CWS overlaps the weapon swap cooldown with the normal GCD from casting a spell, so there should be no delay there. The only real harm is that while your normal +heal weapon is swapped out, your casts during that time will be of a lower spellpower. This will only be 2 or 3 casts, and is negligible for a holy priest (it's slightly more of a concern for a druid rolling lifeblooms or something).
The only time this is really annoying is when I want to refresh renews on the tanks, it will give me an error if I am currently swapped to the spellsurge weapon, as it won't let me overwrite my own renew with a lower +healing coefficient.
Overall though it's a very minor inconvenience, and the mana regen for me and my party far outweighs that.
Well, using CWS in practice, due to streaky random numbers, you may end up having used your Spellsurge weapon for 20%-30% of the fight or so. But not all fights end up like that, plus in my opinion the extra 9-10 mp5 for you (and groupmates) outweighs having a few spells cast with 80-100 less +healing.
Additionally, occasionally CWS's swaps can delay a heal. For example if you cast a spell, and it decides to swap, but then you cancel the spell to heal someone else, you still have to wait out the weapon-swapping cooldown. In practise I barely notice this, it depends on your playstyle though.
So yeah, overall I certainly think using Spellsurge and CWS is win-win. The whole goal of the mod is to let you have your cake and eat it too. But then as the author I am biased.
In practise I find very few people use Spellsurge and people in my party are always asking where the buff is coming from. Without CWS, I think people are unexcited about the regen versus 81 healing. You probably would need a "Spellsurge Group" to make it worthwhile. But with CWS, you are a walking Spellsurge Group.
By the way, a new version of CWS is in the works, which will support swapping between weapons with the same name (just different enchants), and a lot of small fixes/improvements. I know I have said this before but I am actually 60% done with it now.
My biggest problem with spellsurge swaps is simple the lack of 2 weapons that are actually anywhere near eachother in quality. When I get S3 or vashj weapon, I will be losing around 100 healing just from the weapon difference, on top of the enchant loss, in order to swap. And I don't feel like spending dkp/arena points on the second weapon after I already have the first, as they're too precious for the mp5 benefit. Only way I would consider is if I get the weapon from vashj first when I'm still ways away from getting my S3 weapon and then eventually will be able to get S3 weapon as well, but even then it'll be a tough choice if to actuall spend arena points on it.
What weapons are you guys swapping for spellsurge to make it worthwhile? As I just don't see myself realistically getting weapons that will be close enough in quality.
One thing to consider in furutre versions, though, is some "oh-shit i need lots of heal now" command that can be added to certain macros and will force your non-spellsurge weapon for a pre-defined duration. (assuming there isn't such a feature already, as I hadn't tried the addon due to not having weapons worth using with it).
I might score a Hammer of Atonement explicitly for weapon swapping. I have Lightfathom Scepter and no hope of getting Crystal Spire of Karabor unless 9-10 of them drop.
I suppose it largely depends on what items you have a lot of. For example we've had plenty of Hammer of Atonements so picking up a second, or picking up 1 + karabor is not unreasonable. And I believe the next Apostle of Argus for us will rot so I'll pick it up for spellsurge if the next CWS works as promised and supports same name switching.
At worst going form kara mace to vashj you lose 140 or so healing. its a big drop, and for shorter non-mana intensive fights I wouldn't bother, but for like learning illidari council, or even Mother Shaz where your regen is gimped its worth the loss.
Edit: And for the DPS casters I know our SPs chronically suffer from " Soulfrost upgrade-itis" for example they'll have prince dagger and then hyjal trash mace, and then Najentus dagger, and then S3. All enchanted with Soulfrost, but they could very easily take one of their older items and spellsurge it up for a loss of less than 10-15 dmg ( and the 50 from soulfrost)
In terms of Spellsurge, put the enchant on a rep weapon. It really doesn't matter. It will be up for a maximum of 3 spell casts, and you can afford to lose 100 healing S&E for 3 spells. It's not a big deal at all. If you're really worried, use a trinket or something.
I'm currently using Apostle with Light's Spellsurged, and it works out great. Net loss is ~ 100 +heal, for (as I said) 2-3 spells.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein
I run with +Healing on [Apostle of Argus] and Spellsurge on [Staff of Immaculate Recovery]. A fellow priest runs with two Apostle of Argus. CWS is fantastic, particularly with the update to allow for same item, different enchant swaps.
I haven't had much luck with getting fellow guildies to use the mod, but on an Illidan fight, with each of us proccing 13 times, we're returning 2600 mana to our group - and that's just two people. He and I are usually in a group with 2 paladins and a random person (most times a warlock), so everyone can benefit from the Spellsurge. Just wish they (healers) would all get the second weapon enchant.
I have llike 16% holy crit as it is, and I do not gear or spec for crit. (Well okay, I have 1% crit from talents). So, I am leaning towards the crit being a non-issue? I am assuming even a t4 priest will have 10-12% crit naturally. Or am I wrong?
*edit* My uneditedpost didn't really belong here. If there was a delete button I would use it now. */edit*
You could try clarifying your numbers a bit, since statemets like "6 gheals per second" may confuse a lot.
There is no way, even theorethically for even several healers to keep inspiration up 100% of time. Considering that with 3-4 healers who have inspiration or ancestral healing +25% armor is kept up for 50%+ of time (can paste several wws reports showing this), individuals crit% has very little effect. If we are talking about differences of few percents, of course. Any more than that and priest is sacrificing significant amounts of other stants and benefit gained from added inspiration time becomes null and void.
Last edited by Vihermaali : 01/19/08 at 11:48 PM.
Reason: Useless post
You're making it harder than it should be. Chance for inspiration to not be up at any given time is the chance for it to not proc for the last 15 seconds, which is (1-crit)^n where n is number of spells cast within 15 seconds. If n is not constant, figure out the "chance breakdown" for n and calculate a weighted average.
Say if at any given time I have 50% chance to have casted 4 spells and 50% chance to have casted 5 spells, the chance for inspiration to not be up with 15% crit is 0.5*(1-0.15)^4+0.5*(1-0.15)^5=0.48. Note that you could do it approximately and just calculate (1-0.15)^4.5=0.48 the error with this approximation is 0.0016, but it's probably much smaller than the error in your ability to estimate how many casts you will get within 15 seconds not to mention the chance to get each possible number of casts. Note that the approximation is probably only good enough for crit<<100%, and if I'd put the time into it I could probably prove it mathematically although I don't see much point in doing so.
Add 1% crit and you'll get 0.45 downtime.
If you have more inspiration/AF proccers, you'll have to calculate their chance to not have proc inspiration for the last 15 seconds and multiply it by your chance to not have procced inspiration for the last 15 seconds to get the actual downtime. Obviously this reduces the effect of additional crit on your gear.
I'm not sure how to post a graph but I bet someone could post a nice graph showing how inspiration uptime increases with crit with diminishing returns, as the graph is a simple y=1-c*(1-x)^n with 0<x<1 and with n and c predefined constants (c being the chance for inspiration of other proccers to not be up and n being average number of casts per 15 seconds). If you'll look at such a graph for various n values, you'll see that for n<1 crit will have increasing returns, for n=1 the inspiration uptime will be linear to your crit and for n>1 the inspiration uptime will have diminishing returns.
After you've done all the above, you can actually calculate how much mana you're saving the raid by having inspiration up (in terms of extra healing done by not having the tank take damage). I wouldn't count inspirtation as a "tank saving" ability becuase if a boss can burst a tank down when inspiration is not up it doesn't matter what inspiration uptime you have. Just like it doesn't matter how much dodge you have if the boss is bursting you down on a no-dodge string. However both dodge and inspiration procs make healing easier if they don't come at a too high cost of other stats.
If you already have a healing efficiency spreadsheet (with certain buffs spending my mana on these spells (like x% on CoH y% PoM etc or even more complicated by PoMing on-cooldown and using the rest of the mana with some kind of a ratio between abilities, based on experience/wws/whatever) how much healing you can put out maximum using all mana) you can also figure out how many spells/second you can be casting on the tank in the fight you're theorycrafting for and then calculate the damage stopped on the tank due to the extra armor from inspiration procs based on the boss' dps and add that damage to your healing done.
This may be an overkill for theorycrafting as obviously many many people have cleared the game without even thinking about doing this accurately, but if you actually want to know if crit/int is worth it (or better yet, how much heal/mp5 is worth sacrificing for how much crit for a certain fight, for example in case crit sucks but you end up with an item with a lot of int or something that without inspiration would be only slightly worse than your current) - this is the only way I see it actually done in a productive way that'll actually give results that will tell you what would be best. And of course it has to be fight dependant and group composition dependant, as that greatly affects the value of inspiration.
This is my post from a now dead thread about Healing Priests.
There is a much simpler way of calculating Inspiration uptime. The chance that Inspiration is up at any time depends solely on what happened in the last 15 seconds. Let
G = Number of Greater Heals cast in the last 15 seconds.
F = Number of Flash Heals cast in the last 15 seconds.
C = Crit chance for Greater and Flash Heals.
Probability that Inspiration is active = 1 - Probability that Inspiration is not active = 1 - (1 - C)^(G+F)
So assuming 12% crit rate and 6 Heals cast (G+F) we get the uptime of 53.6%.
Let add the fact that we have 2 priests healing this target with 12 crit chance each and roughly 6 heals every 15 seconds. Then the uptime becomes 1 - (1 - 0.536)^2 = 78%.
Looking up armor damage reduction formulas from WoWWiki, at 20k armor Inspiration will reduce incoming damage by 16%. So with the uptime of 78% we are looking at a total decrease in damage of around 13% with two priests. With just one priest the damage reduction will be 8%.
Note that doubling the number of Priests does not double the uptime due to overlap. My main issue with inspiration is that it doesn't work well with the great OFSR that priests have.
The calculation that you have posted however is completely inaccurate and unacceptable mathematically. I posted this because a lot of people make the mistake you have.
The problem with inspiration is that a lot of the damage the tank takes in high level instances is not physical.
I'm sorry to say, but typing words like independent, grossly, does not and nothing in capital letters does not make a wrong calculation correct.
Your mistake is that, if I understand you correctly, in the first paragraph, that you assume that crits while inspiration are up do notthing.
You claim that each crit gives you a guaranteed 15 seconds of inspiration. That might not be true either. If you crit, and crit again 5 seconds later, the new crit only gives you 5 seconds of added Inspiration uptime.
At any given point in the fight, Inspiration if (and only if) at least one of your casts in the last 15 seconds was a crit.
That's how it works, and the chance for it is 1-(1-crit)^(number of casts)
We start right after a critical strke. We want to calculate what the uptime is for the next 45 seconds.
That number is pretty useless. You want the overall Inspiration uptime, not the uptime in some situational circumstances.
"We start right after a critical strke. We want to calculate what the uptime is for the next 15 seconds."
Yay, it's 100%! And it's totally useless information.
Then in your calculations, from what I understand, you assume that crits in the first 15 seconds do nothing one crits in the following 30 seconds grants you another 15 seconds uptime.
But - crits in the first 15 seconds extend your first Inspiration proc, crits in the last 15 seconds grant less than 15 second uptime (for your 45s window) and you completely disregard overlaps in the last 15 seconds.
So, please clear up your post, and don't randomly bash correct models and replace them with wrong ones lacking proper calculation and explanation.
Yes I checked it and I am wrong, while the two posters above me are right. I will clean up the top post as well. In fact my own calculation gives a result pretty close to that when I take into account the fact that I start from a crit which does not have a 100% chance for occuring. When I do that and take into account that a crit before that also gives some inspiration time within those 15 seconds, I come up with 8 seconds inspiration out of 15 just as the model I was bashing predicts. Serves me right for not checking whether they were right before posting something
Calculating those kinds of things you'll often see a wrong model giving similar results, as sometimes the wrong model is just damn close enough. But if you can easily use a more accurate model, I don't see why not.
Just remember to see the ACTUAL benefit from inspiration (how much mana it saves, or easier to see, how much less effective healing is required to keep your tank alive through the fight, as that's the only thing it does), other armor bonus procs, the physical dps your tank is taking matter a LOT, and your other stats play a role in it as well when you want to compare it (aka the effect crit rating and int have on it) to other talents or stats.
Seeing the direction of the discussion concerning Inspiration talent, I have decided to take a bit different approach for assesing its value. I have tried to compute how much damage mitigation from melee attacks can be prevented by active Inspiration.
I have used value of 17000 armor as the one available to warriors tanking Lady Vashj. From my guild raid statistics it seems that she hits for maximum of 8500 hp with an average of 3500 hp. That is corresponding very well with theoretical effectivity of the armor value (approx 60% of melee damage mitigated for 17000 armor) as 8500*0.4 = 3400.
1,2 and 3 points in inspiration talent bring another 1360, 2720 and 4250 armor respectively. These values represent 1.9%, 3.5% and 5.3% of melee damage reduction (using formula from wowwiki: reduction=armor/(armor+400+85*(73+4.5(73-59))))
With maximal Inspiration up for the whole fight, the boss will hit an average of 8500*.36 = 3060, with maximum still being 8500. Difference for tanks with the Inspiration is 340 hp per hit. And all that for the maximalist case when inspiration is up during whole fight.
CONCLUSION:
I would like to propose a conclusion that Inspiration is nice to have from the point of view of tank, but if the points are put into Spell Warding talent instead, which means 10% less damage to a priest, total mana gain is slightly in favor of spell warding. From the point of view of elliminating the damage spikes on tank, gain is not significant. There are still spikes of 8500 melee damage and a sustained HoT is better solution to tanking damage then the average of 340 hp gain per hit.
I am personaly inclined to put the talent into the category of "nice to have" instead of "must have".
I would like to propose a conclusion that Inspiration is nice to have from the point of view of tank, but if the points are put into Spell Warding talent instead, which means 10% less damage to a priest, total mana gain is slightly in favor of spell warding. From the point of view of elliminating the damage spikes on tank, gain is not significant. There are still spikes of 8500 melee damage and a sustained HoT is better solution to tanking damage then the average of 340 hp gain per hit.
I am personaly inclined to put the talent into the category of "nice to have" instead of "must have".
I don't think anyone even considers Inspiration as a talent to reduce mana use. It's virtually impossible for the tank to get killed while inspiration is up-- the talent prevents deaths from spike damage. Yes, spikes aren't that common, but if the chance goes from 1% to .25%, then that still means inspiration reduces the chance of a spike death by 75%. Given that tank death is the most common way for raids to wipe, the talent seems amazing.
Spell warding is great too, and I recommend getting it, just not at the expense of inspiration.
Given that tank death is the most common way for raids to wipe, the talent seems amazing.
Some people would disagree. I would only agree that tank death is a more common reason to wipe than oom healers, although both are possible. Just keep in mind that if you need inspiration to avoid certain spikes your tank could otherwise not take, he can still take those spikes when inspiration is not up. I doubt there are any fights in the game where the tank would die if inspiration falls off (or it would've simply been a wipe fest even when executed perfectly), however if you want to reduce the ability of boss burst ability to kill your tank, healing/haste are the only stats that apply. The fact is there is actually a point where enough HP/armor (constant, not fluctuating randomly) and enough +healing/haste on healers will make it impossible for a tank to die. However no matter how much inspiration uptime you have, if your tank is capable of dying without it he always will be no matter how much you increase inspiration uptime.
At the end, inspiration's value greatly depends on the fight. I doubt you could ever argue FOR having it on a fight where you're not really healing the tank, and I doubt you could argue against it in a fight where you do any meaningful healing on a target that takes physical damage. Only thing you could possibly discuss are the merits of holy spec, spell crit rating and int taking the inspiration uptime increase into account.
If you're looking at inspiration as MT survivability increase, may as well look at it like increased dodge rather than reduced dmg, as it doesn't reduce the max dmg - only reduces the average dmg - same thing dodge does. Yes it helps, but if your tank is getting burst down as it is, more inspiration is not going to save him as well as additional +healing/haste would, as inspiration does nothing when it's not up. Again this is regarding preventing burst from killing your tank altogether, not reducing its chance. Of course reducing its chance to happen also has its benefits to make life easier, but if your tank can die he can die, inspiration, dodge, plain crit heals etc won't change it as they don't always work.
Some people would disagree. I would only agree that tank death is a more common reason to wipe than oom healers, although both are possible. Just keep in mind that if you need inspiration to avoid certain spikes your tank could otherwise not take, he can still take those spikes when inspiration is not up.
I was thinking of it more like this. Suppose the chance of a spike death during a 1 second window is 1 in 2,000 when inspiration is down and 1 in 8,000 when it's up. In a 5 minute fight (300 seconds), what's the chance of a tank dieing to spike damage with 0% inspiration uptime versus 40%?
So the addition of inspiration turns a 1 in 7 spike death to 1 in 10. That's still substantial. Of course these numbers are fabricated, but the seem reasonable. If you could spend 3 talent points to prevent 4% of your boss wipes, would you do it? Of course!
... It's virtually impossible for the tank to get killed while inspiration is up-- the talent prevents deaths from spike damage...
Could you please ellaborate your comment mate please? I am not aware of any spike preventing function of increased armor. Armor (and Agility) should be reducing melee damage by a percentage. Common percentage for T4/T5 mix gear is about 60% (17000 Armor) for a warrior tank without Inspiration. Inspiration adds maximum of another 5% to this (4200 Armor).
As I said, reducing the chance for the tank to get spiked is nice and all, but unless you have mana issues, compeltely eliminating it is often nicer. And inspiration does nothing for eliminating it, only reduces its chance. Which one of those is actually better depends on a lot of things.
Assuming your math is correct, going from 60% to 65% damage reduction reduces all damage taken by 5/40=12.5% compared to without inspiration. That's pretty big, as it's effectively +14.3% HP and +14.3% healing taken on the tank. It's nothing to neglect, however it has its flaws when it comes to "will my tank get pwned?" factor due to the fact it simply won't be up all the time. It will reduce his chance to get pwned, tough, that's for sure. However there are other stats like +healing/haste that, in reasonable conditions, can actually get to a certain point will make it impossible for your tank to get pwned - all the time.
Then again many would claim that plain out "getting pwned" doesn't happen and therefore it's not that important, and then again many would say otherwise. I'd say the main disagreement lies within how geared their tank is and what content they're doing, as it has direct effects on the importance of those things.
... going from 60% to 65% damage reduction reduces all damage taken by 5/40=12.5%...
I would say that 60 to 65 increase in damage reduction reduces all damage by 5% not by 12.5%
Table for damage prevented by this increase looks in my opinion:
1000 HP blow = 400 HP taken without inspiration = 350 HP taken with inspiration
2000 HP blow = 800 HP taken without inspiration = 700 HP taken with inspiration
.
10000 HP blow = 4000 HP taken without inspiration = 3500 HP taken with inspiration
350/400=2000/800=10000/4000=0.875
Taking 0.875 of the damage you would've taken without, to take the same damage you would need to increase the original hit by ~14.3% (1/0.875 - 1 = 1/7~=.143).
I would say that 60 to 65 increase in damage reduction reduces all damage by 5% not by 12.5%
Table for damage prevented by this increase looks in my opinion:
1000 HP blow = 400 HP taken without inspiration = 350 HP taken with inspiration
2000 HP blow = 800 HP taken without inspiration = 700 HP taken with inspiration
.
10000 HP blow = 4000 HP taken without inspiration = 3500 HP taken with inspiration
The 10,000 is irrelevant for the damage reduction, as your tank is not taking 10,000 damage. Your comparing the change in damage (500) to the damage that would be done if the tank had zero armor (10,000), which isn't a reasonable comparison cause inspiration wouldn't do anything in that situation. You're equating a 5% increase in mitigation to a 5% decrease in damage taken, which is only true at 0%.
The tank is taking 4000 without inspiration, and 3500 with. 1-3500/4000 = 12.5% reduction in damage taken with inspiration up versus normally.
01/18/08, 6:01 PM
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