How to Heal like a Pro - Page 54

Habanero · 05/27/08, 12:54 PM

Originally Posted by Opu

Due to some unfortunate circumstances, my raiding main is (likely) switching from a full t6 shadow priest to a late-t4, early-t5ish geared resto shaman. I'll have access to some BT gear -- probably getting dragged through a t6 clear for the 4pc -- but have some questions on how I should weigh EP values from this point forward. The first encounter I've healed in sunwell is M'uru.

Shaman Armory: The World of Warcraft Armory

As you can see, I'm at about 1900 healing, 136 mana/5 unbuffed. Mana regen is a primary focus for my gearing right now. At what point do I devalue mp/5? The wiki EP values show that mp/5 is roughly 3 times more powerful than other stats, but there is a drastic drop-off in value once you're in t5-t6. Also, when should I start to blend in haste?

I've got quite a few badges and should see some t6 soon. Even in the best case scenario I can't see myself at more than 2250 healing, 200 mana/5 unbuffed anytime soon.

Apologies if this has already been covered in the thread, my searches didn't provide what I was looking for.

You don't need more mp5 than that. If you do, it's because you're lazy on consumables.

Opu · 05/27/08, 1:14 PM

Originally Posted by Mano

Take this with a grain of salt, but I'd actually start devaluing MP5 right now. I.e. go for T6 HEP values which includes haste etc already.

The reasons are:
- you get much MP5 from buffs anyway: watershield 50+mp5, mana totem also, mana tide, blessing of wisdom 41+ MP5.
- consumables. Mana pots (I see you're an alchemist, use the effect on the stone), mageblood elixir, restoration flask, mana oil, sporefish.
- you get some more MP5 anyway on many items.
- you're doing this for the raid presumably. Expect to get a shadow priest ALWAYS while your gear isn't up to snuff; this will devalue MP5 pretty directly.

Thanks. My main is one of our two shadow priests and I'll likely be in a group that needs windfury, so I won't have that option available on M'uru at least.

Saerjin · 05/27/08, 1:52 PM

Hey EJ forums!

Long time reader, first time poster.

I did a bit of searching for it, and didn't find any posts about it, but if its already been posted about really sorry, but anyways here is my question.

Ever since the patch that made our totem casts 1.0 second GCD, I've noticed that every so often (usually after many regular 2.5 second casts) that my first totem cast seems to be 1.5 second GCD. Has anyone else noticed it?

I dont know if haste or anything has anything to do with it, I usually raid with somewhere around 60 haste, and I can put on as much as 117. I have noticed it ever since the patch though.

Anyone else had the same things seeming to be happening?

Mok · 05/27/08, 3:32 PM

Originally Posted by Pitbuller

I use this simple macro.

/use potion/trinket/drums
/in 120 /w MyName Cooldown of ItemName ended.

Now you only have to remember use CD at start and macro will notice you when it's up again.

Hi,

What addon do you need to have to use the /in command in your macros?

Thanks in advance.

Daidalos · 05/27/08, 3:33 PM

Originally Posted by Deadbeatdad

Have you evaluated wws for the mace proc, esp on end game encounters? I've had a spire, and I wear it for most fights, but I have been wholly unimpressed. In fact, for twins and muru i switch in my Zuljin Mace (Dark Blessing) for it because i get more out of the 30 spell haste then I would the proc.

From our wws, the heal affect on the Spire does about .5% of my healing on an average fight. The proc may be good, but its rate is pretty low for our group of healers. I would assume the less affective you are at healing the more procs you would get, but as your guild becomes better at SWP, the Spire would actually get worse.

This is just one of those situations where i think translating into HEP is overthinking it. The KJ mace has 23 haste that the illidan mace doesn't have, has more healing, all in place of a proc that you will need less and less. I would say in most any evaluation, if the mace of KJ comes out less desirable then the one of illidan, you did math wrong.

I'm also just amazed that your comparison ignored the haste on the KJ mace. But this thread has continued to discount haste because of its lackluster HEP value, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

One things I noticed is the amount of procs will change greatly depending on raid make up. In my old guild about 3% of my healing was from the mace proc but now its sitting around .5%. From this I think I'm going to let people decide on thier on the value of the proc. The more healers esp. druids and shaman you have the less often you will get procs. So either the mace can truely be a nice gain or do very little as both experiences are being reported. With my current raid make up the KJ mace would be far superior.

Also saying the better your guild gets at SWP the worse the proc will be also is dependant on your guid/raid. In my old guild the longer we had something on farm the fewer healers we would bring (pallys go ret priests go shadow druids go feral etc) greatly increasing my procrate. So again your mileage will vary.

fauxpas · 05/27/08, 3:44 PM

Originally Posted by Mok

Hi,

What addon do you need to have to use the /in command in your macros?

None.

Zedd · 05/27/08, 3:53 PM

AceEvent I think

Mandrachalos · 05/27/08, 7:52 PM

It is Ace or Ace2 - dunno, got both, and I whisper myself every 2 min. for new drums.

Mandrachalos · 05/27/08, 7:58 PM

Originally Posted by Mano

Take this with a grain of salt, but I'd actually start devaluing MP5 right now. I.e. go for T6 HEP values which includes haste etc already.

The reasons are:
- you get much MP5 from buffs anyway: watershield 50+mp5, mana totem also, mana tide, blessing of wisdom 41+ MP5.
- consumables. Mana pots (I see you're an alchemist, use the effect on the stone), mageblood elixir, restoration flask, mana oil, sporefish.
- you get some more MP5 anyway on many items.
- you're doing this for the raid presumably. Expect to get a shadow priest ALWAYS while your gear isn't up to snuff; this will devalue MP5 pretty directly.

I'd do the following in general:
- try to get a good weapon as a priority: [Dark Blessing], the new badge weapon from Quel'Danas or S3 are all much better than your current one. Other healing weapons (e.g. Spire) may still be out of range for a new character depending on your drop luck uptodate.
- go for 4T6 the fastest you can. E.g. bracers from Kalecgos may already be cheap as you're at M'uru. The rest from MH/BT should also be cheap except for maybe the chest.
- get items from ZA: [Enamelled Disc of Mojo] is nice, [Tome of Diabolic Remedy], [Dark Blessing], [Hauberk of the Empire's Champion], [Signet of the Quiet Forest] from the third chest, [Mojo-mender's Mask], [Cloak of Ancient Rituals]. Maybe also some of the cloth/leather items if they don't have much spirit. Most of them are not quite up to T6 standard, but they can certainly help flesh out your set. Many of them have haste - they can build the back bone of your haste set.
- you're probably won't be attuned to MH, so the faction ring will not be possible. But the trash ring from BT [Blessed Band of Karabor] is very good (and not unique). If someone in your guild/on the server already has the recipe for the BOE-Jewelcrafter ring, you might want to get one of these.

Don't forget other stuff not directly related to healing
- you may also need to get a SR set for Mother
- maybe AR for Kalecgos
- many primal water/life for your enchants

Good tips on gear, but forget about Mojo-mender's mask, because that one sucks.
Even T4 helmet is superior because of meta gem slot.

fauxpas · 05/27/08, 8:59 PM

Originally Posted by Zedd

AceEvent I think

Oops.

I just assumed that none is needed because I don't have one specififally for that and usually I'm aware of what my Addons do.

Well, anyone should have the Ace stuff anways .. I mean .. how can one possibly heal well without Grid+Clique?

Shae · 05/27/08, 9:58 PM

Originally Posted by Skyhoof

Your math needs a slight correction since I was using Rank 2 Healing Wave, which has a cast time of 2.0 seconds.

Don't forget about the Improved Healing Wave talent - the ideal cast time for your rank 2 should be just under 1.5s with a bit of haste (unless you respec'd to perform the test). The observed average cast time is ~1.723s (7237 casts in 3:27:50=12470s) which should alter the observed proc rate.

I'm still puzzled by the average cast time. I haven't been following the various discussions closely enough, but I was under the impression that with the spell casting changes and AHK, that people were approaching 0 latency while spam casting - yet that doesn't appear to be true here. I guess it's more interesting to the DPS types, but still curious - the key that AHK was sending, is it bound to a spell or a macro that /casts a spell (and possibly handles other things like using trinkets)?

Trying to think through expected proc rates with a cooldown made me question how many assumptions I'm making about how and when procs are calculated and recorded in the combatlog, and what WWS is reporting. Is anyone aware of any good source material to brush up on this post 2.4?

Just based on some very rough observations in the combatlog, the SPELL_ENERGIZE event appears to trail the SPELL_HEAL event completion by a noticeable latency. When spam casting, it appears as though the next SPELL_CAST_START event can occur before a SPELL_ENERGIZE event from the previous SPELL_HEAL event completion. I imagine that WWS is reporting the interval between the SPELL_ENERGIZE events, and our observations suggest that these events cannot occur closer than 15s. This suggests to me that proc calculations occur on spell cast completion (+latency) and that it might be possible for a portion of the next spamcast spell cast time to overlap the start of a cooldown period. But I have a beer open, and this isn't particularly rigorous science.

Zedd · 05/28/08, 4:28 AM

Originally Posted by Mano

- you're probably won't be attuned to MH, so the faction ring will not be possible. But the trash ring from BT [Blessed Band of Karabor] is very good (and not unique). If someone in your guild/on the server already has the recipe for the BOE-Jewelcrafter ring, you might want to get one of these.

Another Good option is [Band of Lucent Beams](Kalecgos) It is worse then the Blessed band as IMO but you have less competition on it.

(I am speaking from experience, It might be different in your guild. I have this one now and I rerolled just 2 weeks ago)

Pitbuller · 05/28/08, 6:22 AM

Originally Posted by Mok

Hi,

What addon do you need to have to use the /in command in your macros?

Thanks in advance.

I tested this after 2.4 patch and I din't have any add-ons. Wowwiki tell that you need cosmos but never loaded it.

Skyhoof · 05/28/08, 10:23 AM

Originally Posted by Shae

Don't forget about the Improved Healing Wave talent - the ideal cast time for your rank 2 should be just under 1.5s with a bit of haste (unless you respec'd to perform the test). The observed average cast time is ~1.723s (7237 casts in 3:27:50=12470s) which should alter the observed proc rate.

I forgot to mention that I did the test while specced Elemental. As you can see, there is no Ancestral Fortitude in the combat log.

Originally Posted by Shae

I'm still puzzled by the average cast time. I haven't been following the various discussions closely enough, but I was under the impression that with the spell casting changes and AHK, that people were approaching 0 latency while spam casting - yet that doesn't appear to be true here. I guess it's more interesting to the DPS types, but still curious - the key that AHK was sending, is it bound to a spell or a macro that /casts a spell (and possibly handles other things like using trinkets)?

The only thing bound to the key was HW Rank 2. There was no macro, just the spell. I tried using AHK on some Brutallus attempts since my target is often the tank. However, I found that the spam casting made changing targets difficult, unless I interrupted the cast. I don't plan on using it in the future. However, it was great for spamming lightning bolts.

In case it matters, my normal latency is anywhere from 200 to 400 ms.

/use potion/trinket/drums
/in 120 /w MyName Cooldown of ItemName ended.

I had no idea you could whisper yourself! I can't wait to give this a try. Before adding to the Wiki, let's figure out if it does require an add-on and if so, which one.

Shae · 05/28/08, 1:50 PM

Originally Posted by Skyhoof

I forgot to mention that I did the test while specced Elemental.

In that case, wouldn't we be expecting cast times around 1.987s (as you calculated) but appear to be observing cast times around 1.723s? Still puzzling, but in a completely different way - I thought we were seeing additional latency (expecting ~1.5s cast times, but observing longer, similar to the first test log where <1.5s cast times were expected due to haste, but ~1.535s was observed) whereas now we appear to be ahead of the game. Nice for once. =)

Aventis · 05/28/08, 4:44 PM

Originally Posted by Skyhoof

I had no idea you could whisper yourself! I can't wait to give this a try. Before adding to the Wiki, let's figure out if it does require an add-on and if so, which one.

I'm quite sure the /in function is a product of Ace. As long as you have BigWigs installed (which everyone in their right mind should) then you can use it.

Skyhoof · 05/28/08, 5:39 PM

Originally Posted by Shae

In that case, wouldn't we be expecting cast times around 1.987s (as you calculated) but appear to be observing cast times around 1.723s? Still puzzling, but in a completely different way - I thought we were seeing additional latency (expecting ~1.5s cast times, but observing longer, similar to the first test log where <1.5s cast times were expected due to haste, but ~1.535s was observed) whereas now we appear to be ahead of the game. Nice for once. =)

Oh Vey! I forgot that I had the talent to reduce cast time even as elemental. So yes, the cast time should have been 1.5 seconds so we're still seeing quite a bit of latency in my casts even with AHK. And let me redo that math in my earlier post:

Hasted cast time = 1.5/(1 + 10/1576) = 1.490542245

The internal cooldown is 15.0 seconds so 15.0/1.490542245 = 10.06345178

So you can get 10 casts in before the cooldown is finished.

278 procs * 10 casts during cooldown = 2780

7237 casts - 2780 casts during cooldown = 4457 casts where the meta could proc.

278 /4457 * 100% = 6.24% chance to proc outside of the cooldown

I'm a bit surprised to see 6.24%. I expected a value close to 5%

Sprout · 05/28/08, 7:17 PM

Originally Posted by Pitbuller

I use this simple macro.

/use potion/trinket/drums
/in 120 /w MyName Cooldown of ItemName ended.

Now you only have to remember use CD at start and macro will notice you when it's up again.

This is going into my macro list today. Very nice!

Question, can you use /p with this? What about some kind of on screen alert (a full raid warning seems rather overkill. but something popping on screen would be nice. The whisper sound is cool and all but ther eis nothing like a big fat phase right in the middle of your view to minimize the chance of missing it. A sound alerrt would be cool too.

Mandrachalos · 05/28/08, 7:28 PM

Yes, you can.

Here is my standard drums macro:

#showtooltip Drums of Battle
/use Drums of Battle
/p Drums of Battle activated - 30 secs!
/in 120 /w Mandrachalos New Drums!

If you have 2 LWers with drums in your group, you can add him with:
/in 90 /w Other guy New Drums!

Works nice.

Shae · 05/29/08, 1:21 AM

Originally Posted by Skyhoof

Oh Vey! I forgot that I had the talent to reduce cast time even as elemental. So yes, the cast time should have been 1.5 seconds so we're still seeing quite a bit of latency in my casts even with AHK. And let me redo that math in my earlier post:
Hasted cast time = 1.5/(1 + 10/1576) = 1.490542245
The internal cooldown is 15.0 seconds so 15.0/1.490542245 = 10.06345178
So you can get 10 casts in before the cooldown is finished.
278 procs * 10 casts during cooldown = 2780
7237 casts - 2780 casts during cooldown = 4457 casts where the meta could proc.
278 /4457 * 100% = 6.24% chance to proc outside of the cooldown
I'm a bit surprised to see 6.24%. I expected a value close to 5%

Oh well, casting faster than we should would be too good to be true! But in theory you expected to get a cast time of ~1.491s, while the results indicate it was actually closer to ~1.723s. So following your example, 15/1.723=~8.7 casts, and in turn 278/(7237-8*278)=~5.5% observed proc rate, which is closer but still not quite as expected.

I'll confess I'm not convinced I really understand how and when the proc calculations occur and are recorded in the combat log, and how much variance network latency introduces into the mix. For example, the intervals between proc events did not appear to drop below 15s, but there did appear to be a wide spread of measured intervals in the results - I'll have to go back and look more closely, but I didn't notice anything that seemed obviously like quantization around multiples of spell cast times (though this would be more obvious with longer spell casts). There also appears to be some noticeable latency between the spell completion event and the proc event itself (just skimming the first page of your WWS, this latency ranges from 200-400ms) that could overlap the start of the next spell cast time. I wish I had more answers than questions - I guess I'll have to run a few tests of my own. =)

Lugklash · 05/29/08, 4:47 AM

Originally Posted by Mandrachalos

Good tips on gear, but forget about Mojo-mender's mask, because that one sucks.
Even T4 helmet is superior because of meta gem slot.

The available metas aren't especially amazing for healers. IED is 12 int and approx 18 mp5 (according to the value shown on the wiki). This is the good meta. BED is 26 healing and -2% threat. It's basically a glorified Teardrop Crimson Spinel. Unless you seriously need the mana return from IED, MMM with 3x Teardrop Living Ruby is going to outperform the t4 helm. If you lose the 2pc bonus for dropping the t4 helm on the other hand, I wouldn't do it.

Mandrachalos · 05/29/08, 5:10 AM

Well, depends on how you value MP5 at your current gear level I guess.
But yeah, if you don't put much value on the MP5 anymore, MMM is better.