3.2 Is Here! Thoughts about Resilience Changes...

And without a doubt, this new patch has generated the least amount of hububb amongst my group of friends than any other patch.

Rest assured, I haven't quit the game, nor have quit this blog, but the game hasn't changed very much to warrant any real substantial thought provoking posts. For me, while content is good, meaningful content is far more desireable. I'm acutely aware of the level of distaste among the general blogosphere readers towards "we cleared this boss this week! Yay us!" type posts, and since I don't enjoy reading that type, I refuse to post such drivel.

Substance is key!

It's like the difference between a hookup with a non English speaking trick and a one that not only speaks English, but can hold their own when discussing ways for Blizzard to overcome the disparity between Arena and Battleground gameplay and their corresponding reward lists. After the deed is done. Of course.

Whatever. Make up your own bad analogies.

I will, however, briefly mention a few things of note: First, I'm finally full Furious on both of my characters, am starting to piece together a Shadow Priest set and have obtained [Just the Two of Us: 2200] as Prot Pally/Resto Druid. Secondly, from recent Blue posts, it's likely that Season 6 will end on August 25th (2 week notice) and Season 7 will begin a week after; August 31st... just in time for all the nerds who don't go anywhere for Labor Day to apply SPF 5000 sunblock in anticipation of monitor burns.

Anyways, let's talk about the Resilience change and how it affects gear and why I have mixed feelings about the change.

Keep in mind that with 3.2, there were two Resilience changes:
1) Resilience affects all damage, not just crit damage
2) You need more Resilience to make up the same amount of mitigation. (15% more)
For the average player, the first change seems huge as playing in full Hateful gear (or even full Deadly if they run enough heroics for Badges of Conquest) isn't often enough to prevent getting gibbed. But, in reality, is this change really that game changing for the average player? Maybe...

Maybe not.

From a personal observation perspective, the majority of the players that I see in BG's are either wearing a smattering of Hateful pieces, a bunch of Naxx 25 stuff and maybe some crafted blues. Titansteel Destroyers are a very common commodity. Going forward, I'd imagine that while the ilvl 200 BoE's will be omnipresent, the ilvl 219 ToC epics will be abound. Regardless, survivability will still be terrible, especially against top geared players in either full ToC25 gear or Relentless (Season 7). Will this new change help players save themselves because they're taking less damage and have a couple extra globals to use their abilities? No. Not in the least for average players.

As a point of note, I often recommend to PvE DPS (ie: Guildies) that are trying to get into PvP to wear their full Uld25 gear and go for the quick gib. Non-Pally PvE Healers get a different recommendation from me and usually that is to spend badges for PvP gear and stack Stamina so that 15k noob Ret Pally doesnt two shot them in a HoJ. For many of these average BG participants, gimping either their damage output or healing ability/longevity for a tiny bit of resilience isn't worth it. They're going to die anyways, so they might as well DPS/Heal as much as possible before they go down.

Let's look at the second change from an average player's perspective: This change, which requires a player to add 15% more Resilience to achieve the same amount of crit reduction, is definitely not going to help the average player, who is often wearing much PvP gear in the first place.

The rationale behind this change is a good one, and that is to encourage players to wear more PvP specific gear to increase personal survivability as opposed to stacking PvE gear. However, when players are sporting marginal amounts of Resilience in the first place, this change won't encourage casual players to start working towards PvP gear. The survival difference between 0 Resilience and 300 Resilience (arbitrary amount) is very small. On top of that, to achieve the same amount of crit mitigation as 3.1's 300 Resilience (which is still a pittance when you consider that many DPS are rolling with 500+ and healers with 900+), players will need an extra 45 Resilience, which is another piece of PvP gear.

So, if these changes are limited in their effect to promote PvP gameplay to the average player, then who do they primarily affect the most? The answer there is: mid to top level PvPers. Top level PvPers are affected by these changes the most as top players will do anything to obtain the best gear to help them succeed. In previous seasons, many top players were mixing and matching PvE gear because they had enough Resilience (at no risk of exploding), creating a gear gap that was often unsurpassable to players who only had access to PvP gear. These changes promote a balanced playing field.

So what about the average player or the starting PvPer? Unfortunately, they're completely up shit creek because they need everything and are at a severe disadvantage from the get go in their efforts to obtain such gear. Off the top of my head, I'd estimate that they need approximately 5 billion honor to get PvP offset pieces and some mainset pieces, rating to be eligible for current/previous season offset/mainset pieces, and/or hundreds of Emblems of Conquest to buy Deadly gear, which will be 2 seasons old once Season 7 comes out. Throughout this time, they're getting crapped on in the BG's and crapped on in Arenas. By the time they get all their stuff in order, Season 8 will be upon them.

Isn't there a better solution to getting people gear so they don't just implode when someone merely contemplates attacking them? To the many players last night who melted to zero, just from my 3 dots (I was playing Shadow), I'm sorry that Blizzard hasn't implemented a system for you to even have a chance to succeed.

I believe, that to get more people into PvP, Blizzard must make PvP gear easy to get... especially if there is PvP specific gear. I propose that Blizzard incorporates PvP rewards with the achievement system. Win 10 3v3 Arena matches? Here's a pair of Deadly Gloves. Win 30 Arena matches? Here's your Deadly Legs. Turn in 10 'For Great Honor' mark turn in's? Here's your Deadly Bracers. Turn in 30? Deadly Belt. 60? Deadly Feet. Ad nauseum.

The rewards are 2 seasons old with Season 7 coming and if Blizz is afraid of Deadly gear becoming ubiquitous outside of PvP, they can make the gear usable only in BG's, Arenas or BG zones such as Wintergrasp. Speaking of which, WG marks are such a poorly implemented function. If you're a new 80 trying to get a full PvP set, not only do you have to grind BG's and Arenas, but you have to be online at specific times to get enough marks to buy pieces of PvP gear that don't even contribute to your main set bonuses. Who has that kind of time?

Intrepid readers might wonder why I'm so concerned about the average player or the starting PvPer? The reason is as such: For anything to be successful, it needs participants. The more players that use the BG's or the Arenas, the better the competition and gameplay. It also stands to reason the Blizzard will spend more development dollars on something that is more widely utilized than someone only a small percentage of players even acknowledge. Right now, the barrier of entry is just way too high to become competitive.

Also, I now have a 62 Shaman and I'm already dreading the gear grind.

Spec vs Gear vs Comp vs Metagame: PvP Healing Priests

For many classes, there is no correlation between gear and spec in the Arenas. If you're a Warrior, you're looking at a Bladestorm spec or Titan's Grip. If you're a Mage, you're primary two spec choices are likely Deep Arcane Barrage or Deep Freeze Frost. However, for Priests, the spec used is often directly related to the level of gear they have. In addition, bracket and team comp can also add consideration when deciding on spec.

What a headache, right?

No kidding!

Before I get into the detailed explanation, if you are looking for the TL;DR version, here you go:

• Those that have very little personal survivability and don't expect their teammates to take much damage should spec Focused Will/Blessed Resilience.
• Those that have issues surviving but expect that their teammates may share in the damage fest should spec either Pain Suppression/Spirit of Redemption or Guardian Angel/Spirit of Redemption.
• Those that don't expect to take that much damage should look into Penance.

For those who have the iron stomachs to read further, here we go! (Warning! This isht be looooooong)

To elaborate on the TL;DR version, lets look at the 3 different factors and their effects to determine wether the Priest has no chance of survival, a poor chance of survival or a decent of survival. Notice, there's no good or excellent chance. That's because Priests have never had that luxury. Yes, I'm bitter like that. The 3 factors that affect survival are are Gear, Comp and Metagame.

Use the super-complicated-yet-accurate-to-the-nanometer analytical scale below as you analyze the 3 factors.

No Chance <--> Poor <--> Decent

Gear
The simplest indicator of survivability is gear. The fact remains that if you're wearing all PvE gear or you're in leveling gear (aka: BAD PvE gear), your survivability will be non existant. With that said, we'll assume that the minimum attainable gear will be the full Frostsavage Set. If you need help figuring out how to gear up, check out my previous post. The survivability benchmark that has been thrown about has been somewhere in the 750-800 resilience range. At that level, you should be able to endure the initial CS > KS from a rogue with a Bubble up.

Rate yourself:

• If you have the minimum attainable PvP gear set, you pretty much still have no chance for survival, but the marginal resilience will help you against splash damage if you can get peels. Mark yourself on the left side of the scale.
• If you have more gear than the minimum set, but are under 750-800 resilience, your survivability is poor, but you should be able to take a couple of hits. Mark yourself in the middle of the scale.
• If you are over 800 resilience, you've got decent survivability. Mark yourself on the right side of the scale.

Comp
Comp or Composition, refers to your team and in correlation, your bracket. However, in this section, we're looking at our team, not our opponents. What we're specifically looking for is your teammate's survivability and survival skills. There's a huge difference when playing with a tunnel visioning Rogue wearing no resilience and a Death Knight who knows how and when to use LOS.

Rate your teammates:

• If you are playing with classes that have been branded as 'hard to kill' (Death Knights, Warriors who know how to LOS/reflect, etc) or teammates who are wearing a lot of PvP gear (800+ resilience) and/or classes that have personal immunity type effects, your teammates get a decent survivability rating. Unfortunately, that makes you a much juicier target, lowering your survivability. Move your rating to the left or keep your rating the same if you feel that you won't always be the primary target.
• If you are playing with easy to kill teammates (Warlocks, Shamans, another Priest) or teammates wearing very little PvP gear or don't have immunity type effects, your teammates get a poor survivability rating, which will increase your survivability... sometimes. Keep your rating the same or move it to the right if you feel very confident about your kiting and peeling skills.
• If you are playing with a Paladin who knows how to apply Blessing of Protection, your survivability increases. Move your rating to the right.

Metagame
Metagame refers to the types of teams you're expecting to face. Back in S3 and S4, playing in the upper brackets, one could expect many many Warrior/Druid teams and as such, Priest/Mage teams did well, if they could get to that bracket. In today's environment, there are many many comps out there as the top tier comps have yet to be defined (exception: DK/Paladin).

Rate your expected opponents (the metagame):

• You expect a lot of Rogue teams and your teammate does not have have a physical peel a la Kidney, Hamstring, Scattershot, Blessing of Protection, etc and/or you expect a lot of all DPS/high burst/multiple melee teams. This lowers your survivability as Rogues are often your bane. Pure magic peels aren't as reliable in that first 30 seconds of a match due to Cloak of Shadows, Vanish, Prep, and the possibility of a teammate dispel. Move your rating to the left
• You expect a lot of Rogue teams and your teammate has a physical peel and/or you expect a lot of drain teams. This will likely increase your survivability as your teammate can peel for you and the incoming damage is less bursty. Move your rating to the right.

So how did you do? Ignoring gear for a moment, common compositions in this current environment such as Rogue/Priest, Ret Paladin/Priest, and Rogue/Mage/Priest often place the Priest on the far right of the scale, whereas teams such as Warlock/Priest and 4DPS/Priest often shift the Priest to the far left or middle of the scale. Using those comps as guidelines and understanding your Battlegroup's environment, your placement on the scale should be fairly accurate. How does this translate into spec?

Well, currently, there are 3 popular specs out there which, lo and behold, somewhat translate into the various degree of life expectancy.

Focused Will/Blessed Resilience/Lightwell/Spirit of Redemption: This build focuses on personal survivability at the cost everything else. Blessed Resilience and Focused Will help you stay afloat and combined with Lightwell (which you can used while stunned), one can generally stay alive with some reasonable peels and LOS. The downside to this build is that it has no uber 'save me!' abilities such as Pain Suppression or Guardian Angel, heals are anemic and the mana efficiency of this build is in the gutter. You won't have the longevity to win out long drawn out drain style matches, but against high dps teams, where you don't have to worry about your teammate getting bursted, this is a winner. Spirit of Redemption can offer some late heals (which, with the soon to be fixed glyph, can lead to 45 second+ Angel heals) if and when you get brought down. This build is pretty must restricted to 37/34/0.

Pain Suppression/Spirit of Redemption or Guardian Angel/Spirit of Redemption: These specs are largely interchangeable in my view as they offer increased healing output/damage prevention output while giving up either Focused Will or Blessed Resilience. The Pain Suppression build is more mana efficient whereas the Guardian Angel build has more healing output at the cost of mana efficiency. With the uber 'save me!' abilities, these specs are generally used if the Priest wants the post death healing of Spirit of Redemption in conjunction with increased healing/damage prevention as teammates are expected to take some serious damage. Common builds are 50/21/0 and 14/57.

Penance: This deep Discipline spec utilizes Penance and gives up the option to get Spirit of Redemption. This spec is very mana efficient as Penance has a very high healing per mana ratio, especially if the Priest takes Rapture. In addition, Penance offers huge burst healing, even if it is only allowed to tick twice before cancelling, to avoid interruption. Unfortunately, self heals for this spec are fairly weak, and the Priest using this spec generally utilizes either superior pressure, team peels, and/or superior gear to avoid or withstand incoming damage. This spec still have a 'save me!' ability in the form of Pain Suppression and typically, with high resilience Priests, Pain Suppression offers more bang for the buck than Blessed Resilience as non-crit damage becomes a greater issue. Common builds are 60/11/0 or the myriad of 5x/y/0 where y does not exceed 20. (Oh noes! Algebra!)

Summary:
So, looking at the various characteristics of the builds, it becomes clear that the builds can correlate reasonably well to the three positions on the scale.

• Those that have very little personal survivability and don't expect their teammates to take much damage should spec Focused Will/Blessed Resilience. This correlates to people who found themselves on the far left of the scale.
• Those that have issues surviving but expect that their teammates may share in the damage fest should spec either Pain Suppression/Spirit of Redemption or Guardian Angel/Spirit of Redemption. This correlates to people who found themselves in the middle of the scale.
• Those that don't expect to take that much damage should look into Penance. This is for those people who found themselves on the right side of the scale.

Hopefully this little analysis has helped determine where you stand with your spec. It's not 100% accurate, but it should give some insight as to the various factors that go into deciding a spec. Keep in mind that top players will likely not find this of much use as their coordination and communication can often supercede comp mismatches or gear inadequacies, thus allowing them to utilize a spec that would get mid level or beginner players killed.

As always, try stuff out and see what works for you.

Gearing Up - a Pseudo Guide for new PvP Priests

For the release of LK, the only real sources for post leveling PvE gear were Heroics and Raids. For raiders and non PvPers, this was an ideal situation, as badge gear was readily attainable and the gear requirements for the entry raids were not prohibitive. As mentioned in a prior post, if you make it easy enough, people will consume the content, en masse.

Unfortunately, for PvPers, the PvE-speed-badge/easy-raid-grind PvP equivalent, aka “Welfare (PvP) Epic Honor Grind” didn’t happen. What was the Welfare Epic grind that was so prevalent in Season 3 and 4 of Burning Crusade? That grind was when new 70’s would dive into a weekly Kara for badges for their cloak and trinket and PvP like mad for S2 gear and still be fairly well off in terms of PvP viability.

So why didn’t it happen? Well, due to various factors, it wasn’t quite repeatable here at the start of LK. Sure, one could sit in BG’s for days grinding honor for the buyable honor gear set (Savage Gladiator), but people for the most part didn’t. Why? It sucks. Which part? All of it. Becaaaauuusseee:

1) The honor based PvP gear is both exceedingly expensive as an honor purchase and still semi equivalent to the (cheap) crafted PvP set.
2) The honor gear, for some classes, is terrible for starter PvP. Equivalent Heroic instance and raid drops are often better until acquisition of top end PvP gear is possible. Sometimes even Deadly gear is eschewed for high end raid gear.
3) The current honor cap is 75k. This means you can usually only buy 1 piece of gear at a time, because each piece now costs over 35k honor/piece.
3a) The off set pieces (neck, back, bracer, belt, boot, ring) for both the Hateful and Deadly PvP sets all require a great deal of Honor, and one doesn’t want to be caught in the situation where they have just purchased a piece of Savage gear only to be forced to grind honor for a few days when the reach a milestone rating and get the privilege to buy a piece of Deadly gear.

Those reasons were enough for many people to not grind for PvP gear. To reiterate point 2, for some of the classes out there, the attainable PvP gear out there is a strict downgrade as their survivability and arena function doesn’t change whether or not they have 200 or 400 resilience, due to the resilience cap being upwards of 1200.

However, the flip side of this is that for other classes, Resilience and Stamina is everything to their survival and function in the arena. Sadly, the Priest is one of those classes and just looking at the possible avenues to getting gearing up for PvP, one can definitely start feeling overwhelmed very quickly.

To that end, this is somewhat of a guide for those who want to gear up quickly for PvP and are playing a class that has limited survivability such as a Priest. Each point, while listed by number is equally important. Just following a couple points of the list, while ignoring other points will not get you very far. Let’s reiterate the key point: This is for classes that have limited survivability. Classes with outs such as Iceblock, Vanish, Divine Shield, should move along.

1. Honor grind. Recognize that some pieces of PvP gear will require you to spend massive amounts of honor to obtain them. These are the Hateful and Deadly offset pieces (neck, back, bracer, belt, boot, ring). If you know you can hit the rating requirements for Deadly, don’t buy the Hateful gear. Hateful would only be a waste of your time. The only caveat is the scenario where you need some Hateful gear to be able to reach the Deadly ratings. This is more likely to occur towards the end of the season. If you plan on wearing 2 resilience rings, grab the Hateful ring first.

2. Craft. Craft as much PvP gear as possible. While Brutal Gladiator gear is reasonable for pieces that aren’t craftable, it will often have less Stamina and less Resilience than the new craftables, not to mention the new stuff will likely have more spellpower/strength/agility, etc. More resilience will allow you to use a playstyle more coherent with your final gear later down the road.

3. Wintergrasp. Wintergrasp is not only a huge source of easy honor, (I think I’ve only ever seen 1 successful defense, so it’s guaranteed honor if you’re on Offense) but it’s also a good source of PvP gear. Besides the fact that Wintergrasp Marks will soon be able to be used for some reasonable helms and boots, control of the zone allows you access to another raid instance: the Vault of Archavon. Vault (as it’s known) is basically 4 trash pulls and then an absurdly easy boss. The boss has a chance to drop both PvE and PvP gear, of Glove, Leg and Chest variety; Vault 10 drops Hateful/Heroic gear, Vault 25 drops Deadly/Valorous gear. You definitely want to run both every week. No question about it. However, many people run it incorrectly and in turn, screw themselves out of gear.

To run it optimally, make a 10 man raid (grab friends if you can) that contain 1 of each class, regardless of spec. To fill the spots, just spam /2 chat in a major city with something that reads like this “LFM 10 man Vault 1 of each class” and I guarantee that you will have people whispering you for spots. Why? Because people are greedy… And because the boss doesn’t drop tokens for gear like every other raid. It drops the actual piece of gear that’s restricted to a specific class. For example, on one raid, the Heroic Mooncloth Gloves of Faith (Priest T7.10) may drop and if you don’t have a Priest on hand, you’ve just wasted a piece of gear. Conversely, since you’re also as greedy as the next guy and you’ve constructed the raid with just one of each class, if any of your class’ gear drops, its all you, baybee. Just remember: 1 MT, 1 OT (often a melee plate DPS, not necessarily tank specced), 2 healers and 6 DPS.

This raid composition strategy is possible for 25 mans, but a little less so due to the number of available people at any given point.

4. PvE. Bwuh? Yep. To PvP, you’ve GOT to PvE. This is probably one of the biggest gripes I have with the current environment, but easily accessible raid instances have some of the best weapons out there. Titansteel Guardian/Prison Manifest have nothing on the Staff of Restraint from OS 25. Yet, many of these raids take minutes to run. Minutes. Not hours. In addition, just by PvEing, you can load up on badges, Badges of Heroism (Heroic/10 man badges) and Badges of Valor (25 man). For the Beginner, Naxx 10 gives 6 badges for the two easy wings, OS 10 gives 4 badges per clear, Vault 10 gives 1 and the daily Heroic dungeon is at minimum 5 badges. The same is true for the 25 man badges, sans the daily Heroic dungeon. At the least you should be getting 11 badges a week of both types. The kicker is that these badges aren’t just to buy PvE gear. For 30 Badges of Heroism you can buy the Savage Gladiator shoulders or gloves. For 45 badges, you’re looking at the Helm, Chest or Legs. The same applies to Badges of Valor and Hateful Gladiator gear. However, consider weekly Vault drops prior to gear purchases.

There you go, that's how I've gotten to around 800 Resilience in a few weeks. It could have been faster, but, I imagine S5 will be long enough, so it shouldn't matter at all... Unless, of course, you're damn impatient, like me.

All the pretty trinkets

No ganking stories today as the past few days have been full of just trying to clean up our computer from the viruses obtained accidentally from a wow-heroes (the gear comparison site) advertisement. We accidentally clicked on an ad and it was all downhill from there. Please use protection.

Anyways, we're all cleaned up now and have been continuing to gear ourselves up. We realize that this gear that we're acquiring is equivalent to the Kara gear we started off with at the onset of TBC, albiet acquired much more quickly than a couple of years ago, so we're not really worried about putting in an excessive amount of effort to 'get the best of the best'. We've been focusing on obtaining healing gear and to that end have gotten our paws on some reasonable upgrades from various heroics and raids, both 10 and 25 man. Of the gear that we've been able to obtain, a couple stand out, both trinkets.

Egg of Mortal Essence is the 40 Badge of Heroism trinket and while the bonus 98 spellpower is exceedingly nice, the Haste effect is truly the shining star. With it's high chance to proc, you can almost guarantee that it will proc in the first few seconds of a fight. This amount of haste (approx 15%) will drop a Flash Heal (and your GCD) to 1.275s and a talented Greater Heal to 2.125s. Naturally, if it's proc rate is that dependable there are a couple of things you can do: Cast low cost spells prior to a pull to force a proc and count out the 45s internal cooldown to mesh up with other cast reduction spells or other haste effects.

Badge of the Infiltrator is the second trinket that I'm currently using and while it's green and unassuming, the trinket is an excellent example of a highly desired raiding statistic: Intellect. For those out of the loop, Intellect (Int) drives the size of the mana pool as well as a bit of crit. When looking at the current amount of raid healing that is necessary and the specific average amount of healing needed per raid member, a large mana pool is a must. This is especially true if a raid starts moving towards bringing less healers and more dps to power through some encounters as was the case back at the end of TBC. In addition, one cannot ignore the synergy between a large mana pool and Replenishment (the mana return buff from Shadow Priests/Ret Pally/Survival Hunters), making a large mana pool highly desireable. Toss in Shadowfiend's effect and it suddenly becomes obvious why many a casting raider are going with marginally smaller Spellpower totals in favor for stacking other statistics such as Int, Crit and Haste. This is also why I'll probably be going back to my War Mace of Unrequited Love for tonight's raid over my Titansteel Guardian.

It's all about the mana, baybee.

Well, not really, but we'll get to that in a later post.