Dispelling

I’ve been having a look back over my posts over the last few weeks and it struck me I’ve not mentioned my primary topic; priests, nothing, nada, not a drop.  Possibly something to do with priestly ways being done to death by the blogsphere until the next patch drops, and possibly something to do with me playing alts more, and being generally slack…. so in an attempt to redress the balance a little, here we go, a post on dispelling for Shadow (and any other) Priests.

Dispelling (and decursing or curing poison etc. I’ve decided I’m going to use dispel from now on to cover every generic kind of ‘remove something’ simply for my sanity, don’t come whining to me ok… deal with it) like interrupts have made a bit of a resurgence since Cata, yes they were used in previous versions of WOW, but I can’t ever remember an occasion when they were needed so heavily.  Yes, back in the days of Molten Core and Lucifron as a mage(which I was at the time) you’d find yourself decursing 40 people.  Back when decursive was ‘legal’ you simply mashed the button 40 times and carried on.  Then it was outlawed and there was uproar; dispelling classes would have to do more than just mash keys, oh the pain!! to placate people (I assume, or perhapse they realised that, actually, selectively dispelling tens of people was quite hard, and actually VERY dull).  Blizzard introduced mass descurse/spell/poison Prior to Cata there was the occasional boss fight which required this, but it was occasional, and it was generally restricted to raids, not 5 mans, and you’d generally have a designated mass dispeller who did nothing but dispel.  In Cata, as a healing priest, I constantly find myself dispelling nasty crap, even on trash, to mitigate healing needs, there’s some quite nasty stuff which gets thrown about.  In Grim Batol, Throngus really needs to be dispelled, the end boss, Asaad, in Vortex Pinacle is one example who requires the use of mass dispel, and a whole host of others.

Gone are the days when dispelling was the sole responsibility of one unfortunate in a raid, and gone are the days when only the healers are responsible for dispelling.  I still occasionally see the ‘we always used to do it that way’ from the DPS, but I’ve found more and more that when I’m shadow, I need to dispel to help my healer out.  It’s quite polarising actually, the good DPS players tend to be those ones who know how to use their classes secondary abilities like interrupt, dispel, and to some extent crowd control (though most classes have had some form of crowd control for years so are generally quite comfortable with it).

I use healbot when I’m healing, binding my most used healing spells to direct mouse clicks, my lesser used spells with a shift-click and my dispel abilities an alt-click.  I replicate this across my alts, so on my druid my most usual heal is the left click, my ‘panic’ heal is shift right click, my dispel mechanic is alt-click and so on, this really helps (I find) with the muscle memory.  I used to disable healbot when I was playing DPS to give me more screen space, but recently I’ve kept it active so I can see when people need dispelling; if the healer is doing it (and not struggling) I’ll ignore them and melt away.  If we’re having problems then theres an easy indication both because the debuffs are highlighted and I can see peoples health bars more clearly. 
I’ve actually since re-skinned healbot so it’s not so big when I’m playing DPS, I still have all of the same keys bound so I can not only dispel, but also drop out of shadow form and start healing if I’m needed.
More generally, I’m not a big fan of mass dispel (in heroics) there’s for the bosses like Asad in Vortex Pinnacle where several classes can get out themselves, and anyone with any nouse is able to jump to avoid the debuff in the first place so dispel is simply used to pick up the stragglers.  In most other scenarios its simply a case of knowing the debufs that mobs dish out on knowing whether they’re worth getting rid of; for instance a melee speed debuf on a caster can be left.  This has got me wondering if there's any intelligence built in to healbot (or any other mod) or any other add to tell you if you really need to dispel someone.  I’ll have to break Google out when I get home.  Clearly in raids it’s a different story, its a case of choosing the most efficient method, be it mass or point dispelling. 

I think my point is, as a class who can dispel, you should always look to dispel, if possible, (and beneficial) whether you’re the healer or DPS; don’t assume someone else will do it, they’re probably assuming you will.  Know your debuffs too! know what might be coming, and be ready to deal with it.  Oh and when some muppet spams the DPS meter at you, spam the interrupt / dispel count back at them.

The shifting sands of stat weightings

In continuation to my earlier blog on evaluating your SimulationCraft results, this post covers the stat weightings (or scale factors) in much more detail. These are the numbers that anyone new to SimulationCraft will generally be looking for, they are the way you decide one piece of gear is better (for you) than another, the way you chose your gems, enchants, how to reforge and even which buff food and flasks you use. There are a few things to note about stat weights, firstly they are variable, as your gear evolves, so do they; secondly they are unique to you and your gear, this means that the websites proclaiming the definitive stat weights for your class are, at best, an approximation of an approximation – unless they've been calculated with your stats in mind they won't necessarily be applicable to you; finally, and probably most important, the weightings are a reference, and nothing more – unless you are absolutely perfect in your DPS rotations and positioning, your play style will have a far bigger impact on your DPS, use the stats as a framework for improving your overall performance, but don't expect getting your stats right to instantly make you hit 18k DPS.

A word on variability of stat weights

As I mentioned above, stats weights will vary with your gear (and the level of the mob you're fighting) I've knocked together this graph to try and illustrate this from the five examples I made for my last post. Notice how Mastery gains in importance as your gear (or buff level) improves. You'll also notice that Spirit and Hit are useless to me in heroics, that is because I've reached the hit cap (Spirit gives hit with the xxxxx talent). The other weights vary as your stats change, this is why it's important to run a simulation yourself, I'd even go so far as to run one each time your gear changes so that you understand what the implications are. If you're a more serious raider, you might want to play around comparing what your performance should be like with and without raid buffs so that you can adapt your unbuffed gear to give you the best performance when in a raid.

SimulationCraft: What does it all mean??

It's been a pretty busy week on my blog, the busiest one traffic wise since I started spewing my ramblings onto paper (well electronic paper). My post on SimulationCraft seems to have struck a few chords so in an attempt to aimlessly chase ratings expand on my success I thought I'd have a stab at explaining what the actual results mean in plain English.

So you've read the idiots guide, you've ballsed up at least 5 attempts at simulating your characters DPS, you've gone back and read the guide again, read the official help files a bit, scratched your head a bit, and finally got some figures that look like what you've been reading on the interweb. Brilliant! You've got a page of completely incomprehensible maths, statistics and pretty graphs that'd look more at home on a PowerPoint at that next dull management meeting you were trying to avoid…

There are some figures that (may) make sense to you instantly; there are others that are best when compared to an average, or a target of where you want to be. If you're comparing something you need a baseline, for this example that's you! (or me as the case may be). For the record, I've run 5 different simulations; one with the ultimate tier 11, 25 man gear, with all the raid buffs and trimmings; one with the equivalent 10 man gear and the same buffs; one with my crappy heroic gear with all the same buffs and trimmings; one with (a slightly unrealistic) all the buffs and trimmings but with the target_level override set to 87 (i.e. a heroic boss), you'd NEVER get this amount of buffs in a 5 man as you simply wouldn't have the classes there required (you're pushing it for a 10 man); and then finally, a far more realistic 5 man scenario with just plain old Fort, Int, and MOTW (a reasonable assembly of buffs in my view), oh and replenishment as you'll be keeping that up at all times (WONT YOU?!?) as it's one of your main sources of DPS. The baseline scenario will be the final, and probably worst DPS(it's chugging away as we speak, so we'll see if my prediction shows me up to be the eejit you suspect me to be).

I'm setting the fight length to 350 seconds (nearly 6 minutes), 2 adds, Patchwerk style fight, and assuming you're the best of the best when it comes to mashing keys and given you (well me) an elite skill level – the trick is to only change one variable (or set of variables) at a time so the comparison has some meaning. As homework, I'll leave you to run your own simulation, with your gear, with a realistic skill level and fight scenario, I can't stress highly enough that stat weightings will vary massively depending on your ability (or lack of it), your gear, the number of adds, the type of fight, and a whole host of other variables, what is certain is the figures are a model (a model, by definition is an approximation, and only an approximation) of reality. Go read about statistical modelling in a text book or here on Wikipedia or somewhere else where stats geeks lurk.

Lecture over, and here we are, remember I'm using me as the baseline, the links to the full reports are at the end, I'll reference sections only, for comparison in the main text to keep my ramblings to sub War and Peace word count.

First of all, and the thing you're almost all certainally here for, the scale factors, or stat weighting s as they're sometimes known. You'll notice two values, a scale factor and a normalised value; the latter is the one you want, it simply skews everything so that it's a direct comparison to your best stat (Int) to make it easy(er) to compare one stat to another when you come to chosing your gear. I'll be posting some specific analysis on stat weights in my next blog so if you're still confused check back and I'll endeavour to confuse you more.

Int will always be best, if haste comes in at 0.5 and Crit at 0.25 it means that Int is twice as good as Haste, and Haste is twice as good as Crit (and thus Int is 4 times better than Crit). Put simply, if given those weights, you have a simple choice of a tunic with 100 Int and 150 Haste, you'd always chose the first one (but it's never that simple is it?).

Next you're at the charts, the damage per execute is a telling chart, if interpreted correctly; it's basically saying for the amount of time you spend casting these are the spells which do the most damage – i.e. devouring plague is an instant cast spell so does the most damage per cast.

Next is the damage source pie chart, you'll notice that mind flay is near the top in all, which seems counter intuitive given the last statement. But think about it for a second, mind flay is your filler when all of the other spells are on cooldown or waiting for procs, you're casting it for the most time, so it does lots of DPS, but bang for buck its lower than the others.

The other thing to note in these early graphs is the mana timeline graph, if you're going oom regularly, you're doing something wrong (or something right, i.e. emergency healing which is saving the wipe), I've heard a few Shadow Priests complain about mana issues, this should never be the case with any level of gear.

The most important graph in my opinion is the DPS scaling at the end, this basically says if you add 100(for the sake of argument, you could use any figure) of any given stat, what is the expected DPS increase? You'll notice for me Haste Crit and Mastery all look pretty much the same, crossing once or twice; for the best spec there's a far bigger difference as you follow the graph up with Haste becoming the worst and then the best and then the worst etc. as you go up. This is because of a whole heap of internal metrics (some of which we know about or can approximate, some which Blizzard keep close to their chests).

Notice on the t11 graph, Hit and Spirit have a scale factor up to 0 (i.e. if your gear was worse) and then abruptly stop giving a dps boost – this is the hit cap. Also notice for me, it's pretty much horizontal (at target_level 87) which means I'm over my hit cap for heroics (naughty me, I'll be remedying this immediately).You'll also notice, if you look at the 3rd scenario that my dps drops, even though I've got massive buffs, this is purely because of the hit cap dynamic, and is a good reminder to follow the basic principles that have been with us for all (well almost if you forget the last 3 months) of WOW - get hit capped first!

That's it for the basics, there's loads (and loads and loads) more, have a read, if there's anything you want me to explain (or make up on the spot) leave a comment, or email, tweet, or send a carrier pigeon. I'll be posting an additional blog on the differences of the stat weightings specifically tomorrow.



Report Download

Scenario 1 – best T11 25 man gear, all buffs, raid boss

Scenario 2 – T11 10 man gear, all buffs, raid boss

Scenario 3 – my crappy gear, all buffs, raid boss

Scenario 4 - my crappy gear, all buffs, heroic boss

Scenario 5 - my crappy gear, sensible buffs, heroic boss



 

Every Little Counts

When you know you're going to be tight on mana for a boss fight either because you're still improving your gear or the guys you're healing aren't capable of not standing in the crap, there are a few things you can do to help yourself out.

Making sure you have mana potions handy is the first thing to look at, there are a number of different favours useable depending on the situation allowing you to instantly recoup 10k mana with a Mythical Mana Potion, or 22k with a Potion of concentration providing you can spare 10 seconds to use it.

Look at the makeup of your group, a warlock has health stones which are a must, someone healing themselves is a mana saving for you. A shadow priest can help out with shielding and is far better equipped to regen the mana than you, arcane mages can buff your crit rating with Focus Magic etc. Aim to know the details of all of the other classes in the game and work out how you complement each other.

One thing which may not be so obvious for a healer is first aid, if you need a heal, but you're not desperate, then a bandage is a far more efficient way of doing it. Common sense needs to be employed, but there's definitely a time and place for bandages.

Now we come to pre-casting spells, I regularly do this and it can save around 10% of your mana bar. Lightwell is the obvious one, get this down before the fight and make sure it's well positioned. I generally follow this with a Renew on the tank, Chakra, Heal, Prayer of Mending and a power word shield for good measure. You can then sit down and drink as the tank pulls and be full mana before he takes any damage, it also gives you a little grace to get into position before the tank gets squashed. A word of warning, if it's a PUG, whisper your tank and explain what you're doing, there's no point doing all of this if the tank instantly charges in or sits there waiting for the spell effects to wear off.

None of this replaces players ability, and those players who don't take damage by doing silly things will always be easier to heal. As my year has got better I've found I need to do this less and less, but it's good to have it in your locker.