tirsdag den 20. november 2012

A small update regarding Mogu'shan Vaults and Heart of Fear



It has been a while since I've posted anything, but I haven't really have had the time nor the incentive to do so - However, after two instances I wanted to share my views on stats, glyphs and talents for these bosses. 

This is the standard spec. that I would recommend if you are raiding 25man, http://www.wowhead.com/talent#sM5|

There is some minor thing you can switch around depending on the fight e.g. Astral Shift for Feng if you have to stand out then the 40% dmg reduction is quite nice, however, as overall I see Stone Bulwark Totem as the better choice, and the only problem can be that you drop it while having your Earth Elemental up - which is stupid.
At lvl 90 you will notice that I haven't picked a talent since it really depends on the encounter, but for the majority of fights then you will want Primal Elementalist since it is an amazing talent when used correctly. 

Mogu'shan Vaults:
Stone Guard: You should be sitting on a tank, and if you are starting to progress on it I would recommend you using Unleashed Fury since it helps a lot when tank healing is your main objective. Furthermore, Windwalk Totem is a must since it removes the snare effect that ppl. get when they pop a Cobalt mine. Else it is pretty straight forward - Keep your tank up and remember to use your HST and throw the HR on either melee or ranged, but most importantly check your tile stack before popping Mana Tide Totem as with +100 stacks you should go to max mana when it is dropped.

Feng the Accursed: This is a fight where Primal Elementalist shine, and depending on the combo you choose e.g. we pick Arcane first which means that I usually pop my Earth Elemental and get the 10% increased healing and 20% dmg. reduction which is very good to have. And remember your Healing Tide Totem also gets a 10% increase from Primal Elementalist which makes it one of the strongest throughput CDs if you can manage to use a couple of globals of getting it ready. Personally I am currently playing with "Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem" so my Fire Elemental becomes a 3min cooldown so that it always will be ready to use with Healing Tide Totem.

Gara'Jal the Spiritbinder: Primal Elementalist is again the best choice, and you should have your Earth Elemental ready for the last 25% with the increased raid dmg. then the 20% dmg. reduction for 1min is amazing. Furthermore, Spirit Link Totem is a lifesaver and one of the best cooldowns that the raid got whenever it is stacked up, and using Ascendance at that time should make your raids HP go up by quite a bit.

The Spirit Kings: I would go with Primal Elementalist, and there is not much to that fight except using your CDs at the right time, but most importantly help Purging "Shield of Darkness" and you should be using "Glyph of Purge" and "Telluric Currents" since there you will need to push dmg. and you might as well cast Lightning Bolts than stand around doing nothing. 

Elegon: Primal Elementalist is again the strongest contender, and there is no secret trick to this fight perhaps except during transitions with the adds spawning it can help the raid quite a lot of you pop your HTT while you run "back in" since it tops everyone, and if someone takes a hit from the add they will be healed up asap and gives you plenty of time to reposition yourself. Furthermore, when reaching the last phase you will see how strong a cooldown Ascendance coupled with Primal Elementalist and SLT you should be doing +300.000 HPs if only for a short period of time, but it will top people off and give you valuable extra seconds. 

Will of the Emperor:
From my point of view then Unleashed Fury is the talent to pick here since your focus will be on a tank, and he is taking a beating. Preferably you should try keeping a Riptide on your tank, but also on the other tank. Keep Unleash Life on cooldown and remembering to plant your Healing Rain on the ranged camp. This fight is long, and is tough on mana so make it a habit to cast Lightning Bolts whenever it is dance time.

As far as stats go in Mogu'shan Vaults then I would opt for crit over mastery (and was also what I did during progress), however, it depends on the level of your gear since when you reach around 490ilvl you should go for the second HST / HTT breakpoint which is 3306 (goblin) and 3764 for everyone else. 

As for glyphs I would suggest Telluric Currents and Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem for those fights where you are using Primal Elementalist which leaves the last glyph to either Water Shield, Riptide, Healing Wave (It is decent for e.g. Will where you take constant dmg. and you should try to use it as much as possible for tank healing since GHW drains your mana really rather fast) and Totemic Recall. Totemic Recall can grant you a lot of mana back, however, you have time your totems and pay a lot of attention to the timers or else you risk cutting 2-3 ticks, and when you use e.g. Primal Elementalist and use HST you may end up removing both while still having half the time on the Fire Elemental which gives you mana back, but also reduces your throughput. I am not a fan of it, however, on some fights it is good, but it requires a fair amount of focus and is not something I would suggest starting out with when learning a fight.


Heart of Fear:
If you are starting to progress in Heart of Fear I will encourage you to get the extra tick on HTT and HST. 

Imperial Vizier Zor'lok: Dance dance dance revolution - You will want Stone Bulwark Totem and Primal Elementalist and Call of the Elements.
Glyphs: Glyph of Fire Elemental, Telluric Currents and the last is up to you since Spiritwalker's Grace can be quite nice for healing people while dodging balls.
There is only a few "tricks" to this fight and one being: Align your CDs with an Elemental e.g. HTT with Fire Elemental - Ascendance with SLT and Earth Elemental (Quite powerful combo when reaching the last phase) 
And there is no secret trick to the dance, and aside from Blizzard being nitwits in regards to animations and the actual hitbox do not be filled with despair when you are being hit by orbs which is clearly nowhere near you - That is how they managed to do it.
However, as a shaman you do not have too many "oh shit" buttons to hit when that happens, or you have to eat a ball in order to get into the "proper" path. The only thing you can do is to pop Stone Bulwark Totem when he casts Attenuation so if you have to eat a ball you will absorb 50-70k, and pop your HST when you start to run since it is all about focusing on running yourself or else you might eat a couple of balls and require a ress because you tried to heal another person. You can also place a HR in such a manner that you can stand in it, and thereby ensuring that you got some extra HP from Vigor thereby giving you a larger "fuck up" margin, put a Riptide on yourself and be ready with a Nature's Swiftness CH (from yourself, since it is the easiest not the most optimal but the easiest) and be ready to eat a Health Stone. 

Blade Lord: If you managed to kill Imperial Vizier then he shouldn't be a problem, save your SLT for Unseen Strike, spread out and remember to have HTT and Spiritwalker's Grace ready for when he reaches 20%. When you have to start running pop your HTT (use your Fire Elemental if you feel confident with it), Riptide yourself (You should have a roar at this time) and then use Spiritwalker's Grace and CH from yourself until it drops of and then you use Nature's Swiftness, pop Stone Bulwark Totem and HST, switch to Ghost Wolf and run to the other end, and you only stop if someone is close to dying. When reaching the other side UE - HR, SLT, Ascendance and get your raid topped. When the boss reaches 11% get ready to move in advance use Stone Bulwark Totem if it is ready and keep HST on CD while running, and use Call of the Elements if none of them is ready. After that you loot the boss.

Garalon: There isn't many tricks except placing your HR where the raid will be, and remember when you have to use your HTT remember to pop it before the stop thereby reducing the chance that someone will die quite significantly. Beside that utilize Primal Elementalist. 

I will update when I got some more time with Wind Lord Mel'jark, Amber-Shaper Un'sok and Grand Empress Shek'zeer. 

Feel free to mail me if you got any questions. 

fredag den 19. oktober 2012

Restoration shaman - What is better crit or mastery ?



Restoration shaman - What is better crit or mastery ?

One of the more frequent questions regarding restoration shamans on forums is "What secondary stat should I go for - crit or mastery?", so let us take a look at the question.

I rely on my experience from the current content and since that is a 25man view I will refrain from stating anything in regards to 10man, or almost.

Now, there is two types of raiding 10man and 25man, but even when we separate these there is also the factor of how "hardcore" you play. By hardcore I mean are you e.g. atm. progressing on 2nd or 3rd hardmode or are you progressing on Elegon or Will of the Emperor on normal ? This may perhaps not appear to be that big of a difference, but they are since with the current gear levels you are forced by the dps requirements to push the number of healers as low as possible e.g. we had 5 on Gara, 3 on Spirit Kings and 4 on Elegon ("prefix" of the Energies not dealing dmg. when killed).
So an assumption would be "Since we are running as few healers as possible, then mastery will be the best stat since it in the previous expansion was thought of as the best stat during progression due to mana efficiency?", and with several theory crafters have calculated that it is around 70-65% that mastery overtakes crit in terms of throughput, and with progress people will end up there often, so therefore I should go mastery, no ?
I disagree. Mastery is a good stat and that there is no discussion about, but we have to look at mastery as a stat the in order to become effective will decrease its own effective value as soon as it becomes more potent. This might not look like an issue, but let us take e.g. Feng on HM during the fire where the raid is taking quite a bit of dmg., and you rotate your CDs in order to cope with it. The raid is on 50% and a CD is popped and ppl. are back at 75%, your heals until ppl. reached 70% was as strong as they could be, but now that ppl. are at 75-80% you healing decreases. You might say "But they are out of the "dangerous" zone now", well not really since they still require healing and since you currently no longer is healing as much as you could be your fellow healers has to pick up the pace thereby blowing more of their mana. 
My issue with stacking mastery is that you gear for 10-20% of an encounter, I am aware that people will be smashed below 70% more often, but with the passive smart healing from disc priests, WG and HST it will not be consistently "good".

Whereas crit. might "loose" to mastery when people are below 70-65%, but what you have to remember is that your raid will stay above that marker longer since your throughput from 100-65% is higher, and furthermore with you healing more for what will be the larger part of the fight your fellow healers should enter the "hard phases" with more mana thereby increasing your overall throughput.
That is the HPs side of it, but there is also the additional gain from Resurgence whenever you crit. which will grant you some more mana and while it might only be 2 or 4 more casts it will matter for when you are progressing.

Furthermore, on fights as Gara where DPS is tight, and even the healers have to push it then you will gain more from crit. since it does also slightly buff your DPS. 

Therefore I strongly suggest that you aim for crit as your secondary stat instead of mastery, and feel free to disagree and keep stacking mastery, and that will also make it easier for you to jump into elemental off spec and do dailies and whatnot.

lørdag den 13. oktober 2012

Restoration shaman in Mist of Pandaria.



Restoration shaman in Mist of Pandaria.

I think we are far enough into the expansion to take a look at how the restoration shaman performs and competes against other classes.
From Beta to Live there has been a tremendous improvement, and I do think our whine on the forums have helped since it appears that quite a few of the points that we made have been noticed, which is very good. 

In this expansion we got a throughput CD which we have been waiting for, and it is amazing Ascendance is a very, very powerful CD when used properly. Our talents is more or less okay, and there is room for some personal preferences e.g. Astral Shift vs. Stone Bulwark Totem. Furthermore, we also got the option to take another CD Healing Tide Totem, or well I say option but in reality it is mandatory since it is so good.
So that is two new CDs, and if you feel that you wants more CDs you can put your last talent in Primal Elementalist and bam you got two more.
So we went from 0 CDs to 4 that is quite a leap, but I think it is awesome and Primal Elementalist is gold during intensive healing phases with massive raid dmg. with the 10% increased healing and 20% dmg. reduction which lasts for 60 seconds !

Stat change.

Since we no longer gain a larger mana pool from Intellect we rely on spirit to gain the required regn. to sustain our raid, and so an assumption must be that spirit is something that we must stack beyond everything since we need to dish out more spells. Yes, spirit is a good stat, but hold your horses and let us take a quick peek at our spell usage. If we take a look at my Feng HC kill the healing done is:
30% Healing Rain, 14% Chain Heal, 12% Healing Stream Totem, 12% Earth Living, 11% Healing Tide Totem, 7% Riptide, 7% Restorative Mists and Healing Wave, Unleash Life, Earth Shield, Greater Healing Wave, Healing Surge amounts to around 7%.
Now this is by no means a perfect log or kill, but in reality the only "extra" heals I would be able to gain from a lot more spirit would be more CHs since I cannot cast much more Healing Rains since I already do it more or less on CD, and the same goes for HST, Earth Living is something I am not in control of, or well the more spells I cast the higher chance of EL proccing, but I would argue that it isn't really worth overspamming for that.
So how good is spirit then ? Spirit is still good, and is one of the strongest stats, but there is no point in sacrificing all your throughput in order to gain more regn. unless you have just dinged.  
For myself I am currently rolling with 9700 spirit, which might seem odd since I just said that spirit isn't that amazing, but the majority comes from gear, and you still need the required regn. in order to do the task you got in the raid, and that is keeping people alive.
When sockets your new gear take a look at the socket bonus and ask yourself "Is it worth going for the socket bonus?" because sometimes it is.


Secondary stats - Haste vs. Crit. vs. Mastery - What should you pick ?

For haste you want to get 871 (441 goblin) in order to get a tick more on Earth Living, and that is with Ancestral Swiftness which is a flat 5% haste increase. Now, why wouldn't I want more haste? Because outside the breakpoints the only thing haste contributes to is burning your mana pool faster, and that is not even that effective since the majority of your single target heals should be under the influence of Tidal Waves anyway, so you are only really boosting your CHs cast time from 0,2 with stacking haste.


So haste is out - Crit or mastery ?

I personally went for crit, and that is on the idea that the more crits the more mana I gain from Resurgence, and I am able to push ever so slight higher damage on damage intensive fights such as e.g. Gara'Jal the Spiritbinder where damage is tight. Furthermore, since crit doesn't go up or down in its usefulness compared on ppls. HP it will, or that is my claim, be of more use if you play as a team player since your throughput will be more steady, and higher for the majority of the fight which I think means that your fellow healers have to spend less mana because you heal more, and thereby reach the "hard" last 20-30% of a boss with more mana, which should be better than your mastery becoming amazing when everyone is oom and dying. 

And shamans are great atm., forget the throughput of the monks they are in my opinion not that good since they lack throughput CDs, big heals and only can do Uplift spam on the raid, and while they look good on the meter they rely on everyone else does the jobs of e.g. keeping tanks alive, they are a bit like restoration druids in the start of Cata - Great throughput, but worthless since they didn't bring anything else to the table.
For those disc priests out there who think that they are garbage since they aren't pulling 60-70k HPs you are wrong,  disc is great more than great amazing since with Atonement you dish out 15-20k DPs, shielding tanks for large hits, and is capable of pre-shielding the raid with Spirit Shell (Which is AMAZING). Absorbs is always better than pure throughput.

torsdag den 20. september 2012

Pandas !


Pandas !

I haven't written anything for a while which is mainly due to my old keyboard died, and that there really haven't been much to debate.
I highly doubt that there will be a lot of adjustments on any class before the release in two weeks time, and if there is some changes I guess it will be minor tweaks or tooltip clarifications.
So, how is the shamans holding up ?
Shamans are currently in a decent position (if we look much more than a month back the answer would have been very different) and I do honestly doubt that we will be benched on any of the current encounters, all though I cannot speak for 10man since the hard mode testing was before any of the "tweaks" were put in place hence my experiences from it will be more or less worthless.
For 25man I would say that we are looking very strong, and possible one of the strongest healers for some of the fights, and no that wasn't a typo.
The major reason is the abilities that we have been granted and how they work, let us look at Ascendance which duplicates your healing (except for totems) which is quite good.
Ascendance does also have the "benefit" from also being somewhat decent while being on the run aside Spiritwalker's Grace you can blanket your raid with Riptides while moving assuming your raid is low and still do a fair amount of healing. Or in more stationary environments you toss out HR and spam CH while you see the raid HP moves rapidly to a 100%.
Healing Tide Totem is very, very good and is one of the throughput CDs that we have been wishing for.

Furthermore, if we look at our new talents we can choose to get even more cooldowns such as Elemental Mastery - 30% haste for 20 sec on a 2 min cooldown. It will have its uses on some encounters over Ancestral Swiftness.
However, if we pick Primal Elementalist we are granted 2 additional cooldowns: Fire Elemental: 5% dmg increase and 10% healing,  and Earth Elemental: 20% dmg reduction and 10% healing, however, since the elementals have to channel it to you they aren't doing any damage so you trade the damage from increased healing, and you can always stop the channel and let the elementals go back to do damage whenever you do not need the increased healing.
I will personally go with a spec something along these lines for the majority of encounters:


Glyphs: I have not made up my mind a 100% yet, but I am fairly sure that for 90% of the time I will stick to Telluric Currents and Riptide with Water Shield / Fire Elemental Totem or Healing Wave for personal healing. It will depend on the encounter, but they are all situational.

As for stats then there is no doubt about spirit will be very valuable, but do not forget the importance of int.
As for the secondary stats haste, crit and mastery.
Haste is a strong stat, but outside the breakpoints of Riptide, Healing Stream, Healing Rain and Healing Tide Totem there is hardly much to gain from it (http://www.totemspot.com/vb/entry.php?b=41 ) can you see the result.

So crit vs. mastery what to choose ?
There is a couple of ways to answer this one being "What is your setup?" and by that I mean if you play with 2 x disc in your raid grp. then the value of mastery will be a lot lower than e.g playing with 2 other shamans. Then there is the question of the encounter in general as is it moderate and steady damage or is it low damage with the occasional burst? In the first scenario I will value crit higher due to mastery will most likely not be reaching that much of an effect whereas the second scenario will have a use for mastery to heal people back to full as fast as possible.
However, personally I will be going for crit in the beginning and it is mainly due to the difference between crit and mastery is not that massive (Okay, if a person is on 2% hp then it is, but when are you ever gemming / gearing for that scenario?) so on average for the majority of fights (some will require different setups :O ) crit will come out on top, and furthermore it will grant you more mana back from Ressurgence which is something that I always enjoy during progress since mana is always an issue. 

I must admit that I am really looking forward to raiding in MoP, and with the latest adjustments to shamans I am very much looking forward to try MoP healing. 

Happy leveling !