What is the tank’s job?

1
1 year ago
by george in

You would think from the start that there isn’t a tank in WoW that worries about Mana. Maybe aside from the Protection Paladin who’s spells are mana and Holy Power based, Death Knights, Druids, and Warriors use completely different mechanics (rage, runic power, etc) to build up the “stuff” to then attack with.

However, I think that tanks need to take another look at mana, not for themselves, but for their healer. Too often a tank is only concerned about themselves that they completely lose sight of everything else–most importantly where their healers are mana wise.

Case in point, I was running a few dungeons tonight and in each instance the healer kept saying “mana”. Now I thought this was strange since my main character is a restoration druid, and I certainly know the pain of watching a tank pull and pull and pull without any regard for my mana until I spoke up about it. I told the healers that my main was a resto druid and that I was watching their mana pools at the start of every pull–if they were below 50% I would wait till they gained back their mana. The healers were shocked!

Now why is this such a critical function? Well if the healer goes Out of Mana (OOM), guess what, you could be the best tank in the world but you won’t last that long without your healer.

Q: So what is the tank’s job? Isn’t it just to sit there and be able to take the damage?

Let’s look at what the tank’s job is suppose to be:

  1. Aggro management. This is the number one task for a tank to worry about is managing their threat per second (TPS). This means that they are the ones that the bosses and trash are focused on and beating on so the healers can keep healing and the dps can keep dps’ing.
  2. Since aggro is a huge task, pull patterns and which way to go and how are also up to the tanks. Which is why it is critical for a tank to know which way to go, which adds to crowd control, and boss mechanics. If the tank doesn’t know which way to go, which adds to pull or the boss mechanics, the group may be able to make it through by taking the extra time to explain things; however, it is widely accepted that as you progress to harder fights, i.e. going from normal to heroics and from heroics to raiding, that it’s your job as the tank to do your homework and come prepared to take care of your business. Knowing this information is just as important as knowing your class and spec, so be expected to work a bit harder to know these things.
  3. Keep an eye on your healers mana. I put this right behind #2 because a tanks job is ABSOLUTELY to be mindful of their healers. There is naturally a symbiotic relationship between the tank and healer and it should be expected that the two are in sync. The worst groups are the ones where the tank and healer have a love/hate relationship and cannot agree on anything, i.e. healers complaining that the tank isn’t holding threat, and the tank complaining that the wipes are due to the healer not healing. This never results in constructive groups and usually leads to people getting frustrated and leaving the group. So a tank should watch the healers mana and make sure that the healer is ready before any pull. This sounds very common-sensical; however, in practice it’s surprising how often the tank and/or the healer are not in sync.
  4. Managing cool downs (CD). I can’t speak on behalf of warriors, death knights and druids, so this will be purely from a paladin’s perspective. Paladin’s have cooldowns: Ardent Defender, Divine Guardian, Divine Protection and Guardian of Ancient Kings. As of 4.0.1, Ardent Defender no longer proc’ed automatically so this is something we have to do on our own based on the situation (still this is VERY tricky to master when to pop Ardent Defender!). Nonetheless, you have a plethora of cool downs that you as a tank need to manage depending on the situation. Do you need to take more of the party damage so the healer doesn’t have to rotate through the party healing random people but can focus and pour more heals into you (pop Divine Guardian). Or do you need to reduce incoming damage to make the damage spikes more manageable (pop Divine Protection). Keep in mind, even with Cataclysm and the increase in our health pools and being block capped, there is still ALOT of damage going around and damage has scaled to the amount of health tanks now have. Also healers spells are taking longer to cast, so tanks MUST keep this in mind that it takes longer for spells to cast. WoTLK really spoiled tanks as they no longer had to watch healers as healers were just healing machines. Cataclysm changes all of that. Period.
  5. Manage your self-heals. Again from a paladin’s perspective, you have a number of self-heals: Word of Glory and Holy Radiance. Now I am walking a fine line, I know this! But nonetheless, TANKS must manage their self-heals. For example, if you have 3 Holy Power (HP) and sufficient TPS but you are taking ALOT of damage, do you really need to hit that Shield of the Righteous? It’s more important at that point to look at your survivability. A dead group is a non-progressing group. Overzealous tanks need to stuff that idea that their job is just to take the damage. Their job is to survive–by whatever means possible. This means that in the previously mentioned situation, you are better off using Word of Glory, which will heal you for a fairly decent amount AND will proc Holy Shield (bonus!), you don’t lose anything except TPS. If your 5-man dungeon is melee heavy and melee is taking a lot of damage, use Holy Radiance to heal the players around you. This works great since all healer classes have an Area of Effect (AoE) heal. So stack your Holy Radiance on top of their AoE healing. Now paladins have more healing spells; however, I’ve only picked the ones that are instant cast as losing 1 Global Cooldown (GCD) is a very important thing and shouldn’t be done without consideration to the above mentioned 4 jobs of a tank.
  6. Be properly geared. I’ve seen too many tanks go into situations where they are ill-equipped to handle themselves properly. For instance, if you enter into a normal dungeon, a tank should be geared such that their health pools are larger than everyone else in the group. If you have an under-geared tank, even if you know your rotation and the fight you are risking a wipe strictly on the basis that you don’t have an adequate health pool to mitigate against burst damage.
  7. Stamina is not life. Tanks in WoTLK had this brilliant idea. Stack stamina and nothing else. So the idea here is that if Lord Marrowgar (or any other boss encounter) were to cleave the tank using Bone Slice, that the damage could be fully taken mitigated only by the armor value of the tanks. Now what’s the problem here? Well lets take a look at the math (basic mind you cause I’m horrible at math!). If your health pool because you were stam-stacking is 100,000, and Lord Marrowgar hits the tanks (split) for 60k, your armor will reduce all incoming damage by 40%, this means that you are getting hit every say 5 seconds for 24k. Now this might sound like a good idea; however, for a healer to keep up with you, this is a feat of strength. A good healer in WoTLK could keep up (properly geared), but the question always was why are tanks not looking at avoidance or mitigation through blocking, parry, or dodging the incoming damage? Take the same situation as above, what if both a stam-stacking tank and a balanced tank had the same armor value, but the balanced tank had proper avoidance so now they are mitigating an addition 20% of the incoming damage. This would be a huge added benefit as it would mean that instead of healing you through a certain amount of damage you are now avoiding that damage all together. It seems in Cataclysm this was changed as Blizzard observed these behaviors and thought the same as a lot of tanks out there that stam-stacking was just plain stupid. So now you have to worry about being blocked capped to 102.4% in order to be a proper tank. So what’s the lesson out of this, stamina and avoidance are your two main stats and you need to be conscious of both. Stacking in one and ignoring the other is going to tax your healers and in Cataclysm this is no longer something you can just get away with.

Consider that survivability equals progression. This should be the ultimate goal and all other feelings and principles should be left to the sidelines or an after action statement. For instance, if you notice that there are healing issues and assuming you have played the class and can offer suggestions, keep them to yourself until a good time and then provide these suggestions to the healer based on your observations on what you’ve had to go through. For example, if you are popping all your CD’s on a fight that shouldn’t warrant that, you might ask the healer if there is a problem because now the group has to wait because they cannot progress until you are abilities are off CD. Now this is a fine line as a lot of tanks have the habit of seeing their health go down and not having the faith of waiting till the last possible moment to allow the healer to get that ginormous heal off and instead popping their CD’s hastily. This should not warrant a tank feeding back to the healer cause it was their choice to not wait and see what would happen. Now if you had wiped and on the 2nd attempt the same thing happens, sure then it may not be hasty CD popping and there may be a real healer issue that needs to be addressed.

A few thoughts on Mastery in Cataclysm

0
1 year ago
by george in

Mastery is a new stat that comes with Cataclysm. The intent is to scale as gear improves giving that player added advantages–for healers to heal more, for tanks to tank more, for dps to dps more (obviously). But in many cases, Mastery just doesn’t seem to fit all that well.

For example, take my druid. As restoration, the Mastery talent is called Symbiosis. The description is:

Increases the potency of your healing spells by 10% on targets already affected by one of your heal over time spells.  Each point of Mastery increases heal potency by an additional 1.25%.

Since this would affect all the healing that my druid would do, the Mastery is actually a useful stat to look at. Granted it isn’t the first thing you should be going for, i.e. Intellect > Spirit > Haste/Crit > Mastery; however, you could argue that as your heals are more potent less mana is required and each of your spells is just that much better. Nonetheless it’s not useless.

My balance druid on the other hand, his Mastery talent is called Total Eclipse. The description is:

Increases the bonus damage from Eclipse by 12%.  Each point of Mastery increases the bonus by an additional 1.5%.

Now compared to his restoration spec, Total Eclipse only increases damage while in Eclipse. Since balance druids flow in and out of Eclipse state, this means that Mastery is only good about half of the time. The other half of your spell casting, the Mastery bonus isn’t applied. As such, this means for balance druids, that Mastery is one of our worse stats and in fact could be argued you should reforge Mastery into your other primary states, such Spirit (with Balance of Power remember spirit counts for both mana replenishment as well as hit), hit, crit, and haste. Personally I don’t think twice of Mastery for the balance druid as the other stats are far more critical in my opinion.

Now switching over to the paladin, things look very similar to the druid. The protection paladin’s Mastery talent is called Divine Bulwark. The description is:

Increases your chance to block melee attacks by 18%.  Each point of Mastery increases block chance by an additional 2.25%.

This is an absolutely critical state for paladins in the pursuit of being block capped. The magic number is 102.4%, where this percentage is calculated on 102.4% = BM + DC + PC + BC (source). Also keep in mind that Holy Shield procs off Word of Glory or Shield of the Righteous that also increases your block chance. The general query that you can enter into your chat window to determine where you sit with regards to this percentage is [source]:

/script dr=function(x)return 1/(1/16+0.9560/x)end;DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combat table coverage. Currently at: "..string.format("%.2f", GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance()+GetParryChance()+5+dr(GetCombatRating(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL)/122.962)))

Now why is this important? Since Divine Bulwark increases block chance, pouring Mastery into a protection paladin is a MUST! So here’s an example of where Mastery is absolutely critical to the class/spec. Consider, a squishy protection paladin is no paladin that you want in your group. So stacking Mastery in addition to stamina, dodge/parry is one of your prime stats. Getting to the block cap is just as critical for a protection paladin as it is for dps to get haste capped or crit capped (obviously all classes/specs should be hit capped!).

Now let’s look at the retribution paladin’s Mastery. The retribution paladin’s Mastery talent is called Hand of Light. The description is:

Your autoattacks have a 8% chance to grant Hand of Light, causing your next Holy Power ability to consume no Holy Power and to cast as if 3 Holy Power were consumed.  Each point of Mastery increases the chance by an additional 1%.

Your autoattacks have a 8% chance to grant Hand of Light, causing your next Holy Power ability to consume no Holy Power and to cast as if 3 Holy Power were consumed.  Each point of Mastery increases the chance by an additional 1%.

Now at face value, this seems to be something that you would use all the time–right? Wrong! First off, Hand of Light (HoL) when it procs is fairly nice as it means that your Holy Power (HP) may or may not be consumed AND if you have less than 3 HP when you do use Templar’s Verdict (TV) it will behave as if you do have 3 HP. Again seems like this would be a great thing to have. In practice what I have found is that this mechanic is cumbersome and unpredictable and results in an unstable rotation. For instance, my rotation may look something like:

Crusader Strike, Judgement, Holy Wrath, Crusader Strike, Judgement, Consecration, Crusader Strike, Inquisition

To get to our first Inquisition (our main bonus damage), it takes over 9 seconds!!! Now granted you can hit Inquisition earlier on; however, Inquisition scales with each HP, so for 1 HP you get 10 seconds of Inquisition, 2 HP you get 20 seconds, 3 HP you get 30 seconds. Now you throw HoL into the rotation and now you have the choice of getting a 3 HP value off Inquisition (which I would choose early on in a fight) or getting a 3 HP value off TV.

This is in addition to Zealotry, which we should hit on our second run through the rotation–so first run we get Inquisition, second run we get Zealotry and should be able to then use Avenging Wrath for the extra damage bonus.

Finally, yes FINALLY! We also have to watch for Art of War (AoW) procing that allows us to use Exorcism as an instant cast.

So to summarize in terms of priority, I would say: AoW > Inquisition > Zealotry > HoL. So during a fight, you could have AoW AND HoL proc, right in the middle of your rotation. So what do you do? If you have don’t have Inquisition, use HoL for Inquisition then Exorcism (as instant cast through AoW). If you do have Inquisition, use TV so you don’t consume your HP and build up HP to get to Zealotry.

Needless to say, this is an absolute nightmare. First off, because boss encounters are no longer tank and spanks, it requires us to interrupt our rotations to stand out of fire, pick up an add, crowd control, etc. This means that taking our already long rotation and putting interruptions into it your ability to maintain a smooth rotation goes straight out the window. Also I have to say in 5-man dungeons, the likelihood of getting to Zealotry is almost nil at this point in time. Your almost better off going with Inquisition and AW than to hold your HP for Zealotry. Also keep in mind that with Zealotry it requires you to use a Crusader Strike (CS) to get 3 HP, and since there is a 3 second global cool down on CS it further screws with a smooth rotation.

So long story short, Mastery for a retribution paladin is next to worthless and in fact in terms of stats, this is the worst stat for us at the moment.

Now I say at the moment as it would seem that Blizzard has picked up on this imbalance of Mastery being used by some classes and completely ignored by others. A recent blue post on MMO-Champion:

Mastery is a new stat for us, and there are a few specs that don’t value it enough. In some cases (e.g. Combat rogues), the design for mastery is fine and we just need to buff the effects to make it more desirable. In others, we don’t think it’s possible to buff mastery enough in its current form. For example, the Retribution mastery, Hand of Light, is fun, but it doesn’t contribute enough damage. To make it contribute enough damage, the proc would need a very high chance, which then can cause paladins to devalue other sources of Holy Power. Instead, we are redesigning Retribution mastery to add a percentage of the damage of Templar’s Verdict, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm as Holy damage (which also plays better with Inqusition). Because Hand of Light is fun, however, we are going to change Divine Purpose as a chance to proc Hand of Light instead of a chance for extra Holy Power (which will also remove a little of the randomness from the rotation). Unholy DKs are another spec for whom mastery just isn’t working out. Our current intent is to redesign their mastery so that their attacks cause more damage to diseased targets (in a similar manner to the Restoration druid mastery).

Yes, they are correct, IF HoL proc’ed like crazy, it would make our rotations much smoother as it would be a matter of quickly getting Inquisition through the first HoL proc, then going through your normal rotation interrupting with TV as soon as it’s up through HoL–rinse and repeat. This would also mean that HP would almost strictly be stored up to be used by Zealotry which would make that a much more useful spell in shorter 5-man encounters (obviously since boss encounters in RAIDs are much longer you would use Zealotry a lot more there!). But alas it doesn’t look like Blizzard likes that option as it would clearly make for an imbalance amongst the other classes that use Mastery.

However, if what they are talking about is making the Mastery more of a passive ability where it boosts base damage across the board and scales with the amount of Mastery you pour into it–whoa there! Now this has a DIRECT impact on DPS regardless of anything proc’ing. Since a lot of our damage does come directly from Crusader Strike > Templar’s Verdict > Divine Storm. Also changing Divine Purpose to proc HoL could be a VERY interesting change to our rotation. Thinking about, since the abilities we cast, such as Judgement, Exorcism, and Holy Wrath are all part of our rotation, and they have a 40% chance of proc’ing HoL, this could mean a more consistent use of TV as well as Inquisition and allow us to have them up for greater periods of time.

This could make the retribution paladin on the same level as the other dps classes, but we’ll have to watch and see how things play out as Blizzard introduces these changes. Nonetheless, this paladin is VERY excited!

Quick Guide to Reputation Dailies in Cataclysm

1
1 year ago
by george in

Running the dailies each day has become somewhat of a chore. Nonetheless the payouts are amazing with the revered and exalted levels of reputation. I have outlined what my route is to complete the dailies. To start with, my hearthstone is set to Dragonmaw Port.

Druid Dailies (with Cooking profession)

  1. Start with Twilight Highlands (5 dailies), then portal back to Orgrimmar
  2. Complete the Orgrimmar cooking daily
  3. Use portals to head to Uldum and complete the Ramkahen (2 dailies) and once completed use your hearthstone to Dragonmaw and then use the portal to head back to Orgrimmar.
  4. Use the portals in Orgrimmar and head to Deepholm and complete the Therazane quests (5 to 6 dailies). You will also want to go into the cave right below Therazane and pick up the daily in there (should be at least 1). When completed, fly back to Deepholm and use the portal to head to Orgrimmar.
  5. Use the portal in Orgrimmar, head to Tol Barad. Assuming that you faction (for me it’s Horde) has Tol Barad, you should have 6 dailies in the Tol
  6. Barad Peninsula, and 6-18 dailies in Tol Barad itself. A new set of 3 dailies may become available, so be sure to check later in the day to see if new dailies appear in Tol Barad.

Paladin Dailies (with Cooking and Jewelcrafting)

The only addition to the above is that in step 2, just do the jewelcrafting daily in addition to the cooking one.

Update 12/31/2010 – There are two dailies in Uldum. Thieving Little Pluckers and Fire from the Sky.

Cataclysm Helpful Links and Thoughts on the game so far

0
1 year ago
by george in

We are now officially a few weeks into Cataclysm. With the holidays, it’s a perfect time to sit down and veg out to all the glorious things that Cataclysm brings to World of Warcraft.

Through my travels so far, I’ve come across a handful of links that I thought I would share–in particular these will help players who are either Restoration/Balance Druids or Retribution/Protection Paladins as these are my two main characters in game. I’ll add to this when I get my Enhancement/Elemental Shaman through Wrath of the Lich King (WoTLK). Unfortunately he’s taken a side chair to the Druid and Paladin as I need to get raid ready for the start of Cataclysm raiding come the new year.

Anyways, lets start with gear. In WoTLK gear was super easy to get through Triumph and Frost emblems and the emblem vendors made it ridiculously easy to gear up. Between rings, trinkets, full tier sets–all purchased through emblems, no wonder the entire player base of WoW had over 5.5k gearscore gear! Blizzard caught on, and gear is a much more PAINFUL process–as it should be! To start with normal dungeons and reputation gear are an essential part of gearing up, this in addition to the traditional justice point/valor point vendors (replaces Triumph and Frost from WoTLK). What makes this interesting is that even if you do all the quests within a particular area, you still won’t be in the upper tiers of that factions rep gear. However, to make things easy and consolidated, this website:

http://franksplace.org/2010/12/world-of-warcraft-cataclysm-faction-and-reputation-rewards-guide/

Has all the reputation gear listed in one easy to read place. A few things to to keep in mind regarding reputation gear, dailies are essential! A few pointers for those who are chasing their factions for reputation.

  1. For Tol Barad, the portal to Hellscream’s Reach is near all the other portals in Orgrimmar. There are a total of 12 dailies that you can do–6 are in Hellscream’s Reach, and the other 6 are in Tol Barad itself. Don’t forget the other 6 as you will cut the time it takes to get to your reputation goals in half.
  2. There are a total of 10 dailies for the Therazane faction. If you are a protection paladin, be on the lookout while doing your quests for Terborus. This rare spawn is right in the area of the dailies and will drop a Bind on Equip (BoE) wrist that you can use for your tank set. 2 birds one stone for the win!
  3. Both The Earthen Ring and Guardians of Hyjal do not have dailies. Do the regular quests till you are friendly and make sure to pick up the tabard from their Quartermasters so you can gain rep while running normal and heroic dungeons.
  4. Ramkahen has only 1 daily. Make sure to do this one and pick up the tabard.
  5. Dragonmaw Clan has 5 dailies. The quest Hook ‘em High is sort of bugged. Just be patient when trying to bring down the riders. I have found that waiting till they are flying towards you gives me the best results in bringing them down. Nonetheless it is buggy so patience is definitely required.
  6. The Earthen Ring, lets just say I haven’t even looked them up to see if they have dailies. If you’ve done all the quests in Vash, then you should almost be Revered. Just pick up the tabard and earn your rep that way. Although on the off chance your someone who did enjoy Vash, knock yourself out and see if they have any dailies!

In terms of reputation gear, I see my gear break down as such based on spec. Also I’m going to leave out enchantments. Since these are Bind on Account (BoA), only one of your characters has to get the reputation with that faction and then they can buy the enchantment for the rest of your characters.

Boomkin/Restoration Druid

Therazane – Revered. Getting the Diamant’s Ring of Temperance is a must.

Ramkahen – Honored. Ammunae’s Blessing is really the only thing I can see there that you need. The mounts at exalted would be nice don’t get me wrong!

Guardians of Hyjal – Revered. Aessina-Blessed Gloves are nice to have. As is the Cloak of the Dryads.

Hellscream’s Reach – Exalted. For restoration, the Mandala of Stirring Patterns is very nice to have. Since it’s an equip the 1926 mastery proc will enhance Symbyosis quite nicely. Also the Shimmering Morningstar coupled with the Apple-Bent Bough makes a good weapon combo for restoration. Insidious Staff for boomkin.

Dragonmaw Clan – Exalted. This is probably going to be the first one that you should definitely get your reputation leveled up with since you get two epic quality items, Withered Dream Belt and Yellow Smoke Pendant. Additionally the Band of Lamentation would be great for your boomkin spec. The Spaulders of the Endless Plains would be good for either spec, given that haste is important for both Boomkin and Resto and with our hit caps being so high, your boomkin spec may need the extra hit that you would get from the Spirit conversion.

The Earthen Ring – Revered. Cloak of the Ancient Wisdom, Leggings of Clutching Roots, and Pendant of Elemental Balance are all good selections.

Protection/Retribution Paladin

Therazane – Revered. The Felsen’s Ring of Resolve is a great tanking ring and Gorsik’s Band of Shattering good for your retribution set.

Ramkahen – Exalted. Sadly there are two epic items: Gift of Nadun for retribution and Sandguard Bracers for protection. The Red Rock Band is nice for either protection or retribution (since we have to be expertise capped in both) although I’d say this is more of a tanking ring and you should try and look for another ring for your retribution set in the long run. Shroud of the Dead is a good retribution cloak.

Guardians of Hyjal – Exalted. Another sadly since there are no dailies for Hyjal. Two epic items catch my attention. Belt of the Ferocious Wolf for retribution and Wrap of the Great Turtle for protection. Waywatcher’s Boots are nice for retribution as is the Galrond’s Band. Mountain’s Mouth is a nice protection neck piece.

Hellscream’s Reach – Revered. This one is debatable, as the two trinkets that you get at Exalted don’t have any base stats, such as Stamina or Strength; however, their equip bonuses are fairly nice. I would say probably given the cost of getting to Exalted you don’t push to hit this level of reputation; however over time as you earn rep through the dailies you may want to reexamine this for yourself. Definitely the Blade of Fearless is going to be very nice for the retribution set.

Dragonmaw Clan – Exalted. Paladins just can’t catch a break here! Boots of Sullen Rock are probably going to be pre-raid Best in Slot (BiS) for protection. Gauntlets of Rattling Bones for retribution and Grinning Fang Helm for protection.

The Earthen Ring – Honored. Thankfully you only need the Stone-Wrapped Greaves for protection.

In terms of general links, I have found the following sites to be very useful as I examine gear for both classes/specs.

Boomkin/Restoration Druid

http://r4healingtouch.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/looking-at-pre-raid-gear-and-where-to-get-it/

http://www.restokin.com/caster-druid-85-pre-raid-gear/

http://www.restokin.com/2010/11/cataclysm-resto-moonkin-faction-gear-at-85/

http://plusheal.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7679 – more towards restoration

http://www.owlkin.org/moonkin-guides/cataclysm-pre-raid-bis-list/ – more towards Boomkin

Protection/Retribution Paladin

http://retributionpaladins.com/retribution-paladin-dungeon-gear-leveling-in-cataclysm/ – strictly retribution

http://elitistjerks.com/f76/t110338-cataclysm_tanking_protection_field_manual_updated_dec_13_2010_4_0_3a/ – strictly protection

http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/index.php?f=3&t=30230&rb_v=viewtopic – strictly protection

Initial Thoughts

My initial thoughts so far has been a mixed bag. As I’ve written previously regarding Restoration Druids and OOM, I have to admit the druid has been something of a struggle. I am finding though that a large part of this seems to be dependent on gear, for instance when my average ilevel was below 330, I was going OOM fairly consistently; however, since getting above a 330 average I am finding my mana to be much more manageable. Also keep in mind that with Balance of Power, Spirit converts to Hit in addition to providing much needed replenishment. This is no longer a heal set only item and with reforging you may find that many items that were once exclusive to your heal set can now/should now be used for your boomkin–especially since our hit cap is as high as it is. Omen of Clarity is your friend and you should watch for this to proc and make use of it each time it’s up. This is especially true for restoration druids. For instance if your Omen of Clarity procs a Clearcasting state, you should immediately use a Nourish or Healing Touch in your rotation so you can get off a heal without impacting your mana. For a tank where your Lifeblooms should be maintaining a 3 stack and since you should be spec’ed into Empowered Touch, you get a free heal with Omen of Clarity proc and your Lifebloom stack will automatically reset. This is clearly a win/win situation.

Going through normal instances has been much easier. Knowledge of the dungeons and general familiarity amongst all the members of the party has eased some of the initial pains of Pick Up Groups (PUG’s). Also since each of the fights resembles more of a raid encounter with the mechanics of the fight, as long as each person knows what to do and when they need to do it, the tanks won’t take as much damage, the healers won’t have to heal through un-necessary damage and the boss or group of adds just seems to blow up.

Justice Points are still a pain to accumulate. Back in WoTLK frost emblems were a joke. You could earn frost emblems from the first random dungeon that you finished through the Dungeon finder. Raids were easy to get into for Naxx, Ulduar, and Icecrown Citadel–all of which had emblems awarded for successful boss kills. Vaults of Archavon (VoA) gave you frost emblems for at least one of the boss kills. The raid weekly gave you frost emblems. Needless to say, getting enough for your Tier 10 set and Frost emblem items (trinkets, belts, etc) were easy enough to come by. It would seem that justice points on the other hand are just not that plentiful. Granted I am not running heroic dungeons yet nor am I running through our raids, but at the moment they are slow to come by. I’m assuming that as I get into heroic’s and raiding again, this will change.

Retribution paladins I am again quite fond of. As WoTLK was coming to a close, changes were made to retribution paladins that made us just mediocre. Now they are again fun to play and I find that I am again in the top DPS/damage on normal dungeons with single target encounters (I don’t count AoE encounters as they are just pointless when looking at the meters). I am finding that you do need to make some heavy UI adjustments (Power Auras) in order for the game-play to be much more effective, but once you get into your sweet spot, day to day travels as retribution have been quite rewarding.

Professions. I have gone into the poor house with professions–no joke! Between my two mains I have a miner/engineer on the druid and jewelcrafter/enchanter on my paladin. Fortunately the miner has been working overtime and with the plentiful nature of Elementium, I have been able to supply most of the raw mineral materials for the engineer and jewelcrafter (through prospecting). I will say that I have probably prospected over 400 ores over the last few days, so just keep that in mind that you need to have a good gathering route and a bit of luck to be the only one running that for a few hours while you gather your materials. Engineering by far was the most expensive, although jewelcrafting is coming up a close second. I would recommend that you start running the jewelcrafting daily as soon as you hit 500 as you will need the tokens to craft the higher level items and bring your profession to 525. I haven’t done much with the enchanter other than get them to 500 so they could disenchant the higher ilevel items. My plan is to get them to 525 this week. Keep in mind though that jewelcrafting and engineering both have a lot of crafted items that can give you an early boost. Also go download the Gatherer addon if you haven’t already started to use this for your gathering. It makes a huge difference in determining the best route to take.

Guild perks. This has to be one of my favorite things to see in Cataclysm. For one thing, it brings a guild together in ways that I haven’t seen in WoTLK or previous releases. Guilds actually mean something now other than just a collection of players with a common goal. Guild hoping I can see tapering off a bit as it is more advantageous to stick it out given the perks than to try your hand at an untested guild. Also just getting together to accomplish guild achievements has been a fun addition to the everyday grind.

I thought that the portals being removed out of Dalaran was going to be the death of travel–I was surprisingly happy that this was not the case. For me, I have set my hearth to Dragonmaw, as there is a portal in the main town back to Orgrimmar. From Orgrimmar I have zepplins to Northrend, a portal to Outland via the Blasted Lands, and portals to all the new Cataclysm areas. Clearly this is a perfect setup (you could also set your hearth to Deepholm with similar affects).

Restoration Druids and OOM

4
1 year ago
by george in

I had a dream, where resto druids could keep up their mana pools. And provide raid wide healing stronger than any other class. Ah yes, this is a dream alright! Actually not so much in Wrath of the Lich King (WoTLK) days. Those were the days when you could recklessly HoT (Heal over Time) the entire raid and your MP5 (mana gained back every 5 seconds) could keep up. In most fights in WoTLK I would spend well over 80% mana and think to myself, my aren’t I wonderful!

Fast forward to today with the changes in Cataclysm, and the previous strategy for healing as a restoration druid was shot with more holes and a swiss cheese sandwich! It’s been tough… not it’s been MISERABLE healing in Cataclysm. There I said it. You would think with mana pools into the 80-100k range, that your heals could keep up. In a perfect world that might be the case, but in today’s world even though our mana pools are that much bigger, and the health pools of everyone is that much bigger, there is just a lot more raid damage that’s going on. Sure your tank won’t get one shotted by a flame bolt; however, that bolt is going to hit like a truck for 40k!

I just came across a great article on the Restoration Druid blog. She condenses down the strategy of managing your mana to the following list:

1.) Don’t blanket the raid.  Yeah, it seems to go against years of brain programming, but don’t!
2.) Use nourish, all the time, all the freaking time.  Nourish is cheep as hell and it refreshes lifebloom on the tank (or whomever.)  Yeah it’s small, and slow, but it’s sadly our new bread and butter spell.
3.) Did I mention not to blanket the raid, this is really importaint
4.) Intellect, Spirit….. haste….. and then spell power.
5.) And finally, last but not least, don’t blanket the raid!  I’m serious, you’ll be OOM in no time if you do :)
Also, I know your DPS doesn’t wanna hear it, but they need to be responsible for their own health.  Health stones, bandages, and most importantly being very raid aware of incoming damage and avoiding everything you can.  The old “it’s not that much damage” attitude won’t cut it, it all adds up!
Also, did I mention, don’t blanket the raid? :)
You know, I’m just not happy with being a druid anymore :(  Now that I want to change to something else, I just hate how homogenized things are.  I liked HoTs, and healing on the run, and being different from the other classes.  I know they had their reasons… but I don’t like it.  I want druid healers to be druid healers… not a slightly modified priest.

1.) Don’t blanket the raid.  Yeah, it seems to go against years of brain programming, but don’t!2.) Use nourish, all the time, all the freaking time.  Nourish is cheep as hell and it refreshes lifebloom on the tank (or whomever.)  Yeah it’s small, and slow, but it’s sadly our new bread and butter spell.3.) Did I mention not to blanket the raid, this is really importaint4.) Intellect, Spirit….. haste….. and then spell power.5.) And finally, last but not least, don’t blanket the raid!  I’m serious, you’ll be OOM in no time if you do :)

Also, I know your DPS doesn’t wanna hear it, but they need to be responsible for their own health.  Health stones, bandages, and most importantly being very raid aware of incoming damage and avoiding everything you can.  The old “it’s not that much damage” attitude won’t cut it, it all adds up!
Also, did I mention, don’t blanket the raid? :)

You know, I’m just not happy with being a druid anymore :(  Now that I want to change to something else, I just hate how homogenized things are.  I liked HoTs, and healing on the run, and being different from the other classes.  I know they had their reasons… but I don’t like it.  I want druid healers to be druid healers… not a slightly modified priest.

I have to admit, I pretty much agree with everything she’s written. One of the bad behaviors that we have coming out of WoTLK is that heals were cheap and mana replenishment was plentiful. That’s just not the case anymore. We can no longer cope with members of an encounter 5 or 10 man who aren’t raid aware and know where to be and what to do in order to minimize the amount of damage they contribute to the group.

Looking back to my healing style from WoTLK I wouldn’t use Lifebloom that much because of the mana costs. My main rotation looked something like:

Tanks – Rejuv > Regrowth > Nourish > Swiftmend/Efflorescence > Wild Growth > Healing Touch w/ Natures Swiftness

Raid - Rejuv spam > Regrowth > Wild Growth > Nourish > Swiftmend/Efflorescence

Now the above in Cataclysm is just not possible. The amount of mana costs for Rejuv and the fact that you need an insane amount of Haste in order to get that mythical 6th tick, you can EASILY and rapidly go OOM from using this often. And looking  back at my 5 man normal and heroic attempts, this is just what happens. Old habits are hard to break. But not blanketing your raid or tanks with Rejuv is the fastest way to prevent yourself from going OOM. Also spells like innervate that really were special utility spells are now your bread and butter. Innervate early and glyph it so you can get back as much as you can. I think the general rule of thumb on innervate is that you innervate around 70-80% so that you can get another innervate before you go OOM.

Blizzard seems to be in a love/hate relationship with Nourish. In WoTLK pre 4.0.1 Nourish spamming was the norm. Then post-4.0.1 Nourish became more painful to use. Also with the changes to Tree of Life where this became a cool down ability, Regrowth’s were used more because of their instant cast ability. Now in Cataclysm with our abilities up to level 85, Nourish is again in the forefront of our main healing tool box.

My healbot configuration pre-Cataclysm using a 2 button mouse was:

Left Click – Rejuv

Right Click – Regrowth

Shift + Left – Lifebloom

Shift + Right – Nourish

Ctrl + Left – Rebirth

Ctrl + Right – Swiftmend

In thinking through the rotation, I think I’m going to make some adjustments here:

Left – Lifebloom (since we want to have this up all the time)

Right – Nourish

Shift + Left – Swiftmend

Shift + Right – Rejuv

Ctrl + Left – Rebirth

Ctrl + Right – Regrowth

The final thoughts from Restoration Druid was that she was not happy with Druids. I tend to agree with that point. Previously we had a very select segment of the healing spectrum, we can HoT and go, we can quickly adjust to raid damage. We’re not as strong tank healers as say a Holy Paladin or a Discipline Priest; however, we did an adequate job as a backup or off-tank healer. With the normalization that Blizzard has done across the classes it seems less of a niche and takes some of the uniqueness out of it. Also what the heck did Blizzard do to the Tree of Life form! Looks more like a Redwood now than the previous old man in the tree form!

Funny Family Guy Scene

0
1 year ago
by george in

Lame duck sessions in full swing

0
1 year ago
by george in

http://cnnmoney.mobi/wk_snarticle?articleId=urn:newsml:CNNMoney.com:20101113:social_security_payment:1&category=cnnm_business

In yet another example of worthless spending why in the world would we consider this to be a good use of both time and tax payers dollars.

Don’t get me wrong, just like you would expect a cost of living increase as a worker, social security can be seen in the same way. However, is that really apples to apples? For instance if I’ve lost value in my 401k will I expect the government to pass legislation to help improve my eate of returns? Or is it just up to me to figure out how to make up that difference? My assumption is that it’s up to me to resolve any short falls. Likewise I would expect it up to the recipients of social security benifits to also figure out how to make up the difference.

Calling in sick… Questioning the slackers ethos

0
1 year ago
by george in

In an recent article on Discovery:

http://news.discovery.com/human/calling-out-sick-stress-induced-absences-often-hidden.html

I have to raise concerns about how we approach calling in sick or taking time off. First off, there is an undeniable link between stress and decrease in productivity. The more a person is stressed, over time, the productivity curve will start to decrease. The previous assumes that all things remain the same, as things like cyclical stress due to new projects can alter this as it offers a new challenge than the same old grind.

But I have to ask the community, how many of you are actually accustom to calling in sick and making excuses for why it is that your calling in? I know personally I would say if I were to be stressed out, I would let me boss know that I need to take some time off to reset, recharge, and otherwise take a mental health day to prevent further degradation. Why is this so important?

Speaking with my management hat on, managers are not mind readers. Yes managers need to be observant and ask questions to pick up on the little signs of distress amongst your teams, but at the end of the day that can only go so far. The individual people need to contribute to let their management know when things are getting too much, or when they feel like there is undue pressures. Many times this comes off as complaining or other “slacker” type of attitude, but when done properly, this is invaluable feedback to your manager. Perhaps they can provide guidance or direction to help you weed through that pile of work. Or can they help to reprioritize and balance the things that you are working on? Are they able to escalate and otherwise help to push along sticky items that have been hanging on your back for what seems to be the longest of times? All of these are great reasons that workers need to seek out and have those regular discussions. Now don’t get me wrong, there is a fine line between seeking out your manager to discuss your work load and for you to seem like your passing your work off to someone else or your inability to solve your own problems. These are very real concerns and you as the worker need to be conscious that you are still taking personal initiative to own your work and seek help when necessary.

Having said that, the other important result to having those regular discussions is it provides more real-time views on your state of mind. Stress is one of those silent killers as it can easily creep up and bite you in the rear and leave you in a very bad situation.

So communicating stress is a good thing when done properly. Now there are times when unavoidably stress is something that comes up out of the blue and all of a sudden you are under the gun to produce results and afterwards you need what I call a mental health day.

This isn’t to say you are crazy, but it is to say that people–any working person–requires time to recharge their batteries and get onto level footing. I’ll take something fun as an example. We all enjoy taking vacations, but what if your vacation was your job, would taking them all the time be enjoyable still? Anything no matter what it is or work field that your in, work will become a job and that job will be stressful. When that happens, there is absolutely nothing wrong with calling in stressed. Again this is caveated that you are taking the right approaches and calling off for the right reasons.

Some pointers that I’ll suggest:

  1. Be honest with your management and let them know that because of specific events, you feel that it would be best to take a day and unwind so that you can get back on track the following work day.
  2. Ask the question if there was anything differently that they saw in that/those specific events that would help reduce the amount of stress that caused or if they feel you handled them properly. This is an important step as it allows time to reflect on the past and help to adjust going forward as we don’t want to be fearful of the next time we are asked to do that particular task.
  3. Don’t blame. The work is your own, and we all have work. It shouldn’t be anyone’s fault that you were stressed at the work, and if it is, you need to be constructive in your assessment and how you communicate that. Be clear and specific, such as “In this case, it appeared that our process didn’t account for these extra manual steps, and as a result I had to burn the midnight oil just to get them done in time. In the future, I would recommend we look at improving that process to help reduce those manual tasks”. This is demonstrating that you are able to step back and understand the issues and not only provide feedback on what went wrong, but can offer a viable solution to how that might be improved going forward.

These are simple suggestions that can help turn a stressful situation into one where you as the worker can take the much needed time to reset, as well as helping to improve your working situation going forward.

Leading by Example

0
1 year ago
by george in

There was a recent article on Harvard Business Review blog:

http://blogs.hbr.org/hbsfaculty/2010/11/ask-not-what-your-company-can.html

How often are we in offices and work environments today where as you go up the corporate ladder, the differences in pay seems to multiply by leaps and bounds–almost to a point where you have to say to yourself and colleagues, “if we are in such dire financial times, why isn’t upper management taking a larger percentage of cuts to allow for compensation at lower levels?”.

There’s an additional question in here and that is for companies where the vast majority of the profits comes directly from the efforts of certain levels of workers, is it right to incentive them on short term profit gains, or for long term company benefits?

Take for example Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs, who both make $1 a year, but obviously are doing fairly well for themselves by the value of their company stocks. What this type of model does is emphasize that while a company may have a good year or sales may be up, their in it for the long haul. Whereas if you provide incentives that are purely based on year over year sales, the value of the work is only focused on the immediate deal and not the long term implications it would have to the company. Or taking it from another angle, it helps to provide more complacency within an organization because none of the increases in individual profit help to promote long term company success. Take for example, if you have a manager who makes $100,000.00/yearly. If their incentives are to improve satisfaction of the customer, they will only focus on that. However, if they are paid less than that per year, but offered stocks that will appreciate/depreciate over time as the value of the company changes, their priorities day to day will differ.

More companies should evaluate these types of compensation to look at how do we best reward people for their individual contributions but yet still look at how those incentives play out over the long term.

It’s been my long term belief that while people look to companies for answers, “why are we doing it this way” or “how could they have made that stupid decision”, individuals do not feel that they are given a large enough voice in the companies direction to affect these types of decisions. Conversely it may also be that individuals like to talk the talk around the water cooler, but when asked directly for their opinions in fear or timidness they opt to not voice their opinions in that type of forum. Clearly communication is a big key here to help keep employee’s engaged and focused on how to best align themselves with the company and not only seek to have the company provide them with the answers.

Moonkin Hatchling Pet

0
1 year ago
by george in

My first World of Warcraft character was really a hunter, but after many days of failed progress, I left the game. That was 2 years ago. Fast forward to 2010, and coming back to WoW during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, I find myself looking at all the characters. The decision at that point in time was whether or not to keep going with the level 40 something hunter, or to go with something else.

After trolling around the forums and such, I decided that a Druid was something I ruled out way back when because it was considered to be one of the hardest classes to play, but I decided to go with Feral (Bear)/Restoration (Tree). I tanked my way to 80 and by the time I hit 80, I got laughed off the island since I had no real ideas on how to tank as a bear.

I decided at that point to respec and go from Feral to Moonkin, and I have to admit that was the best decision I made with that particular character. Moonkin or more commonly known as Boomkin has been and will always be my favorite spec to play.

Fast forward to today, and I come to find out that there is now a Moonkin pet that will soon be offered from the Blizzard store! Now I’m not the type of player that normally spends real money on in-game entertainment, but given my deep love for the Boomkin, how can I resist! Plus the proceeds will go to charity, so this is a win-win.

See an image of the pet in game (not my druid in the picture), so cute!

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