When to start hard modes?
Right now my guild is completely on the fence about hard modes (10 man I mean). Some of us (including me) think we should be pushing into the hard modes we can do. This means all of them aside from Mimiron (which is uber hard), Freya (which requires co-ordination which is beyond us), Vezax (which is ridiculous) and Yogg (since we haven’t killed him that often).
So far we’ve completely FL+3 and Heartbreaker. We’ve attempted IC, Thorim, Freya 1 (and I guess Hodir since we do that with 1 tank and 2 healers now). We’ve done the stupid achievement fights for the meta (or most of them).
However, we are ambivalent about pushing them. Its rare for us to give them more than 2 goes because there is always someone who wants to push for a fast full clear. It doesn’t take too many wipes for a couple of other voices to join them. At that point progression hard mode kills are that much harder anyway. People know that a couple of wipes will see them moving on, usually for easy boss kills and phat lootz.
The problem is simple. Take Steelbreaker – which isn’t that hard of a fight really. It is however, reasonably long (since if you wipe you’ll wipe at about the 7 minute mark or so) which means a few attempts burns some serious time.
Now we don’t normal kill IC (or Ignis or Razor) until we’ve killed Yogg. There are 7 bosses between IC and Yogg. That’s a lot of raiding (and loot for those that are that way inclined) that you miss if you wipe for the night there. Like most guilds (I’d wager) we don’t have set 10 man progression teams. Our 10 mans are pretty much ad-hoc and so, while we run 3 a week, they clear very different amounts of content.
The one I lead will usually full clear (or go damn close). I don’t pick the all “uber” raiders but usually I got a pretty ok group. The other group will get blocked by the Keepers night after night. You can also assume that our 25 man is blocked in the same spot most weeks. As an aside, regardless of how strong I build the second group, it ALWAYS gets stuck there.
The third group, well, it’s the alts and triers raid. It doesn’t go that far but it has a damn lot of fun.
Do we rotate everyone through my group until the whole guild has cleared (which is what we’ve done up to now) or do we keep the ball rolling with hard modes?
See I *want* to do hard modes. I was the other group to be the clear group so I can work on getting the tough fights done. I prefer 10s and I’d be willing to put more time into them, but if I can’t pick the group there aint that much point. We don’t have a limitless pool of geared skilled raiders.
So what to do?
Warrior regeneration stats
I was reading a quite well thought out article by Matthew Rossi on wow.com this morning. While I think he sometimes lacks perspective, he is usually articulate and knows his stuff.
This got me thinking about how regen is different for different classes. Some classes (like warlocks and rogues) and some specs (like resto druids and, allegedly, holy paladins) have little or no concerns about resource management. For other classes (eg mages) its been a massive concern since the inception of the game. Now you could argue that arcane can “throttle” its mana usage (and to an extent that is true) but as soon as the throttle is anywhere but full dps suffers significantly.
Which brings us to warriors, who are on occasion rage starved and on other occasions getting hand cramps from trying to get rid of their rage.
Its difficult to have that much sympathy for warriors really. Warriors were designed to be the best tank for 2 expansions yet, ineplicably, they were exempt from the hybrid tax (hai lolret). That said, after a period of insane OPness in Naxx, warriors are at best 3 in the tanking stakes and behind on dps.
I did have a thought about how to change warriors. At the moment some classes start with a full resource bar that depletes, others have an empty one that fills up. No-one really has one that starts halfway. Lets say, for example, that rage could work both ways. That it could go both negative and positive and always tended to 0. At 0 rage you’re doing tooltip damage, with normal rage generation (which generates from white damage, taking damage, block, parry etc). Lets say you then reel off a couple of specials, burning rage so you are now at -50 rage.
At negative rage you gain haste (which would generate rage faster – more white hits) and you would actively generate more rage (either at a flat rate or more per swing) but you would do less damage (to stop people sitting at a massive negative and spamming specials). Prot could have a talent gives you extra mitigation when you’re negative rage.
When you have positive rage you gain extra crit damage which scales with your rage level but your rage degenerates faster (tending to 0).
Why is this relevant to holy paladins you may ask? Its because resource management is only valid if everyone has to do it. Its not a “fun” mechanic to be limited in what you can do when others are not so limited.
Raid lock-outs
While 3.2 might be tough times for Silk Paladin Healing Co, Silk Raid Leading Enterprises Inc is looking at some fantastic additions to our portfolio. One them is extendable raid lock outs.
Since everyone gets this completely wrong let me first explain my understanding of the changes (it would be ironic if I am wrong as well):
- an individual can choose to extend their own raid id for as long as they wish – indefinitely if they so choose;
- if they choose to extend their raid id, that instance will not reset on Tuesday night with the rest of them;
- one person extending their raid id in no way impacts any other holders of that raid id – you are NOT all automatically extended;
- If the raid leader is saved to an extended id, when you enter the instance you will be offered the choice to be saved to that id; and
- you can reset you’re extended raid id at any time provided that you have not undertaken any action that would otherwise save you to the raid instance since the reset time (ie if you extend the instance lock and then clear the instance you are locked until the next reset).
There are several degrees of awesomeness contained in this idea. You’re guild (and mine) can now focus more on hard modes knowing that we can do a 2 week clear instead of restarting every week. If for some reason your group misses a raid then you don’t have to battle through everything to get back to where you were. People with limited raid time can still put in 3 nights to clear an instance -they can just do it over 2/3 weeks.
Predictably, those invested in their self-image as hard core raiders think this change is stupid. I can’t for the life of me think why – remember all those casuals who said they would clear as much content as you if they could raid as often? They are going to have that opportunity – and the excuse that you don’t have time to kill all the bosses has disappeared.
The other concern I see being raised is that people will miss the “gearing” bosses at the start of the instance. First, who cares? If someone else’s raid makes it harder on themselves by not gearing up it doesn’t affect you at all. Second people think gear matters way more than it actually does.
You know who needs gear? Tanks need gear. Mostly cause whether you dodge, parry, block or take a spiky mace in the ass is based on RNG not on skill. Healing? 90% decision making, 10% gear (hard modes excluded). DPS? The biggest improvement most dps could make to their numbers is to spend 30 mins on EJ figuring out how to play. The difference in gear from 1 tier to the next is NOT why you can’t down Kologarn. Forget Naxx and learn the damn fights!
This change will let people spend more time learning the fights they need and waste less time clearing old content.
3.2 – Numberz
When talking about Holy Paladins, mana is returned in several different ways. What we might call the int / crit sources are:
- Illumination (which returns 60% of a spell’s base mana cost for a crit);
- Seal of Wisdom (which is a 4% mana return from a melee swing);
- Divine Plea (25% of total mana over 15 sec); and
- Replenishment (which is a 0.25% mana return per second).
Remember intellect provides both critical strike percentage and increases mana pool and is increased by buffs and talents. Mp5 of course returns a set amount of mana every 5 seconds.
From adding up fight timers from two of my WWS parses (I’ve picked a random full clear Naxx 25 and a half Ulduar 25 clear), I was fighting bosses for about 3,750 secs in Ulduar and 3,000 in Naxx. Note I’ve rounded these numbers off slightly to make them less clumsy to work with.
Lets then look at mana return numbers (in a 3.1 world) H Ulduar
- Illumination 515,000
- Replenishment 190,000
- Seal of Wisdom 135,000
- Divine Plea 50,000
Meaning a total of nearly 900,000 mana regen vs an Mp5 (assuming 250 mp5) total of 190,000
H Naxx
- Illumination 300,000
- Replenishment 125,000
- Seal of Wisdom 185,000
- Divine Plea 20,000
In relation to the Naxx run the total is 630,000 vs 150,000 total from Mp5 (again assuming 250 mp5)
Obviously in both cases I was sparing on my divine plea use (and so there is a small amount of slack there). Lets look at the Ulduar numbers again (assuming 3.2)
H Ulduar
- Illumination 257,500 (goes from 60% to 30% ie reduced by 50%)
- Replenishment 146,000 (96% of 152,000 – 25% nerf + intellect nerf)
- Seal of Wisdom 130,000 (intellect nerf)
- Divine Plea 43,000 (intellect nerf)
Meaning a total of 575,000 mana regen – almost a 40% reduction. The 25% buff to mp5 (again assuming 250 mp5 but since blessing of wisdom is NOT getting buffed the buff would be, at best, 125% of 150mp5) results in an extra 37.5 mp5 for a total of 215,000. This results in a net deficit of 300,000 mana or 400 mp5. I could probably pick up another 100,000 mana from divine plea. This is STILL 270 mp5 missing taking that into account.
H Naxx shows a deficit of 167,500 or 280 mp5 (the biggest reason for this difference? much more mana regen from seal of wisdom in Naxx, which isn’t being nerfed).
We can draw some conclusions from this data (which admittedly is both a small sample size and subject to my below average maths skills).
- The nerf to intellect and illumination is truly quite massive; I imagine it would roughly be the equivalent of stripping all the spirit of a holy priests gear
- Over a 5 min fight I will lose something in the vicinity of 35,000 – 50,000 mana
- Fights were the paladin cannot melee a target will be insanely tough on mana
- Divine plea must be used on cooldown, every cooldown meaning for 25% of every fight a holy paladin will have the equivalent of a mortal strike debuff on every member of the raid
Would love any corrections on the maths – maybe I’ve missed something. I know come 3.2 I’ll be missing something…
Patch 3.2 – I can haz mana?
Henny Penny got nothing on me cause dammit if the sky aint falling.
When I am looking for excuses to hate the rest of humanity I visit the official forums. It’s occasionally funny, mostly horrifying. One thing they are up in arms about at the moment is the changes to pally healing coming in patch 3.2.
Let me tell right now both why things are going to be ok and why they are not.
Firstly why things will be ok. Things are going to be ok because, for the most part, guilds simply cannot afford to replace ANY of their healers. Guilds will mostly preserve with their current healers regardless of how effective they are. Like most nerfs to healers and tanks – they will be effective only in making encounters tougher or easier for guilds that rely on those healers and tanks.
So stop worrying you’re going to be dropped. Only the very hardcore will drop their raiders for performance reasons anyway. In addition, as naïve as it sounds, I don’t believe that Blizzard will leave one healer so underpowered as to be useless for an entire patch again (yeah I played a mage and a pally – hai Sunwell).
So why then will things be bad? Well that’s simple too. Paladin healers had a niche and, while people didn’t really like the single target tank healing niche THAT much, it was a niche that was useful. After all every raid has a couple of tanks and therefore a couple of tank healers were kinda handy. Of course now paladins are being shifted out of that role. You don’t think so? You don’t believe some random person on the internet you don’t know? I’m both surprised and disappointed in you.
Apparently current encounters require bosses to hit SO hard because tanks have too much mitigation and tank healers can churn masses of heals indefinitely. Nerfing tank healers will allow bosses to be friendlier to tanks, loving stroking them WITH THEIR GIANT SPIKY HAMMER.
Now add to this the follow factors:
- Both shammies and druids will have their single target healing buffed (shammies especially may be even better than pallies were);
- Paladins have been given NO additional tools with which to raid heal (currently pallies in hard content are beaconing the tank and raid healing to a certain degree anyway, in any event transfer of overhealing won’t do a single point extra healing to the raid members being healed – only the tank);
- There has been one, lamentably poor, buff to our healing spells (don’t kid yourself, the hot is that a drop in a damn big ocean); and
- Our mana regen has been significantly reduced.
Do you see what I see? I see our only real advantage (continuous, strong single target heals) disappearing.
What’s worse is that the proposed changes will hit the hardest in the very content that paladins have struggled with the most (hard modes). This is because hard modes (almost inevitably) involve some combination of heavy raid damage, high movement and rapid, flexible responsiveness. In the hard modes I’ve done (mostly 10s to be honest) it’s a constant stream of HLs pouring into raid members (and via beacon into the tank). The more generalised raid damage, the less overhealing is done and the closer the 3.1 beacon comes to the 3.2 beacon (you know the buff that was supposed to make up for the massive regen nerf).
In fact, in circumstances where there is at least 1 target other than the tank that needs significant healing the 3.2 change to beacon has no real effect at all. The regen nerf will have an effect though, because at some point (much sooner than it does now) that stream of HLs becomes unsustainable – and there is nothing left to replace it with.
Next time, we’ll play with some numbers and see what’s what.
The people you meet on the forums
In the true spirit of the people in your raids , I present Silk’s list of people you meet on the forums.
These are the people who the developers of this game listen to daily – be very afraid.
The Shaman – every thread has at least 1 shammy who insists that no one spec or class has it as bad as the shammies do. Bad single target healers? Shaman are worse. Can’t AOE tank effectively? Shaman tanks were deleted in beta. You have haemorrhoids? Shaman can only drop 1 totem per GCD!!!
The Casual – despite the fact that this guy has enough time to respond to every thread on the forums each day, the Casual insists that any deficiencies in their gear, spec, achievements or social life are because Blizzard caters too much to the hard core. Dammit if I want to raid naked with no talent points I should be able to. Who has time for talent points anyway?
The Arena Master – has a 2000+ arena rating, you know this because its in every post that he makes. Ask him what he had for breakfast and he’ll tell you he’s 3rd in his BG in 2’s. Then he’ll call you a noob.
The Wanna-be – the Wanna-be is an average raider, in a reasonably well-progressed guild and he’s filthy about it. He’s convinced he could give Ensidia a run for their money if his guild was just slightly less bad. Has been in every raiding guild on his server and not once twigged to the fact that the only common reason for their “slow” progress is him. Often posts about how bad his server is.
The Shining Light – the only person in the world who knows how to play the class properly. Following his exact spec, rotation, glyphs and gear is the ONLY correct way to play, you hear me??
The Snob – don’t have a 2300 arena rating? You’re not allowed to have any opinion about pvp at all. Haven’t killed hard mode Yogg-Saron? Then you couldn’t possibly know about the serious struggles that raiders face. His posts almost inevitably contain no facts or valid points but always have some variation of the words “GTFO noob”.
The Hard-core raider – fevently believes that “Blizz is catering to casuals” / “the game is too easy”. It’s simply amazing the number of people who on the one hand post that the game is too easy and yet have failed to finish the content they claim is a pushover.
The Other Class – how could an end-game raider be expected to know more about his class than someone who plays a different class entirely? They can’t that’s how. Its good then that the Other Class is there to imperfectly explain how things “really” work for a class he’s never played in an encounter he’s never seen. One thing he is sure of though, you’re OP and in need of a nerf.
The Alt – some people post insightful comments on level 1 characters. Most people though just troll. Quite frankly you don’t look all that insightful….
The Quitter – buffs, nerfs, new icons, changes to quests, items or professions that he doesn’t have and isn’t interested in or even no changes at all – doesn’t matter, these exact changes were the ones that lead to the “cancellation of my subscription”. You can feel the nerd rage from here…
The Fanboys – are so in love with Blizzard that you cause them deep emotional pain by disagreeing with anything they’ve ever said. That’s their first love you are disagreeing with. *Sigh* if only Blizz would return their calls…
The Insane – you are quite literally reading the last thread of their sanity as it clings desperately to life. One more nerf and you think that pally might just go postal. Part of you wishes they would get help but secretly you’re just praying for someone to set him off.
How do you do raid invites??
My guild doesn’t use the tag casual. None of the officers really likes it, mostly because “casual” is far too often an excuse for playing poorly or short-changing your teammates. In my last guild “casual” too often meant “I expect to be carried through content and be damned if I will lift a finger to help myself out”.
In my view however, the demarcation of casual vs hard-core is simple. If you have an attendance requirement, you’re probably hard-core. Once you cross the line of compelling people to commit to raiding with you in advance, you’re probably on the hard-core side.
We don’t have an attendance requirement. That means that on any given raid night we range between 20 and 30 people who want to raid. Sometimes we have a very strong team with great composition and sometimes we don’t. I could say facetiously that no-one is guaranteed a raid slot but in reality, as I am both officer and raid leader, I almost always end up with the team I want for a particular encounter. Some people are guaranteed a spot if they want it, they just don’t really know it. Some people, usually the undergeared and / or underskilled, miss out more than others.
Recently I put a massive wall-of-text post on our forums detailing our (my) raid invite policy. [NOTE regular readers (lol) will quickly become used to the patented Silk Wall-o-Txt approach]. In it I committed to everyone taking a turn subbing out and a bunch of other things. In truth though I have no problems with any of my raiders personally, I just get tired of carrying their 2200 dps through 25 man Ulduar.
Therefore, if I need to find a reason to bench them, you better believe I will find it. I feel bad about it but in order for a guild to continue to function you need to both see new content and have fun doing it. If you are completely holding back one or the other then we got a problem.
This leads me to wonder, exactly how much actual control a raid leader has over their selections. Not how much the policy says they should have – what they actually do.
Who / what is this?
This is my blog. A wow blog (another wow blog).
There are a million wow blogs out there, undoubtedly some will cover this content better than I will. I honestly have no idea if anyone will read this but if someone does then yay?!
I am going to post 2/3 times a week about whatever I can think of. I play a spacegoat paladin (holy) mostly and so a heap of posts will be about that. I am a raid leader and so there will undoubtedly be posts about that too. I also have a mage that I used to play a lot more. I might post about that if I get bored (run out of ideas).
Other things about me to note – I am completely and utterly without technological knowledge. This blog will be a haven for poorly presented, badly written tech…. stuff.
As the french say – let’s do it!
WoW - Silk's Blog 