[Resto] Cataclysm (Old/4.1) - Page 57

Nihlo · 02/22/11, 4:23 AM

I just wanted to find the best way to get the cap. The ways I've seen here so far:

switch to Alchemy just for the 200 haste on a trinket which only has normal mode ilvl
use legs as t11-offpiece, although the chest has the worst stats and you need more luck/tries to get Al'akir's legs than e.g Wyrmling's chest
use Moonkin t11 heroic legs, but at least on 25 man content you probably won't get a hero token from another spec before 4.1 comes
loose a lot of spirit and mastery by taking items without them, which could be crucial at least on 25man content

In my eyes it's not as easy as it seems to get to the cap if you try not to loose a lot of int, spirit and mastery. For those with Dark Intent, I recommend: chardev 8 - Cataclysm Beta

• Mex · 02/22/11, 7:44 AM

Okay, first up it's not a cap, it's a breakpoint. It's not something that you just gear to, then leave your haste sitting at that value for ever and ever afterwards. Rather, it's a specific point where the value of additional haste drastically peaks. The closer you are to that point, the more powerful haste will become compared to other stats. Saying that you 'lose' spirit and mastery in order to get haste is a facile way of looking at the problem. All of our stats have one ultimate effect -- they increase the amount of healing we do in a fight. The key is to configure the stat points that we have available for manipulation into the most effective configuration for increasing our healing output.

The best way to get to the breakpoint is to trade your least powerful stats for haste. It's as simple as that. Reforge all the crit that you can. Then spirit. Then mastery. Then swap items with less int but more haste. Again, whether or not this is worth it or not will depend on how close you are to the breakpoint and how large the sacrifices you're making are. Use a spreadsheet if you're looking for more precise numbers.

It's critical though that people get out of the mindset of needing X amount of a certain stat. 2005 haste is a great amount to have, but it's not worth losing 800 intellect for, for instance. Similarly, spirit is a really useful stat and helps us not go oom in fights, which is important. However if you can trade 120 spirit for 120 haste and in doing so hit 2005, then you've just increased the amount that every single WG you cast during a fight heals for by about ~12.5%. By contrast, that 120 spirit will provide enough mana for roughly 1.5 WGs over the course of a 7 minute fight. So if you're casting more than about two WGs per minute, you'll end up with more healing done from the haste.

Wrate · 02/23/11, 5:04 AM

I see many druids here trying to reach 2005 haste. And many chardev build aim 2005 haste rating with Shard of woe but, personally I aim 2031 haste so my rejuv get a 6th tick under the Celerity effect from Shard of woe. I think it worth it for 26 haste rating only.

Flightform · 02/24/11, 6:46 AM

Originally Posted by frdrk

I can't help but think that the way we quantify stat values is still too far from the "real" world of raiding. For example, Wild Growth on every cooldown sounds good on paper, but is there honestly any fight in the game where you actually do this?

I've found that using WG on CD is extremely helpful on 25 Halfus and 25 Maloriak hardmodes, and pretty much every other situation where there is a lot of consistent raid damage. In fact, at a certain point, WG eclipses my Rejuv healing on some fights. For example, on our Halfus kill tonight (World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis) WG did a full 6% more healing than my Rejuv. If you compare my parse against our other Resto Druid (Biggesize) who is not at the 2005 haste breakpoint, you can see the contrast. He and I share similar gear, similar play style, and the same raid-healing role.

I think that in any 25m raid-healing role, you will probably see a greater benefit in haste stacking (assuming you can reach the WG breakpoint) rather than mastery stacking. It's difficult to predict where WG will go, which makes its benefit from mastery unstable at best. You may see a higher mastery benefit during ToL, due to multiple LB/Rejuv rolling but that's periodic and situational.

Obviously, in a 10m raid the playing field shifts a great deal where mastery may come even with or outpace haste as the optimal stat, due to the limited amount of players, and the tank healing you're probably picking up on as well. My healing experience in the current 10mans is limited so I can't speak much on this subject.

Jesinta · 02/24/11, 10:42 AM

In Hamlet's original post, he explains that

"Mastery rating:
123.64 mastery rating adds 1% to our Symbiosis bonus. The exact value of this depends on your particular spell usage and healing technique. It tends to be strong in 10-man or smaller content, and even in 25-man if you use WG and Rejuvenation heavily."

My main is a Holy/Disc Priest but have started doing some alt raids with my Resto Druid. For Priests, 179.28 Mastery Rating = 1% Mastery and I am not sure why/how this would be different for Druids? Am I missing a talent or Glyph or is this a standard feature?

Playered · 02/24/11, 11:06 AM

Originally Posted by Jesinta

In Hamlet's original post, he explains that

"Mastery rating:
123.64 mastery rating adds 1% to our Symbiosis bonus. The exact value of this depends on your particular spell usage and healing technique. It tends to be strong in 10-man or smaller content, and even in 25-man if you use WG and Rejuvenation heavily."

My main is a Holy/Disc Priest but have started doing some alt raids with my Resto Druid. For Priests, 179.28 Mastery Rating = 1% Mastery and I am not sure why/how this would be different for Druids? Am I missing a talent or Glyph or is this a standard feature?

Classes get different % from their mastery stat. 1 point (for lack of a better word) of mastery for Druids gives us an additional 1.45% increased effect on our mastery. Shamans gain an additional 3% bonus effect for 1 point of mastery. Priests are 2.5% and 1.25% per point of mastery.

• Hamlet · 02/25/11, 11:42 AM

Efflorescence graphic changed

It's good to try to make all these effects less annoying. Some of us had been pointing this out since beta. Of course, I'd still rather they make it do a reasonable quantity of healing.

Vand1 · 02/25/11, 11:52 AM

According to thekrucha on the mmo forum, not only is the graphic changed, but the way the spell works has as well. If he is correct, efflo will now target the lowest-health person within the area of effect each second for an instant heal 30% the size of your SM (assuming 3/3 efflo talent). That heal is affected by mastery.

If this is correct, it would certainly make SM/efflo much more valuable for 10-man tank healing, where SM can be a valuable spell to keep tanks up, but the silly green circle has been so meh when there is only one person standing in it.

kameelyan · 02/25/11, 12:04 PM

Originally Posted by Vand1

According to thekrucha on the mmo forum, not only is the graphic changed, but the way the spell works has as well. If he is correct, efflo will now target the lowest-health person within the area of effect each second for an instant heal 30% the size of your SM (assuming 3/3 efflo talent). That heal is affected by mastery.

If this is correct, it would certainly make SM/efflo much more valuable for 10-man tank healing, where SM can be a valuable spell to keep tanks up, but the silly green circle has been so meh when there is only one person standing in it.

If this is true, then this is quite good. Here's a log report from heroic Chim last night:
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

While it should be noted I don't heal the raid in this encounter, we can still look at efflo values versus SM values. My average SM was 21684.9. 30% of that is roughly 7200. 7200 x 7 = 45400. Currently, it would do 30% to up to 6 people without being diminished. So that equates to 7200 x 6. On a fight like Chim, we can assume during feud phases that there will be a diminished value on the heal. Conversely, we can assume during non feud phases, efflo will hit up to 2 targets. Thus the heal is greatly reduced to 7200 or 14400 respectively.

With this change, we'll always gain the full heal benefit from efflo (by full heal benefit I mean currently you need 6 people in the circle to get the fully benefit). If it's one target, it'll heal for 7200 per tick on the on target. That's quite nice, even for tank healing.

• Hamlet · 02/25/11, 12:15 PM

Hmm. Interesting idea, I'm not convinced though. Right now it heals 6 people each for a total 30% over the duration. After this it would heal for 7 30% ticks. So it will be a bit "smarter," but the total amount isn't changed very much. Since the quantity of Efflo healing output right now is so low as to barely justify the talent, I don't think that rearranging the way the heal is delivered is likely to change much.

That is a more interesting mechanic perhaps, and it will make it better to SM a single unclumped target, but it doesn't address the underlying weakness of the spell.

Nihlo · 02/25/11, 12:24 PM

Here are some pics of the new Efflorescence:
http://img402.imageshack.us/g/wowscr...511181619.jpg/
the link from above doesn't work for me.

What do you think of the new trinkets ?

Jaws of Defeat
Eye of Awareness
Fiery Quintessence
Mark of the Firelord

Playered · 02/25/11, 12:25 PM

From some brief napkin math I'm not sure it can be considered a buff in 25 man raiding on encounters where the raid clusters up.
An example being on Chimaeron where you have 20+ people able to benefit from it I had: 196 ticks healing an average of 319.0 to the sum of 62526 from 1 single Efflorescence (SM was not a crit, healed for 23k). The new style will instead heal about 48k in the same situation.

Having said that the new way it has been designed seems a lot better and far easier to balance (Your Eff will heal x amount as long as one person is in it). Sure the high end has been toned back but the low end will heal for more than the current version does when you have between 1-6 players in it and most likely more than if you had 7+. Not only that but drop the losses of when people move out of the effect half way through or something but this is under the assumption there is always 1 person in it still.

I suppose the best way to think of the change is that Effloresence has been normalized.
Some figures assuming the above 23k SM:
New (.) 48300
Old (1) 6900
Old (2) 13800
Old (3) 20700
Old (4) 27600
Old (5) 34500
Old (6) 41400

One part I really like about the change is that it will not feel 'wasted' if I have to Swiftmend on a tank rather than using it on a cluster of raiders which is an aspect I have loathed about the design since it moved from RG to SM.

• Hamlet · 02/25/11, 12:30 PM

Right, I think the normalization idea is good--but even how weak the maximum output is in the first place, it still just needs a buff independently of that.

Trinkets: Jaws of Defeat will be tricky to math out. I'll see what I can do. Eye of Awareness is just Althor's Abacus (although not as attractive as that one since we actually like other stats now). Quintessence is straightforward (cooldown is probably actually something like 100 seconds).

tangedyn · 02/25/11, 2:10 PM

Originally Posted by Hamlet

Hmm. Interesting idea, I'm not convinced though. Right now it heals 6 people each for a total 30% over the duration. After this it would heal for 7 30% ticks. So it will be a bit "smarter," but the total amount isn't changed very much. Since the quantity of Efflo healing output right now is so low as to barely justify the talent, I don't think that rearranging the way the heal is delivered is likely to change much.

The real benefit of the new Efflorescence mechanics probably comes in when there's less than 6 people within the circle, in the sense that you don't "waste" healing anymore with less than 6.

Use it for tank healing and Efflorescence talent becomes "increase Swiftmend healing by 210%"

• Hamlet · 02/25/11, 2:13 PM

Yes. On level it makes Swiftmend into a kind of goofy tank cooldown. Again, with better numbers, it could be kind of compelling--but ultimately, it probably couldn't be used reliably in place of a "real" cooldown, due to lack of a mitigation effect.

We should probably get more confirm on the mechanic before going on with this.