Moar About Light

In my mind, there are two reasons to use Light rank 4: Keeps Light's Grace up for potentially faster big heals and saves mana/cast (if you're using [Libram of Absolute Truth], taking 27 mana off Light's). This was hailed as the greatest thing since sliced bread back when the T5 set bonus reduced Light's cast time even more, making it 1.5 sec after the first cast. Then we pwned both PvE priests and arena healing, and they took it away. :(

The downside is (at least when I tested it in all T5) each cast of rank 4 Light heals for less than a cast of max rank Flash, at something like 200hp less. So even if the cast times were equal, you were trading healing for mana. But now they're not equal and Light takes 2 sec to cast even with LG up. In one of the "I hate you! Die!" letters I occassionally receive, the paladin even went so far of accusing me of padding the healing meters because I used Flash. Yep, that's how much less healing Light rank 4 was doing. I let it slide that you're not actually supposed to be chain casting it... Just using it for LG. After all, she wasn't even playing my faction and had stollen my WWS. ;)

In certain situations, you're going to need to cast Light. The percentage chance of this happening is inversely proportional to how many other healers, specifically priests, are in your group. (If you don't has math, more healers = less chance) That's not to say I don't hesitate to cast big heals if the situation calls for it. I can always drink mana back later.

Pulling up the most recent WWS of MH/BT (cleared MH, 2 bosses in BT, plus trash, I'm Virgo on the WWS) I casted a total of 1,563 times and 15 of those were Lights. So that's a 0.9% chance of me using Light. To be fair, I pulled up the other paladin's info. Out of 1427 casts (I'm not counting the holy shocking he seems to enjoy), he used Light 95 times or 6.6%. Our healing amounts and averages look nearly identical, so those are rank 9 and rank 11 Lights, not rank 4's that he's using.

So let's go with his numbers. I could be making him do all the healing work or he could be going all out on trash, who knows. I don't have the time today to look at each boss fight and count. So 6.6% of the time a paladin needed to use Light. If I do some fuzzy math, 1427 casts = 95 Lights + 1332 Flashes. If you take that as one big long fight and recalc it for the rolling rank 4 Lights, you'll get the following breakdown: 1,213 Flashes, 119 rank 4 lights, 95 rank 9 Lights. The total cast time to reach 1427 casts with rank 4 Light's is 23.78 seconds longer than if you just cast 95-2.5 sec big heals+ton of Flashes. Now, this is a +37 min fight, so that's not exactly a huge amount, but that's still about 16 Flashes that you're missing out on.

Another question is how much less healing does rank 4 Lights do compared to Flash with my current gear? Well, I did try it out the other night but sadly WWS seems to have jumbled up our Council fight and I don't even see the fight where we won. The best I can do is come practice casting tonight when I get home. I think the gear thing is important since my +healing has gone up.

One of the biggest non-math arguments for using rank 4 Lights is: If shaving 0.5 sec off a big heal keeps someone from dying and prevents a wipe, then it's all worth it. This is like relying on your crit or an item proc to heal someone back up. I care more about the day in and day out.

I haven't touched on the whole saving mana aspect, which is what made my h8ter convinced that spamming rank 4's was the way to go. I have yet to come across a boss where buffing to the teeth and proactively drinking mana pots still resulted in going OOM. And I don't even tell me this sob story if you're sitting in a group with a shadow priest. I never get one and do just fine.

Glove Quandry Part II

While my analysis in the previous post is solid, there were a couple of holes. Namely, I need to know if 2.36% crit on FoL is better than 9mp5. While I'm never going to officially solve the effective healing for crit debate on EJ, I can do rough approximations.

FoL = 1.75 sec casts (allowing for lag) = 34.3 casts/min
Max FoL = 180 mana
Illumination = 60% mana return = 108 mana
Current Crit: 23.67% = 523.1 crit (22.1 crit = 1% crit)
23.67% * 34.3 casts = 8.1 casts crit
8 crit casts * 108 mana/crit = 864 mana returned per minute

mp5 => 60 sec/5sec ticks = 12 ticks/min
(864 mana/min)/(12 ticks/min) = 72 mp5

72 mp5/23.67% crit = 3mp5 : 1% crit

So for the S3 gloves, the equivalent to 2.36% crit on FoL is 7.08 mp5. The T6 gloves provide 9 mp5.

The extra healing done with a crit is 150% of the original heal.
I overheal for about 40% on average
+1 healing rating = 0.429 effective +healing for FoL

If 8 casts crit: 1.6k heal * 50% * 8 casts = 6.4k hp extra from crit per minute
40% OH = 60% Effective Healing => 6.4k hp * 60% = 3.84k hp extra/min
3.84k hp/min / 34.3 casts/min = 112 hp/cast
112 hp/cast (effective healing) * (1 / 0.429 effective FoL) = +261 healing
+261 healing / 23.67% crit = +11 healing/% crit

T6 also has +7 healing rating over S3, equivalent to an additional 1.57% crit or 4.71 mp5. So in the end, the T6 has about 14 mp5 while the S3 gloves have 7 mp5.

The real key will be getting more T6 so I can spec around the 1% decrease in glove crit. Then there's no need to worry about it really.

I've also been thinking more about the overall situation. EJ is all about the +healing if you're a FoL spammer like me. Keeping my current meta gem will push me close to the +2.2k healing mark, a number people seem to be tossing around as a goal. My concern is the Council fight coming up next after Mother. Apparently it's a tough fight not to need Light on. Likewise, I'm already struggling with Naj'entus and phase 3 RoS healing where Flashes just don't seem like enough. Even on the last time we downed Bloodboil, I cast 18 Lights with my nearly 100 Flashes. I'm using the mp5 flasks mainly now for the fights I consider tough, not the +healing elixirs.

There's also this whole camp of +haste people who both have a shadow priest and want to mainly rely on Lights. With the changes to the T5 set bonus, it's just the latest way to try to be a priest in plate, imo. But part of me wants to be that paladin. The downside is you loose mp5. Sure, I'd have awesome reactionary burst healing, but the issue is having enough mana on long boss fights. I got to play with the old T5 and its 1.5s cast Lights. Blowing 11k mana on a single trash pull was freaking awesome, but only because I could drink right after.

So in the end I've just proved the same things over again. I'm going to hold on to the Bracing ESD for now, knowing I'll probably want to replace it later. I'm also going to wear the T6 gloves since they're new and shiny. I also need some WWS data on them before I make any serious changes.

Faking It and Glove Quandry

Last night I picked up the last of the MH rep JC patterns. What this means is even though I'm most likely the worst 375 JC you've ever had the chance to meet, it doesn't matter because all my guildies want are the rep patterns for the epic gems. The "guild JC'er" and I are closer to equals than we ever have been before, even though he spent tons of gold buying patterns off the AH and grinding all that rep. Granted, we have been passing epic drop patterns to him, but those are few and far between. I think in the end, it's a bit of relief for him. I was able to help with the onslaught of people bearing gems last night when the officers decided it was open season on the ones we've been storing in the bank. I've never seen so many happy caster dps people in all my life. Previously gems had been restricted to slot color matching. It feels good to be useful.

Speaking of gems, I picked up the T6 gloves last night. I'm one of those people that likes matching and love collecting sets of gear. My priest still has like 3 pieces of T0 in her bank, just in case I manage to get the rest someday. So when I got the chance for another piece of T6, I didn't bat an eye. And maybe I should have... After suiciding off the MH hill, I picked the gloves up from the foyer vendor. And realized I was loosing 22 crit for 4 stam, 4 int, 20 healing, and 5mp5. (Using [Royal Shadowsong Amethyst]) I already run low on the spectrum of crit pallies at about 23.7%. Loosing that crit drops me by 1%.

So I was hoping that maybe the full set of T6 would compensate. It seems to come close if I use a +8 crit [Gleaming Dawnstone] for one of the yellow slots. The rest of the gems would be [Luminous Pyrestone]x2, [Royal Shadowsong Amethyst]x4, [Kailee's Rose], [Blood of Amber], and [Bracing Earthstorm Diamond]. The net result is +24 stam, +20 int, +87 healing, -1 crit, and +17 mp5 from my currently gemmed T5 set to my proposedly gemmed T6 set. I am a bit ill over having to use Kailee's Rose to maintain my meta gem, though. I'm already a bit extreme on the +healing, a condition left over from being a priest. If I swap to [Insightful Earthstorm Diamond] then I can get a net positive +24 stam, +32 int, +50 healing, -1 crit, and 19mp5. That's either about +16 hp more healed per Flash (with Bracing) or the mana for 2 extra Flashes in a 15 min fight (with Insightful).

Doing the math from there based on my WWS for a 15 min fight, it's basically a wash bewtween the two until you look at the Insigtful meta gem proc. According to WoWHead comments, paladins can see around a 10% proc rate, or 45mp5 over the duration of a long fight. That jumps the 2 extra Flashes to 47 in a 15 min fight, which is a ton more hp healed.

Reading EJ right now, I might have some hope on the crit front. They note 18% crit as the number they shoot for. While that does seem kind of low to me, maybe the situation isn't as bad as I thought. Sadly, they did spell out that the T6 gloves suck (b/c of only 2 crit) and recommend the S3 gloves instead. /sigh Comparing the S3 to the T5, I'll get +13 stam, +4 int, -7 healing, +4 crit, and -9 mp5. The trick, though, is the on equip: +2% crit for Flash. I don't mind loosing the healing (have +2.1k atm), but 9mp5 for 2.36% on Flashes... Moar math. /brain explody

As EJ also points out, if you're mostly in the tank group (a la no SP), mp5 can be more helpful than crit. I'm always in the tank group. Always. T6 gives me 5mp5 over T5 and switching metas will give me even more. So maybe the gloves will work out once I get more T6. Sadly I just put a shiny new Bracing in my T6 helm, a gem my husband farmed the mats for. He's is gonna kill me for not doing this analysis earlier...

Faster Leveling Backlash

Building money at low level isn't viewed as an issue, don't expect any addition of daily quests or anything helping grinding gold at "low" levels. (Blue Source)

Right now my level 37.5 hunter has 9g to her name. Now, I haven't started really trying to make gold, so I have stores of meat, leather, and greens still to sell. But that's a far cry from the 90g for a mount. And with quests giving 45s-50s, the xp seems to be out-pacing my financial gain. Stop! AH time! /male orc dance

It's had me wondering about what monetary side effects the new faster leveling is going to cause, and it seems I'm not the only one to bring it up. Since level 11 I've needed less xp per level, so less grinding/questing has been needed. Level 30 brought higher quest xp rewards, decreasing the stuff I have to do per level even further. This also means I'm killing less mobs and potentially doing less quests, both of which are my primary income sources.

But my question is how much am I getting for free? I'm going to include the explaination below, but for those with TLDR syndrome, here's the summary: From level 1-30, you kill about 355 less mobs. For 30-40, it's about 540 less mobs if that's all you grind. If you do every quest, including the new quest xp bonus, you're looking at about 1,025 less mobs kills. Combining all the mobs, that's roughly 1,380 you didn't have to kill. Assuming each drops 5s (about the worth of 1 leather), that's 69g you didn't get. Um, that's a good junk of the 90g I need for my mount. And the problem will continue as you head towards level 60.

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For those of you that want the long version, here it goes. First stop is Tekknub has a spreadsheet comparing the previous xp per quest versus the new xp per quest. I took that raw data and found the averge amount of bonus xp you get by level (from 30 to 60). There aren't that many data points, but it was the best I could find.

Another stop at WoW Wiki yeiled the old and new xp requirements to reach the next level. That's where the 18% less xp per level reported around comes from, but note it's really less than that below level 30. More importantly, I grabbed the xp/mob forumlae at the top.

Taking these data, I come up with the following analysis. (You can find the Excel calcs here.) From levels 1-29, you'll have to kill about 355 less mobs than before, assuming you only kill those the same level as you.

From 30-60, it's gets a bit trickier since you add in the bonus quest xp. So I'm going to look at it in two sections. If you only grind mobs that are the same level as you, the following graph shows how many less you'd have to kill per level.



The amount from level 30-60 is 2,325 less. From 30-40, it's 541 less. Now, not many people only grind mobs. I prefer juicy quests, personally. The chart is below is from Tekknub's information:



The comparison breaks down at this point, since quests reward different amounts of xp and methods of completing them. Unless you have WoHead and some time... While I love you all, the most I could manage at work was all the Horde available quests for levels 30-39, exculding class specific ones. It was still a lot, ok?

Crunching the numbers, I end up with the following graph of how much bonus xp you'll get if you do every quest.



Here's a version laid out by level:



Combine that with the xp requirements to level, and you end up skipping about 1,380 mobs from 1-40. Assuming each are worth 5 silver, you've missed out on 69 gold. Um, that's kind of a big chunk of my mount, but imagine what you'll have missed by level 60. /boggle