Warning. NSFW. Seriously. But it's so goddamn hilarious.
There is a bot in a channel I frequent in IRC called Wheaties. He, for the most part, comes out with garbled, often crude, messages. Sometimes this is random. Other times, it is when you address him by name.
This link catalogues the very best, oh-so-appropriate times that he fires off a message, in this particular channel and others like it.
I'm dying of laughter.
Friday, 30 October 2009
Thursday, 29 October 2009
A Bubble of Healing Bloggers
So, I've been tagged by my GM over at Planet of the Hats to participate in a questionnaire started by Miss Medicina. I will confess to having been forewarned about this indirectly by Paolo, who was tagged earlier in the day. I will also confess that I ... don't actually have anyone I can tag -- only person I know is Paolo, really. Oh, wait! I know! Muahahaha ... The next link in the chain will be at the bottom.
Post this questionnaire, with your answers, on your blog. Pick the healing class you know most about (or is the focus of your blog) for the questionnaire, and then send it over to another healing blogger you know and love who heals with a DIFFERENT class. Include a link to the blogger who sent you the questionnaire, as well as a link to the blogger to whom you are sending it.
So. Tone. Your turn. You're not a different class, but I don't know anyone else with a blog. Go go.
Post this questionnaire, with your answers, on your blog. Pick the healing class you know most about (or is the focus of your blog) for the questionnaire, and then send it over to another healing blogger you know and love who heals with a DIFFERENT class. Include a link to the blogger who sent you the questionnaire, as well as a link to the blogger to whom you are sending it.
- What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer? Sinespe, Discipline Priest, primarily shadow
- What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans) When required by my guild, I heal Trial of the Grand Crusader 10-player, up to and including the Twin Val'kyr.
- What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why? Lightwell. No, seriously; stop laughing. Lightwell. I know it's not even in my spec, but it is my favourite Priest healing spell. People need to be educated in its use, because it is ludicrously powerful. Coming in a close second is Binding Heal. Both of those spells are unique to the Priest class, in spite of all the homogenisation that has gone on in Wrath.
- What healing spell do you use least for your class and why? Either Greater Heal or Divine Hymn. The former just because I forget or don't find time to use it, the latter because by the time I realise I have it we've probably already wiped. I need to work on that.
- What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why? As just about every other priest will have said, our biggest strength is that we have a spell for every occasion. Specific to Discipline, Borrowed Time allows for quite amazing single-target burst healing when it's needed -- Power Word: Shield is an instant 7-9k's worth of prevention, and following that up with a GCD-capped Flash Heal ... there's nothing quite like it.
- What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why? I ... really don't think we have one in PvE. Specifically where Discipline is concerned, we have quite a lot of ways in which we can remain mobile while still casting useful spells -- Prayer of Mending and PW: S being the instant ways to do that, and Borrowed Time allowing for very short bursts of standing still while needing to move. I guess you could say that we have problems where our itemisation is concerned, because the lines between throughput and longevity are very rigidly defined: Intellect gives negligible throughput, and spellpower negligible longevity. But that's not a bad thing -- all it requires is intelligence enough to focus on a particular philosophy according to what you and your raid need.
- In a 25 [10] man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you? (I don't do 25-mans, so I've edited this question.) I don't actually have a preference. Discipline has very strong supportive raid healing with its shields and Prayer of Mending, but also strong supportive Tank healing with Penance, Bubbles and Flash Heal. In a 10-man raid where the other two healers are a Resto Druid (Almost certainly a raid healer) and a Holy Paladin (Almost certainly a tank healer), I like to fill in the gaps between the two.
- What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why? Discipline, of course. I wouldn't give up my offspec for anything. I like to feel that I have an intuitive knowledge of both Discipline and Shadow -- as such, if either spec gets jumbled by changes, I get jumbled by them too. (In the words of "Kungen", "Live inside your character. If it dies, you die. FOCUS!")
- What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why? I would most likely have trouble playing a Holy Paladin. I know that they have a lot of utility if they spec 51/20/0, but they are, for the most part, a "Stand still and heal" kind of a class. They get most hamstrung by movement fights, and especially in ToGC with fights like Gormok the Impaler with his Snobolds and Jaraxxus with his bassément Mistresses, I'd feel annoyed if a tank died because of my inability to heal them.
- What is your worst habit as a healer? The same as when I'm DPSing: Jumping (to the left or right, generally) whenever I cast an instant spell. If I hit PW: S, I jump. Prayer of Mending? Jump. However, I see this as a good thing: I have been conditioned to associate "Instant-cast" with "jumping" -- i.e., when I need to move, I will know my limits in terms of my healing capability, and I will know where my instant-cast buttons are.
- What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing? I dunno ... I guess when I'm in PuGs I get annoyed at DPS who pull less DPS than me (while I'm healing. I smite in 5-mans to alleviate the boredom) -- and there have been people who do that, in epics, no less. I know they're only heroics, but I do wish people would focus just a little bit. I don't like slacking from other people, when I'm always trying to run at >90% efficiency for whatever I'm doing.
- Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing? Oh, definitely. I mean, I'd love some kind of Power Word: Bacon that I could apply to a target, and which would mirror my Penance healing -- that would give me a bit more single-target healing output to compete with Paladins, but, really, it would be a luxury. It's not something we need.
- What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer? I use Pitbull. If Boss health is at 0%, fellow raiders' health are above 0%, and my mana is at 10% or lower after having popped every mana cooldown I have, then I consider myself to have performed perfectly. I do check the "Deaths" section of Recount to see if there were anything I could have done to keep dead people alive, but apart from that I don't generally focus much on anything other than what I'm doing at the time of a boss fight. If I screw up, I know it, because it doesn't happen often.
- What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class? That we are tank healers. I think that misconception still exists -- I don't think enough people yet rate Power Word: Shield spam as a viable form of raid healing; or, if they do, I don't think they realise that we not only can raid shield but also can tank-heal at the same time.
- What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn? The importance of Meditation. While levelling my Death Knight, I've seen so many holy priests who have gone too deep into Holy before hitting Northrend, and thus haven't picked up Meditation (including one train-wreck of a priest, but he has since respecced Discipline and it doesn't look as terrible as it used to). I find that Discipline is pretty self-explanatory. It's obviously about shields, and it's obviously centred around Flash Heal and Penance.
- If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)? They wouldn't see a pattern. I try to keep low overhealing, but apart from that, it is entirely fight-dependent
- Haste or Crit and why? MOAR DAPPS
- What healing class do you feel you understand least? Holy Priest. It's changed far too much since Wrath came out, and I don't really recognise it any more. I sort of get it, but ...
- What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing? /cast [target=focus] Power Infusion, on the Macro side, and that's all. Add-ons, I use Grid, Quartz ... that's about all.
- Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why? I follow Paolo's advice: Intellect comes on gear, Spirit comes on gear where there are no double-dip slots, so stack Spellpower and Crit as high as you can. Moar DAPPS.
So. Tone. Your turn. You're not a different class, but I don't know anyone else with a blog. Go go.
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
Gear.
Paolo has already written on this subject, but something just happened which incensed me to the point where I had to add to this, from something of an opposite end of the spectrum, but firing at the same point. The point is that "Gear is not everything". But the premise this time, instead of being about skilled people in low gear, is unskilled people in Naxx gear.
I'm going to just say this bluntly, because I feel like it. Stop blaming bad DPS on your gear.
In my Simcrafting, I ran a simulation of a Patchwerk fight, with the gear template being this set. This is a set of gear that I am actively collecting, to prove a point, but for now, I will work off the following information to build a reasonable hypothesis:
Simcraft gave my Blue gear a DPS potential of 4.3k DPS.
On a target dummy, I determined that I work at a 92.5% rate of efficiency with respect to mess ups in rotation, crit variance, and the like. So, on Patchwerk, I would be able to pull 4k DPS in my blue gear.
Let me say that again: A skilled Shadow Priest can pull 4k DPS in heroic blues, given full raid buffs and less than 500ms of latency.
This is also a continuation of The Greedy Goblin's foray into Ulduar10 wearing gear sets rather similar to the one that I have created. In another post, though I believe it is on the same blog, Gevlon states that high-level gear only accounts for around a 40% DPS increase in current casual content -- i.e., if someone in iLvl 200 epics does 4k DPS, that same person on the same fight with iLvl232 epics will do 5.6k DPS.
Now, when a class is said to have "scaling problems", either positive or negative, this is because their gear is either contributing too much or too little a proportion to this DPS gain (I.e., it's either above or below 40%) -- and I know that you can throw a tonne of examples at me about why the 40% figure is arbitrary, such as melee classes scaling better with their weapons than any other part of their gear, or X class pulling 200% of the DPS in Ilvl245 gear that they pulled in iLvl200 gear, but my point still remains solid through all the minutiae: Player skill is far more important than gear.
I won't rant for long about the incident itself, but, to summarise: Someone in VoA25 pulled 3k DPS and apologised for it. In their apologetic sentence, they said they "Needed better gear". They were in iLvl200-213 epics. I called them out on it. They then fell back on "This is my offspec."
You know what? It's fine to do badly in your offspec. Make that the core of your apology for why you only pull 3k DPS. Don't blame it on your gear. If you blame it on your gear, it carries with it the implication that you have this false belief that, with a full complement of ToC epics, you will magically transform into an awesome raider.
And don't put me on ignore when I'm about to link you to my shadow priest guide. You want to improve? Listen to me.
I'm going to just say this bluntly, because I feel like it. Stop blaming bad DPS on your gear.
In my Simcrafting, I ran a simulation of a Patchwerk fight, with the gear template being this set. This is a set of gear that I am actively collecting, to prove a point, but for now, I will work off the following information to build a reasonable hypothesis:
Simcraft gave my Blue gear a DPS potential of 4.3k DPS.
On a target dummy, I determined that I work at a 92.5% rate of efficiency with respect to mess ups in rotation, crit variance, and the like. So, on Patchwerk, I would be able to pull 4k DPS in my blue gear.
Let me say that again: A skilled Shadow Priest can pull 4k DPS in heroic blues, given full raid buffs and less than 500ms of latency.
This is also a continuation of The Greedy Goblin's foray into Ulduar10 wearing gear sets rather similar to the one that I have created. In another post, though I believe it is on the same blog, Gevlon states that high-level gear only accounts for around a 40% DPS increase in current casual content -- i.e., if someone in iLvl 200 epics does 4k DPS, that same person on the same fight with iLvl232 epics will do 5.6k DPS.
Now, when a class is said to have "scaling problems", either positive or negative, this is because their gear is either contributing too much or too little a proportion to this DPS gain (I.e., it's either above or below 40%) -- and I know that you can throw a tonne of examples at me about why the 40% figure is arbitrary, such as melee classes scaling better with their weapons than any other part of their gear, or X class pulling 200% of the DPS in Ilvl245 gear that they pulled in iLvl200 gear, but my point still remains solid through all the minutiae: Player skill is far more important than gear.
I won't rant for long about the incident itself, but, to summarise: Someone in VoA25 pulled 3k DPS and apologised for it. In their apologetic sentence, they said they "Needed better gear". They were in iLvl200-213 epics. I called them out on it. They then fell back on "This is my offspec."
You know what? It's fine to do badly in your offspec. Make that the core of your apology for why you only pull 3k DPS. Don't blame it on your gear. If you blame it on your gear, it carries with it the implication that you have this false belief that, with a full complement of ToC epics, you will magically transform into an awesome raider.
And don't put me on ignore when I'm about to link you to my shadow priest guide. You want to improve? Listen to me.
One last hurra-LEEEEROOOOOY ...
Sometimes, just sometimes, there arise from the ashes, phoenix-like, old memes, for one final, triumphant, Original Content return.
May it now rest in pieces.
May it now rest in pieces.
... And everyone else. <3
So while I'm on the subject of thanking people and making them known, and since I don't really want to blogroll notable people whom I read, here is just a run-down list of all the other fine folks in the Wowhead Priest and General communities, and some other awesome people, and why they are most certainly worthy of mention in this little corner of the blogosphere:
Wowhead:
General awesome people
Casey (Malgayne) -- Awesome community manager, if far too infuriatingly forgiving of some of the trolls on the Wowhead forums. Always a joy to talk with through IRC or the super sekrit Premium e-mail address. He has this blog, too.
Corgan -- Corgan is a dick. Anyone who has been on #wowhead will know this. Be on his good side, though (I.e., Don't Be A Dick), and you find a cuddly owl who cares about the upper-tier content and cares about enabling people like me to get there. Hear that, Corgan? Your secret's out. Better start telling people to eat dicks again, or your reputation might start faltering.
Sarah (Noxychu) -- Has a hot voice (and I say that as someone who is used to hearing English voices anyway, so is not biased by the sexiness of British accents in general). She's also a Priest, and an extraordinarily talented artist -- and I hope that Blizzard takes note of her abilities sooner or later, because she would be a credit to their design department. She also keeps trying to get me play on the US servers. Not any time soon, I'm afraid, my dear. ;3
Priestlings
Euan (Primar) -- A retired Shadow Priest, through whom I was able to elbow my way into the Troupe of Superfluously Flamboyant Headwear where I now permanently reside. He now occasionally attempts to derail threads in the Priest section of Wowhead. I encourage him; he has a 100% success rate at derailment. Hilarious to listen to when drunk on Ventrilo. Always going AFK for more beer.
Paolo -- A Discipline Priest of whom I am a keen disciple, and with whom I have some kind of undefined rivalry. Day by day, I am slowly turning him British, while tapping him of all useful knowledge regarding the ways of the Bubble. Soon, Paolo, the student will become the Master. Of what, I'm not sure.
karlusdavius -- In the gold corner, representing Holy Priests. Wowhead's resident expert of the ways of CoH and Holy Contentration (or what we folks used to call OO5SR), and infrequent troll -- but he's toned that down a lot.
Patty132471 -- British, so I am biased to include him. An intelligent contributor to the forums, always worth reading.
Seneca -- At the time that Seneca actually started making himself known on the Priest boards, I was in my third year of Uni, and, coincidentally, part of my Latin course was to study three of Seneca's works. This I find amusing, though in no way significant of anything. Recently returned to the fold, and hopefully sticking around, Seneca is a fellow Shadow Priest, and Lord of Priest Memes. im shock.
Gwennevere -- Doesn't post often, which is a shame, because I always know to expect quality when I see the Rapture avatar.
kuinkitty -- A Paladin, regularly, but has recently entered the Disciples' fold and is doing rather well, from what I gather. A resident of #wowhead.
Astarael -- Another #wowhead resident, part of the little clique that Noxy, Euan, he and I share as Priests of IRC.
Other awesome folk:
Sihmm -- Also Chayah (ch-eye-ah ("ch" as in "loch")), Charles, or simply C. My GM. Very supportive, and willing to listen to far too many of the walls of text I throw his way.
Boubouille -- This guy requires no description. His website says it all.
Fáy -- A Shadow Priest on Shadowsong, with whom I enjoy talking about our buffs and nerfs. A hardcore 25-man raider.
If you're not on this list and you should be, then I'm very sorry for leaving you out, and I will remedy it as soon as you /glare at me.
Wowhead:
General awesome people
Casey (Malgayne) -- Awesome community manager, if far too infuriatingly forgiving of some of the trolls on the Wowhead forums. Always a joy to talk with through IRC or the super sekrit Premium e-mail address. He has this blog, too.
Corgan -- Corgan is a dick. Anyone who has been on #wowhead will know this. Be on his good side, though (I.e., Don't Be A Dick), and you find a cuddly owl who cares about the upper-tier content and cares about enabling people like me to get there. Hear that, Corgan? Your secret's out. Better start telling people to eat dicks again, or your reputation might start faltering.
Sarah (Noxychu) -- Has a hot voice (and I say that as someone who is used to hearing English voices anyway, so is not biased by the sexiness of British accents in general). She's also a Priest, and an extraordinarily talented artist -- and I hope that Blizzard takes note of her abilities sooner or later, because she would be a credit to their design department. She also keeps trying to get me play on the US servers. Not any time soon, I'm afraid, my dear. ;3
Priestlings
Euan (Primar) -- A retired Shadow Priest, through whom I was able to elbow my way into the Troupe of Superfluously Flamboyant Headwear where I now permanently reside. He now occasionally attempts to derail threads in the Priest section of Wowhead. I encourage him; he has a 100% success rate at derailment. Hilarious to listen to when drunk on Ventrilo. Always going AFK for more beer.
Paolo -- A Discipline Priest of whom I am a keen disciple, and with whom I have some kind of undefined rivalry. Day by day, I am slowly turning him British, while tapping him of all useful knowledge regarding the ways of the Bubble. Soon, Paolo, the student will become the Master. Of what, I'm not sure.
karlusdavius -- In the gold corner, representing Holy Priests. Wowhead's resident expert of the ways of CoH and Holy Contentration (or what we folks used to call OO5SR), and infrequent troll -- but he's toned that down a lot.
Patty132471 -- British, so I am biased to include him. An intelligent contributor to the forums, always worth reading.
Seneca -- At the time that Seneca actually started making himself known on the Priest boards, I was in my third year of Uni, and, coincidentally, part of my Latin course was to study three of Seneca's works. This I find amusing, though in no way significant of anything. Recently returned to the fold, and hopefully sticking around, Seneca is a fellow Shadow Priest, and Lord of Priest Memes. im shock.
Gwennevere -- Doesn't post often, which is a shame, because I always know to expect quality when I see the Rapture avatar.
kuinkitty -- A Paladin, regularly, but has recently entered the Disciples' fold and is doing rather well, from what I gather. A resident of #wowhead.
Astarael -- Another #wowhead resident, part of the little clique that Noxy, Euan, he and I share as Priests of IRC.
Other awesome folk:
Sihmm -- Also Chayah (ch-eye-ah ("ch" as in "loch")), Charles, or simply C. My GM. Very supportive, and willing to listen to far too many of the walls of text I throw his way.
Boubouille -- This guy requires no description. His website says it all.
Fáy -- A Shadow Priest on Shadowsong, with whom I enjoy talking about our buffs and nerfs. A hardcore 25-man raider.
If you're not on this list and you should be, then I'm very sorry for leaving you out, and I will remedy it as soon as you /glare at me.
Belated thanks.
It occurs to me that I never properly accredited my new blog design and layout, after my previous "I'm sorry for the mess" post.
Thanks must go to Zicon of Wowhead -- also Isolde of the fine 25-man casualcore raiding guild, Aurora, on Quel'thalas-EU; and Tone, to give her real name, which isn't pronounced at all like "Tuna" -- for painstakingly designing this new layout from scratch, after looking at the mess of HTML that comprises Blogspot's default layouts.
Kudos on your recent Heroic Beasts kill, Tone. May Aurora continue to thrive.
Thanks must go to Zicon of Wowhead -- also Isolde of the fine 25-man casualcore raiding guild, Aurora, on Quel'thalas-EU; and Tone, to give her real name, which isn't pronounced at all like "Tuna" -- for painstakingly designing this new layout from scratch, after looking at the mess of HTML that comprises Blogspot's default layouts.
Kudos on your recent Heroic Beasts kill, Tone. May Aurora continue to thrive.
Sunday, 25 October 2009
Saturday, 24 October 2009
More 3.3.0 number-crunching.
Now. Once more, I'll deliver the disclaimer that this is still PTR stuff and it could all change. Additionally, I will say that my numbers are of a 10-man-heroic BiS list, and thus the numbers do not necessarily apply to any other gear set, above or below.
This is my BiS wishlist. I decided to have some Simcraft 3.3.0 fun with it. Firstly, I did some basic controls:
3.2.2 average DPS over 300-second fights, 10,000 iterations, full raid buffs: 7514
Scale Factors (Normalised):
Spirit: 0.35
Int: 0.23
Spellpower: 1
Hit: 1.45
Crit: 0.73
Haste: 0.69
3.3.0 average DPS, same conditions: 8726 DPS
Scale Factors (Normalised):
Spirit: 0.55
Int: 0.22
Spellpower: 1
Hit: 1.17
Crit: 0.74
Haste: 1.36
Then I started to have some fun with it. First test: Changing all "potent" gems to "Reckless":
8789 DPS
Scale Factors (Normalised):
Spirit: 0.56
Int: 0.23
Spellpower: 1
Hit: 1.25
Crit: 0.74
Haste: 1.31
Second test: Changing all "runed" gems and all "potent" gems to "Reckless":
8833 DPS
Scale Factors (Normalised):
Spirit: 0.55
Int: 0.20
Spellpower: 1
Hit: 1.28
Crit: 0.73
Haste: 1.14
Third test: Changing all yellow sockets to Quick King's Amber, and all red sockets to Reckless Ametrine:
8827 DPS
Scale Factors (Normalised):
Spirit: 0.56
Int: 0.20
Spellpower: 1
Hit: 1.14
Crit: 0.71
Haste: 1.09
So the third test took it too far -- as predicted in my previous post on the subject, socketing as many Quick gems as possible causes too much spellpower decay and the haste scaling loses its potency. There is something to be said for changing Potent to Reckless, but beyond that it starts getting a bit silly and expensive for not very much reward. And, besides, this is only tier 9 gear -- when patch 3.3 does hit, we'll be wanting to replace it all.
This is my BiS wishlist. I decided to have some Simcraft 3.3.0 fun with it. Firstly, I did some basic controls:
3.2.2 average DPS over 300-second fights, 10,000 iterations, full raid buffs: 7514
Scale Factors (Normalised):
Spirit: 0.35
Int: 0.23
Spellpower: 1
Hit: 1.45
Crit: 0.73
Haste: 0.69
3.3.0 average DPS, same conditions: 8726 DPS
Scale Factors (Normalised):
Spirit: 0.55
Int: 0.22
Spellpower: 1
Hit: 1.17
Crit: 0.74
Haste: 1.36
Then I started to have some fun with it. First test: Changing all "potent" gems to "Reckless":
8789 DPS
Scale Factors (Normalised):
Spirit: 0.56
Int: 0.23
Spellpower: 1
Hit: 1.25
Crit: 0.74
Haste: 1.31
Second test: Changing all "runed" gems and all "potent" gems to "Reckless":
8833 DPS
Scale Factors (Normalised):
Spirit: 0.55
Int: 0.20
Spellpower: 1
Hit: 1.28
Crit: 0.73
Haste: 1.14
Third test: Changing all yellow sockets to Quick King's Amber, and all red sockets to Reckless Ametrine:
8827 DPS
Scale Factors (Normalised):
Spirit: 0.56
Int: 0.20
Spellpower: 1
Hit: 1.14
Crit: 0.71
Haste: 1.09
So the third test took it too far -- as predicted in my previous post on the subject, socketing as many Quick gems as possible causes too much spellpower decay and the haste scaling loses its potency. There is something to be said for changing Potent to Reckless, but beyond that it starts getting a bit silly and expensive for not very much reward. And, besides, this is only tier 9 gear -- when patch 3.3 does hit, we'll be wanting to replace it all.
Monday, 19 October 2009
Huh. How about that.
So, it's early days on the PTR; thus, all things are subject to change. Buuuut ... I was curious about whether anyone had done any 3.3 Simcrafting, taking into account the haste changes.
Elitist Jerks, naturally, came through. The PP values of the current build, using 3.2.2 BiS T9 gear, and with 2/2 IST etc. etc., are:
Spellpower: 1 (Always)
Hit: 1.42 (No surprises here. Hit's always what you want)
Crit: 0.84 (Fairly consistent, really. It just naturally goes up as gear improves)
Spirit: 0.56 (Very consistent with the buffs to spirit. I guessed this precise number before I even saw it. For me, it would sit at 0.5 exactly because I don't run with 2/2 IST -- IST gives it a little extra push; just over 10%, as you see)
Int: 0.24
Haste: 1.31
Haste is better than Spellpower.
But don't all start gemming for it just yet. Early days, folks, early days. If these numbers do make it to Live, I would recommend exercising caution -- consider full Reckless gems rather than switching everything to Quick King's Amber. Scaling relies on all the stats available. The values above are from a full complement of BiS tier 9, gemmed optimally for 3.2.2 stats. In other words, all the slots apart from two would be gemmed pure spellpower. If you sink >200 spellpower and turn it all into haste, and then run the 20,000 Simcraft iterations again, you're going to get a much smaller gap between Spellpower and Haste: you'll speed up, but each thing you do will be doing less damage.
When MMO-Champion starts giving us enough data to build a Tier 10 BiS list, we'll be able to see the theoretical scaling values of a set with full Quick King's Amber versus one with full Reckless Ametrine or Runed Cardinal Ruby. My intuition tells me that Reckless will be the way to go, but time will tell.
Elitist Jerks, naturally, came through. The PP values of the current build, using 3.2.2 BiS T9 gear, and with 2/2 IST etc. etc., are:
Spellpower: 1 (Always)
Hit: 1.42 (No surprises here. Hit's always what you want)
Crit: 0.84 (Fairly consistent, really. It just naturally goes up as gear improves)
Spirit: 0.56 (Very consistent with the buffs to spirit. I guessed this precise number before I even saw it. For me, it would sit at 0.5 exactly because I don't run with 2/2 IST -- IST gives it a little extra push; just over 10%, as you see)
Int: 0.24
Haste: 1.31
Haste is better than Spellpower.
But don't all start gemming for it just yet. Early days, folks, early days. If these numbers do make it to Live, I would recommend exercising caution -- consider full Reckless gems rather than switching everything to Quick King's Amber. Scaling relies on all the stats available. The values above are from a full complement of BiS tier 9, gemmed optimally for 3.2.2 stats. In other words, all the slots apart from two would be gemmed pure spellpower. If you sink >200 spellpower and turn it all into haste, and then run the 20,000 Simcraft iterations again, you're going to get a much smaller gap between Spellpower and Haste: you'll speed up, but each thing you do will be doing less damage.
When MMO-Champion starts giving us enough data to build a Tier 10 BiS list, we'll be able to see the theoretical scaling values of a set with full Quick King's Amber versus one with full Reckless Ametrine or Runed Cardinal Ruby. My intuition tells me that Reckless will be the way to go, but time will tell.
Friday, 16 October 2009
About-face.
The chilling presence of the Frozen Throne deals Frost damage to all nearby enemies. Removes 1% of your health every 3 sec.
So, Blizzard, I heard you didn't want another Sunwell Radiance aura in future expansions, because it was a sign that you had screwed up some game mechanics. You put in diminishing returns on avoidance to ensure that this wouldn't have to happen.
So instead, you seem to think that healing is far too powerful, and that that deserves to be drained.
Fix your bloody game and stop being hypocrites.
In which I get Tailoring nerfed.
I apologise to all tailors. I just respecced Tailoring from JC. Blizzard will now nerf it, in line with their policy of breaking any profession I choose.
EDIT 1: (I can't sleep. As usual.)
EDIT 2: Oh god. 9g for a stack of Mageweave. Brickwall time! Fortunately I have lots of Runecloth stockpiled for the tailoring equivalent of the Thorium Sink.
EDIT 3: So apparently I don't actually need Mageweave at the level I learn how to Bolt it. Back to cheap silk. Yaaaay
EDIT 4: You can tell I planned this way in advance.
EDIT 5: Long craft times are the bane of my existence.
EDIT 6: Gee, Chris, do you want to guarantee these ten insignificant levels by using your overpriced Mageweave cloth, or will you take the ULTIMATE GAMBLE and risk losing TENS of silver by crafting YELLOW silk pantaloons?
EDIT 7: Why the hell do dyes stack in 10s if thread stacks in 20s?
EDIT 8: 225. Time for all the Mageweave to disappear magically.
EDIT 9: 250. Let's see what Runecloth I can scrounge up from my Death Knight.
EDIT 10: Ah. Runecloth Belt. My old friend.
EDIT 1: (I can't sleep. As usual.)
EDIT 2: Oh god. 9g for a stack of Mageweave. Brickwall time! Fortunately I have lots of Runecloth stockpiled for the tailoring equivalent of the Thorium Sink.
EDIT 3: So apparently I don't actually need Mageweave at the level I learn how to Bolt it. Back to cheap silk. Yaaaay
EDIT 4: You can tell I planned this way in advance.
EDIT 5: Long craft times are the bane of my existence.
EDIT 6: Gee, Chris, do you want to guarantee these ten insignificant levels by using your overpriced Mageweave cloth, or will you take the ULTIMATE GAMBLE and risk losing TENS of silver by crafting YELLOW silk pantaloons?
EDIT 7: Why the hell do dyes stack in 10s if thread stacks in 20s?
EDIT 8: 225. Time for all the Mageweave to disappear magically.
EDIT 9: 250. Let's see what Runecloth I can scrounge up from my Death Knight.
EDIT 10: Ah. Runecloth Belt. My old friend.
Thursday, 15 October 2009
ToGC. Healers: Tuonie, Chayah ... Sinespe?
You better believe it. I shelled out sixty emblems to pick up the Tier 9 healing Shoulders and Gloves, because I've had no luck getting the gloves from VoA, and I helped heal the first four bosses of Trial of the Grand Crusader, in my mix of off-spec-rolled healing pieces and just-happens-to-work-for-Disc-too DPS items. Ironically, I got no upgrades for my DPS set tonight, but I got three items (Belt, boots and ring) from ToC10N and Onyxia10 for my healing set. Know what I was doing in ToC10N and Onyxia10? DPSing.
Additionally, there's nothing quite like clearing ToC10N in 26 minutes and 30 seconds, including breaks.
Still wouldn't want to heal as a main, but it's nice to know I'm keeping myself fully up-to-date and competitive even in my offspec.
Additionally, there's nothing quite like clearing ToC10N in 26 minutes and 30 seconds, including breaks.
Still wouldn't want to heal as a main, but it's nice to know I'm keeping myself fully up-to-date and competitive even in my offspec.
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
Monday, 12 October 2009
I GOT THE BASTARD.
[13:30:21] [RL] [80 Shibba:1]: [Illustration of the Dragon Soul] roll
[13:30:24] Sinespe rolls 92 (1-100)
FUCK YOU, SARTHARION.
[13:30:24] Sinespe rolls 92 (1-100)
FUCK YOU, SARTHARION.
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
Urgh.
I'm ill. Whenever I get flu, my early warning sign is a sore throat. Sore throats happen to be the thing I hate most about illness. I can cope with the aches and the shakes just fine, and the loss of appetite isn't so much of a problem (thanks to Charlotte for sorting out that one: "Drink squash. Really strong. With lots of sugar. You'll trick your body into thinking you've eaten something and you'll get lots of glucose to fight the virus.").
I write the above paragraph as a warning that I might not be quite so lucid as I normally am, since I have something to respond to today. Yaaaaay.
Eoy now tells us that Ensidia has dropped him from regular raiding in ToGC25, out of reasons of efficiency. Naturally, one of those points of "Efficiency" is our "low DPS" compared to other classes. Which other classes? Mages and Warlocks are the two noted in his post. Those are pure DPS classes. Fair enough, a 2k discrepency is perhaps a tad higher than it should be, but those things could be fixed by nerfing damage done across the board rather than boosting Shadow Priest DPS, and comparing us with pure DPS classes has always been a silly thing to do. Nowhere in his post does he mention Elemental Shamans, Boomkins or Retribution Paladins. Now, why would that be ...?
As you know by now, I don't understand why people are complaining about our DPS. Primarily, this lack of understanding is because I do things like this (Note the lack of boomkin buffs). But let's talk about utility today, ladies and gentlemen. I'm willing to admit that our utility is not very exclusive, and I think it's a slight problem. I'm fine with Ret Pallies having Replenishment. Why? Because they're a hybrid DPS class. I'm fine with Frost Mages having Replenishment. Why? Because if you want to provide Replenishment as a Mage, you're going to be sacrificing some of your DPS in order to give it.
This brings us to Survival Hunters and Destruction Warlocks. Unlike the Frost tree for Mages, there is not such a huge loss of DPS by speccing Survival or Destro as opposed to Marksman or Demonology. Why should that be? They are pure DPS classes already, so why is their purity of DPS not tainted by picking up the extra utility?
But let's go back to the damage issue. Here's why I don't think it's very useful to say "omg buff us" (and, yes, as selfish as it is, it relates to my own situation). Let's take it as a fact that in 25-man cutting-edge content, Shadow Priests aren't performing well; but let's also take it as a fact that in 10-man cutting-edge content (where I currently am), Shadow Priests are performing well. What happens if you buff us based on the first fact alone? Our damage becomes overpowered in 10-man content. So what is Blizzard supposed to do? How can Shadow Priests be buffed for one raid setting without making us overpowered in another raid setting? Are we going to have to have a system whereby all abilities have a different base damage value depending on whether they're being used in a 10-player or a 25-player context? Would that not be something of an artificial solution to the problem?
And now I'm going to wander carelessly into the minefield of self-entitlement by saying this: cutting-edge content is not the only content there is. Or, rather, the "hardcore" attitude is not the only attitude in the game. Fancy Hat Club considers itself pretty hardcore in terms of our raiding ability, but I can't help but feel that guilds like Ensidia take this kind of stuff waaaay too far. If you're raiding in a guild where, as apparently is the case for Eoy, people are "Focus-geared" for the sake of "Efficiency", and where 2k DPS out of >100k RDPS matters that much, then, I'm afraid, you're not really in a setting that is representative of the game as a whole. "Bring the player, not the class" is the philosophy taken by Blizzard -- if Ensidia chooses not to follow that philosophy, do they not relinquish any claim to being representative? On their own heads be it, and I hope Eoy leaves Ensidia to find a guild that doesn't feel the need to min/max to such a minute level in order to rush through the content.
I write the above paragraph as a warning that I might not be quite so lucid as I normally am, since I have something to respond to today. Yaaaaay.
Eoy now tells us that Ensidia has dropped him from regular raiding in ToGC25, out of reasons of efficiency. Naturally, one of those points of "Efficiency" is our "low DPS" compared to other classes. Which other classes? Mages and Warlocks are the two noted in his post. Those are pure DPS classes. Fair enough, a 2k discrepency is perhaps a tad higher than it should be, but those things could be fixed by nerfing damage done across the board rather than boosting Shadow Priest DPS, and comparing us with pure DPS classes has always been a silly thing to do. Nowhere in his post does he mention Elemental Shamans, Boomkins or Retribution Paladins. Now, why would that be ...?
As you know by now, I don't understand why people are complaining about our DPS. Primarily, this lack of understanding is because I do things like this (Note the lack of boomkin buffs). But let's talk about utility today, ladies and gentlemen. I'm willing to admit that our utility is not very exclusive, and I think it's a slight problem. I'm fine with Ret Pallies having Replenishment. Why? Because they're a hybrid DPS class. I'm fine with Frost Mages having Replenishment. Why? Because if you want to provide Replenishment as a Mage, you're going to be sacrificing some of your DPS in order to give it.
This brings us to Survival Hunters and Destruction Warlocks. Unlike the Frost tree for Mages, there is not such a huge loss of DPS by speccing Survival or Destro as opposed to Marksman or Demonology. Why should that be? They are pure DPS classes already, so why is their purity of DPS not tainted by picking up the extra utility?
But let's go back to the damage issue. Here's why I don't think it's very useful to say "omg buff us" (and, yes, as selfish as it is, it relates to my own situation). Let's take it as a fact that in 25-man cutting-edge content, Shadow Priests aren't performing well; but let's also take it as a fact that in 10-man cutting-edge content (where I currently am), Shadow Priests are performing well. What happens if you buff us based on the first fact alone? Our damage becomes overpowered in 10-man content. So what is Blizzard supposed to do? How can Shadow Priests be buffed for one raid setting without making us overpowered in another raid setting? Are we going to have to have a system whereby all abilities have a different base damage value depending on whether they're being used in a 10-player or a 25-player context? Would that not be something of an artificial solution to the problem?
And now I'm going to wander carelessly into the minefield of self-entitlement by saying this: cutting-edge content is not the only content there is. Or, rather, the "hardcore" attitude is not the only attitude in the game. Fancy Hat Club considers itself pretty hardcore in terms of our raiding ability, but I can't help but feel that guilds like Ensidia take this kind of stuff waaaay too far. If you're raiding in a guild where, as apparently is the case for Eoy, people are "Focus-geared" for the sake of "Efficiency", and where 2k DPS out of >100k RDPS matters that much, then, I'm afraid, you're not really in a setting that is representative of the game as a whole. "Bring the player, not the class" is the philosophy taken by Blizzard -- if Ensidia chooses not to follow that philosophy, do they not relinquish any claim to being representative? On their own heads be it, and I hope Eoy leaves Ensidia to find a guild that doesn't feel the need to min/max to such a minute level in order to rush through the content.
Saturday, 3 October 2009
"Who's tanking?"
This question irritates me.
Specifically, this question irritates me when it comes from healers, in pugs. If you're a healer, presumably you have some kind of raid/party frame for, y'know, healing. Presumably this can be clicked to see a unit frame of the person you've selected. Presumably this unit frame tells you that person's current & total health. Total health is generally a good indication of whether someone's a tank or not.
If this is not the case, I'd love to know how you heal.
Specifically, this question irritates me when it comes from healers, in pugs. If you're a healer, presumably you have some kind of raid/party frame for, y'know, healing. Presumably this can be clicked to see a unit frame of the person you've selected. Presumably this unit frame tells you that person's current & total health. Total health is generally a good indication of whether someone's a tank or not.
If this is not the case, I'd love to know how you heal.
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