Arena Shape-Up — Redux!

Player versus Player, Priest 3 comments.

I’ve been horribly remiss. Back in May I described in Arena Shape-Up! the staple Discipline Arena build, which coupled the Discipline tree’s high survivability with some of the pertinent talents of the Holy tree that would allow an Arena healer to perform well, even under pressure. At the same time, however, I also mentioned that this was actually one of two builds I was considering in my glorious return to lackluster performance on the battlefield. Time passed and I never actually got around to describing that build.

I’d like to take the opportunity this afternoon to rectify that mistake.

45/16/0: Variation on a Theme

If you compare this build with the 42/19/0 Arena build mentioned in Arena Shape-Up!, you’d find a lot of similarities. It has the core survivability talents, such as Unbreakable Will and Improved Power Word: Shield, as well as keeping both Power Infusion and Pain Suppression, which are — of course — the crux of any Discipline Arena build. It also retained those fluff buffs¹ such as Blessed Recovery and even Martyrdom to some extent. And, of course, we still kept that dreaded Holy Nova so that we can spam rank 1 Holy Nova to break stealth, interrupt cast times, and prevent people from drinking or bandaging.

In fact, unless you look very carefully the two builds might even look identical.

There are, however, a few major changes to this build. First off, the entire point of this build is to pick up Reflective Shield. This talent allows 50% of the damage absorbed by Power Word: Shield to be reflected back onto your opponent. Prior to 2.4, this talent was almost entirely avoided by most Arena playing priests. The main problem lay in the fact that Reflective Shield had the nasty side effect of breaking those forms of crowd control that could be broken by damage. For example, if a warrior managed to get Rend on the priest just before her magely companion sheeped him, the first tick of the bleed effect would reflect half of the damage to the warrior and break the crowd control.

This was often considered a bad thing. We want to avoid breaking crowd control. This was especially a problem in 3v3 and 5v5, where teams are often built around select forms of crowd control.

This all changed in 2.4, when various changes were made to talents that in the past would break crowd control. If we take a moment to read the patch notes, we see:

Reflective Shield: The reflective damage from this talent no longer breaks crowd control effects which break on taking damage.

Problem resolved! Suddenly numerous priests considered picking up Reflective Shield as a way of providing somewhat significant damage to their opponents without ever casting a spell on them. How significant? Let’s take a moment to examine that. A rank 12 Power Word: Shield is capable of absorbing 1,315 damage while benefiting from 30% of our Bonus Healing stat²; with three points in Improved Power Word: Shield, we can further increase the amount absorbed by Power Word: Shield by 15%.

Now in my admittedly subpar Arena set, I currently have around 1,750 Bonus Healing unbuffed. How much damage absorbed does that translate to?

[1,315 + (0.30 × 1,750)] × 1.15 = 2,116 damage absorbed.

And half of that would be reflected back when Reflective Shield is applied, meaning that our target could reflect up to 1,058 damage to the person doing damage to him. Now, this isn’t like something to raise our collective nose at. In a fight where we’re playing a predominately healing role, even that little bit of damage could be enough to help us secure a win. That is a good thing. We like good things.

The problem with Reflective Shield, however, is the fact that the added damage has the nasty result of generating more rage for warriors, which those same warriors then use to smear our pancreases into the dusty floor. My hope with this build, however, is that the number of warriors that I come up against in the 2v2 bracket aren’t so overwhelmingly numerous that I run back to my friendly neighborhood priestly trainer for a quick — and costly — respec. Looking at the real time Arena ranking stats at SK Gaming, I see that warriors are pretty popular in my Battlegroup³, with the greatest percentage of players over a 2,200 rating favoring the classic Warrior-Druid combination with a grand total of 17.9%.

Fortunately, I’m an extremely casual Arena combatant and would be enough if I finally managed to break an 1,750 rating. This is in no way I’d ever find the time⁴ to make it to the 2,200 tier.

Another concern with this particular build is that I dropped the five points I invested for rank 5 Silent Resolve for a paltry rank 1 Silent Resolve. While many people tend to consider the ability as a strictly raiding talent and having little effect on player versus player combat, the 20% spell resistance can be a huge factor. As I noted before, any spell removal that is resisted means that your opponents have to spend more mana to remove it, sometimes resulting in them spending valuable mana that would have otherwise been spent on healing allies or damaging opponents. Furthermore, it may mean that an important ability stays up longer. We like that.

If I really felt the need I could snag those points out of Enlightenment and place them back into Silent Resolve where they rightfully belong.  However, in speaking with others who have considerably more talent, experience, and knowledge than I possess, I have the suspicion that Silent Resolve is a larger factor post-1,750 and in larger brackets, when dispelings and purgings become more frequent.  From my limited experience, I don’t recall running into it too much prior to 1,600; in fact, the main time I saw it was when we ended up against teams in Season 3 gear who — as my Arena partner and I guessed — we most likely either selling Arena points or blasting through the lower brackets to sell another high-ranked Arena team.

What’s the Verdict?

Overall, I’m leaning towards the 42/19/0 build I described in Arena Shape-Up! I think that it will serve me better and that overall I’ll be more successful with it. I might take an after or even a week to explore this other build just to get my grubby paws on Reflective Shield; I know that personally I’ve been eying the talent for quite some time now but hesitant to snag it due to the fact that in the past it would break crowd control.

And, no, I haven’t quite leveled my Discipline priest up to 70 yet. She’s languishing around 62 or so, which is so close to 70 that there’s no excuse why I haven’t gotten off of my butt to get the job done. I guess Rahel Isera’duna is doing what she does best — being a recalcitrant, cantankerous bitch.

Related Posts

1. Arena Shape-Up!
2. Spirit on Arena Gear — Absurd!
3. Priests — Examine Your Spirit Stat!

A Player’s Secret Weapon: the SWOT Analysis

Priest, Theorycrafting 3 comments.

There is a technique used in the business world that can provide valuable information that is often later utilized in strategy formation and selection. Known as the SWOT analysis, it examines the environmental factors that might influence a company, venture, or project to determine its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. By identifying strengths, companies can gain a competitive edge over their competitors while overcoming weaknesses that might prevent them from pursuing future opportunities.

Two months ago, I found myself applying to one of the top raiding guilds on my server as an alternate or sub. While the entire ordeal eventually fell through and my current raid decided to step foot into Mount Hyjal and Black Temple — thereby negating my need to find a raid in those instances — one of the questions posted in their somewhat lengthy application reminded me of a SWOT analysis. They asked:

What do you feel your classes strengths are? Weaknesses?

Now, a cautious individual might have taken a moment to consider her response. Perhaps, wanting to make as good an impression as she possibly could, she might have even done some research in order to sound intelligent, knowledgeable, and correct. Not me! Within moments I had written a diatribe regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the priest class¹ that easily dwarfed the rest of my answers on their application. I only reread my response to verify its spelling and grammatical accuracy.

My response² was more or less as follows:

The healing priest lacks the unadulterated strength of every other healing class in any one specific area: paladins have unparalleled single target healing, druids just blow our paltry Renew away, and shamans frequently outperform us in unspecced multi-target healing. Our heals are slow, ponderous, somewhat efficient, and don’t excel in any one area. Our fastest heal is also our most mana inefficient and suffers from little benefit from Bonus Healing.

However, priests are pretty damn versatile. We have multiple single-target heals, a heal over time, one unspecced group heal, a pre-emptive heal, a heal that allows us to heal both ourselves and a buddy, and the list goes on and on and on. While we were moderately efficient pre-2.4 with some forethought, we’re now mana powerhouses with the change to a Spirit-based mana regeneration system; how many other classes have you come across that can hit the 1,000 mana regen OO5SR mark with full raid buffs? And, like our Restoration druid counterpart, we’re capable of regenning up to 30% of our mana while casting, which allows for greater sustained performance than classes that gain no benefit from Spirit and instead stack MP5 (which typically possesses a high ilevel than both Intellect and Spirit combined).

As a human Holy priest specced with Spirit of Redemption and possessing The Human Spirit, I have reached over 900 Spirit in full raid buffs and have 1,500 mana regen OO5SR with my trinket. With some foresight, thought, and good use of talented abilities and trinkets, I can heal and keep healing past the point many other classes might be begging for an Innervate or hating the mana potion CD.

And that’s all she wrote. In three paragraphs, I managed to summarize what I felt were the strengths and weaknesses inherent in my preferred class. It must have been somewhat well written, given the fact that one member claimed that it was probably the best application that they had ever had the pleasure of receiving. Score one for me!

So, how was I able to fly off of the cuff and easily comment on my class? Because, whether or not I was aware of it, I was performing a SWOT analysis on my class on a regular basis. The power and also the shortcoming of a SWOT analysis is that it is done such that it has information regarding the near — if not immediate — future. So while the information you collect may be correct at this very moment³, it’s probably going to be inaccurate even as close as six months down the future. As a result, they’re supposed to be reviewed and updated on a regular basis.

As an avid theorycrafter, I spend a lot of time reviewing my performance, researching what others have to say about the class, and investigating possible future changes. All that information allowed me do keep a running SWOT analysis in my head. I have to know my class’s strengths in order to utilize my abilities and talents to their fullest potential; I need to know my weaknesses so that I can work to overcome them; I need to find out what changes Blizzard may be implementing in future patches so that I can learn what opportunities or threats might arise that would affect my performance.

I don’t know if I should feel impressed or sheepish that I applied the knowledge garnered while going to college on a computer game. I highly doubt that the parental units would have approved!

Related Posts

1. Priests — Examine Your Spirit Stat!
2. Spirit on Arena Gear — Absurd!
3. Single-Target Priestly Healing in “Echoes of Doom”

Priests — Examine Your Spirit Stat!

Priest, Raiding, Theorycrafting 1 comment.

One of the good things that I’ve heard recommended to a number of people — and a practice that maintain myself — is to go through your monthly statistics. In particular, it’s been said that you can help get ideas for future posts by looking at the keyphrases used on search engines that somehow end up being directed to your site. I’ve no shortage of ideas for future posts¹, but I thought that it was a pretty nifty idea.

Ignoring the phrase “sex for epic flyer” that somehow got my site hit two times, at the very top of my list is the following phrase: “does spirit increase priests healing“. Now, as I pointed out earlier in “Does She Come Pocket-Sized?”, my raid often refers to me as the Spirit Goddess. I adore Spirit, which is probably why my current raiding healing priest is a human with Spirit of Redemption. As such, even though I have a veritable slew of articles that I could flesh out and post, I’ll cover that topic this evening.

Does Spirit increase priests’ healing?

The short answer is it depends.

Let’s take a moment to consider the Spirit stat, shall we? Spirit is probably the least understood stats that any individual can posses and, prior to 2.4 when World of Warcraft switched to Spirit-based mana regen system, it was the one that very few people even cared about. You see, Spirit has only two basic impacts in the game:

• Spirit allows you to regenerate health outside of combat, and
• Spirit allows you to regenerate mana while not casting.

The mechanics of health and mana regeneration aside, Spirit didn’t have a lot of weight pre-2.4. In fact, the only classes that favored Spirit were druids and priests² due to a number of talents in their trees — and that further depended on build and playstyle. Since I know next-to-nothing of druids and yet am a self-proclaimed priestaphiliac, we’ll explore what impact Spirit currently has on priests.

Deep in the Holy tree there is a talent called Spiritual Guidance. This fifth-tier talent allows priests to increase their spell damage and healing by up to 25% of their Spirit stat. So, for example, my perky priestess currently has an unbuffed Spirit stat of 655; if we were to apply Spiritual Guidance³, we’d find that Csilla’s Bonus Healing and Bonus Damage has increased by approximately 164. That’s slick, isn’t it?

Now, looking at the Discipline tree, there are two talents that allow us to derive benefit from Spirit. On the third tier there is a talent called Meditation that allows any priest specced in this talent to regenerate up to 30% of her mana while casting. Furthermore, placing three points in Meditation will allows you to to acquire Divine Spirit and then subsequently Improved Divine Spirit which would allow you to increase your damage and healing by a further 10% of your Spirit stat. In the previous example I pointed out that Csilla currently has 655 Spirit; with two points in Improved Divine Spirit I gain 66 Bonus Healing and Bonus Damage, meaning that I’ve managed to snag an additional 230 for both.

And that’s unbuffed. With full raid buffs and consumables, I’m usually around 1,000 Spirit.

While I won’t be going into the mechanics of the new Spirit-based mana regeneration released in patch 2.4 tonight, I will say that — as the name implies — it relies heavily on Spirit. For example, given my current Intellect and Spirit stats (518 and 655 respectively), I have 695 mana regeneration while not casting without applying the benefits I gain from MP5 on my gear. In fact, the benefit is so high that I gain approximately 1.06 mana regen per point of Spirit I add beyond this point. And, with Meditation I get 30% of that mana regeneration while casting — leading to a whopping 209 mana every five seconds while casting.

Still not convinced about the power of Spirit? Look at a post that I made earlier this week while in Hyjal Summit. Lady Jaina Proudmoore has a delightful buff⁴ called Brilliance Aura that increases the Spirit of all friendly units within 30 yards by 100%. In other words, I was touting 1,741 Spirit with full raid buffs and consumables. With that buff applied I was just five points shy of 2,200 mana regen. My Bonus Healing was over 2,500.

If that doesn’t convince you, I don’t know what will.

How can you increase your Spirit?

Having learned the incredible benefit of Spirit to priests, you might be interested in learning how to acquire more Spirit. I approve!

We won’t go into gear which has high Spirit; you can easily check loot lists to see what you can grab that has Spirit. However, there are a number of talents that you can spec for that allow you to increase your Spirit. As we noted earlier, Divine Spirit in the Discipline tree can allow you to increase your Spirit to up to 50. Furthermore, the fifth-tier talent Spirit of Redemption has the added benefit of increasing your total Spirit by 5%. The druid’s Mark of the Wild will increase your Spirit by 14 — and by 19 if he has rank 5 Improved Mark of the Wild. An Elixir of Draenic Wisdom will further boost Spirit by 30 for an hour. And, of course, a number of foods will increase your Spirit as well.

Of course, for those who are truly interested in boosting their Spirit, there’s the ultimate sign of obsession: roll a human priest. The human racial bonus is, believe it or not, The Human Spirit which increases her Spirit by an almost inconceivable 10%. What was once considered a laughable racial bonus in light of other races has now become one of the largest boosts to healing-specced priests.

Related Posts

1. Spirit on Arena Gear — Absurd!
2. Blizzard Stole My Spirit!
3. Single-Target Priestly Healing in “Echoes of Doom”

Does She Come Pocket-Sized?

Priest, Raiding No comments.

Now, I’ve been to Hyjal Summit a handful of times. Thanks to the Remnants, I’ve seen and downed four of the five bosses there and even managed to acquire the Boots of Divine Light while with them — a slick pair of healing boots if I’ve ever seen one. I’ve reached the point where the instance is no longer new to me and also nothing should really shock or amaze me too much. Yet every time I’m also deliriously happy when I step into the instance. Why?

One word: Jaina.

For those who have yet to explore the Battle of Mount Hyjal within the Caverns of Time, the first two bosses are fought in the Alliance camp following eight waves of Scourge creatures for each boss. Situated there are a number of Alliance forces, including mounted calvary, priests, mages, and — my personal favorite — Lady Jaina Proudmoore. In fact, the very first thing I do in each raid is go up to the woman and give her a fierce hug.

Now, I’m a bit of a lorewhore and I did enjoy learning more about this important character in the World of Warcraft, but that’s not why I cling to her side throughout the raid and weep dragon tears when we’re parted. Nor is it her supposedly good looks or even her winning personality. No, the sole basis of my attraction for Jaina is Brilliance Aura, an absolutely divine buff that she places on all friendly units within thirty yards of her. Oh, and did I mention that it increases their Spirit by a full 100%?

I have to admit, I do have a reputation within my priest’s twenty-five man raid for being overzealous about priests and for enjoying each minute detail of the class. They’re not shocked to learn that I have three priests alone on Feathermoon US and that I’ve leveled four priests to 60 or beyond. Furthermore, they know my unbridled affection for the Spirit stat. It’s true, I’m absolutely hooked on Spirit, so to say, and was cooing the evening that I snagged my Ethereum Life-Staff from High Astromancer Solarian in Tempest Keep. In fact, they refer to me as the Spirit Goddess — though I’d really rather nominate Jaina for that title.

So, really, you might be wondering what the big deal is. Let me show you. While waiting for various people to show up for the raid, my dear fellow raiders started bothering me about my mana regen, curious as to what effect the buff was having on my perky priestess. The following image is a copy of my stats while standing within Jaina’s glorious Brilliance Aura:

At the time I in full raid buffs and consumables — which doesn’t change the fact that this is absolutely amazing. I was casting Flash Heals until I went below 50%, stopping, and then watching my mana bar as the mana literally gushed back into it.

But it couldn’t get any better than that, could it? Ah, you poor unimaginative peons. Consider for a moment the joy that is the Soulful Earring of Meditation. For those who don’t know about this priest class trinket, it increases the priest’s Spirit by 300 on use. Coupled with Brilliance Aura, we get:

I may have cried when I saw that. 2,500 Spirit? 2,851 Bonus Healing? A glorious 3,113 mana regeneration while not casting? That’s not just awesome; that’s heavenly. I wish, however, that I’d managed to capture a screenshot when some darling druid cast Innervate on me. My mana regeneration was over 9,000! I just could not heal quick enough to get my bar to drop; every two seconds it jumped right back up to full no matter what spell I cast. My Spirit was so high that a fellow healer joked that her Spirit went up by 1 just by standing by me.

Mind you, she also claimed that it would have been 100, but I kept the other 99 Spirit to myself like the greedy Spirit whore that I am.

So, seriously, do you know if Jaina is seeing anyone lately? Or if she prefers a Bouquet of White Roses instead of a Box of Chocolates? Or maybe both? Now I know that I’m not an amazing virile orc like Ratshag and I’m not interested in what she does while in the closet, but I’ve got to find a way to make her mine!

Related Posts

1. Priests — Examine Your Spirit Stat!
2. Boot Camp Basics: The Five Second Rule
3. We’ve Got Spirit — How ‘Bout You?

Arena Shape-Up!

Player versus Player, Priest 1 comment.

I mentioned recently in my post “Arena Healer Behaving Badly” that I’d returned to my perky priestess’s 2v2 team, Hostile Negotiations. Though Death — now going by the pseudonym Shadowsummon — and I are having difficulties trying to find time to kick some Arena butt between our overwhelming busy schedules, we’re having a blast when we do!

I now, however, am left with a dilemma. You see, in the past I never respecced from my raiding build even when doing PvP¹. From the very beginning, Shadow and I had decided that we were only playing for fun and not because we really expected to do well. This decision was further supported by the fact that I was raiding five to six days a week on Csilla, meaning that I’d have frequent respec costs when we did have time to hit the Arena circuit. All in all, it just made more sense to be kind to my coin purse and leave my build alone.

Now we have an entirely different situation. I’ve cut down my raiding days with Csilla to just two days a week², which means that I have much more flexibility. Furthermore, I’m an avid theorycrafter and I adore the Discipline tree. It’s always fascinated me and I likened it to the red-headed step child of the priest class. Furthermore, even though I currently have a Discipline priest in the form of my cantankerous kal’dorei priestess, she hasn’t quite reached 70 yet and she lacks a full set of PvP gear. And with the fountain of gold literally gushing out of dailies these days, there’s no excuse not to respec!

There are currently two builds that I am considering for my Arena build, given exhaustive research and more than just a bit of experience. I thought that I would take the time this evening to review one of them.

42/19/0: Staple Discipline Arena Build

The goal of this build is maximum survivability with enormous utility. That means snagging everything that will help me resist stuns, silences, loss of casting time due to damage, and so forth; this should allow me to continue to heal, mana burn, and dispel as needed. This is primarily a healing build, though it is capable of doing some significant damage when required to help burn down opponents.

There are a number of highlights that can be found in the Discipline tree:

• Unbreakable Will’s benefit can hardly be argued. By increasing my resistance to stuns, fears, and silences I can continue to heal my parter
• While Silent Resolve may be often considered a raiding talent, the added 20% resistance to my buffs being dispelled or cleansed is amazing
• Improved Power Word: Shield is a talent that increases the amount of damage absorbed by Power Word Shield — a valuable ability that can be cast while moving
• Absolution will help reduce the mana cost of both Dispel and Mass Dispel, which are spells that I’ll be casting very frequently
• Mental Agility benefits instant cast spells like Renew, Power Word: Shield, Dispel, and Prayer of Mending. Since every time I’m not moving is an opportunity for an opponent to get closer to me, this is a huge buff
• Power Infusion and Pain Suppression are the major benefits of the Discipline tree, provide huge utility, and are the crux of this build

Reflective Shield has been discarded from this particular build for two reasons. One, prior to patch 2.4 this patch actually had the unfortunate side effect of breaking crowd control. Two, the shield actually helps warriors generate added rage, which may actually be more detrimental to the raid than the benefit gained by its ability to do damage to opponents. Furthermore, while some people think that getting Improved Power Word: Fortitude would be beneficial for the added health, its worth is actually very minimal in light of its likelihood of being dispelled or purged. The same can be said of Improved Inner Fire.

On the other hand, the Holy tree lacks the utility and survivability of the Discipline tree. It does have, however, benefits that warrant spending points in this tree. For example:

• Healing Focus is required in order to ensure that damage won’t prevent an otherwise timely heal — especially at an inopportune time
• Renew is one of the primary healing spells, especially given the fact that it can be cast while moving, which makes Improved Renew almost necessary for any successful Arena build
• Holy Nova is usually considered a worthless spell, but it really shines in PvP; a rank 1 Holy Nova costs a mere 185 mana but can both break stealth and interrupt spell casting
• Blessed Recovery serves the role of being yet another fluff buff

I’ve mentioned a number of times the phrase fluff buff; I’m not sure if this is a term that I’ve read while researching Arena builds or something that I’ve coined myself. However, full buffs are important aspect of any successful PvP team. You see, sometimes the difference between success and failure can be as simple as having a necessary buff up at the right time:

• Power Word: Shield can prevent damage just long enough to get a heal off,
• If your opponent can get out of line of sight for a few moments, Renew can return some valuable health,
• Pain Suppression allows your healer to stay alive at a time when she’s taking a lot of focused fire, and
• Power Infusion can sometimes provide just enough damage to let your team mate knock off an opponent before he receives a heal

The key, however, is ensuring that those buffs remain on your allies long enough. Between dispel and purge, that may not be the case; sometimes an important buff is removed, entirely negating its effects. As such, fluff buffs like Divine Spirit, Blessed Recovery, and even Power Word: Fortitude can be hugely beneficial; instead of having those necessary buffs gone when they can provide the most benefit, there’s a chance that these lesser important buffs are removed instead.

After extensive research, I’ve selected this to be what I consider the optimal Arena build. There is another build that I have considered, but discussion of that build will have to be at another time. Now all that is left is to decide if I’m going to respec my perky priestess for this build or get the cantankerous bitch to 70 so that she can finally serve her intended role!

Related Posts

1. Arena Shape-Up — Redux!
2. Spirit on Arena Gear — Absurd!
3. Single-Target Priestly Healing in “Echoes of Doom”