07-26-2005, 04:07 PM
Brista,Jul 26 2005, 09:05 AM Wrote:If I trim Wand specialisation down too that would allow me to put 5 in Mental Agility (10% cheaper instants). I'm not especially inclined to do that as in the really tough fights I don't cast much that isn't Greater Heal. Fade maybe, and my new toy of Holy Nova.
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I still have pretty unreliable groups so while sometimes I'm with a great tank, sometimes I'm still stuck with tanks who hold aggro no better than a Rogue. Hence some of my choices: Subtlety, avoiding Renew, the no-threat Holy Nova. This also dictates my style of let tank get to 20%, chuck 2 greater heals on, wand until tank at 20% again. Hence the slant towards encouraging crits on the greater heal, since I usually use 2 at once. The idea of course is a kind of brinkmanship where basically I'm really stingy with the heals in order to do the minimum threat possible to try to keep my threat down below the rather feeble threat generated by many of my groups
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Mental agility also affects your shadow word: pain, your dispell magic, your cure disease and abolish disease, your fortitude buffs, and your inner fire. Even without using renew much, you'll still get plenty of use out of all your instants. Also, even without wand spec, if your tank is poor, you'll be pulling aggro off him just by wanding anyway. You can do really good DPS with just a wand without the specialization anyway. It'll make life easier for soloing though.
The only issue I see with your choice of playstyle (and you can easily adapt for those times when you need to) is when fighting the critters that hit the tank with mortal strikes, but again, you can just change how you heal in those situations and your build will still be fine for it.
BTW, crit heals on tanks seems to be fixed again. I noticed it yesterday and the day before iirc. Gnolack is getting inspirationed quite frequently now. It's almost like he's back to his low defense skill. So getting holy spec and inspiration isn't fruitless and the holy spec will really help make your holy nova much more effective. BTW, it's especially effective in AoE situations. Have a mage who's AoEing? Do the shield, when it wears off and they take some hits, pop a nova and then start the "real" healing if need be. If you've got two mages and a warlock AoEing? Even better. :D I hope you have as much fun with nova as Aleri has. :)
Intolerant monkey.