Tuesday (21 Dec) - A Hitch in the Grind

Tuesday (21 Dec) - A Hitch in the Grind

Sis's respeccing tales and the enforced idleness from the surprise maintenance on a Wednesday drove Wild to take a look at his own talent specs now that there are level 85s out there running Heroics and refining their healing strategies. While questing Wild primarily works from his moonkin spec since it delivers much higher damage while still providing plenty of self-healing when needed. But for dungeon runs and the raids that are coming just around the corner, Wild needs to be in top form with his healing talent spec.

Wild considered himself "old school" as far as healing strategies go, but during WotLK had let himself be lulled into the "never out of mana" strategy of spamming expensive spells on everyone all the time, never mind whether they needed it at that moment or not. Wild did have to make some adjustments to reduce mana consumption during the seemingly endless nights of battling the Lich King, but that was really the only time Wild needed to watch his mana bar. Wild's cata dungeon experience is limited to just the two normal mode dungeons that are the starter dungeons for cata. Wild had no problem with mana there, either, and so didn't make any changes to his healing strategy - however, everyone in that group way overgeared those dungeons, so I don't think that was a true test.

The end result of that, though, is that Wild's talent spec decisions look more like WotLK style healing than the kind of healing that is expected in Cata. I can sum up those differences pretty easily:

WothLK Healing: Spam rejuv. Spam regrowth when rejuv isn't enough. Spam rejuv some more. Toss Wild Growth around whenever you feel like it. When tank healing add lifebloom. Innervate the priest so she can spam her own spells without worrying about mana. Repeat until boss is dead.

According to the pundits, the WotLK way of healing will end seconds after it started when the healer goes out of mana and the group/raid wipes.

Cata Healing: (1) Lifebloom stack on the tank at all times. (2) Spam Nourish on the tank, and use it on DPS, too, unless there is an urgent need for something faster. (3) DO NOT spam rejuv. Rejuv is now an expensive spell and WIll run you out of mana if over-used. (4) Secondary spell procs from the above will create conditions called Clearcasting and Omen of Clarity. When these proc the next spell can be cast mana-free. USE THESE PROCS by casting regrowth (primarily) the player most in need of a heal. It's free mana, so look for it and use it! (5) Don't forget Tree of Life (ToL). I know Wild is going to forget. It is an amazing increase in healing, but can only be used once every three minutes. Use to lifebloom the whole group (normally LB can only be used on one target) and for the instant regrowths. (6) Tranquility is useful again! The channeled spell is instant, has no cooldown, and heals up to five players. It's only downside is that it's a channeled spell, so Wild can't do anything else during the channeling. (7) I say again that Nourish is now the spam spell of choice because it's cheap and helps proc other nice things. (8) There are still differences of opinion on whether wild growth (pre-cata a superb AoE heal that could be spammed every few seconds) should be in heavy use or only situational use. It's more costly to cast than before, but ... my take is to use it often, unless you start to see mana problems, since it's instant and hits up to six players.

Ok, first an admission from Wild - Wild HATES Nourish. It takes two plus seconds to cast the dang thing, and the heal at the end of it is pretty lame. BUT - a decent tank with a stack of lifeblooms ticking should be able to survive most of the time using nourish spells. Poster after poster in the forums have said this. Wild doesn't have to like it, but he'd better learn to use it. Often. I'm going to have to make the rejuv spell difficult to reach on the keyboard - my fingers are so conditioned to hit that spell I've seen Wild cast it three times in a row before it hits me what I'm doing. Going to put nourish on that key - gah, that will be hard to get used to.

I haven't mentioned one other healing spell - Healing Touch. It's a BIG heal - and it's three times as expensive to cast as nourish. But it has the same cast time as nourish, so when the situation calls for a bigger heal than nourish can provide, and you don't have time to cast two nourishes instead, then HT should be used. That will be even harder for Wild, because HT is the least used spell of all time.

After all the above, the question now is - How does this affect Wild's talent specs? Well, in several ways.

1) Wild ignored talents that affected nourish and HT. To add those talents, Wild will have to give up some others, particularly some that improved his rejuv spell, which he isn't supposed to use as much now. Wild will be swapping Blessing of the Grove for Naturalist. The miss-placed Nature's Ward will go to Malfurion's Gift. Wild has one unspent talent point to use in Empowered Touch. At level 85 Wild gets 41 total points, and so has three still to use. One will got to get a second point in Empowered Touch. The other two will go to Fury.

The Why -

Naturalist - Reduces the cast time of nourish/HT by 0.5 seconds.
Malfurion's Gift - a chance to proc OOC (only putting one of two points here)
Empowered Touch - increases nourish/HT healing, and refreshes the lifebloom stack when those spells are used, saving an LB cast.
Fury (from the feral tree) - increases mana pool.

Wild kept Nature's Swiftness, although the "stock" spec no longer includes it. NS is basically an instant HT, useful in emergencies, and Wild likes to have as many options as possible for emergencies. If it proves not needed, then Wild can change it.

In combat mana regen is going to remain a concern until Wild starts to get some dungeon/raid experience. The stat spirit, which provides mana regen, has been in depressingly low availability in gear drops. The huge +spi numbers Wild has on his pre-cata gear is taking a big hit as it's replaced by cata gear without it. So, if things go really bad mana regen wise, Wild may be going back to some of that "old" gear to increase mana regen.

You know, I just noticed that I hadn't included the latest news from Sis and DER. Here goes!

DER (respomnding to Sis's comment that she probably wasn't going to be questing on Tuesday night) - I’ll bet she makes 85 tonight as I can easily see “I don’t think I will be on tonight” being translated tomorrow to, I only got on to level to 85, then ended up staying up until 3 AM. :P
Sis did get in game Tuesday night, but DER would have lost that bet - I did get on, but I did not do a single quest with my Hordies, and only the cooking/fishing with Neekia. But I was on a lot longer than I was thinking I would be.

I cleared out Sis’s first tree, that cost 32g. Then I cleared out the second tree, that cost 62 or 64 gold. So 94 or 96 gold for both trees :P At least it is money that will very much improve her game, I hope. She then saw that she won her big on some shards and cracked them to skill up her enchanting and create 70-80 material for Lao’s enchanting needs. It was a downward spiral then. She decided to clear out her bank of old low level enchant material and posted that on the AH (even undercut Happy on one of the shards). Then it was the “redo” the action bar.. bah. So 45 minutes later..

Finally Kia got on and did her cooking and fishing quests. Also got to buy a new recipe using Blood Shrimp to make a strength food.

But I am off all day Thursday, the sprint will begin then. More that I want to see how some of these quest chains go.

From Wild - Wild was on for a bit last night, following Sis’s bloody trail through Deepholm and taking on those stone troggs. Got as far as getting the invite to head to Egypt land (Uldum). Despite being rested and finishing many, many quests with 60k plus experience, Wild called it an evening only 45% of the way to level 84. The grind to 84/85 is a long one. Wild was also shocked to find out that he can’t disenchant gear at ilevel 318. I had no idea there was a level requirement for disenchanting as Wild has been able to disenchant cata gear below that level. Haven’t been able to find out what level Wild needs to be; for now, the junk is going to start collecting. I hope Wild has room for it all.

Yesterday I finally finished the large Christmas project I’ve been working on for the Mrs and powered up the computer this morning expecting to get in several hours of “catch up” grinding. But wait …

When I logged in I discovered that Blizzard had decided to do maintenance – on a Wednesday. Sigh. No grinding this morning, at least not before 11am. Right after I logged in last night my druid tank/moonkin friend whispered me demanding that Wild get to 85 “like now!” He misses his healer. Most of the guild raiders are already level 85 and the guild is starting the planning to establish raid groups for cata raids.

The one bit of good news for Wild is that one day after upgrading his pre-cata main hand weapon for a sweet two hand, another main hand mace dropped along with an off hand that out gears the two hand. Wild also changed out two more pre-cata pieces for cata gear. Wild is now wearing 8 pieces of Cata gear, which is almost half his gear. Since quest rewards heavily favor leather feral gear and not leather caster gear, Wild has also accumulated a pretty fine set of cat/agi gear to play around with. Not much gear for a tanking bear, though.

So you’re off Thursday? Hope I’m on when you hit 85 (of course, you could hit it tonight as well). And I hope I won’t be too far behind ya. :-)