I'm writing on a hotel wireless, in the beautiful desert, awaiting my sunset photo op in Canyonlands. Rough, I know.
But Jessabelle upset me. She just posted on trinkets, and did it all wrong. It's ok, she's still a very good priest, and a cool lady. We all make mistakes.
Here is my trinket list. All but one are in my bags at all times. I hope this helps with your own gearup plans, even as we're in the denoument of a long hard road through Arthas' world.
Time-Lost Figurine. I got this the first week I hit 70, while helping a friend farming his Sha'tari Skyguard rep. It used to be fun to run Shadow Labs while disguised as an Arakkoa. Now, well, it's still the best disguise in the game IMO.
Figurine - Ruby Hare. I don't PvP much nowadays, but when I do, the mobility boost is just too much fun. Call it the luxury of being human, and the price for not being an engineer.
Sif's Remembrance. I just need 9 more people and I'll be able to Herald. Until then, I have a bag in my bank filled with 226s.
Discerning Eye of the Beast. Holy Nova + Discerning Eye + Skellies in Culling of Strat = infinite mana. I don't use this as much as I used to, but definitely if I get Strat right after changing specs.
If you need to shard Solace or PLD to make room for one of these, don't hesitate.
There is a little-known secret among disc priests.
We all know the two basic principles of the discipline spec. First, that our greatest value is our ability to mitigate, whether it be from our shields, our crit-bubbles, or our passive quasi-aura. Second, our direct heals are pathetically small. This is why bad raid leaders everywhere continue to fire disc priests from their raids when we register near the ret pallies and shadow priests on any healing meter that doesn’t count absorbs.
But I’m not here to tell you that there’s a secret way to combat this. Bad raid leaders are bad. Apparently they missed the patch notes from 3.0.2, which came out, like, a YEAR AND A HALF AGO. Sheesh.
No, I’m here to teach you a secret way to maximize your output. Yes, I know you’re already doing great, and I know that when you factor in absorbs (hooray World of Logs!) that you end up at or near the top of the meter. I’m here to challenge you to pump out more healing (and shielding) that you thought you could in a given fight.
Ready?
Always. Be. Casting. This is the ABC of discipline priesting. And it seems to be a well-guarded secret!
This is a mindset you learn as a damage-dealing class. Any time you’re not casting, you’re leaving dps on the table, so to speak. Shadow priests learn to spam Devouring Plague and Shadow Word: Death when they’re running so they don’t waste precious seconds getting from orange to green. But healing classes have been trained the opposite way. We might shield pre-emptively, but we also stand idly when there doesn’t appear to be anything more to do.
Think about it. Every global you don’t cast a spell is a potential loss of 10 to 30 thousand points of healing/mitigation, maybe more. How many globals do you spend moving without casting? Or waiting, just regenerating mana, subconsciously living in the BC-era world of dodging the five-second rule? If you idle for just six globals a minute, you’re looking at a 10% reduction in your output. You might as well be healing in your Ulduar gear. Or be healing through a minor Mortal Strike debuff.
“But wait,” you say, “I only pause when there’s nothing to heal!” Well, dear friends, disc priests are the best in the business at healing people who are already at full health. We spam bubbles. Bubbles are instant. They’re our most valuable function in a raid, our most powerful spell.
And after all the bubbles have been spammed—and I do mean all—we spam direct heals. Because with our high crit rates, even direct heals turn into more shields. And when you’re on the move, if Weakened Soul is on every raid member…what then? Of course PoM is on CD (isn’t it?), so you suck it up and toss out your only remaining instant, our weakest heal: Renew. Renew is terribad for disc, just awful. But it’s better than doing nothing.
Have I managed to rile you up yet?
Ok, fine, I’ll back off Renew. But that’s as far as I’ll go.
I have to confess, this post was 100% inspired by something Matron wrote over on PlusHeal a couple of weeks ago. For reference, he’s the GM of an 11/12 hard-mode guild, so scoff at your own risk. It was part of a discussion on how disc priests should gem. Remember that he is speaking about a 25-man progression context, in which disc is a raid healer shielder, not healing the tanks. Tank healing in 25s is best left to our bacon-loving friends, at least until Cata. Ok, here we go:
The #1 way to increase throughput is to cast more spells, not gem SP.
The popular advice to “gem INT if you have mana problems” and “gem SP if you don’t have mana problems” is the worst advice given on these boards. If someone is casting fewer spells than they should of course they’re not going to have mana problems, and what individuals take away from the discussion is a feeling that because they don’t have mana problems they should gem throughput. That’s absolutely incorrect.
You can go OOM on most every encounter in ICC, even with the best gear and using all your mana cooldowns, by simply spamming PWS, which will provide the most HPS for your raid as disc.
The challenge of any role is to cast more of your best spells/abilities. To do this you must support yourself with int/regen.
Rather than saying “if you don’t have mana problems gem SP,” instead we should be advising people that “if you don’t have mana problems you need to cast more spells until you do have mana problems”... pushing people towards a state of OOMness will increase their throughput much faster than advising them to socket an extra 100-150 SP.
The INT that people socket won’t even make much of a difference in terms of regen; again gems are only going to provide 150-200 stat points. However, advising people to socket SP if they don’t have mana problems tells people that their current level of casting is acceptable/optimal, when in reality 99% of priests aren’t casting using every gcd.
He clarified a few posts later:
Again, gemming INT or SP won’t make that much of a difference either way. We’re talking at most a 5-10% difference in mana pool or shield size. What makes the most difference is how many spells people cast, which I believe is a playstyle/practice better supported by focusing on regen/INT...
My feeling is that it is easy enough to go OOM by simple pro-active shield spammage, disc’s bread & butter; you don’t have to get fancy to go OOM…
Basically there are a ton of reasons/encounters for constant PWS spam. If you’re not taking these opportunities and you’re losing out on the meters, but you “don’t have mana problems”, gemming for SP is not going to close the gap with other healers. You’re playing incorrectly, not gemming incorrectly. In reality gems matter very little for us.
I am as guilty as the next guy for giving gemming advice like that. However, my own gearing strategy has its bedrock on hybridtrinkets and an overpowered regen meta (sorry Dawn!). But as Matron said, the issue he’s poking at here is not so much gem choice as playstyle choice.
Try it out next time you raid. Challenge yourself to waste fewer globals. Fight the urge to wait for anything. When there’s no one to shield, Flash your neighbors to put up more Divine Aegis. Use Penance every cooldown, assuming you can risk not having it available for emergencies for a few seconds.
Treat yourself like a dps class who has to do everything he can to squeeze out another drop of damage. You might just discover a whole new level of play.
It will be difficult to make this seem less directly related
to my current situation than it is. What I mean is: this is a private QQ and a
public QQ. Both a philosophical argument and a more personal argument. I
actually have a proposal at the end of this rant. So bear with it.
Preliminary disclaimer: this is not about loot. It’s about
loot policy. We all know that getting loot is part of the motivating
factor for playing the game. If you raided all of ICC25, then all of ICC
heroic, and were victorious the whole way through, you would feel like you beat
the game for sure. But if you got no gear along the way, your gnawing sense
that you were being carried would get stronger and stronger. That you weren’t
living up to your potential. That you were in fact more of a burden than a
player. If your toon is not evolving, getting slightly but consistently more
powerful with every raid week, it becomes a psychic knot. It feels awful, and
it has effects on your performance, your relationships, and your interest in playing
the game. Whoever says that loot isn’t important might be correct if they’re
attacking gear-score whores. I just hope you don’t miss the deeper point: loot
is in fact quite important.
As I’ve said before, I believe loot council is the best loot
distribution method available. That is, if it’s run by philosopher kings and/or
enlightened officers. I have not met a single person who fits this description.
Therefore, in practice, it runs the gamut from merely awful to the absolute
worst.
The quality of a LC is limited by several factors, including but hardly limited to: (1) the
integrity of the council members; (2) the degree of team spirit on the council
and in the guild itself; (3) the data systems used for tracking loot
distribution, including a way to measure the amount of upgrade a piece
represents; (4) clear rules regarding performance and its affect on loot; and (5)
delicate care for the individuals in the raid, as well as for the raid itself.
Integrity: This should be obvious. We’ve all heard
stories of loot councils in which council members grabbed high-value loot for
themselves, or gave it to their friends. That’s just the most obvious example
of a lack of integrity. While integrity is tied to team spirit (below), it is
so vast and multi-dimensional that it can’t really be narrowed down to a simple
bullet-point. There are more situations than you could ever codify in some
rulebook of loot allocation. Integrity itself must be the rulebook; you
need to be truly trustworthy to be a loot councillor. And that’s no small feat.
I’ve been in the position many times of having to make a
loot allocation decision that had no easy answer, and which would most
definitely anger or hurt someone who did not deserve their fate. It’s hard
stuff. Most people I know have small cojones when it comes to making hard
decisions, such that they’ll reliably take the easy way out, rather than make
harder, gutsier, riskier calls. Our true character is on the line when it comes
to stuff like this. We all know it. Challenging situations bring out the devil
and the saint in us; those with more integrity are more likely to show their
saint than their devil when the going gets tough.
Team spirit: First of all, if your guild is missing
this, you should be looking for a new guild. And if your officers are missing
this, run for the hills. It’s a team sport, and if you don’t have a
team-spirited team, there’s no loot distribution “trick” that can fix it for
you. Certainly a LC needs to have its eyes not on the individuals, but on
the team. Where will this piece of loot benefit us the most? This is so obvious
it surely doesn’t need to be said. But it always needs to be said.
Data systems + upgrade measurements: That’s fancytalk
for “spreadsheet.” The LC needs to track who was given what, and when. It needs
to track when people missed raids. It needs to track the degree of each upgrade
– getting a new ring with a 19-iLevel jump is very different than getting a
new 19-iLevel pair of pants, or a trinket.
If a loot council is looking at any single piece of gear in
isolation, it’s doomed to failure. Consider two mages, one decked out in Ulduar
(226) gear, the other in ToC10 (232) gear. Every piece that drops will be a
bigger upgrade for the Ulduar mage, so unless you’re tracking distributions as
a holistic upgrade model, with team spirit, and a lot of integrity, the ToC10
mage will get gear only after the Ulduar mage is fully ICC geared. This is a
stupid-obvious example of one of the problems that data systems should
be in place to help solve. No system is a replacement for integrity,
intelligence, and care, but those qualities without a data system cannot be
channeled and used properly.
Performance: If there is ANY rule that affect how
loot is distributed, it must be articulated clearly so everyone knows what to
expect. Will missing a raid lower your loot priority? By how much, and for how
long? How about dying to fire? Lower dps? Will brown-nosing change your
priority? Being an officer? Donating to the guild bank? These types of rules are
often in place but unspoken until the moment they’re used. (See integrity,
above.) Personally I’m seriously opposed to a lot of these policies, but that’s
not the point: if these policies will be in place, they must be explicit.
Care for the individuals: At any point along the way,
you need to be aware of what’s happening on the other side of the council’s
walls. Has one of your raiders gone three weeks without a drop? Maybe they
should get the next one even if it isn’t the highest benefit for the raid.
Maybe, just maybe, that will keep your raiders happy. And that’s in the loot
council’s hands. Is it paying attention?
Between all of these criteria, there has to be some way to
prevent imbalanced situations. Just as an example, I looked at our guild’s healing
core. In that group, you have people with this many main-spec LC-assigned
drops: 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 7. (Which one do you think is the officer?) Maybe I’m
wrong about my presumption that fairness forms some portion of the policy. But in
case I’m right, I have a suggestion.
The proposal: Limit loot council to non-armored
pieces: rings, necklaces, trinkets, cloaks, weapons and offhands/shields. Use
EPGP for anything with an armor class.
Let’s say your raid has an abundance of clothies, but only
two holy pallies. (Pretty typical, I suspect!) In a pure EPGP system, the
pallies would have less competition, and would spend fewer points on armored
gear than the clothies, leaving them freer to bid higher on shared gear like
rings or trinkets. Implementing a hybrid system where a LC handles shared gear
would ensure that your clothies, leather, mail, and plate wearers all have an
equal shake at that stuff.
It also allows the LC to shift the loot balance if too many
mail pieces have dropped recently (for example). So even if a ring might be a
great benefit to a resto shaman, the LC can rebalance loot distribution as it
sees fit.
The meta-point: Running a guild is not the same as
leading a raid. There is a whole other set of skills that very few people have;
skills that are about humanity, fairness, and development of team spirit. And
no, leading a guild is not about group hugs. But integrity (in the way I’m
describing it here) has absolutely nothing to do with being soft. It has to do
with doing the right thing.
Tank healers, skip to the next QQ! This one is not
applicable. This is for
bubble-spamming raiding discipline priests.
Let’s look at the stats on our gear.
Stamina, intellect, spell power: More is always better. These stats are
on every piece of gear you’ll equip, and they scale with iLevel. As you gear
up, you really don’t have any choice – you’ll get higher and higher values of
spell power and intellect.
Haste: The hard cap for bubble-spam is 150 haste
rating. Since we’re almost always affected by the haste bonus from Borrowed Time, we need only a
tiny amount of haste from gear before our GCD hits the 1 second hard cap. After
that, haste will only affect the casting time of your long-cast spells (GH,
PoH, Penance, DH). Realistically, you get capped at 150 the moment you hit 80.
Because of the GCD cap, the value of haste is nearly zero. It’s not actually
zero, but the value drops precipitously at 150. To paraphrase my old
probability professor (discussing asymptotes), the value of additional haste on
our gear is so close to zero that we might as well just call it zero.
Spirit: This is a mana-regen stat. Holy priests get a
spell-power conversion talent,
but we get only regen. Spirit holds zero value if you don’t need any additional
regen; having more regen is just wasted mana. So there is a regen “cap” of
sorts. In ToC25 or ICC gear, you should not have significant mana problems (perhaps none at all), so spirit
has nearly no value for us. You can’t (and shouldn’t) get rid of it from your
gear entirely. But it’s highly unlikely that adding spirit to your gear will
change anything about your capacities, even marginally. Another wasted stat.
(FYI: I will lump mp5 in the same category here…it’s present on some gear,
especially shared gear like rings and cloaks, and it also provides zero value
if you do not need mana.)
Crit: Our direct heals can crit: Penance,
Flash, Greater, Divine Hymn, and PoH. Shields cannot crit. The heal from the Glyph can crit, but the heal is
only 20% of the size of your shield anyway. So crit benefits your shield only
20% as much as it benefits your healing spells. Of the stats listed here, crit
is by far the best, although it is gimped by nearly 80% for shield spammers.
The more you cast direct heals (like PoM), the more benefit you’ll get from
crit.
Ok, so all our gear will have stamina, intellect, and spell
power. Then we’ll get two of the three other stats as well – either
crit+spirit, or crit+haste, or haste+spirit. Two of these stats have zero
value, and one has about 20% of its nominal value.
Contrast this with gear for a shadow priest, for example,
who will receive less value from spirit on gear than from crit. But all three
stats offer some real dps benefit. None of them are wasted, none are as gimped
as crit rating is for discipline priests. And the only capped stat for shadow
priests is hit rating.
Ergo: gearing for discipline is currently broken. On
gear that’s supposedly designed for our spec, we receive less value per point
of iLevel upgrade than any other spec in the game. If there were a piece of
gear that had stam+int+double spell power, that would suit our needs
just fine. But since that won’t happen, we’re stuck with getting approximately
half the benefit from upgrades that another caster gets.
Since we have agreed that (by and large) tier gear is for
chumps (or early adopters, you poor things) (or 10-man tank healers, ok?), that
leaves many of us with emblems to burn on other upgrades. What do you want to
spend them on? Which cloak? What about the trinket?
Well, as we all know, there are different needs for
different occasions, so as beautiful as that black dress might be, you’re
definitely not going to wear it out to dinner with my folks. In other words,
there is no single absolute recommendation for anything (except in the negative).
Everything always depends on everything else – the gear you’ve already got, the
gear you have access to, your role in raids, etc. I know my caveats get boring,
but they bear repeated repeating.
Nevertheless, I’ve decided to at least comment on the
current emblem purchases, since emblems do you no good in your pocket. I’ve
also listed some of the other (non-emblem) options that you will be considering.
See the full 3.3
gear list for details. A case could be made that this is not in fact a real
post, but just a rehash/reorganization of that list. To that I say poo.
Lastly, I’ll include my own gearup plan, which is finally becoming
focused.
Violet is nicely itemized for disc. If you don’t have a 264
cloak, and don’t expect to get one, this is a great solution. But if you have
an offspec that you share gear with, Volde will definitely be better for you,
since both holy and shadow prefer spirit to mp5. Cloaks were the first emblem purchase
for many priests.
Haste gear is too easy to come by this expansion. If you already
have a 245 belt, I wouldn’t bother with this. Even if you have the nice haste/crit 232 from HoR5, I’d
still pass on this badge belt. It’s nice for holy priests, and not so exciting
for disc.
Ok, here is where things get interesting. Chest! You’ve got
three badge options, each costs 95 emblems. Ermine has crit/spirit, MCR has
crit/haste, and T10 (shadow!) also has crit/haste. Only buy the shadow robe if
you’ll be upgrading it with tokens; the 264 version is nearly identical in
stats to MCR, and if you’ll be upgrading it to the 277 version, woweezowee. (That’s
my current plan.) If you’re a strict shield-spammer, Ermine is probably a good
bet; spirit is crap, but it’s better than the haste on MCR once you hit the cap.
(The haste cap for shield spam is 147, which you get practially by walking
through the door.) MCR (and the shadow tier robe) is perfect for tank healers.
Tough choice.
Same issue here. You have a great set of crit/spirit gloves
and a great set of crit/haste gloves. Both are delicious; depends mainly on
your raid role (tank or bubblespam).
PLD just got a spell power boost, which brings the trinket up to par for its
function. If you don’t have Solace and at least one other solid trinket, you
should definitely consider this as a very respectable purchase.
Don’t spend your emblems on these just yet. If you have the
gold to burn, get them ASAP. But emblems are just too useful a commodity, and
in too short supply, to spend on these expensive items. Your benefit-per-emblem
is low.
The Paolo Plan
For what it’s worth. As you can see, I don’t really have
urgent plans to spend my frost emblems. After I buy my last piece of shadow
tier gear I can think about upgrading gloves or maybe cloak.
Head & shoulders: Aiming for two-piece T9.258. I
have the 245s, and we should start killing Anub on heroic this week. I doubt
many other raiders will be as committed to T9 as I am, so I have a decent shot
at getting the 258 tokens. If I couldn’t upgrade to 258, I wouldn’t plan to
keep T9.245 gear. (No frost emblems needed.)
Legs, boots: crafted. I already have both of these,
and have openly admitted my insanity for purchasing the hit boots in my last
post. I still think it was the right move. So sue me. (No frost emblems
needed.)
Chest: Shadow tier, used for both shadow and
discipline. With the amount that I’m playing shadow, this makes perfect sense,
as the chest will be upgraded to 277 at some point. I could also have made a
case for using the shadow shoulders for healing, but the T9 head &
shoulders look like keepers for me. (Frost emblems already spent – no more needed.)
Gloves: False
Gestures for 60 emblems. Not in a huge rush, as Lifeless Touch are still quite
strong. After I complete my shadow 4-piece set (OMG!) these will be my next
purchase.
Bracers: Bejeweled
are not in urgent need of upgrading. Rotface25 drops nice bracers, but not really
worth spending capital on at this point.
Cloak: My Ony25
cloak is still excellent. (See a pattern? All those 245 crit/haste pieces are
winners!) Upgrading is a low priority; my last emblem purchase will be Volde if
I haven’t gotten one of the other 264 cloaks.
Belt: I have Heroic Cinch. I’ll upgrade to one
of the boss-drop crit/haste belts, but nothing else.
Trinkets: Solace
(I have already). If I don’t get Solace
(heroic) or Abacus, I’ll
eventually buy Lunar Dust. But no rush for me on this.
EDIT: As you can see, my comments on T10 were written prior to the changes in March. The new set bonus is massive for 25-man bubble-botting disc priests. The rest of this article is basically irrelevant now :( Except Gentle Giant. They still rock.
We need to start planning our emblem purchases, so it’s time
to start looking generally at where the set bonuses will be taking us, what
compromises we’ll need to make, and whether or not those compromises are worth
it. This is not going to be a complete exposé on the value of the Tier 10 set
bonuses, but a broad-stroke look at the cost of going tier. Stay with me,
this is long! But hopefully there’s something in here you can chew on; I know
the whole issue of gearing up for T10 has been bugging me for a while.
As usual, if you come expecting a single, final, absolute
recommendation, you will be bored, disappointed, and end up sending me hate
mail. Bail now.
The bonuses
Just for review – here are the T10 set bonuses for healing
priests.
(2) Your Flash Heal has a 33%
chance to cause the target to heal for 33% of the healed amount over 9 sec.
(4) Your Penance spell has a 20%
chance to cause your next Flash Heal cast within 6 sec to reset the cooldown on
your Penance spell.
Apparently there was something in there about CoH too, but
who gives a hoot about holy anyway? (Lol at you dual-speccing traitors. Shame
on you!)
For shield-spamming raid healers
You, my friends, are SoL. (And that’s not Surge of Light.)
On a recent jaunt to ICC, I was on shield spam duty for the night, and Flash
Heal made up a whopping 2.7% of my overall healing for the night. Obviously,
since both the 2-piece and the 4-piece bonuses are tied to Flash Heal (and/or
Penance), you certainly won’t want to make any compromises to get the set bonuses,
which are basically crap for you. Get whatever gear you want, including tier
pieces if you like.
That’s about all there is to say for shield spammers. The tier
bonuses are largely irrelevant. But I feel bad, since you came here hoping for
a real post. So, as my gift to you, for coming here planning to spend some time
reading tons and tons of words, I offer you some music instead. Enjoy this
window into 1978 British prog-rock bliss. If my calculations are correct, this
was around the time your parents were dating, plus or minus.
This is one of my favorite bands. Consider it a sneak peek
at my playlist, which is on whenever I can spare the brain cycles for music
while I’m healing. Look up the albums Freehand and Interview for more
deliciousness. Yes, they're goofy to watch.
For tank-healing foos
Clearly the bonuses are aimed at tank healers. Both the hot
and of course the Penance cooldown reset will be throughput boosts. How
beneficial will they be exactly? Hah! You shall not receive the glory of
mathematical analysis in this post. Instead of looking at the benefits,
we’ll be looking at the opportunity costs of using the tier pieces. For
those of you not familiar with the term, “opportunity cost” simply means: what
do we give up, relative to getting non-tier BiS gear, to get the tier gear? The
actual cost (in emblems, for example) might be the same for tier gear
and non-tier gear, but there’s a stat tradeoff that we want to look at carefully.
My own thinking
Treat this as a disclaimer, or as deep thoughts on the
matter, or as the ramblings of a lunatic fool. But we all come with our own
context: the gear we’re wearing now, the role we’ll be playing, the
availability of upgrades, etc. Here’s my context, and how I expect it will
affect how I relate to the new tier gear.
First, as you know, I just transferred servers and joined a
new guild. How will that affect my role? Who knows. I might be needed more as a
shielder than as a tank-healing support healer. So until that’s resolved, I’ll be
moving slowly on tier pieces.
Also, I might be raiding as shadow quite a bit more now. Which is fine, I love shadow. And it turns out that several of the
shadow tier pieces are BiS for disc as well, although they count as offset from
that perspective, since those set bonuses won’t exactly proc on heals.
And, like many of you, I have two pieces of T9. I don’t plan
to drop that bonus any time soon! In an ideal
world, I’d find a way to have two pieces from each tier.
Lastly: I’m fascinated by the new 4-piece bonus. It’s not
clear yet how it will translate in practice, but I love the fun factor of it.
It’s a weak version of the other proc-based items they’ve added to the game (Nibelung, Trauma), of which I am a BIG fan.
I’m kind of peeved that there isn’t a weapon that summons a healing Val’kyr;
that would be just about the biggest win in the game. But you get the idea: the
reset on Penance, while not something you’ll be able to rely on, will still be
awesome to use. If I’m going to be tank healing, I will try to find a way to
make the 4-piece bonus happen. I just like the idea of it, and if it’s not the
perfect or absolutely optimal setup, I’m ok with that.
Three sample gearsets
Below are three 5-piece gearsets. They are made of all 264s;
nothing higher for now. The first gearset uses four tier pieces plus the BiS
item for the fifth piece. I chose offset legs for this experiment, although one
could certainly look at gloves, or even the robe as your offset piece. The
reason I chose the legs is that they are craftable (and more importantly,
purchasable with cash), which means I won’t necessarily have to wait to
accumulate additional emblems before getting them crafted. YMMV, of course.
The second gearset uses two tier pieces and three BiS offset
pieces. For this set, I picked the two tier pieces with crit (head and
shoulders), then picked the best offset pieces for tank healing.
Oh, all the offset pieces are crit/haste. I’m maximizing
tank-healing throughput for this experiment.
Lastly (I hope you saw this coming) I created a gearset
which ignores tier pieces altogether, and just grabs five BiS pieces. And yes, two of those pieces are shadow tier gear.
You can see the comparison on this Wowhead
page, which gives a great presentation of the tradeoffs I’ll be discussing
below.
There are lots of debatable choices I just made. For
example, why the crit pieces instead of the haste pieces in the 2-piece
gearset? Why the offset legs instead of the gloves in the 4-piece gearset?
These questions are valid. But for now, as you’ll see, all this is secondary to
the main tradeoff we see in this comparison: regen.
What do we lose in order to get the tier gear?
Check out the Wowhead link above for a very nice presentation
that I won’t reproduce here.
I’ll start by using the 0-piece BiS gearset as a reference.
Going to the 2-piece gearset, we lose 156 haste and 16 crit, but gain 172
spirit. (And, of course, the 2-piece bonus itself.)
Going from the 2-piece gearset to the full 4-piece gearset,
we lose another 100 haste, 64 crit, and 25 spell power, but gain 180 spirit
(and the 4-piece bonus). (I’ve put red gems into the two extra slots we get,
just to keep things simple.)
The full tradeoff from the BiS gearset to the 4-piece
gearset is a loss of 256 haste, 80 crit, and 25 spell power, and a gain of 352
spirit, plus the two bonuses.
So returning to the debatable points I just mentioned: no
matter how you pick your pieces, the tier gear will give you more spirit, and
the BiS offset pieces will give you more throughput stats (crit/haste). The
throughput stats can be adjusted towards crit or haste by making adjustments to
the gearsets above, but in the end, it’s a tradeoff of throughput versus regen.
I expect this was not a big surprise, now that we look at
it. After all, I’m defining “best in slot” as those pieces with maximum
throughput stats, and the spirit on the tier gear is most definitely not a
throughput stat.
About that regen
Ok, using the BiS gearset loses us 352 spirit that we would
have gotten from the tier gear. For my current unbuffed setup (600 spirit, 1400
int), this translates to approximately 100mp5. There are ten gem slots in the
BiS gearset (eight slots in the 4-piece gearset). Using a healthy dose of
intellect in those slots would not quite make up the difference, but it would
make up enough. If you’re stacking throughput stats, you damn-well better have
enough mana to make use of all those big & fast heals!
So… go for the BiS gear, lose the spirit, and gem intellect.
Not bad…not bad at all.
And the 2-piece
Not known yet whether or not the hot will stack. This
matters a bunch. This question should be resolved soon, as enough emblems
become available for early-adopters to get this bonus and test it out.
In conclusion
The BiS throughput gear costs you a bunch of regen, which
you can (and will probably have to) recover by using int gems. The benefits of
the tier bonuses are as yet undetermined. Until we know about the hot stacking,
and until we can get a real-world sample of how the 20% Penance reset works for
a tank healer in ICC fights, we can’t put pen to paper and come up with the
perfect analysis of tier vs. non-tier.
And the real conclusion is that I have no conclusion. I’m
stumped. I’d like to have it all! As I said, the 4-piece bonus appeals to me on
levels that go beyond pure min-max throughput. But max throughput appeals to me
as well, not to mention the fact that gearing up with BiS throughput gear is
perfect for shadow play as well. I don’t expect everyone will share my opinions
in this matter, and that’s fine. Hopefully I’ve given you some food for thought
as you make your own way in this early phase of tier 10 gearup.
The 3.2 list remains relevant
if you aren't fully 245+ geared yet, so head there for details on the ToC loot options (and for my thoughts on gear lists in general).
While I don't include hit gear in the list, I have included the shadow T10 gear, as several pieces have haste and crit on them.
Obviously, choosing shadow tier gear will prevent you from getting the 4-piece healing bonus. How you relate to that is
up to you...perhaps the subject of a future post. (Thx to jedimax for the tip!)
And if you're new here: this list isn't designed to explain how to choose your gear. For my thoughts
on gearup plans, stats for disc priests, and enough words to make a nice tossed salad with, have
a look here (for tank healers) and here (for raid healers).
I first met Matron
on the Plusheal forums. I believe it was
in a heated debate about the viability of Greater Heal for tank-healing
discipline priests. I was only a provocateur, but he was debating with gusto
against some staunchly anti-GH forces, and doing it calmly, articulately, and
convincingly. I was impressed, and continued to pay attention to his posts on
that site. After I posted my article on stats
for tank healers, he PM’d me, asking if he could quote my blog
in his rebuttal, to be posted in an undisclosed location, perhaps
public and perhaps not. This made me both eager for dialogue and nervous as
hell. When he failed to make good, I took it upon myself to write the article I
suspected he wanted to write himself, on intellect for
disc priests.
So, the
inaugural entry in this Q&A series belongs
to Matron. He’s not only a world-class discipline priest, but he is the guild
leader of Ladies of Destiny, an
endgame progression guild on Scarlet Crusade. He is also one of the authors of
the new LoDBlog, which offers
an endgame perspective on current raid and class mechanics.
PP: How long have you been raiding?
Matron: I’ve been raiding with LoD since summer 2005.
We started in ZG, which served as a great introductory raid. I’ve raided
seriously as almost every spec imaginable, even holy dps in Vanilla WoW.
PP: What level of content are you at now? Do you
normally raid at the edge of progression? How many hours per week do you raid?
Matron: We’ve cleared ToGC 25 man, so we’re focusing
on clearing with 50 attempts left and waiting on ICC. LoD didn’t start as a
progression, or even raiding, guild but over the course of time we’ve built
ourselves into an endgame progression guild. We’re not competing for World
Firsts or anything like that, but we’re consistently raiding the most difficult
content that the game has to offer. We’re scheduled for 4 nights of raiding, 16
hours total, but with the new limits on attempts being introduced and the
general lack of new content it becomes a challenge to fill those hours. One
thing we've started to do is to run two regular ToC 25 runs each week,
splitting mains between the two runs, for more chances at weapon/trinkets so
that everyone can be in BiS for ICC.
PP: Do you lead raids? How does that affect your
healing during a raid?
Matron: Yes I’m the raid and guild leader of LoD,
leading our 25 man raids. I’d like to say that leading doesn’t hurt my personal
healing, but it certainly does. Any time you have to concentrate on anything
but your main role in an encounter it’s going to hurt your performance.
Directing the action and pushing your personal performance will always be in
conflict.
On the other hand leading a raid does force you to pay
attention to everything, meaning that you know when and where everyone will be
at all times. This greatly helps anticipatory healing, which is the major
strength of the disc spec. Because I’m the person that tells people to go into
the Yogg brain room I know exactly which ten people to make sure have PWS on
them at those times. This raid awareness extends to runs that I’m not leading,
such as some of our 10 man endeavors or even PuGs. In those runs, without
having to lead, I’m able to really push my performance, in part because of my
experience leading other raids.
It’s a mixed bag really.
PP: Name some of your favorite fights to heal.
They don’t have to be from current content.
Matron: Chromaggus – The 2nd to last boss in BWL. I
found healing in Vanilla WoW a lot more interesting because of down ranking.
All of your spells were similar in effect, single target heals, but varied in
mana cost and amount healed. I had 7 single target heals on my bar (2 ranks of
Flash Heals, 2 Heals, 3 Greater Heals). Chromaggus was a looong encounter, on
the verge of 10 minutes, and he had so many abilities that you couldn’t settle
into simply spamming one size heal. There were enrages, frenzies, and breathes
that forced you to ramp up your healing at various times. However you had to
find a balance where you would be able to keep the tank alive, but also
maintain mana over a long encounter. I really enjoyed a straight stand still
fight where mana management, heal selection, heal canceling and oo5sr regen
were the important components. Now most fights are one flavor or another of
“don’t stand in fire” and all the heals are “one rank fits all.”
PP: Your favorite raid?
Matron: My favorite instance of all time was ZG. Back
in the early days of WoW, guilds weren’t as organized with
recruiting or set schedules. We’d just have people online each night and everyone
was really excited to work together on this new instance. Because it was
everyone’s first raid we all learned the game and our classes together. ZG had
some interesting boss mechanics and an awesome jungle/troll atmosphere. I
remember every first kill in ZG feeling like a holiday. I wonder if people have
the same “first raid” feeling, now with Naxx or Ulduar completely changing the
way they look at the game. ZG and the people I met when I first starting
raiding, are probably most responsible for my love of WoW.
PP: Your meta gem. Have you tried others?
Matron: I’m currently using ESD, but, I actually think IED is a lot stronger choice for
a meta gem. At the time I socketed +25 SP / +2% intellect I was using dual
intellect trinkets and really wanted to see how high I could push my mana. When
I upgrade to my next helm (the 258 T9) I’ll go back to 21 int and mana regen.
PP: Do you change glyphs for certain fights? Do
you change gear?
Matron: I haven’t changed glyphs in a long while.
Disc choices are very limited. I change gear more for HP reasons than any
other. For heroic Twins + Faction Champions I sometimes equip some extra
stamina gear to give myself wiggle room; when attempting to clear with 50 attempts left in ToGC any death is a bad
death.
Swapping gear when speccing holy or disc works sometimes,
but only if you have two pieces which are equal ilvl and very specific for each
spec. In ToC there really isn’t a huge selection of gear, so often times your
ToC gear is BiS for both specs. There are only a few slots where you can drop
spirit to pick up a second throughput (crit/haste) or disc friendly stat,
gloves off Anub > T9 gloves for example.
PP: Renew? Greater Heal?
Matron: Renew when I’m tank healing, though it’s
hardly a priority.
Greater Heal, hell yes! People like to think that flash heal
has destroyed GH’s viability. Nothing is further from the truth. GH, when
specced for it (which I am), is more HPS and better HPM than FH. I think it’s a
HUGE mistake for priests to ignore the GH talents if you’re attempting hard
modes. Algalon, Anub, Thorim, Council, and I can only assume a few ICC
encounters have very hard hitting tank damage. People like to say that FH is
just so much faster and easier to use, but GH gets hasted down with borrowed
time to a very reasonable cast time, sub 1.8s. A lot of spells make you choose
between HPS and HPM, GH beats FH in both. I could do paragraphs on greater
heal…
PP: Do you heal as holy, or full-time discipline?
Matron: I used to swap back and forth per encounter,
back before I realized that disc was such a valuable raid healing/absorption
spec. Now I’d only switch if another disc priest was in the raid and we were bumping
WS debuffs too much.
Discipline is such a strong raid healing spec, every raid’s
first priest should be disc.
PP: How do you evaluate a new discipline priest?
Matron: Healers are always tough to judge, because
your output is dependent on your raid group. A DPSer will do the same dps in
one raid as another, but a healer in a bad group is going to look a lot better
than a healer in a good group. Until you’re healing against the people you’re
trying out with, meters and logs don’t mean much (though you should be topping
your guild's meters before you apply elsewhere).
Disc is especially difficult to evaluate, because the
effectiveness of each disc priest is reduced when another disc priest is added
to the raid. So having two disc priests joust for PWS applications doesn’t
really show you the maximum output of either one. Basically, if I were
recruiting a disc priest, I’d let them be the only disc priest and I’d check to
see that they were beating the other healers in HPS (counting shields). I know
that no meter shows shields exactly, but you can get a good idea from them. A
disc priest SHOULD be competitive in combined HPS with other healers.
PP: Do you do all of your own theorycrafting? If
so, where (if anywhere) do you share it? And where else do you look for good
information or suggestions?
Matron: I suppose you could say I do most of my own
theorycrafting, most of it is simple math that any high school student could
do. Obviously I’m often helped when people share experiences or new findings.
But a lot of experiments you can do on your own. EJ is the most valuable
resource, and has been for some time, but that’s not really easy reading for
most people. Since the summer I’ve been trying to right some misconceptions on
the plusheal forums, having long arguments about the value of meters, HPS, and
GH. Most of my recent theorycraft comes from those discussions.
PP: Overall, what is your experience of the
discipline priest community?
Matron: Well, I think that you have all types within
the community. I’ll say that I have been surprised by a few things, most
notably how many people have limited experience or success with raiding yet
still preach their methods as gospel. To me, that’s a dangerous situation.
Someone asking a question might not know which person to listen to and if the
“bad ideas” get repeated often enough people start to believe them.
Phrases such as “GH is too slow,” “The extra healing from GH
compared to FH isn’t needed,” “Disc priests are for single target healing,” “If
you never go oom then it’s time to stack SP” are all easy for starting players
to latch on to and accept as “truths.” But they hurt their development as
players and probably doom them to a certain level of raiding for the rest of
their careers.
This isn’t the new player’s fault, it’s difficult to
navigate the jungle of advice and pick out the pearls of wisdom.
Sometimes those pearls are a little too complex for a newer
player and they need an easier to digest message, with accurate information. Even though a lot of the
bloggers/posters in the community might not have the experience, I think many
do a good job of finding that good advice and presenting it in a
“noob-friendly” manner.
I’d think the ultimate goal would be a platform where smart,
accurate information was presented in a way
everyone could understand. I’m not sure we’re quite there yet, but I see people
working towards that. That’s one of the main reasons we’ve launched LoDBlog.
My ultimate pet-peeve is the person that uses the excuse,
“Well my way works fine for the content I’m doing.” That may be true, but I
think the majority of people searching for this information want to be the best
they can be and not just “good enough.” This person effectively wants to put an
end to the discussion for no other reason than sheer laziness.
PP: And from left field…You’re stranded on a
desert island with an undead rogue you’ve never met. Fight to the death, or
partner up despite the communication barrier?
Matron: They’re a rogue! Screw the communication
barrier, if you think that’d be my biggest problem with him then you’ve never
pvped as a priest! I’d kill a human rogue too! Well… unless there was a desert
island 2v2 bracket, then maybe we’d talk.
An interesting array of cultural factors aligned in the
1990s. As baby boomers were entering their 50s, they were experiencing mid-life
crises in large numbers and with large bank accounts. Boomers were ready and
willing to part with a lot of money to alleviate the nagging ache that invades
the spirit as one grows older. The ache that says, “I haven’t lived up to the
expectations I set for myself when I was younger…there’s so much more to do!”
Additionally, the 90s saw the advent of eco-tourism and
adventure tourism. With the number of untouched wild areas dwindling, the
Australian Outback and South American rainforests were becoming more and more
popular. For many people, vacationing in Paris or Tuscany started to hold
little pull compared to the more raw emotional experience of the wild.
One type of adventure tour that emerged in the 90s was the
Everest climb. The way to the top had been well mapped…not only the actual
routes up the mountain, but the process of acclimation to the thin air and
biting cold. It remained a dangerous and sometimes deadly climb, but the perils
were more predictable and preventable than ever before.
Tour guides – people who were themselves highly trained,
very experienced climbers – began offering the thrill of a lifetime. For around
$60k (plus travel and equipment, of course), you could essentially be carried
to the Top of the World. Everest was no longer the exclusive domain of the most
trained, elite, risk-seeking mountaineers.
The process has a built-in ready-check. Most humans are not
built to deal with the trivial amount of oxygen in the high mountains, nor with
the trivial amount of heat in the air. So climbers spend weeks at Base Camp, which
is actually at 17000 feet above sea level, doing little but letting their
bodies adjust to the extreme conditions and taking occasional forays to higher
altitudes. (The summit is over 29000 feet.) Not everyone is suited to this
process, let alone to the final, intense hike to the top. Those who are
physically able to endure the conditions do so with the assistance of the very
best gear, large support crews, and a generous dose of supplementary oxygen.
Early explorers, of course, traveled under a very different
set of circumstances. Sir Edmund Hillary wore winter clothes that look to our
modern eyes as scarily insufficient. He had guts though, and he failed multiple
times before he finally succeeded in his historic ascent.
In 1996, everything went wrong. Two tour guides and six of
their customers died on the mountain. A combination of bad luck, bad judgment,
and raw arrogance brought the experiment in paid summiting to a devastating
halt. No amount of money or gear was enough to secure the safety of those
involved. The two tour guides died trying to save their customers’ lives. The inexperience
and arrogance of their paying customers was just too much weight for them to
carry.
I find myself fascinated by this type of arrogance and its
results. We all have it, we all act on it, we all create some form of
repercussions because of our own hubris. This was obviously an extreme example,
with deadly results. But what about in our little corner of the world, where
the price paid for shortcutting is virtual?
We all know that in this patch especially, gear is free for
the taking, no raiding required. Which means no learning required. You
can be geared in 245 without ever having made a mistake severe enough to wipe a
raid. Messing up that badly is a very real learning experience. Wiping in a
heroic is not. It’s why the Everest tour guides were tour guides: they learned
through hard work and mistakes, in real and challenging situations, not just on
indoor rock-climbing equipment.
I’m very much in favor of the gearing shortcuts that have
been implemented in 3.2. The thing is, farming (or buying) cheap epics is not a
substitute for learning. You can be a well-geared failure but still be proud of
your accomplishments (i.e., purples), never realizing that you earned nothing.
I’m as guilty of this as anyone. On my DK, I have something like
100 heroic instances completed, and only 15 boss kills in Naxx and Ulduar
combined. On those fifteen kills, I wiped the raid at least five times, and no
one knew it was me. I was brought in as the overgeared tank – with the
assumption that I was a low-risk asset to the raid – and proceeded to silently
prove to myself just how empty the purchased epics were. I learned first-hand
how utterly irrelevant good gear is compared to the skills and awareness that
come only from experience. Some of that experience transferred over from my
priest, but much of it had to be re-learned as a tank the hard way.
So…you’ll get a snapshot from the Top of the World if you
get airlifted in or get there on your own guts, determination, and suffering.
While that snapshot might look the same to others, to you, there’s no
comparison. The learning process, while more time-consuming, brings deeper and
more lasting satisfaction to the reward you get at the Top than any shortcut
method could. I won’t insist that the journey is more important than reaching
the destination, because it’s not that simple. Just don’t underestimate how
rewarding the journey can be, both because of and despite the
difficulty of truly doing it yourself.
Oh, and if you haven’t read Jon Krakauer’s book about the
tragedy on Everest, called Into Thin Air, I strongly recommend that you
do. The story is heartbreaking, and the storyteller is a master.
My producer just informed me that we have a guest in the studio for today’s blog. I’ll be interviewing someone who would like to discuss my post on stats for discipline priests. To be frank, I’m a bit surprised it’s taken this long to find someone to rebut that post, since I fully expected that it would generate more heat than it did.
Would you like to introduce yourself to my readers?
Paolo: Hello, my name is Paolo, and I’m a discipline priest. I want to say that I’m a big fan of your blog. Your post on stats agitated me a bit, so I wanted to offer an alternate take. Other than that though, kudos on some great work.
Penance Priest: Um, did you say Paolo?
Paolo: Yes, why?
PP: Oh, nothing. Please, tell us a bit more about yourself and your thoughts on stats for disc priests.
Paolo: Well – and I’ll cut right to the chase here – your stance on intellect is just wrong. You don’t know what you’re talking about when you say that intellect is bad.
PP: I never said that.
Paolo: Indeed you did. Not only did you say, and I quote, “Intellect is usually bad,” but the consistent message in your post was that it is a second-class citizen, or “special-purpose” stat, as you called it.
PP: It usually is the wrong stat for people to take. As I described, many discipline priests are using intellect for the wrong reasons, or just blindly, for no good reason at all. However, I did indicate that there are good reasons to stack intellect. I just didn’t cover them in depth. I made it clear that I’m primarily a tank healer, and as such, I usually have more mana than I know what to do with; ergo, intellect gets the short end of the stick when it comes to gems.
Paolo: Tell me: on a fight like twins, what’s your role?
PP: Well that’s an interesting example, simply because it’s basically a raid-damage fight. But I’ll play along. A tank healer like me would be stupid to relegate himself to tank duties only. So I usually float on that fight, doing raid healing more than anything.
Paolo: I’ll admit, I chose it as an example of a fight that forces you to bubble-spam. There’s really very little use for Penance, is there? It’s PoM and bubbles for the most part, not much else. So yes, I’m forcing you to discuss your role as a raid healer.
PP: There isn’t a single shield that doesn’t get 100% used up on twins. Same with PoM, all charges consumed, guaranteed. The constant ticking of the AoE effect will certainly make quick work of the shields.
Paolo: So what’s your HPS on that fight?
PP: I really don’t know.
Paolo: I knew you would say that, given how much you hate meters. But let’s do some simple math, and for now, we’ll ignore the passive HPS included with Renewed Hope. I’d ask you how much your shield will absorb, but I’m guessing you don’t know that either. So let’s just say your shield absorbs about 8000 and your PoM will hit for about 4000 each bounce. With Borrowed Time up (and it will be up almost 100% of the time), your GCD will be down to 1 second. So you’re probably shield-spamming about that often, maybe a bit less. And PoM is getting you 5 hits every 10-second cooldown. Maybe you slack a bit with PoM, and only cast it every 15 seconds. Let’s give you 10 shields and 5 PoM hits every 15 seconds, for a net theoretical HPS of about 6600.
PP: Wow.
Paolo: I chose this somewhat extreme example to make a point. And my numbers may be off a bit for sure. But the point is that a shield-spamming disc priest is potentially an HPS machine, and not only on this fight. The only problem is –
PP: Mana.
Paolo: That’s right. Shield-spamming is a mana drain. If you did nothing but chain-cast shields, you’d last about a minute and a half. Which means –
PP: Intellect.
Paolo: You really are as smart as they say. In order to make shield spamming possible, you need to increase the size of your mana pool and boost your regen. Of course, if you regem for intellect, each shield will be smaller since you’re not stacking spell power. But if you’re OOM, you’re shields get smaller still…like, zero. Should we go over the math of how much smaller your shields will be without your spell power gems?
PP: Well let’s see. I’m currently at 2600 spell power unbuffed, of which 275 or so is from gems. So I’d lose 10% of the shield strength relative to what I can do now.
Paolo: Yes, even less, because your spell power will be well over the 3000 mark with consumables and raid buffs. And we could take it one step further. You could revisit your old friend Tier 8. We all have a love/hate relationship with that set bonus, but I’m sure we can agree that it is perfect for shield spam. What I’ve done is regemmed my Tier 8 gear with intellect, and kept my new Tier 9 gear gemmed as it is for tank healing. There’s a lot less haste and crit than there is on my new stuff, but between all the int gems and the full-time 250 spell power bonus, you have a gearset designed for the job.
PP: Interesting idea. When T9 was released, there was a massive amount of discussion as to when disc priests would abandon their T8 gear, because the four-piece bonus is so compelling. You’re saying T8 might be viable even now?
Paolo: Perhaps…I’m using the T8 gear largely because I followed your gearup model during 3.2, which was of course aimed at tank healers. So my main set now is full of crit and haste, both of which are mostly useless for shield spam. If I had been planning for a shield-spam kit from the beginning, my gear choices certainly would have been different.
PP: Alright then, tell us more about the gearing choices you’re making, other than the Tier 8 set. Which, if I understand you correctly, you’re using for two reasons: the delicious set bonus, and the fact that you now have a second set of gear that you can re-gem with intellect. You also seem to say that the Tier 8 gear is not necessarily optimal, just the best you currently have for the job.
Paolo: That’s correct. I’m also using Spark of Hope, which is one of the best mana-conservation trinkets there is, and of course Solace. For shield spam, I’ll also equip Rapture, since I’ll get more benefit from the spirit on that staff than I will from the haste on Enlightenment. Remember, shield-spammers are very much subject to the 5% haste cap, which you discussed in your original post. So it’s important for me to be shedding haste for this gear set.
PP: What’s your mana pool like? Your regen?
Paolo: It’s enough to last through a spam fight like Twins without even a trace of worry. It almost feels like the infinite-mana heyday before they toned down the mana returns from Rapture. I’m now sitting at what is still a fairly modest 25k mana (unbuffed) and 650/350 regen. Spell power is at 2350 unbuffed, but remember that I get a near-constant 250 spell power boost, which brings me up to the same amount that you’re getting from your newer gear. If I remember correctly, your mana is more like 23k unbuffed, and 350/200 regen or thereabouts.
PP: How the hell do you know about my regen?
Paolo: You’d be surprised what I know about you. Would you like to talk about the rotten tanking job you did on Ignis last night?
PP: No I wouldn’t. I do have one last question though. What about the Tier 9 two-piece bonus? Wouldn’t that be as good or better for a raid-healing disc priest than the Tier 8 four-piece?
Paolo: Oh, absolutely. First off, I don’t have the two-piece bonus yet (as you well know). But more importantly, all the other pieces in my main gearset have been selected according to your tank-healing guidelines: slathered in haste and crit, which is just wrong for raid healing. So there’s nothing bad about T9 and other newer gear for a discipline raid healer...in fact, it’s really great. I’m only using T8 for the regemming option, as we discussed, and to enable me to have different gear available for tank healing and raid healing.
PP: You’ve said several times that haste and crit are bad for a raid-healing disc priest. Can you elaborate?
Paolo: Sure. When you’re spamming shields, you are constantly benefitting from the haste effect of Borrowed Time. As you discussed in your original post, it takes only 5% haste, or around 150 haste rating, to reach the haste cap. When you hit the cap, your GCD is limited to 1 second. So for a raid healer, any haste over 5% is literally a waste. And crit does not affect the strength of your shields. The glyph can now crit, but the glyph is still only 20% of the size of your shield to begin with, so it makes crit a very low-priority stat for boosting your throughput. PoM ticks can still crit though, but overall, the throughput of a raid-healing disc priest is most directly tied to spell power. By a longshot.
PP: Well thank you very much for joining me today!
It's not your fault. You're not the original sinner. Your motives were pure, of that I'm convinced. But times have changed, and your services are no longer providing the benefits to the community that they once were. In fact, quite the opposite.
So I will have to put you on notice. You have one month to clear out.
Your only other option is to help us clean up this god-awful mess. The mess begins and ends with:
“LFM Ulduar10, 2300 required…”
Am I geared enough to ...
Stop. Stop right there. Look carefully at this simple question, so innocuous, so common, so flawed. Let's turn it inside out: “If I have X gear, then I will be able to down Y boss.” It sounds weird when you put it that way. We all know that gear does not kill bosses, people kill bosses. But answering the question “yes you have enough gear to down X boss” is feeding that very wrong idea.
Gear does not kill bosses. People kill bosses.
How much spell power do I need to ...
You're not listening.
How much mana ...
No. Not answering.
What gear score do I need to …
Wow-heroes, pack it up.
The Gevlon Experiment
If you haven't already heard about Gevlon's experiment, go read it now. A few months ago, he and his merry band of misfits re-geared themselves in heroic blues and cleared Ulduar. It wasn't pretty, but they did it. Full clear.
Be honest: the first time you heard that – perhaps it was now – didn't it shock you? Impress you? And make you question your own obsession with gear as a ticket to higher-level content?
I'm a fan of Gravity's response to the matter, in which he created a graph to illustrate the wide range of gear requirements for each raid. Because we all know that gear is not totally irrelevant. Just less relevant than many people think.
I know you know that gear isn’t enough
But if I hear one more person asking if they have enough spell power or mana or crit or haste in order to do this or that raid…
/shakes fist
/screams
/pummels people who actually try to answer the question earnestly
/quits trying to bring sanity to this crazy crazy world
Scratch that last one. I’m in it for the long haul.
