Noximus

The OP most likely used ProcWatch. There are other mods like these, and most of them are discussed in the EJ UI forums.

ProcWatch: http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/downloads/details/6631/

Extih <Apocalypse> - Raid Leader - 70 Warlock (Retired)
Noximus <Apocalypse> - 70 Warrior (Retired)

 

Shadowborne

In regards to spellsurge being useless for arenas, not exactly in all cases. For the popular 23/38/0 Warlock & Holy Paladin combo in 2v2, spellsurge is more valuable then +40 damage/soulfrost or +81 healing/30 intellect. The reason behind this is that this group has survivability (A Soul-Link Warlock who can heal himself with drain life/siphon life and a healer in Plate). The general idea behind this group make-up is to drain mana the healer and kite the DPS around. Since drain mana does not scale with damage and your Paladin is casting mainly Holy Shock and FoL when he gets a chance, +81 healing isn't as major.

Dual Spellsurge is amazing mana regen in 2v2 if you run a healer + DPS group and you try to outlast the other teams mana by utilizing mana burn/mana drain, don't think of it as JUST a PVE enchant. It's also useful in 5v5 if you're having mana issues but my 5v5 never made it above 2000 so I don't think my input there is valuable.

 

Ward

Something to think about. My druid friend and I just did a range check on Spellsurge.










ITS RANGE IS ONLY 30 YARDS. This makes spellsurge much less desirable for anyone beyond Karazhan to have since most of the fights after that require healers to spread out.



Seems kinda weird that no one caught this before, but I think +81 healing has to outweigh this enchant now.

"A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having." - V

 

Taryenne

Which is why I feel it suits a resto Shaman perfectly, given that totems are 30yds (talented)

 

Ward

While that might be true, many fights require more than 30yds range of spread between group members (depending on group composition I suppose). I just suppose that this was surprising to me and had not been noted before.

"A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having." - V

 

averly

My normal caster group is SP, Boomkin, Elem. Sham, Fire Mage, Arc Mage (me). We now have 2 spellsurge proc's going with CasterWeaponSwapper and as the rest of the group gets weapon upgrades we will be on them to get spellsurge on the old weaps as well. As an arcane mage I am always thankful for more mana

The addon is amazing for optimizing between the 2 weaps. Thank you.

 

stormb

As a resto druid healing through SSC and TK, personally, i absolutely love spellsurge. While the 81 healing enchant would help my lifeblooms roll higher and higher, the mana it gives back is about 2/3 of another lifebloom. Also, I've noticed spellsurge procs very often, even from herbing. I don't have as much mp5 as some of the other healers in my guild, so spellsurge helps me keep my mana up, so I'm not a pot chugger anymore.

 

Belenos

I'm glad that people are getting good results out of CasterWeaponSwapper.

I don't know if it is anything close to actually optimal, but I do think that juggling two weapons like this is better than just picking one enchant. According to my reporting, I spend anywhere from 15% to 45% of the time with the Spellsurge weapon equipped, and most of the rest with the +healing weapon. The variance is due to Spellsurge being stubborn about proccing sometimes, and to the happenstance of when I cast/stop casting.

So, while a truly optimal scenario would be using +healing except for 1 cast every 50 seconds to get Spellsurge, I think in practice it still works out well, and I routinely get a lot of use out of the +healing and 4-6 spellsurge procs per fight.

 

Keleborn

I've been considering getting spellsurge for my healing mace on my paladin rather than the +81, From what ive read it is only a viable enchant if more that one person in the group has it. Given the numbers, i think that in an extended battle it works very well even if you are the only person with it. Any thoughts?

 

• Karakas

I'm not seeing why the presence of another Spellsurge enchant has nay bearing on whether it will be good for you. To the best of my knowledge, Spellsurge procs are independent of one another, are they not?

 

Rollins

The idea is, "Do I want 100 extra mana per minute or (potentially) 500 mana per minute?" Assuming, of course, that your group has five people with Spellsurge in it, and it's 1ppm per person.

 

• Karakas

Yes but the premise behind my question is, someone else having the enchant has no bearing on the effectiveness of your personal enchant.

 

Daenerys

The procs aren't related, but the affect on personal performance is. If you have 1 guy in a healer group with Spellsurge and the others all have +81 healing, that one Spellsurge isn't going to be terribly beneficial to any single one of them. But when you have all 5 of them with the enchant, the stacking of them starts to return ridiculous mana to each member of the group.

We have been running a Spellsurge group for a couple weeks now, and the healers love it.

 

Braque

This seems like muddled thinking to me. The trade off is the same no matter how many people do it. You still drop 81 healing and gain X mana/5s per person. It is in no way made better or worse by changing the number of people in the group who have it. The per person gains and losses are identical.

The "its better if everyone has it" is just psychological. Because 81 healing is a "selfish" enchant (it improves the performance of the raid by improving the performance of the one individual who has it in his role). Where as Spellsurge benefits the performance of the whole party (assuming the whole party is a caster group), so the individual only "feels" the full effect it (as an individual) has if all the other in the party have it, because that's the only way he'll get his "fair share" of its effects.

EDIT -> Added explanation:

To explain better this psychological effect:

Assume that the benefit to the RAID of +81 healing on a healer is 5 points.

Assume that the benefit of the mana returned to 1 person from Spellsurge is 1, so that in a 5 mana user group, the total benefit is equal (I know this is a point of debate, but its a useful assumption to simplify the maths that explains the psychological effect).

So, consider group 1, players A to D have +heal, and E has Spellsurge.

benefit
+heal | SS regen
A) 5 + 1 = 6
B) 5 + 1 = 6
C) 5 + 1 = 6
D) 5 + 1 = 6
E) 0 + 1 = 1
Total 20 + 5 = 25

Players A to D feel like they get most of the benefit from their own selfish +heal enchants, and E feels like everyone is outperforming him and he wasted his time on a crappy enchant.


So, consider group 2, which has stacked Spellsurge:

benifit
+heal | SS regen
A) 0 + 5 = 5
B) 0 + 5 = 5
C) 0 + 5 = 5
D) 0 + 5 = 5
E) 0 + 5 = 5
Total 0 + 25 = 25

Everyone feels the full benefit of the Spellsurge enchant, but the over all contribution it brings per person is the same. You should be able to see now that if the enchant is good (or not), stacking on multiple people it does not make it better.

 

Daenerys

I think it's more complicated than that though. If you look at it in a practical sense, the mana return of 1 Spellsurge in a group may not be significantly impacting the ability to throw out more heals. But the mana from 5 does allow those healers to cast that extra heal or spam a little bit more often.

You're right though, Spellsurge stacking is basically a psychological impact, but that's okay we me. I think that can have a positive impact on performance, even if there is no theoretical impact. The healers gain some more confidence with their mana pools and won't hold back in times when they need to be spamming. I don't have as much experience as most raid healers, but I do know that I heal a lot better when I'm confident that I won't run out of mana early, and I doubt I'm alone there.

 

• Shocktar

You are both missing the big picture.
There are *several* mods that allow both of these enchants to be weaved. Essentailly, the mod swaps to the SS weapon, waits for a proc (for me it's never more than 3 casts), swaps back, waits 50 sec, then changes to SS again. My other weapon has 81 healing, and the mod switches midcast, to kill the global cooldown. You'll also not that if you switch weapons midcast (check the Theorycraft compilation thread), your cast gets the bonus of the switched-to weapon's +dmg/healing.

In essence, I get at most (yes, statistically it could be infinitely more) 2 casts without the benefit of my +81 healing every 50 seconds. The tradeoff is 100 mana/50 sec to each member of the group. It's *very* worth it. You don't have to choose.

Edit: Braque, just using arbitrary numbers (5 for 81 healing, 1 for spellsurge) so your final product comes out even is extremely flawed logic. There's no 'math' or 'theorycrafting' in that post whatsoever, just a bunch of numbers you decided to put there so support your argument. What if I value 10mp/5 (very roughly equivalent to spellsurge, slightly more powerful, unless there's a 100% proc chance) at MORE than 81 healing? Or less than 1/5 of 81 healing? There's just no good foundation for that post.

Gear is how hard you hit. Skill is how often you hit.

 

Belenos

I don't think the math of Spellsurge vs Healing has to be that complicated. Each healer can decide if the +X mp5 of Spellsurge is more valuable, or the +81 healing.

A "spellsurge group" is a great idea, and 5X mp5 is better than X mp5, but each healer still has to ask the question, would I prefer +5X mp5 for the group, or +81 healing for myself and 4X mp5 for the group? And of course, this reduces to the same initial question of +81 healing vs +X mp5.

Stacking spellsurge enchants does not make them better, although it may make you feel like you're swimming in mana, which is not a bad thing. Five spellsurge enchants is no more than five times as good as one spellsurge enchant (and they still take up five enchant slots).

Of course, as Shocktar said, you can attempt to get the best of both worlds.

 

Bain

I personally consider 1mp5 = +7healting or there abotus... i think that follows suit with the iLevel?

That's how i'd think on it. (normally chanceman, currently resto)

 

• Shocktar

If that's your personal opinion, that's fine. Thank you for framing it as such. Blizzard seems to agree decently closely, as the Royal nightseye should be 9 healing, 1.5mp/5. If that was equal to the Lustrous Star, 9 healing=1.5mp5, so it's roughly 6 healing=1 mp/5. (It's not, and that's why the Royal Nightseye rocks so much)

By that logic, Spellsurge, which is just less than 10mp/5, should be around 60 healing. This is where people get confused with the math. If 2 people in the group have it, it's roughly equivalent to each person in the group getting 120 healing, if all 5 have it, it's around 300 healing per person, *in Blizzard's iLevel system*. Don't read too much into this however, each enchant is still just that, a mana proc per person.

If you wanted to ge really nuts, it's actually 10 mp/5/person equalling 50 mp/5. Does that make it worth 300 healing per enchant? See how quickly the math falls apart? I'm even using real numbers, not arbitrary ones I made up.

-Again this is just Blizzard's idea of iLevel and equivalents. Some healers perfer MP/5 or healing, which is what makes healing so hard to theorycraft. Healing is an art (except for Paladins), which makes it difficult to model. take all healing 'math' with a grain of salt.

Edit: Bottom line, just get both! Use casterweaponswapper and switch two weapons and enchants automatically, netting you slightly less than 81 healing and slightly less than 10mp/5 but way more than just sticking with one of either. Every single caster should get this, even if your spellsurge weapon is a level1 grey dagger, it's that good.

Gear is how hard you hit. Skill is how often you hit.

 

Braque

Yup, as everyone knows, the true win is to get both Spellsurge and +81 healing and a weapon swap mod. I just want to take a moment to defend my post and reply to this:

The point of my post was NOT to say the two enchants are equal, but to explain the reason why it feels like stacking Spellsurge is more powerful, when it's not. It doesn't matter what numbers I use for the value of the +heal vs the value of the mana regen, because the net gain per mana user per enchant is fixed, it's just the way that value is distributed around the group when considerign it as replacing +heal. Plug whatever numbers you like into it, it makes no difference, its just easier to understand of the the numbers balance.

Obviously I didn't do a good job of the post because you didn't understand it, but its foundation isn't supposed to be "math" or "theorycraft" (of warcraft game mechanics) but good old fashioned "game theory".

 

• Shocktar

And my point was that that's not true, because you can have the best of both worlds. The more people that have both spellsurge and 81 healing (or 40 or 54 dmg enchants), the more benefit each enchant has, in large chunks.

For example:
With 10 mp/5, it will take me 300/((10/5)=2 Mana/sec)=150 seconds before I get enough mana to cast another 300 mana spell. With 20 mp/5 (two people in the group having the enchant), it takes 300/((20/5)=4mana/sec)=75 seconds before I can. The math continues.

My point is, if I get enough mana to cast 3 more Gheal7's during my cast-cancelling on a tank with 2 spellsurges, and I get enough to cast 6 or 7 during the course of a fight with a full group of spellsurges, that's a real added benefit to more surges.

You are correct that each additional enchant provides a linear, and not logarithmic benefit, but the ability to not have to sacrifice a significant amount of +healing means that each enchant gets a decent amount of benefit.

Gear is how hard you hit. Skill is how often you hit.

 

Braque

Of course, because with a proc watch/weapon swap mod you gain the full benefit of Spellsurge, whilst only loosing around 10% of the benefit of the alternative enchant. No contest. When the choice is: 1 (A) vs 2 (B) vs 3 (A*0.9 + B), then A would have to be more than 10x better than B to make any choice than 3 worth it. We are in agreement on what's better.

I wasn't really trying to chip in on the discussion of when/if to use Spellsurge, just trying to explain to people why it feels more powerful when lots of people use it (in a 1 weapon per player scenario).

 

Shadowborne

One more thing I've done is enchanted 1 weapon with spellsurge since it's on a 45 second hidden CD and the other with soulfrost. I use the spellsurge weapon until it procs, then swap in soulfrost for 45 seconds, this way spellsurge isn't paperweight during it's hidden CD.

Just an idea.

 

• Shocktar

One thing you HAVEN'T done is read the thread.
Edit: Good call though Braque, sorry I jumped on you so early.

Gear is how hard you hit. Skill is how often you hit.