Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Playing Catch-Up

So, I may have gotten slightly ahead of myself when I decided to state I was going to post more, but here is another attempt at such things...

One a personal note, Nef was put down a couple weeks ago, and surprisingly was not too bad. Here is an uber-awful video where I do some end of the key s-key allstar movements...

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Now, since I always said this was more of an advice/theorycrafting blog, here we go...

Resto:

Thanks to recent 15% buff to purification, most of our heals are now in a competitive/comparable spot healing wise (125/110 = 1.136, so a 13.6% increase in healing) I could still complain about our coefficients lacking for most heals, especially as we progress further into the expansion. The buff to the coefficient of greater heal along with its base healing will probably keep that competitive.

10 Man Notes

My experience in this expansion has been solely in 10 man encounters, which is an entirely different monster than 25's in terms of possible spec and healing spell usage.

Now that we are working on heroics and I know the fights quite a bit better, I can see my healing percentages leveling off to more mana friendly levels.

4 pc T10 is a blessing, but also not really. It is wonderful in that it is a free 540 spirit, and if you look at your uptime, no matter your role, it should have an uptime of 90%+, but sadly does not stack with mana tide. It really is just a little extra "free" spirit since you are getting it for doing nothing different.

It is nice to know that we can seamlessly, for the most part, switch between raid and tank healing without a spec change.

Tank healing actually allows a lot of use of our mana efficient heals for the most part, I spent a lot of my time tank healing casting riptide, unleash elements, and healing wave, with the occasional greater healing wave. It is useful to note that we have a deadspot in our rotations where we will generally be casting a 3rd heal before our tidal waves buff comes back up; this spot can be filled with a healing surge (a better heal than greater without tidal waves up) or a healing wave depending on what type of damage you are looking at, or you can just sit and twidle your thumbs. People with telluric currents still specced could also consider a lightning bolt for some free mana here.

Raid healing is slightly more complicated on 10 man than, what I hear, 25. The general fight has people spread out so much so that your chain heal and healing rain become much less effective, and almost turns us into the "pally raid healer" of yesteryore, where we play wack-a-mole. Still, there are many opportunities during group phases in the current tier that allow you to get your ample fill of chain heals and healing rains in.

Talents

Stop talking about taking focused insight, it is at best a pvp talent, and does not reduce the cost of your heals. It reduces them by 75% of the shock's cost, for 30% more healing, and takes a gcd +25% of the shocks costs, which are quite expensive these days. There are things where this seems useful (while the buff is up, healing rain will receive this bonus until you cast a direct healing spell, using it), but it is not worth the points.

Telluric currents is something I would have swore by 2 months ago, I have long specced back out of it and no longer care. I think this is something that is great when you are clearing bosses which have a burn phase with low damage, and if you don't care about having a second resto PVE spec, I would suggest using it, but I doubt many of us have that opportunity, and although the mana return is excellent, my healing wave has moved into near mana neutral. I haven't had a fight since our healing was boosted that made we wish for this talent back to get some mana back. If you take it, drop points out the cheaper dispell, or extra healing on your earth shielded target, not movement speed. I don't know if you've noticed yet, but there is a lot of positional requirements to adhere to in the raiding environment, and you are getting a very nice boost over the boots enchant.

Ok, so I'm out of time for my break, since this post comes during some down time while I was waiting for sql code to pull out a few million records, time to get back to work.

I will try and do some at least better/more informative information soon, I promises it!

-B Rab

ps - unleash elements -> cast a heal and queue riptide, is appears the bug where the heal and riptide both get boosted is still not fixed...

pss - I like crit, it works as a mana regen tool. Haste is still an excellent way to increase throughput if you can afford it, and mastery is less lackluster than it was, but you wont catch me gemming or reforging to it