The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
2.4 Public Service Announcement
by Vonya
Those of you who know me know that I don’t usually like to spend much time talking about upcoming patches until they become a reality.
Things keep changing and getting nerfed and renerfed right up to the point of deployment, so I don’t generally see much value in speculation and preparation for things that may never even come to pass.
Keeps me from getting my fragile little hopes up too high.
HOWEVER.
However, 2.4 looks like it’s got some stuff that - if it makes it all the way to live - we’re all gonna wish we’d spent a little time preparing for. (And oddly enough, all three add up to very good reasons to run Heroic Botanica)
The first of those three things is yet another buff to spirit. As it CURRENTLY stands, it’s hugely OP and is probably going to get nerfed. However, if it makes the live servers even with a scaled down usefulness, I’m going to be spending a lot more focus on spirit than I had been.
What does this mean? It means I’m farming Bangle of Endless Blessings again.
The second of these three things is that the very nice spirit and healing gem that drops in heroic Botanica will (theoretically) not be unique after the patch. Yet another reason to be spending more time in Botanica.
The last of the three things is less likely to get hit terribly hard with the nerf bat (and yes, I know. A good way to get God to laugh at you is to announce your plans) are the badge rewards.
That’s right. Those of you who were as disgusted with the priest badge rewards (with a few small exceptions) from the last patch can finally rejoice. These new rewards are HAWT with a capital ‘ZOMG’.
Follow that link and see the pants, ring, hammer, dress, and boots.
VERY snazzy. Huge upgrades in stamina. Probably huge downgrades in MP5, but sockets galore. The loss of MP5 may be offset by the changes to spirit, and there’s some disagreement on whether the hammer is really an upgrade over Prince’s shiny gavel because of the spirit, but I personally am going to plan as though I’ll need every single one of these items as an upgrade.
How many badges is that?
Weapon = 150
Legs and Chest = 100
Boots = 75
Ring = 60
Let’s see…take the square root and multiply by five…carry the seven…divide by pi….
I need a metric boatload of badges, is what I need.
Lucky for me, I had 200 saved up in the bank with nothing to spend them on.
Unlucky for me, that’s about a third of where I need to be, come 2.4.
So! This, my priestly healing friends, is a public service announcement.
Run Karazhan to get badges. Run heroics to get badges. SAVE THOSE BADGES, my lovelies.
These things may get severely changed by the actual deployment of the patch, but if they stay close to where they are, I know I’d sure wish I’d been given some kind of warning about the mind-boggling number of badges I’d need to buy the fantabulous gear that will soon be available.
Here’s your warning.
This has been an Egotistical Public Service Announcement.
February 28th, 2008
I’m curious as to why you see the spirit/int regen changes as an imba buff? It’s a nice up-front buff, but the ongoing effects are pretty minimal (with the game’s current gear).
February 29th, 2008
One thing about the new lewts. For someone like me who has had 0 luck in Kara getting EITHER mace to drop this patch is a godsend to push forward in content. One thing that bugs the crap out of me is that alot of things on the net concerning priest are above this content, and for good reason. However, it is nice to see this gear because it will put alot of people on par (just intime for the expansion IMO)
February 29th, 2008
@Bruthah
A lot of priests are gaining around 100 Mp5 in average gear and the Mp5 outside the 5 second rule is a even greater gain.
If math doesnt make your head explode check out this thread over on EJ talking about the forumlas and the gains. They’re pretty confident that they’ve figured it out.
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t21280-intellect_-_spirit_conversion_ptr_theorycrafting_hq/
Hope that helps out
February 29th, 2008
@Brutha,
With my current gear, disc spec, my mp5 rate will increase by about 25% with this change. There is some gear I can shift that will result in insignificant effects on direct healing and damage and health but which will add another 10-15% to the mp5 rate.
In my holy-spec, I was somewhat notorious for not running out of mana - efficiency and tricks with gear and timing. With this change, I expect it will become normal that MOST priests (and druids, I suspect) will not run out of mana - usually.
February 29th, 2008
@Brutha
*points at Kirk and Zasp* What they said.
Seriously. I had someone more math-minded than me that I trust show me what my mana regen would be with my CURRENT gear if I was on the PTRs. I could test it easily, but the jump was pretty incredible.
@Sinful
*laughs* VERY true. I’ve had wickedly bad shoulder upgrade luck, for example. I do like that it puts people on par without requiring a ton of experience.
It’s like those “entry-level” jobs that require 2-5 years experience. Where are you supposed to GET the experience, if nobody will hire you without it?
This way, if you can farm badges, you can get geared up for raiding guilds without necessarily depending on undependable raiding drops. And if you can farm badges, you’ve proven at least some modicum of ability in my eyes. =]
I think it’s a great idea, and I’m all for it.
February 29th, 2008
Ego what do you think about the Blue Dragon card now with the new spirit changes in 2.4? Will that be worth getting?
February 29th, 2008
The jump for me in my current gear is 40mp5. Meh. Nice, but, Meh.
100mp5 gains?! Wow! That really goes outside the bounds of the math postedi n the EJ thread, and all the spreadsheets and tools they provided. I’m shocked.
February 29th, 2008
I also don’t see “MOST priests (and druids, I suspect) will not run out of mana - usually” ad equal to “As it CURRENTLY stands, it’s hugely OP”. I don’t understand why it’s OK for priests to regularly go OOM and not druids or pallies. /shrug
February 29th, 2008
@Rae
The card looks pretty solid. I’m not personally a fan of collecting the card decks because of the randomness and costs associated. *grins* So I won’t personally be seeking it. Whether it’s worth getting would depend on what other gear is available to you, and what the percentage of that “on spellcast” is. Sometimes those trinkets are padded with “can only happen once every 20 seconds” and “only has a 2% chance to proc” so they end up not really being worth the paper they’re (not) printed on. =]
Bruthah
40 MP5 without having to swap out any gear at all is pretty nice.
And “I don’t understand why it’s OK for priests to regularly go OOM and not druids or pallies” - that’s probably why the spirit buff is happening. It shouldn’t be okay, but at the moment of me writing this, it’s true for priests, at least. I don’t plan on finding a bunch of links and soforth to back myself up, because this is my blog and I don’t have to. (ie : I am lazy and at work right now) I’ve seen some screenshots of the mana regen of someone with innervate on that made no kind of sense at all. I cannot imagine Blizzard keeping it that high.
Arguing about semantics at this point really doesn’t do much good, especially since the PTR changes this go round are notorious for being swift, unexpected, and galling.
February 29th, 2008
@Rae
The folks over at EJ have this to say
[Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon] Due to low proc rate this trinket’s effectiveness can vary dramatically, but overall ( and depending on gear) this trinket can be worth around 25 mp/5. It also has some small synergy with Bangle/Earring in that if you click either of those 2 trinkets while the blue dragon affect is up you will receive the maximum amount of regen ( but you’d lose regen if you waited for this trinket to proc before clicking them). Since this trinket can not raise your regen above 100% in 2.3 it will be essentially 15% less effective. This is especially useful for a spirit-based healing priest; full regen at 700 raid buffed spirit is around 2000 mana per proc. Last time we did tests on the procs, it seemed to be accurate at 2%, and have a rate of around 0.5 ppm. At that rate, it’s effectively a second potion timer, which is useful. If you have this, hang onto it until you get a lot of spirit, and then play with it.
Hope that helps ya out. In the same post they talk about nearly all the Healy Trinkets you could ever want(Save the new ones from 2.4) so you may want to look there.
http://elitistjerks.com/510801-post2.html
February 29th, 2008
IMO the changes to mana regen is about damn time. Why shouldn’t priests be the numbero uno when it comes to heals, afterall that is what the class was orginally designed for. With the crap mana regen that we have now we will never be able to keep up with pallies or druids, even with this slight buff we wont be the gods and goddesses that we should be.
March 18th, 2008
I was just curious about your thoughts on the primal mooncloth gear and whether to replace it or not. I personally hate not having any stamina but I’m not sure what to spend badges on first. Hypothetically, if you had 200 badges or so, which of the 5 items would you buy first. I’m currently using the staff of the everliving from nightbane, Primal mooncloth + whitemend set, other kara/za epics.
I was thinking the chest looks like a big upgrade with stam. I dont know whether to spend the 150 badges on the weapon because there are many easy to get weapons out there already including lights justice.
I’d really appreciate any input. thanks
March 18th, 2008
@Wimstor
Definitely get rid of the Mooncloth if you’re planning on progressing past Kara. It’s an incredible way to get ready for kara, but it’s a crutch anywhere beyond.
It’s sad, really. The special stats on it are SO GOOD, it’s hard to see the epics in kara being an upgrade.
Until you start gruul, and you’re the first one to die to a cave-in or to an unlucky shatter or something.
That stamina is incredibly important when you don’t have it - and it’s so hard to downgrade your primary healing stats to get it.
Thankfully, I never had to make the decision, but I can only imagine how hard it is to replace something with another piece that feels and looks like it’s a downgrade. Even when you know it’s really not.
With the changes to int and spirit, stat-heavy gear probably isn’t going to be as much of a downgrade as you might think. =]
Anyrate, enough from that particular soapbox - the new badge gear has AWESOME stam and specials on it. I think the chest was one of my first upgrades. The hammer was definitely my last - it has no spirit on it, and I want the other gear just as badly, so it can wait.
Yeah. I think I’d buy the chest first. *nod*