Jov sez: My guild has too many healers omg

Okay, so my guild only occasionally has too many healers…  Like when you’re trying to run that new 5-man.

I mean, it’s only been out a week, and I’ve only run it a couple-dozen times on normal, and a couple times on heroic.

And I only have TWO healing main-specced characters.

And it’s supposed to be really challenging to heal.

I wouldn’t know, though.  Shammy?  We needs you to lawl-dps.  Priest?  Go shadow, prz.

Well, at least I’m not the only one…

(And no, before anyone asks…  I’m not annoyed, I’m not really complaining.  I’m more amused than anything, as it always seems to go this way.  Back when Wrath first released, before the advent of dual-specs, Jov was lawl-holy-dps’ing her way through most of the instances out there.  Seems when the content is new, it’s what always seems to happen.)

Jov sez: That’s great, now work on your overheal

Back in Vanilla-WoW, the dividing line between the “good healers” and the “bad healers” wasn’t usually so much a matter of keeping people alive (since, apparently, even bad healers could be carried for that) but that little overheal number.

TBC, with it’s limitless regen and bottomless mana pool seemed to take the stance “overheal doesn’t matter as long as your assignment lives and your mana holds out.” The TBC attitude has definitely carried over into Wrath raiding, and with encounters like Naxx, it was easy to slip into a zoned-out buttonspam while you smacked around the various loot pinatas for purples.

In short, it made us sloppy, where we’ve a lot less room for sloppiness in Ulduar and, presumably, moving forward.

What is Overheal?

Overheal is any healing which occurs over the healing needed by the target (effective healing).  This can be caused by spell selection (which is pretty easy to control if you’re paying attention) or crit (which is somewhat more difficult).  So if Roguechick is down 4k health, your flash hits for 6k and your greater hits for 12k, your flash will have lower overheal (6k heal – 4k deficit = 2k overheal vs. 12k heal – 4k deficit = 8k overheal).

Why Overheal?

Overheal is symptomatic of several things, meaning there’s no one answer.  It could be there are too many healers for the encounter (leaving 8 healers fighting to get their heals off first because the fight only needs 7).  It could be your healers aren’t familiar with an encounter so are reactively healing (4 healers going “oh crap, that mage took a ton of damage *healheal*) rather than proactively (I know Mage is gonna take a big clump of damage here, so I’m going to pre-shield/ProM/get flash ready.)  It could just be the spammy nature of some of the fights (And in P2 Mimiron, I do nothing but spam PoH on g2 and 3).

Some classes and roles are more inclined toward overheal in general.  Tank healers, specifically (pallies and Disc priests) tend to face situations where tanks can be gibbed at a moment’s notice, so tend to adopt the spam-heal-and-let-it-land approach, and often see very high overheal numbers (over 60%)  It’s currently a fact of the game, but at the same time, that’s 2/3 of your mana wasted.

Why not overheal?

As I somewhat touched on above, mana is the primary issue.  Through potion sickness, and the regen coefficient nerfs of early 3.x content, to the more recent hit to OoC regen outlined in Zusterke’s posts of last week, we can’t count on the bottomless mana pool sticking around.  I’m not meaning to turn into a “Blizz is hitting healers with the nerf bat” poster, but I get the strong feeling that this is a trend which will be continuing for some time.  I feel this is backed up, in part, by a post from Ghostcrawler just 3 days ago.

We want healing to be less spammy and more deliberate, but that won’t work until overhealing matters. To get to that point, mana regen has to matter but the risk of the tank dying in two boss hits also has to be chilled out.

In other words, tank healing is likely to get less finicky, but the nerfs to regen aren’t finished.

But how do I stop?

First of all, I don’t want to come down unilaterally hard on overheal and say “all overheal is bad!!!11″  For the most part, as the game stands currently, any overheal that your gear can support isn’t by itself bad.  In some situations (the above-mentioned tank healing, for example) it’s a requirement.  What the overhealing metric is good for is giving you a direction you can improve on.  Yeah, it’s great that you’ve officially gotten Freya on farm; now work on better spell selection and less zoning out to whack-a-mole and getting your overheal below 40%.

Jov sez: In Defense of Wacky Specs

Last week, one of my priesties (Hai Mira!*) sent me a PM asking for my feedback on some talent changes she was considering.  As anyone who’s read this blog knows, I’m pretty damned opinionated as to how to properly spec.  However, I do also try to keep a (somewhat) open mind to things which might make sense based on current needs, either of the player or of the content.  I’m also willing to give a good bit more thought to something that comes from someone I trust to not be a total mouthbreather, but that’s neither here nor there.

Essentially the gist comes to this:  My little priestie (Hai Mira!**) has been doing research, reading blogs, keeping up on her talents (exactly like I like them to do) and approached me with the thought of using a build first proposed by Derevka a couple weeks ago.  She gave me the build, made certain I had a link to the post, and (re-)explained the reasoning behind the various talents.  Essentially she (HAI MIRA!***) did everything right to break through my consistant knee-jerk reaction to some of the talents she proposes to take/skip and take on faith that she’s experimenting with a plan.

That’s not to say I immediately agreed with her.  Anyone asking my opinion directly is going to get it. The reply I sent back goes like this:

Personally, I’ve never liked Spell Warding, for the reasons you mention. I’ve seen people argue taking it when faced with constant raid-wide unavoidable damage (it was very big in SWP), it seemed very much “drop in the bucket”y vs Greater Heal. Of course, with the death of downranking, I can also understand not wanting to sacrifice points in something which improves a spell you rarely use.

I’ll totally trust your judgment re: GHeal usage vs hope of taking the edge off certain spell effects for better survivability. That’s a personal call.

Re: Healing Focus. I’m just snagging a random WWS to take a look at your spell useage here. (5/7 Ulduar is what I clicked on). Pushback doesn’t matter on your instants (CoH, renew, ProM, etc, which was ~70% of your healing done for the night) but will help with Flash, Greater, and PoH (~30% of your healing done). Again, I know that your spell selection is going to vary by fight.

Summing up my thoughts on the proposed spec change:
1) Spell Warding is very little bang for 5 talent points. It can help on some fights, but I’m personally biased against taking talents which are so very situational, generally speaking.
2) How much are you facing pushback in a given week?
3) If you are needing a greater heal, is the lack of reduced cast time going to hurt? What about the loss of the mana reduction?
4) I understand the logic behind the changes, I only wonder at the applicability.
5) I wouldn’t make the changes myself. However, I fully acknowledge that I am not you, my style is not yours, and my biases are my own. I’m very pro- trying stuff out to see what works. My main issue (which you’ve already resolved) is just following something weird you dug up somewhere and try as the hot new thing without actually giving it thought. I know that doesn’t apply, so consider this the green light. I very much look forward to how this works for you.

See? I can totally be open-minded.

When it comes down to it, some amount of healing is still based on personal style.  If I trust you through reading or personal experience enough to know you know what you’re doing, I’m very capable of acknowledging that some tweaks might not necessarily improve your throughput, but might help you out in other ways.

This is also not the only spec discussion going on in-guild at the moment, as I’m privy to a bit of a disagreement between two people I trust highly in knowing what they’re talking about.  I think it’s somewhat resolved, with a “try both of the specs for a week and give them a fair shot” plan in the works.  I just hope that one can forget the mathbook and the other can give cookie cutter an open mind long enough for the test to be fair.  But we’ll see.

In other news, AXIOM IS STILL RECRUITING! We’re particularly wanting a tree and a holy priest! Trees will get plenty of fertilizer from the streams of BS in guild chat and vent!  Priests!  You’ll get a kick-ass priest crew.  You’ll also down bosses.  Axiom needs YOU!

* Didn’t know I was gonna do this in a post, didja?

** Bet you wish you didn’t say something when I was racking my brain for this week’s post, huh?

*** You’re really gonna kill me, now, aren’t you?

Jov sez: How2Priest (part 2)

Okay, you’ve decided on priest, moreover, you’ve decided on leveling with a non-standard (read: non-shadow) spec.  Good job!  Lemme just recap a bit :

Part 1 included links to suggested specs for soloing

Earlier, I posted a general guide to speccing, which is great if you’re going the LFG route.

So you’ve got your priest, you’ve got your spec plan, now what?

Spells

As can be expected, a lot of our spells involve healing.  Priests are the jack-of-all-trades healers, meaning we’ve a huge toolkit with approximately 1500 ways of healing.  But when out in the wilds of Northrend (or STV, for that matter) we’re not going to heal stuff to death, we’ve got damage capabilities as well (don’t laugh, we can totally do damage.)

1-29

You’ve got quite the overwhelming repertoire when starting out.  While the damage spells you learn early on (Smite, Mind Blast, Shadow Word: Pain, etc) stay with you until the end of time, heals sometimes have expiration dates.  In short, once you hit lv 20 and get Flash Heal, take Lesser Heal off your bar and retire it to the old heals home. It served you well, but Flash is in all ways better/stronger/cheaper.

You also have the longer-cast larger heal with Heal, but to be perfectly honest, during the levels covered in this bracket, you can probably do just fine using nothing but Flash.

As far as damaging during these levels, your best tools aren’t really your damage spells at all; they’re Shield and Wand. Wands are stupidly OP in the beginning, to the point where it’s probably as effective to bubble and wand stuff from full as it is to cast at it, at least through the teens.  Otherwise, some general good guidelines would be to remember that Holy Fire is an opener, both due to the cast time and the DoT component.  Don’t worry about SW:P or Devouring Plague unless you’re certain you’ll get most of the ticks in (or if you’re tab-dot AOEing).  That’s… pretty much it.  These levels are really only slowed by the speed of running.

30-59

Congratulations!  You have a mount!  You’ve also got a lot of new spells which will see you finishing up your toolkit and finally retiring the last lingering spells of your noob-ness.  First off is Prayer of Healing.  Ignoring the small-heal component of Holy Nova, this is your first real big piece of group healing.  At this point, however, I’m going to advise you not put it on your bars. Prayer of Healing really needs 3 targets needing half their health pool to make it efficient, and with the wonders of PUGging, if you’re in a party where that many are needing that much, the tank doesn’t have good control and you’ll just pull healing aggro and die.  In the grand scheme of things, it’s simply a choice between their repair bill and yours.    There are places where it’s useful, yes, but it mainly just means the group is struggling until you hit mid-40s at the earliest.

Speaking of 40s, lv 40 is also where you do a bit of retiring.  Once you get Greater Heal, standard Heal goes the way of Lesser Heal.  It does.  I promise.  All those people who tell you Heal is viable at end-game did End Game back when BWL was hot shit.  Retire it, mourn it, miss it, but get rid of it.

DPS… has changed a bit, though you’re not looking at anything new.  Wands are now a finisher when you’re running low on mana, or something you use when bored in instances now.  All those spells you’ve had since the last bracket are the spells you’ll (still) be using now.

60-70

Ahh, Outlands.  You get more new spells in these 10 levels than you have in a clump since you rolled.  I’m talking about Hymn of Hope, Binding Heal, Shadow Fiend, and Prayer of Mending.  They also range from “not totally useless” to “this spell is the best thing ever” which isn’t actually too bad considering.

Hymn is, without a doubt, the weakest spell of the bunch.  If you’ve got the time to channel, you get some mana back, though I personally consider it most effective for getting o5sr and getting some serious ticks of spirit regen.  But it’s something.  Related, Shadow Fiend is also situationally useful (and useless).  The mana you get back is nothing to sneeze at, though your shadow puppy has some truly idiotic AI.  It works best on single-boss fights with no AOE abilities, and no CC to worry about.  And make certain you hit “attack” a few times, so it doesn’t just decide to chill out beside you.

And going from the meh to the awesome, both Binding Heal and Prayer of Mending are the shiznit.  I personally know I’m not in the habit of using Binding as much as I ought, but that’s mainly due to my imperfections in the class.  Binding should be used WHENEVER you’ve taken damage as well; and ProM should be going off every cooldown, especially in a raid environment.  They are seriously that good.

71-80

After all the new toys in the previous bracket, this one is kinda a let-down.  Mind Sear and Divine Hymn.  Divine Hymn currently echoes the other Hymn in it’s utility.  There are places where it’s okay, but it’s never going to be the best tool for the job, and has a long cooldown to boot.  Patch 3.1 sees it changing to a much stronger heal, though still facing a 10 minute cooldown.  I don’t know about anyone else, but with a cooldown that long, and the very situational need of it’s use, I know I’m probably going to continue to essentially never use it.

Mind Sear, however, is an awesome spell, and one a long time coming.  As is probably obvious by it’s name, it’s a DPS spell, but more than that, it’s an actual AOE.  Shadow Priests now have something more useful on trash than tab-SW:P’ing.

Talents

Of course, many of the class-defining tools require certain expenditures in talents to accomplish.  Yes, I’m talking about spells like Penance and Circle of Healing.  These are covered in my general spec guide linked above.  Regardless, if you don’t have one of the spells I just mentioned, you need to have the other.  Otherwise, don’t even bother.

Summing Up

Our bread and butter healing spells are Flash Heal, Greater Heal, Binding Heal, Prayer of Mending (every cooldown), Prayer of Healing, Penance (every cooldown, if specced) and Circle of Healing (situational, if specced). Renew is useful pre-80, though the jury is still out whether the effort to re-balance for 3.1 is going to work.  Also, don’t be afraid to Shield (if you’re Disc) and ignore what the warrior is telling you about rage.  What miniscule amount that might have been true before, it’s being fixed in 3.1 anyway, so tell them to shut up and l2read patch notes.  Guardian Spirit also is a situationally useful lifesaver.  Those are what you’ll be working with as a healing priest, and you can probably safely remove most of the rest of the stuff from your bars, or at least tuck them away and hide them.

Jov sez: How2Priest (part 1, the noob years)

This isn’t going to be the most thorough guide out there, but in the past week, we’ve gotten many requests here at Snarkcraft HQ requesting a bit of basic priest-fu, ranging from leveling to raiding (seriously, multiple emails… you all sharing a brain or something?) so I’m gonna take the next few weeks to provide an overview.

This week: the noob years.  Rolling and leveling.

Okay, so after stumbling upon our blog and becoming faithful readers, you say to yourself “Self… Priesting is awesome-pants.  I totally want in on that.  What should I do now?”  Fear not, for Jov has answers and will steer you right.

First, you need to consider faction and playstyle.  I’m horde, but I’m a reroll and played Alliance from 05 to 08, and make no secret of my total infatuation with the draenei.  I don’t really have faction pride.  Play what makes you happy, where your friends want to play, or where you can send yourself bags and heirloom shoulders.  Related, determine how are you going to level.  Are you going to solo quest?  Whore yourself in LFG?  Do you have a buddy you don’t leave home without?  Take a moment to plan exactly what you want from the class, because that will affect how best to go from here.

If you choose to solo quest…

First, I’m gonna come out and say it.  Shadow is totally viable for healing most instances, and is also much faster when it comes to questing out in the world.  The advantage holy* (defined from here forward as “healy”) priests usually have is in mana regen and/or stronger heals.  That isn’t an issue, however, until Outlands at the very earliest, so feel free to go straight to shadowform before jumping over to Discipline and picking up Meditation and going back for more shadowy goodness.  Or badness, depending on perspective.  (Think about something 13/0/31-ish in the mid-50s.  Note: getting to Meditation happens however in the second tier…  you don’t get the spellpower boost from Inner Fire (and want the boost to improved) until 71.)  That will be more than enough to see you through until you’re closer to thinking about a “final spec.”

However, much as you can heal as shadow, you can definitely level as holy or discipline, bearing in mind it’s just going to be a bit slower to do so.  For those of you going the mainly solo-route, I’m still going to advise sticking your first 5 talent points in shadow to snag spirit tap (and improved spirit tap), then jumping into Discipline to get Meditation as quickly as possible.  The name of the game here is reducing downtime, since kill time will be a bit longer.  But that’s alright, with Meditation and Spirit Tap working together, you’ll be a regen machine and rarely need water.

Once you hit lv 18, with it’s regen hijinks, you can pick your path:  Discipline, or Holy.  You won’t see much difference between the two while questing, nor will you really be running into the differences between the healing styles until closer to Outlands when you can pick up Circle of Healing or really become a bubble-priest.  Discipline will want to pick talents which boost their spellpower and shields, and Holy will want to snag reduced cast time, more spellpower, and chance for free spells.  Remember to respec at 71 for Improved Inner Fire if you’re not using it already!

Example Disc Soloing Build (live)
Example Disc Soloing Build (3.1 PTR)
Example Holy Soloing Build (live)
Example Holy Soloing Build (3.1)

If you choose to LFG…

… by which I mean “don’t quest, just instance level,” most of what I said above applies.  Spirit Tap and some of the damage talents will decrease in utility, as you’ll mainly be using them when the party is going well or to duel outside Orgrimmar while waiting on a summon.  There’s actually little to no reason to avoid going straight for one of the specs I outlined a few weeks ago, just remember to start in Discipline for Meditation, either way.  You’ll be a healing machine, just maybe a bit slow if you try to kill anything yourself.

If you choose to Healbot your friends…

It’s kinda a combination of the two.  Depending on who you’re running around with, you might not find Spirit Tap all that useful *grumble lousy hunters grumble* but you’ll probably find yourself smiting pretty frequently.  It really depends on your group or what you’re doing.  If you’re wanting to have fun smiting around, spec more for damage.  If you’re just wanting to tag along and heal when needed, spec for healing.  (Hey, I don’t judge.  I first started playing Priest because it enabled me to auto-follow Tarsus’ first character, not get lost, not understand WASD controls, loot and heal occasionally.  Even to this day, several years and many characters later, I STILL prefer to follow Tarsus as I have serious issues deciphering some quest descriptions.)

Next week: Jov discusses what makes healy priests unique: spells, glyphs, and talents.

Jov sez: Raiding as a Job

It’s often said that tanks and healers, as the two highest-pressure jobs in a group, are also the two roles who are most susceptible to burn-out.  It’s also somewhat of an open secret around Snarkcraft that Seri (who has alt-itis anyway) swapped to rogue after a couple years raiding and healing.  Having stepped into her role as both priest class lead and heal co-lead, I often find myself slipping into the thought processes that define WoW as job:

• I attend every 25-man our guild runs.  While there, I’m not only handing out assignments and focusing on my own targets, but I’m also spreading my attention between the other healers and their targets.  We’ve got a pretty strong healing team, and I’m always trying to make certain that I’m riding the balance of giving them assignments they can do/prefer, while still keeping things challenging and interesting.  If things start to go wrong, however, the problem feels personal when I’m trying to sort it out.
• I still feel unprepared for some of the tasks I have for other classes.  I need to know proper gearing, enchanting, gemming, speccing, and some idea of proper spell selection for all the healing classes, so I can 1) spot anything in advance that raises red flags to see if there’s a plan for it (I’m happy to let wacky stuff go if there’s a reason for it) and 2) figure out post mortem what went wrong in a certain encounter.  I don’t spend as much time on this as I should (as I’m not NEARLY so good at this side of things as my co-leader), but it’s still there and I feel I should be making the effort.
• I blog and moderate PlusHeal.  Even in my non-raid, non-WoW time, I spend a lot of time hunched over the computer, coming up with topics and wielding my ban-hammer at goldsellers and spambots.
• I generally have little patience for truly repetitive tasks.  One of the reasons I love raiding is I honestly find the whack-a-mole aspect of it to be entertaining, or at least more entertaining than farming and Hodir dailies.

WoW may not be a 40-hour a week activity, but it still takes up a lot of mental real estate.  Burnout may not yet be the elephant in the room, but the potential is there.  How am I dealing?

• If it’s not fun, why do it?  I’m a bad raider and a bad example.  I’ve totally let my Hodir dailies slip, and I only do enough herbing for what I need, without my usual redundancy backlog of an overflowing herb bag.  Most of my income is from Naxx runs.  I don’t intend to stay like this forever, but for the moment it’s helping me stay sane.
• I’m not playing my alts to level.  I play them when I want to goof off.  Leveling is something that just kinda happens (or doesn’t) in the course of things.  I’m not focused on getting to 80.
• I’m letting myself get obsessively immersed in other downtime activities.  I’ve watched more movies in the past month than I had in the previous 6.  I’ve also re-read all my manga, and scoured the net for scans of new stuff.  I do what I want to do, when I feel like doing it and I’m alright with that.

So, yeah.  There’s me.  If I do hit the burn-out stage, it won’t be the first time.  Luckily, my burnouts tend to be fairly short-lived and to involve me doing things like showing up for raid in shadow form (back before shadow priests were awesome and were stuck on healing duty anyway) or taking 2-week long enforced no-WoW leaves of absence.

The most important thing is really to remember why I do this.  I raid because I love healing.  I love my guild.  I love the vent and raid chatter.  I’m a heal lead because, while I think I know my stuff, I love to help.  If raiding is a job, it’s a job I love.

Jov sez: Priests: Regen and You

Stats: Joveta, lv 75 Holy Priest, currently specced 14/47/5 for questing, STILL getting shunted to DPSing instances (wtf healer shortage??  Where?!) and occasional heal-pwning.  Due to the Thanksgiving holiday with the in-laws, almost no time was spent this week on leveling.  The only major accomplishment was finally finishing up Tars’ Netherwing Rep, enabling him to have a shiny dragon, too.  Go Tars!

I’m not continuing my “everything” posts this week, as I’m fully aware that I’m now approaching the minority to have not at least crested the Cold-Weather Flying benchmark, and raiding is regularly happening.  I’m posting this now to try and get information together and out there.  None of this originated with me, and I am providing links to all of my sources.  It’s pretty safe to say that most of it comes from EJ, however.

Please note: when I say Discipline Spec, I’m assuming a talent spec containing at least 51 points in Discipline; likewise for Holy.

In Which Jov Eats Crow

Regen ain’t what it used to be, and straight mp5 isn’t necessarily the devil.  There comes a time in a priest’s life where they may find themselves taking mp5 over spirit.  This is not a bad thing.  Especially since deep-Discipline is raid-viable, mp5 can seriously outweigh the benefits of Spirit.  Quoting from the WotLK Healing Compendium on EJ,

For holy, 9 spirit = 4 Mp5, ignoring spellpower gains entirely. Given spellpower gains, a 2:1 ratio is acceptable.
For disc, 5 spirit = 2 Mp5, with no spellpower gains. Convert cleanly, and make your decision.

What does that mean to you, Mr. Non-Mathcrafting Healing Priest?  Essentially, Spirit is twice as important to a Holy-specced priest than it is to one who is specced Discipline, and most of that is due to the bonus Holy gets to spellpower. If you’re weighing the regen between an item with 20 spirit or 12 mp5, Discipline will do better with the straight mp5.  Use the weights above, and take the item that nets you more regen.

I feel so dirty typing that.

Also, spirit has been nerfed.  The old spirit based regen figures were

5 * 0.0093271 * Spirit * Square_root ( Intellect )

But now we’re looking at

5 * 0.005575 * Spirit * Square_root ( Intellect )

Which means that generally speaking, we’re getting less regen in general.  Ghostcrawler has earned the enmity of the spirit-based healers at large with the following response:

As a few players have referenced, we thought mana regen got to a point at the end of BC where players could just generally ignore it and assumed that mana was just a system you eventually graduate out of (kind of like experience).

We don’t want you to be out of mana constantly, but we do want the risk of that to exist. We balance some spells based on their mana cost for example and when you can always use your most expensive, least efficient spell without consequence, then your cheap and efficient spells don’t compete.

Mana is a resource to be managed, much like health or cooldowns.

Basically, we’re not supposed to be never-ending founts of infinite mana and never were.  The removal of downranking and the nerf to spirit-based regen was done to reflect that.  To Ghostcrawler (on this and other things) I say thbbbt.

Intellect is a Regen Stat

Um, it is now.  Thanks to Replenishment and our new reliance on crit, Priests want Int.  Yay Int!

Thus: (ignoring gains in mana pool size)
Discipline: 132 intellect = 1% crit, 31.3 Mp5
Holy: 150 intellect = 1% crit, 30.9 Mp5

Comparatively:
Discipline: 132 spirit = 40 Mp5
Holy: 150 spirit = 46 Mp5 + 43 spellpower

Replenishment is a nifty tool.  Living in the days of “Base Mana” everywhere, it’s really nice to face something that’s based on maximum mana.  Essentially, if you’ve got a Ret Pally, a Survival Hunter, or a Shadow Priest, you’re getting the Replenishment buff.  It’s a 15 second buff which gives you 0.25% of your maximum mana back per second.  How much is that?  Well, it depends entirely on how much mana you can get for yourself.  You get more regen the more mana you have, so buff up!  (And yes, Discipline Priests have an advantage here with Mental Strength.)

Crit is also interesting.  Current theory holds that 20-25% is the “magic number” to aim for when getting crit rating.  It’s not a direct regen stat, but it snags you time Oo5SR through Surge of Light and Holy Concentration procs.  Why 20-25%?  That’s 1 cast in 4-5. Put simply, with that much crit, you’re looking at potentially one Surge of Light proc per tap of CoH.  Needless to say, that’s pretty snacky.

Intellect vs Spirit

So with the addition of Replenishment, and the fact that Spirit isn’t so OP, you may be thinking to start stacking Int for all your regen needs.  If you are, stop right there! Zusterke from PlusHeal (all my healing readers also read Plus Heal, right?  Right?!) made an awesome post outlining exactly why you should not be focusing on one stat and ignoring all the others.  For the healcraft-averse, the TL;DR can be summed up as:  Don’t stack!  You want a 1:1 ratio between Int and Spirit! That applies to any spirit-based healing class: Trees, Discipline, or Holy.

EDIT 12/3 : Zusterke has published a tool to let you calculate exactly how much regen an upgrade/consumeable/anything else will net you.  Available at Zusterke’s Corner: where undead test their brains…

So to sum up:

• Spirit isn’t what it used to be.  Dependent on spec, you may find mp5 is better.
• Smart Priests choose Int!
• But not too much, you’re aiming at a 1:1 ratio between Intellect and Spirit for best regen.

Guest Post: Tanks on Healers – A WoS Special

Jov is being lazy this week, and instead of providing a post herself, is pulling from the husband archives to provide you, dear readers, with a view from the other side of the healing story.

Since Jov is on vacation this week I, Tarsus, her loving and devoted husband have offered to fill in here with an exciting guest post.  To give you some background, Jov and I have been playing WoW together for over three years now (since March 2005 to be precise, when it became clear after a week of playing that just one account would not be sufficient for the two of us), and for most of that I have played as her Tank.  This is because I love warriors as much as she loves priests.  I love tanking, she loves healing, and together we’re the toughest part of a PuG to assemble.

This also means that I can offer some perspective from the other side to you, dear healers.  We tanks have more feelings than just the searing flames of rage, and though our bodies are made of Steel, Bear Blubber, and Flasks of Fortification, or feelings are not, and occasionally you stomp on them.  Or, you know, do a little jig on their burning embers.

Jov and I have a very good understanding on these things, being that after the raid is over and the video card is cooling we still live and love with each other.  For you healers who are not married to your tanks, however, I have some “learning” for you.

1) A good tank will never complain about healing. You got that?  NEVER.  Even if they go without healing and must pop shield wall in order to live long enough to pop a pot because you are doing something wrong they will never tell you how to tell you how much it hurts.  They do this because despite the repair bills and corpse runs they know where their bread is buttered.  Regardless of this the ancient adage remains true: with few minor and specific exceptions if the tank dies it is the healer’s fault. We’ll just never call you on it, remember that.

2) We hate it when you heal the DPS. We don’t hate them because they can generate more threat than us.  We don’t hate them because they’re too busy watching recount to realize they’re about to die.  We hate them because when they get healed, chances are a healer is about to die.  The only thing that kills healers faster than a tank dying is when you heal the doomed aggro-pulling DPS. The enhancement shaman may be wearing mail, but when it comes down to it they might as well be wearing paper.  We try so hard to make sure you live, but sometimes taunt just isn’t enough.

3) Threat does not grow on trees, but healing does. We tanks can stack as much hit and expertise as possible, but chances are we’re still going to miss some of those crucial first hits.  This applies double to fights which have aggro drops and transitions in them.  Try to keep your heals small and controllable.  Big Heals and HoTs right after the tank gets aggro are going to get you killed. We don’t want you to go splat, even if you do things sometimes that make us die a little inside.

4) Unless you are being hit by something, don’t stand near us. In case you missed the memo, being in melee range of a mob increases your threat significantly.  Just remember that this also works in reverse though, so for the love of God run towards the tank if you pull aggro. We like to joke about how often the mage blinks away when Mr. Mob comes looking for his blood but every tank knows that healers are every bit as guilty of just standing there and get eaten. We know this sounds like a hot cold thing, it’s not really, we just want you to live.

5) The good tank is a grumpy tank, so please stop complaining about it. It isn’t that we’re failing at having fun.  It isn’t that we don’t like epics, or getting hit repeatedly in the face (or shield).  We do like these things – that’s why we’re here after all.  But when you’re job is to be the meat-shield (and most tanks can’t do much besides that) it’s hard not to take it personally when people die.  This goes double for healers.  Really.  If a rogue dies and the tank still has aggro, does anyone care?  No.  But if the healer dies, it doesn’t matter what the aggro status is because everyone’s life just got a lot harder.  We tanks are sensitive.  We recognize this.   We see a special relationship between us and the healers.  And then you go and die on us, so we are sad.  So if we seem a little rough around the edges it’s not because we’re not having fun, it’s because we care.

And so therefore…

6) We are tired of the healer Mafia. We know that we’ve had a cozy relationship in the past and sometimes we’ve made somewhat crass statements that were a bit too “friendly”, but we here down at the Tanker’s Union work hard to bring home the purples and we could really use a break from the threats.  Our numbers are dwindling all the time, and what with the shiny foreign undead competition on the horizon, there is just not a lot of love left for the common working tank.  Sure, people don’t talks smack about the tank like they do the effete elite DPS classes who can make their millions and afford many fancy epic mounts, but we thought you were our friends.  You never hear tanks say they’ll stop saving the healers. A grue eats a kitten every time you think about killing your tank.  So if you can’t care enough about your tank, at least think of the kittens.

Jov sez: 3.0.2 — The New Game

So, it’s been a week since the big patch; things seem so different, don’t they?  They do because WoW is a very different game at current.  Regardless of level of progression, it’s very noticeable that things are a lot easier.  My caveat to what I’m about to start talking about goes here:  I’m not in a guild that had “beaten the game” before the patch.  My e-peen is big for all the old-fashioned reasons, not for any that involve Muru pre-nerf.  My credentials are those of a solidly mid-progression raider.  The changes made to raid environments directly benefit me, and my impressions are colored by that.

Okay, so, all that done with… what are my impressions?

• I need a nerf.  Seriously.  I’m OP.
• 2-hour BT clears are a good thing.
• So are raid-wide buffs.
• Who’s that at the top of the WWS by a huge margin?  Oh, right, that would be me…
• Carelessness can still get you wiped… sometimes.
• I don’t know what some priests are doing that they think they’ve been nerfed.
• The changes are awesome for getting past “stuck” issues with bosses.
• The Line Boss is the new Elevator Boss.
• Blizz is totally rewarding me for bad-priesting and it is awesome.

Okay, okay…  My impressions you all might actually care about:

• While I remain unconvinced that GS is worth dropping Meditation for at this stage of the game, I’ve seen it can be done, and can be done well.  That being said, you’ll pry Meditation from my cold, dead fingers.
• As a 14/47 spec (differing from my suggested due to misspent points from server lag… I just decided to stick with it and try it out), I could do nothing to run myself out of mana.  I spent all of BT face-rolling CoH, with a smite or flash thrown out when I got a Surge proc.  My mana went nowhere, and I used 3 biscuits all night.
• BT feels much more like what it is for us: the instance we farm to get gear for people so we can go do the actual raiding in Sunwell.  Being able to clear it in 2 hours is like a gift of 2 free hours we can spend elsewhere.  It also helps with a lot of the frustration of “Here we are again, just like last week, another Wednesday down the drain.”  People were relaxed, laughing, having fun and not taking things so seriously.  There’s time to actually work on the bosses we need to work on, even with our 3-day schedule.
• We couldn’t get Kalec down pre-nerf.  There were some heartbreakingly-close attempts, but with raid comp availability, we spent a lot of time mindlessly throwing ourselves at him.  We wiped so much, we forgot how to do anything but wipe, attempts always felt doomed from the start. We downed him the same day as the 2-hour BT clear, with minimal raid deaths, on our second attempt.  There was much happy screaming in vent.

There are a lot of complaints out there now about Blizzard dumbing down the game with these systems of nerfs.  People who beat the game before 3.0.2 feel somewhat insulted that Blizzard is discounting their hard work in making things accessible to everyone.  People who’ve been working through content feel a letdown that Blizzard suddenly made things too easy, taking away all sense of accomplishment.

I have one thing to say to both of those camps:  QQ.  If you downed KJ before Tuesday, you have the pride in knowing that you beat the game, you’re awesome, and that all the rest of us out there needed the nerf to do what you could do with out.  If you’re upset that suddenly Kael or Archi or Illidan are easy, you should have gotten them down before the patch.  If you couldn’t, you’re the person the change was designed to help.

And to both as well: if you don’t like it, hang up your DKP and stop.  Everything is going to reset in three weeks, anyway.  Then, we can all move on to Naxx, which Matt assures us isn’t so easy.  That, at least, should make everyone happy.

Jov sez: What Trash Says About You

No, I’m not talking about McDonalds bags or kitty litter, I’m talking about instance trash. This is actually a bit of a tie-in with Seri’s post about apping to a raid guild. It was prompted by problems our guild has faced in the past with new recruits, so I wanted to bring it up. There is more to joining a raid guild than having the gear for the content. Finding the right “fit” is a process, and very open to pitfalls. I think we all have a tendency to just go shopping for a guild at the right level of progression, without thinking first about what sort of raid environment we enjoy. I’m not just talking about the people and vent chatter, I’m also talking about the actual process of raiding. Knowing what you need and want is your responsibility to consider before accepting a guild invite, and should be brought up by you in the interview process. The simplest, and perhaps most telling, would be to ask how the guild handles trash.

Two examples to illustrate what I feel are two ends of a spectrum:

The Meticulous Style

This is many group’s default, at least while learning content. Every pull is marked, every tank and CC’er has their target, everyone is careful. There is very little FFA healing, each healer assigned to a specific person or group/party and sticking with it. It’s also very much healing by the rules. Lots of cancel-casting, letting hots tick without being overwritten, there’s a general focus on doing what is needed and conserving resources. Healing is not a competition, you’re doing what is most needed to get the boss down cleanly. This style is very good when things go wrong, there’s usually a back-up plan in place. Also, this style is very friendly to low-healer groups. Doing content with fewer than the recommended number of healers pretty much demands this style of gameplay.

The Aggressive Style

This is almost the opposite of Meticulous. It’s perhaps best considered a controlled chaos. This is much more common on the instance you’ve farmed to death and just want to get through as quickly as possible. Tanks fight each other for aggro on multiple targets (Tank A decides he wants all his targets, plus a few of Tank B’s) AoE occurs more often than single-target DPS, and beyond assigning tank heal assignments, the rest is FFA healing. Most pulls have a “seat of your pants” feel, and you spend a good deal of the evening riding the line of something going very wrong. This sort of style usually occurs with a very strong, overgeared group. However sloppy it may look, however, it is done by people who know their capability. Tanks will steal targets, but not more than they know they (and their healers) can handle. Healers will cross-heal with abandon, but only as far as they know their mana will stretch.

The Problem

As is probably obvious, problems can occur when someone who is used to raiding with a group who uses one extreme applies to a group who goes the other way. If you were happy with the style of raiding of your previous guild, you need to also ensure your application goes to a guild which follows the same style. (If you’re not happy with the style, by all means, find a guild of the opposite style to apply to.)

If you are a meticulous healer, you’re healing by-the-books, the right way. Your target is staying up, you’re doing everything the right way. However, if you join an aggressive guild, you’re either going to be bored (because someone else is always going to have a heal land first, or overwrite your hot) or going to cause red flags with your class lead when WWS reports your effective healing numbers are half that of those who share your spec/assignment.

Conversely, if you’re an aggressive healer and join a meticulous guild, you’re going to spend your time feeling like you’re surrounded by a bunch of slackers. You’re not going to want to watch the DPS’s health slowly climb as hots tick, you’re going to want to give ‘em a boost now. You’re also likely to cause just as many red flags with your class lead for your flagrant cross-healing. At the end of the day, your healing numbers may blow everyone else out of the water, but you’re going to cause people to worry about your conservation and what will happen if things go wrong.

The Solution

Neither healer nor guild in either of my previous examples is wrong, they are only wrong for each other. Where the wrongness occurs is before the first raid, it’s in the interview, or even the application. It is the applicant’s responsibility to know what their style is, and to find out if that meshes with the guild they are applying to. Guilds also have the responsibility to be open and upfront with what sort of healing environment they will provide.

No guild is going to follow either style 100% of the time, nor are they always going to adhere to the extreme. Most guilds are probably somewhere in the middle. Know where you stand, so when you apply, you know you’re not setting yourself up for failure.