So, while deliberating the ins and outs of paladin healing this week with my guildies (mostly, my paladin partner in crime, Siha) we came to a bit of a realisation: I was mana potting, she was conc potting.
What exactly is the difference?
Mana pots give you a one shot 10k (approx) hit of mana.
Conc pots mean you stay put for up to 10s and gain back up to 22K mana (more if you are an alchemist - which I am not, so I dont know the details of the buff there).
Here is a bit of an analysis I popped on our forums trying to figure out which was better (slightly edited for a couple of errors I made and were pointed out to me):
--
So, 10s of silence with a concentation pot gives a guaranteed 22k mana. But you cant do anything else. For 10s.
vs
A mana pot (quick 10k) plus hitting the boss. Seems like the proc rate of insight is about 30-40% per successful melee hit giving around 937 mana, with a judgement doing about 3.5k, but also leaving you free to heal or do other things.
So in 10s a mana pot (10k instant) plus 2 judges (7k) plus 5 (ish) hits with a proc rate of about 2 of them returning mana puts you about 2 k behind a conc potion, without having to be immobile for 10s (ie you can WoG or HS or anything else at the same time)
Thoughts?
I think it is situational. Clearly, Magmaw favours conc pots (probably bracketed by judgements to maximise regen) but I suspect other fights might favour the mana pot.
--
Siha added that coinciding DP with a conc pot would really throw you back up in the mana stakes, and I said while that is a good idea, (I mean it really IS a good idea, and one of which I should have thought), it didn't change the math because both mana pots and conc pots could be coincided with DP.
So people - what have you experienced? When is it a good time to mana pot? when is it good to conc pot?
Showing posts with label Holy Paladin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Holy Paladin. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
One boss in BWD gawn
So, we killed magmaw on our first 10man adventure into raiding on wednesday night. In typical raiding style, it went down on the last pull of the night!
I drew a lot of conclusions from that raid, and I need to do a couple more before I write up some advice on how to kill magmaw (there are a couple of very straight forward things you need to do to win) but also, on holy paladin healing. There were two of us in the raid - and we are both very competent pally healers, with VERY different styles. Looking at the recount summaries made me guffaw in amusement. The other holy pally was using Divine Light as her go to spell, and pumping out the HPS. She probably has a good 8-10 gear points on me. Me? Well, I was using every trick in the book to squeeze as much as I could out of what I had! I used literally everything, except Light of Dawn, which I am not a fan of as a spell.
Today, I am hoping to go through the parses and see how much mana I generated compared to the other holy pally, and see if that is where I was lacking. I strongly suspect it is. I was experimenting with flasks and food, and I was trying the int flasks - I suspect until my gear picks up, I might need the spirit flask.
Here's a screen shot of the kill attempt and my spell usage (Yes I know they don't fit on my actual blog, just click them and they will take you to a page with just the image. RSS feed readers... you will have no idea what I am talking about!)
As you can see, I was very evenly using every trick at my disposal. I was keeping shock on CD as much as I could (which, honestly, probably wasn't enough). Here is the other holy pally:
As you can see, she was pumping out the DLs hard as her go to spell. I simply do not have the mana, or regen to keep that up as much as she did.
Then the money shot - why I need to up my spirit:
Guess where Brang ran short on mana completely and utterly and was running on fumes? Yes, I was the light pink line. This really rams home to me that my attribute distribution on my gear is not ideal, and I am a bit short when it comes to being 10man raid ready. Not a LOT short, just a little bit.
Remember that list I put up a couple of weeks a go with the self gearing information? Yeah, well I'm still wearing that list. It's not the best list, but as you can see above, it is really just about raid ready, or at least very close to it. I am near to replacing my crafted helm with the JP badge helm and that might make a bit of difference for monday, we will see! Unfortunately, I don't have another holy pally to compare myself to in that raid.
But, I think I acquitted myself quite well, I kept pace on the whole, considering my gear level. I didn't die too much, I didn't stand in the fire, and on the whole, the tanks didn't get omnomnomed to death.
Monday will be another raid instance, so we will see how that goes! I will chat to our kiters of adds for magmaw and see if I can get a good understanding of how they controlled the adds successfully (as toward the end of the night, they really had those adds under control) Then I will write up a NERD guide to 10man magmaw.
I drew a lot of conclusions from that raid, and I need to do a couple more before I write up some advice on how to kill magmaw (there are a couple of very straight forward things you need to do to win) but also, on holy paladin healing. There were two of us in the raid - and we are both very competent pally healers, with VERY different styles. Looking at the recount summaries made me guffaw in amusement. The other holy pally was using Divine Light as her go to spell, and pumping out the HPS. She probably has a good 8-10 gear points on me. Me? Well, I was using every trick in the book to squeeze as much as I could out of what I had! I used literally everything, except Light of Dawn, which I am not a fan of as a spell.
Today, I am hoping to go through the parses and see how much mana I generated compared to the other holy pally, and see if that is where I was lacking. I strongly suspect it is. I was experimenting with flasks and food, and I was trying the int flasks - I suspect until my gear picks up, I might need the spirit flask.
Here's a screen shot of the kill attempt and my spell usage (Yes I know they don't fit on my actual blog, just click them and they will take you to a page with just the image. RSS feed readers... you will have no idea what I am talking about!)
As you can see, I was very evenly using every trick at my disposal. I was keeping shock on CD as much as I could (which, honestly, probably wasn't enough). Here is the other holy pally:
Then the money shot - why I need to up my spirit:
Remember that list I put up a couple of weeks a go with the self gearing information? Yeah, well I'm still wearing that list. It's not the best list, but as you can see above, it is really just about raid ready, or at least very close to it. I am near to replacing my crafted helm with the JP badge helm and that might make a bit of difference for monday, we will see! Unfortunately, I don't have another holy pally to compare myself to in that raid.
But, I think I acquitted myself quite well, I kept pace on the whole, considering my gear level. I didn't die too much, I didn't stand in the fire, and on the whole, the tanks didn't get omnomnomed to death.
Monday will be another raid instance, so we will see how that goes! I will chat to our kiters of adds for magmaw and see if I can get a good understanding of how they controlled the adds successfully (as toward the end of the night, they really had those adds under control) Then I will write up a NERD guide to 10man magmaw.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Getting ready for Heroics (and raiding to some extent) as holy with minimal luck
Since I have had little to no time for heroics (and every time I do, it takes upwards of 2 hours because there are always a few of us learning what is going on as I always go as a guild group), and RNG has been less than kind to me with regards holy gear, I have had to work on getting my gear sorted out very much on my own.
Shopping list:
About 2500 JP, about 5000 if you want to buy a helm instead of the crafted one. Rep grinding to exalted Earthen Ring and Therazane, Honored with Ramaken by quest levelling and wearing a tabard. Bad RNG in heroic drops. About 5-10k gold to use. A herber alt. JC as a profession.
So this is what I have done thus far:
Helm - get the Stormforged Helm created by a guildie. You can buy a helm with JPs which is better, but as you will see later, I spent my JPs on another item to cover off other, larger upgrades.
Neck - Pendant of Elemental Balance (Earthen Ring Honored)
Shoulders - Twilight-Heart Shoulderplates (Quest Reward, Traitor's Bait, Horde side, unsure of alliance equivalent in Twilight Highlands)
Back - Cloak of Ancient Wisdom (earthen ring revered)
Chest - Peacemaker's Breastplate (Earthen Ring Revered)
Wrists - Good bloody question. Still researching my options there, and waiting for RNG to strike in Grim Batol for Bracers of Umbral Mending off Erudax
Gloves - Gloves of Curious Conscience (1650 JP)
Belt - Expensive (truegold is owie), Light Elementium Belt (crafted Epic, needs 4 hardened Elementium bars, 3 Truegold, 2 Chaos Orbs)
Legs - My second piece of luck - Greaves of the Misguided (Heroic Shadowfang Keep, Lord Godfrey)
Feet - Drystone Greaves (Ramaken - honored)
Ring - Diamant's Ring of Temperance (Therazane - revered)
Ring - Ammunae's Blessing (Ramaken - Honored)
Trinket - Figurine - Dream Owl (JC)
Trinket - Figurine - Jeweled Serpent (JC)
Mace - A bit of luck! Scepter of Power (Heroic Halls of Origination, Setesh)
Shield - Shield of the Mists (950 JP)
Relic - Tattooed Eyeball (Inscription) This is where you will need your herber. The ink is hideously expensive, and it takes about one stack of cataclysm herbs per ink. If you have the money, GREAT! If not, get herbing!
It's not the BEST list of items, but it is a very fast way of getting mostly ready to kick arse and take names in heroics at least. I suspect, it might even scrape you into almost ready for raiding with an understanding guild.
So, in the last 4 days, that is what I have done. Gone from 277 and 264 items and a lot of quest greens, and done the above. I hope to heal my first heroic some time this weekend (My ret gear has been far outstripping my holy gear in luck and drops and so I have been DPSing all my heroics I have been doing) so will be able to put all this to the test!
Shopping list:
About 2500 JP, about 5000 if you want to buy a helm instead of the crafted one. Rep grinding to exalted Earthen Ring and Therazane, Honored with Ramaken by quest levelling and wearing a tabard. Bad RNG in heroic drops. About 5-10k gold to use. A herber alt. JC as a profession.
So this is what I have done thus far:
Helm - get the Stormforged Helm created by a guildie. You can buy a helm with JPs which is better, but as you will see later, I spent my JPs on another item to cover off other, larger upgrades.
Neck - Pendant of Elemental Balance (Earthen Ring Honored)
Shoulders - Twilight-Heart Shoulderplates (Quest Reward, Traitor's Bait, Horde side, unsure of alliance equivalent in Twilight Highlands)
Back - Cloak of Ancient Wisdom (earthen ring revered)
Chest - Peacemaker's Breastplate (Earthen Ring Revered)
Wrists - Good bloody question. Still researching my options there, and waiting for RNG to strike in Grim Batol for Bracers of Umbral Mending off Erudax
Gloves - Gloves of Curious Conscience (1650 JP)
Belt - Expensive (truegold is owie), Light Elementium Belt (crafted Epic, needs 4 hardened Elementium bars, 3 Truegold, 2 Chaos Orbs)
Legs - My second piece of luck - Greaves of the Misguided (Heroic Shadowfang Keep, Lord Godfrey)
Feet - Drystone Greaves (Ramaken - honored)
Ring - Diamant's Ring of Temperance (Therazane - revered)
Ring - Ammunae's Blessing (Ramaken - Honored)
Trinket - Figurine - Dream Owl (JC)
Trinket - Figurine - Jeweled Serpent (JC)
Mace - A bit of luck! Scepter of Power (Heroic Halls of Origination, Setesh)
Shield - Shield of the Mists (950 JP)
Relic - Tattooed Eyeball (Inscription) This is where you will need your herber. The ink is hideously expensive, and it takes about one stack of cataclysm herbs per ink. If you have the money, GREAT! If not, get herbing!
It's not the BEST list of items, but it is a very fast way of getting mostly ready to kick arse and take names in heroics at least. I suspect, it might even scrape you into almost ready for raiding with an understanding guild.
So, in the last 4 days, that is what I have done. Gone from 277 and 264 items and a lot of quest greens, and done the above. I hope to heal my first heroic some time this weekend (My ret gear has been far outstripping my holy gear in luck and drops and so I have been DPSing all my heroics I have been doing) so will be able to put all this to the test!
Monday, December 20, 2010
The Cataclysm levelling experience so far
Well, I wanted to post this a week ago, but it seems Life and Work have smacked me around the head a lot, and I have had minimal time to log on recently. I am currently half way through 84.
Previous expansions (including vanilla) I charged to the level cap, and was assisted to get as much XP as possible to get to endgame as fast as possible. As I get older, more cynical and with more alts, I am finding I want to actually level this time. I want to experience the story of the Naga, of consorting with ancients, or really smelling what uldum smells like.
I have completely finished Hyjal, and I loved the epic feel to it. I felt important, I felt like I was making a difference. Pity we had to go undercover again, I felt they ruined that section of the story with the pre-events. But apart from that, the Hyjal story line was engaging, the questing was useful (if there were "go get me 6 of these" it was clear that they had a reason). I was tricked, duped, sent up trees to save baby bears, used, abused, stuck on hippogriffs and dragons, had molten bore jokes thrust in my face and so on and so forth.
Vash'ir wasn't the amazing experience it was sold to me as. I found the quest tricks annoying rather than engaging (to the point that I spent over 45 mins trying to figure out why my seahorse kept despawning, only to discover it was my vanity pet after about 30 attempts, then to have arrows shown on my screen and have my action bar mod fail so I spent another large amount of time screaming and wondering why hitting the REAL arrow keys wasn't working... yeah, not a happy camper). I also gave up on the zone about 2/3 of the way through it. The story was LONG, the quests not engaging (the only really interesting thing was the naga phasing story) and I wanted to get levelling. So Vash'ir went bye bye.
I skipped deepholme and went to Uldum. Now, I had heard mixed reviews of uldum, that it was not linear, the quests were terrible, the cut scenes were annoying and so on and so forth. However, I am finding the quests interesting, the cut scenes FUN! and the xp very nice. I'm only half way through Uldum, but I hope to finish it as I hit 85.
I think this is the longest time it has taken me to hit level cap ever. Someone give me some of their spare time please? I am missing mine. I won't get to log on for at least another 2 days either. Yeesh, talk about getting the twitches.
And my poor guild needs recruiting and some love, MMOLeader needs some of my attention and my blog here needs some time too.
I have some opinions on Holy Pally healing as well, but given the state of flux the class/spec seems to be in at the moment, I might wait until it settles. Suffice it to say that holy light is still your go to spell, with the odd flash, shock on CD, and get in there and hit those mobs. No matter what anyone says, a free heal is a free heal, use those Holy Power points!
Previous expansions (including vanilla) I charged to the level cap, and was assisted to get as much XP as possible to get to endgame as fast as possible. As I get older, more cynical and with more alts, I am finding I want to actually level this time. I want to experience the story of the Naga, of consorting with ancients, or really smelling what uldum smells like.
I have completely finished Hyjal, and I loved the epic feel to it. I felt important, I felt like I was making a difference. Pity we had to go undercover again, I felt they ruined that section of the story with the pre-events. But apart from that, the Hyjal story line was engaging, the questing was useful (if there were "go get me 6 of these" it was clear that they had a reason). I was tricked, duped, sent up trees to save baby bears, used, abused, stuck on hippogriffs and dragons, had molten bore jokes thrust in my face and so on and so forth.
Vash'ir wasn't the amazing experience it was sold to me as. I found the quest tricks annoying rather than engaging (to the point that I spent over 45 mins trying to figure out why my seahorse kept despawning, only to discover it was my vanity pet after about 30 attempts, then to have arrows shown on my screen and have my action bar mod fail so I spent another large amount of time screaming and wondering why hitting the REAL arrow keys wasn't working... yeah, not a happy camper). I also gave up on the zone about 2/3 of the way through it. The story was LONG, the quests not engaging (the only really interesting thing was the naga phasing story) and I wanted to get levelling. So Vash'ir went bye bye.
I skipped deepholme and went to Uldum. Now, I had heard mixed reviews of uldum, that it was not linear, the quests were terrible, the cut scenes were annoying and so on and so forth. However, I am finding the quests interesting, the cut scenes FUN! and the xp very nice. I'm only half way through Uldum, but I hope to finish it as I hit 85.
I think this is the longest time it has taken me to hit level cap ever. Someone give me some of their spare time please? I am missing mine. I won't get to log on for at least another 2 days either. Yeesh, talk about getting the twitches.
And my poor guild needs recruiting and some love, MMOLeader needs some of my attention and my blog here needs some time too.
I have some opinions on Holy Pally healing as well, but given the state of flux the class/spec seems to be in at the moment, I might wait until it settles. Suffice it to say that holy light is still your go to spell, with the odd flash, shock on CD, and get in there and hit those mobs. No matter what anyone says, a free heal is a free heal, use those Holy Power points!
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Holy Rogues be BUFFED!
30% across the board in the beta build and Bacon up from 1 minute to 5 minutes.
And mastery buffed as well. We might be viable again in Cata! WHEE!
And mastery buffed as well. We might be viable again in Cata! WHEE!
* Holy Radiance's effectiveness now diminish on targets farther than x yards away.
* Divine Light base healing has been increased by 30%. From 8538-9512 to 11100-12366
* Holy Wrath now scales from 61% of SpellPower, up from 30%. Base damage reduced by 22%, from 3122 to 2435.
* Exorcism now scales from 34.4% of SpellPower or AP, up from 15%. Base damage increased by 15% from 2343 to 2741.
* Flash of Light base healing has been increased by 30%. From 5313-5961 to 6907-7750.
* Lay on Hands no longer restores mana.
* Holy Light base healing has been increased by 30%. From 3202-3567 to 4162-4637.
* Beacon of Light now lasts 5 min, up from 1 min.
* Mastery: Illuminated Healing now absorbs 10% of the amount healed, up from 8%. Now lasts 8 sec, up from 6 sec. Each point of mastery increases the absorb amount by an additional 1.25%, up from 1%.
* Holy Shock base healing has been increased by 30%. From 3033-3285 to 3943-4271.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Holy Pally Co-efficients 4.0.0.1987
So, in a post over on The Bossy Pally, Ophelie was mucking around with spell coefficients for Holy Pallies. Now she has gone off to Blizzcon and left us all hanging with regards the patch adjustments. So, based on her math, here are the updates.
I have made a COUPLE of changes to what is going on - there seem to no longer be ranges on the tooltips for heals, just a straight number. So, I got my kit off in the middle of Dalaran in the name of science and came up with these numbers:
Nekkid (92 SP at level 80 - base values)
Light of Dawn -1687
Word - 1699 per charge
Holy Shock -1975
Divine Light -8499
Flash of Light -5319
Holy Light - 3187
Clothed (3416 SP at level 80)
Light of Dawn - 2296
Word - 2312 per charge
Holy Shock - 4047
Divine Light - 11566
Flash of Light - 7615
Holy Light - 4335
Coefficient = (Clothed heal - Nekkid Heal)/Clothed Spell Power
Light of Dawn - 0.18
Word - 0.18 per charge
Holy Shock - 0.31
Divine Light - 0.89
Flash of Light - 0.67
Holy Light - 0.33
Compared to the previous values:
Light of Dawn = MISSED
Word of Glory = 0.22
Holy Shock = 0.69
Divine Light = 1.04
Flash of Light = 0.77
Holy Light = 0.33
EEP check out holy shock! They really mucked around with that one!
I have linked the values on WoWhead so you can see what Ophie used (note these MIGHT get updated soon). Seems we have been dropped across the board - which is in line with the comments I am hearing that Paladins are over powered at 85. So, that's actually a good sign. I'd rather be tweaked with now, rather than later, that's for sure.
I have made a COUPLE of changes to what is going on - there seem to no longer be ranges on the tooltips for heals, just a straight number. So, I got my kit off in the middle of Dalaran in the name of science and came up with these numbers:
Nekkid (92 SP at level 80 - base values)
Light of Dawn -1687
Word - 1699 per charge
Holy Shock -1975
Divine Light -8499
Flash of Light -5319
Holy Light - 3187
Clothed (3416 SP at level 80)
Light of Dawn - 2296
Word - 2312 per charge
Holy Shock - 4047
Divine Light - 11566
Flash of Light - 7615
Holy Light - 4335
Coefficient = (Clothed heal - Nekkid Heal)/Clothed Spell Power
Light of Dawn - 0.18
Word - 0.18 per charge
Holy Shock - 0.31
Divine Light - 0.89
Flash of Light - 0.67
Holy Light - 0.33
Compared to the previous values:
Light of Dawn = MISSED
Word of Glory = 0.22
Holy Shock = 0.69
Divine Light = 1.04
Flash of Light = 0.77
Holy Light = 0.33
EEP check out holy shock! They really mucked around with that one!
I have linked the values on WoWhead so you can see what Ophie used (note these MIGHT get updated soon). Seems we have been dropped across the board - which is in line with the comments I am hearing that Paladins are over powered at 85. So, that's actually a good sign. I'd rather be tweaked with now, rather than later, that's for sure.
4.0.1 and initial Holy Pally reaction
So, I spent 2 hours patching then another 3 hours readjusting my UI and figuring out my spec (which I am still not happy with) and wondering what on earth is going on with glyphs. Oh man, I wish I were an inscriptor, they were raking in the money! RAKING IT IN.
But this is a holy pally post - a very bad, I haven't raided yet, wtfamIdoing post.
First of all, I would like to welcome my new Holy Rogue style of play to my keyboard. I can't tell you how immeasurably happy I am to have my 2 favourite classes smooshed together in such a way. I was leaping around my chair with excitement. It seems blizzard are finally pushing paladins back into melee. I never understood why Holy Paladins all stood at range to heal. It doesn't fit the lore, or the class. I was always in the thick of it, seal twisting depending on what I needed at the time, health or mana, and by doing that, allowing myself to use different stats to other paladins. I could value crit higher. Bring on the Combat Medic, I say. I am looking forward to raiding encounters in Cata which will allow this to happen.
I am going to ignore anything about spec and glyphs for the moment. I am not convinced mine are right and I need to play a little to figure out what I think is useful in terms of spells before I tweak in any way yet. I expect to be spending some gold on respecs.
For reference, I have a spec something like this.
First of all what do we have to use as a holy pally now?
The very first thing I noticed was I have a lot less on my bars, but a lot more that I need to look at. I have moved from 1 bar under my feet with OHSHIT buttons and a GCD timer from quartz, to 2 bars and a holy power meter and quartz to manage everything I feel I need to watch constantly.
It seems things are now grouped into 3 catagories for healing.
Heals
Holy Shock - This seems to be our bread and butter heal. I keep it on CoolDown (CD) at all times. It was reasonably cheap and generates Holy Power (HP). If it is not on CD, why not? As far as I seem to play, it is always on cooldown.
Word of Glory - This is a free heal. Again, if you have HP and it is not on CD, why is it not on CD? Use it at every opportunity you have, generally on the tank, but really whatever needs it. 3 HPs mean the heal gets up to 5k.
Divine Light - This is our heavy hitting heal. Seems to me to be a little underpowered for the mana cost at the moment. I am sure this will get balanced out at 85 as we scale up. For the moment, use sparingly and only in emergencies.
Flash of Light - Ok, so this is our upside down heal. What used to be a quick small cheap heal is now a quick EXPENSIVE middling heal. Bigger than holy light. I seem to be using this a lot in heroics, its fast and fights dont last long enough for me to run out of mana.
Lay On Hands - This is unchanged from 3.x, but now the CD is 10mins base. Which is pretty much one per fight. Looks like every pally took the glyphs/talents to reduce the CD on this, so Blizz decided to just reduce the CD. Smart move.
Holy Light - What used to be the staple for healing is now probably going to gather dust till we hit 85. It is REALLY cheap now, like ludicrously so, but it heals like you are drinking water as a placebo. I suspect it is designed to be our average damage evener-outerer (the math design says that is the case).
Light of Dawn - This has a great graphic! The conal area of effect will take some getting used to, but this will be a great melee healing device. Wont work so well on ranged, they generally don't like standing in any position which will make this at all useful.
Beacon of Light -Despite the nerf, I found that bacon should be on the tank at all times regardless of anything else. We have so many more instant and free heals to throw around, that requiring this to be 100% I feel certainly would have been over powered. The HP talents that go with this make it even more attractive as it will generate a free heal for every 3 casts.
Seal of Insight - Go forth and be a combat medic. Hit shit the way Paladins were meant to! FINALLY! So happy about this change.
Holy Power Generation
Crusader Strike - Combat Medic strikes again. If you get a free cycle, throw up a crusader strike and generate HP. Hitting stuff is fun.
Judgement - old faithful. Use it when you can.
Holy Shock - Yep, should always be on CD and always generating HP for you.
Mana regeneration
Divine Plea - Seems this is pretty much unchanged from 3.x in terms of how and when you would use it (which is obviously, use early, use often)
Seal of Insight - Again with going in and being a combat medic, this seal regenerates not just health, but mana too.
UI changes?
We have a lot fewer spells to deal with now, but there are a lot more things to watch. All our spells are on odd cooldowns, and we need to keep track of HP to be sure to use Word as often as we can. I came up with a bit of an odd idea - I have a mostly opaque bar under my toon's feet with all my heals on it, behind that I used a mod (in this case, IceHud) to place the holy power bar behind that, so I could see at a glance which of my heals were ready to use, and how much HP I currently had.
However, I have now decided that is a terrible idea and simple have a counter next to that healing bar instead.
So, that's my initial reaction to what we now have to play with. I have some idea of how to use it now, but really, I have a nasty feeling that our gimpedness now will not be an issue at 85. We are in pre-cata patch testing... the talents and abilities we have now are not designed to be ready for 80. They are designed for 85 raiding. So, if you feel your incapable of being useful in heroic LK, have a break! Don't cry and say that your class is broken and you are going to reroll, and blizzard doesn't love you and all that other QQ I am seeing at the moment. I cant recommend more that you play an alt and go see what HEALING TALENTS classes have in their trees now. Judgement of Light might be gone, but it has been absorbed as talents in just about every talent tree I have looked at. Little things like that. Go see what syngergies are out there now for you. Yeah, so you will have less HPS on the healing meters, SO WHAT? As long as your targets stay alive and the boss dies, does it matter if you are at the top or the bottom of the meters?
Go play an alt. Go play the auction house. Have a break! You have earned it.
But this is a holy pally post - a very bad, I haven't raided yet, wtfamIdoing post.
First of all, I would like to welcome my new Holy Rogue style of play to my keyboard. I can't tell you how immeasurably happy I am to have my 2 favourite classes smooshed together in such a way. I was leaping around my chair with excitement. It seems blizzard are finally pushing paladins back into melee. I never understood why Holy Paladins all stood at range to heal. It doesn't fit the lore, or the class. I was always in the thick of it, seal twisting depending on what I needed at the time, health or mana, and by doing that, allowing myself to use different stats to other paladins. I could value crit higher. Bring on the Combat Medic, I say. I am looking forward to raiding encounters in Cata which will allow this to happen.
I am going to ignore anything about spec and glyphs for the moment. I am not convinced mine are right and I need to play a little to figure out what I think is useful in terms of spells before I tweak in any way yet. I expect to be spending some gold on respecs.
For reference, I have a spec something like this.
First of all what do we have to use as a holy pally now?
The very first thing I noticed was I have a lot less on my bars, but a lot more that I need to look at. I have moved from 1 bar under my feet with OHSHIT buttons and a GCD timer from quartz, to 2 bars and a holy power meter and quartz to manage everything I feel I need to watch constantly.
It seems things are now grouped into 3 catagories for healing.
Heals
Holy Shock - This seems to be our bread and butter heal. I keep it on CoolDown (CD) at all times. It was reasonably cheap and generates Holy Power (HP). If it is not on CD, why not? As far as I seem to play, it is always on cooldown.
Word of Glory - This is a free heal. Again, if you have HP and it is not on CD, why is it not on CD? Use it at every opportunity you have, generally on the tank, but really whatever needs it. 3 HPs mean the heal gets up to 5k.
Divine Light - This is our heavy hitting heal. Seems to me to be a little underpowered for the mana cost at the moment. I am sure this will get balanced out at 85 as we scale up. For the moment, use sparingly and only in emergencies.
Flash of Light - Ok, so this is our upside down heal. What used to be a quick small cheap heal is now a quick EXPENSIVE middling heal. Bigger than holy light. I seem to be using this a lot in heroics, its fast and fights dont last long enough for me to run out of mana.
Lay On Hands - This is unchanged from 3.x, but now the CD is 10mins base. Which is pretty much one per fight. Looks like every pally took the glyphs/talents to reduce the CD on this, so Blizz decided to just reduce the CD. Smart move.
Holy Light - What used to be the staple for healing is now probably going to gather dust till we hit 85. It is REALLY cheap now, like ludicrously so, but it heals like you are drinking water as a placebo. I suspect it is designed to be our average damage evener-outerer (the math design says that is the case).
Light of Dawn - This has a great graphic! The conal area of effect will take some getting used to, but this will be a great melee healing device. Wont work so well on ranged, they generally don't like standing in any position which will make this at all useful.
Beacon of Light -Despite the nerf, I found that bacon should be on the tank at all times regardless of anything else. We have so many more instant and free heals to throw around, that requiring this to be 100% I feel certainly would have been over powered. The HP talents that go with this make it even more attractive as it will generate a free heal for every 3 casts.
Seal of Insight - Go forth and be a combat medic. Hit shit the way Paladins were meant to! FINALLY! So happy about this change.
Holy Power Generation
Crusader Strike - Combat Medic strikes again. If you get a free cycle, throw up a crusader strike and generate HP. Hitting stuff is fun.
Judgement - old faithful. Use it when you can.
Holy Shock - Yep, should always be on CD and always generating HP for you.
Mana regeneration
Divine Plea - Seems this is pretty much unchanged from 3.x in terms of how and when you would use it (which is obviously, use early, use often)
Seal of Insight - Again with going in and being a combat medic, this seal regenerates not just health, but mana too.
UI changes?
We have a lot fewer spells to deal with now, but there are a lot more things to watch. All our spells are on odd cooldowns, and we need to keep track of HP to be sure to use Word as often as we can. I came up with a bit of an odd idea - I have a mostly opaque bar under my toon's feet with all my heals on it, behind that I used a mod (in this case, IceHud) to place the holy power bar behind that, so I could see at a glance which of my heals were ready to use, and how much HP I currently had.
However, I have now decided that is a terrible idea and simple have a counter next to that healing bar instead.
So, that's my initial reaction to what we now have to play with. I have some idea of how to use it now, but really, I have a nasty feeling that our gimpedness now will not be an issue at 85. We are in pre-cata patch testing... the talents and abilities we have now are not designed to be ready for 80. They are designed for 85 raiding. So, if you feel your incapable of being useful in heroic LK, have a break! Don't cry and say that your class is broken and you are going to reroll, and blizzard doesn't love you and all that other QQ I am seeing at the moment. I cant recommend more that you play an alt and go see what HEALING TALENTS classes have in their trees now. Judgement of Light might be gone, but it has been absorbed as talents in just about every talent tree I have looked at. Little things like that. Go see what syngergies are out there now for you. Yeah, so you will have less HPS on the healing meters, SO WHAT? As long as your targets stay alive and the boss dies, does it matter if you are at the top or the bottom of the meters?
Go play an alt. Go play the auction house. Have a break! You have earned it.
Monday, September 6, 2010
So, tell me about your mother....
Edit - I wrote this some time ago, but only just found it, unpublished, in my edit list. So, it seems fully formed as a post, why not post it! you can tell because I talk about pulling aggro in Ulduar, so this might be... a year old? I will edit the bits that need editing to make it relevant to now.
I was cruising the blogosphere and found that people have a bunch of questions about their primary tank/healer/dps toon. So, I figured why not do mine? I have not actually spoken to much about me and my history. It might pay to let you folks out there know a bit about me.
What is the name, class, and spec of your primary Healer?
If you are clever you can work out my name (there is enough info out there about me for the Watsons out there to figure it out). I play a holy paladin. I play on an oceanic realm, being from the antipodes. I run a guild. I am also quite insane.
I run this spec as holy. I gear specifically to run it. Which means I gem and enchant for int, and I preference haste/MP5 on gear and stats over crit. That said, I have nearly 1000 haste now yowser. I use the ilvl 200 libram and flasks of mojo. Yes, that libram is still the best damn holy pally libram in the game.
What is your usual healing environment?
25s baby! Preferably heroic and as fast as I can do it. I also really enjoy the 10man setting and I run in a 10man group on weekends. In short, I love team sports and I love overcoming challenges together in a group. [Edit - wow how time flies! Now I am running primarily 10s in a 10man guild]
What is your favorite encounter to heal, and why?
That's a very good question. I enjoy encounters where the heal stress is not high, and there are game mechanics involved that you need to complete to win. I think my fave WotLK encounters are Sarth25 3D, and yoggy. Yogg is just a beautifully balanced encounter, I feel. Sarth 3D has good raid awareness, stuff you have to do "other" than healing (ie using abilities, moving around, in and out of portals etc). [Edit - And guess what, this remains unchanged!]
What is your least favorite encounter to heal, and why?
Anything in TotGC. It is poorly designed, especially for healers. The tank spike damage is beyond ridiculous (for example RNG can kill a tank on Northrend beasts no matter how good you are in current gear if the planets align). Basically, I get into position, plant my feet and chain heal. BORING! Oh yeah, if I HAVE to move, there is a good change the tank will die or get gaspingly close to dead. And if I get killed? WOW. WIPE! I hate that pressure. [Edit - again, unhanged, ICC was a middling/average instance to me]
What do you think is the biggest strength of your class, and why?
Raw output. I love the changes to beacon of light, it has actually improved my game play enjoyment immensely. It also suits my preferred style of healing (which is emergency heals on DPS who stand in fires). With a mana pool that no longer fits in my pants and crit out the wazoo I rarely go oom and can pump out the numbers with the high haste rating I have somehow wrangled. I am not by any means well geared (I think I am 20th on my server atm... down from my usual position of the top 5) because, I dont need it. I simply dont need the gear to do the work I need to do. Which I think is a very good sign for things to come. Paladins are in a really good place right now, I feel. I hope blizz don't much it up.
and weakness?
I have one casting tree. Lock it, and I'm screwed. Also, I am very immobile as a healer. I plant my feet and I heal stuff.
Fire? WHAT FIRE? oh, hang on, that fire was a wipe mechanic *splat*
A whirlwinding mob? BAH! Oh that was HEROIC faction champions *splat*
What is your favorite thing about the class you chose for your primary Healer and why?
PLATE ARMOUR!!! Oh yeah. Loves me some plate! I also love the idea of paladins... combat casters. I always played my Holy pally as melee, and never understood why everyone else stood back and bitched about mana issues. Get in there and hit shit people! You are a Paladin of the Light!! Seal and Judge Wisdom kGO!
In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel is the best healing assignment for you?
Me heal tank.
Ugg.
What is your worst habit as a healer?
HAHAHAAAAA Hairy would say "pulling aggro on Steelbreaker wed night and getting one shot!", but I think my absolute worst habit is trying to do all the jobs at once. I simply try to do too much sometimes because I get bored. And sometimes tanks die. *whistles innocently*
What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?
Players who are not raid aware. Players who cannot understand mechanics. Players who argue stupid shit. Players who don't shut up and do what they are told - right or wrong - when told to do so by the RL. DPS who stand in fires.
I could go on.... Hang on, it asked for one pet peeve. People who stand in fires, that's my biggest pet peeve.
Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other tanks for PvE healing?
Yes. I really do. I love paladin healing, and it is really well placed at the moment in relation to other healing classes. I could say that of paladins in general at the moment. I think they are in a really great place, and I'm loving playing my paladin. Which is good, because I have lost time to play on my alts recently *pats unloved alts* I promise to play you soon guys!!
What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?
Are the tanks dead yes/no?
Is the boss dead yes/no?
If yes to both I did well. If no to either, meh - middling to good. If no to both I did badly.
I use livelogging into worldoflogs for analysis on the fly, and recount for a ballpark idea of how things are going. If anyone is doing too much healing on the tanks, then I am doing something wrong.
What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?
That we can do anything except buff, stand still and heal. Seriously, we don't do ANYTHING else so stop trying to make us, ok?
What do you think is the toughest thing for new players of your class to learn about healing?
Algebra. No really!
Pally healing is about predicting the rate of change of damage over time, and casting into the future to mitigate that. It is about learning the boss damage out put SO WELL that you can "feel" when things are going well, and going badly. You can "feel" when to cast a big heal, or when you can get away with flashing your tank *whee!* It is about algebra.
If someone were to evaluate your healing ability via tools like fraps, recount, and World of Logs, what tendencies would they notice?
I keyboard turn, except when I know I can't and I plan ahead to mouse turn.
Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
I addressed this earlier on. I stack int and haste/MP5. I spec for it, I gear for it, I LOVE IT! I have found that the Haste style of healing suits me, and I empirically find that I get better mana return and bang for my buck doing this. Your mileage may vary.
What healing class do you feel you understand least?
Druids. Hots do my head in.
Addons for healing?
Pally power
clique+raid frames (I use a combination of xperl and pitbull and vuhdu)
dominos (bar mod)
quartz (casting bar mod)
Pally bar mod thingy (it keeps track of your bubbles, judgements, bacon and hots and also other peoples bubbles)
I was cruising the blogosphere and found that people have a bunch of questions about their primary tank/healer/dps toon. So, I figured why not do mine? I have not actually spoken to much about me and my history. It might pay to let you folks out there know a bit about me.
What is the name, class, and spec of your primary Healer?
If you are clever you can work out my name (there is enough info out there about me for the Watsons out there to figure it out). I play a holy paladin. I play on an oceanic realm, being from the antipodes. I run a guild. I am also quite insane.
I run this spec as holy. I gear specifically to run it. Which means I gem and enchant for int, and I preference haste/MP5 on gear and stats over crit. That said, I have nearly 1000 haste now yowser. I use the ilvl 200 libram and flasks of mojo. Yes, that libram is still the best damn holy pally libram in the game.
What is your usual healing environment?
25s baby! Preferably heroic and as fast as I can do it. I also really enjoy the 10man setting and I run in a 10man group on weekends. In short, I love team sports and I love overcoming challenges together in a group. [Edit - wow how time flies! Now I am running primarily 10s in a 10man guild]
What is your favorite encounter to heal, and why?
That's a very good question. I enjoy encounters where the heal stress is not high, and there are game mechanics involved that you need to complete to win. I think my fave WotLK encounters are Sarth25 3D, and yoggy. Yogg is just a beautifully balanced encounter, I feel. Sarth 3D has good raid awareness, stuff you have to do "other" than healing (ie using abilities, moving around, in and out of portals etc). [Edit - And guess what, this remains unchanged!]
What is your least favorite encounter to heal, and why?
Anything in TotGC. It is poorly designed, especially for healers. The tank spike damage is beyond ridiculous (for example RNG can kill a tank on Northrend beasts no matter how good you are in current gear if the planets align). Basically, I get into position, plant my feet and chain heal. BORING! Oh yeah, if I HAVE to move, there is a good change the tank will die or get gaspingly close to dead. And if I get killed? WOW. WIPE! I hate that pressure. [Edit - again, unhanged, ICC was a middling/average instance to me]
What do you think is the biggest strength of your class, and why?
Raw output. I love the changes to beacon of light, it has actually improved my game play enjoyment immensely. It also suits my preferred style of healing (which is emergency heals on DPS who stand in fires). With a mana pool that no longer fits in my pants and crit out the wazoo I rarely go oom and can pump out the numbers with the high haste rating I have somehow wrangled. I am not by any means well geared (I think I am 20th on my server atm... down from my usual position of the top 5) because, I dont need it. I simply dont need the gear to do the work I need to do. Which I think is a very good sign for things to come. Paladins are in a really good place right now, I feel. I hope blizz don't much it up.
and weakness?
I have one casting tree. Lock it, and I'm screwed. Also, I am very immobile as a healer. I plant my feet and I heal stuff.
Fire? WHAT FIRE? oh, hang on, that fire was a wipe mechanic *splat*
A whirlwinding mob? BAH! Oh that was HEROIC faction champions *splat*
What is your favorite thing about the class you chose for your primary Healer and why?
PLATE ARMOUR!!! Oh yeah. Loves me some plate! I also love the idea of paladins... combat casters. I always played my Holy pally as melee, and never understood why everyone else stood back and bitched about mana issues. Get in there and hit shit people! You are a Paladin of the Light!! Seal and Judge Wisdom kGO!
In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel is the best healing assignment for you?
Me heal tank.
Ugg.
What is your worst habit as a healer?
HAHAHAAAAA Hairy would say "pulling aggro on Steelbreaker wed night and getting one shot!", but I think my absolute worst habit is trying to do all the jobs at once. I simply try to do too much sometimes because I get bored. And sometimes tanks die. *whistles innocently*
What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?
Players who are not raid aware. Players who cannot understand mechanics. Players who argue stupid shit. Players who don't shut up and do what they are told - right or wrong - when told to do so by the RL. DPS who stand in fires.
I could go on.... Hang on, it asked for one pet peeve. People who stand in fires, that's my biggest pet peeve.
Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other tanks for PvE healing?
Yes. I really do. I love paladin healing, and it is really well placed at the moment in relation to other healing classes. I could say that of paladins in general at the moment. I think they are in a really great place, and I'm loving playing my paladin. Which is good, because I have lost time to play on my alts recently *pats unloved alts* I promise to play you soon guys!!
What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?
Are the tanks dead yes/no?
Is the boss dead yes/no?
If yes to both I did well. If no to either, meh - middling to good. If no to both I did badly.
I use livelogging into worldoflogs for analysis on the fly, and recount for a ballpark idea of how things are going. If anyone is doing too much healing on the tanks, then I am doing something wrong.
What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?
That we can do anything except buff, stand still and heal. Seriously, we don't do ANYTHING else so stop trying to make us, ok?
What do you think is the toughest thing for new players of your class to learn about healing?
Algebra. No really!
Pally healing is about predicting the rate of change of damage over time, and casting into the future to mitigate that. It is about learning the boss damage out put SO WELL that you can "feel" when things are going well, and going badly. You can "feel" when to cast a big heal, or when you can get away with flashing your tank *whee!* It is about algebra.
If someone were to evaluate your healing ability via tools like fraps, recount, and World of Logs, what tendencies would they notice?
I keyboard turn, except when I know I can't and I plan ahead to mouse turn.
Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
I addressed this earlier on. I stack int and haste/MP5. I spec for it, I gear for it, I LOVE IT! I have found that the Haste style of healing suits me, and I empirically find that I get better mana return and bang for my buck doing this. Your mileage may vary.
What healing class do you feel you understand least?
Druids. Hots do my head in.
Addons for healing?
Pally power
clique+raid frames (I use a combination of xperl and pitbull and vuhdu)
dominos (bar mod)
quartz (casting bar mod)
Pally bar mod thingy (it keeps track of your bubbles, judgements, bacon and hots and also other peoples bubbles)
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
The importance of communication
Right about now, I would suspect that there is a lot of burnout and frustration in ICC progression raiding teams. There certainly is in mine. People making simple mistakes are causing massive explosions of arguments, and fingers are getting pointed. People taking breaks, recruiting people well behind the curve, necessarily dropping standards; this is all leading to a slight backwards step in progression.
This is frustrating.
As people are generally frustrated, they take it out on each other. Small arguments get blown out of proportion, and things start getting said to your face in not the most pleasant way. I was a victim of this last week.
For some reason, people think I am unapproachable - this could be because I a) talk back and b) require evidence of theorycrafting and the math to back it up. If a minor change is minor, don't expect me to toe the line if my personal preference is for something else. If you are going to tell me "You are wrong, you should be doing this" I will question you, I will ask for proof, I will not just take it on your word that you are right. So, don't sidle up to me and subtly try to change my mind. I don't take kindly to manipulation, mostly because I do a lot of manipulating myself and zomg icwotududther HAHA.
I am a unique and special snowflake as a holy paladin, and DON'T forget it.
For 4 years my healing style as a paladin was hybrid, as a GL, and healing leader, I was generally doing all the jobs and covering people's arses. I was paranoid about mana usage (still am) and my goal was to have the lowest % overheal I could possibly manage and still beat the boss or have my healing assignment still standing.
Now, new guild has a new way of doing things. Fine, I will try to fit in. I ask questions in the healing channel and get radio silence in response. I ask more questions, again nothing. In the end, I give up asking questions. I just keep the tanks alive in the method I have grown accustomed to - minimal mana usage, minimal overheal. I am not in the "healer group" in the raid, I am not getting innervates or mana tides benefits, I have to tank heal and manage myself solo. I am also not getting communication because all the healer communication was occurring in party chat in the "healer group".
OK, got that set up?
Now, fast forward to last week. I had an inkling that there was resentment towards me, to the point that I was about ready to quit raiding. I was sick of the snide half remarks and bollocks pointed at my healing style. Not a single person would outright talk to me about anything. It was all "why don't you..."s or "You should..." without a shred of evidence or reason as to why I should. So, I would always counter with logical sound arguments: "I have to mana manage on my own, so I use flash a lot more...", "If I do that this will happen and that's bad" and so on and so forth. No one countered my arguments to my satisfaction, no one convinced me with good reasons to change my style. All I got were other classes QQing that I was flashing, to which my response was "Are tanks dying? No."
This all came to a head last week when the GL said "Can you please just use HL all the time on the tanks?"
...
Uh... Where did that come from? Are tanks dying?
No, but people are complaining that you are using Flash too much.
So, why don't they tell me that?
Apparently they are?
No, not in so many words.
Can you just do it?
FINE! I will be an OOM meter whore for you then, but this is silly and a waste.
I then proceeded to come in the first 1,2 of effective healing done on the meters, and ran dry early on in the fights. I played dumb, not smart, and that shut people up. It was ridiculous.
After the raid, I was pulled aside for "a chat". I was told that I needed to tank heal more. I proceeded to tell the GL what happened from my pov, the issue wasn't that I was healing wrong, I was healing right with the complete lack of information I had about my healing team and given zero communication to me about what my role was and how I fitted into the team. No one tells me, raid to raid, what people are doing in our healing team, who is healing tanks with me, what I am supposed to do in special circumstance fights (ie heroic saurfang) - because I am not in the healing group in raid. Those guys all talk about that stuff within party chat, they bitch moan complain, work out healing strat all that stuff, each and every time forgetting that I am not psychic and have no idea that they have changed what they are doing. I have to watch tanks die, or key assignments die, get blamed, then work out from looking at meters that people had changed their roles, and that I needed to adapt.
It was never a healing "fault" on my part, I could always do what they wanted me to do - it was a communications fail on their part, and to some extent mine for giving up on trying. The last time I had a long chat with officers and healers, I completely changed my spec (to a style I didn't really like) to cover off short falls in our raid team! I am not adverse to doing things differently, but you need to back it up, give me a good reason to be running myself dry, that blah has your back, tell me that blah is your go to person for innervates, and they will save them for you. That you are tank healing with this person, to give you someone to bounce off when there are issues with tanks. They finally explained how everything worked and where I fitted into that, I finally got through to them how alienated I always felt and the next raid, you know what? I didn't have to try to be psychic, I was told what was happening, in the healing channel, and strangely enough everyone else noticed the difference. I was no longer a mushroom, sitting in the corner of the healing channel in the dark second guessing what I had to do.
Half the reason I was miserable raiding was that I was an island, and I was in quarantine, no one talked to me. It was quite demoralising. I felt isolated and on the outer - all because I was the 6th healer, placed in the tank group and no one on my team talked to me about the important things, like being a team member.
This guild does not have specific "section leaders" and I tell you what, I am REALLY noticing that not having them makes for isolation within the raiding team. I very strongly recommend that you have officers with jobs - section leaders - who make sure each section is looked after and communicated with. It is so very, very important. Talk to each other... now more than ever. The thing that is going to get you through the frustration is communication and a feeling of belonging, because right now, progression is hard to come by.
This is frustrating.
As people are generally frustrated, they take it out on each other. Small arguments get blown out of proportion, and things start getting said to your face in not the most pleasant way. I was a victim of this last week.
For some reason, people think I am unapproachable - this could be because I a) talk back and b) require evidence of theorycrafting and the math to back it up. If a minor change is minor, don't expect me to toe the line if my personal preference is for something else. If you are going to tell me "You are wrong, you should be doing this" I will question you, I will ask for proof, I will not just take it on your word that you are right. So, don't sidle up to me and subtly try to change my mind. I don't take kindly to manipulation, mostly because I do a lot of manipulating myself and zomg icwotududther HAHA.
I am a unique and special snowflake as a holy paladin, and DON'T forget it.
For 4 years my healing style as a paladin was hybrid, as a GL, and healing leader, I was generally doing all the jobs and covering people's arses. I was paranoid about mana usage (still am) and my goal was to have the lowest % overheal I could possibly manage and still beat the boss or have my healing assignment still standing.
Now, new guild has a new way of doing things. Fine, I will try to fit in. I ask questions in the healing channel and get radio silence in response. I ask more questions, again nothing. In the end, I give up asking questions. I just keep the tanks alive in the method I have grown accustomed to - minimal mana usage, minimal overheal. I am not in the "healer group" in the raid, I am not getting innervates or mana tides benefits, I have to tank heal and manage myself solo. I am also not getting communication because all the healer communication was occurring in party chat in the "healer group".
OK, got that set up?
Now, fast forward to last week. I had an inkling that there was resentment towards me, to the point that I was about ready to quit raiding. I was sick of the snide half remarks and bollocks pointed at my healing style. Not a single person would outright talk to me about anything. It was all "why don't you..."s or "You should..." without a shred of evidence or reason as to why I should. So, I would always counter with logical sound arguments: "I have to mana manage on my own, so I use flash a lot more...", "If I do that this will happen and that's bad" and so on and so forth. No one countered my arguments to my satisfaction, no one convinced me with good reasons to change my style. All I got were other classes QQing that I was flashing, to which my response was "Are tanks dying? No."
This all came to a head last week when the GL said "Can you please just use HL all the time on the tanks?"
...
Uh... Where did that come from? Are tanks dying?
No, but people are complaining that you are using Flash too much.
So, why don't they tell me that?
Apparently they are?
No, not in so many words.
Can you just do it?
FINE! I will be an OOM meter whore for you then, but this is silly and a waste.
I then proceeded to come in the first 1,2 of effective healing done on the meters, and ran dry early on in the fights. I played dumb, not smart, and that shut people up. It was ridiculous.
After the raid, I was pulled aside for "a chat". I was told that I needed to tank heal more. I proceeded to tell the GL what happened from my pov, the issue wasn't that I was healing wrong, I was healing right with the complete lack of information I had about my healing team and given zero communication to me about what my role was and how I fitted into the team. No one tells me, raid to raid, what people are doing in our healing team, who is healing tanks with me, what I am supposed to do in special circumstance fights (ie heroic saurfang) - because I am not in the healing group in raid. Those guys all talk about that stuff within party chat, they bitch moan complain, work out healing strat all that stuff, each and every time forgetting that I am not psychic and have no idea that they have changed what they are doing. I have to watch tanks die, or key assignments die, get blamed, then work out from looking at meters that people had changed their roles, and that I needed to adapt.
It was never a healing "fault" on my part, I could always do what they wanted me to do - it was a communications fail on their part, and to some extent mine for giving up on trying. The last time I had a long chat with officers and healers, I completely changed my spec (to a style I didn't really like) to cover off short falls in our raid team! I am not adverse to doing things differently, but you need to back it up, give me a good reason to be running myself dry, that blah has your back, tell me that blah is your go to person for innervates, and they will save them for you. That you are tank healing with this person, to give you someone to bounce off when there are issues with tanks. They finally explained how everything worked and where I fitted into that, I finally got through to them how alienated I always felt and the next raid, you know what? I didn't have to try to be psychic, I was told what was happening, in the healing channel, and strangely enough everyone else noticed the difference. I was no longer a mushroom, sitting in the corner of the healing channel in the dark second guessing what I had to do.
Half the reason I was miserable raiding was that I was an island, and I was in quarantine, no one talked to me. It was quite demoralising. I felt isolated and on the outer - all because I was the 6th healer, placed in the tank group and no one on my team talked to me about the important things, like being a team member.
This guild does not have specific "section leaders" and I tell you what, I am REALLY noticing that not having them makes for isolation within the raiding team. I very strongly recommend that you have officers with jobs - section leaders - who make sure each section is looked after and communicated with. It is so very, very important. Talk to each other... now more than ever. The thing that is going to get you through the frustration is communication and a feeling of belonging, because right now, progression is hard to come by.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Healing as a Pally - The Frostwing Halls
Valithria Dreamwalker
Bacon the dragon
Kings the dragon
You should be going in the portals, so make sure you know what to do
Get into portal position early, use judgement or bacon upkeep/holy shock/FoL combo to keep casting and move into position
Holy Light all the way for this one, so change your gear/spec to maximise crits and Spell power of this spell (the buff means that MP5 is irrelevant)
Help out on raid healing when you can (glyph of HL will be obscene with lots of stacks later on in the fight), and keep an eye on Valithria - make sure bacon doesn't drop off.
Use LoH directly on Valithria when you have 25+ stacks (or when you are on your last healing phase)
Sindragosa
Phase 1/1.5
Single tank at a time fight, so bacon the tank, heal the raid.
Dont get more than 6 stacks of the debuff (and heal yourself if you have to)
Phase 2
Be careful of tank transitions, ensure that you are precasting on the incoming tank to avoid early hard hits
Dont get more than 4 stacks of anything at a time
Don't die to the debuffs - yes that might mean letting someone else die, as long as it isnt a tank, then its a necessary thing to do
Bacon the dragon
Kings the dragon
You should be going in the portals, so make sure you know what to do
Get into portal position early, use judgement or bacon upkeep/holy shock/FoL combo to keep casting and move into position
Holy Light all the way for this one, so change your gear/spec to maximise crits and Spell power of this spell (the buff means that MP5 is irrelevant)
Help out on raid healing when you can (glyph of HL will be obscene with lots of stacks later on in the fight), and keep an eye on Valithria - make sure bacon doesn't drop off.
Use LoH directly on Valithria when you have 25+ stacks (or when you are on your last healing phase)
Sindragosa
Phase 1/1.5
Single tank at a time fight, so bacon the tank, heal the raid.
Dont get more than 6 stacks of the debuff (and heal yourself if you have to)
Phase 2
Be careful of tank transitions, ensure that you are precasting on the incoming tank to avoid early hard hits
Dont get more than 4 stacks of anything at a time
Don't die to the debuffs - yes that might mean letting someone else die, as long as it isnt a tank, then its a necessary thing to do
Healing as a Pally - The Crimson Hall
Blood Prince Council
Pop bacon on the purple balloon tank
Go hard early, as that balloon tank will be taking a fair whack of damage
Stand as close to the centre as you can, and get people to move away from you.
Heal the other two tanks evenly
Use fire aura and pop AM when the big ball of fire is cast
Keep the current target in mind and keep judgment of light up on it as best you can.
Blood-Queen Lana'thel
Phase 1
Get in melee range and get some mana back on your time with auto hits.
Bacon the blood mirrored off tank and heal the main tank
Make sure your raid frames show who has the bite buff, these guys dont need as much healing
Shadow aura
Phase 2
If you are human, get out of fear with your racial and bubble the second, otherwise bubble off the first fear and tremor totem the second
Get in position early and heal like crazy
Use AM to cover off the fear to position transition and try to ensure people have extra resistance if they get a bad fear
Pop bacon on the purple balloon tank
Go hard early, as that balloon tank will be taking a fair whack of damage
Stand as close to the centre as you can, and get people to move away from you.
Heal the other two tanks evenly
Use fire aura and pop AM when the big ball of fire is cast
Keep the current target in mind and keep judgment of light up on it as best you can.
Blood-Queen Lana'thel
Phase 1
Get in melee range and get some mana back on your time with auto hits.
Bacon the blood mirrored off tank and heal the main tank
Make sure your raid frames show who has the bite buff, these guys dont need as much healing
Shadow aura
Phase 2
If you are human, get out of fear with your racial and bubble the second, otherwise bubble off the first fear and tremor totem the second
Get in position early and heal like crazy
Use AM to cover off the fear to position transition and try to ensure people have extra resistance if they get a bad fear
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Healing as a Pally - The Plagueworks
Rotface
Bacon the add tank, heal the rotface tank (as the add tank might run out of range)
Stand on rotface and melee hit him for mana
Shocks on the infected person to assist with a quick heal to keep them alive
Use bubble to make sure your slime merges quickly if you have to run through green goo on the ground
Shadow aura
Festergut
Shadow AURA!
Bacon the tank and heal the raid, as the raid takes less damage focus on the tank.
Have DG/HoSanc ready for emergencies on the tank
Watch the boss for the cast of pungent blight and save AM for a bit of extra shadow protection then (incase someone missed a buff)
Plant your feet in melee range and heal like crazy!
Putricide
Phase 1 and 2
A much more mobile fight
Aura doesn't matter
Bacon on the tank, and help raid heal
Throw additional helping heals on the slime targets
Keep an eye on the abomination and heal it up if necessary
Phase 3
Keep the tanks alive at all costs
Try to keep your best DPS up if you can spare a bacon heal
Pre-bacon the next tank and start pre-emptively healing them when the current tank is on n-1 debuffs (n is the number of stacks you guys decided to take per tank)
Keep bacon on the current tank so you can throw out extra heals on the raid and the previous tanks without losing a beat on the current tank
Keep all the tanks alive (did I mention that? I did? well it really is that important)
Save LoH for the third tank phase
Bacon the add tank, heal the rotface tank (as the add tank might run out of range)
Stand on rotface and melee hit him for mana
Shocks on the infected person to assist with a quick heal to keep them alive
Use bubble to make sure your slime merges quickly if you have to run through green goo on the ground
Shadow aura
Festergut
Shadow AURA!
Bacon the tank and heal the raid, as the raid takes less damage focus on the tank.
Have DG/HoSanc ready for emergencies on the tank
Watch the boss for the cast of pungent blight and save AM for a bit of extra shadow protection then (incase someone missed a buff)
Plant your feet in melee range and heal like crazy!
Putricide
Phase 1 and 2
A much more mobile fight
Aura doesn't matter
Bacon on the tank, and help raid heal
Throw additional helping heals on the slime targets
Keep an eye on the abomination and heal it up if necessary
Phase 3
Keep the tanks alive at all costs
Try to keep your best DPS up if you can spare a bacon heal
Pre-bacon the next tank and start pre-emptively healing them when the current tank is on n-1 debuffs (n is the number of stacks you guys decided to take per tank)
Keep bacon on the current tank so you can throw out extra heals on the raid and the previous tanks without losing a beat on the current tank
Keep all the tanks alive (did I mention that? I did? well it really is that important)
Save LoH for the third tank phase
Monday, March 22, 2010
Healing as a Pally - The Lower Spire
Lord Marrowgar
Phase 1
Get into melee range and hit Lord Marrowgar.
Put Beacon on one tank and heal the other (HL or FoL are acceptable depending on gear levels)
Frost Aura is a must.
Phase 2
Plant those feet, beacon yourself and heal like crazy, Shock, HL, FoL
If the fires come your way, strafe out a little bit so you dont get hit.
Use Aura Mastery at this time to help people stuck in fires.
Lady Deathwhisper
Try to stay as central as possible to keep range on all tanks
Beacon on one tank, heal the other - if they are both in range of you, they are in range of each other for beacon.
Use the aura you are specced into, resist is not a major player here.
Aura mastery not a major player here except for fun.
Keep your judgement up on the lady, dont try to judge the adds (the ret pallies will do that)
Gunship
If you are careful, and stand on the edge of the boat, you can generally have range of everyone.
Beacon yourself and go nuts healing anything and everything.
This is an easy battle, you should not have to do a lot of work.
Judge the axe throwers or any thing in range, really.
Fire Aura!
Deathbringer Saurfang
Stand wherever your RL's strat tells you to
Move HoJ onto your bar
Aura is not critical
Keep your judgment up on Saurfang
Keep Sacred Shield up on Saurfang's current target and FoL spam it (that should be enough to keep them up)
When a mark goes out, beacon the mark and keep FoL spamming.
When a second mark goes out, swap your FoLs to the second mark target.
If a third mark goes out, start using holy lights and alternate your heals around the marked targets and tanks.
When an add comes in range, Stop, HAMMER TIME! You should be able to get one stun every 2 sets of adds.
If toward the end things get hairy, you might want to use a Hand of Sacrifice or DS to ease the pressure.
Phase 1
Get into melee range and hit Lord Marrowgar.
Put Beacon on one tank and heal the other (HL or FoL are acceptable depending on gear levels)
Frost Aura is a must.
Phase 2
Plant those feet, beacon yourself and heal like crazy, Shock, HL, FoL
If the fires come your way, strafe out a little bit so you dont get hit.
Use Aura Mastery at this time to help people stuck in fires.
Lady Deathwhisper
Try to stay as central as possible to keep range on all tanks
Beacon on one tank, heal the other - if they are both in range of you, they are in range of each other for beacon.
Use the aura you are specced into, resist is not a major player here.
Aura mastery not a major player here except for fun.
Keep your judgement up on the lady, dont try to judge the adds (the ret pallies will do that)
Gunship
If you are careful, and stand on the edge of the boat, you can generally have range of everyone.
Beacon yourself and go nuts healing anything and everything.
This is an easy battle, you should not have to do a lot of work.
Judge the axe throwers or any thing in range, really.
Fire Aura!
Deathbringer Saurfang
Stand wherever your RL's strat tells you to
Move HoJ onto your bar
Aura is not critical
Keep your judgment up on Saurfang
Keep Sacred Shield up on Saurfang's current target and FoL spam it (that should be enough to keep them up)
When a mark goes out, beacon the mark and keep FoL spamming.
When a second mark goes out, swap your FoLs to the second mark target.
If a third mark goes out, start using holy lights and alternate your heals around the marked targets and tanks.
When an add comes in range, Stop, HAMMER TIME! You should be able to get one stun every 2 sets of adds.
If toward the end things get hairy, you might want to use a Hand of Sacrifice or DS to ease the pressure.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Well, that was much harder than anticipated
Splurging that strat forward was a marathon and a half!
I am not really sure why it was so hard, possibly it was the last boss that my guild was working on before we died, so now that is written up, that really is a formal acknowledgment of that chapter of my wow career being gone.
That said, new guild is going well. Apart from one thing. I am suffering from "but you aren't them" syndrome. But not in the way you would think. I am not worried that this new guild is not like my guild. That is fine, I am suffering from "We have only ever had one holy pally and he does things this way so why aren't you doing things this way?"
Um... because I am not them?
Mostly, I just don't have the gear their pally does. I am geared and (was) specced to be a utility OT healer. I valued crit and int, I was specced into the ret tree for critty goodness. And no matter what the people on EJ say about it, the spec is viable, it doesn't OOM as much as you might think and you can quickly switch your style mid raid if necessary. I can FoL till the cows come home, almost literally with a bottomless well of mana. I can HL for a good lengthy period of time because I have a huge mana pool from all the int. This allows time for my crits to do their work (raid buffed I sit AROUND 70% crit).
But one of the guild leaders is also the main tank - and he's nervous of my style. He doesn't like "dipping" low (which is actually not at all an issue for him, he is just paranoid) and panic uses CDs. So, to mollify him I have dual specced holy. One into the ret tree, and one into the prot tree (taking imp dev aura as we have no prot pally). Now, respeccing into the prot tree was something I was looking at for hardmodes (if we ever kill LK) but not really before that.
So I have dropped my lovely DPS spec in favour of trialing 2 specs side by side. Hopefully next week I will have parses to look at on the same fights with differing specs.
I suspect that because I am not on top of the healing meters, he thinks I am doing something wrong. *sigh* When I manage to get ANY T10 that is useful, I am quite confident my healing output will increase.
I am not really sure why it was so hard, possibly it was the last boss that my guild was working on before we died, so now that is written up, that really is a formal acknowledgment of that chapter of my wow career being gone.
That said, new guild is going well. Apart from one thing. I am suffering from "but you aren't them" syndrome. But not in the way you would think. I am not worried that this new guild is not like my guild. That is fine, I am suffering from "We have only ever had one holy pally and he does things this way so why aren't you doing things this way?"
Um... because I am not them?
Mostly, I just don't have the gear their pally does. I am geared and (was) specced to be a utility OT healer. I valued crit and int, I was specced into the ret tree for critty goodness. And no matter what the people on EJ say about it, the spec is viable, it doesn't OOM as much as you might think and you can quickly switch your style mid raid if necessary. I can FoL till the cows come home, almost literally with a bottomless well of mana. I can HL for a good lengthy period of time because I have a huge mana pool from all the int. This allows time for my crits to do their work (raid buffed I sit AROUND 70% crit).
But one of the guild leaders is also the main tank - and he's nervous of my style. He doesn't like "dipping" low (which is actually not at all an issue for him, he is just paranoid) and panic uses CDs. So, to mollify him I have dual specced holy. One into the ret tree, and one into the prot tree (taking imp dev aura as we have no prot pally). Now, respeccing into the prot tree was something I was looking at for hardmodes (if we ever kill LK) but not really before that.
So I have dropped my lovely DPS spec in favour of trialing 2 specs side by side. Hopefully next week I will have parses to look at on the same fights with differing specs.
I suspect that because I am not on top of the healing meters, he thinks I am doing something wrong. *sigh* When I manage to get ANY T10 that is useful, I am quite confident my healing output will increase.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
For the Love of the Light!
I had my chance to face palm against Sindragosa 25 last night.
Not only was I wholly unprepared to be invited at short notice, but I was also extremely unprepared. I think this point is so important, I had to make it twice.
So, I crammed as much wowhead/tankspot as I could in the 10mins I had to play with before getting summoned into the instance.
WHOA THERE NER! Didn't you say that your guild had stopped 25s?
Well, yes we have.
I had to make a tough call last week. I had to decide what I wanted to do more - run a guild or run 25man content. And this is what I wrote on my guild site about it (with a few edits for it to make sense here):
This is not easy for me to say.
I am going to be moving Brangwen to another guild to continue raiding 25s.
All I have ever really wanted to do is raid. When I couldn't find a guild to do that in originally the way I wanted it done, I made my own place with the support of a group of people to run a guild with.
When those people left, I found another group of people to run a guild with to continue raiding. And now, after 2.5 years, that group of people has finally dwindled down to 2.
There are many reasons why I decided to call a halt to 25s. I was also very aware that it was probably the end of us as we knew it irrevocably. And yes, it broke my heart. And yes, I feel like I am deserting those who chose to stay. And yes, I have been uncommunicative about this decision, because I have been struggling with even admitting it to myself. But, I find that I want more than this guild can provide.
I want to kill the Lich King on 25 mode, and I want to do 25man hardmodes. I am also no longer in a position to be able to do this as a guild leader. I am burned out, for reasons outside WoW as well as inside WoW.
I will stay on as GL for the moment - but mostly as a figure head. I am going to talk to people who are most keen to get us going as a serious 10man guild. You know who you are, and I will try to support you in your ambition to make this happen. So, there will be a period of transition and negotiation coming up.
I will also be leaving my alts here for as long as is feasible.
But the long and short of it is that I need to step down, but I want to raid, this necessarily leads me to other pastures.
Thank you for all your support and time over the years. It really has been one of the most rewarding things I have ever done with my time. We have achieved a lot, and I am sure we will again - but differently.
I and my wow buddy decided last week that we really did want to run 25s and we wanted to see the content and defeat it. He had some solid contacts in another guild and we both applied privately and talked to the guild leaders before we made a move, before we said anything to our guild.
Yes, it felt a bit like deception. But I wanted to be sure that I was actually going before I said anything to anyone. And these guys do things very differently! It will be interesting to make comparisons about the way we used to do things to the way they actually do them now.
TANGENT NER? What about Sindragosa?
As a holy pally, sindragosa is really a terrible fight. The damage output is minimal, and evenly distributed if everyone does their job in Phases 1 and 2. But you know what REALLY makes you look bad first night in? 3% of the total healing. Yeah, that looks bad. But if you break it down, it really isnt as bad as all that.
Comparing myself to the other holy pally in the raid, over 40% of his healing came from Judgement of light. There really is nothing I can do to compete with that! Why waste a GCD when he is maintaining the judgement? Sure, it makes the new girl look BAD but any healer worth their salt will see the break downs and realise what was happening.
The other mechanic that made my wow buddy gag when I pointed out to him how poorly it looked like I was performing, was the actual fight itself. There are 3 mechanics that forcibly stop you from casting as a holy pally. One is a debuff that stacks when you cast/melee hit the boss with it on. So, you stop casting. Awesome! The second is running around like an idiot. Because pallies are so GOOD at moving and casting at the same time. This fight has a lot of movement in it. The third is being turned into an iceblock and being stunned.
Guess which paladin was well and truly loved by Sindragosa last night? Yeah, this one. On the upside I got very good at positioning my iceblock exactly so!
When we get Phase 3 more under control, I think holy pallies will be looking a bit better on the meters, but it is still a really mobile fight... we may not catch the chain hax and HoTy goodness of the other classes in time.
Not only was I wholly unprepared to be invited at short notice, but I was also extremely unprepared. I think this point is so important, I had to make it twice.
So, I crammed as much wowhead/tankspot as I could in the 10mins I had to play with before getting summoned into the instance.
WHOA THERE NER! Didn't you say that your guild had stopped 25s?
Well, yes we have.
I had to make a tough call last week. I had to decide what I wanted to do more - run a guild or run 25man content. And this is what I wrote on my guild site about it (with a few edits for it to make sense here):
This is not easy for me to say.
I am going to be moving Brangwen to another guild to continue raiding 25s.
All I have ever really wanted to do is raid. When I couldn't find a guild to do that in originally the way I wanted it done, I made my own place with the support of a group of people to run a guild with.
When those people left, I found another group of people to run a guild with to continue raiding. And now, after 2.5 years, that group of people has finally dwindled down to 2.
There are many reasons why I decided to call a halt to 25s. I was also very aware that it was probably the end of us as we knew it irrevocably. And yes, it broke my heart. And yes, I feel like I am deserting those who chose to stay. And yes, I have been uncommunicative about this decision, because I have been struggling with even admitting it to myself. But, I find that I want more than this guild can provide.
I want to kill the Lich King on 25 mode, and I want to do 25man hardmodes. I am also no longer in a position to be able to do this as a guild leader. I am burned out, for reasons outside WoW as well as inside WoW.
I will stay on as GL for the moment - but mostly as a figure head. I am going to talk to people who are most keen to get us going as a serious 10man guild. You know who you are, and I will try to support you in your ambition to make this happen. So, there will be a period of transition and negotiation coming up.
I will also be leaving my alts here for as long as is feasible.
But the long and short of it is that I need to step down, but I want to raid, this necessarily leads me to other pastures.
Thank you for all your support and time over the years. It really has been one of the most rewarding things I have ever done with my time. We have achieved a lot, and I am sure we will again - but differently.
I and my wow buddy decided last week that we really did want to run 25s and we wanted to see the content and defeat it. He had some solid contacts in another guild and we both applied privately and talked to the guild leaders before we made a move, before we said anything to our guild.
Yes, it felt a bit like deception. But I wanted to be sure that I was actually going before I said anything to anyone. And these guys do things very differently! It will be interesting to make comparisons about the way we used to do things to the way they actually do them now.
TANGENT NER? What about Sindragosa?
As a holy pally, sindragosa is really a terrible fight. The damage output is minimal, and evenly distributed if everyone does their job in Phases 1 and 2. But you know what REALLY makes you look bad first night in? 3% of the total healing. Yeah, that looks bad. But if you break it down, it really isnt as bad as all that.
Comparing myself to the other holy pally in the raid, over 40% of his healing came from Judgement of light. There really is nothing I can do to compete with that! Why waste a GCD when he is maintaining the judgement? Sure, it makes the new girl look BAD but any healer worth their salt will see the break downs and realise what was happening.
The other mechanic that made my wow buddy gag when I pointed out to him how poorly it looked like I was performing, was the actual fight itself. There are 3 mechanics that forcibly stop you from casting as a holy pally. One is a debuff that stacks when you cast/melee hit the boss with it on. So, you stop casting. Awesome! The second is running around like an idiot. Because pallies are so GOOD at moving and casting at the same time. This fight has a lot of movement in it. The third is being turned into an iceblock and being stunned.
Guess which paladin was well and truly loved by Sindragosa last night? Yeah, this one. On the upside I got very good at positioning my iceblock exactly so!
When we get Phase 3 more under control, I think holy pallies will be looking a bit better on the meters, but it is still a really mobile fight... we may not catch the chain hax and HoTy goodness of the other classes in time.
Monday, January 11, 2010
All that healing is making me thirsty
So, with a less than sparkly team, our sunday 10man advanced into ICC10, hoping for a shot at the professor. But, due to circumstances both in and out of our control, festergut handed our arses to us on a silver platter.
But, I smelled a problem early on. 3 healers, and I, the holy pally, am putting out over 50% of the healing (inc guessed absorbs from the disc priest). Yeah, the tank is taking a lot of damage, but BUH!? I suspect that was where most of our issues lay. But after me throwing off my headphones in anger at getting blamed for tanks dying and doing an entire attempt logged off of vent and no one noticed (yeah guys, I don't actually need to hear you complaining sometimes! but I very quickly noticed how lonely it was at the other end of a silent computer screen), we got ourselves sorted and tanks got CDs under control and priests got their oh shit moments sorted. And yeah, Festergut hit the floor.
Festergut is a tank and healer check. Kind of like patchwerk, but I found patchwerk to be a lot more forgiving on the tank healing, even when I was gear appropriate, because there was little to nothing else going on other than damage on the tanks. With Festergut, that isn't true, there is some serious raid damage as well as nasty tank damage.
Me? I didn't have time to do anything except chain heal until I went oom (which, fortunately for me, was about the end of the fight, you can tell when I go oom, because tanks start dropping. Kill attempt? Both tanks dead!).
Quick tips for Holy Pallies and mana management, NERD style.
1 - get a mana pool that simply doesn't fit in your pants. This means stacking int. My current goal is 40k 25raid buffed (I'm at almost 39k atm)
2 - get as much crit as you possibly can. It's still a very effective way of regenning mana. (If anyone is interested, I have numbers in a spreadsheet somewhere.)
3 - Haste haste haste... then some more haste. Not so great for mana management, but 1.3s (or less with hero) Holy Lights are sexy as a sexy thing!
4 - Flasks of Mojo, MP5 or crit food and glyph seal of wisdom
5 - get seal of wisdom up, get into the bosses face and autohit the bastard! 1500 mana for a hit every so often? Yeah, that's totally worth it.
6 - DP + trinkets + wings = win ... do it around 70% mana if you can, or else, when there is a lull in healing. It's 15s, so worst case, call out in vent for assistance on the tank for 15s. Also, macro them together to save on clicky-clicky time.
7 - macro Divine Illumination to a healing spell. Have it constantly on CD. I have mine set to Holy light, so if the initial part of the fight is not too bad, I flash until the damage starts mounting up then HL and DI come up together once the shit starts hitting the fan. And DI is used every CD after that.
But, I smelled a problem early on. 3 healers, and I, the holy pally, am putting out over 50% of the healing (inc guessed absorbs from the disc priest). Yeah, the tank is taking a lot of damage, but BUH!? I suspect that was where most of our issues lay. But after me throwing off my headphones in anger at getting blamed for tanks dying and doing an entire attempt logged off of vent and no one noticed (yeah guys, I don't actually need to hear you complaining sometimes! but I very quickly noticed how lonely it was at the other end of a silent computer screen), we got ourselves sorted and tanks got CDs under control and priests got their oh shit moments sorted. And yeah, Festergut hit the floor.
Festergut is a tank and healer check. Kind of like patchwerk, but I found patchwerk to be a lot more forgiving on the tank healing, even when I was gear appropriate, because there was little to nothing else going on other than damage on the tanks. With Festergut, that isn't true, there is some serious raid damage as well as nasty tank damage.
Me? I didn't have time to do anything except chain heal until I went oom (which, fortunately for me, was about the end of the fight, you can tell when I go oom, because tanks start dropping. Kill attempt? Both tanks dead!).
Quick tips for Holy Pallies and mana management, NERD style.
1 - get a mana pool that simply doesn't fit in your pants. This means stacking int. My current goal is 40k 25raid buffed (I'm at almost 39k atm)
2 - get as much crit as you possibly can. It's still a very effective way of regenning mana. (If anyone is interested, I have numbers in a spreadsheet somewhere.)
3 - Haste haste haste... then some more haste. Not so great for mana management, but 1.3s (or less with hero) Holy Lights are sexy as a sexy thing!
4 - Flasks of Mojo, MP5 or crit food and glyph seal of wisdom
5 - get seal of wisdom up, get into the bosses face and autohit the bastard! 1500 mana for a hit every so often? Yeah, that's totally worth it.
6 - DP + trinkets + wings = win ... do it around 70% mana if you can, or else, when there is a lull in healing. It's 15s, so worst case, call out in vent for assistance on the tank for 15s. Also, macro them together to save on clicky-clicky time.
7 - macro Divine Illumination to a healing spell. Have it constantly on CD. I have mine set to Holy light, so if the initial part of the fight is not too bad, I flash until the damage starts mounting up then HL and DI come up together once the shit starts hitting the fan. And DI is used every CD after that.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Holy Pally's in 3.2
Everyone should wander over to Siha's blog and have a look at her latest posts on holy pallyness. Seems she has ironed out the bugs in her website and is back to posting again.
Tonight, I plan on getting WWS for my healing and doing some number crunching myself to see what could possibly be the changes for me and my gear. I have a sneaking suspicion that int and crit stacking will still be viable, and I am prepping a spreadsheet to see what the numbers say.
But mostly, I just wanted to pimp the blog of one of my "other" guilds Guild Leader. Go Siha! Welcome back to the blogosphere :)
Tonight, I plan on getting WWS for my healing and doing some number crunching myself to see what could possibly be the changes for me and my gear. I have a sneaking suspicion that int and crit stacking will still be viable, and I am prepping a spreadsheet to see what the numbers say.
But mostly, I just wanted to pimp the blog of one of my "other" guilds Guild Leader. Go Siha! Welcome back to the blogosphere :)
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Nerfing Illumination is not the answer
As some of you might realise, I play a holy pally. And recently on the forums blue have been bandying around a theory that now pallies have stopped QQing, there must be something wrong with them. *sigh*
Yes, there is something wrong with us, but it is not what you think.
You can see the blue posts in this thread here and here and here.
MP5 is not undervalued, int is overvalued (giving crit, manapool and SP).
But you know what? I seriously doubt this is as major as people are making it out to be. Remember all the hoo haa about 3.1 and nerfing regen? Yeah well, look how that panned out, storm in a tea cup.
Until they actually address the issue (that int as a stat for holy pallies is too powerful, not that MP5 is unattractive) they are going to stuff everything up.
There is a very easy way to solve the problem, remove a bunch of int from gear and reitemise it with MP5/crit/SP. There really is too much int kicking about, so much so that it is worth stacking at the moment.
Reitemising a certain amount of int has the effect of reducing the mana pool (making replenishment type effects more in line with everyone else), reducing crit and making MP5 much more viable for long term harder fights (where I can totally see not relying on RNG would be a benefit).
Personally, I have a good dose of MP5 on my gear (I use flask of mojo to cover off my shortfall cos frost wyrm is fail atm), and I do look for it, but there are plenty of OTHER items that render actual MP5 useless: insightful earthsiege diamond, the libram (worth a good 300MP5 or so when going hard on HL), the crit trinket that returns 900mana and procs ALL THE TIME... and those are just the ones I got my greasy little mitts on. Why would I look for MP5 when those 3 items and a flask cover off most of my issues? I mean really? T8 comes with much MP5, and I am not going to turn my nose up at that.
And now for the clincher - I present GENERAL VEZAX. WHY ON EARTH would I want MP5 for THAT fight? Really? Someone explain it to me cos I dont want it.
In short... Dont nerf illumination or DP, reitemise pally holy gear - it's not like it has got any other onflow effects other than holy pallies! go nuts! Set up the gear in a manner that makes MP5 as desirable as int - REMOVE INT from gear if you HAVE to do something. If my mana pool were in the low 20s like most other healers, I would be SCRAMBLING for MP5 on my gear. But it's not, it's around 30k. I am 10k ahead of any healer just to start with which is 10 holy lights, 50% of which are crits and cost 60% so effectively before I even hit where the other guys start, I am 14k mana ahead! That are some VERY rough numbers, but gets the idea across. Now had I started at 20k mana, I would be wanting my time to work for me a lot harder, and I would definately have a lot more MP5. I wouldn't have the wiggle room to not worry about a crit not happening for mana return, I need reliable calculable returns.
With a 30k mana pool, math says YES! use crit as your regen stat. 20k mana pool? Math says NOOOO use MP5 as your regen stat.
I have also seen suggestions of making spirit the across the board regen stat for everyone, and this has its advantages. But at this stage in the game, changing to spirit needs more game wide changes to implement (and thus much more chance of ballsing things up). I prefer the reitemisation idea as it has much less gamewide impact and "resolves" the issue.
Over 30k mana pools? over 50% crit raid buffed and ridiculous amounts of haste? Yeah, something is very wrong, and I see the amount of int available to use as being one of the main contributors.
Yes, there is something wrong with us, but it is not what you think.
You can see the blue posts in this thread here and here and here.
MP5 is not undervalued, int is overvalued (giving crit, manapool and SP).
But you know what? I seriously doubt this is as major as people are making it out to be. Remember all the hoo haa about 3.1 and nerfing regen? Yeah well, look how that panned out, storm in a tea cup.
Until they actually address the issue (that int as a stat for holy pallies is too powerful, not that MP5 is unattractive) they are going to stuff everything up.
There is a very easy way to solve the problem, remove a bunch of int from gear and reitemise it with MP5/crit/SP. There really is too much int kicking about, so much so that it is worth stacking at the moment.
Reitemising a certain amount of int has the effect of reducing the mana pool (making replenishment type effects more in line with everyone else), reducing crit and making MP5 much more viable for long term harder fights (where I can totally see not relying on RNG would be a benefit).
Personally, I have a good dose of MP5 on my gear (I use flask of mojo to cover off my shortfall cos frost wyrm is fail atm), and I do look for it, but there are plenty of OTHER items that render actual MP5 useless: insightful earthsiege diamond, the libram (worth a good 300MP5 or so when going hard on HL), the crit trinket that returns 900mana and procs ALL THE TIME... and those are just the ones I got my greasy little mitts on. Why would I look for MP5 when those 3 items and a flask cover off most of my issues? I mean really? T8 comes with much MP5, and I am not going to turn my nose up at that.
And now for the clincher - I present GENERAL VEZAX. WHY ON EARTH would I want MP5 for THAT fight? Really? Someone explain it to me cos I dont want it.
In short... Dont nerf illumination or DP, reitemise pally holy gear - it's not like it has got any other onflow effects other than holy pallies! go nuts! Set up the gear in a manner that makes MP5 as desirable as int - REMOVE INT from gear if you HAVE to do something. If my mana pool were in the low 20s like most other healers, I would be SCRAMBLING for MP5 on my gear. But it's not, it's around 30k. I am 10k ahead of any healer just to start with which is 10 holy lights, 50% of which are crits and cost 60% so effectively before I even hit where the other guys start, I am 14k mana ahead! That are some VERY rough numbers, but gets the idea across. Now had I started at 20k mana, I would be wanting my time to work for me a lot harder, and I would definately have a lot more MP5. I wouldn't have the wiggle room to not worry about a crit not happening for mana return, I need reliable calculable returns.
With a 30k mana pool, math says YES! use crit as your regen stat. 20k mana pool? Math says NOOOO use MP5 as your regen stat.
I have also seen suggestions of making spirit the across the board regen stat for everyone, and this has its advantages. But at this stage in the game, changing to spirit needs more game wide changes to implement (and thus much more chance of ballsing things up). I prefer the reitemisation idea as it has much less gamewide impact and "resolves" the issue.
Over 30k mana pools? over 50% crit raid buffed and ridiculous amounts of haste? Yeah, something is very wrong, and I see the amount of int available to use as being one of the main contributors.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Volazj's Quick Demise - healer PoV
Somehow, after many, MANY hours of trying, I managed to get this done yesterday. As a paladin healer (specced arena 2s PvP) I found that I was the main reason we were not making this in 2mins.
Reasoning is as follows:
1) You do not "pop out" for assistance of insanity until you have taken down everyone bar one of your shadows is dead by your hand. I noticed this late in the piece.
2) I was taking far too long to kill the tank
3) I was not pumping out enough DPS to break out for assistance and still be able to make the 2 min timer.
What we ended up doing was that I respecced ret and wore most of my healing gear. This did a couple of things. It meant that my shadow did not cast healing spells, making it much faster for everyone else to kill their shadows. I also swapped my weapon/shield to a DPS weapon once inside insanity. I went for the ranged first, which dragged the melee with me and aoe'ed everyone down. I also left the tank for last (to get assistance on that one) - the tank was extra tanky as they were not going to get as many heals as usual. Everyone one who could cast a healing spell helped with healing when we popped out.
This technique got the damn achievement done as SOON as we did this. We had been failing on it for a good couple of hours, trying to figure out what was going wrong. As a holy pally, my shadow was too hard to kill and healed too well. As a holy pally, I didn't do enough DPS to kill my shadows fast enough.
Respeccing ret fixed all of these issues and we did 2 insanities and killed the guy with 10s to spare. I highly recommend any healing class respec to a DPS spec and wear a combo of your healing gear. There isnt a lot of healing required in this fight if you burn through it quickly. The slower you do this fight, the more you need healing. Trust your group to self manage somewhat.
Reasoning is as follows:
1) You do not "pop out" for assistance of insanity until you have taken down everyone bar one of your shadows is dead by your hand. I noticed this late in the piece.
2) I was taking far too long to kill the tank
3) I was not pumping out enough DPS to break out for assistance and still be able to make the 2 min timer.
What we ended up doing was that I respecced ret and wore most of my healing gear. This did a couple of things. It meant that my shadow did not cast healing spells, making it much faster for everyone else to kill their shadows. I also swapped my weapon/shield to a DPS weapon once inside insanity. I went for the ranged first, which dragged the melee with me and aoe'ed everyone down. I also left the tank for last (to get assistance on that one) - the tank was extra tanky as they were not going to get as many heals as usual. Everyone one who could cast a healing spell helped with healing when we popped out.
This technique got the damn achievement done as SOON as we did this. We had been failing on it for a good couple of hours, trying to figure out what was going wrong. As a holy pally, my shadow was too hard to kill and healed too well. As a holy pally, I didn't do enough DPS to kill my shadows fast enough.
Respeccing ret fixed all of these issues and we did 2 insanities and killed the guy with 10s to spare. I highly recommend any healing class respec to a DPS spec and wear a combo of your healing gear. There isnt a lot of healing required in this fight if you burn through it quickly. The slower you do this fight, the more you need healing. Trust your group to self manage somewhat.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Glyph of Holy Light
I hate to say it, but this is a facepalm moment.
Glyph of Holy Light being upped from 5 yards to 20 then RAPIDLY nerfed back down to 8 yards has to be the biggest WELL DUH moment I have ever seen Blizz come out with. Honestly, what did they expect with a glyph that heals for 10% and each extra one can crit?
5 yards was definitely not enough... But I agreed that 20 yards was way too large. I cant prove that because I wasn't really writing this blog at the time it was on the cards. However, I do think that 8 yards is a little too small for the following reason. There are plenty of 10 yard radius AoE killing effects in WoW. Ice blocks, swirly things, detonate manas, etc etc where you need to stay a minimum of 10 yards apart from each other to minimise AoE damage.
Putting 8 yards on the radius makes MT healing (and helping out on melee) impossible, it also means that if you heal a targeted player, if they were a touch too close you don't land a small helpful heal on the nub nearby.
Flip that to 10-12 yards, and I would be happy. If would cover off the situations where people stood a little too close and copped it but it wouldn't be the OP craziness that 20 yards was. It would also help with MT healing and melee where the boss mechanics don't allow your melee within 10 yards, but being in 12 is still a close balancing act. It would help just enough in 5mans, which is why the glyph was buffed in the first place. People will still need to stack, but not quite as dangerously as with an 8 yard radius. Blizzard is kidding themselves if they think this glyph is like a passive talent. It isn't. It is a TOTAL modification to the spell. Total and utter. But it is way to late to take it out now.
Glyph of Holy Light being upped from 5 yards to 20 then RAPIDLY nerfed back down to 8 yards has to be the biggest WELL DUH moment I have ever seen Blizz come out with. Honestly, what did they expect with a glyph that heals for 10% and each extra one can crit?
5 yards was definitely not enough... But I agreed that 20 yards was way too large. I cant prove that because I wasn't really writing this blog at the time it was on the cards. However, I do think that 8 yards is a little too small for the following reason. There are plenty of 10 yard radius AoE killing effects in WoW. Ice blocks, swirly things, detonate manas, etc etc where you need to stay a minimum of 10 yards apart from each other to minimise AoE damage.
Putting 8 yards on the radius makes MT healing (and helping out on melee) impossible, it also means that if you heal a targeted player, if they were a touch too close you don't land a small helpful heal on the nub nearby.
Flip that to 10-12 yards, and I would be happy. If would cover off the situations where people stood a little too close and copped it but it wouldn't be the OP craziness that 20 yards was. It would also help with MT healing and melee where the boss mechanics don't allow your melee within 10 yards, but being in 12 is still a close balancing act. It would help just enough in 5mans, which is why the glyph was buffed in the first place. People will still need to stack, but not quite as dangerously as with an 8 yard radius. Blizzard is kidding themselves if they think this glyph is like a passive talent. It isn't. It is a TOTAL modification to the spell. Total and utter. But it is way to late to take it out now.
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