Bad dps

As noted, I've dinged 80 with my third character. I noted something very interesting this time, which I hadn't before.

My first two characters were both geared up as healers. I ran instances as healer, rolling greed on dps gear I needed. As a healer, I could solo stuff, but didn't do much dps. I considered 1.5k dps "good", 2.0k dps "great", and anything above that superb. Why? Most dps I ran heroics with was around 1.5k, some of them lower. When I got a dps that could pull out somewhere above 2.5k, I was amazed.

At some point I got dual spec on my shaman, and could suddenly pull out quite decent dps as elemental. I joined a Naxx25-man, doing somewhere around 2.5-3.0k dps. I was very satisfied. Not that I topped the charts, but I was definitely far from the bottom. I assumed it was because I'd gained so good gear while healing... many ilvl 213-pieces, even.

When I levelled up as bear, I had tanking spec- and glyphs. I could go cat, but I had trouble breaking 3k, even mostly clad in ilvl 219-gear with several pieces higher. I was happy breaking 2k while tanking in bear form.

Now, when I levelled my DK, I did so with a heirloom axe, chest and shoulders, and with a Unholy PVP spec. The most important dps talents, but also stuff like On a Pale Horse, Improved Unholy Presence, and 17 points in Frost to get Endless Winter. 17 points in Blood would've been much better for dps.

At lvl 78, in Culling of Stratholme, I broke 1.5k dps. I'd like to repeat that. Two levels before 80 I did more dps than most dps I had ran with when I was healing at lvl 80. Apart from the heirloom stuff, I had quest blues and greens.

At lvl 80, I quickly broke 2k dps, after respeccing to a pure dps spec. I did 3.5k dps on Onyxia 10-man, but that fight hugely favors Unholy DKs due to the AoE damage on the whelps. Fast forward a few upgrades. Interestingly enough, upgrading from the heirloom axe with Crusader (which hardly does anything at lvl 80) to the ilvl 219 axe from TotC heroic with Rune of the Fallen Crusader was less of an increase on my dps than I'd expected it to be. Unholy is much less dependant on weapon damage than Blood and Frost, I believe.

At the moment, I've got a gear score of around 2000 in wow-heroes.com. That translates to mostly ilvl 200 gear plus 4 ilvl 219 items and three items below ilvl 200. I pull 3-3.5k dps on single target fights in 5-man. Above 4k raid-buffed. Much more on fights featuring adds and cleaving. I pulled well above 7k dps on Onyxia 25-man, but that fight isn't the best to check that kind of stuff.

I've got a fairly good knowledge about death knights, but I'm far from mastering it. I still make noob mistakes like forgetting to save a blood rune for Death and Decay when it's coming off cooldown on AoE fights.

The conclusion I pull from this is that many of the dps I've met lack knowledge of their class. They lack knowledge about what makes the better upgrades, priorities on their attacks, they forget to use cooldowns, and so on. Or to say it with a word: They suck.

Dps is a way more forgiving job than tanking and healing. You can get away with much less knowledge about your class and gear than you can as a healer or tank.

On nice people

Disclaimer: When you read "nice guy" in this post, substitute "nice guy/girl".

With a handful exceptions, I've pugged all the instances I've done. Well, if it's also pugging when I ask a guy I've met earlier if he'd like to join in.

There are a lot of different people you meet when pugging. I'd like to speak of one specific personality type, one I was a member of myself for my first years of WoW.

The nice guys. The ones that seem to stick around no matter how bad things go, and will accept almost endless amounts of "nerd rage", blaming, accusing, unreasonable favors (like a guy asking to be ressed when the entire group wiped without any reason at all) and other negative communication.

Incidently, the nice guys very often end up as healers, tanks and often also group leaders. Not necessarily the group leader as the tank getting the party leadership to mark targets, but the one that put the group together, was first at the stone to wait several minutes for the next one to show up to summon and so on.

Healers seem to be the most common role for these guys. They want to help. They want to be important to the group or raid force. They want to make a change. Healing is a natural response to that "need", as they're critical to the group, can contribute without competing on a damage meter, and get the warm fuzzy feeling when they succeed on keeping everyone alive, or at least prevent a wipe, despite the odds.

One of the most striking features; They usually don't complain. They feel they shouldn't.

Now, they have a problem. I can describe one of the most common sympthoms. Previously, said person have been working hard for weeks/months, avoiding complaining when psosible, and always done what was best for the group(s). Suddenly he or she burst out in furious anger, and seemingly creates a huge conflict over something others consider small or trivial.

The best example I know of was a raiding druid who let out his rage on the official forums from the time I was a regular there. He was a raiding resto druid at lvl 60. His guild was doing great, downing bosses east and west. A physical dps leather item dropped, and he wanted it for his feral set. The guild leader gave it to a rogue who had recently joined the raiding force and needed it as a minor upgrade.

The druid in question spent half an hour screaming on vent and cursing on guild chat before leaving the guild and the raid force. I don't know what happened afterwards.

Now, the problem was not that the guild leader gave the item to the rogue. It was only the last drop which caused the glass to spill. At best, giving the item to the druid would have delayed the problem, but it would have happened later instead.

The problem didn't necessarily have only a single cause, but I can imagine some. The druid had persisted through lots of wipes without complaining. He had set his own needs aside for the raid force's. He had probably swallowed a lot of frustrations, not wanting to 'cause problems' or 'create drama' until the moment he was unable to swallow it.

I'll go as far as to say there are quite a lot of similarities between this and several break-ups. One person, often the girl/woman, remains silent until she suddenly can take no more. After the following break-up, the partner is unsure what happened.


What can be done to prevent such problems?

The short answer is Communication.

The long answer; There are several means that can help.

The best mean may be for the person to learn to talk about it. It may sound strange, but just getting your problems acknowledged by someone else helps immensly. There's a reason why you feel the need to complain to others when you've experienced something annoying or uncomfortable. It helps even more if you can talk to a person who is in some position where he can understand well what happens. In the case of WoW, a fellow WoW player is better than a random person. A guild member may be even better. A person that participated in the scene that caused the frustration will be even better. Best is probably the if the person him/herself that caused the frustration can acknowledge the problem. Shared first place might be the raid/guild leader.

Getting your problem acknowledged is first step towards solving it. How to solve it will vary with what kind of problem it is and who is involved. In the case of raiding, an officer might make a change, even minor, that can ease the frustration.

But before you can think of a solution, you need to actually identify the problem. After all, this personality archtype doesn't complain in the first place. That's why others, everyone that can, should react to signs that there's something wrong. In particular, the leaders. Asking if everything's okay won't necessarily help.

There's a skill straight out of the child psychology book that can be applied to much more than just children; Achknowledging by describing.

Consider the following situation I participated in yesterday. Simplified for the example.

I was dps, pretty average. We had a moderately well equipped tank. We had a superior healer. We had a superior mage dps. We had a average rogue who was a bit annoying to me. Let me put it this way; Who will ask for a res in TotC heroic after a wipe?

The healer suddenly had to leave after the first boss was down. It's hard to find a healer, harder when you've already downed a boss and you don't get the loot/emblembs/champion's seals.

I calm the group down, and say I'd find a new healer. I had assembled the group in the first place.

I've got black belt in random whispering, saying something like "We're in need of a healer for Trial of the Champion herioc (5-man). We've downed the first boss, then our healer had to leave for a raid. Would you happen to have time and interest in joining us?" to all healer classes at lvl 80 which isn't in a zone that dictates they're doing something I'm disturbing them in.

I come across a priest healer. He doesn't want to join, he'd just had a very bad experience with a pug. He's definately one of the nice guys archtype. I didn't get all the details, but I belive it was somthing like he had stuck around for wipe after wipe with a terrible tank, people leaving and cursing and blaming. I can completely understand that feeling after having "been there" myself several times. While going on whispering others, I reply to the whisper by describing how frustrating that can be, and how I understand he want to take a break from PUGs. Meanwhile I get a 20-30 declines on my offer to join, most of them polite.

After a few minutes, the healer I'm whispering with says he'll join us after all. He says I sound like a guy he'd like to pug with. I graciously accept his offer.

Fast forward. We wipe two more times before finishing the last two bosses. The tank stands completely immobile, and doesn't move out of the Desecration the death knight puts on the floor. Neither does the rogue. I do, leading to a serious downtime in my dps.

When we last succeed, it's with only 3 people standing. The priest ran out of mana healing through all the damage on the desecration. He was "correctly" equipped for the instance. While an overgeared healer might be able to heal through that without a sweat, this priest did nothing wrong and still ran out of mana. We did ask the tank after each wipe to kite the black knight around, not to get caught in his desecration.

The tank and the rogue leaves. The three of us stands around for several minutes. I tell the mage how I appreciated his dps despite the zombies in phase 2 swarming over him, and how we I don't believe we'd succeeded in the first place without his dps. I tell the priest how I saw that he managed to pull it through, despite the tank and a dps taking much more damage than intended by the instance.

What happens next? They open up and talk. A lot. Letting out their frustration and letting me know how they appreciate grouping with me, despite the fact that I was tied for the lowest place in dps. They even go so far that they share the names of their alts with me, hoping to group with me again. I'm not sure they would've opened up if I've asked 'Everything okay?'. Most likely, they'd answered something like 'yes, we're (finally) done' or something.

I believe both of them walked away more satisfied than they otherwise would. Imagine the difference; several wipes, and noone mentions a word about the hard work you put in to make it finally work. Alternatively, several wipes, but someone saw you and what you did, and tells you how they appreciate it. It's different from a 'Good work'. Someone saw exactly what you did, not just that you collectively succeeded.

Neither of them have their problems solved. But they have had some of their problems and work appreciated.

Some ways to solve problems might be for you nice guys to leave the group if it doesn't work with a warning in advance, or perhaps even kicking the 'problem player' if they've got the leadership. Don't hesitate to do that. It's not punishing the player. It's letting him or her know the consequences of his or her annoying behaviour. Just be sure that you share the view with the majority first.

Don't hesitate to talk. You're not causing a problem if you're telling what's bothering you. If you've got a guild leadership who think you are, you're in a very self-destructive guild. It's going to blow up, or rather, implode sooner or later. Guild quit and find a place where you are achknowledged.

I'm no longer one of the nice guys. I'm one of the guys that take responsibility for myself.

PVP strikes back

I had, for quite a while, neglected a part of WoW I really used to love so much. PVE has lots of fun factors. In particular, I love the cooperation required to bring down bosses, and the excitement of succeeding together. However, playing only one aspect of the game will burn it out faster than playing all aspects.

With the "birth" of my death knight, I played a bit PVP along the way. And heck, what fun I've missed!

While levelling up, my DK has the heirloom PVP shoulders, heirloom PVP trinket, heirloom chest and heirloom axe with Crusader on it.

BG 50-59 was a bit of a joke. More than half of all players joining were death knights. In fact, it was joked that "whichever side has the most death knights wins", something that proved painfully true for all rounds I participated in.

Come 60 and lowest level in BGs. Interestingly enough, I didn't feel underpowered. Quite the opposite, it felt "just right". Most likely because of the superior gear I had for my level (DK starting area blue gear is about equivalent of lvl 65 greens, I think). Of course, I was feeling a bit squishy, so I played all the time in frost presence.

Here's the thing: I don't like following all the stupid sheep that races towards the stables, Balinda or just mindlessly fights in the midfield in Warsong Gulch. I stick around in our base to defend our flag in WSG, I stick at a base in AB and defend it, I try to keep Galv alive, get our towers back and prevents stealth caps in AV.

I'm used to playing a healer. What happens when a single healer sticks around a place to defend? Well... at best I can survive until my mana is all gone. That's the limitation of my abilities.

As a DK, I'm able to succeed on my own. At least some of the time.

Now, I've hit 80 with my DK. There are a few problems.

I'm painfully reliant on a good weapon, and I'm STILL running around with my heirloom axe. It helps a lot being unholy -- I did 4.5k dps in quest blues in the Onyxia 10 pug I joined. Superior AoE, anyone? With a bit of luck, a new weapon will drop sooner or later in TotC heroic.

I still only have two specs to play around. I want three (at least). PVE dps, PVE tank and PVP. For the moment I don't have all that good tanking gear, so I've got PVE dps and PVP. Considering tanking with my PVP spec. It has Toughness, Magic Suppression, Anti-Magic Zone, Bone Shield and even Glyph of Anti-magic Shell, so I'm only lacking Anticipation, Blade Barrier and Improved Icy Touch of the core tanking talents. I can even afford two points in Imp Icy Touch in my PVP spec without losing anything important.

Other than that, I'm gearing up my third character. At a point I got really tired of it and switched back to my shaman for some PVP. It took less than a single AV to recall what I liked about my DK.

1. The get-out-of-jail-free cards. In particular Anti-Magic Shell and Icebound Fortitude, but also Strangulate and Chains of Ice. Together, they allowed me to survive for quite some time alone with an enemy. Except retribution paladins, bloody annoying bastards. They stun me for 5 seconds before I got the runic power to get off either AMS or IF.


2. Just being a tank. Standing around defending a node in frost presence, and a rogue fires up his arsenal at me. But hey, I've got tons of armor, I can survive for quite some time. Compare that to a shaman, even with a shield, whose only defense is trinketing out of a stun or die before the stunlock is up. Well, almost.

I like being a tank in PVP.

Delicious cookies! All mine! Muhahahahahaha...

... and another blog bites the dust?

Yes, it did. I ought to have made a post telling you why I stopped blogging.

However, I'll start again. This time with a slightly different focus.

What has happened?

Something like this:

• Played my shaman for a while, gearing her up for raiding (3.1). Did some pug raids, lots of fun.


• Got tired of only healing, wanted to tank again.


• Fooled around with a paladin for a bit. Got it to 71.


• Returned to my druid, levelled it to 80.


• Geared up my druid for raiding. Lead a few Naxx-raids.


• Applied, got accepted into a raiding force. Pretty serious 10-man force with good people. However, they were full on druids and wanted shammies.


• Geared up my shammy again (3.2)


• Raided one night. Found out I can't do it and function normally at work the night after. Bed at midnight, up at 6 AM. I'm a zombie half of the following day.


• Got a bit depressed. Considered stopping WoW entirely.


• Returned to my druid for a bit, played a bit without any specific focus. Tanked some pug raids, including Koralon 25 right after he was added.


• Tried a death knight. Got hooked.

Status quo: DK at 74, fairly speed-leveled. Having fun meanwhile, though. Had a few short breaks to the seasonal stuff. Knowing myself, I will sooner or later want to return to healing. Which class? Don't know, thus I do the seasonal stuff on both my 80 healers (druid and shammy).

So, future stuff will most likely be centered a bit around death knights and leveling stuff. Not much raiding stuff to be expected here, I'm afraid.

I'm going to spend a bit less time writing each post. I expect a post a week, sometimes more often.

The glyph shuffle, shamanic version.

3.1 brings a lot of changes. Dual-spec, for example. Personally I'd prefer a Quadruple-spec (Healer PVP, Healer PVE, dps PVE, dps PVP), but I'll take Dual-spec over single-spec any day. When dual-spec hits the "shelves", I'll have at least one of the builds as a resto-PVP build. I'm debating whether to have elemental PVP or resto PVE as my second build.

But it's important that you also get two set of glyphs. Because of that, I'd like to take a closer look at the various glyphs that can be useful to resto builds. For all of the glyphs, I'll rate them either 1 (rarely/hardly useful), 2 (handy), 3 (very handy/critical) for each of these purposes:

• PVE Chain Heal: Where Chain Heal contributes 90% of your healing done. Mostly translates to 25-man raids, some 10-man and rarely 5-man.


• PVE Mix: Where you use a mix of various heals and not only chain heal.


• PVP Arena: Where you'll meet a limited number of enemies who usually are well coordinated, and their objective is to keep you from breathing. Mana is a secondary problem compared to just staying alive.


• PVP BG/WG: Where you'll meet lots of uncoordinated enemies, and the objective isn't nescessarily to kill you. Running out of mana is a concern.

The newcomers

Glyph of Earth Shield: A straight-foward buff offering +20% more healing on Earth Shield. I'd consider it pretty stupid to take this glyph without also speccing Improved Earth Shield and Improved Shields, as they stack together. Buffs each charge of Earth Shield by something between 300 and 500, depending on spellpower. This is what I'd consider a handy ability for all purposes, but nothing critical for either. Check your recount values. Find how much effective healing Earth Shield provides (discarding overhealing), and multiply the number by 0.2. This is a rough estimate of the increased healing done by this glyph. Score: 2 all around.

Glyph of Riptide: 3 more sec on the Riptide HoT. Each tick of Riptide heals for something between 600 and 800, depending on spellpower. On a non-crit, this increases Riptide's total output by about 11%. on a crit (with Ancestral Awakening), about 8% more output. For this to be useful, the target must actually have less than full health at this final tick, which is 18 seconds after you initially cast Riptide on someone. In PVP, chances are high that you have to overwrite the buff early because you need the instant potion of Riptide right NOW. The glyph doesn't really convince me. There is one redeeming feature, though. Extending the HoT also extends the window in which you can cast Chain Heal on the target and get a 20% buff. But still... meh. Skip this. I'm 90% certain we'll see this glyph buffed sooner or later. A simple +5% crit rate on Riptide would be better, or perhaps "lowers the global cooldown after casting riptide by 0.5 sec". Current version: 1 all around.

Glyph of Hex: Increases the damage a hexed target can suffer by 20% before hex breaks. Similar to Glyph of Entangling Roots and Glyph of Frost Nova. I can't actually see who would want this. In any sort of group PVE, it's in 99% of the cases broken by the tank (often through AoE) and while it's a bit more incoming damage on the tank, it's nothing really bad. After all, by breaking it, the tank is sure to have aggro on it. In PVP I find that the most common reason for hex breaking being the PVP trinket. The second problem is that the target simly runs away, if it has any kind of intelligence between it's ears. With a 45 sec cooldown, it's a poor return for a glyph. 1 all around.

Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem: Shields you when you cast Stoneclaw Totem. According to a poster on wowhead, this shield aborbs 4340 damage no matter how much spellpower you have. On current PTR, the shield amount is unaffected by Earth's Grasp. In effect, another instant heal spell, but with a few limitations. 30 sec cooldown like the totem. Probably range-dependant meaning it stops working if you move more than 30 yards away from the totem. Possibly disables you from using Earthbind Totem or Tremor Totem for the same time the shield lasts without loosing the shield. The bright side is that being a totem, you can use it despite being counterspelled/silenced. It also has the other advantages of shield spells. And 4k extra health on demand isn't such a bad deal. Handy in PVP. There are few cases where I see the need for this in PVE, versus just healing yourself up. PVE: 1. PVP: 2.

The old fellows

Glyph of Chain Heal: Makes Chain Heal hit four targets instead of three. This has two effects. First, it improves Chain Heal's average throughput by 1/14 or 7%, given that it's always a fourth (wounded) target in range. Second, and harder to measure, it provides another target that potentially can proc Earthliving. If you're raiding 25-man (and possibly even if you only raid 10-man), Chain Heal will usually contribute most of your healing done. This will provide a nice increase. PVE Chain Heal: 3. PVE Mix: 2. PVP: 1. The effect of this glyph is further amplified by...

Glyph of Earthliving: Increases the chance to proc Earthliving by 5%. Notice, though, that there are several cases where this does nothing. First, Earthliving never procs if you heal a target at full health. It can proc if the direct heal brings the target to full health, though. Second, with Blessing of the Eternals you will have a 100% chance to proc Earthliving on a target at less than 35% health without this glyph. Finally, earthliving doesn't stack, but merely refreshens the duration of the last earthliving if it procs again on the same target, making it less useful if you spam heals on one target (like the tank). But still... I think this is a rather solid glyph. Most of the cases you will be healing people at between 35% and 100% anyway, and it can proc on any direct heal, making it an work just as well in 5-man and 25-man. It's nice for PVP too, since there's a chance that the last earthliving was devoured/spellstolen/purged/dispelled/whatever. I rate it 2 all around.

Edit: As drug pointed out, Earthliving is a minor part of healing done for a priest mainly relying on Chain Heal. I agree with his comment, there's probably better glyphs for a chain-healer.

Glyph of Healing Wave: Heals you for 20% of the amount Healing Wave heals your target for. I have sometimes, but not every time, experiened that this extra heal triggers even when I'm the target of my own HW. Possibly a bug. Personally, I love this glyph. Since I favor using Healing Wave as much as possible, I rarely ever worry about my own health in PVE groups. In fact, between this glyph and ancestral healing, I often heal area damage without using Chain Heal at all. Of course, it does rely on you using Healing Wave. Since shorter casttime = less chance to be interrupted/kicked/silenced/etc, not to mention higher chance that my target is alive when the heal hits, I mostly favor using Lesser Healing Wave in PVP. However, there are times when I can use this, and I try to maximize those. PVE Chain Heal: 2. PVE mix: 3. PVP BG/WG: 2. PVP arena: 1.

Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave: Increases the amount healed by Lesser Healing Wave by 20% if the target has Earth Shield. This is *the* PVP resto shammie glyph. Don't leave home without it. It both increases throughput and mana efficiency of your most used PVP healing spell, but only if the target has earth shield. More handy in arenas than in BGs, but it is always handy because you can earth shield yourself and spam Riptide -> LHW -> LHW -> move/root until Riptide is ready again for maximum chance of survival. It does have some use in PVE as well, but since Earth Shield will almost always be up on the tank and HW is preferable to LHW as a tank heal if you've got the talents to support it (mainly Imp Healing Wave, Imp Water Shield and Healing Way), it's usually better to stick to HW. However, if the tank needs heal right NOW, he may not have the extra second it takes to cast HW. PVE chain heal: 2. PVE Mix: 2. PVP BGs: 2. PVP arenas: 3.

Glyph of Healing Stream: Increases the amount healed by Healing Stream Totem by 20%. It makes little sense to take this without Restorative Totems. I'm a personal fan of Healing Stream totem in 5-mans myself, as it provides a nice steady return to health for everyone, meaning I can just ignore everyone with less than 2k health missing. However, since it's party only (unless I've been missing something, which reminds me: WTB raid-wide Healing Stream totem), it is significantly less effective in raids, especially 25-man. I rarely ever use it in PVP. PVE chain heal: 1. PVE Mix: 2. PVP: 1.

Glyph of Water Mastery: Also called glyph of 30 mp5, at least as long as you have Water Shield active. A solid glyph if you ever run into mana problems. PVE: 2. PVP BG: 2. PVP Arena: 1.

Glyph of Shocking: Reduces the global cooldown of all shock spells to 1 sec. This one is for the PVPers, especially at higher levels of arena. Of course, it does require that you rely on shocks as a source for interrupts/snares/burst in the first place. PVE: 1. PVP: 2.

Glyph of Frost Shock: Increases the snare effect on frost shock to 10 seconds. PVP glyph without doubt. Without Reverbation, which few resto shammies have, Frost Shock has a duration of 8 seconds and a cooldown of 6 seconds, meaning you technically can perma-snare someone. This is easier said than done, and another two seconds help a lot. But more importantly, pretty much every melee'er who would want to stay on your face beating you have access to some talent that reduces the duration of snare effects by 30%. That reduces the duration of non-glyphed frost shock from 8 to 5.6 seconds, meaning you can't perma-snare someone. With the glyph, this increases to 7 seconds. Like the glyph of shocking, this is a good glyph if you can't find any other for a PVPer. PVE: 1. PVP: 2.

Glyph of Mana Tide Totem: Increases the amount restored by Mana Tide Totem by 1% per tick. It will now restore a total of 28% of total mana instead of 24% of total mana. Last time I checked, Mana Tide Totem was a very low part of the mana restored during a fight, and so I consider this a minor upgrade. However, redeeming trait that it affects all party-members. This glyph provides an additional 20% of total mana across all affected, which isn't bad.

To tell the truth, I don't like this glyph. I don't like any type of glyph that provides a buff to others (versus just your own healing), because the raid might end up forcing you to take it. No, I'm dead serious. Let's now say that Uldar really brings mana troubles for mana users. The raid leader might require that all priests run with this glyph because it helps with the mana trouble. While it's nice that the priest in question can help others, he has to sacrifice a glyph slot which could be used for some other glyph he'd rather want to have. It might cripple his own healing somewhat, while helping other healers.

But min-maxing, it's not a bad glyph for PVE. PVE: 2. PVP: 1.

Recommendations

For a PVE raider relying primarily on Chain Heal, the primary glyph is Chain Heal. Good choices for the last slot are Water Mastery, Healing Wave, Earth Shield, Lesser Healing Wave, Mana Tide Totem or Earthliving.

For a PVEer that relies on a mix of heals, especially in heroics, I'd strongly recommend Healing Wave. If you regulary user either, Healing Stream, Chain Heal or Lesser Healing Wave can make good choices. If neither are too much used, go with Earthliving, Water Mastery, Earth Shield or Mana Tide.

For a PVPer that stick mostly to battlegrounds, wintergrasp and other world PVP stuff, there are a lot of choices. If you have trouble with survivability, go with Stoneclaw, Earth Shield and Lesser Healing Wave. Mana trouble? Water Mastery. Neither? Healing Wave, Shocking or Frost Shock all make decent choices if you rely on those spells. Finally, Earthliving is always handy if you can't find anything else.

For an arena healer, I strongly recommend Lesser Healing Wave. As with BGs, if you have trouble with survivability Stoneclaw and Earth Shield could help you. Depending on what partners you run with, Frost Shock can also be tremendously useful, also in reducing incoming damage because you can slip away from your enemies slightly easier. Shocking is a solid choice if you're good at watching your enemies.

For an all-rounder, Earthliving and Water Mastery might be the best bets. If you use Healing Wave a lot, it's a good glyph, otherwise Lesser Healing Wave.

If you could pick one WoW ability...

... to have IRL, I'd picked Reincarnate. If I could pick two, I'd pick Cleanse Spirit, or any other disease-removing ability next.

Sorry for the lack of posts. Even though I weren't sick that long, work was piled up when I got back. Working on the next post now.

Blizz healing spell design philosophy.

New theories incoming, this time about heals.

Basically, I believe all healing spells fit more or less into these three categories:

Baseline aka Bread & Butter: Spells that have a clear defined purpose and are straight forward.

circumstantial: Spells that are better than the bread and butter spells for various special purposes. Most group heals fit in this category.

Cooldowns: Spells that are so powerful and good that Blizz gives them a cooldown to prevent only using them.

Blizzard tries to make every healer use as much as possible of their reportoire. Some spells are much better fit for either PVE or PVP, but they often try to buff the spell for the least used aspect. The baseline spells will be almost garantueed to always have a use. The cooldowns can pretty safely be buffed straight, as the cooldown will limit just how powerful they become.

For the circumstantial spells, though, they follow a different strategy. It can potentially be very dangerous to straight buff a circumstantial spell (as in more healing throughput without adding to mana cost), because you might end up it being completely superior to other tools at disposal for the same purposes. That's what happened to Circle of Healing. They can't balance it by giving it a high mana cost, because the players still will use the spell and then complain about mana. The way they end up buffing these spells are usually by adding secondary effects to them, or give them additional situations in which they might be useful. Adding another situation where the spell shines makes it less circumstantial, as the circuimstances in question show up more often.

Let's take an example, Binding Heal. When it was first introduced in Burning Crusade, pretty much every PVE priest shunned it. While it could outshine Flash Heal in throughput (healing per second), it had no significant advantage in healing per mana (especially compared to Greater Heal) and risked overhealing twice. In serious arena, it was much more common for the enemy team to focus one player rather than split the damage, and it offered no additional benefit to focused damage. Of course, there were occassions where it would shine, but it was very circumstantial. Blizz couldn't straight buff the throughput, as that would've made it put out more single-target healing than Flash Heal. They tried lowering the mana cost, which helped both in PVP and PVE. But since it still was too circumstantial in PVE, they gave it very low threat. That helped. Suddenly priests used it in heroic on threat-sensitive fights, or early in pulls before the tank had proper threat on all mobs.

Fast forward to WotLK. Blizz is talking about changing how healing works. At the same time, they can't mess up too much the existing healing style, as there is no way to garantuee that a new healing style will be better than the old. Read: More entertaining. It's hard to please most of the crowd, impossible to please all.

From the 3.1 preview, it said that holy priests now will have a faster Greater Heal after casting Flash Heal. Fairly unoriginal as it's basically the same idea that they used with both Discipline and shaman Resto end-talents, but it works. It changes Flash Heal so that instead of being a pure bread'n'butter spell (discounting Surge of Light procs), it will also be a circumstantial spell. At the moment, you get the highest throughput of healing as a holy priest by spamming Greater Heal. In 3.1, you will do better alternating Flash Heal and Greater Heal, perhaps Greater Heal several times if a single flash heal will give a stack of buffs (like Tidal Waves gives two faster Lesser Healing Waves/Healing Waves, not only one). In addition, you can also throw in a flash heal early so that you'll already have the buff ready when you need it.

What they do is give spells additional circuimstances in which they'll be better than (other) baseline spells. I offer two observations to Blizz approach in making spell more interesting.

First observation: By adding circuimstances such as the above, Blizz tries to reward planning and foresight. While combat in WoW always will have random elements, most of what happens can be anticipated. At the very least, it's easy to anticipate that the tank will take damage. Then you might also anticipate that he or she's going to take spikes, and that the rest of the group will take AoE damage from the spell the boss mob is just casting. While I think it is a good thing to reward anticipation, it leads to one of two problems. First case, fights might be tuned so hard that the healer is required to be very familiar with the fight in order to keep everyone alive. Second case, fights will be tuned so that it still is possible to improvise and catch up, in which case they might be too trivial for a healer familiar with it. Of the two evils, the second is the lesser and the most likely Blizz will follow.

Second observation: There might be problems at the horizon if you keep adding stuff to existing spells. Specifically, you will "need" to press your cooldown-heals at every possible cooldown to be an optimal healer. That, in turn, makes the healing game feels very spammy, and less dependant on good decisionmaking. Let's take an example, Riptide. For the moment, this spell has all of the following functions:

• A direct instant heal.


• A HoT that lasts 15 seconds.


• A buff to your next Chain Heal with the Riptide target as a primary target which removes the HoT.


• A self-buff to the caster, Tidal Waves, reducing the casttime of the next two combinations of Lesser Healing Wave and Healing Wave.


• A chance to proc Earthliving Weapon, a second HoT that lasts X seconds.


• A chance to crit, thus proccing Ancestral Healing.


• A chance to crit, thus proccing Improved Water Shield.


• A chance to crit, thus proccing Ancestral Awakening.

Pretty hefty list for a single spell. Why is it so long? Blizz has more or less stated that they considered it a problem that every resto shaman in a raid did nothing but spam Chain Heal all day. They wanted to buff Riptide so that it was worth the GCD to cast it for a resto shaman. In the process of buffing it (which also included buffing it's direct throughput), they added a lot of circumstantial reasons to use it. Now it is almost at the point where I feel that I need to cast it as often as I can while healing 5-man heroics, provided anyone in the group have taken damage. Holy Shock is very similar in the regard that it also has a lot of circumstantial effects attached to it.

The bottom line, I think we'll see even more of the circumstantial stuff for healers in the future. Consider the healer abilities in the Aces High daily, same as the last phase of Malygos.

(By the way, sorry for the lack of posts. Like WoW, a blog's priority is well behind both job and private life)