Generic WoW

v3.1

Previously when posting gear lists for Discipline and Holy I intentionally excluded trinkets from those lists. While writing those lists I didn’t really have time to give trinkets the work they need and I wasn’t happy with LootRanks treatment of them either. Trinkets are a bit of a special case for gearing as they have significantly more variety between them. The idea of higher item level means better doesn’t apply as strictly as it does for the other gearing slots.

Stat Weights

For stat weights I used two gearing ideas. Firstly is the more mana regen focused I have discussed ad nauseum in previous posts. This is the one that I have used extensively in-game for gearing my priest through to the start of Uldar. The second idea is a more throughput focused stat weight set which some players prefer.

Mana regen stat weights

Throughput stat weights

Trinket rankings

Links to the trinkets are provided in the calculations section.

Mana regen

Discipline

Holy

Throughput

Discipline

Holy

Calculation notes

Most trinkets have either confirmed or suspected 45s internal cool downs. I have added 5s to all cool downs to allow for delays in procing or players deciding not to use the trinket for a period of time. Observation sees most 45s procs actually occurring every 48 to 55 seconds. Trinkets with 2 minute cool downs were assumed to be used ever 125s.

• Pandora’s Plea = Intellect bonus * Intellect stat weight + (duration [10s]/cool down [50s] * spell power [850] * spell power stat weight)
• Spark of Hope = Spirit bonus * Spirit stat weight + MP5 equivalence * MP5 stat weight. The up to 42 mana reduction of spells has been valued between 100 and 200 MP5. I erred on the conservative side with 130 MP5.
• Darkmoon Card: Greatness (Int) = Intellect bonus * Intellect stat weight + (duration [15s]/cool down [50s] * Intellect [300] * Intellect stat weight). I assumed that priests will have Intellect as their highest stat.
• Darkmoon Card: Greatness (Spi) = Spirit bonus * Spirit stat weight + (duration [15s]/cool down [50s] * Intellect [300] * Intellect stat weight). I assumed that priests will have Intellect as their highest stat.
• Flare of Heavens = Crit rating bonus * Crit rating stat weighting. The ‘Equip’ effect has been ignored as I assumed healers will be healing and not DPSing.
• Illustration of the Dragon Soul = Maximum spell power bonus * spell power stat weighting. I assumed that the full stack was gained instantly and maintained throughout a boss fight. I’m too lazy to calculate it taking 10-20 seconds at the start of the fight to hit full power and teh effect will be minimal in a 5 mintue boss fight.
• Eye of the Brood Mother = Crit rating bonus * Crit rating stat weighting + maximum spell power bonus * spell power stat weighting.  I applied the same laziness as for Illustration of the Dragon Soul above.
• Sif’s Remembrance = Crit rating bonus * Crit rating stat weighting + Spell power bonus * spell power stat weighting
• Forethought Talisman = Spell power bonus * spell power stat weighting + (healing [3572] / HPM [6.5] * over heal % [50%]) / cool down [50] * 5 * MP5 stat weight. This one was a bit more complicated than most. The healing effect was calculated based on Flash Heal’s healing per mana (HPM) ratio of about 6.5. 50% over heal was assumed, which if anything was generous.
• Scale of Fates = Spell power bonus * spell power stat weighting + (duration [20] / cool down [125] * hast rating gained [432] * haste rating stat weight
• Soul of the Dead = Crit rating bonus * Crit rating stat weighting + (mana gain [900] / cool down [50] * 5 * MP5 stat weight
• Sundial of the Exiled = Crit rating bonus * Crit rating stat weighting. The ‘Equip’ effect has been ignored as I assumed healers will be healing and not DPSing.
• Je’Tze’s Bell = Spell power bonus * spell power stat weighting + (duration [15] / cool down [45]) * MP5 bonus * MP5 stat weight
• Energy Siphon = MP5 bonus * MP% stat weight + (duration [20] / cool down [125]) * spell power bonus * spell power stat weight
• Embrace of the Spider = Spell power bonus * spell power stat weighting + (duration [10] / cool down [50] * haste rating gained [505] * haste rating stat weight
• The Egg of Mortal Essence = Spell power bonus * spell power stat weighting + (duration [10] / cool down [50] * haste rating gained [505] * haste rating stat weight
• Show of Faith = Spell power bonus * spell power stat weighting + (duration [15] / cool down [45]) * MP5 bonus * MP5 stat weight
• Spirit World Glass = Spirit bonus * Spirit stat weighting + (duration [20] / cool down [125]) * Spirit bonus * Spirit stat weight

Comments

Personally i’m currently packing dual haste trinkets (Embrace of the Spider and The Egg of Mortal Essence).  I have Spark of Hope, Forethought Talisman and Spirit World glass in my bags. As discussed previously my gearing has a slight bias towards mana regen generally and I rarely have mana issues currently, so I look for throughput trinkets. Eye of the Brood Mother and Illustration of the Dragon Soul are good candidates as i’m a raider just starting Uldar. The Spirit World Glass i’ll chuck in the bank in case something magical happens to spirit in game. Ditto for the Forethought Talisman. Spark of Hope i’ll swap in if I have mana issues.

Enjoy!

Posted in Priest

v3.1

Previously when posting gear lists for Discipline and Holy I intentionally excluded trinkets from those lists. While writing those lists I didn’t really have time to give trinkets the work they need and I wasn’t happy with LootRanks treatment of them either. Trinkets are a bit of a special case for gearing as they have significantly more variety between them. The idea of higher item level means better doesn’t apply as strictly as it does for the other gearing slots.

Stat Weights

For stat weights I used two gearing ideas. Firstly is the more mana regen focused I have discussed ad nauseum in previous posts. This is the one that I have used extensively in-game for gearing my priest through to the start of Uldar. The second idea is a more throughput focused stat weight set which some players prefer.

Mana regen stat weights

Throughput stat weights

Trinket rankings

Links to the trinkets are provided in the calculations section.

Mana regen

Discipline

Holy

Throughput

Discipline

Holy

Calculation notes

Most trinkets have either confirmed or suspected 45s internal cool downs. I have added 5s to all cool downs to allow for delays in procing or players deciding not to use the trinket for a period of time. Observation sees most 45s procs actually occurring every 48 to 55 seconds. Trinkets with 2 minute cool downs were assumed to be used ever 125s.

• Pandora’s Plea = Intellect bonus * Intellect stat weight + (duration [10s]/cool down [50s] * spell power [850] * spell power stat weight)
• Spark of Hope = Spirit bonus * Spirit stat weight + MP5 equivalence * MP5 stat weight. The up to 42 mana reduction of spells has been valued between 100 and 200 MP5. I erred on the conservative side with 130 MP5.
• Darkmoon Card: Greatness (Int) = Intellect bonus * Intellect stat weight + (duration [15s]/cool down [50s] * Intellect [300] * Intellect stat weight). I assumed that priests will have Intellect as their highest stat.
• Darkmoon Card: Greatness (Spi) = Spirit bonus * Spirit stat weight + (duration [15s]/cool down [50s] * Intellect [300] * Intellect stat weight). I assumed that priests will have Intellect as their highest stat.
• Flare of Heavens = Crit rating bonus * Crit rating stat weighting. The ‘Equip’ effect has been ignored as I assumed healers will be healing and not DPSing.
• Illustration of the Dragon Soul = Maximum spell power bonus * spell power stat weighting. I assumed that the full stack was gained instantly and maintained throughout a boss fight. I’m too lazy to calculate it taking 10-20 seconds at the start of the fight to hit full power and teh effect will be minimal in a 5 mintue boss fight.
• Eye of the Brood Mother = Crit rating bonus * Crit rating stat weighting + maximum spell power bonus * spell power stat weighting.  I applied the same laziness as for Illustration of the Dragon Soul above.
• Sif’s Remembrance = Crit rating bonus * Crit rating stat weighting + Spell power bonus * spell power stat weighting
• Forethought Talisman = Spell power bonus * spell power stat weighting + (healing [3572] / HPM [6.5] * over heal % [50%]) / cool down [50] * 5 * MP5 stat weight. This one was a bit more complicated than most. The healing effect was calculated based on Flash Heal’s healing per mana (HPM) ratio of about 6.5. 50% over heal was assumed, which if anything was generous.
• Scale of Fates = Spell power bonus * spell power stat weighting + (duration [20] / cool down [125] * hast rating gained [432] * haste rating stat weight
• Soul of the Dead = Crit rating bonus * Crit rating stat weighting + (mana gain [900] / cool down [50] * 5 * MP5 stat weight
• Sundial of the Exiled = Crit rating bonus * Crit rating stat weighting. The ‘Equip’ effect has been ignored as I assumed healers will be healing and not DPSing.
• Je’Tze’s Bell = Spell power bonus * spell power stat weighting + (duration [15] / cool down [45]) * MP5 bonus * MP5 stat weight
• Energy Siphon = MP5 bonus * MP% stat weight + (duration [20] / cool down [125]) * spell power bonus * spell power stat weight
• Embrace of the Spider = Spell power bonus * spell power stat weighting + (duration [10] / cool down [50] * haste rating gained [505] * haste rating stat weight
• The Egg of Mortal Essence = Spell power bonus * spell power stat weighting + (duration [10] / cool down [50] * haste rating gained [505] * haste rating stat weight
• Show of Faith = Spell power bonus * spell power stat weighting + (duration [15] / cool down [45]) * MP5 bonus * MP5 stat weight
• Spirit World Glass = Spirit bonus * Spirit stat weighting + (duration [20] / cool down [125]) * Spirit bonus * Spirit stat weight

Comments

Personally i’m currently packing dual haste trinkets (Embrace of the Spider and The Egg of Mortal Essence).  I have Spark of Hope, Forethought Talisman and Spirit World glass in my bags. As discussed previously my gearing has a slight bias towards mana regen generally and I rarely have mana issues currently, so I look for throughput trinkets. Eye of the Brood Mother and Illustration of the Dragon Soul are good candidates as i’m a raider just starting Uldar. The Spirit World Glass i’ll chuck in the bank in case something magical happens to spirit in game. Ditto for the Forethought Talisman. Spark of Hope i’ll swap in if I have mana issues.

Enjoy!

Posted in Priest

v3.1

Yes, yes I know Uldar has been out for a while.  I’m a casual raider remember?  Actually RL has been pretty busy of late and one weekend of raids were missed when I thought by graphics card had completely died.  It only half died and i’m picking up the new one today, but that is another story.

Uldar.  Where all the cool cats congregate.  Saturday night, after the awesome Naxx 25 run Friday night, I was minding my own business working off some rested XP on Moowall when I get a whisper from a guildie asking if I wanted to heal Uldar 10.  I didn’t really.  I kinda wanted to just level some alts and relax, not smash my head against progression raiding.  I have to admit I was a bit scared intimidated by Uldar.  I’d gotten used to familiar old Naxx and didn’t want to leave my comfort zone.

After a bit of procrastination I said “F*ck it!” and whispered back that i’d come.  I had at least 3 hours and who kenw when i’d get he offer again? So raid invite then blam!  On to business.  Summoning, assembling, entering, wow this place is big. Wondering around aimlessly while we sort out who’s riding in which vehicle.  I’m to be a passenger in one of the demolishers and I can’t even figure out how to get into the damn thing!  Turns out that one already had a passenger… Uldar noob!

What does this button do?  Wow targeting as a passenger is crazy.  Every time the vehicle turns my aim moves with it and occasionally seems to jump (auto targeting?) of its own accord.  Shoot stuff on the ground, shoot stuff in the air, hook power ups.  Apparently there is a steam guage or something somewhere, I sure can’t find it.

Shoot big tank, set oil on fire, whoa!  Run away from giant tank.  Hit nitro (at least I knew what my main job was).  Try shoot more stuff in the air.  Get ejected from demolisher?  Say what?  Get half a dozen achievements (well two i think). Oh Flame Leviathan is dead.  Crazy vehicle fight.  Not bad, just chaotic and not overly hard.  I felt we were doing well to get Shutout until I realised each boss has about ten achievements.  You get an achievement for just about everything in Uldar.  No healer loot.

Moving right along.  What?  Next boss already?  We just killed one.  This was one of the most noticeable themes of the night (other than my noobness).  After Flame Leviathan you pretty much just ride to the next boss, or perhaps kill one or two interesting trash pulls then arrive at the boss.

Next was Razorscale.  Me, my companions and a small army of Mr Fix-it type dwarfs rocks up to this big “fight the boss here” target on the ground.  My brain briefly kicks into jaded critic mode and wonders why Razorscale chooses to fight us at the only spot on the map with four broken harpoon turrets, but that is quickly overwritten by instructions on healing assignments, kill orders and don’t stand in blue stuff instructions.

Fight starts, the dark dwarves popup in their Thunderbirds-are-go mole vehicles and the killing begins.  Most of the rest of the fight is a blur healing until at a critical moment I get knocked back most of the way to Dalaran and out of range of the MT.  He dies.  The DPS all die.  The OT gets him under control and the healers smite him mightily down from 5%.  Phew!  Crazy, chaotic, but quite fun.  No healer loot. I wouldn’t mind this sometime Eye of the Broodmother.

I love giant robots. Even if they fly through the air and do an AoE stun on me   Next we clear a bit more trash.  These might be innocent robots who were just hanging out at the scrap pile at the end of a hard employment cycle? Kill everything!  I had a lot of trouble concentrating on these guys because there was this giant robot at the back of the room doing warm up exercises?!? WTF?

We pull the giant robot to the side of the room. OMG what is that stupid noise?  Is that supposed to be the robots voice?  That’s just dumb.  After reading about it I was expecting something funny, but that was just … lame. *shrugs*  Hunters kill adds, big robot spends most of the time taking a break while we kill his heart.  He did throw a tantrum or two but they weren’t too bad.  Divine Hymn fixed the first one.  Its all over.  More achievements.  Something to do with Gravity bombs.  Plasma Foil drops.  Nice!  I lose the roll.  Never mind.

Three bosses no wipes.  Uldar is supposed to be hard I think.  Or has it been nerfed down to Naxx level?

Trash on the way to Kolgarn.  Wipe.  Knock back into patrols = bad.  Release, run back, these teleporters are going to make me lazy.  Turkelife will have to go on a diet (no more Great Feasts by herself).

Kologarn looks cool.  Kill right arm, dodge eye beams, heal through Stone Grip, check.  Go!  Tank charges Kologarn and off the edge of the platform.  Instant death! WTF?  Wipe.  Run button got stuck apparently.   Release, run back, these teleporters are going to make me lazy.  Another wipe or two but the big guy goes down.  Literally.  Quite a cool fight.  I like the eye beams.  Spark of Hope! Part of my slightly alcohol fogged brain screams, “thats good, get it!”.  I roll, no one else does.  Sweet!  If I ever think i’ll have mana issues I can always equip this.  Shame its +100 spirit not +100 spell power.  Must post about trinkets sometime.

Big complicated trash on the way to Auriaya.  Apparently you have to kill them at the same time and kill sparks or something.  Glad i’m just the healer.  Why did that tank just run out of range?  Auriaya + cats was quite a fun challenge.  A fair bit of movement as she is repositioned and of course restacking after fear.  I learned later the stacking was to minimise the effect of the 80k Sonic Screech she does.  More cats spawned and turned into void zones on death.  More repositioning.  One shot!  Nurturing Touch dropped and this time it was my conscious that knew this was worth having.  Once again I rolled and no one else did.  Apparently the holy priest didn’t want it. *shrugs* No complaints here.

More teleporters on the way to Ignis.  Soon we’re standing in front of two very big red giants.  The trash in here is nothing if not variable.  They got tanked spread out. I guess there was a stacking debuff or something.  We get to the top of the stairs and the comment is, “where is all the trash?”  Apparently there used to be heaps and now there isn’t.  A few chaotic pulls with flaming tornadoes and we’re on to Ignis.

Wipe, wipe, wipe.  Wow this Ignis is a step up.  Healing him was about twice as hard as any of the others so far.  A few more wipes and the OT has to leave.  We discuss how to get a DPS, besides the Boomkin, to do 5k to the adds to shatter them, as the Boomkin can OT.  We eventually call it for lack of geared replacements.  Apparently people in blues were wanting invites and the RL was having fun ridiculing them in Vent.  I read later that in 10 man with a decent group you can just OT the adds and burn him down.  Next time.

So thats it.  Uldar is a bit harder than Naxx.  From what i’ve seen so far (not much) if you knew the fights like you did in Naxx it wouldn’t be too bad.  It seems less gimmicky, but still managed to have giant robots!  There is less trash, but the stuff that is there is harder than in Naxx.

I reviewed the gear in Uldar and there isn’t much more for me until heroic, but i’ll be doing the 10 man version again just for the challenge.  That’s got to be a good thing.

Posted in Priest

v3.1

I finally got a chance to road test Holy over the weekend.  A couple of guildies organised a quality (i.e. gear checked) Naxx 25 PUG.  I was late on and the last healer to join.  Wow! Five priests in the raid.  This will be interesting.  Two shadow and three discipline speced including me.  I get summoned and they are at the first boss in Spider wing.  My healing assignment? … Raid.

OK, now might be a good time to try out Holy. So after the big beetle dies I respec Holy and start mentally preparing for it (i.e. trying to recognise the buttons ).  While im doing this the master looter calls for off spec rolls on Sash of the Parlor.  Off spec?  Yep no one wants it.  Its a small upgrade for me so I roll.  No one else does.  Wierd. Upgrade one secured.

We clear trash.  First impression is, “wow we are packing serious DPS tonight!”  Second impression is, “hey this Circle of Healing spell is awesome!”  I just wander around hitting my ‘3′ key every 6 or so seconds and raid healing is done.

Next we decide to just burn Grand Widow Fae down.  Tank pulls, everything stops.  Vent erupts in “I think i’ve DC’ed” comments and we wipe after about ten people DC including all except one healer.  Glad we got that out of the way

After that we just destroyed the place.  We had one wipe on Thaddius when there was a mis-communication following a ready check.  It was text book killing.  No long breaks for AFKs (i’m the culprit of these on occasion), everyone danced on Heigan except 1 or 2, everyone knew the fights.  Very few stood in blizzards or red glowing things on the floor. Lots of DPS.  Healing is so much easier when everything dies fast.  Naxx 25 pug clear in 4 hours.  I think the DPS was the main difference between this run and the regular guild runs in Naxx 25.  I only saw one meter somewhere near the start of the run and one of my guildies, who usually pushes about 5k DPS, wasn’t even in the top 10.  DBM recorded record kill times on every boss, some of them 25% faster than previous runs.  The raid was a real pleasure.

I picked up the last 2 badges for my Valorous Shoulderpads of Faith. I also won the rolls for Serene Echoes (finally) and Urn of Lost Memories (first time i’ve seen it drop).

Holy healing is a nice change.  I was only using Flash Heal, PoM, CoH, PoH, Guardian Spirit (once or twice) and Light Well.  A few used the Light Well, but it was only ready effective on Loatheb.  Coming from discipline I noticed the restricted number of instant heals, but usually between CoH and PoM there was enough.  I didn’t really notice the additional throughput, but it was only a moderate workout healing-wise.  Interesting spec, must try it again sometime.

I’ll be going holy any time i’m raid healing from now on.  Even got me the Glyph of guardian Spirit to play with Guardian angel wings FTW!

Posted in Priest

v3.1

*Queue the next line from some song from the 80’s* KLF?

I actually mean Power Auras Classic.  The addon, not the band.

I’ve been wanting to try this out for ages, but haven’t really found a good use for it for my healer.  A number of others have posted about this funky addon and it sounds and looks useful.

Enter my decision to finally get my act together and re-bind my mouse wheel to something more useful than zoom in/zoom out for my warrior and we have a perfect marriage of form and function.

So what are we looking at?  Well i’ve seen people with some of their action bars and other stuff displayed towards the centre of their screens and not anchored to the top or bottom.  Matticus, I think it was, posted about eye strain from zig zagging his eyes all over his screen and it occurred to me I spend a lot of eye travel time moving between the center of my screen, the bottom left where my action bars were and the top right where buff icons appear.

Ding!  An exclamation mark appeared above my head as I discovered a new quest had an idea to experiment with a new layout for my warrior.  Previously I had a pretty typical setup with two bars of 10 actions at the bottom left of screen with the chat window above.  Nothing was displayed in the middle where my toon was.  So I made some changes.

Firstly I moved my Shield Slam and Revenge actions off my visible bars (BarTender4) and on to a new bar which is enabled, but permanently hidden. I then bound the ‘=’ and ‘-’ keys to zoom in and out (which doesn’t work that well, but that’s a minor issue) and bound Shield Slam to mouse wheel up and Revenge to mouse down.  Now I need a way of figuring out when to use Shield Slam and Revenge.

Enter Power Auras Classic. The gorgeous little addon should be core functionality I think.  It allows you to display graphical effects around your toon when certain conditions are met.  To configure it type ‘/powa’.  I set up three effects straight up:

1. Shield Slam – I display a red dagger pointing up icon to the upper left of my toon when in combat and Shield Slam is usable.
2. Revenge – I display a blue dagger pointing down icon (some icon, different colour and 180 degree symetry) to lower left of my toon when in combat and Revenge is usable.
3. Battle Shout – I display a red shield icon to the bottom right of my toon when i’m in combat and I do not have the Battle Shout buff.

These all zoom in and out when they appear and disappear and they flash while visible.  Actually the Battle Shout one might pulse slowly, but the effect is similar.

Thirdly I moved my chat window to the very bottom left corner of the screen and moved my two main action bars above them and centered on my toon.  This means they are now only about 2 inches below the feet of my toon.  This means at least 3-4 inches less eye travel between targets/toon and action buttons.  Quartz displays just above these and immediately below my toon.  I also shuffled my buttons a bit.  Originally I had my main bar with, from left to right: Attack (bound to 1), Shield Slam (2), Heroic Strike (3), Revenge (4), Concussion Blow (5), Shock Wave (6), Shield Block (7), etc.  This is pretty much the Prot warrior skill priority order from left to right.  The new bar has Heroic Strike (1), Concussion Blow (2), Shock Wave (3), Shield Block (4), etc.  This means I can easily reach my keys with my left hand, which hovers over the QWEASD movement keys.  Shield Bash is bound to the ‘~’ button, to the left of number 1, which is easy reach for interrupting.

I then added a 4th and 5th effects:

1. Glyph of Revenge – I display a white crossed swords effect immediately above my Heroic Strike button when my toon has the Glyph of Revenge buff (free Heroic strike after hitting with Revenge).  This also zooms in and out and flashes.  This is to inform me to use it after the glyph triggers.
2. I also have set the same crossed swords effect to display when I have more than 80 Rage so that I can dump rage via Heroic Strike.

Prot warriors have a lot of buttons to push.  When soloing this results in a priority like this: Charge then if red shield appears hit Battle Shout > if red dagger up appears mouse wheel up to Shield Slam > if blue dagger down appears then mouse wheel down to Revenge > Shield Block + Blood Rage + Berserker Rage if off cool down > Concussion blow (button 2) > Shockwave (button 3) > Thunder Clap > Demoralising Shout > etc

If at any time the white crossed swords appear hit Heroic Strike (button 1) also.  Lots of buttons as I said.

The end result of this reconfiguration is that i’m pushing and clicking buttons a lot less.  I’m also not watching my buffs at all and watching the cool downs on my bars a lot less.  When i’m using the bars I am not having to move my eyes so far from the centre of the screen.  Formally the buff bar to action bars distance was about 20 inches with the center of the screen in between.  Now the eye travel distance is only about 3 inches.  My situational awareness has started to increase already.

It is also visually more interesting.  Watching buttons for cool downs and the buff region of the screen for Glyph of Revenge and Sword and Board procs is no where near as interesting as big red and blue daggers and shields and crossed swords appearing to tell me stuff.  Maybe the novelty will wear off, but so far so good.

Try it out sometime.

Posted in Addons, Warrior

v3.1

I’ve updated my theorycrafting posts slightly to include two changes.

Firstly as Zusterke pointed out over at WowInsider my assumption of 80% inside the 5 second rule was a little unlikely.  I’ve bumped this up to 90%.

Secondly i’ve changed the valuation of Holy Concentration.  Originally I was working off 70% uptime for this but there seems to be more support for an uptime more like 45%.  Also i’ve discovered the additional regen is a flat 50% of whatever you’d normally have (be it inside or outside the five second rule).  These two changes significantly reduce the value of Holy Concentration down from about 140-160 MP5 to about 50 MP5.  I’m suspecting a buff to HC might happen before too long.  Would be nice if they extended it to 12s duration or something.

This has some flow-on effects to my Discipline and Holy gear lists.  These lists are also updated to include some of the new stuff still being discovered in Uldar.

So if your interested go and have a look.

Gobble gobble.

PS Discovered another Discipline Priest blog.  This one likes numbers.

Posted in Priest

Some are calling it a minor patch.  It’s not so minor for priests and Disc priests in particular.

Important bits:

• Divine Hymn: Healing and healing scaling reduced by 30%. Buff on affected players changed from 15% to 10%.
• Renewed Hope: Effect can no longer be dispelled.
• Soul Warding: Mana cost reduction is now 15% down from 30%.

I’m not sure how minor these are.  Divine Hymn continues to get nerfed, while retaining its ‘once per boss fight’ cool down.  I haven’t had a chance to test this yet, but i’m hoping they go easy on any future changes to it.

Also a nerf to Soul Warding. My calculations have this going from costing 556 mana to 675 mana.  That seems fairly significant to me.  Il might even get to raid tonight to test it out.  Hmm actually my video card is dying and the new one won’t arrive till about Friday.  The onboard video card on my motherboard runs WoW surprisingly well, but doesn’t like Dalaran much.  I doubt it will like raiding either…

*crosses finders for a fast delivery*

Equipment Manager When enabled from the Interface Options menu, this feature will allow players to store sets of equipment, easily swap between saved sets using hotkeys, and pull items directly from backpacks or bank slots (must be at the bank to equip inventory from the bank).

This I am looking forward to checking out.  I hope it is well implemented (and less buggy than dual specs were).

Gobble gobble.

PS Interesting fact (or not) – Signing off with ‘Gobble gobble’ could get me banned from Elitist Jerks forums. I t’was surprised.

PPS OK it is a minor patch

Posted in Priest

v3.1

Just a short post to provide some numbers for those that think my previous numbers were too mana regen focused.

I have just taken my existing model and bumped the spell power to MP5 ratio from 0.6 to 1.5.

Gear lists

• Discipline LootRank
• Holy LootRank

Pawn

( Pawn: v1: “Discipline31″: Stamina=0.2, Intellect=1.0457, Spirit=0.3516, RedSocket=21.8657, CritRating=0.8075, MetaSocket=21.96, HasteRating=0.7312, BlueSocket=11.3657, YellowSocket=16.7315, SpellPower=1.5, Mp5=1)

( Pawn: v1: “Holy31″: Stamina=0.2, Intellect=0.8163, Spirit=0.908, RedSocket=20.0305, CritRating=0.6246, MetaSocket=17.1425, HasteRating=0.7647, BlueSocket=13.7941, YellowSocket=13.0609, SpellPower=1.5, Mp5=1)

Summary

If you compare the Discipline numbers to the throughput numbers from The Doctor on Elitist Jerks you’ll see they are pretty similar.

• MP5 – 1.00
• Spirit – 0.33
• Intellect – 0.97
• SP – 1.49
• Crit rating – 0.72
• Stamina – 0.00
• Haste rating – 0.88

Note that i’ve normalised his original numbers to 1 MP5 so they can be directly compared.

If you compare the LootRank for these throughput orientated weightings with my previously published weightings you will see what I have been saying about the usefulness of gear lists. The top ten items in almost all slots are the same, the order in which the top 10 items is ranked is different to varying degrees.

Enjoy.

Posted in Priest

I finally got around to finalising secondary specs for both priest and shaman last night.  For Turkelife (priest) I was initially excited about off-specing into Shadow for a bit of work on the dark side.  I figured I could solo as Shadow rather than Disc and maybe even DPS occasionally, once-in-a-while in raid.  Unfortunately shadow turned out to be not a lot more useful soloing.  Sure it outputs a fair bit more damage than Discipline, but it has weaker shields and no ability to self heal it dies faster.

Also raid-wise I suffer, like most healers from, well, having a healing main.  Due to ongoing shortages of healers, this makes it extremely hard for me to DPS in raids.  Unlike off-tank/DPS the times you can afford a healer to DPS for the entire duration of fights is fairly limited.  Being one of the best geared healers in the guild makes it even harder to argue for me to DPS as opposed to one of the lesser geared/experienced healers.

She also has enough hit gear to swap in for the horrid Mind Control duties on Instructor Raz (I hate that fight and I hate it three times if I have to MC.  Line-of-sight, delays in transfering “control” to target so I move and break MC and the stupid 20 yard range on MC, etc, etc).   So I don’t need to go shadow for Mind Control fights.

So last night I changed to Holy off-spec.   The plan is to try it on a gearing/farm type run so I can see how the other half live.  This is more for a change rather than feeling I need more AoE healing.

Turkemoo (shaman) also had his off-spec updated last night.  I finally pulled my finger out and figured out what was a decent Resto build for shaman.  Having only healed once as Resto I still don’t ‘get’ resto shaman, but a bit of research, a better spec and better understanding of guidelines of which spells to use when will help.  Being used to lots of instant cast spells as a Disc priest I think i’m going to find resto shaman hard to play to start with but hopefully I figure out their style.  My current opinion is that resto shaman are inferior to Disc priests, but i’m pretty sure this is just my ignorance of resto shaman.  I think the smart part of Chain Heal and Ancestral Awakening will prove me wrong.

Turkemoo has gone resto as i’m hoping to slip him in to heal some of the easier guild raids (e.g. Naxx 10) instead of being a bit bored healing them on Turkelife.  Otherwise I guess he’ll stick to PUGing as DPS (elemental).

Game on!

Posted in Priest, Shaman

v3.1

I notice a few people searching for stuff like, “Which gems for elemental shaman?” and the like and arriving at this blog.  So here it is.

First off when gemming your elemental shaman remember the hit cap.   If you are only planning on doing heroic instances then your hit cap is 79.  If you are planning on raiding you have two hit caps.  295 hit rating is your soft hit cap.  It assumes that you are raiding with a Shadow Priest debuffing the raid boss with Misery.  If you do not raid with a Shadow Priest your hard hit cap for raid bosses is 368.

Personally I feel must hit the soft cap and then have a piece of gear with lots of hit on it to swap in if there is no shadow priest in the raid.  Pieces like Ebonweave Gloves/Robe are good for this.

OK now the gems.

Meta gem

• Only option – Chaotic Skyflare Diamond

The 3% extra damage from this metagem makes it the stand out option for elementalists.  The big downside for this gem is the requirements for 2 blues gems to activate it.  Blue gem slots seem to be few and far between for the sort of gear we are looking for.

Yellow gems

• Option 1 – Rigid Autumn’s Glow +16 hit
• Option 2 – Veiled Monarch Topaz +9 SP +8 hit

Early on I put Rigid Autumn’s Glow in my yellow slots and swap in Veiled Monarch Topaz as I get more hit rating.

Red gems

• Option 1 – Veiled Monarch Topaz +9 SP +8 hit
• Option 2 – Runed Scarlet Ruby +19 SP

The advantage of the Veiled Monarch Topaz are that they fit both your main slot colours and spread your hit rating around your gear.  They are also about one third the price of Runed Scarlet Rubies on my server.  I suggest starting with Veiled Monarch Topaz and replacing them with Runed Scarlet Rubies as the hit on your gear improves.

Blue gems

• Option 1 – Vivid Forest Emerald +8 hit +12 stam
• Option 2 – Glowing Twilight Opal +9 SP +12 stam

All you options for blues are pretty weak, but unfortunately you’ll need two for your metagem activation.  The two choices are pretty close depending on your need for hit rating.  I find my Eternal Belt Buckle a good place to put one of these.

Done.  Bookmark this or add it to your cheat sheet for you elemental shaman.

Gobble gobble.

Posted in Blogging