buff

Guardian Spirit Works on Kel’Thuzad

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Derevka from Tales of a Priest asked me to issue a World of Matticus all points bulletin:

8:50 PM Derevka: word to the wise, Kelthuzzad CAN be buffed with Guardian Spirit while you are MC’d. We had 10 seconds of “OMG DONT KILL HIM!”

For those of you unaware, if you kill a subject with the Guardian Spirit buff active, they gain 50% of their health back. For most of us, 50% is no big deal. But if you’re sporting a bajillion health, 50%’s a pretty honkin’ big deal that would make Howie Mendel proud.

So if you’re on the last legs of the encounter and a Holy Priest get’s MC’d, make sure you CC him like crazy. If he gets the wings off, try to break it with a Purge or Dispel.

As Wyn always tells me, you can’t spell success without CC!

The Utility of Utility

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IDSvCOH2

I consider myself to be an okay tank healer, but an excellent raid healer.  I love Circle of Healing, and when you catch me off-guard enough to admit it, I’ll say my favorite spells are the ones I can cast while pounding my spacebar and hopping around.  Yes, I am “that type” of raider.   I also seem to be in a rather unusual raid group where, up until recently, we had a surplus of single-target healers (paladins coming out our ears,  our only resto druid is a Dreamstate-wants-to-be-a-doomchicken Healing Touch spammer) and raid healing came from one Shaman and a few CoH.  We had no priests with Divine Spirit on our roster because we simply couldn’t afford them.

Unfortunately for me, I’m also a spirit junkie.  I would LOVE to go into every raid with an extra +50 spirit, not to mention the +10% dmg/heal the buff gives as well.  Even though my group’s makeup needs raid healing, not to slot a priest in a tank heal, IDS utility spot, I decided to turn the question around (for purely selfish purposes, of course).  Circle of Healing is an awesome spell in T6 raiding, but if IDS is considered mandatory, what exactly will it bring to the raid?

Spellpower

One of the largest arguments against IDS is the fact that it’s only a significant buff to holy priests and tree druids.  None of the other healers or DPS have a spirit focus, so the damage or healing they gain is minimal.  I decided to check and see how minimal the gain actually is.  I used my guild as an example, and spent some time with the Armory and a calculator.  Unsurprisingly, our Holy Priests had the highest spirit out there.  We ranged from ~550-650 unbuffed spirit, and the gain from IDS gave each holy priest somewhere between 60 and 70 +heal.  What did surprise me was the fact our mages tied our DS druid for second place in the spirit race.  They ran from 250-350 unbuffed, which left them getting 30-40 more damage or healing.  This is roughly equivalent to nearly two Teardrop Crimson Spinels for the druid, and three Runed Crimson Spinels for the mages.  Paladins, Warlocks, and Shaman tied for third, each in the 100-200 spirit range, got 15-25 damage or healing.  If your raid group is heavy on priests, druids, and mages, IDS’s utility increases.

Talents

If the results of IDS on mages is so surprising because they are not a class that gains much from spirit, what about the classes which have a spirit focus, or talents specifically relating to spirit?  That’s right, I’m talking priests and Trees. 

For priests, those talents are Spiritual Guidance and Spirit of Redemption.  Spiritual Guidance increases dmg/heal based on 5%/10%/15%/20%/25% of the priest’s total spirit.  Spirit of Redemption, in addition to that whole “heal while dead” thing, gives a flat 5% increase to total Spirit.  Those two spells work beautifully together, and are a must for every healy-priest regardless of spec.  Both of these talents are also multiplicative, meaning the more spirit you have, the more you’ll get as a result.  We get the 60-70 +heal IDS grants at base, plus another 13 (25% of the 50 spirit of the buff for Spiritual Guidance) and 3 (5% of the 50 spirit of the buff for Spirit of Redemption) added on. In T6 gear, the average increase in +heal a priest gains from having IDS is 75-85. The healing Priests get from IDS is equivalent to the +heal to weapon enchant.

For tree druids, there are also two talents which deal directly with spirit: Tree of Life and Living Spirit.  Much like with priests, these talents were designed to go together.  Tree of Life also increases healing based on 25% of the Tree’s spirit, but instead of the healing done by the tree, it’s healing done to anyone in the tree’s group.  Living Spirit increases spirit by 5%/10%/15%.  As we don’t have any trees in our guild, I can’t use guildie figures for this, but poking around other guilds at our level of progression, their trees seem to have spirit numbers on par with our holy priests.  That gives the same 60-70 +heal from IDS at base, in addition to another 7 (15% of the 50 spirit boost) to everyone in the tree’s party.  In T6 gear, the average +heal gained by the tree’s party is increased by 65-80.  Tanks in a tree group healed by holy priests with IDS using max-coefficient spells will see an increase in healing received by 140-165 per hit.

Regen

In addition to the healing gained based on spirit for both holy priests and tree druids, regen must be taken into account as well.  Both have equivalent spells.  Meditation for priests and Intensity for druids each give 10%/20%/30% regen while casting.  The formula for determining regen is the same regardless of class as well:  Mana Regen = 5 * sqrt(Int) * Spirit * Base_Regen

regen

All names slightly tweaked as I didn’t speak to them before posting.  Jadey is a tree, whereas the bottom four are myself and 3 other priests in my guild.  Both Int and Spirit numbers are unbuffed and pulled directly from armory.  OOC and IC refer to out of combat and in combat regen numbers.  OOC IDS and IC IDS show how the numbers change if we’ve got IDS up, and the final columns show the differences between buffed and unbuffed stats.

Buffs

Moving back to the general raid utility, because the gain in spellpower due to IDS is based on a percentage, the amount can also be increased by use of buff food and elixirs.  Blackened Basilisk, that favorite of DPS casters everywhere, gives 23 damage and 20 Spirit.  With IDS, suddenly it’s giving 25 damage.  If you use Bloodberry Elixir in Sunwell, in addition to buffing your stats, you’re picking up 6 extra spell damage.  Priests that use Draenic Wisdom will see an increase of 11 healing (versus the 7 they get from it without).  The buffs you give yourself anyway become more powerful with the addition of IDS.

Is IDS awesome enough to be considered “mandatory” in today’s raid environment?  It’s really going to depend a lot on the group composition you have available.  If you have more healing priests and druids than you have paladins and shaman, or more mages than warlocks, you need IDS in your raid.  Find the raid healers, put a priest on tank healing so they can have the buff.  But… not me.  I’m going to be over here, hopping around and spamming my CoH button.

3 Reasons Why I Pick Blackened Sporefish over Golden Fish sticks

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People choose the paths that gain them the greatest rewards for the least amount of effort. That’s the law of nature."
Dr. Gregory House

I wanted to highlight another one of my oh-so-important thought processes today on why I decide to do some things one way and not another. My debut column at WoW Insider generated fairly positive responses. Obviously I didn’t escape much in the way of scrutiny. I clearly spelled Naxx incorrectly and my eyes are literally glued to my raid frames that are 2 inches in from the left side.

It does make eating rice rather difficult when raiding. But that’s an entirely different story.

A number of comments here and there mentioned golden fishsticks as their delicacy of choice when raiding.

Before the most recent patch, I was a bigger fan of the sporefish than the fish sticks as well, Ego writes. With the new changes to mana regen, I have yet to test the various kinds of food.

And I am very much in the same boat. The patch did bring about several important formulaic changes. I can’t even make my own calculations about the different bonuses and the like (and yes, mathematically challenged Asians are a rarity).

Here you have your Golden Fish Sticks and your Blackened Sporefish. Below you can see an image comparison of where you can acquire these yummy fish from. I won’t get into details about which fish is better than the other. Suffice it to say, Golden Fish Sticks reign supreme in the post 2.4 world. But here’s why I will continue using Sporefish.

 

Affordable opportunity-cost

What I mean about opportunity cost here is the fact that the overall effort required to catch Sporefish is easier than Fish Sticks. There’s a large difference in fishing skill required to fish between the two areas. It takes longer for me to empty out a Highland Fishing pool than a Sporefish pool. Couple that with the fact that it’s easier for me to kill a level 61 hydra as opposed to a level 71 water elemental.

Maybe it’s karma from all the sushi I’ve been eating recently.

PvP Problems

I play on a PvP server. I’m also a Priest in a marked guild. A holy priest sitting in Skettis with nothing but a fishing pole equipped may as well just be holding a large neon pink "GANK ME NOW" sign. It is tough competition especially when the pools are scarce enough as is.

Quantity

Zangarmarsh has four large lakes which have numerous fishing pools. There’s a lot more potential Sporefish pools out there. There are only 3 mid-sized lakes to fish from. I’m not disciplined enough to fly around all three Terrokar lakes to get said fish.

By the way, as a follow up, my Guild has retrieved the lost Hearts of Darkness and epic gems from the perpetrator. According to the GM, that player has had "justice served".

Quick Tip to Mentally Calculate Stamina After Buffs

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Stamina

I was just going through my trackbacks. I get a lot of guilds that link to some of my lists (particularly the Karazan and Zul’Aman one). While visiting one of these Guild forums, there was a poster who was skeptical about some of the ZA numbers I had written. It was specifically about a Paladin tank. He was wondering how a Paladin could hit 18000 health after buffs. Now I’m not going to name any names, but you know who you are =).

Let’s start with a Paladin template. I’m going to use my friend Sasstar as an example.

For a quick reference, he only has 2/5 T4, is using the Gavel of Unearthed Secrets (Lower City), and Shield of Impenetrable Darkness (Nightbane). The rest of his items are from Karazhan or badge rewards.

Calculating Maximum Possible Health for Tanks

These are all of the buffs that could possibly benefit a tank in terms of Stamina.

Stamina Buffs

Imp. Fortitude (Priest): 102
Imp. Mark: 18
Spicy Crawdad: 30
Imp. Blood Pact (Warlocks): 70

That equals approximately 2200 health (assuming each point of stam offers 10 health).

Health Buffs

Flask of Fortification: 400 HP
Commanding Shout: 1080 HP

Blessing of Kings

This Paladin Buff increases all stats by 10%. It will take into consideration the buffs applied to your tank, but NOT the subsequent health only buffs like Flasks or Commanding Shouts.

Applying all of this to our Tank

A quick glance at Sasstar’s HP reveals that he has approximately 14900 HP. Add 2200 from the stamina only buffs, and you get 17100 health. Applying Kings will increase his health to 18800 (10%, right?). Flask of Fortification and assuming you have a diligent Warrior will further shoot up his health total to 20280.

Reality

In reality, we don’t always get all the buffs we want. But having the correct class composition and having the willingness to spend gold to improve yourself is the first start. Even without having Commanding Shout, we can see Sasstar easily reaching 18k health after buffs with no problems.

For the rest of us

For the rest of us who aren’t tanks, an easy way to figure out your health after buffs is to add 1200 to your current HP and add 10% of your health after that. This takes into account Imp. Fort and Imp. Mark and Blessing of Kings. I have about 7000 health. After buffs, I have 8200. After Kings, I have 9000ish health.

Pretty good for a Dwarf Priest!

Disclaimer: I may or may not be accurate with some of these numbers. They are meant as “ballpark” figures. Use this info at your own risk. I cannot be held liable for any wipes that could possibly occur.

(Special thanks to Bellwether for her assistance)