, I use Greater Heal Rank 6 right now. If I were to downrank to rank 5, this would mean my heals would be 178 smaller, but would cost 34 less mana. Since Greater Heals get .83333 of your +healing, (6 +healing = 5 +healing to Greater Heal), My Greater Heal rank 5 with +214 healing would heal for the same amount as Greater Heal rank 6 with 0 +healing.
So I guess the question is, which one should I use? This depends on you mostly. Theorycraft cannot dictate playstyle. First thing you need to do is determine how big you want your heals to be. I personally like my greater heals to hit the tank for around 1/3 of his max HP. This is because I like to use big heals for maximum regen time, but I don't like to have a chance that the tank will be 2 shotted if I don't get there in time. So I shoot for 4K Greater Heal. How much +healing do I need to achieve this? With Rank 7, I'd need 1381 +healing. (I have an increase in 12% to +healing for Greater Heal, since I have 3 points in Empowered Healing, so I technically only need +1229 healing for this) I currently have +1569 healing self buffed. This makes my Rank 6 Gheal hit for on average 4223, so that's why I use rank 6.
Next post, I'll talk about how to determine whether you should seek out more +healing, or if you should seek out more +MP5 and spirit, and what ratio makes the most sense.
Heroic x 2
Last night I did 2 heroics with Wynri, Gullkurack, and Nikelle. One was heroic Botanica, which was easy except for one boss. Alarion was with us too. We got stuck on the second boss because the DPS was afraid to lay into him for fear of pulling agro. Boy, once we had the DPS lay into him, he died SO quickly we didn't even have a chance to wipe.
The second heroic was Shattered Halls, with Akime instead of Alarion. We rocked all the way through til the very end. Then we wiped and wiped on the final boss. Our last attempt was the best...we finally decided to stop trying to control the adds, and just have Wynri tank them and Gully and Nikelle crowd control one apiece. We would have had him if I hadn't gotten cleaved 3 times and had an add hitting me. SO close. It's annoying to have to stop that close to the end.
I changed my spec as well, to this. I moved two points from Healing Prayers to Spiritual Guidance. At this point, since you can only cast Prayer of Mending every 10 seconds, I didn't think saving 70 mana was worth it in the long run. I'd rather have an extra 10% of my spirit converted to damage and healing at this point.
Finally, yesterday's 5v5 arena kicked butt. We went 8-2, and the 2 losses only lost us a total of 8 points. One of the wins netted us 25 points. Everyone was just on top of their game.
Can't wait til tonight with the Prince.
Hopefully soon, I'll be posting with an analysis of +healing vs. int, spirit, and mana per 5. I've been thinking about it for a long time.
The second heroic was Shattered Halls, with Akime instead of Alarion. We rocked all the way through til the very end. Then we wiped and wiped on the final boss. Our last attempt was the best...we finally decided to stop trying to control the adds, and just have Wynri tank them and Gully and Nikelle crowd control one apiece. We would have had him if I hadn't gotten cleaved 3 times and had an add hitting me. SO close. It's annoying to have to stop that close to the end.
I changed my spec as well, to this. I moved two points from Healing Prayers to Spiritual Guidance. At this point, since you can only cast Prayer of Mending every 10 seconds, I didn't think saving 70 mana was worth it in the long run. I'd rather have an extra 10% of my spirit converted to damage and healing at this point.
Finally, yesterday's 5v5 arena kicked butt. We went 8-2, and the 2 losses only lost us a total of 8 points. One of the wins netted us 25 points. Everyone was just on top of their game.
Can't wait til tonight with the Prince.
Hopefully soon, I'll be posting with an analysis of +healing vs. int, spirit, and mana per 5. I've been thinking about it for a long time.
Saturday, June 9, 2007
2v2, Priest and Hunter
I may have mentioned before that I have an arena team with Gullkurack the hunter. Boy does he know his stuff. He's very well geared as well.
Most people don't consider hunters the best partners for a priest. How wrong they are. Most of the people we face are 2 DPSers. The key during those is the first 15 seconds. If I can stay alive and keep Gully alive, we usually have it made.
Hunters are great in PVP. They can do decent melee damage and crazy ranged damage. They can crowd control with a trap. They can scattershot. They have a pet to annoy casters, healers in particular.
The worst groups for us are the melee groups. He is best when at range, and I struggle to stay alive through melee DPS. Rogues and warriors are my bane, and if they can stay next to a hunter, he can be ineffective as well.
We went 8-2 last night. One loss came when a mage/druid combo did some amazing work. I didn't see the instant cast pyro hit Gull, and by the time I saw that I needed to heal him, I was cycloned. I was cycloned for 9 seconds, which was enough time for the moonkin druid and mage to own him. From there, I just delayed the inevitable.
The other loss was against a warrior/paladin. I have to say, we shouldn't have lost this one. It still makes me angry. The warrior was terrible! He had mortal strike and piercing howl, and I think deathwish. But he did SO little damage to me. I had trouble healing through it and staying alive, but usually inside of 20 seconds, I'm dead. We outlasted them. My problem is, to stay away from the warriors I hug a pillar. This means Gully can't get LOS to hit anything. By the end, he was oom, and I was doomed.
I really need to learn that against a warrior/pally combo, I need to stay out in the middle. This way, the pally will hide behind a pillar most of the time. Gully can stand near that pillar, nuke the warrior, and ultimately scattershot - trap the paladin so we can get the warrior down. I tend to try to stay away from the warrior to avoid hamstring, but this warrior kept using piercing howl, which was tough. Oh well, live and learn.
PS: I am so jealous of pallies against melee. They aren't as good as priests for burst-down caster groups, but the fact that they can take a rogue/warrior beating on them, makes them almost invaluable.
That's all for now.
Most people don't consider hunters the best partners for a priest. How wrong they are. Most of the people we face are 2 DPSers. The key during those is the first 15 seconds. If I can stay alive and keep Gully alive, we usually have it made.
Hunters are great in PVP. They can do decent melee damage and crazy ranged damage. They can crowd control with a trap. They can scattershot. They have a pet to annoy casters, healers in particular.
The worst groups for us are the melee groups. He is best when at range, and I struggle to stay alive through melee DPS. Rogues and warriors are my bane, and if they can stay next to a hunter, he can be ineffective as well.
We went 8-2 last night. One loss came when a mage/druid combo did some amazing work. I didn't see the instant cast pyro hit Gull, and by the time I saw that I needed to heal him, I was cycloned. I was cycloned for 9 seconds, which was enough time for the moonkin druid and mage to own him. From there, I just delayed the inevitable.
The other loss was against a warrior/paladin. I have to say, we shouldn't have lost this one. It still makes me angry. The warrior was terrible! He had mortal strike and piercing howl, and I think deathwish. But he did SO little damage to me. I had trouble healing through it and staying alive, but usually inside of 20 seconds, I'm dead. We outlasted them. My problem is, to stay away from the warriors I hug a pillar. This means Gully can't get LOS to hit anything. By the end, he was oom, and I was doomed.
I really need to learn that against a warrior/pally combo, I need to stay out in the middle. This way, the pally will hide behind a pillar most of the time. Gully can stand near that pillar, nuke the warrior, and ultimately scattershot - trap the paladin so we can get the warrior down. I tend to try to stay away from the warrior to avoid hamstring, but this warrior kept using piercing howl, which was tough. Oh well, live and learn.
PS: I am so jealous of pallies against melee. They aren't as good as priests for burst-down caster groups, but the fact that they can take a rogue/warrior beating on them, makes them almost invaluable.
That's all for now.
Friday, June 8, 2007
Epic mount, Heroic Slave Pens, and more
Well, I was doing some quests in Shadowmoon last night, including the one to ultimately get attuned for Tempest Keep. Boy does it suck not having an epic mount when everyone else does. Sadly, I intended to get the epic mount for my warlock, the herbalist. Herb farming would be cake. But now I can't decide.
Although when Rubix and I run Scarlet Strat, it takes less than an hour, and last night we got 2 Righteous Orbs, 6 Large Brilliant Shards, the Flask of Undistilled Wisdom pattern, and 4 blue BOEs. If we run this 3-4 times a week, we could get a new person epic mounted every 5 weeks or so. Gotta love it.
Ran a heroic Slave Pens...fairly uneventful. We didn't have the NR buff because we got feared and mind controlled and barely survived the last pull. Also near the start of the final boss, our shaman died. Then I died when the boss was around 20%. Good thing our DPS finished him off while the tank used every cooldown he had. And praise Elune for engineers. (But we got no gems. :-()
Team Blue kicked some ass last night, downing Attumen, Moroes, and Romulo and Julianne after facing them for the first time. Congrats you guys! Definitely awesome. Hopefully now they get a chance to down Curator on Monday(?)
During our run, Akime the shaman was talking about how paladins shouldn't need a huge mana pool, while priests do. He said that he read somewhere, a paladin should only need a 6K mana pool while a priest should have a 9K mana pool. This is something that I don't quite understand. Perhaps if the paladin is offhealing maybe? Priests have much better regen in general than paladins do. They regen a completely different way, using mana per 5 and +crit to get free heals. They have no spirit (which is why a paladin should never get an innervate unless it's an absolute emergency.) So I wonder where he read it. More importantly, I wonder if it's true.
I know my mana pool is above 9K, so I'm not too worried, but it makes me wonder what kind of gear you'd need to regen mana that well. /curious.
That's all for now.
Although when Rubix and I run Scarlet Strat, it takes less than an hour, and last night we got 2 Righteous Orbs, 6 Large Brilliant Shards, the Flask of Undistilled Wisdom pattern, and 4 blue BOEs. If we run this 3-4 times a week, we could get a new person epic mounted every 5 weeks or so. Gotta love it.
Ran a heroic Slave Pens...fairly uneventful. We didn't have the NR buff because we got feared and mind controlled and barely survived the last pull. Also near the start of the final boss, our shaman died. Then I died when the boss was around 20%. Good thing our DPS finished him off while the tank used every cooldown he had. And praise Elune for engineers. (But we got no gems. :-()
Team Blue kicked some ass last night, downing Attumen, Moroes, and Romulo and Julianne after facing them for the first time. Congrats you guys! Definitely awesome. Hopefully now they get a chance to down Curator on Monday(?)
During our run, Akime the shaman was talking about how paladins shouldn't need a huge mana pool, while priests do. He said that he read somewhere, a paladin should only need a 6K mana pool while a priest should have a 9K mana pool. This is something that I don't quite understand. Perhaps if the paladin is offhealing maybe? Priests have much better regen in general than paladins do. They regen a completely different way, using mana per 5 and +crit to get free heals. They have no spirit (which is why a paladin should never get an innervate unless it's an absolute emergency.) So I wonder where he read it. More importantly, I wonder if it's true.
I know my mana pool is above 9K, so I'm not too worried, but it makes me wonder what kind of gear you'd need to regen mana that well. /curious.
That's all for now.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Dueling a Hunter as a Holy Priest
Last night I "dueled" Gullkurack, one of the best hunters that I know. We were in the Blades Edge Arena, fighting each other, along with some friends. After a while it became an epic duel to the finish. I was in my PVP gear to max my resilience, and I was running out of mana all over the place. I was also low on water, so I got out of combat and tossed on my healing gear for lots of regen. From that point on, I had no problems staying alive. Imp Viper sting does drain 1700 mana over 8 seconds, but when you regen that much every 15-20 seconds, it doesn't matter as much. I focused on keeping renew and shadow word: pain up, and it was easy to kite him. Every once in a while he was able to get me into a trap, and when he did, I immediately shielded while running toward him, then renewed, then feared him and his pet when I could. If I could manage to get off a mana burn, I did that as well. Eventually, through attrition, by keeping out of line of sight whenever I could, I would get to the point of being able to 2 shot him.
Any mana class CAN be kited and CAN be killed in this way. When you run them out of mana, you're in good shape. This is why I can't stand rogues and warriors...there's no way to draw out the fight successfully. Eventually, they will outlast you. Sad but true.
Any mana class CAN be kited and CAN be killed in this way. When you run them out of mana, you're in good shape. This is why I can't stand rogues and warriors...there's no way to draw out the fight successfully. Eventually, they will outlast you. Sad but true.
Gruul's Lair Take Two
Well, we went into Gruul's Lair again, and still made progress. This time, our main tank only died once, and it wasn't his fault. The biggest issues that we had were with assorted things. Once we got all of the kinks ironed out, things went smoothly. We had a few accidental pulls, and a few mis-pulls, and those didn't help things but for the most part I learned a lot about the healing.
If you have a moonkin tanking the shaman, you don't need much healing on him/her.
The warlock tank, the warlock(s), and the hounds need a lot of healing and attention from healers. By the end I was healing them, and it was pretty chaotic.
It didn't help that we only had one rogue on the priest, and a rogue who had never done the fight before at that. We also only had one warlock, which made things interesting sometimes, especially since he couldn't find his pet bar. Once he had that straightened out, the fight went much better.
I felt badly for Saro our leader, who respecced just for Gruul, and was completely out of it. I could tell that he was tired, but wouldn't give up...just a testament to him.
The next time we are in there will be 2 weeks from now. I know there were several just-turned 60s there who we need to try to get geared up. It seemed that last time we were in there, we had better geared people...not sure why that is. We got the priest down last time, and this time we didn't really get close. The priest needs to die fast so we can have that extra healing and attention on the other targets...it isn't maintainable forever. Fortunately, we have the next several evenings without Karazhan or Gruul so we can focus on getting some people into different instances.
If you have a moonkin tanking the shaman, you don't need much healing on him/her.
The warlock tank, the warlock(s), and the hounds need a lot of healing and attention from healers. By the end I was healing them, and it was pretty chaotic.
It didn't help that we only had one rogue on the priest, and a rogue who had never done the fight before at that. We also only had one warlock, which made things interesting sometimes, especially since he couldn't find his pet bar. Once he had that straightened out, the fight went much better.
I felt badly for Saro our leader, who respecced just for Gruul, and was completely out of it. I could tell that he was tired, but wouldn't give up...just a testament to him.
The next time we are in there will be 2 weeks from now. I know there were several just-turned 60s there who we need to try to get geared up. It seemed that last time we were in there, we had better geared people...not sure why that is. We got the priest down last time, and this time we didn't really get close. The priest needs to die fast so we can have that extra healing and attention on the other targets...it isn't maintainable forever. Fortunately, we have the next several evenings without Karazhan or Gruul so we can focus on getting some people into different instances.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
2 man Scarlet Strat
Well, Rubix and I were looking to farm up some Large Brilliant Shards, so we went to Strat to see how far we could get. We got pretty far....cleared the place pretty easily. Here's a video of our trip.
My favorite part is when Rubix blinks and uses ice lance to snag the Magistrate before he runs off to tell the Baron that we're here, pulling 2 packs of skellies in the process.
My least favorite part was when Rubix got mind controlled and hit me with a fireball, counterspell, presence of mind fireball. OUCH.
But it was a lot of fun and we made a lot of money from the Righteous Orbs, Large Brilliant Shards, and random BOEs.
Without further adieu, here it is: VIDEO
My favorite part is when Rubix blinks and uses ice lance to snag the Magistrate before he runs off to tell the Baron that we're here, pulling 2 packs of skellies in the process.
My least favorite part was when Rubix got mind controlled and hit me with a fireball, counterspell, presence of mind fireball. OUCH.
But it was a lot of fun and we made a lot of money from the Righteous Orbs, Large Brilliant Shards, and random BOEs.
Without further adieu, here it is: VIDEO
Speedy Karazhan
Well, we got Attumen through the Shade down last night. Only wiped a few times, mostly on trash when people were still getting rezed or someone was AFK. Definitely is going to make tonight or Sunday, depending on whether or not we do Gruul, much easier.
I want to mention here how different Karazhan can be when everyone works as a team and doesn't mind splitting time. Last night, we had 12 people. One person was still running an instance and sat out the first three bosses. Another was running late and sat out the first two. No matter where we were at, people were always willing to sit if they needed to, even if they happened to need loot from someone (best example is Shaena the hunter sitting for Curator, even though she needs tier 4 gloves.) As a result of people being so considerate, we flew through and one shotted everything but the Shade. The Shade was a thrilling fight at the end. We downed the adds, and had around 7-8 people left. The healers started running out of mana. People were dropping here and there. There were three of us left at 3%. Finally the hunter dropped at 1%, leaving me (the holy priest) and Murien (the resto druid). According to Murien, he downed a pot and moonfire spammed him for the win. That was a crazy good feeling to down him under those circumstances.
Again we had no paladin, which is why we ran oom during the Shade fight. However, we had our feral druid heal for the Maiden and for the Curator. He did a bangup job. I was very impressed....his gear wasn't even that good. Hopefully he can pickup some better healing gear, but even so he knows what he's doing.
Lastly, I wanted to mention again how skilled everyone seems to be. I know for a fact that when we chose 10 people originally, we chose them based on their ability to perform. On skill, not gear. As such, even though 3 of the original are gone (including Bootstrapbil cause he's dropped off of the face of the earth :-P), we have skilled players. They feed off of each other. I notice a change in people from the first time they join through to the end. Because we have 3-4 people fighting for the top of the damage meters, it inspires the rest of the group to push themselves. This makes a big difference from back in MC when there were a few people at the top of the damage meters and the people who weren't there figured ahh what the hell, who cares.
Thanks to all 11 of the people who joined me last night, and everyone who usually runs with us. We tear stuff up because we have skill. And as time goes on, we are getting some kickass gear too. I see no limit to what we can do.
I want to mention here how different Karazhan can be when everyone works as a team and doesn't mind splitting time. Last night, we had 12 people. One person was still running an instance and sat out the first three bosses. Another was running late and sat out the first two. No matter where we were at, people were always willing to sit if they needed to, even if they happened to need loot from someone (best example is Shaena the hunter sitting for Curator, even though she needs tier 4 gloves.) As a result of people being so considerate, we flew through and one shotted everything but the Shade. The Shade was a thrilling fight at the end. We downed the adds, and had around 7-8 people left. The healers started running out of mana. People were dropping here and there. There were three of us left at 3%. Finally the hunter dropped at 1%, leaving me (the holy priest) and Murien (the resto druid). According to Murien, he downed a pot and moonfire spammed him for the win. That was a crazy good feeling to down him under those circumstances.
Again we had no paladin, which is why we ran oom during the Shade fight. However, we had our feral druid heal for the Maiden and for the Curator. He did a bangup job. I was very impressed....his gear wasn't even that good. Hopefully he can pickup some better healing gear, but even so he knows what he's doing.
Lastly, I wanted to mention again how skilled everyone seems to be. I know for a fact that when we chose 10 people originally, we chose them based on their ability to perform. On skill, not gear. As such, even though 3 of the original are gone (including Bootstrapbil cause he's dropped off of the face of the earth :-P), we have skilled players. They feed off of each other. I notice a change in people from the first time they join through to the end. Because we have 3-4 people fighting for the top of the damage meters, it inspires the rest of the group to push themselves. This makes a big difference from back in MC when there were a few people at the top of the damage meters and the people who weren't there figured ahh what the hell, who cares.
Thanks to all 11 of the people who joined me last night, and everyone who usually runs with us. We tear stuff up because we have skill. And as time goes on, we are getting some kickass gear too. I see no limit to what we can do.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Calling all Casual Shamans
Last night I ran a heroic Botanica with Zeusal (feral druid), Rubix, Gullkurack, and Akime, an enhancement shaman. And I felt like I was in a regular Botanica. No joke. Zeusal is an excellent tank, and Rubix, Akime, and Gullkurack were pushing each other for top DPS. (Boy have they nerfed heroics, and thank goodness.)
But our Karazhan group suffers because we don't have a shaman. There are several classes that not only can perform a duty well, but improve the people around them. Shamans are one, with their totems. Paladins are another, with blessings and auras. To a lesser extent, warlocks (healthstones, soulstone, curses) and shadow priests (group healing and mana regen). These "group" classes improve groups incredibly. In Karazhan, there are dreadful fights that get incredibly easier when a paladin is there. Or when a shadow priest is there. I wonder if we could have gotten Prince down if a shaman had been there. I'm willing to bet we could have. Shamans are able to adapt to all sorts of situations. They can DPS cast. They can melee. They can heal. They have totems for every kind of situation you can think of that can improve melee DPS, tanking, healing, and/or caster DPS.
Without one, our Karazhan teams suffer, just as they did when we didn't have a paladin. Unfortunately, most shamans are doing some heavy raiding with more serious guilds. If anyone knows of a shaman who is looking for casual raiding with some smart players, let me know. I'd love to have one, and I know Saro would as well for the other team.
But our Karazhan group suffers because we don't have a shaman. There are several classes that not only can perform a duty well, but improve the people around them. Shamans are one, with their totems. Paladins are another, with blessings and auras. To a lesser extent, warlocks (healthstones, soulstone, curses) and shadow priests (group healing and mana regen). These "group" classes improve groups incredibly. In Karazhan, there are dreadful fights that get incredibly easier when a paladin is there. Or when a shadow priest is there. I wonder if we could have gotten Prince down if a shaman had been there. I'm willing to bet we could have. Shamans are able to adapt to all sorts of situations. They can DPS cast. They can melee. They can heal. They have totems for every kind of situation you can think of that can improve melee DPS, tanking, healing, and/or caster DPS.
Without one, our Karazhan teams suffer, just as they did when we didn't have a paladin. Unfortunately, most shamans are doing some heavy raiding with more serious guilds. If anyone knows of a shaman who is looking for casual raiding with some smart players, let me know. I'd love to have one, and I know Saro would as well for the other team.
Monday, June 4, 2007
Prince wipe at 2%
The title says it all. What a night. The Prince fight is very much like the Maiden fight. It's about as intense for healing as you can get. The DPS did a stellar job, as did the tanking. However, the healing is such that it's a very long fight, and you need to have close to full mana when he hits 60% because during phase 2, he hits like a truck. Then, when he hits 30%, it's almost a DPS race. Three times we got him to phase 3. The first time, I thought it was 40% that he started phase 3, and got 2 groupmates killed by the Enfeeble. The other two times we got him to 8% and once to 2%. Both times, it was the infernals that got us. They would land either right on top of us, or right on top of the tank every time.
All of the other attempts usually got stifled around 60% when phase 2 began and when there were around 5 infernals on the ground. Either the tank got hit too hard while we were moving around, or we just couldn't manage to place ourselves right and got some people killed when they were enfeebled.
While the night was somewhat frustrating, since this was only the 2nd time we've faced him I'm quite certain that we will be able to get him next week when we are fresh. This isn't going to be the next Shade fight, fortunately.
I'd post more, but I need to work. Bleh.
All of the other attempts usually got stifled around 60% when phase 2 began and when there were around 5 infernals on the ground. Either the tank got hit too hard while we were moving around, or we just couldn't manage to place ourselves right and got some people killed when they were enfeebled.
While the night was somewhat frustrating, since this was only the 2nd time we've faced him I'm quite certain that we will be able to get him next week when we are fresh. This isn't going to be the next Shade fight, fortunately.
I'd post more, but I need to work. Bleh.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Making your Goals a Reality
Too many times I run into players who talk about a specific goal that they'd like to achieve. "I want to get 1500 attack power." "I want to have 1750 +healing." "I want to have a 40% chance to dodge." And I want to ask these people if they've invested in greens that only give that stat. I ran across gloves the other night that gave over +100 to healing, but nothing else. Wearing that gear you could easily do it.
But people tell me that they need their other stats as well. What is a rogue without stamina, dodge, crit, AND attack power? What is a priest without stamina, intellect, spirit, mana per 5, AND +healing? What is a feral druid without attack power, armor, crit, AND dodge? They aren't worth much. This is totally correct. So, how do you achieve your goal of getting that stat up to where you want it?
Blizzard creates itemization that makes sense. The better gear is harder to get to. Currently, self buffed, I have 423 Stamina, 510 Int, 581 Spirit, +1500 healing, 11.61% crit chance on a heal, 446 MP5 outside of the FSR, and 111 MP5 inside of it. Would it be realistic for me to shoot for 450 Stamina, 525 Int, 600 Spirit, +1600 healing, 13% crit chance, 500 MP5 outside of the FSR and 125 MP5 inside of it? Unless I said I was going into the Black Temple tomorrow, this is absurd. Trying to increase all of your stats to a higher level is impossible, unless you are planning on raiding somewhere new.
However, I personally have a goal of reaching 150 mana per 5 inside of the FSR. How am I going to go about this? It would have to be by sacrificing other stats. Maybe I could lose some spirit, or stamina, or intellect, or +healing. These are the hard decisions. This is when you need to decide which stats are worth more to you.
Currently, my gear (without any talent adders) gives me 263 stam, 325 int, 333 spirit, 1355 healing, and 33 MP5. To get an additional 39 MP5, maybe I would need to swap my Darkmoon Card for my Shard of the Scale for an extra 16 MP5 (I will be doing an article about my Darkmoon Card later.) Sure it'd be nice to have both, but until we are killing Gruul and Magtheridon and going into Serpentshrine or Tempest Keep, it isn't gonna happen.
I guess what I'm trying to say is to be realistic about your goals. You can make them happen, but you need to realize that with every benefit, there comes a cost.
But people tell me that they need their other stats as well. What is a rogue without stamina, dodge, crit, AND attack power? What is a priest without stamina, intellect, spirit, mana per 5, AND +healing? What is a feral druid without attack power, armor, crit, AND dodge? They aren't worth much. This is totally correct. So, how do you achieve your goal of getting that stat up to where you want it?
Blizzard creates itemization that makes sense. The better gear is harder to get to. Currently, self buffed, I have 423 Stamina, 510 Int, 581 Spirit, +1500 healing, 11.61% crit chance on a heal, 446 MP5 outside of the FSR, and 111 MP5 inside of it. Would it be realistic for me to shoot for 450 Stamina, 525 Int, 600 Spirit, +1600 healing, 13% crit chance, 500 MP5 outside of the FSR and 125 MP5 inside of it? Unless I said I was going into the Black Temple tomorrow, this is absurd. Trying to increase all of your stats to a higher level is impossible, unless you are planning on raiding somewhere new.
However, I personally have a goal of reaching 150 mana per 5 inside of the FSR. How am I going to go about this? It would have to be by sacrificing other stats. Maybe I could lose some spirit, or stamina, or intellect, or +healing. These are the hard decisions. This is when you need to decide which stats are worth more to you.
Currently, my gear (without any talent adders) gives me 263 stam, 325 int, 333 spirit, 1355 healing, and 33 MP5. To get an additional 39 MP5, maybe I would need to swap my Darkmoon Card for my Shard of the Scale for an extra 16 MP5 (I will be doing an article about my Darkmoon Card later.) Sure it'd be nice to have both, but until we are killing Gruul and Magtheridon and going into Serpentshrine or Tempest Keep, it isn't gonna happen.
I guess what I'm trying to say is to be realistic about your goals. You can make them happen, but you need to realize that with every benefit, there comes a cost.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Spirit vs. Mana per 5 continued
Well, as I said in the post earlier, I've found that I spend around 60% of my time in the FSR. Ouch. I also determined the formula to see what your spirit to MP5 ratio is.
Spirit = S
X = % time in FSR (as a decimal, so 40% is 0.4)
H is how much spirit it takes to get 1 mana per tick (for priests it's 4)
Q is the amount of spirit continues to regen in the FSR. Priests with Meditation have .15 for example. Paladins would have 0.
The formula is: S = (0.4*H)/(1 - (1 - Q)X).
For a priest with meditation, the numbers are S = (0.4*4)/(1 - (1 -.15)X)
When you plug in my value of X (.6) you get your spirit to mana per 5 ratio. Mine is around 3.25 spirit per mana per 5.
This means that given the choice between 13 Spirit and 4 mana per 5, it wouldn't matter.
HOWEVER
This doesn't account for extra Spirit from talents, like the 5% extra to spirit with Spirit of Redemption, or the 15% extra for tree druids.
This doesn't account for bonuses based on Spirit, like the +10% damage and healing with Imp Prayer of Spirit.
This doesn't account for abilities that regen mana based on spirit like Innervate, Evocate, Aura of the Blue Dragon, and many others.
So use this as a tool, not an algorithm.
However, I did use it to determine that 9 healing and 2 mana per 5 gems are better than the corresponding 9 healing and 4 spirit gems. Also I'll be looking at the 15 spirit to chest vs. the 6 mana per 5 to chest enchant very closely in the future.
Just as a note, Regenfu also tells you in a given fight what your Int to MP5 ratio should be, based on the length of the fight. This calculation is easy. For every 5 seconds a fight goes on, 1 MP5 is worth 1/15th of an Int. So in a fight that lasts 75 seconds, 1 Int is worth 1 mana per 5. Another useful tool, more so for DPS casters than healers.
Spirit = S
X = % time in FSR (as a decimal, so 40% is 0.4)
H is how much spirit it takes to get 1 mana per tick (for priests it's 4)
Q is the amount of spirit continues to regen in the FSR. Priests with Meditation have .15 for example. Paladins would have 0.
The formula is: S = (0.4*H)/(1 - (1 - Q)X).
For a priest with meditation, the numbers are S = (0.4*4)/(1 - (1 -.15)X)
When you plug in my value of X (.6) you get your spirit to mana per 5 ratio. Mine is around 3.25 spirit per mana per 5.
This means that given the choice between 13 Spirit and 4 mana per 5, it wouldn't matter.
HOWEVER
This doesn't account for extra Spirit from talents, like the 5% extra to spirit with Spirit of Redemption, or the 15% extra for tree druids.
This doesn't account for bonuses based on Spirit, like the +10% damage and healing with Imp Prayer of Spirit.
This doesn't account for abilities that regen mana based on spirit like Innervate, Evocate, Aura of the Blue Dragon, and many others.
So use this as a tool, not an algorithm.
However, I did use it to determine that 9 healing and 2 mana per 5 gems are better than the corresponding 9 healing and 4 spirit gems. Also I'll be looking at the 15 spirit to chest vs. the 6 mana per 5 to chest enchant very closely in the future.
Just as a note, Regenfu also tells you in a given fight what your Int to MP5 ratio should be, based on the length of the fight. This calculation is easy. For every 5 seconds a fight goes on, 1 MP5 is worth 1/15th of an Int. So in a fight that lasts 75 seconds, 1 Int is worth 1 mana per 5. Another useful tool, more so for DPS casters than healers.
Groupmates
Well, last night I ran 3 instances. Heroic Steamvaults, normal Shadowlabs, and the first boss of Shadowlabs again (I count this as a separate instance, you'll see why in a minute.)
Not only did I get the Pontifax Kilt to drop (epic leggings in Steamvaults), I also snagged the Bishop's Cloak with 25 of my Badges of Justice. This means that the only items I have that aren't epics are my necklace, my wand, my chestpiece, one of my rings, and both trinkets (one is epic 60, the other I probably wouldn't replace with anything epic even.) So I'm laying in bed thinking about how lucky I am, when I thought back to the night's runs. Let me review them again with you.
Heroic Steamvaults was with Rubix (mage), Nermal (moonkin druid), Wynri (warrior), and Proteus (feral druid). All of these people have really good gear, mostly from Karazhan and other assorted things. You can check on armory if you don't believe me. Other than wiping twice on the same pull, we one shotted each of the bosses handily (I say handily, but we got lucky on that first boss a little.)
Normal Shadowlabs was with Proteus, Rubix, Jerrik (rogue), and Jhalyn (hunter). Jerrik and Jhalyn raided MC with us back at level 60, and are looking for their key for Karazhan. They have a mix of greens and quest item blues for their gear. Thankfully, the dagger from Murmur dropped for Jerrik...congrats Jerrik! Anyway, I felt that this instance was significantly harder than heroic Steamvaults. Why? Possibly because Jerrik and Jhalyn have been away from their characters for a while. But I think a lot of it was gear related.
This brings me to my last run. Proteus needed 141 rep with Lower City to be revered. So I decided to run down there, along with Xytras, a rogue from the guild, to kill some trash mobs. It was so easy, that we ended up clearing to the first boss and taking him down. The only reason we wiped twice was because the pathing on one of the felguard-looking things got stuck, and we had no choice but to pull him along with the 3 humanoids. First time we got the felguard down to 26% before we wiped. Second time, we got 2 humanoids down first, and then the third time was cake again. The boss took a little longer, but was incredibly easy.
What do all of these runs have in common? You can do anything with a combination of skill and gear. I personally feel that almost all of my guildmates have great skill. They know how to play their classes. However, some of them just don't have the gear yet.
It's made me think a little bit. Usually when I'm running an heroic instance, I'll grab Wynri to tank because he has great gear. How does that help anything? He already has amazing gear. Why not grab a tank who has decent gear to help him gear up? I really need to start impressing this on people. We won't get Gruul down unless we have 25 well geared people...not 10 amazingly geared people and 15 mediocre-geared people. It just doesn't work that way. From this point on, other than always trying to make room for my friends in RL, I'm gonna try to include the people who have never done a heroic and the people who could benefit most from the gear. (Look at me being all admirable and stuff)
Just as a quick note, I apparently spend around 60% of my time in the FSR. It's been pretty consistant throughout most of my runs. I want to try to get this number a little lower...50% I could accept. I'll be working a little harder on that.
Not only did I get the Pontifax Kilt to drop (epic leggings in Steamvaults), I also snagged the Bishop's Cloak with 25 of my Badges of Justice. This means that the only items I have that aren't epics are my necklace, my wand, my chestpiece, one of my rings, and both trinkets (one is epic 60, the other I probably wouldn't replace with anything epic even.) So I'm laying in bed thinking about how lucky I am, when I thought back to the night's runs. Let me review them again with you.
Heroic Steamvaults was with Rubix (mage), Nermal (moonkin druid), Wynri (warrior), and Proteus (feral druid). All of these people have really good gear, mostly from Karazhan and other assorted things. You can check on armory if you don't believe me. Other than wiping twice on the same pull, we one shotted each of the bosses handily (I say handily, but we got lucky on that first boss a little.)
Normal Shadowlabs was with Proteus, Rubix, Jerrik (rogue), and Jhalyn (hunter). Jerrik and Jhalyn raided MC with us back at level 60, and are looking for their key for Karazhan. They have a mix of greens and quest item blues for their gear. Thankfully, the dagger from Murmur dropped for Jerrik...congrats Jerrik! Anyway, I felt that this instance was significantly harder than heroic Steamvaults. Why? Possibly because Jerrik and Jhalyn have been away from their characters for a while. But I think a lot of it was gear related.
This brings me to my last run. Proteus needed 141 rep with Lower City to be revered. So I decided to run down there, along with Xytras, a rogue from the guild, to kill some trash mobs. It was so easy, that we ended up clearing to the first boss and taking him down. The only reason we wiped twice was because the pathing on one of the felguard-looking things got stuck, and we had no choice but to pull him along with the 3 humanoids. First time we got the felguard down to 26% before we wiped. Second time, we got 2 humanoids down first, and then the third time was cake again. The boss took a little longer, but was incredibly easy.
What do all of these runs have in common? You can do anything with a combination of skill and gear. I personally feel that almost all of my guildmates have great skill. They know how to play their classes. However, some of them just don't have the gear yet.
It's made me think a little bit. Usually when I'm running an heroic instance, I'll grab Wynri to tank because he has great gear. How does that help anything? He already has amazing gear. Why not grab a tank who has decent gear to help him gear up? I really need to start impressing this on people. We won't get Gruul down unless we have 25 well geared people...not 10 amazingly geared people and 15 mediocre-geared people. It just doesn't work that way. From this point on, other than always trying to make room for my friends in RL, I'm gonna try to include the people who have never done a heroic and the people who could benefit most from the gear. (Look at me being all admirable and stuff)
Just as a quick note, I apparently spend around 60% of my time in the FSR. It's been pretty consistant throughout most of my runs. I want to try to get this number a little lower...50% I could accept. I'll be working a little harder on that.
Friday, June 1, 2007
"Sunder Armor is for Nubs"
True fact, this is what I heard from the warrior last night in Heroic Sethekk Halls. Let me walk you through how this came to be.
I've done heroic Sethekk Halls before, and quite successfully. I have had very few complaints about any of the groups that I've been in there with. However, I inspected the tank's gear before the run, and he had epic weapon and shield, and lots of blues and greens. I was ready for awfulness.
After the first few pulls or so, I realized that he was not only tanking guys extremely well, but he was also taking very little damage. During the Ravenguard pulls, he tanked both without agro problems, taking low enough damage that I with the shadow priest's HOTs was able to heal him through it. I was thinking to myself at this point...."WTF is going on here? Is this guy cheating?"
So Rubix the mage noticed that he wasn't using sunder armor either. So I asked him how he was managing to hold agro, because I noticed that he wasn't using Sunder Armor. And his response was "Sunder Armor is for noobs." My jaw hit the floor.
He said that Sunder Armor doesn't scale with gear, which is true. So I asked him what he uses. He said he uses Shield Slam, Revenge, and Heroic Strike primarily to hold agro, and Thunderclap for AOE tanking. Mind you, he did one of the best AOE warrior tanking jobs I've ever seen, because Rubix told me "I don't think I could pull agro if I tried."
It got me to looking around, and I found this really good site about warrior tanking. I would recommend it to any warrior, because it's some really good information.
PS: This is the warrior's spec. I'd use his name but I don't want to embarrass him, since he is still wearing greens :-P. Some keynotes: he has Imp Thunderclap, but not Improved Sunder Armor or Improved Heroic Strike. Very interesting indeed.
PSS: He does use Sunder Armor, just doesn't spam it. I'm sure he spams it on bosses to get Devastate maxed out, but for trash mobs, it amazed me to learn how much better Shield Slam actually is.
I've done heroic Sethekk Halls before, and quite successfully. I have had very few complaints about any of the groups that I've been in there with. However, I inspected the tank's gear before the run, and he had epic weapon and shield, and lots of blues and greens. I was ready for awfulness.
After the first few pulls or so, I realized that he was not only tanking guys extremely well, but he was also taking very little damage. During the Ravenguard pulls, he tanked both without agro problems, taking low enough damage that I with the shadow priest's HOTs was able to heal him through it. I was thinking to myself at this point...."WTF is going on here? Is this guy cheating?"
So Rubix the mage noticed that he wasn't using sunder armor either. So I asked him how he was managing to hold agro, because I noticed that he wasn't using Sunder Armor. And his response was "Sunder Armor is for noobs." My jaw hit the floor.
He said that Sunder Armor doesn't scale with gear, which is true. So I asked him what he uses. He said he uses Shield Slam, Revenge, and Heroic Strike primarily to hold agro, and Thunderclap for AOE tanking. Mind you, he did one of the best AOE warrior tanking jobs I've ever seen, because Rubix told me "I don't think I could pull agro if I tried."
It got me to looking around, and I found this really good site about warrior tanking. I would recommend it to any warrior, because it's some really good information.
PS: This is the warrior's spec. I'd use his name but I don't want to embarrass him, since he is still wearing greens :-P. Some keynotes: he has Imp Thunderclap, but not Improved Sunder Armor or Improved Heroic Strike. Very interesting indeed.
PSS: He does use Sunder Armor, just doesn't spam it. I'm sure he spams it on bosses to get Devastate maxed out, but for trash mobs, it amazed me to learn how much better Shield Slam actually is.
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