Holy Paladin in 4.0.1 - Part I

I am one of those people that do not moan about their classes. Well not much. It seems this time around its kind of harder to do. Holy paladins are changed, but I am not sure yet if they are 'damaged'. Let’s review what I did do once I went 'live' and how that did work out...

Rebuilt the Gui to the state it was minus Satrina Buff Frames. I currently do not have anything informing me about procs and transient states appart from the default 'Power auras' and some Pitbull 4 notations. This defo needs tweaking...

Bought some new Glyphs as per Rohan's advice which I found quite useful.

Now the hard part...

I tweaked my Haste, Critical and Mastery to the following (unbuffed):

• Haste 728 (quite low by some reports for 4.0.1, more than adequate for 3.X)
• - Crit 39% (probably could do with less as crit is less usefull now)
• - Master ~10% (this is new territory and current reports state that logs do not measure absorbsion - need to check)

With those options and the same talent trees Rohan suggested (31,0,5) I participated in a guild run in ICC, doing some heroic modes.

My reports are:

Paladin healing is, obviously, very different - it looks like we need some time to adjust to the new paradigm. Main changes went from a Pace-type of healing (FL repeatedly for minor damage, HS+Glyph for larger damage+splash, Beacon, shields etc) to a more synergetic style. Holy shock is our secondary resource "counter", Word of Glory is our mana-free-instant counter reset-er and we now have 3 core 'time' heals:

• Divine Light (expensive, slow and very-high-output)
• Holy Light (cheap, average-to-small output)
• Flash of Light (expensive, ultra-fast, high-output)

Coupled with the aforementioned:

• Holy shock (mana based, instant, procs Holy Power)
• Word of Glory (Holy Power based, instant, procs acute pain to my fingers...)

We are much less 'capable' than other healers when it comes to healing meters. I am having trouble determining what our niche is with the current build and I hope this will change within the next few weeks and hopefully some correcting tweaks. Instant (therefore extremely situational) heals in small-damage scenarios (damage either was small or other healers very fast) feels kinda... "where do I fit in"... Last but not least, it is ESSENTIAL to built the UI in an informative way. It may take a couple of runs to adjust to "looking for the right things"

Overall...

1. I am having trouble detecting our niche
2. I need time to learn and put inside my head the timings
3. I need to gain some experience with the new synergies
4. We need to 'measure' Mastery - I am not sure there is a reliable method there. Kinda makes me feel like a Disc Priest
5. I need to make our UIs assist 'counting' and 'pacing'

And I most definitely need to do a few more runs with an alternative build to be able to have a better insight on how the new Holy Paladin paradigm feels. I am particularly intrigued by Eternal Glory and the possibility of chain-casting WoG (which if it does happen it will be eventually nerfed "to the ground"). All in all, I am sure we will be tweaked as things are noticeable inefficient and things look less favourable for the time being. But I could be wrong...

Lag, gear, raid fillers and poor performance

Its been a while since I posted here and the reason was once again too much work in the way. I have been travelling the last week and I have been having chain meetings the week before. Being exhausted from the whole thing had a sever impact in my performance in guild raids. Granted, I have never been our guilds best healer but sometimes I feel I am just not outputting enough and I am not helping my guild.



So, I have been thinking about what needs to be done, insight to my performance etc. My conclusions? As with anything in Warcraft I sometimes I feel I got the right excuses. Other times that I am just fooling myself, or simply trying to find excuses for being poor. But in any case here is my brainstorm...

Real Life tiredness:

Its probably the most important reason but raiding after a tiresome day or a trip in the Middle East definitely has an impact on performance. I have noticed that after some time my responses are much slower, my anticipation of incoming damage is crap and I generally make poor judgements. What I am optimistic about though is when I fuck up, I know what happened. I just need to fix it. And start getting some sleep before raids. After all I DO raid to relax and get my mind of things so I might as well be more... prepared for it.

Gear:

I must admit I have slacked in getting proper gear. Things of course did not improve by missing a few raids or working on my own on my toon but I have also been reluctant in mix-and-matching new items as they come. In other words I have not been bold enough and thought a bit too much on what items I should have. However, I started tweaking things yesterday and I feel this can be solved easily.

And my favourite subject of all, the grand excuse as I say...

Tech healing vs Nuke healing:

(Check here for differentiation, I often call tech-healing anything that does not involve an HL nuke)

Yes, I know its being used a lot as an excuse but in my case its probably very applicable. I have been closely monitoring my performance on 10-mans and I must admit I have no problems there. In fact I have been doing just fine. I always felt 10-mans are more challenging, there is a lot of player-intervention due to the smaller number of raiders. Simply put, there is more room to heal, dps and make a difference. Now, being a Technical healer since I remember myself I am used to having a `pace' in my healing rotations that accommodates the 10-man damage patterns more than anything. In those scenarios you do not only need to output more, but in the right time. And you need to do that along with your healing peer or peers. That is - in my humble opinion - the ultimate challenge. And I have been feeling that on the healing front 10-mans are much better tuned than 25-men. Or - if its not the raid mechanics themselves - two or three healers of different class work better together than a mixture of 6,7 or 8 classes .

Now, monitoring our raids for the last few days I noticed that nuking paladins make a huge impact. Granted, in some scenarios they can not keep up with aoe-healing classes. But generally speaking the Holy-Light splash seems to work just fine. Only recently I had to adjust my healing to err on that side after some... insight, former guild-mates. Now, call me stubborn or a dinosaur. I just can not do it to the max. I feel its immensely more fun to try to squeeze that Flash of light in the right time. Unfortunately I have to keep up with times. And I have always been a `mainstream' person, hence I am reluctant in going for a proper Flash of Heal build (which needs some fine gear to work properly). I have been therefore constantly trying to pick up my healing output, while not loosing much on awareness and mobility. Although I have had some silly deaths the few recent weeks - 90% of which where because I either tried to do too much of took calculated risks which obviously were not calculated properly :-p - I was always proud of my awareness. But check point 1 and you will see how it all comes together...

At the end of the day though, I have been wondering what is the importance of that person at the bottom of the healing meter list - where I have been ending up quite a bit. Could the raid do without? Well. Probably. But just to give myself a pat on the back - excuses excuses... - it you take that person, the filler as I like to call it - you will most probably crumble. Cause healing is not only about how much. Its also about when. And if that person at the bottom of the list heals in a timed manner, the odd heal might make a difference in dying or being repeatedly healed by different healers. In other words, I'd like to believe I am the one that prevents death, while others just fill up your healthpoints bar...

Unfortunately, Silvermoon server is in a very bad state and lag is more abundant than bones in Icecrown. Lag is definitely not helping us a lot and trying to Tech-heal in such an environment is just impossible. So I end up trying to nuke, which seems not to work as I'd like it to be.

All of the above might be simply an excuse and the real reason of my poor performance is not being able to cut it any more. But, one thing I've got is being stubborn. Extremely stubborn. And I still have not said my last word...

Guts 'n' balls... revisited

I often wonder what makes elite players truly elite. By elite I do not mean the wannabes of every server but the truly top ones. What makes them so efficient at what they do? Often people simply reply... time. Ok, time does indeed play a huge role in our involvement with the game. The amount of time we put into the game is often proportional to what we achieve. Or the other way around, but you do get the picture. But that is often an aspect of an individual, not the guild as a whole. So... what makes elite guilds tick? Fear of the RL? Some common jedi-like focus on the game? Magic? Money?

I'd like to think that its co-operation. World of Warcraft is by no means complex. Mathematics can be complex. Quantum mechanics, nanotechnology, augmented reality and space travel. These are complex. Scripted, repetitive encounters are not complex. What IS complex though, to some extent, is how you approach those encounters. Take a raid for example...

You got 25 individuals. One of them, at least, is busy up to his neck with raid leading. Possibly others with leading subgroups, like healers etc. The rest try to do a set task and do it as best as possible. Most of the times. When they do not slack that is. When the raid succeds all is well. But what happens when they fail?

One of the most important aspects of World of warcraft is that its a multi-player game. Not a solo game. Therefore, its safe to assume that teamwork does indeed play an important role. I often used to refer in the past to Manslow's pyramid of needs - depicted below:

Source: University of Tasmania (!)

I beleive that the three top layers can be extrapolated to the WoW environment through the notion of guilds. All of the features depicted in the above diagram can be met within a guild. Teamwork - expressed above in the Social tier but with hints to Ego and Self-Actualization - is an important element of a guild. Since most encounters require certain subgroups to micro-manage, its essential that those groups work together consistently to achieve their goals. Moreover, the members of these groups must maintain a good level of communication in order to rectify errors, achieve stability and hopefuly - and ultimately - improve performance.

Now, enough with the posh talk. Wow players must play together. They need to communicate, speak their mind in a polite way. There is absolutely no value in not expressing an opinion when you want to concider yourself a raider. However, this communication needs to follow some simple ethics. I remember when I filled in my application form in Escape a year and a few months ago there was one question. "What is your abuse tolerance level". Well, most of us said extreme. Quite rightfuly I might add. But at the end of the day I often thought that this tolerance is towards constructive critisism. One that is expressed directly from the person voicing an opinion towards the individual concerned. I expect my fellow raiders to come to me and offer their suggestions, critisim and ideas personaly. Thats when that question starts to mean something. When I will sit down and talk with them, reply to their suggestions. Otherwise, if they do not speak their minds I will not know of their opinion. And - I am not perfect by far - I may make a mistake. I must admit - and I am thangfull for it - that certain people do actualy come forth and speak their mind to me.

Raiding is more often than not about reviewing what you did. About being aware of your choices and making decisions. Its about communicating those decisions, tactics and concerns. When a guild does not communicate as it should, when people keep opinions for themselves - or use messengers to relay them... - the guild stops being that very thing, a guild. It becomes a pug, full of indifferent individuals who would rather talk with a sub-group of players with absolutely no benefit for the group, instead of trying to help out the group.

I am fortunate enough that I have a fellow paladin playing with me that he does have the balls to come and talk tactics and opinions with me. We recently had a talk, trying to gauge certain aspects of the encounters we are currently working at. And we adapt. This is teamwork after all...

Guts 'n' balls boys and girls. Come forward and have your say. I assure you, you will surprised from my answer (and this is not by any means a threat...)

Patch 3.2 review - Part 1: On healing meters and forthcoming changes...

First of all, I can not emphasize how good this post, over at World of Matticus is. It is one of the most insightful posts I have seen on healing and how tricky it is to evaluate it. Sometimes, the results of healing deficiency (or not?) are obvious - kind of like the three MT deaths we had in our last raid. However, saying that its just the healers fault is not very meticulous. And even if an RL has not time to deal with such details and he will simply say it to pump its crew, the healing coordinator and his healers have to take it into account.

Nonetheless, my purpose was to review some of the changes on Holy Paladins rumored or announced for patch 3.2. It seems that Napalm healing (as the notorious Ferraro once named it) is taking a heavy hit. No more Holy Light spamming boys and gals. Now we have to think, when, who, for how long etc. Which brings the ball over at the technical healing court. And finds yours truly quite happy as I consider tech healing more challenging.

Now, lets see those changes:


Mana Regeneration: All items that provide "X mana per five seconds" have had the amount of mana they regenerate increased by approximately 25%.

Ok, more is good but obviously something's got to give...

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Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target's maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgements of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts and Soul Leech).

1% over 5sec vs 0.25% over 1. I.e. replenishment ticks with a larger period and returns 0.25% less totally. Personally I find this particular change indifferent, I am more worried about the overall (aggregate) mana return.

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Lay on Hands: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 10/20% instead of increasing the target's armor.

Reduces the physical damage. Indifferent, its a situational spell that its core use is to heal a lot fast at no cost (but with some return when glyphed). So the added effect is not important in my opinion.

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Sacred Shield: When a paladin casts Flash of Light on a target with this buff, they also now place a heal over time effect on the target, healing that target for 100% of the Flash of Light amount over 12 seconds.

Ok, bearing in mind that Sacred Shield is now unique among your group and its usually casted on your primary assignment the hots will give you a `smoothing' mechanic which buys time to heal other targets (with some assumptions suchs as beacons etc) and allows some nice `matching' rotation schemes among healers. Imagine two paladins rotating among themselves flash of lights and the odd holy light.

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Judgment of Light: Now heals for 2% of the attacker's maximum health instead of a variable amount based on the spell power and attack power of the judging paladin.

Ok, JoL now belongs to all paladins, not just the Retry ones. Good for looking good at the meters. Too bad I almost always pick wisdom :p

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Beacon of Light: The healing amount on the Beacon of Light target is now based on the total healing done (including over-healing) instead of the effective healing done. Radius increased to 60 yards. Multiple Paladins can now have this active on the same target. Buff indicating a player is within range of the Beacon target is no longer displayed.

Whoa... hang in there! Beacon becomes very powerful (which means I expect it to be nerfed due to some stupid arena-related reasoning). Over healing does count as effective healing now. Which means that less is wasted, its less risky to off-heal and probably allows for some positioning tricks. Does it stack with JoL, I wonder. Do JoLs on multiple targets add-up? I wonder...

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Divine Intellect: This talent now gives 2/4/6/8/10% increased intellect instead of 3/6/9/12/15%.

Boo, net nerf. Less intellect. Trickier replenishment. Balance between them... unknown but there is always a way...

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Illumination: This talent now returns 30% of the mana cost of the spell instead of 60%.

Boo, net nerf. But... in the grand scheme of things possibly justified. Crit is less important now (but always nice for all sorts of other reasons), mana-per-5 is more important, mindless-spaming of Holy-Lights goes out of the window, Glyph of Holy Light becomes less useful but still there, Fash of light returns imo as the flagship heal and....

... well, overall the requirement for greater awareness crops up. I am not one of the people crying `nerf!!!' when changes like this happened. But I do feel that things need to be `balanced' out somehow and evaluated properly. If trading crit for mana-per-5 produces the same results (ro comparable) in healing output (whatever the latter is :-p) then I see no problems. If however the changes are not overall complementary and properly `matched' then there will be issues. Can't wait for some PTR testing... :p

Well, as with everything related to healing things are not as simple as they seem. The changes seem to follow a trend, which is to make paladin healing a bit more challenging and thoughtful. I am waiting to see the synergy among the changes. People (paladins) have asked for challenge but are bound to complain about it because we (everyone) are intrinsically lazy. I say be careful what you wish for because you might just get it...

Thank you, Jong... again

Wicked post - as always hilarious - from Jong here. Averna thinks he is `sucking-up' for a heal but what the hell... at least someone does and does not blame us ;-p. I wont spoil-it with my `up-tight' writing style (yes, I know...) so...

And always remember...

"You may be boasting about your crits and damage, but at the end of the day we decide who lives and who dies"

- SomeonewhoIdonotremember

Doctorate in Healing: a primer for healing research

Healing metering methods seems to be an aspect of the game that is widely debated. Advocates claim that current healing meters are a reliable method to represent the healing output of a player/team whereas adversaries claim they do not depict important information and often people end up healing for the sake of their meter bar, without using their heads.

Let me tell you one thing. I am a researcher. I worked my butt till I get a PhD in augmented reality and wearable computing. What I found out during my years of research is that any method of measuring, formulating and investigating can have pros and cons. In research there is never black and white. There are opinions, claims, data, evaluations and degrees of truth. Why would a game as complex as World of Warcraft be any different?

Measuring output in an encounter, whether its healing or dps is highly situational and dependant on various aspects. Group composition, available buffs, tactical assignments, exclusivity among abilities (e.g. only one paladin can JoL), encounter mechanics, player individual skill (whatever that is :p), situational and context awareness, means of communication, technical issues (lag etc.) and of course the methods of measuring some of the above.

Analysing the above is usually done with observation and measurement, i.e. qualitative and quantitative methods.

Observation is simply looking around who does what, when and how. Our raid leaders do a formidable job of that - they are often a bit scary on how well they see things. Players, in addition, need to look around and `decipher' the imagery and the sound, monitor their co-raiders etc. The quality of this observation, in the wow context, is dependant on ones experience.

Measurement is done with some sort of metering or reporting add-on. Bearing in mind these are pieces of software, continuously updated to be more accurate, report things better, cover more variables etc we should be aware of their deficiencies before we use them as evidence for further insight. Subsequently we need to understand what those meters mean, more often than not coupled with our observations and our `design' variables (assignments, group compositions, buffs etc)

Only then we will be able to appreciate the amount of information available to us and reach some conclusions on what works and what is broken. But still, we must always keep in our mindset that what we are doing might not be perfectly correct.

Like in research, knowing what you do and why you do it is more than half the battle. Likewise, in something as trivial as analysing Warcraft data, knowing what they mean in the grand scale of things is equally important.


That is in my opinion what makes this game so interesting. Appart from the feeling of immersion that is... :p