Monday, June 22, 2009

The 3.1 Innervate Mechanic

I saw a discussion on a blog which made me think that this information was not dispersed widely enough, so here we go!

In 3.1, the mechanics of Innervate changed. The current mechanics are as follows:
Causes the target to regenerate mana equal to 450% of the casting Druid's base mana pool over 20 sec.
How much mana should that be?

Well, for that we need tp know our base mana, which varies by class and level, but is not affected by gear. For Druid's that number is 3496. So, a Druid's Innervate should give:

4.5 * 3496 mana = 15732 mana

Glyph of Innervate
gives the following benefits:
Innervate now grants the caster 90% of base mana pool over 20 sec sec in addition to the normal effects of Innervate.
That translates into 3,146 mana for the Druid casting it. If they cast it on themselves, that would be a total of 18,878 mana.

Compared with the old mechanics:
Increases the target’s Spirit based mana regeneration by 400% and allows full mana regeneration while casting. Lasts 20 sec.
This is a great thing for most Druids. *Top* end Trees on the very edge of content *might* see a slight reduction in Innervates cast on them, but it is my understanding that this is generally either an insignificant change or a significant buff. Which is to say, it's all good, and now you know exactly how good. ;)

According to the 3.2.0 Test Realm Patch Notes this may change dramatically:
Duration reduced to 10 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 3 minutes. This means each use of Innervate will give half as much mana as before, but it will be available twice as often.
Given enough time, do you think they will just make it another Replenishment effect. :P

Friday, June 19, 2009

Patch Notes 3.2.0

Taking a break from learning about Trees...

So, I was checking out the test realm patch notes for 3.2.o and saw some interesting things. Aside from the biggie:
New druid art for cat and bear forms has been added. There are now five unique color schemes for each form and faction. Changing hair color (night elves) or skin tone (Tauren) via the barbershop will change the look of one's cat and bear forms.
[Here's hoping the faces are not as freakishly large as they appear in the image...]

There are other things...

Mana Endurance

MPS 5 is up 25%, but Replenishment effects are down 20%. First, that means most healers will probably have more mana recovery, which is good. Second, it seems to shift the burden of mana endurance more towards the individual and reduce reliance upon Replenishment. Also a good thing, as it supports bring the player, not the class.

Carrots for the Jaded! Present for Everyone!

Hooray! The old Heroic raids will now drop Emblems of Conquest! Not only can I gear up my raiders faster with Emblem items, there is another motivation for veteran raiders to keep going back to Naxxramas, etc. to help rapidly gear up our new folks. Yay!

Mount Changes

Earlier, cheaper, and easier to summon mounts. I am firmly in favor of it. The game is in Northrend, the rest is for tourism. Empower people to join us in the current content more quickly, or see the old content more quickly. Walking sucks. Hooray for the mount changes!

Oh, and just to be clear, all 10 of my Horde characters have Epic Flying Mounts, so if anyone has ammunition to complain, it would be me. But I am not. Enjoy your mounts. I wish they had done it sooner, but better late than never.

That said, if Blizzard would refund me some gold, that would be awesome... ;)

Unholy Death Knights Get a Savage Roar...Mangle...Sort of Thing

So, Unholy DKs now have a new Talent, Desolation, that gives them an ability that creates a buff when they use Blood Strike that will increase their overall damage. Rogues have Slice and Dice and Poisons, Cats have Savage Roar and Mangle, and Warriors have Battle Shout. Now only Retadins and Enhancement Shamans need something annoying to constantly maintain to perform at their peak.

Druid Stuff

Innervate is half as effective and twice as frequent. Hmm, how long before it ends up being a Replenishment effect?

A lot of "base points" reduced? I have to admit, I had no bloody idea what that meant.

Feral Druids can finally get rid of their addon to track their mana! It will be built into the game.

Hunters

Pets get Hit-capped right along with their masters, which is appropriate and a long time coming. A huge change is in the form of traps - Fire, Frost, and Nature Traps do not share cooldowns anymore.

Mages

Invisibility cannot be interrupted during the 3-second fade period. That's nice, but it does seem to take away an intentional game balance. Now it's essentially a Vanish with a 3-second warning.

Paladins

Have Retribution Paladins been nerfed so they can't alpha-strike anyone without an immunity ability? Maybe.

Exorcism is back to being usable on players but has a 1.5-second cast time. That could actually be interesting in that you might actually be able to lock a Retadin out of his Holy Spells if he tries to use it. No wait, Art of War can make Exorcism instant too. Still, that forces a "heal vs. DPS" decision akin to an Enhancement Shaman's choice when Maelstrom hits 5 stacks. You do still have the option of letting the Art of War buff linger so you can set up a large pulse, but you need a melee crit first to set that up. Seal of Command has also been smeared out, giving more damage per swing, but less on Judgement.

So, yeah, it looks like the gigantic alpha strike has been blunted a bit. Yay for my Arena team!

Crusader Strike does less damage (75%), but the CD is shorter (4 sec, down from 6). That means that in 12 seconds, you should be able to do 2.25 strikes where you used to do 2, but it does take the edge off the alpha strike and requires a little more management of CDs.

Nice boost for Tanks, +10% Stamina from Blessing of Sanctuary. That could also create an interesting option if you have multiple Paladins and a fight in which people need more health. It does not stack with Kings, but at least it makes Sanctuary a less a painful choice if a Protection Paladin is the only Paladin present.

Hand of Reckoning loses its damage when your target is not already targeting you. I guess Tanks were using it to generate Threat, when it was really intended to be an effective and reliable Taunt. This will probably only help raids, as spamming it would be a bad habit in many fights, where you can make the Boss Taunt-immune rapidly and get everyone killed if you need to trade Taunts with another Tank.

Judgement of Light is based on the beneficiary's maximum Health, which puts it more in line with a Improved Leader of the Pack type of effect.

Righteous Fury stays up until you die, cancel, or switch specs. Great news for when I Tank something with my Paladin, who lives in Retribution mode normally. "Man, what is up with my Threat? Oh, right, I should probably put up Righteous Fury."

OMG: Ardent Defender has been changed in good ways. It reduces the damage of an attack that takes you below 35%, which is likely to be an issue. It also has a Guardian Spirit-like mechanic built in! If you take a killing blow, you instead get restored to 10%/20%/30% Health! Wow.

Flash of Light + Sacred Shield = HoT.

OMG: Beacon of Light now does the total heal, not just the effective heal (so overhealing counts) and multiple Paladins can Beacon the same target! Wow. That could be a very interesting dynamic to work into healing assignments.

Priests

Prayer of Healing gets nerfed a bit by reduced benefits from Spell Power. Penance gets a nerf in the form of a longer CD. Inspiration gets a buff (it seems) by reducing all damage rather than just increasing armor.

Rogues

Rogues can now use Axes. Hmm, more weapon choices is nice. Not sure if this is an OMG! change.

Shaman - The Game Changes

A simply amazing change for Shamans - they can now queue up a quartet of Totems and drop them with a single CD. Great news for PvE Shamans and not too shabby for PvP either, although PvP Shamans are probably going to still maintain their ability to place (or more correctly, replace) single Totems well.

Chain Heal gets a lot better. It was already good. Now it jumps up to 10 yards and reduces by only 40% (down from 50%). Really good news for Shamans and raid leaders.

Improved Water Shield can proc of Chain Heal and no longer consumes orbs.

Cure Toxins combines Poison and Disease cleansing...more akin to their Paladin counterparts. Simplification is nice.

Ancestral Healing changes from armor boost to damage decrease, which sounds like a buff to me, but I have not run the numbers.

For my Arena comrade, Earth Shield only loses one charge when Dispelled and Mana Tide gets 10% of the Shaman's Health. Good stuff for Shamans in Arenas.

If you think that's nice:
Macros and scripts will no longer be able to target totems by name.
Shucks, I guess they will actually have to work on those Totems instead of blindly spamming a macro.

Warlocks

They may disagree with me, but the fact that you can refresh your Banish while Banish is still up is really really nice. Having to perfectly time the refresh was a PitA. A more frequent Soulshatter (CD down to 3 min from 5 min) is nice too, but it will still require some skill to use it well.

Lots of Nice Little Things
  • Character name auto-completion for the chat frame, pop-ups, and mail interface can be enabled through an interface option in the Development settings.
  • Character names can now be colorized according to class in the chat frame through an interface option in the Development settings.
  • Casting bars under a target's portrait will now indicate whether or not the cast can be interrupted.
  • Item Comparisons: Holding the shift key while hovering over an item will now display the stat differences with the item currently equipped in the relevant slot.
  • Quest creatures and objects will now show on the player's world map.
  • The quest log is now double-paned for more easily viewing quest information.
  • Vendor prices will now be listed on items whether or not players are at a vendor.[Now I can disable Auctioneer for everyone but the character that handles my AH stuff!]
  • For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum.
An interesting patch indeed.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

The Path of the Tree - Attribute Priorities

Wow, time keeps flying past. Time to get this stone rolling...or tree barking?

OK, so let's go with stream of consciousness. Before I can even consider going green, I need to square away my gear. That means filling in those gem sockets and applying some Enchantments. That means understanding our Attribute priorities.

Thought process: start with one and see how the others vary....

The Basic Stats

Health, Mana, and Mana regeneration are necessary up to a point, but extra is just a waste. If you have enough to survive and do your job, you are good to go. It's nice to have hard numbers, but it can vary greatly on the content you are seeing and the type of raid you typically experience. For example, if your raid routinely has a Shadow Priest, Survival Hunter, Shaman, Frost Mage, and Retribution Paladin, mana endurance may be a low-level concern for you.

But still, how much is enough? Well, rather than give you fish, I am going to teach you to fish by referring you to my Gearing Up page; focus on the process, not the specific example. I also used Rawr to help me refine my set, having blind faith that the model they use is sound (the recommendations thus far make sense).

Onward to the meat of this discussion, the prioritization of stats.

Stat Priorities for Trees

Note: I am only going to include statistics that I could envision a PvE Healer considering for augmentation.

The various Tree folks have varying opinions. However, what do I really want to know? Right now, I want to know what to take for Gems, Enchants, etc.

While there are differences, for augmentations (gems & enchants), we see common priorities for a given color:

  • Red - Spell Power
  • Blue - Spirit
  • Yellow - Intellect
Haste, Crit, and MP5 are more complex and vary with build, technique, and personal taste/bias. But, lucky me, those three priorities up top are necessary and sufficient for me to make my important choices.

You see, I have no interest in eschewing the HoTs for which Druids are known. Rather, I want to embrace what little diversity is left in Healing.

Gems

I head on over to my old friend, wow-gem.com, and see what gems match up to my priorities.
  • Red - Runed (Spellpower)
  • Blue - Purified (Spellpower & Spirit)
  • Yellow - Luminous (Spellpower & Intellect)
I was surprised at the variety in metagem choices. For the most part, with other classes, spec, etc., I find there is a single best choice, end of discussion. For Trees, however, I have seen recommendations for:
  • Ember (+25 Spell Power, +2% Intellect)
  • Insightful (21 Intellect, chance to restore mana on spellcast)
  • Bracing (+25 Spell Power, -2% Threat)
My impression is that Ember would be best unless you need the others, either because your mana endurance is inadequate, or your Tanks do not generate enough Threat. I think I will start with Ember and see what happens.

Inscription, Arcanum, Spellthread, and Enchantments

OK, time to settle on some augmentations. The bold-faced ones are the ones I will try first.

  • Head - Arcanum of Blissful Mending (+30 SP, +8 MP5)
  • Shoulders - The best Inscription of the Crag (SP & MP5) you can get
  • Back - Wisdom (-Threat, +10 Spirit), Subtlety (-2% Threat), or Greater Speed (+23 Haste Rating)
  • Chest - Powerful Stats (+10 all stats) or Greater Mana Restoration (+8 MP5)
  • Wrist - Fur Lining: Spell Power (LW only; +67 SP), Superior Spell Power (+30 SP), or Major Spirit (+18 Spirit)
  • Hand - Exceptional Spell Power (+28 SP)
  • Legs - Brilliant Spellthread (+50 SP, +20 Spirit)
  • Feet - Greater Spirit (+18 Spirit) or Greater Vitality (+6 MP5 and HP5)
  • Finger - Greater Spell Power (+19 SP)
  • Weapon - Mighty Spell Power (+63 SP), Exceptional Spell Power (+50 SP), or Exceptional Spirit (+45 Spirit)
What Gear Should I Pursue?

This is less of a debate in my guild. We long ago agreed that "+Hit" is priority for DPS and "+MP5" is priority for Healers. We give Cloth-wearers first priority on Cloth armor, so that's less of an issue for me. I will look for Spirit too, of course.

So, I think I am ready to prep my gear for healing.

Just Saying...

I really hate that when I enter a label in a Blogger post that I am composing and hit "enter" reflexively, it publishes my post...

Friday, June 12, 2009

Tree Reading List (Druid Raid Healing References)

Is it intellectual cannibalism for a Tree to read a book?

Luckily, I am only consuming electrons!

All righty, much to my pleasant surprise, folks have offered up good references for Druid healing. I am going to shoot for an even more transparent thought process on this one. OK, the first thing I need to do is read, as I said. So, what should I read?

Well, the references recommended by my fellows go right to the top of the list:
Thanks again folks for providing those.

As always, we have to hit up ye olde WoW Class Forums:
What can I find from poking around Google? First, I was disappointed to find my first hit for "Druid raid healing" was a blog for a guy that has not healed for years, but I guess I can't blame Google, since he still has a page titled "Druid Über Healing Guide" on his site. :P

OK, so I follow links and see if anything looks intriguing...
Wow, took a while to compile that...I guess I'll move beyond skimming another day...

Monday, June 8, 2009

Trees Aren't Just For Sharpening Your Claws?

[Finished my gigantic analysis at work, so I have some writing energy again!]

For some strange reason, we seem to be absent of Trees in our guild now and for the first time in a long time, we are light on Healers. So, as insurance, I am taking the plunge and trying to figure out the spec, Glyphs, gear, and techniques just in case I need to heal something...

I know, it's scary!

OK, on to the things I need to resolve.

What gear should I wear and pursue? I have collected bits and pieces of a healing set whenever bits trickled down. Keeping up with Cat, Bear, and Moonkin kept me more than adequately occupied.
  1. I need to cobble together the best set I can from what I have, preferably without dismantling my Moonkin set by gemming or Enchanting it in an odd way.
  2. I need to identify any high value targets that I should be on the hunter for, especially items I can buy with Emblems of Heroism or acquire in Heroic Dungeons
  3. What are my Augmentation (gem, inscription, enchant, etc.) priorities?
I plan to use Rawr as my starting point and see how that goes. If the guidance makes sense, I'll stick with it.

What Talent Build should I choose? I was worried that this was more open-ended, but playing around and looking around seems to indicate there is not a much room for variation as I had feared. Either way, I need to arrive at a build and understand why it's good.

What Glyphs should I choose? Moonkin and Cat have taught me that Glyph choices can be incredibly important. I need to figure out the "must haves" and the optional choices, if any, and the rationales.

What should I do? Technique is the final piece of the puzzle. What spells should I favor and when? What's best for Tank healing? What's best for raid healing? What's best for "oh crap!" situations? What are my mana considerations?

This and more will follow in a series of posts in which I expose my ignorance and, hopefully, get a little more educated along the way...

Friday, May 15, 2009

Meowwwww! The Proper Use of Feral Charge Cat!

Drew asks the question - "Could you explain the proper use of kitty feral charge in raid dps?"

A fine question.

Back in the last expansion for WoW, The Burning Crusade (TBC), melee DPS started do discover the wonders of increased movement speed. In fact, leading theory crafters recommended boot enchants with movement speed. The reason is that if you are not on the target, your DPS is low.

So, that's a fine argument for making sure you have Feral Swiftness 2/2, but is it enough to justify Feral Charge - Cat? I think so, but I also think that it may be something you can live without.

Why do I have it, then? I find that there are plenty of cases where I need to:
  • Get onto a target rapidly
  • Move away from a target then get back quickly
  • Switch targets rapidly
  • Switch to Bear and charge something to stop a healer from dying
Consider Naxxramas 25.
  1. Anub'Rekhan - Getting back in after the swarm
  2. Maexxna - Getting back in after a Web Wrap
  3. Loatheb - charging to or from a spore
  4. Grobbulus - get out for mutating injection, then get back in. The charge might even reduce the damage you take
  5. Gluth - if you need to pull off to Swipe Zombie Chow, it lets you get back onto the boss fast
  6. Sapphiron - After every air phase or perhaps an unlucky tap from the tail
And my Rogue colleague weeps for his lack of a Charge on Emalon, when we have to keep switching back and forth between him and his overcharged add.

Do you really save enough time? Well, my usual metric was that +1% DPS was enough to make a Talent good. If a Charge give me 2-3 more seconds on the boss, that is generally at least 1% damage, which enough to justify it, and that's usually the case if I only use it once in a fight.

For those that would question the value further, I would counter with the question - is there a better place to put that one Talent point? My current "Razor Kitty" build is focused on maximum single target DPS. There are no points to spend that would increase single target DPS. In fact, the only points you could spend to increase Cat DPS would be an increase to Swipe Damage.

Then the question becomes - what is better? +10% Swipe damage or a Charge? I'll take the Charge. My Swipe already pulls Threat too often and Bosses don't care about my Swipe; and it's on the Bosses where I really need to maximize my DPS.

Use It Or Lose It -> Hot Key It

Charge is pointless if you spend 2-3 seconds looking for it. Hot key your Charge and make sure that same hot key has Charge on it for Bear and Cat for both of your specs. Put it in every Feral Build you have and use it every chance you get so that it becomes muscle memory. If you are going to just buy the Talent and slide the ability somewhere onto an action bar, then hunt for it when you need it, there's not much point and you might as well drop it, but if you are *that* person, this whole discussion is probably way more than you want to think about these things.

Once you have it down, it will be a solid Talent that will make you more effective. And, hey, it's pretty fun too.

Monday, April 27, 2009

3.1 Feral Builds - Bear Tank

If you spent all of your points to maximize your stats, avoidance, and mitigation, you would end up with this:

Feral Combat (60 points)

5/5 Ferocity
3/3 Feral Instinct
2/2 Savage Fury
2/2 Feral Swiftness
1/1 Survival Instincts
3/3 Sharpened Claws
2/2 Shredding Attacks
3/3 Predatory Strikes
2/2 Primal Fury
2/2 Primal Precision
1/1 Feral Charge
3/3 Natural Reaction
5/5 Heart of the Wild
3/3 Survival of the Fittest
1/1 Leader of the Pack
2/2 Improved Leader of the Pack
3/3 Protector of the Pack
3/3 Infected Wounds
3/3 King of the Jungle
1/1 Mangle
3/3 Improved Mangle
5/5 Rend and Tear
1/1 Primal Gore
1/1 Berserk

Restoration (11 points)

2/2 Improved Mark of the Wild
3/5 Furor
5/5 Naturalist
1/1 Omen of Clarity

Note: If you are almost guaranteed that someone else will bring the slowing effect, then you could drop Infected Wounds for Thick Hide, but 20% less attacks should usually win out over 10% more Armor.

And there ya go!