The 1.50 patch is live!

[mjdoom]

It is easy to turn off, but having to turn it off and then wait to cast my instant casts really throws off my timing.  When I first ran BRD as the only healer, my mana pool was below 5k without a buff.  With a buff it was just over 5k.  Even with getting some new gear, I'm barely above 5k mana without a buff now.  If I expect to be able to heal and not run out of mana all the time, I have to play it close with what spells I cast and when.  If something throws off that casting time, characters die.  I'm sure our other 60 priests won't have an issue with it because they've got their fancy equipment and have "better" specs so they don't have to manage mana as closely as I do, but having to shut off the wand and then wait some more to cast a spell throws it off enough that people will die.  So Aleri doesn't even get to wand in instances anymore.  Hooray!  Really makes it more fun.   :wacko:

I'm glad you enjoy the wand autoshoot though.  It won't be changed again anytime soon so enjoy.
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Fancy equipment aside IMO mana efficiency is always important for a priest. I can't say that I've really played with the new toggle switch but it seems to me like I will be in the same boat as Treesh and not like it.

It seems to me that if I have to cancel (or detoggle) the autoshoot that that is one extra button I have to press in the process of doing my job. I can only expect this to frustrate me at first (mostly because I'm not used to it) and decrease my healing efficiency even after I have gotten used to it, unless I stop using my wand when efficiency is important; this seems pretty silly to me.

People who really felt they needed extra dps on a wand seemingly get it now but it makes it less efficient to intersperse wand shots while healing in an instance. I used to always fire off some extra damage when I could but it was fire and forget thing. If I suddenly had to heal someone all I had to do was go off and hit the button to heal them and it would go off as soon as possible. This now adds an extra step where I have to turn off autoshoot first and then hit the button for what I want to do. I will reserve full judgement until I get to use it more but I fear that I am not going to be a fan.

The most stressful (and also most rewarding) times for a priest IMO are 5-manning the late instances where your effectiveness and efficiency are extremely important. You can't beat things by being overlevelled and in 5-man runs laziness and inefficiency are punished more swiftly. These are the times that having to press an extra button could be the difference between life and death. This would lead me to recommend just ignoring your wand to eliminate this issue. Unfortunately it is in these very situations that priest dps (as a part of the whole) is most valuable because you don't have a huge raid to just overpower the mobs. Every damage source counts to kill the mobs faster which limits the chances of the priest going OOM. It's in these situations that I see autoshoot being a hindrance. Rarely will you have time to fire off more than 1 or 2 shots before you have to toss another heal and thus any additional dps that might be gained through autoshoot is probably not worth the loss of efficiency.

In a raid who really cares? You're usually going to be sufficiently overpowered that most encounters are easy to handle as long as there is some semblance of discipline. Does it really matter to you if your dps number is a bit bigger? If you rolled a priest and you are concerned about doing damage then you are probably specced shadow and your spells are going to be far more damaging than a silly wand anyway. And despite some objections on this forum who here really thinks that a priest is going to be standing there autoshooting someone for any extended period of time in a duel? I obviously play PvE but I have still only won one duel with a weapon hit and that was actually with a staff hit. Having autoshoot is definitely nice there but I doubt that will suddenly make priests stand there and try to send a volley of wand shots your way.

In the end I think there are two ways to look at this:

1) I'm a priest but I like to do damage too. Autoshoot will clearly up my dps and I can handle the inefficiencies inherent in its implementation just fine. This allows me to contribute more damage while still being a great healer.

2) I'm a priest and healing is my main role. DPS is important in it's place of course but healing efficiency is most important. I knew how to use my wand effectively before to add some dps. This possible inefficiency is not worth it for a chance to do a few extra points of damage and now it's harder for me to efficiently add damage as I had done before.

Just my $0.02.

- mjdoom

Edit: Haha, messed up my own handle. :)