Warning for Redcape: 2. All opinions should be stated as succinctly as possible.

• Chicken · 08/21/09, 4:29 AM

Post: Glyph of Divine Storm
User: Redcape
Infraction: 2. All opinions should be stated as succinctly as possible.
Points: 0

Administrative Note:

Message to User:

Avoid splitting people's quotes in a paragraph per paragraph basis. Using multiple quotes from different people in a topic is fine, but if you have to reply on a paragraph per paragraph basis, I'd recommend rereading your post and see if you really needed to post all that you did.

Original Post:

Originally Posted by Shldnhearth

The fact that you would only be using this as a substitute for the Exorcism glyph makes the discussion moot for the overwhelming majority of Rets who use the SoV glyph anyway.

I'm all for raid utility (sometimes I feel like I'm too outspoken in favor of taking Divine Sacrifice) but in this instance I can't see the benefits of the trade-off.

Quite true. SoV Glyph is much higher dps if your gear setup makes it useful (which is does for most people I suspect). I would glyph for SoV instead of Divine Storm if that was a sensible choice given the gear I have. It isn't, and there are other people in that situation.

Originally Posted by SwordSa1nt

I completely agree with Zurm. Sacrificing dps for questionable utility like this glyph is, for me, against the min-maxing phillosophy most players in progression guilds follow, and unnecessary and counter-productive residue of the old "armored ambulance" mentality. We don't need to "justify" our raid spot anymore with long theories and made-up scenarios.

Of course we don't. We justify it based doing substantial dps coupled with excellent buffs and some very useful utility, which is the same as any other class. This isn't about begging your raid leader to let you play, it is about maximizing the contribution you can make to the success of the raid overall.

Minmaxing is not about you having the highest dps number on recount. It is about giving your raid the maximum chance possible to defeat the encounter given the tools you have. The essence of minmaxing is looking at every available option (even ones with very small effects) and considering their merits, regardless of what your raid role is named.

I would like to point out that EVERY top guild was extremely happy to take dpsers with terrible dps along to sunwell if they had high utility. In particular, consider shadow priests! They basically brought direct healing as well as indirect healing (mana showered onto the healers) and their dps was never competitive once you got to full t6 gearing. The fact is that smart raid leaders and guilds will gladly scoop up dpsers with substandard damage but amazing passive healing capabilities. At the moment there is no spec that does that since the JoL nerf, but the basic point that dps being sacrificed for healing is not new, crazy or the province of scrubs. It was considered standard/necessary in the past in extremely difficult content and only awaits the appropriate numbers for it to be chosen again. Glyph of DS is in no way similar in power to Shadow Priest mana return in Sunwell, but the tradeoff is identical: small dps loss for larger healing gain.

Originally Posted by Zurm

Your question here is based on two faulty assumptions. Your first assumption is that the fight has no mechanic where one or more bosses gain HP, and where the boss has no raid obliteration ability. The DPS in my guild is our strongest group; we all tend to place very highly on WMO's rankings and always get good parses for our class. That being said, it wasn't uncommon for us to wipe on Algalon or Iron-Council hard mode with the last boss at 500k hp or less. Does 50 dps from one person matter that much? Probably not. But if everyone let themselves slack 50-100 dps those attempts, they could have been wins (especially since algalon ends the fight early).

Obviously if everyone in the raid slacks off and raid dps goes way down the chance that it makes you lose goes up hugely. However I did not suggest that everyone in the raid lose dps to no end! Clearly losing a substantial amount of dps is bad, but losing a person is also terrible. People die. Even in top guilds people die on progression raiding. You don't lose every encounter to a enrage. Many, many encounters are lost when a single dpser dies (or the tank dies). The whole point I am trying to make is that when people die, you fail dps checks. Preventing player deaths will prevent wipes.

Originally Posted by Zurm

Your second assumption is that the entire encounter's DPS check is based around one (or a small number) of very high-hp mobs. Anyone who's attempted Yogg (especially 1k or 0k pre-nerf) can tell you that one person slacking on tentacles in the portals can lead to a wipe due to an extra crusher spawn. Are you telling me 20% extra damage on an ability with a high burst factor does not outweigh a measily 15% extra healing on a weak heal to begin with in this situation?

As a matter of fact, that is exactly what I am saying. In nearly every case of course you can run with that glyph slot blank and still perform your job exactly the same: We are talking about 1% dps. However, there are times when you will blast that tentacle with a strike and it sits there with 80 hp and the exorcism glyph would have been great. And there are times when the warrior WW/Cleaves 3 tentacles, gets a massive string of crits and is at precisely 50 hp because your DS healed him. Both situations don't usually come up, but both have the potential to be critical.

Originally Posted by Zurm

And no, I've never experienced a situation where the AoE was just a "tiny" bit more than the healers can handle. When you have the strat wrong, its obvious. When you get the strat right, it's a joke.

Again, are you suggesting that no one in your guild is ever dead until enrage is reached? Sometimes incoming damage is simply too much, or the healers have a lag spike, or someone gets graphical issues and takes slightly more damage than they normally do. When that happens, a small heal CAN matter even if you are playing with the best healers in the world.

Originally Posted by Arikah

That I can remember (per your example situation above) there were exactly 2 times in wrath raiding where I've died from raid damage that had less than 200 overkill - one was unavoidable and the entire raid was wiping anyways, and the other was my own damn fault for standing in fire.

For perspective, a single FoL heals for more than DS does and can crit; a shadowpriest in your group heals for much more than DS does, and an actual group heal like CoH blows DS away. .

So if an effect a glyph can generate is worse than Circle of Healing it isn't worth considering? By that logic we should not Glyph for 20% more exorcism damage because that effect is worse than Fireball. We aren't comparing major class abilities from other classes to our glyphs, that isn't constructive. Just look at your two options and see which makes most sense in and of itself.

Originally Posted by Zurm

Allow me to make an analogy. From my viewpoint, all of you arguing about our healing and utility make about as much sense to me as a tank or healer trying to maximize their DPS. Is it nice and potentially helpful? Sure, but NEVER at the cost of your primary role. To any degree. This is seriously like the holy paladins making a thread to discuss how to maximize their judgement damage.

I certainly don't want my tanks equipping gear with crit. I DO want them to think about what abilities they use and how they can maximize they output given acceptable losses in survivability. Thing is, if your tank could lose 1 hp and gain 4k dps, you would make that trade instantly. Again, you clearly aren't going to trade 1k sta for 1k crit, but there is a point where the tradeoff is worth it and it is worth investigating where that point is. In the case of your MT the tradeoff is probably so crazy that it will never come up and simply looking *only* at survival is the same as considering your theoretical 1 stamina to 80 crit ratio. In the case of a dpser though, if your personal dps is halved but you bring absolutely massive benefits you can still easily find a raid spot.

Originally Posted by zeidrich

Here's my counterpoint: Ret paladins already have a way to modulate their damage down to increase healing done. This is through FoL on AoW procs. It's even "smarter" than Divine Storm because you choose who to cast it on. If you want to modulate healing up, you can use every AoW proc when Exorcism is on cooldown to heal.

This is a mistake. No rational ret paladin is using every AoW proc for FoL because you are trading off a 7k strike for 3k healing. I am suggesting trading off 50 dps for 77 hps, which is dramatically better. If you want to up your healing you should use the DS glyph FIRST because it is a much greater return on your tradeoff and use Flash as a secondary option.

Originally Posted by zeidrich

Also, looking at Redcape's armory, it looks like he raids 10-mans primarily. A situation where you are healing 3 targets out of 10 (30% of the raid) with 2 healers in the group seems a lot more valuable than where you are healing 3 targets out of 25 (8.3% of the raid) with 5-6 healers.

I am not convinced this is relevant at all. The heal hits your lowest hp target first. Only if the entire heal is consumed does it spill over, so it will be hitting precisely one target in 99%+ of raid situations regardless of how many people are in your raid.

To summarize my point:

The Glyph of Exorcism is only useful for those with extremely heavy expertise on their gear and who do not have good nonexpertise sidegrades. If you are in that situation then GoE is your best remaining pure damage glyph, though it is a weak one. Trading off dps for healing willy nilly is a mistake, but trading off the extremely weak effect of GoE for the slightly less weak (per my argument, anyhow) GoDS is a net gain for overall raid success.

Maximizing damage is extremely important, but our job is not to do maximum damage, but rather to maximize the chance that the boss dies instead of us. My contention is that the GoDS is a better choice given that mandate.