I am now packing some serious heat. Well, no not really. But my healing has gone up slightly. Before, my main weapon was the [item]Crystalheart Pulse-Staff[/item] which dropped from Mag. Now I have the [item]Ethereum Life-Staff[/item] which drops from Solarian in Tempest Keep. Actually, they both look the same. The Crystalheart is the same model except the crystals on either end are red.
Anyway, let’s compare the stats. For raid simulation (and the fact that I still had the buffs going from Tempest Keep), I consumed the three main Priest consumables:
- Flask of Mighty Restoration
- Superior Mana Oil
- Blackened Sporefish
I applied the mana oil to both of my staves just so I could save myself the trouble of having to do math. I can keep Mallet suspended until I raid with him again on Thursday anyway. Remember, I do not have any raid buffs on other than consumables. Take a look at the following shot:
First, let’s keep in mind that my Crystalheart Pulse-Staff has a +81 Healing enchant on it whereas my Ethereum Life-Staff has no enchants on it. I lost a small piece of healing crit chance, but I’m not worried about that too much. I also see a decrease in my healing by 30 points.
The above shot is the Crystalheart and the below shot is that of the Ethereum.
Comparison
The stat points were fairly marginal at best. I gained 1 stamina and lost 6 intellect (10 health, 60 mana). But look at the amount of Spirit that I gained. I picked up a whopping 62 spirit. A quick glance on the tooltip on the side shows that I lose 4 mp5 while casting, but I gain 23 mp5 while not casting.
So herein lies the dilemma. My original intent was to use one staff as my main healing staff and the other one to regenerate mana. Now I’m wondering which one to use for which.
I’m seriously considering putting Spellsurge on the Ethereum because I want to help my party out a bit more. I’m almost positive I can guarantee the effect to proc when the hidden cooldown is up.
Most raiding encounters are endurance based. They depend on how long you can keep your assigned tanks alive instead of how much you can keep them alive for. Since I already have 81 Healing on my Crystalheart, it seems kind of weird (AND STUPIDLY EXPENSIVE) to re-enchant it again with Spellsurge and put 81 Healing on my new Ethereum.
I lose the nice 4 MP5 while casting with the new staff. As a raiding Priest, I’m not going to be idling. I’m going to be using my global cooldown fairly often by tossing renews and PoMs everywhere. I will rarely, if ever, get chances to sit and just regen my mana. No one in my Guild uses Spellsurge at the moment. But maybe I can influence them to create a Spellsurge mana endurance group.
It looks so easy when you’re comparing enchants on 1 weapon. When you’re working with 2, it makes it a little more difficult because now you have to start planning for different scenarios.
How much mana do I gain as I’m casting spells?
How much mana do I gain when I’m not?
How much healing do I lose?
Is the decrease in healing worth the extra longevity?
How much mana do I gain back if I were to be innervated?
What will benefit my healing the most?
What will benefit my raid the most?
Even now it’s not an easy question for me to answer. Everything looked so simple the first time when I compared 81 Healing with Spellsurge. But there’s a lot more to take into account when you are a raiding Priest.
Any healers out there? Discussion of any kind would help. Maybe there’s a point that I’ve forgotten.
Personally, for my playstyle, I’d put +81heal on the new one and get going. I’d keep the old one in the bank, in the event I can afford to change the enchant to spellsurge. I wouldn’t put spellsurge on the new one.
I’m in a different situation though: In my guild, lots of paladins, one of the druids and our only resto shaman all have Spellsurge. We’re almost always all stacked together in one group so I often benefit from it.
Spellsurge wouldn’t proc that much for me because I’m not casting that often. On most boss fights, I’m on MT duty (being the only Inspiration specced priest) so it goes something like PoM-renew-gheal-gheal-gheal…casting PoM when I need to reapply renew, canceling gheal when appropriate, stacking clearcasting procs with inner focus to stretch my time out of the fsr and using my earring whenever my robe procs (still wearing the robe from the opera event, I really want the one from SSC with lots of spi).
Fights with lots of aoe I’m normally on the melee, being the only CoH priest. That’s when I’d switch to a different weapon with spellsurge, if I had one. I normally switch out a couple items and my trinkets to some that proc on spellcast.
I was thinking pretty selfishly while writing this (personally, I’m not often “oom-out-of-tricksâ€Â) but our dps casters often have the shadow priest in their group. And the healers get spellsurge from whoever has it.
Spellsurge would be useful, but very situational. You get the benefit of +81heal all the time.
To both ease and add to the frustration, remember you can swap out weapons mid-combat.
Which would make me lean toward eating the cost, putting spellsurge on the crystal and +heal on the Ethereum. My planned use would be to have the Ethereum loaded when first pulling trash (especially 4 or more pulls) and that first 10 seconds on a boss while trying to see how hard he is going to hit THIS time, then swapping midfight to the mana-maker. And then near the end, when the 5SR starts kicking in (and I’m getting fewer chances for the spellsurge proc) go back to the Ethereum for the OFSR mana regen.
It’s not just the numbers, it’s how you plan to USE the numbers that matters.
What sucks is the fact that I’ll be the only one in the group with Spellsurge on it. On the plus side, Innervate’s going to be that much more effective.
Man, farming is going to suck. 🙁