[Resto] Cataclysm Raiding and Discussion - Page 2

exschwizer · 12/13/10, 2:06 AM

First, thank you Philondra for assembling the above information. I really appreciate your effort.
I also think that the above assessment of Mastery is a little harsh. Most of us agreed that mastery sucked in the Lich King environment, because health bars were more or less digital (100% or 0%). But some critical opinions were voiced even then. In the Cata healing environment, thorough assessment of Deep Healing's effectiveness has yet to be done as far as I know. And yes, we currently have no reliable tool to do this task for us. Perhaps Mastery will always need a little intuition as to when it is a sensible choice.

Alhoon · 12/13/10, 2:27 AM

Problem with the mastery is not that it's a bad stat by itself, but the fact that our spells synergize so much better with crit. Crit procs AA, mastery doesn't. Crits proc AH, mastery doesn't. Crit doubles as a regen stat due to IWS, mastery doesn't. Crit affect riptide hot, earthliving and earth shield, mastery doesn't.

KnThrak · 12/13/10, 6:19 AM

Originally Posted by Sun_Tzu

Hmm, doesn't CH count as a direct heal? I suppose that would explain it then, foolishly I had made the assumption it applied to all healing, but if it doesn't increase HoT-effects then it's pretty much crap except for single target heals. Time to start rethinking this then, mixture of crit/haste looks rather more inviting now, given my dual purpose in 10mans.

We should also probably look into whether this is intended or not. Taking into account the way Haste and Crit work for our heals it seems likely the design goal balance had Mastery affect all of our healing, otherwise yes, there is no contest.

Cyfir · 12/13/10, 10:04 AM

The problem with Mastery is this - it affects the exact same healing issue as crit (throughput) with only a modest increase in value, even at optimal performance levels (e.g. when the target is at extremely low health.) If you take a look at this chart, you'll see that even when the target is at 1% health and you with a 99% crit chance, Mastery provides only 1.58% more healing throughput against the same budget of crit - and that's the best-case scenario. 1.58% healing throughput simply doesn't compete against Improved Water Shield and Ancestral Healing.

Sun_Tzu · 12/13/10, 11:46 AM

Originally Posted by Cyfir

The problem with Mastery is this - it effects the exact same healing issue as crit (throughput) with only a modest increase in value, even at optimal performance levels (e.g. when the target is at extremely low health.) If you take a look at this chart, you'll see that even when the target is at 1% health and you with a 99% crit chance, Mastery provides only 2% more healing throughput against the same budget of crit - and that's the best-case scenario. 2% healing throughput simply doesn't compete against Improved Water Shield, Ancestral Healing, and especially Ancestral Awakening.

Thanks, this really does clarify it quite a bit. So moving away from mastery in favour of crit will allow you to move spirit into other throughput stats without sacrificing regen. Overall, because of the dual usefulness of crit, you thus have more throughput stats, enabling more HPM/HPS, as is needed. That having been stated, this still leaves me thinking the proposed stat prio at the top of the thread is a bit off, as it seems to undervalue regen. I'd probably estimate crit under these conditions as highest prio together with spirit, then int and haste/mastery following that, depending on your spell mix.

So until your regen is sufficient: Crit > spirit > int > haste/mastery
After this point: Crit > int > haste/mastery > spirit

Does this seem reasonable? I'm somewhat concerned with the horrible scaling of spells based on SP, but since int increases manapool/regen/crit/crit regen/direct throughput, it still seems like a very strong stat. The reason I overprio crit is because it keeps allowing you to take more spirit out.

And if these priorities pan out, would this again have us foregoing spirit on gear in favour of basically DPS mail by the end of t11? Certainly would make the life of dual ele/resto players a lot easier, as the forced spirit on tier would likely have you at a decent point for regen/ele hit purposes.

Zidders · 12/13/10, 12:24 PM

Great post. Oh man, the last time I was here I was still a druid.

Anywho. The order I've been following, at least in terms of gearing up in heroic gear to raid has been: Spirit / Int > crit > haste > mastery.

I don't really see a point in prioritizing crit over int at any point just because int gives us way too many benefits, mostly those that you listed. Maybe I'm just dead on my feet and need a bit of clarification on your meaning behind it allowing us to take more spirit out.

As for that very last part, I feel like it's going to head that way towards the end for sure. It'll depend on how heroic heroics actually are. We had our first raid of the expansion tonight and did lolBaradin Hold10 and Tron Council25. I finished Baradin with about 30% mana after a tide \ eggshell pop \ concentration potion and nearly solo healed that fight. Tron Council 25 at 50% or so I was at 80% mana still carrying healing on a few of the attempts we did. (Ran out of time and had to call it. Hooray for 10's later today.)

Regen isn't too bad in normals when you're able to handle fight mechanics \ manage damage properly. I assume heroics will be the same way which will basically allow us to move away from spirit all together and use DPS mail towards the end.

My only real question has to do with mastery. I've been thinking that mastery at THIS tier will pull ahead of haste because I don't think there is even close to enough haste in the game to get us up to haste cap for it to even matter. Am I dumb or correct?

Sun_Tzu · 12/13/10, 2:52 PM

Originally Posted by Zidders

Great post. Oh man, the last time I was here I was still a druid.

...

I don't really see a point in prioritizing crit over int at any point just because int gives us way too many benefits, mostly those that you listed. Maybe I'm just dead on my feet and need a bit of clarification on your meaning behind it allowing us to take more spirit out.

Heh, I came over/returned from the Holy Priest crowd myself

Well, the reason I would be inclined to emphasize crit so highly, and why I believe it allows us to take out spirit, is o/c the water shield procs we get from hw/ghw/hs/ch. Now, I'm working with a basic healing "arsenal" which would use HW as the filler spell, GHW primarily in combination with NS, HS as tank healing/spot healing spell, CH as primary raid healing tool. Riptide on CD and ES on tank, Healing Rain on demand.

Now, the key thing here is HW, as with improved shields each water shield proc is 1743 mana, and the cost of HW is 1981 mana. Assuming say 2 casts per 5 seconds (given Tidal Waves etc.) and 3k combat regen, you're paying about 490 mana per HW. This means that at 490/1743=~28% crit HW becomes "mana neutral", and any crit above that means HW is actually regening mana for you.

This ofcourse also applies to other spells which proc water shield orbs, but HW is the only which is likely to become mana neutral/positive. Anyway, this dramatic regen capacity is what makes me think that getting a high crit % would out-pace the slower crit gains of int, even coupled with spirit regen(diminishing returns) and replenishment, but I can't seem to find the mp5 value estimates of Int in the usual places, so can't really say for certain (or the bloody int -> spell crit conversion at 85 either tbh).

Cyfir · 12/13/10, 3:45 PM

Originally Posted by Sun_Tzu

Hmm, having just gone over some logs of the highest shaman HPS on WoL, I noticed most of them had been dropping out GHW entirely in favour of Healing Surge. Upon closer inspection, this seems to make perfect sense, as the spell is only slightly more expensive and due to the horrible scaling of heals currently, actually delivers quite closely the same amount of healing as GHW but in half the time. Need to try out using a lot more HS/CH instead of GHW next raid, see if that yields an increase in performance.

I put together a speadsheet to model HPS/HPM comparatively in our three direct heals. You can find it here. Bottom line: including Improved Water Shield, HS is almost exactly the same HPM as GHW, and much, much better HPS. Factor in the added flexibility HS adds to your healing, and there's no reason GHW should ever be on your bars, except inasmuch as it is part of a NS macro. HW is *much* lower HPS than either heal, but *much* higher HPM. With high enough crit values, HW approaches mana-neutral.

Zidders · 12/13/10, 4:19 PM

Oh. Hm. Yeah, I can see where you're going with this. My question to you is what sort of crit levels will it take for you to make prioritizing crit worthwhile?

It would seem like you would need to hit a point like near the end of WOTLK where we were constantly critting.

Cyfir · 12/13/10, 6:16 PM

Crit is not a viable substitute for SPI for mana regeneration. At a laudable-for-this-tier 25% haste, 1 point of Crit Rating comes out to .301 mp5 casting a Tidal Wave'd HW or GHW, and .243 mp5 casting any other direct heal. At 4000 INT, 1 point of SPI is worth 1.06 mp5.

Sun_Tzu · 12/13/10, 6:23 PM

Originally Posted by Cyfir

Crit is not a viable substitute for SPI for mana regeneration. At a laudable-for-this-tier 25% haste, 1 point of Crit Rating comes out to .301 mp5 casting a Tidal Wave'd HW or GHW, and .243 mp5 casting any other direct heal. At 4000 INT, 1 point of SPI is worth 1.06 mp5.

But if you need 1 mp5 and you have 4 statpoints to spare, 3 crit gives you what you need, but it also gives you throughput, where as SPI just gives you more regen. If you needed limitless regen, sure, spirit would always be the best choice, but because you only need enough, crit is in fact a viable substitute at a given point.

Cyfir · 12/13/10, 6:45 PM

Originally Posted by Sun_Tzu

But if you need 1 mp5 and you have 4 statpoints to spare, 3 crit gives you what you need, but it also gives you throughput, where as SPI just gives you more regen. If you needed limitless regen, sure, spirit would always be the best choice, but because you only need enough, crit is in fact a viable substitute at a given point.

That would be true if there wasn't a better throughput stat than crit. However, haste is a far superior stat for throughput. 1 spirit and 3 haste will give you better throughput than 4 crit, while providing similar benefit in regen, while having the added advantage of being more flexible and predictable in your healing output.

Corunix · 12/14/10, 6:06 AM

Originally Posted by Cyfir

The problem with Mastery is this - it affects the exact same healing issue as crit (throughput) with only a modest increase in value, even at optimal performance levels (e.g. when the target is at extremely low health.).

I believe that your spreadsheet contains a computational error or you do not take into account the fact that 1 mastery point equals 2,5% bonus.
13% crit, 20% mastery (baseline), 6500 non-crit HW on 100% target.
Let's assume 90% bonus for crit (50% from crit and 27% from AA) and try to add 5% crit or mastery at the expense of the same amount of rating (1% crit costs as much rating as 1 point of mastery does).

80% hp target:
crit-powered heal = 6500 * (1 + 0,18 * 0,9) * (1 + 0,2 * 0,2) = 7855
mastery-powered heal = 6500 * (1 + 0,13 * 0,9) * (1 + 0,325 * 0,2) = 7732

66% hp target:
crit-powered heal = 6500 * (1 + 0,18 * 0,9) * (1 + 0,2 * 0,33) = 8051
mastery-powered heal = 6500 * (1 + 0,13 * 0,9) * (1 + 0,325 * 0,33) = 8039

50% hp target (normal stuff nowadays):
crit-powered heal = 6500 * (1 + 0,18 * 0,9) * (1 + 0,2 * 0,5) = 8308
mastery-powered heal = 6500 * (1 + 0,13 * 0,9) * (1 + 0,325 * 0,5) = 8440

33% hp target (tank hit by something bad or just someone was standing in the wrong place):
crit-powered heal = 6500 * (1 + 0,18 * 0,9) * (1 + 0,2 * 0,66) = 8549
mastery-powered heal = 6500 * (1 + 0,13 * 0,9) * (1 + 0,325 * 0,66) = 8817

Hypothetical 1% health target:
crit-powered heal = 6500 * (1 + 0,18 * 0,9) * (1 + 0,2 * 0,99) = 9048
mastery-powered heal = 6500 * (1 + 0,13 * 0,9) * (1 + 0,325 * 0,99) = 9451

So, if your targets are lower than ~60% HP, mastery is better than crit for direct heals in terms of HPS with zero overhealing (up to 5% bonus for 5%-equivalent rating spent).
Of course, the regen and utility of IWS and AF should be taken into account, along with the fact that indirect healing (hots) now contribute much larger amount of our healing, being affected by crit but unaffected by mastery.

alcapawn · 12/14/10, 7:11 AM

Originally Posted by Cyfir

The problem with Mastery is this - it affects the exact same healing issue as crit (throughput) with only a modest increase in value, even at optimal performance levels (e.g. when the target is at extremely low health.)

Isn't this discussion analog to the tank mitigation/survival gearing? Crit might be a more valuable stat over a longer fight given expected crit rates. But in the worst case scenario, where someone has taken a large chunk of damage and is in need of a big heal, you can always count on the boost from the mastery, but even with extremely high crit chance - a bad streak can leave you completely un-boosted by your crit.

This would leave mastery as a more predictable way to boost your healing in an environment where you know you will be healing target with low HP - progression raiding. Or have I misunderstood the Deep Healing mechanics? Is there a random element I'm not aware of?

Keiyakusha · 12/14/10, 7:37 AM

Been keeping this to myself for a while, as I wanted to be sure, but I think now is a good time to share. The UL bonus is affecting Riptide's HoT and will linger long enough for you to cast a heal into a queued Riptide and gain that 30% boost to the heal, Riptide's DH, and Riptide's HoT. I generally have UL on constant cooldown as a result of this. This works 100% of the time (it's dependable).

Also Focused Insight still doesn't affect Riptide's HoT despite not explicitly saying direct heal. I wonder if the IDs for these effects got mixed up unintentionally?

On another note I find crit and Mastery to be complementary stats. If you crit a low health player they are both working together, but if you don't crit at least you still had Mastery. Wouldn't the odd man out be Haste at this point? I notice people mentioning Shaman reports where HS is being favored over GHW. Wouldn't a compelling reason for this be the 30% crit provided by Tidal Waves providing more HPM (I'm including both the added healing of a crit and the regen provided by Improved Water Shield) over the course of a fight than GHW? Correct me if I'm wrong on that.