This one’s going to be a short and quick post because I daresay the point that I’m trying to drive home will not take long to figure out. Several days ago, a prominent Guild on Ner’Zhul disbanded due to lack of attendance and other factors that kill Guilds (hmm, a good blogging topic). Needless to say, we signed several of their players in the hopes that it might solve a few of our attendance problems. Summer’s now over, everyone should be back to a fairly stable schedule right?
Wrong. One of our Feral druid gets hit with an evening shift. Our Paladin suddenly has a life. One of our Rogues mysteriously vanishes (Go figure). Getting those extra players helped a lot. By the way, in other Guild news, Dinosaur disbands and joins Dissonance (both top 20 Guilds on NZ, I think).
Tonight was Serpentshrine Cavern. Since we were shorthanded a player, we opted for Lurker first. Two wipes later, we trekked back to Hydross. A colleague over at Priestly Endeavors published his own suggested requirements for raiding in terms of individual player stats. At first I disagreed with him at the amount of gear and such that was required. But something happened in our attempts against Hydross that made me think twice. For those who are unfamiliar with the fight, Hydross has an attack called Water Tomb in which he encases a player in a bubble of water which does approximately 4500 damage over 5 seconds. Furthermore, players within a certain radius around him will also get entombed but thankfully that spell does not chain past the second player. In addition, Hydross applies a stacking debuff where all players within the raid will periodically take increasingly more punishing frost damage (Water tomb hurts more). One of the new Priests we picked up today just died within the first minute or so of the encounter. His health was approximately 7400ish fully raid buffed. It looks as if he had 5800 base health.
Back to Kirk, it appears as if he is correct to a certain extent. The amount of HP he recommends for his level of raiding is a little more generous. There’s no possible way to sacrifice healing and MP5 gear for a little more stamina. You really don’t need over 7000ish base health in Kara. It’s true there are certain encounters where you will take a lot of damage (For instance, Aran’s Poly-Pyro, or Illhoof’s sacrifice). But for the most part, you just need above 7.2k using whatever buffs you can slap on yourself. You also need to pray your tanks are able to do their job and hold their aggro. That’s not a problem in a 10 man instance like Karazhan because there isn’t a whole lot of pressure or damage being applied to you (the priest) or to your raid. But once you get to an instance like SSC, it definitely is a whole new ball game. Maybe the only person who might’ve been able to save our poor Priest was a player with reflexes equal to that of Martin Brodeur. But I applied my method of raid healing and was not able to restore his health quick enough.
A lot of Priests emphasize the importance of +healing and MP5. Don’t get me wrong, I do too. After that incident today, the second stat I would take a long hard look at is stamina. It’s one of the reasons why I spent DKP on my [item]Crystalheart Pulse-Staff[/item]. Strangely enough, that item dropped again last week and no healer took it so it became sharded. How unfortunate. I guess players really want to go after their Light’s Justice/Aran’s Sapphire combination instead of spending their DKP to get loot that will help them.
It’s midnight, but before I go to bed, just think about this:
What’s the point of having all that healing and all that MP5 if you’re not alive to utilize it? I know I would get more healing if I stayed with an LJ/Aran’s Sapphire duo, but I would not be of any use to my Guild if I was dead half the encounter.
Great post! Picking up an item with Stamina is often less “shiny” than picking up an item that boosts only our pure healing stats (MP5/Healing/INT/SPI), especially when you are spending DKP on it. But sometimes it’s a selfless decision to do so. I’m fortunate to have a full set of PvP gear in my bags so adding 2k more hit points is one click away (although I do sacrifice 100 MP5 while not casting and around 100 +Healing)!
“You really don’t need over 7000ish health in Kara.”
For a couple of fights it’s incredibly helpful to have, however: Shade of Aran and Terestrian Illhoof.
Aran has no aggro list, whereas Illhoof randomly sacrifices players….
for all other encounters though, the level of HP that Kirk recommends is probably too high.
I should clarify that. I’m going to edit it so that it says “you really don’t need over 7000ish base health in Kara”. I’m getting sloppy again. I need to stop with the midnight postings.
Good stuff as always, Matt. I’ve been trying to improve some of my gear, but not finding much–you’ve given me another place to look. (Although it seems every “upgrade” I find wants to take a HUGE chunk of mana away. But if I’m dead, all the mana in the world isn’t really doing me, or anyone else, much good.)
Oh…and may I say, as training camps open this week, “Go Avs!” 😉
*GASP* An Avs fan! Why if you weren’t such an accomplished blogger, I’d have half the mind to restrict commenting privileges :O. Just kidding! Hockey fans are few and far out in WoW. You get an extra brownie point…
…which I must take away since you’re an Avs fan ;).
Looks like they’ll have a good season this year, unless Theodore chokes :O
Your link to the Crystalheart Pulse Staff isn’t working. *cry*
Also, I need to do a post on Stamina. I’m restricting myself from responding to comments because I caught myself being snippy, and that’s no good.
But it’s an important thing to mention, and it’ll be a good follow-up for the piece I hope to write today. =]
Stam gear is very important. For some fights, our guild likes everyone to have 8k unbuffed (Al’ar for one). Sure, 7k base will do it in most places, but give your healers a little leeway to react. Getting popped down to half health by Fathom-Lord Karathress’ cataclysm bolt, then a tick or two of a spitfire totem and you’re dead before a heal can reach you doesn’t help the raid. Sacrifice a little bit of other stats for some more health, because the old saying goes; a dead toon does no dmg (or healing… for the most part…).
If you’re really having trouble and you’re sitting below 6k, take off one item and replace it temporarily with a green off the AH with the suffix “of Stamina”. Or get some pvp gear. Doesn’t take too long getting points with a medicore arena team to get a piece or two, or doing some AFK Valley while watching TV or something.
I had about 6.7k fully buffed HP in kara, I did just fine even with Aran’s pyro and Prince’s axes. Stam is a nice thing to have though, I just got Nightstaff of the everling…nice stam on it.
I agree with you about STA. My situation is slightly different, here’s the information:
Me – 40ish Disc rest Holy
MH – Standard full holy build
3rd healer – HP or RD
I mainly pvp with this toon, so alot of my heal gear is the season set. Not best for raiding 25 man, good enough to heal kara well. I have 10k-ish(10kish looked wierd) health fully raid buffed, I sit around 9k normally. Our MH has the short end of the I want healing gear instead of sta gear set. He’s dies roughly twice as much as me.
Reasons:
– He’s main heal, pulls more aggro than I and heals for more than I.
– He’s got roughly 1.5k less HP than I. He’s a chump when he gets hit. I on the other hand can survive long enough to receive that big heal or heals.
I like STA because I like saving money. Not dieing = not paying repair bills. Not paying repair bills means more enchanting fun. More enchanting fun = more money.
Rerollmuch: Yeah, there’s a fine line to balance. Too much stamina, and you jeopardize your to the point where you may not be as strong healingwise.
Too little stamina, and you have a higher chance dying to some kind of funky boss mechanic. Yeaaah.
Stamina is really important, I have recently nerfed my +healing from +2100 down to just under +2k in order to get my stam up above 9.5k (I increased my mana by 1k as a side bonus)raid buffed. It has saved me many times.
If I can get 10k HP with STA/kings/food buff I’m more than happy and I wouldn’t sacrifice my other stats for extra Stamina. It may be worth it to have some extra in fights like Naj’entus, Rage Winterchill, Bloodboil or Illidari council, fights that require better than average survivability.
In those situations, a living priest is better than a dead one with more +healing.