Weekend (28 Mar) - Java's Latest Adventures

Weekend (28 Mar) - Java's Latest Adventures

On Saturday night Java moved out of the city of Exodar - for good. It was just too far from the action. Java took up residence at the Inn in Stormwind City, and that is his new base of operations.

Once settled in, Jave queued up for the battlegrounds and then grabbed a flight heading to the Arathi Highlands. I forget the name of the Alliance Outpost there; I just remember thinking how much smaller it was than the large stockade the Horde have called Hammerfall. The small alliance post had a lot of quests to hand out, and Java gathered them all up. There were officers from the Arathi Basin BG there as well, and Java took advantage of that, buying a very nice pair of Highlands boots from the quartermaster.

Java's questing was pretty easy, as the majority of the hostiles were in the high level 20s. Good for decent experience but easily dispatched. Java rounded up as many as five at a time to kill. Java had been questing for about twenty minutes when he got an invite to Warsong Gulch. The battle was already underway and the Alliance was already losing 0-1. Java waded into the fray, but it was soon pretty obvious we had no chance. Half of the alliance players were turtled up inside our home base and spent the whole match complaining at how bad the offense was. The horde had our flag and guarded it well at the top of their base. In frustration Java twice attacked the flag group solo, and got razzed for it by the cowardly BG leader, telling Java he should group up, but not offering any help at all. Those not hiding at the base were running around mid-field looking for KBs, and the Horde accommodated them. No more flags were taken by either side, and we lost 0-1 when time ran out. Has to be the stupidest BG I've ever been in.

Java did some more questing and got a second WSG. This alliance group at least tried. We had four paladins on the team, a priest healer, and various others. The Horde came at us with four hunters, and five minutes into the battle Java had a very good idea just how terrifying a Hunter Fortress like team can really be. The Horde got a 1-0 lead and then played mid-field, daring us to get by them. We managed to grab their flag five times, but were never able to get it back to base through the withering hunter fire. Java carried the flag on our last shot at capping it for a tie. Java had a healer with him and one other. We beat back the first couple of horde attackers, running along the western edge, and pushed past the mid-field mark. Most of the help we had hoped to join us were dead on the field or still at the graveyard. Java used his "save me" spells but consecutive stuns from the hunters and their pets kept Java moving at a crawl. Java still had more than half his health, but was ganged up on by pets and I swear they must have coordinated Kill Command strikes as suddenly Java went from hopeful to dead. We lost 0-1.

Java wrapped up the evening by DINGing to level 33. At least that went well.

In other news Wild has decided to rethink his stats and make some changes. The standing wisdom for resto druids prioritizes stats like this:

intelligence > spirit > haste > crits > mastery

So, the most important stat is +int and the least important is +mastery.

+Int comes with every piece of healing gear, so the only thing to remember is just get as much of it as you can.

+Spi provides the in combat mana regan that Wild must have, so Wild looks for gear that has +spi, and if he gets gear that doesn't he reforges lesser stats to get it.

There are volumes of often conflicting information about +haste involving breakpoints, and raid buffs, and lots of detailed mathematics. Wild loves +haste, so while he knows his breakpoints he doesn't live and die by them like some seem to do. Theoretically, Wild should have a 1573 rating and stay at that rating until/unless he becomes geared enough to get to 2004. Wild is at 1584 haste rating (after his tinkering), and can't get to 2004 yet, so is happy to leave it right where it is.

All of the above is fairly straightforward. Where things get the most fuzzy, however, is what to do about +crit and +mastery. There is a camp that favors +crit, and there's a camp that favors +mastery, but nobody has a clear idea of how much of each you should have. As a general rule, folks say that if you are a raid healing druid, then +crit is better; but if you are a tank healing druid, then +mastery is better. The reason for that is that +mastery increases the amount of healing when casting heals on a target that already has a heal over time (HoT) on it. Since tanks should ALWAYS have HoTs on them, Wild's tank heals will be better with higher +mastery. It's pretty much a guaranteed bonus.

In raid healing, however, the chances of getting the mastery bonus are lessened unless you are very smart about the order you heal, who you heal, and when you heal them. That's way to much work for Wild, and it hurts his cow brain to think about it.

After studying over it for a bit, Wild came to a very simple conclusion. And I've learned that the simplest answer is very often the best answer.

Wild's playstyle (and the needs of the raid) includes significant tank healing even if his primary role is raid healing. When raid healing Wild uses Wild Growth pretty frequently, and that spell puts HoTs on up to six raiders. Seems to Wild that there are plenty of opportunities there to take advantage of the mastery bonus healing. The downside is that Wild would have to reforge +crit (ie, lower his crit stats) to get more mastery.

The actual numbers are meaningless until Wild compares the results - healing a raid - between last week's raid and the next raid. Wild buffed up his +mastery stats by a good bit, and was surprised that it didn't really hurt his +crit that much. Oh, and it didn't hurt that Wild picked up [Hide of Chromaggus] Sunday night, an i359 shoulder piece with a ton of +crit Wild turned into +mastery. It replaced his i333 shoulder and moved his gear score up to i349. Wild's healing gear is all i346 or better except for his bracers (i333). There isn't much in the way of leather bracers to choose from, and none of it is easy to get:

[Manacles of the Sleeping Beast] - i359, BWD's Chimaeron (5th of 6 bosses)
[Bloodthirsty Gladiator's Bindings] - i352, 1250 honor points
[Armbands of Change] - i346, Heroic 5 man BRC boss drop

And now, ladies and germs, it's time for an episode of:

Wild Is Stupid!

Did you notice the i352 pvp bracers listed above? While the +resilience on those bracers are useless to Wild, they do have +sta, +int, and +spi, all good things to have. Wild wondered how long it would take him to get the needed 1250 honor points to be able to buy them? Then he wondered how many honor points he already had? Well, that bag of honor points was buried so deep in Wild's closet (he doesn't pvp much, we all know, and none at all since Cata) that he almost couldn't find the tiny, moth eaten bag.

Wild opened the bag and spilled out the contents. He counted each one, and then counted them again to make sure he had it right:

Honor points - 1292, that's, um, larger than 1250, right?

Wild could have been wearing those bracers - well, on the day he turned level 85.

Wild is wearing those bracers now. His gear score is i350.