Thursday 10 July 2008

Best of the best of the best, sir! With honors.

Movie quote time again... virtual chocolate for the winner!

So, yesterdays post got me all worked up again. I'd reached a point where I was happy with my gear. I knew I wasn't really going to get much more until probably WotLK - unless we get to down lurker and I get THE priestly trinket [Earring of Soulful Meditation]. (Note to self - no other priests allowed in raid if we're gonna get Lurker). Then I win the stupid new mace from Magtheridon. My son, sitting in the background watching the kill, is telling me over my shoulder - it's THE best mace in the game until, oh I don't know where. Honestly some times he's like the little devil that sits on one shoulder while I am my own little angel on the other.

So now I'm supposed to go back to school and work out what of my gear to use. Trouble is - it's the summer holidays and I'm all out of brains. I've read (well, skimmed) World of Matticus and, well, basically, my head hurts. I want someone to tell me what to do. Tell me what is "best". And preferably don't all disagree with each other.

So - here goes with some numbers...

The latest gear I decided to use has [Shadowvine Cloak of Infusion] and I have my [Rod of the Blazing Light], which has the Spirit enchant on it and I use [Vial of the Sunwell]. With these on I have (completely unbuffed) 1886 healing, 275 MP5 casting (785 not casting), 10.9K mana and 6511 health. I use the fancy alchemist stone too.

If I put on my purely healing gear, which I used to wear and not worry about mana regen - damn all this reading I started to do - made me change everything - I was happy working pretty much completely on gathering +heal stuff and annoying a fellow Paladin by having more than him (hugs Logic).

OK - so now I'm wearing [Stainless Cloak of the Pure Hearted], along with [Light's Justice] (with healing enchant) and [Voodoo Shaker]. I have my [Essence of the Martyr] on too. Now I got 2156 healing, 239 MP5 casting (705 not casting), 10.9K mana and 6711 health.

My new staff is [Crystalheart Pulse-Staff]. I was only just playing with my "regen spirity" outfit and haven't really tried it a lot in raids, but what I've seen of it, I really like. My potion use has gone right down. In my numerous fights with Ahune it seemes that if I stood still for a bit my mana came back really well and when I used my fiend or got an innervate I was in mana heaven! My gut feeling is that about 1800-2100 plus healing is ok - somewhere in that range. I think I need to learn to down-rank my heals a bit, but I've not got that many fingers to be able to use shift and click, "G" for a shield, keys for moving (yes, I STILL can't use my mouse to move properly), etc.

My current leaning is towards putting the healing enchant on it (more Bog Lords must die), although in part this is because the guy I know who did my spirit enchant has stopped playing for now and I don't trust general trade people.

Life was easy before - I found tools to help me, but there doesn't seem to be much out there that compares Mace + Offhand with a Staff and nobody has said - "this is the best way to go". I want to be the best healer I can be and the most useful to the raid. I know pretty much any choice will do really - I mean we're not talking first kill in SWP or anything here. But I'm conditioned to want to be good - maybe it stems back to my childhood, when I can remember getting 90% for my Maths exam and my Dad asking me "what happened to the other 10%?"

Oh, by the way - have you seen Priest Healing? It tells you the mana efficiency and stuff for all your heals if you put in your talents, stats, etc.

Gosh - that was a lot of heavy stuff, but it's been weighing on my mind. Maybe I'll hold off on my questioning about the use of my [Bangle of Endless Blessings] and [Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon] for another time.....

Knurd, Softi and Amaryllis ... and anyone else who reads this stuff that flows from my keyboard .... over to you.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

*Gives best deer-in-headlights look*

Another great post from you Mum. :)

I really don't know the in's and out's of priesty goodness though - I play a boomkek. Says it all really doesn't it? :P

Hopefully someone else can help you with your decisions more than me!

Anonymous said...

Ok, from my brief analysis i would go for the offhand combo.

Basically what you are currently using gives:

34 stam
41 int
45 spirit
530 plus healing, including enchant and assuming you have 5/5 spiritual guidance.

The staff offers

51 stam
50 int
463 plus healing
16 mp5

Now, 45 spirit is almost akin to 16mp5 whilst casting but with some advantages, innervate and kings namely. As well as with spiritual guidence each point of spirit adds to your plus heal.

Also if you get outside the 5 second rule, that 45 spirit leaps ahead of the static mp5, giving around 40 something (ye i was lazy and used 50 spirit for my maths :P).

All in all, i would only use the staff on fights where i needed those extra points of stamina, everywhere else i would use the offhand combo because it gives so much more.

Knurd said...

I agree with Amaryllis’ math and suggestions, but offer a secondary solution as well that will give you the best of both worlds. It’s the one that I use, and now have my entire guild using …

Let me find the thread ...

(commercial break)

http://www.worldofmatticus.com/2008/01/13/caster-weapon-swapper-an-essential-addon-for-spellsurge-users/

That is a thread from the World of Matticus talking about an add-on called Caster Weapon Swapper. It will allow you to have the best of both worlds as far as mana regen vs high +heal. The problem is it would appear that things are going to change in the next patch so I am unsure how viable this is going to be in a few short weeks, but for the moment it works great.

(Thread I wrote for my guild forums: )

Well crap.

The add-on that several of us are now using called caster weapon swapper has a new problem, and we may have to stop using it if this goes live. How it works, (for those that don't know), is currently you can equip and unequip a weapon in combat during a spell cast. What it does is takes advantage of this by changing your weapon out to your spell surge one as you start to cast a spell. This means that the new spell and the weapon equip share a global cool down so you never have to stop casting.

I know that K does this manually in the same fashion.

The 2.4.3 patch test notes state a small change that impacts healers in a big way:

Equipping an item will now cancel any spell cast currently in progress.


This will cause a huge problem for those of us exploiting this.

I was able to have a conversation with the writer of said add-on and he said that he has several ideas for ways around this once the time comes … but then again the more I have thought about it even blowing a global cool down in order to promote mana regen will not be as bad as originally thought …

Hope this helps some!

Sephrenia said...

Oh you beauty! I totally forgot that I wanted to ask about the weapon swap - wanted to find a macro about it, but the add-on looks great! I think some of our "younger" guildies are going to Slave Pens tnoight - sounds like a great opportunity to go and mess with this.

*hugs to you all*

Anonymous said...

I'm lazily looking to rely on http://dwarfpriest.com/2008/03/16/the-best-priest-healing-gear-24/


Of course it doesn't consider gear switching, but the bonus of gear switching will depend on the encounter. If you have a healer rotation or access to a innervate then a temporary switch to spirit weapon set with spirit enchant may give a great boost.

Matticus said...

If you get that Earring of Soulful Meditation and the Bangle of Endless Bangles, you are set on trinkets until you kill Illidan.

Anonymous said...

quote from Men in Black. Can i have that virtual chocolate now?

Sephrenia said...

Hurray! Well done! *hands out double chocolate chip cookie*

Oh go on then *gives other commenters one as well as thanks for all their help*