Originally Posted by Praetorian,March 15th, 2006 @ 2:30PM
I like how this started out as an interesting thread with solid numbers and diverse perspective and turned into a mishmash of informative posts and shitty flames.
If you (or anyone) are going to post, don't do so from the perspective of a righteous crusader expounding upon the One True Way to play your class. Why are you posting? Are you posting to add to a discussion, and maybe to learn from it with some humility, or are you posting to enlighten the other poor posters who sadly have been forced to trudge through their dreary existences without the benefit of your wisdom? We can always use more of the former, but keep the latter far away. Thanks.
It's pretty bad that this is the most valid point in the last two pages of what has otherwise been an excellent thread.
A lot of people come here to glean some insight and understanding from the extremely talented and intelligent individuals who post here. The community that has grown up around EJ is very insightful and has done a tremendous amount of research into the mechanics of the game which is why I stop by daily to read the forums.
When people have to trudge through pages of BS posts about Helm of the Lifegiver turning Shaman into Superman and people on their own personal crusade to prove things such as the viability of a feral druid in a raid setting it destroys the reason many of us came here to begin with.
I have seen it said by many people on here before, but I think you'll find a better place for those kinds of posts are the WOW General Forums.
As a reply about HealingPoints, I respeced this weekend to a pure PVE Tank Build to off-tank MC as we were short some warriors. I wish I had thought to check the HealingPoints before and after the respecs with my different gear on. I would be willing to respec again however since apparently my respec costs were reset with the 1.8 patch and I won't be paying 50g per respec again for awhile.
I was more interested in seeing how feral had changed in light of my better gear since 1.8 as I spec'ed 7/0/44 as soon as 1.8 came out and had not respec'ed since then until this weekend.
If I respec again what particular builds would people be interested in seeing HealingPoints information collected on? You can check my healing gear from the link in my signature (I am wearing it) and look at my feral gear which is currently bagged to get an idea of what I am working with.
Originally Posted by Brilliance,March 15th, 2006 @ 2:49PM
Originally Posted by Whillwin,March 15th, 2006 @ 2:42PM
"Last I checked it IS POSSIBLE to have too much healing, ever checked the Recap meters? But there's many situations when more DPS is exactly what the raid needs."
Those are my two quotes on the matter. What exactly is incorrect about either?
If the raid needs more dps, go get a dps class. Where do most raids fail? Its not the DPS, its either the tanking / strategy or the healing. (normally the first, but it sometimes falls on the latter)
Also, to how you worded your post, you came off as the LOL FERAL DRUID WHO SITS IN CAT 3000 MANA idiot. And then you justify your arguement by saying your important to your guild. Good, I dont care what your guild thinks about you when we are discussing the flexibility of druids in a HIGH END RAID SITUATION.
No guys, I wasn't talking about a feral build with 21 points in resto. Im talking about the OOC build vs. a resto build. I think the 30 feral/21 resto build is raid viable. It is the OOC feral build I take issue with.
Anyone with healpoint numbers for a full resto/balance build (most mana efficient) vs. a OOC feral build?
Originally Posted by thevidon,March 15th, 2006 @ 3:02PM
No guys, I wasn't talking about a feral build with 21 points in resto. Im talking about the OOC build vs. a resto build. I think the 30 feral/21 resto build is raid viable. It is the OOC feral build I take issue with.
Anyone with healpoint numbers for a full resto/balance build (most mana efficient) vs. a OOC feral build?
Oh god.
I can't imagine anyone takes 15/31/5 seriously as a healing build in any way, shape, or form. You can do bizarre amounts of DPS with it (450ish is seriously attainable on lvl 60 elites without timers) and it can be tanking build capable of ridiculous aggro generation, but seriously, your healing is limited to 3 rank10 HTs and 1 rejuv per mana pool with no mana regain talents at all.
Originally Posted by Lord BEEF,March 15th, 2006 @ 2:46PM
The problem with your argument Whilwin is that you're essentially saying "Why should I try to maximize my healing ability further when what I have is already good enough?"
The answer to that is simply "It's not always good enough." If it was, a raid could bring you as the only healer and do just fine. Or more realistically, at least one less healer and instead bring more dps.
"In my mixed tank/dps/heal gear with 0/12/39 I'm at like 83K healpoints. In full healbot gear (what I wear 90% of the time in a raid) I'm at about 96K healpoints, again with 0/12/39 resto build.
In my mixed tank/dps/heal gear with 0/30/21 feral build I'm at about 75K healpoints. In full healbot gear, still with 0/30/21, I'm at about 89K healpoints.
A lot of long-term fight druid healing ability comes from 3 piece stormrage and reflection, which applies to either build.
Is full-on resto build better for long-term healing? Absolutely. Is it better enough to invalidate the theoretical utility of feral/healing builds? That will always be up for debate. I happen to think that I'm a good enough healer to conquer the limited challenges of my build in my primary role while being able to take vastly more enjoyment from playing the game with a feral/healing talent build."
How is that not the same thing? Both of us are saying the exact same thing, "I already heal well enough that I don't need to spec resto."
1) A full-Resto druid will heal better than a hybrid talent spec.
2) Putting at least 11 points into Feral to get Feral Charge doesn't entail too much sacrifice and offers a fair bit of raid utility.
3) There are situations in which your entire raid's healing capacity is not needed, or in which more DPS or tanking would outweigh the benefit of more healing.
4) In the situations that fall under #3, a hybrid-spec druid is superior.
5) Pure feral LotP+OOC druids can't heal for shit.
6) From a raid perspective, a raid is well-served having some hybrid or heavy-feral druids complementing their Restoration druids.
7) A raid full of full-Resto druids lacks versatility in certain situations that may make things harder for the raid group.
8) A raid full of full-feral druids lacks healing capacity in many situations that may make things VERY hard for the raid group.
Originally Posted by Praetorian,March 15th, 2006 @ 2:54PM
Originally Posted by Kytrarewn,March 15th, 2006 @ 2:53PM
When you talk about "healpoints", you mean the amount you can heal from a 100-0% mana, right, not amount healed in a particular amount of time? I feel like I'm mising some of the terminology.
Jesus don't want me in a sunbeam
Sunbeams are always made on me
Don't expect me to cry, for all the reasons I'm gonna die
Don't ever ask your kick of me.
It's an arbitrary benchmark, but it is, in my experience, a fairly solid one. It offers a lot of detailed information about healing effiency on a per-spell basis, and lets you play around with hypothetical gear setups to see which would yield a better balance. It also breaks down healing capacity into short-term burst healing and long-term regen-based healing. I really like it as a mod.
But no, "this is worth 8k healpoints" really has no objective meaning to an uninvolved listener.
Originally Posted by Praetorian,March 15th, 2006 @ 3:13PM
1) A full-Resto druid will heal better than a hybrid talent spec.
2) Putting at least 11 points into Feral to get Feral Charge doesn't entail too much sacrifice and offers a fair bit of raid utility.
3) There are situations in which your entire raid's healing capacity is not needed, or in which more DPS or tanking would outweigh the benefit of more healing.
4) In the situations that fall under #3, a hybrid-spec druid is superior.
5) Pure feral LotP+OOC druids can't heal for shit.
6) From a raid perspective, a raid is well-served having some hybrid or heavy-feral druids complementing their Restoration druids.
7) A raid full of full-Resto druids lacks versatility in certain situations that may make things harder for the raid group.
8) A raid full of full-feral druids lacks healing capacity in many situations that may make things VERY hard for the raid group.
Ok, can we agree on the above?
That's pretty much it.
Kytrarewn, look into the math used for it, it does make an arbitrary decision about balancing point between raw healing and healing over time from regen, but we've been pretty happy with it as a real-world* relative yardstick.
edit: Healpoint's biggest failing is that it assumes you're using your effecient heals over your fast ones. There are very few healers, from what I've been able to tell, not in well-informed end-game guilds who actually do so.
Niwi I don't think anyone really argued that the OOC build is anything but shit for healing.
When you're healing the tank during nef, and your 3.5 second cast heal becomes a 6 second cast heal because the warlock yell came and their fire shields keep slowing down your heals, you know you're not the best spec for the job.
For the OOC build to be viable as dps you have to really be able to compete with rogues or warriors, and that means having like 1600+ attack power unbuffed.
At that point, at least in theory, you'd bring a druid instead of a rogue with the reasoning "Hey it's a bit less dps but we gain a battle res and a group buff and some emergency healing".
It'll remain theory as long as Gurgnazi spreads his healbotaganda and keeps encouring our rogues and warriors to spend their points on things they're not excited about while denying the Jewids the gear they need to be viable
Originally Posted by Lord BEEF,March 15th, 2006 @ 3:21PM
It'll remain theory as long as Gurgnazi spreads his healbotaganda and keeps encouring our rogues and warriors to spend their points on things they're not excited about while denying the Jewids the gear they need to be viable
Beef, you're like the Hamburger Helper to our public forum's uncooked meat.
Originally Posted by Lord BEEF,March 15th, 2006 @ 3:21PM
It'll remain theory as long as Gurgnazi spreads his healbotaganda and keeps encouring our rogues and warriors to spend their points on things they're not excited about while denying the Jewids the gear they need to be viable
Heh.
I know this is not strictly a feral druid question but I am curious where EJ's druids fall for healing done vs. the priests and shamans in your raids. I am particularly curious about where your more feral heavy spec druids fall on the meters vs. the resto heavy druids.
Our guild pretty much subscribes to the DnT theory that we're only going to be able to get our Nature's Swiftness from one place so you'd better have it for those, "oh shit why does the MT have 200 hps," moments.
- Am I still a good healer? yes
- Was I too much of a good healer before? no
- Was I more efficient and contributing to the raid before? yes
- Is feral spec more fun? yes
Anyone who disagrees with the above is a 24-carat moron.
And Whill. One more sass and you're getting the :redhammer:. At first, your stupidity was funny. Now it's annoying and shitting up a decent thread.
Originally Posted by Lyta
I've been trying to concentrate on studying for my Proof Methods test tomorrow, and all I can think of is your hotness, radiating out from the pixels on my monitor, seared straight into my neurons.
Originally Posted by Somnambulist,March 15th, 2006 @ 2:42PM
I know this is not strictly a feral druid question but I am curious where EJ's druids fall for healing done vs. the priests and shamans in your raids. I am also curious whether your more feral heavy spec druids fall on the meters vs. the resto heavy druids.
Before I went 0/30/21, I regularly made the top 3 in healing over the course of a raid. Once 1.10 goes live though, druids should never beat out the holy spec priests.
Originally Posted by Lyta
I've been trying to concentrate on studying for my Proof Methods test tomorrow, and all I can think of is your hotness, radiating out from the pixels on my monitor, seared straight into my neurons.
is pretty representative. A druid is a mainhealer and will heal for that much. I would also wager that none of the top healers has more than high single-digit overheal.
Originally Posted by Somnambulist,March 15th, 2006 @ 3:42PM
Our guild pretty much subscribes to the DnT theory that we're only going to be able to get our Nature's Swiftness from one place so you'd better have it for those, "oh shit why does the MT have 200 hps," moments.
Yeah, NS is extremely useful. Even if you wanted to spec for PvP, NS is insanely useful in PvP too, so there are all sorts of reasons to get it. I think pretty much all of the mainstream druid builds except the wacky OOC/LoTP "I'm a rogue who can heal you three times and I could even bandage you too" builld incorporate NS. Once you get past NS, it gets fuzzier.
Ok. Time to use a screenshot of a different heal meter.
BWL, in the process of clearing the lab:
Suck it.
Originally Posted by Lyta
I've been trying to concentrate on studying for my Proof Methods test tomorrow, and all I can think of is your hotness, radiating out from the pixels on my monitor, seared straight into my neurons.
Right now I actually have the OoC/LotP spec. It's not because I want to be an lol I do as much damage as a rogue druid or whatever, it's really because it's a great build for solo grinding and that's about all I'm doing these days. I may change my spec once ID (yeah, go figure, I left Myths Fury, and everybody on the server not in MF loves me for it) starts raiding next week (how heavily I go into resto depends on how many incidents of tanks dying or healers running out of mana we have).
Oh, your new avatar reminds me of Baal from D2 by the way. But, back on topic, I can see either 30/21 or 20/31 being very viable depending on the situation of your raid. In the end, I guess what really matters regarding how your druids should spec is the situation of your raid, so there is no one "correct" spec for druids. If you have problems with priests running out of mana, get innervate (or kick your priests from the guild, wonder which is more appealing), if not then spec 30/21 for the versatility.
Who's on top of healing meters is largely determined by the role given in the fight, the amount of consumables and innervates that person receives, how much attention they're paying, and the size of their penis (or in the case of females, how licious their booty is).
Don't forget overhealing. If you're at the top, you're absolutely overhealing.
Originally Posted by Lyta
I've been trying to concentrate on studying for my Proof Methods test tomorrow, and all I can think of is your hotness, radiating out from the pixels on my monitor, seared straight into my neurons.