Huntering Makes Me a Better Pally, and Other Stories

So last night was like raiding in the Twilight Zone. First off we only had 6 healers and 2 paladins total. Not having 3 paladins and the subsequent buffs makes me uncomfortable. Plus it's a lot of extra work on the 10 min buffage front since you're trying to fake a 3rd pally all evening. I'm a creature of habit, so casting mights was a bit strange feeling.

We started the raid and grabbed a resto shaman when he logged on to give us 7 healy types. On the first Teron attempt I got marked for constructs. I haven't had constructs in so long, I was pretty surprised. So once I have about 20 sec left, I headed over to the corner. I spammed the AoE attack then ran forward to shakle them. Somehow one missed the spell, so I slapped an Ice Lance on him. As the rest of the constructs began to pop, I lanced them as well. Unfortunately the one that intitially made a break for it did reach the melee group with a little health left, but by this time the person's mobs that died before me were tearing up the raid.

So I ran over and did my AoE again before picking up where I left off on the lances. I think all of mine were killed before they took out anyone (and a shammy agreed with me on this), and I found myself helping out on other people's.

This situation is a lot like kiting mobs on my hunter. Even the slowing is the same. And I've been practicing this for months now. It really has helped and given me the confidence to nuke constructs into oblivion. :D

On the down side, I'm not very happy with my healing right now. I'm coming in at the bottom of the meter, about 3% behind the other paladins and not even in the same hemisphere as the CoH Priest and Shaman. Yes, 3% isn't really a big deal, and I do have to stop healing on trash to do assignments, but still... Comparing me to the other pally last night, it appears that the issue is my Flash heals about 63 hp less per cast.

Sure that sounds like I'm some sort of psycho that is worrying about a tiny amount of healing. The issue is it adds up. It's not unusual for me to cast Flash over 100 times per fight. So if I'm behind 6.3k per bosses and we kill 5 bosses, I'm looking at a 31.5k healing difference.

I also noticed last night that I'm crusing with a ton of mana for most fights. I started picking up on the big heals, but I need to start paying attention to my mana usage more. It's a waste to have half a mana bar left over when it could have been used to keep people alive.

I also got into a discussion with a holy priest about raid consumables. I normally don't use much and he always has at least food and an elixir on. I think I might do a discussion around this in an upcoming WI article because I'm still not convinced what I should be doing. On one hand, I don't feel like people are dying due to a lack of healing in most cases. I can't heal you through a 10k hit unless you're a tank. On the other hand, maybe that's the difference between me and the other paladin.

All of this stuff is surfacing because we're now farmers and what used to be hard is now much easier due to our skill and better gear. I'm just looking for optimization tweaks to get me back with my buddies is all.

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.

DBM, WWS, and You Topping the Meters 24/7

While I'm a big fan of "These are the minute details of my WoW existance" blogs (like a BIG fan), I really get into the ones spiked with useful information. So after two posts of random crap, I'm ready to contribute to the internet void.

Deadly Boss Mods messes up your ability to record your combat log for WWS (WoW Web Stats).

There, I said it. A lot of people, including myself up until a few weeks ago, had no idea that DBM resets your combat log range when you log into WoW. If you've been merging multiple people's logs, then the effect may be small, but my guild tends to rely on 1 or 2 people.

I don't offer up problems without answers, though. Ok, with at least some idea of a suggestion...

In order to use WWS effectively (i.e. without skewing the data in your favor, muhahaha), you need to have your combat log range set at the Blizzard decreed maximum of 200 yds. Deadly Boss Mods has built-in function to extend your combat log range, but only to 150 yds. Below are some options to fix the problem or work around it.

Editing DBM Code
1) Open the API.lua in a text editor like Notepad
The file is typically found at C:\ProgramFiles\WorldofWarcraft\Interface\Addons\DBM\DBM_API/API.lua
2) Do a Find (ctrl+F) for “CombatLog”
3) Edit the following line as shown:
elseif (xOpt == 3) then rv = {"150", "150", "150", "150", "150", "150", "150", "150"};…
to
elseif (xOpt == 3) then rv = {"200", "200", "200", "200", "200", "200", "200", "200"};…
4) Save and close the file
5) Load into WoW and open DBM
6) Click on Options and then the Misc tab
7) Slide the Combat Range slider to 3 and click Ok

Using a Combat Log Recorder/Extender Addon
Since DBM changes your log range on log-in, you can use a log recorder/extender addons to extend the range after the fact. Just be sure to check their defaults before using them. Some start at less than 200 yds. These will also auto-start your log recording when you enter certain areas, etc.

Here are some common addons: AutoCL, CLSaver (BRK Recommended), and Loggerhead (search under "L"). I haven’t used them, so I can only point you in their general direction.

Using a Macro
I normally just use a macro to start/stop my recording. If you do the same, you can just add the combat range commands before hand. You click it once to record and again to stop. Be aware that it stops recording when you log out or crash. Here’s the code:

/console SET CombatLogRangeParty "200"
/console SET CombatLogRangePartyPet "200"
/console SET CombatLogRangeFriendlyPlayers "200"
/console SET CombatLogRangeFriendlyPlayersPets "200"
/console SET CombatLogRangeHostilePlayers "200"
/console SET CombatLogRangeHostilePlayersPets "200"
/console SET CombatLogRangeCreature "200"
/combatlog

So while this might decrease the epeen you get from viewing information biased towards you and those that stand near (groupies, if you will), it should help in the whole "realism" department of raid analysis.