Wilbert

Did anyone see the redeemer's Alchemist stone?

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...hemystones.jpg

Worth going alchemy for pre-sunwell you think?

 

Currylaksa

If you pot regularly, this new alchemist stone destroys all other healing trinkets in TBC. Same amount of healing as the Memento, but double the mp5.

 

Arkoth

To address the new alchemy trinket:
As a druid that is in a raid that has just recently downed Illidan, and thus not expecting to get a t6 chest anytime soon, I have leveled up leatherworking to craft the chest once 2.4 hits live. Using drums is an additional bonus that i quite like, and use regularly. Up till today I was quite content with my profession choices (Enchanting+Leatherworking).
However, looking at this trinket - I am not quite so sure anymore. Currently, I have no possibility to acquire either a memento or a t6 chest.

My current equipment in the relevant slots: Jade Ring of the Everliving, Honored healing Hyjal ring, but will get the revered version in one or two runs, Nalorakk robe with 3x Teardrop Living Rubies, EotM + Battlemaster/Bangle trinkets.

What do you think would be the right course of action for me? Staying LW when I craft my chest, and using drums (We only have a handful of leatherworkers in the raid, and drums do make a difference in my opinion), or should I just craft the chest and respec Alchemy, since I will still be able to wear the chest?

Also, what would you do in a similar situation?
I am usually in a tank group with no outside ways of restoring mana, but I get to innervate myself most of the time. I usually drink potions every time the cooldown is up, if the encounter demands it.

 

Pyros

I'm in roughly the same situation, only that I might get a T6 chest before patch, will depend on our luck with drops(if a lot drop then I'll be able to get one for cheap). I'm also hesitating since I've seen the healing stone, because while all the other stones somewhat suck, the healing one is straight out awesome.

However my main concern is this. Besides the fact that I'd have to level alchemy which means I'll have to level herb AGAIN on an alt and stuff, the issue here is, alchemist stone provides a ~40heal boost over eotm/battlemaster trinkets, and a decent mp5 improvement IF you chain chug potions. However with 2.4, mana regen being boosted and all, I'm not sure I, as an individual, will need to chain drink super mana on top of my natural regen(again dependant on group setups but whatever). In comparison, while drums restore much less mana, they restore it for everyone in your group, aka the retarded regen classes, paladins and shamans. You gain less as an individual, but more as a group, and I'm actually wondering if it'll be worth using(as in, will I be able to use all the mana?) over just helping mana regen on shitty classes, or if I end up in tank group, buffing threat generation with a haste drum.

So overall, it's "only" a 40ish heal improvement, and maybe a mana regen improvement depending on your usage, your assignements, your group and how much you feel like farming between raids. Haven't done the math but drums turn out as like, what, 20mp/5 for the group? Tough choice in my opinion, and I'll probably end up choosing what I chose when I was pondering getting JC for the neck then dropping it: Probably not worth the money/hassle to get.

 

Norfair

Well as far as I know there are pretty good alternatives for T6 chest in 2.4. I think there's a badge one, a LW one and one that drops in Sunwell. So LW seems the lesser of professions. Also, the trinket is a better upgrade than the 2x healing enchant rings. (Very nice mana regen on it and at least 40 +healing upgrade, probably 50 +healing on your other trinket.) I'd keep Enchanting and level Alchemy if you can be arsed.

Must say I'm very happy to see these new stones, pr0 itemisation by Blizzard (for healers at least).

Keep f**king that chicken.

 

Melador

Personally, I'd like to see Regrowth buffed in a different way: make the duration of its HoT portion longer, not shorter, but still tick for the meager 400-or-so-per-3s that it currently does.

Our 2 second cast is already too short to beat out a Paladin that's on the ball, and having a short-but-potent HoT immediately after the fact is going to be adding healing when someone needs it the least -- right when they're getting an avalanche of heals from every other healer in the raid.

Extending its duration would make it truly dual-purpose: good, but expensive for healing random raid damage, but also superb swiftmend fodder. Extending the duration would make the swiftmend as large as a rejuv swiftmend, and it would make it much more fire-and-forget. Big AoE packs where your mages/locks are likely to get gibbed? Throw a regrowth on all of them at the beginning, and then you're primed for an emergency heal on any of them for quite a while. Even on a tank it would be helpful, I mostly do it for the HoT portion anyways, so we wouldn't be burning 900 mana nearly as often on a 3k direct heal that's generally overhealing.

Swiftmend is the best thing that's ever happened to druid healing, and I wish that they'd leverage it more, especially if they're going to explicably nerf lifebloom.

 

Heffro

The option you don't seem to be considering is:

1. Acquire the last two rings you'll ever need. Maybe a pair of the new Sunwell trash rings (Ring of Harmonic Beauty? ... not yet in wowhead). Enchant them.

2. Drop enchanting and level jewelcrafting. Craft an [Amulet of Flowing Life].

3. Drop jewelcrafting and pick up alchemy. Craft your new trinket.

It would be expensive, but if you're an incorrigible min-maxer, you'd get the best bonuses from all professions while ending up with the two professions you need to keep, since drums are LW only and the trinket is alchemy only.

 

vendel

Any numbers on the lifebloom nerf yet>

 

Pyros

Like 3pages back or something, lifebloom ticks for 9% less than on live(don't have new coeff cause I'm too lazy to remember all these numbers). A pretty bad nerf but well.

 

Currylaksa

Switching crafting professions to min-max sunwell loot is too hardcore. When Sunwell arrives, WOTLK could be around the corner to override your hard-earned epics with levelling greens.

Save your money!

Well there's 2-set T5 if you are into longer regrowths.

People have different ideas for how regrowth should be. Some want stronger upfront heals, others want better HoT portion. Personally I thought it is fine the way it is, as a situational oh-shit heal when the splash healers are catching up.

 

Pyros

That's pretty stupid really. You might as well stop raiding right now, after all wotlk is just around the corner by your logic. Hell you should probably stop playing wow, wow2 is right around the corner too. Really, if by right around the corner you mean about 4-6months after 2.4 goes live, then yeah sure. They haven't even started the beta, and blizzard isn't the kind of company to skip on a lenghty beta to make sure their product is ready. While they released wow a bit too early(mainly because of EQ2 competition), they had almost a year of beta before that. With BC, they had 5months of beta(or was it 6?forgot when I got in, was alpha for a bit though).

Also unless they change it again, for BC, you could keep your naxx epics until karazhan and well into it.

Na switching profressions is the easiest way to get gear upgrades over T6, and they're rather cheap/easy to get. There's no reason not to consider them, unless you're forced to keep your current tradeskills or don't have alts to get the gathering profession up and have no money to afford leveling it without gathering yourself.

The real question is how many do you want to level then drop. You probably want enchanting once you get the trash ring and assuming you have MH exalted ring; you could level JC, craft the neck, and drop it, then level LW, craft the chest/gloves, and drop it, then level engineering, craft the goggle and drop it, then level alchemy and keep that with the trinket. All depends on how much effort you want to put in, how much gold you have to waste, and what are the biggest upgrades for you(chest/gloves are pretty good, neck is decent, helm is minor, trinket is very good)

 

• Playered

How is Regrowth "oh shit" when a RJ/SM combo is faster and better for that same purpose (RJ->1.5 sec GCD->SM vs 2.0 sec RG / both effected by haste in favor of the RG).

Either adaption is better than its current incarnation which is medicore in both sitations.

A primary HoT spell with an upfront heal would ideally have a longer cast time (see HT) a smaller ratio on the direct heal and a longer, stronger HoT - considering you are using this spell for the HoT thus the cast time and magnitude of the initial cast is meaningless.

A primary direct healing spell would have more on the upfront heal, a much shorter duration on the HoT and ideally a slightly shorter casting time.

Using a 6k heal as an example but I believe it would end up flawed due to cast time coef or so:
Direct: 1.5/1.75 sec cast - 4k Heal + 2k HoT (12 sec duration, 3 sec tick, 500 Heal // 8 sec duration, 2 sec tick, 500 Heal)
HoT: 2.5/3 sec cast - 1k Heal + 5k HoT (30 sec duration, 3 sec tick, 500 Heal // 21 sec duration, 3 sec tick, 700 Heal)

The latter is closer to what Regrowth is currently, but right now too much is wasted on the direct heal to make the spells primary use as the HoT.


The reason for more wanting a quick direct heal conversion is due to our lack of one.
Our primary raid healing option is either heavily reliant on no other spell healing the target over 7 seconds (and there being no rush on healing them either) or them taking enough damage to mean that another heal ontop will not result in much over healing. We also have Tranq but on a 10min CD, a channel, a large cost, and finally being group & AoE restricted its use is VERY situational, heck DLK is potentially the only boss where it seems to fit perfectly (Naj'entus not so much because you are required to go through atleast 3-5 shields unless you are compeltly overgeared and on total farm status).

The problem with a long duration HoT is that they end up very weak (lets face it RG is doing around 150-180 HPS at max rank..) because of how the +healing ends up applied, when you consider a direct heal ontop of that it really does ruin its intention because an already weak concept is made (pointlessly) weaker.
Having a 30+ second long, fire & forget HoT which actually provided good healing seems rather pointless however because so many ticks will end up wasted - heck this even happens on our low duration HoTs and lets face it LB is hardly actually healing the tank once per second, it ends up more like 2-4/7 ticks that actually heal unless no one else is healing that tank.


This is potentially where the PvP problems come too; in PvE alot of our ticks tend to get excluded thanks to overhealing of others due to there most often being potential burst damage or general hits far higher than HoTs can be able to heal up.
In PvP you tend to either have very high burst periods or a general onslaught of damage over an extended time, most often where the target will not be at max health often.
WoW PvP has mostly evolved into endurance fights (2v2/3v3 - where we are 'vastly' superior) with the occasional very high burst teams, except 5v5 which tend to have alot more burst potential in general.
Resil also works too well in our favor as it reduces the burst damage even lower meaning smaller hits of damage over a longer duration as people are able to survive spike damage which is a HoTs only real weakness.


Infact im quite confident on saying Resilience is the reason for Druid superiority in lower brackets, and upon realisation I actually laugh at how misconceived Blizzard were at the introduction of it, reap what you soe matey.

 

Currylaksa

Regardless of the release date of WOTLK, it is still unnecessarily hardcore to switch professions for a piece of gear that is superior only in that patch version. Bottom line is you probably gain only a one-patch advantage. If WOTLK gets delayed, Blizzard will issue another content patch with new instances and new itemizations, which should be superior to Sunwell loot of similar groupings (raid/badge). If in that fictional 2.5 patch were they to release new cool items for a specific profession, will you dump a profession for that or take a long term approach?

Participating in a raid is quite different from dumping one crafting profession for another. You join a raid, you get epics. For crafting professions, you are looking at a big gold cost to re-level, as well as the opportunity cost of dumping your old profession. It is not cheap and easy.

 

• athanyel

Personally, I would prefer to see Naturalist reduce the cast time on Regrowth instead or along with Healing Touch.

With the same .5s reduction in cast time, Regrowth would be a decent fast cast without replacing the fast casts of the other healing classes. With my current gear and build, I would see 1515 HPS on non-crits and 2272 HPS on crits. Frankly, I like those kind of numbers. The mana cost of Regrowth would make it a very poor substitute for Flash of Light spam but it would be nice both in a pinch and for weaving between Lifeblooms.

 

• Playered

Respecing for PvP/PvE is far more expensive than changing a profession, its what 500g~ to buy the majority of mats for most of them (enchanting being above, and a fair bit more expensive)? and you could just pick up the pre-quisit gathering profession first and spend a couple of hours farming the mats you need for leveling your crafting profession regardless.

 

Pyros

That's very subjective and relative to everyone. Waiting for your tradeskill to get "fixed" might take you a year. Remember smithing? Once Arcanite reaper wasn't the best thing around, smithes had to wait until... BC. That was like, 1.5year? In comparison, dropping a tradeskill and leveling a new one will take a week at most if you're pretty casual, and in my case 2days at most. The money costs can be recouped by disenchanting what you craft and selling it(low level enchant mats always sell well), or simply negated by leveling the related gathering profession first(drop skill X, train mining, level it to 375 in a few days, drop it, level smithing, use what you mined, fill the gaps with your money).

In the end, you're looking at a pretty low cost for each item. I'm sorry but 1k gold investment for the best chest or necklace in the game until the patch after(so ~2months minimum) is a good investment, however you look at it. 1k gold is a week of doing daillies, so about 7hours(1hour a day) of grinding. Some of the tradeskills, namely alchemy, don't even cost 200g to level.

As I said, the only situations you could hesitate in is if you had very rare recipes(alchemy mostly). In most situations these rare recipes don't sell anymore though. You tried selling spellstrike lately, you might get one, maybe 2crafts a month, and you're not even making a lot off the nethers, compared to just crafting legs enchants. Enchanting and JC are the only craft that can still make decent money off rare patterns, and with JC on my server it's actually not so profitable anymore cause everyone and their mother have a JC alt.

And if Blizzard were to release a 2.5 patch with better craftables, I'd sure drop my tradeskills to get the new ones. Why wouldn't I? Because a few months after there will be better shit? So what, what am I gonna use my money on anyway. It's exactly the same as if you were raiding with a dkp system, but when T6 drops, you say, oh no I'm not gonna loot that, next patch there will be 6.5. Then when you're in sunwell, you say oh no I'm not gonna bid on that, next patch I can get T7. Or the same as saying, oh not I'm not going to bother enchanting my gear, because it'll get replaced.

It's a mmo, your gear will eventually be replaced in a matter of months(year if you had thunderfury in prebc wow ^^) anyway, so why not get the best gear that's available to you, unless you know for sure that something better is coming in like, a week. But not getting gear because a patch MIGHT come in a few months which MIGHT contain better items, making your whole 1k gold getting wasted? I'm sorry but I call that stupid.

 

Kalaghan

Okay, so I've just come to an interesting conclusion about the spirit regen impacts and I have seen it discussed nearly as much as the lifebloom nerf and thought it could contribute to this thread. This all stemmed from a discussion about innervate priorities in 2.4, and the fact that high int classes may be a more viable option. I haven't looked into which classes will benefit most from my innervate yet (I'm being told arcane mages in 2.4), but it seems based on the following math I certainly won't need my own innervate (I've used 600 raid buffed int as a benchmark, so bear this in mind when evaluating the results). I'm aware a lot of similar discussion has gone on in the thread I link (follow the spirit formula), but thought this could contribute in the tree thread as well.

It appears the new formula for spirit based mana regen is given by 5*0.00932715221261 * sqrt(Int) * Spirit. This is for outside the 5-second rule, and is still a rough but reasonably accurate approximation based on an incomplete data-set.

Spirit provides:
0.3*5*SPI*0.009327*INT^0.5 mp5 inside the 5-second rule via 3/3 Intensity

So a change in spirit (ΔSPI) gives the following increase in mana regen:
Δmp5 = 0.3*5*ΔSPI*0.009327*INT^0.5

I'm sitting at 484int right now with just mark, so I'll be generous and estimate it at around 600 raid buffed.

Δmp5 = 0.3*5*ΔSPI*0.009327*600^0.5
Δmp5 = 0.3*5*0.009327*24.5*ΔSPI
Δmp5 = 0.3427*ΔSPI

So I want to find how much spirit for 1mp5:
ΔSPI = 1mp5/0.3427 = 2.9 Spirit

This assumes I'm inside the 5-second rule 100% of the time. The effective mp5 change when I'm not inside is given by:
0.102809/0.3 = 1.1423
ΔSPI = 1mp5/1.1423 = SPI

Let X = % time spent inside the 5-second rule:
ΔSPI = 2.9*X+.9(1-X) = 2X + .9 <==Spirit required to equal 1mp5

Now, factor in Kings & Living Spirit:
(2X + .9)/(1.15*1.10)= 1.6X + .7 <==Itemized Spirit equal to 1mp5

From the itemization point perspective 1mp5 = 2.5 spirit.
1.6X + .7 < 2.5 (always true, since 0<X<100%)
Hence, spirit regen would be better than mp5 hands down in 2.4, even without a self-innervate. What's more though, I've generally gone from the principle that the ipoints are roughly accurate for mana regen right now assuming self innervate.
That is:
Spirit + Innervate ~= mp5 in 2.3 (itemization standpoint)
Spirit > mp5 in 2.4 (from above)
Spirit(2.4) > mp5 ~= Spirit(2.3) + Innervate
mp5(2.4) = mp5(2.3)
Total Regen in 2.4 > Total Regen in 2.3 + Innervate

Hence, not only do other classes gain more from our innervate in 2.4, but we should very realistically be able to manage to give it away under most circumstances. If only they messing with LB.

 

Ithildin

I learned a lot reading this post. Thanks so much for the effort. I'm still a littly fuzzy on trade-offs between mp5 and spirit. Specifically, your post and others seem to indicate that innervate is really only driven by spirit. Perhaps I'm reading the post wrong. I have an arena resto-druid that doesn't have a single point of spirit. His mp5 is something like 250. When I innervate and look at my character sheet at the mana regeneration box the number changes to roughly 1000 for the entire duration of the innervate.

It seems that if you can make use of innervate with mp5 based mana regeneration alone then the comparison between the two stats becomes more difficult. Sure high spirit may make innervate work even better but mp5 is always working and I'm always within my 5 second rule.

Does that really nice chart you made take the fact that innervate can work on mp5 alone into account?

 

Xantcha

Even if you have no points in spirit you still have your base spirit.

 

Ithildin

Ah I see....that makes sense. Thanks

 

Dokos

Does anyone know how much haste is needed to drop the global cooldown to 1.3-1.4? Im interested in being able to roll 5 blooms when needed.

If there's a topic on this one sorry but global cooldown haste and lifebloom yield too many results.

 

Pyros

Around page8 or so, there's quite a few calculations. It seems the end number was around 210 for 1.3s GCD. So you'll probably need a full set to be able to get 5lifeblooms, which might take some time to get.

 

Szilia

Hmm, those numbers weren't ever tested in the PTR were they? They were just based on the formula that describes how spells with cast time is influenced by spell haste. I've seen some druids saying that you don't need as much spell haste as listed, even with high latency. So it may either be another formula or something.
Will try to get some numbers from a druid in an old guild of mine, if noone around here has a druid with spell haste on the PTR

 

Edghar

I'd also like to see some actual test results. I have a druid in my guild that swears he was able to stack 5 lifeblooms on the PTR and he has less than 100 haste rating. My druid only has about 30 haste rating available, otherwise I'd test it myself.

 

• giansm

Based on the UI hook that is floating around these forums (the one that prints out the GCD when you use an ability) it does appear that the same formula is used. The number printed by the hook matches the number you get from the formula, I tested that personally on the PTR. I don't have enough haste gear to do "real-life" testing on when you can actually get 5 GCDs per cycle, so I can't check that. Based on the formula I have enough haste to get very close to the breakpoint but not pass it, and this was indeed the case on PTR (I could never quite get 5 GCDs per cycle but based on chronometer, it was damn close) but of course, that is not really a proper test.