Andrast

1. For me people who stack haste require shadowpriests more frequently than people who stack "regen" (crit or mp5). Both of these are anecdotal but I think if you ask around most people will agree that if you get a shadowpriest it allows you to stack more haste than if you don't get a shadowpriest.

2. Tanks aren't hit with regular flows of damage. They are hit with spikes.

3. I'm sure I'm blind but I see no "stats above".

Also you said that I shouldn't be spamming my big spells towards the end of a fight if I have the mana to do so. Feel free to take a look at your healer mana next time the boss is on 10%. Notice how if they have been doing their jobs it is low. By spamming HL11 at this point you reduce the chance that the tank will die. Towards the end of a fight is when people make the most mistakes.. a tank might screw up positioning, cooldowns or something similar. My argument for using HL11 in this situation is that you might as well do so because your mana level after the fight is done is meaningless. Your argument against doing so is that the tank survived till now and therefore will survive with you doing the same thing?

The thing I find most amusing now is that you say you've posted strategies that are better than reactive healing but claimed earlier on this page that haste helps you reactively heal. Please get your terminology straight.

I'll leave you with the following:

Of course casting a lower ranked heal will save you mana. Whether you can keep your HPS constant is a different question totally and then asking if it provides more effective healing is another question for theorycrafting. Look at every bit of damage that hits the tank as a spike and you'll get an idea about what I'm thinking about.

 

Ragnor

The approach I see most sunwell raiding holy pallies taking is: Stack heal until over 2k, then stack crit until over 28-30% holy crit and then stack haste.

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

www.retpaladin.com

 

Stolidus

I think a lot of the "stack this stack that" talk is sort of funny, since the gear fluctuations that are actually likely are only gemming ones. Realistically, most pallies wear highly similar gear- 5 pc t6, girdle of stromgarde's hope, and and whatever other common offset items there are. That means most pallies that farmed BT are going to have similar baseline stats: 2200+heal, 26% holy crit, 120 mp5, 0 haste or thereabouts.

So really most of these "gearing decisions" come down to what you gem, especially since the badge gear is horribly stat heavy and the non sunwell haste gear is horrendously itemized. I view gemming as a chance to customize your gear to make it comfortable for you, in terms of regen, and then increase your HPS, because seriously, that's the only logical thing to do.

So then you look at your options to increase regen- crit, mp5, and int-and HPS-+heal, haste, crit, and technically int-and gem accordingly while maintaining IED, whose worth is, I find, in mana intensive sunwell fights, indisputable.

Gemming crit is always contentious, but I find since it's already artificially inflated to 37% for most pallies due to 2pc t6 and talents on HL, the marginal gains become less, like they do with all rating stats. It's use as a stabilizing agent and HPS increaser is also, while valuable, repeatedly noted to be unreliable, devaluing it in my eyes. So, I don't gem crit, and tend to favor the mail mp5/haste gear over the stat heavy and crit/mp5 plate.

Mp5 is, I think, a preferable choice for regen to int because it's worth does not rapidly diminish in fights longer than 6 minutes, like mu'ru, and because it fills your blue gem requirements.

Then when you start gemming for hps your main choices become +heal and haste, unless you favor crit, since int is really a regen stat with minor hps benefits.

The reasons I find haste compelling are actually not directly HPS related, but I think the facts that it can help you recover from mistakes or negate some degree of lag/the space between heals are rather significant in themselves. Pseudo mathematically, it's also good for the same reason crit is sort of bad: since you generally only get good haste gear/have the ability to gem for it in sunwell, you start with zero and any you add has the largest marginal gains it could (especially since haste does have diminishing returns on cast time reduction, which is more relevant to healing than the actual HPS increase I think).

+heal remains as good as it always was as the fallback for gemming once you've achieved the mana pool you desire (and this is for me at least, based entirely on feeling in boss fights). It's really a question of gemming for haste or not, and gemming +heal if not.

That's my piece on "stacking" stats, though I should add that after a certain level you really probably won't need more, which I too feel, as I think Zoid proposed earlier, is around 200 rating, because the cast time reductions become less and less and you've probably managed to compensate for realistic internet and mind lag at that point.

And on the subject of "reactive" up/down ranking, I'd like to once again plug Instant Health Updates for making it smoother in terms of health displays. And I'd like to mention that I feel more comfortable just casting pretty high rank heals and canceling them if the tank is topped off with my current level of haste (around 200) than with none, and in that way it has helped my efficiency a little. However, I feel way more comfortable with a spriest now than without, although I think that's partially the fault of sunwell fights themselves, and not just the +haste I've acquired.

 

Palados

1. I didn't said that haste is as good without SP as it is with SP. Haste (as well as crit) has different value, depending on your current stats, support, etc.

2. Of course tanks are hitted spikely. Though you should agree that casting 1k heal each 1 sec is better than casting 10k heal each 10 sec (ultimate example).

3. The Healadin Thread look at 'Example' part of the post.

4. Terminology is OK. I don't see a contradiction in two statements: 'Haste helps with reactive healing after a big spike' and 'Chain-healing is better tactics than reactive heal'. After all, even while chainhealing you should adapt your spells according to current situation. And haste allows you to adapt faster.

5. I didn't get what you wanted to say. I didn't say that haste is so imba that it both increase effectiveness and up HPS at the same time. I just claim, that if you want extra HPS - haste will increase it better than crit (and in more consistent way). And if you want more effectiveness while keeping the HPS about the same - for good gear haste would be more effective than crit.

 

Palados

2.4.3: Equipping an item will now cancel any spell cast currently in progress.

Seems no more libram/wep swapping during spell cast.

 

Andrast

Actually I'd disagree here. Casting 1k heal with a 1second GCD with oceanic lag makes your effective GCD somewhere around 1.2 seconds. Therefore your effective HPS is nerfed significantly. (1000hps vs 833hps). Even so this example is extremely unrealistic.

Remember that as a laggy player as you get more haste the latency you suffer more negatively impacts your healing particularly as you downrank to save mana. It's all very well to "prove" via theorycraft that something should be the case. If it the case in reality tends to require testing of the model to ensure that it matches.

 

Lambi

The question you'll have to ask yourself is: Did the player die from the heal not landing in time, you being oom or the heal not being big enough?

In 9 out of 10 cases it's because your heal didn't land on time and now I'll let you elaborate on that

 

Malleus

Elaborate yourself. Maybe things differ in SWP, but IME 9 out of 10 tank deaths can be explained by all the MT healers inadvertently synchronising their downrank pattern or someone using the wrong size of heal.

If there's sufficient healers on the job, "the heal not landing in time" means that somewhere along the line, one or more people did not do enough healing. That includes situations where upranks were mistimed and came in before the hit, or where the downranks or upranks all aligned. The only exception is when tanks get instagibbed, but in those circumstances a faster heal would rarely have helped.

 

Palados

Well, there is one more exception as well - tanks twoshotted. While this is rarely the case in MH/BT (unless enrages are hitted) in SWP it is quite usual. We have had too many wipes on brutallus when 3 healers chain-casted max(!) rank heals. Simply due to all heals landed on the same time and nothing save HoT ticked in the next 2 sec, when tank gets twoshotted (under stomp). When tank is stomped - hit-slash-hit is requiring around 5-7k heal landed inbetween for tank to survive. And sometimes (quite often even due to radiance debuff) this combo happens in about 1.5-2 sec time frame. One could call the heals mistimed ofc, but since healers can't predict when hit is landing they could do nothing about it. Only having other healers on focus and desyncing casts (haste helps to do it without idle time) would fix this situation.

 

Malleus

That's not another exception. It's a scenario I already outlined.

 

Palados

But exactly in this scenario haste could make a big difference. Since usually tank is killed in about the time of a heal cast (both in twins and Brutallus encounters). Thus reducing cast time by 0.2-0.3 sec would help to prevent a tank death.


Here is one of our logs with only relevant info:

20:28'29.078 Fladimirr's Greater Heal heals Arjuna for 6149
20:28'29.468 Brutallus's Swing hits Arjuna for 8453 Physical damage
20:28'29.546 Urezanthos's Greater Heal heals Arjuna for 5778
20:28'30.312 Palados's Holy Light heals Arjuna for 4356
20:28'30.734 Brutallus's Meteor Slash hits Arjuna for 8334 Fire damage
20:28'31.765 Brutallus's Swing hits Arjuna for 4283 Physical damage
20:28'31.765 Brutallus's Swing hits Arjuna for 9174 Physical damage
20:28'31.890 Fladimirr's Binding Heal heals Arjuna for 2905
20:28'32.265 Arjuna is afflicted by Death

3 big heals landed, then in 1.031 sec tank got 21791 damage. Now, if Fladimirr or Urezanthos would have a little bit more haste we woudln't wipe. Heal would land right in time to save the tank and my HL11 was incoming in half a sec. I could probably gather a dozen of such scenarios over the last month, where extra 50 haste would save the tank.

Another encounter where it could be the case - twins. Plus in both encounters you have to react on tank switch. Even if tank calls it before taunt (and in twin fight it is not always possible to predict when exactly switch would happen), the faster your heal is - the faster it will top the tank after initial hit.

 

elduce

I understand this may be the type of question you dont like to see here. If so please feel free to ignore me but since I havent really been able to find help anywhere else I thought maybe you could help.

I'm wondering if my char's holy crit is too low at the moment. Im currently farming Kara,cleared Gruul once and downed 2 bosses at ZA. Any suggestions how to improve my gear would be greatly appreciated since I dont know anyone more experienced healadin.

 

Palados

22% holy crit is good for your gear lvl. You should upgrade your cape (the one from Prince is very good) and Kara ring (with spirit). There are even blue rings that are better for paladins, but ideally you would want the ring from heroic MgT (with socket).

 

Andrast

I see these as the relevant lines.

I don't want to sound trollish but I don't think there is any other option. I'm going to assume that this was during stomp due to the size of the mainhand hit. There appear to be several things going wrong here and from my perspective none of them are "not enough haste":
1. People are casting non max rank heals. Both yourself and Urezanthos are (for some reason) downranking during stomp. Had either of you healed with your max rank it is likely the tank would have survived.
2. Perhaps 4.3k is your max rank holy light. In which case you need more +healing or alternatively the tank needs BoL.
3. Fladimirr is using Binding Heal during stomp.
4. Where are the heals from your other raid healers? You surely cannot expect 3 healers to solo heal the tanks at all times during brutallus? I would have expected in that to see 1 or possible 2 chain heals running through the tank or possibly an earth shield proc? Maybe a druid hot?

I believe that 1, 3 & 4 and possibly 2 are much more likely reasons as to why you wiped. Indeed there are alot of times when healers say "oh my heal just missed you" but in reality what is much more likely is that the healer was too slow in starting their heal. It is possible that stacking some haste would give some margin of error but this is once again a totally different argument than whether a competent paladin should stack haste or not. In my opinion the main reason tanks die is due to poor strategy and assignments rather than poor gearing choices.

 

Silmeria

Be very careful when using WWS logs and timestamps when depicting tank deaths, as the timestamp information can be a little misleading due to lag, and the innate inaccuracy in the Wow combat log's timestamps. What you really want to look at when it comes to Brut tank deaths is the number of instances of heals during the estimated period of tank death. Stomp deaths are usually the result of mis-use of ranks and mis-allocation of tank healers, when it is neither of these, it is typically a classic tank gib (it happens). Also, the log you pasted has a lot of missing context: why is a priest using binding heal, for example (going to guess he was burned?), is that during a stomp, etc.

 

elduce

Thank you very much. I know my cape is crap but Im like 3 x exalted with Violet Eye and never seen either Wolf's or Prince's cape. Didnt really even noticed ring. Guess I have to try find something better cos my only chance to go to MgT is pugging and it sucks big time always. Havent even done it on normal all the way yet.

 

Malleus

Insufficient data. We don't know what Arjuna's max health is, and we don't know if he/she/it was at 100% when the gib landed. Palados, if you can link directly to the WWS log so we can see everything that was going on, it would help.

(I do suspect that Arjuna was not at max health, however, as a 2.9k Binding Heal didn't suffice to bring them back above zero. I don't know exactly how much health a Sunwell tank will typically have, but I'd wager it's more than 19k.)

 

Palados

Bindheal is landed after tank death. There is small lag between tank hitting 0 HP and being dead, heal could land and get registered at that time client side, but server still marks the tank as dead.

Tank had no BoL indeed (1 pala in raid at that time).

I never really told that paladins should stack haste in SWP. I was saying that haste could be quite usefull, mentioned where it could be usefull and told that I personally will try it out. As well as showed math that calculates +haste effectiveness similar to math that was used to +heal effectiveness. I know I flamed Galg myself for this math being not too close to real situations, but no one (myself included) proposed a better way of doing it. Thus I used the same idea - matching lower rank and HL11 HPS.

 

Ragnor

Actually you do expect 3 or 4 healers to solo heal the tank most of the time on Brutallus. It's good strategy for your slash damage raid healing shaman to chain heal through the tank but it's not always possible to reach everyone this way due to the range on chain heal jumps (5 yards iirc) so you can't really gaurantee chain heals through the tank the whole time for example if your shaman gets burn.

Haste is an excellent stat for Sunwell, the difference between 1.8sec HL and 2.0sec HL is quite huge. However, I wouldn't be comfortable increasing my spell haste without having at least 28-30% holy crit and 2.2k+ heal.

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

www.retpaladin.com

 

Andrast

I agree insufficient data.

It is probable 4.3k is a max rank HL considering that I get 4.4-4.6k non crits while chain casting on myself. This is why I said that the tank may need light. Note that I'm doing this totally unbuffed so I'd expect a small increase with raid buffs.

I also suspect that the tank wasn't topped off since my tanks run around with more than 19k hp fully buffed up.

Are you sure this is the case? I'm not convinced that the heal didn't land before tank death but the combat log "reordered" it. In any case would a 3k heal have been enough to save the tank?

Why are you tank healing on Brut without light? Switch yourself to burn healing or get another pally in the raid. Not saying its not possible to kill Brut with that setup since I'm sure it is. But you are seriously gimping yourself for tank healing without using light.

3 healers except during stomp is fine. During stomp there need to be more people healing the tank which was my point that you seem to have missed. If the shaman gets burn and is moving during stomp then thats a reason why that 1 healer wasn't casting through the tank at that moment. Where is the other healer in the raid? (7 healers = 3 tanks, 2 raid, 2 burn)

 

Ragnor

3 tanks healers during stomp is perfectly doable with enough haste and a spriest. However, it really depends on your raid makeup. If you intend to have both spriests with caster dps groups then of course you wouldn't favor haste and you'd assign 4 healers for the tank.

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

www.retpaladin.com

 

Palados

1. Tank has close to 21k HP and I am pretty sure he was topped. That is why I assumed that heal landed after death and small extra haste would save the tank. I had my own heals and sometimes BoP landed (CD used for example, so client registered it landing) but person died and WWS showed buff registered after death. So this is possible.

2. After that day when we wiped like 6 times due to synced heal and then tank getting killed in about 2 sec, we use 4 healers on MT full time and 3 on burn/slash (1+1 and 1 shared). It makes fight much more safe. There is no need to have 2 healers on burn full time (unless burn is spreading, but that is bad anyway) as well as there is no need to have 2 healers on slach full time. Sometimes we have 8 healers and then fight is a cake. As soon as DPS is enough to beat the enrage timer, adding extra healer helps a lot in this fight.

 

• frmorrison

I hate to say it, but if you don't get another Pally in the raid then you need to get an Alt Pally to bless and logout. BoL (and another set of blessings) is a huge gain.

 

Silmeria

I actually run without BoL on most tank/spankers, opting for improved might in its stead (kings is always up). It's a non-trivial threat increase when you run the rawr models, so it seems worth it. Healing without BoL is definitely noticeable though, and I would heavily suggest including it if you are ever having tank deaths due to lack of healing throughput on your own personal part. On Brut, usually our rare tank deaths are positional crisscrosses with healers moving in/out of burn. That being said, BoL is probably worth more than BoM on this fight, as threat is largely not an issue when the situation involves taunt exchanges using warrior/feral.

On fights like Felmyst and Kalecgos, however, I typically run without BoL as threat is something of a major consideration on Felmyst, and the taunt in the ghost realm can be a bit touch-and-go on Kalecgos. Although I have made a mental note in the future, to switch to re-bless BoL if I find myself topside and about to walk into an enraged Kalecgos.

 

Andrast

If you had 4 healers on the tank.. where was the 4th healer?

The problem with the combat log entries you posted here were:
1. No context
2. Incomplete
3. Timing may very well be off. We can't tell if that heal landed before or after tank death server-side.

These things in addition to the problems I pointed out in my previous post and the simple LACK of strong healing on a stomped tank don't prove that healers need more haste. They prove to me that strategy needs to be improved.