Will of Arlokk

[nobbie]

There seem to be some hot debates whether the ZG healer staff "Will of Arlokk" is primarily a Druid or Priest staff. What's your slant on the subject, and why?

And a second question out of curiosity: I've won said staff yesterday with my Healer Druid, but can't decide which enchant I should choose. Which enchant would you take, and why: +20 Spirit, +22 Intellect or +55 Healing?

[Bolty]

There seem to be some hot debates whether the ZG healer staff "Will of Arlokk" is primarily a Druid or Priest staff. What's your slant on the subject, and why?

For one thing, reading Thottbot can be an exercise in total pain. No matter what epic item you look up, it will be followed by 30 posts debating why such-and-such a class should win it. I can't wait to see a "thread" there on the legendary staff. :)

Here's the answer: it's great for both classes. Druids resent seeing Priests win it because raiding Priests have access to Benediction/Anathema, a staff so incredible that there's nothing that can really compare to it until you're whacking Nefarian. Priests still have quite a solid use for it, though: as a regen staff. You use Benediction until you get low/out of mana, then switch to Will of Arlokk and use its massive spirit bonus to regen back up.

Will of Arlokk is such a rare drop though (it's never dropped for Stormrage's Avarice Alliance, for example) that our Priests would likely get shot if they outrolled a Druid on it, especially one dedicated to healing. I know I'd feel dirty taking it from a resto Druid while I'm sitting on my Benny.

And a second question out of curiosity: I've won said staff yesterday with my Healer Druid, but can't decide which enchant I should choose. Which enchant would you take, and why: +20 Spirit, +22 Intellect or +55 Healing?

First off: congrats!

Secondly, for Priests, it's cut-and-dry: the spirit enchant would get slapped on there to maximize its role as a regen staff. For Druids, it's a bit tougher, since you don't get as much regen power from spirit than Priests do. Much of it may depend on your current gear. If you have epic set bonuses to boost your regen while casting, spirit may be the way to go. Otherwise, you want +heal.

Int? No. Int does you good only at the outset of a fight. Once that extra mana is used, it's gone. Meanwhile, +heal saves lives, boosts your healing power, works on every heal spell you cast, and allows you to downrank your heal spells some to make your regen even more effective. Big regen > big mana pools. Having a 10,000 point mana pool won't do you a lick of good when you run out of it in 2.5 minutes of a raid encounter and there's still 8 minutes to go.

Anyhow, hopefully some other Druids can chime in here with their experiences. I'm Priest-oriented.

-Bolty

[teske]

Bolty pretty much already said everything. It is a good staff for both classes. BTW: It dropped 3 times for us in 4 months. Incidentally those 3 drops were in a row.

As to the enchant.
You can measure the importance of int, spirit and mana/5 with the MUSE addon. (see curse-gaming.com)
My data indicates that spirit is far more important than int for my total mana pool.
(Side note: The top alliance priest on my server has a unbuffed mana pool of just ~5700. )

From discussions with my fellow druids, their data basically the same. You probably need to measure your own equip.

As to wheter enchanting with +55 healing or 22 spirit is better. Well it depends on your other equip. I personally like to have both

[oldmandennis]

My option would be to go healing, until you can get a better healing combo, then go to spirit. Pocketbook permitting.

The heal power combo would probably be either aurastone or unending life with the lei of the lifegiver. None of those are particularly difficult to obtain.

[Professor Frink]

Priests still have quite a solid use for it, though: as a regen staff. You use Benediction until you get low/out of mana, then switch to Will of Arlokk and use its massive spirit bonus to regen back up.

Even at that, it's only 6 spi better than scholomance quest-reward dancing silver, so while it's the best item possible for that particular use, the effort-reward ratio for getting one is pretty far out there. You'd probably do better farming post-nerf gizzard gum or getting friendly with the nearest mistletoe stockpiler...

-- frink

[nobbie]

Thanks for the replies. Since I'm a bit low on spirit (regen), and expect more healing power soon (two ZG enchants for the T2 helm and legs, two AQ20 healing books, healer weapon/off-hand combo), I'll choose the +20 Spirit enchant for the staff:)

[lfd]

(Side note: The top alliance priest on my server has a unbuffed mana pool of just ~5700. )

On a side note, how on earth do you measure the "top" priest?

[teske]

On a side note, how on earth do you measure the "top" priest?

Well there two guild who are collecting first kills in Naxx. He is in one and tops their healing meters, is their healer for special jobs.

[lfd]

Well there two guild who are collecting first kills in Naxx. He is in one and tops their healing meters, is their healer for special jobs.

I thought it'd be something arbitrary and pointless like that.

[Bolty]

Well there two guild who are collecting first kills in Naxx. He is in one and tops their healing meters, is their healer for special jobs.

*giggle*

Bolty's Guide to Topping E-Peen Meters

Since DamageMeters is the sole means to determine who the bestest player evar is, it's crucial to make sure you're at the top of the list. Remember, raiding isn't about winning objectives, it's about stroking your e-peen! This means:

1) if you're DPS, refuse to do anything that does not directly correspond to getting more damage. All forms of crowd control or spell interrupts are merely there to slow your DPS down; surely the raid would benefit more if you simply kill things faster. The more mass damage you do to the highest number of targets, the better. Be sure to break as many shackles/sheeps/fears as you can; it's the healers' problem if they get killed by it, lern2play. If you aggro anything, it's the tank's fault for being nub.

2) if you're healing, ignore any duties unrelated to healing. Being #1 in healing meters means you rawk! Dispelling/cleansing is for nubs that can't heal. Mana efficiency is for tards with crappy gear. Be sure to get your heals in before anyone else can, because healing is by nature a very competitive activity, right?

How to top e-peen meters?

1) Accumulate tons of +heal gear.
2) Downrank your fastest-cast heal so it heals for 500 hps or so.
3) Set a macro that selects the member of the raid with the most hitpoints lost - this can be done via CTRA's Emergency Monitor feature - and use your fast-cast low-rank heal.
4) Hit that macro button constantly, always, all night long, in and out of battles. Ignore the fact that anyone's bandaging; they're just trying to take your healing e-peen points away from you. Another healer being mana efficient and queuing up a long, powerful heal on someone? Laugh as you jump in with your quick heal and send their overhealing sky-high - newbs!

Congratulations! You have topped e-peen meters, and will win the love and adulation of everyone around you. You are now the #1 Priest on the server!


-------
I still can't believe people pay attention to DamageMeters and actually rate players by it. It just boggles my mind. DamageMeters can tell you if someone's doing a bad job - pointing out rogues who take too much damage, healers who are being lazy, etc. It is absolutely terrible for telling you if someone is doing a good job and damages a raid's effectiveness by having people pay attention to it as a measure for their abilities.

I only post this because I've seen people do it (healers, I mean). I've seen Druids, Paladins, and Priests do this as a means to get high in healing meters - casting small heals like crazy every chance they get simply to climb that chart. You could explain to some people forever how useless DamageMeters is as a judge of ability and they'll still never get it.

-Bolty

[oldmandennis]

Well there two guild who are collecting first kills in Naxx. He is in one and tops their healing meters, is their healer for special jobs.

Well how else are you going to measure it? I mean, he might not be the BEST (if such a thing is possible), but it illustrates you can be a good priest, without a ton of mana.

[teske]

*giggle*

Whatever. The side note was just there to illustrate that you can do fine in Naxx with as much int as a level 60 blue equiped priest.

I won't comment on your guide. It seems you missed that I actually did mention two different things on which my comment as the "top" priest was based.

Your guide actually makes it pretty clear that you don't want a reasonable discussion of the merits of damge meters. In fact almost every point you make is in favour of damage meters!

If you still want it, you might be suprised in what a carefull analysis of the meriads of different data damege meter provide tells you about your raid.

[Lissa]

Whatever. The side note was just there to illustrate that you can do fine in Naxx with as much int as a level 60 blue equiped priest.

I won't comment on your guide. It seems you missed that I actually did mention two different things on which my comment as the "top" priest was based.

Your guide actually makes it pretty clear that you don't want a reasonable discussion of the merits of damge meters. In fact almost every point you make is in favour of damage meters!

If you still want it, you might be suprised in what a carefull analysis of the meriads of different data damege meter provide tells you about your raid.

I'm going to state this once, and once only, damage meters lead to sloppy play. I know, because when I bothered with trying to get the biggest E-peen, the raid suffered because I was pulling mobs off tanks. Once I got rid off it, it's very rare that I pull mobs off tanks (hasn't happened in any 40 man instance since, and happens occasionally in 5 and 10 mans when the tank is undergeared compared to me as I'm in full Tier 2).

I would much rather be known as a good player for banishing that demon or elemental at the right time and keeping it locked down while helping the raid DPS something down. I would rather be known for putting up that curse that helps the raid down the boss quicker. I don't need to be top of the damage meters to know I'm doing my job. (Hell, last night I died by grabbing aggro on lava elemental in MC with my Warrior before the Warlocks banished it, by doing so, anytime it unbanished, it came to me, not the Warlocks or the Healers, and in the end, it killed me, but by then, the raid was ready to deal with it and kill it, to me, my character getting killed helped the raid, I know a few healers were probabaly pissed that their heals didn't land, but they were still there to keep other people up fighting that elemental instead of being dead because it beelined to them because of healer aggro instead of a plate wearer.)

So using damage meters as a criteria for how good someone is doesn't prove anything, especially in the healing arena where overhealing is far easier to do and wastes mana.

[vor_lord]

I'm going to state this once, and once only, damage meters lead to sloppy play.

Certainly a lot of people fall into that trap, but I think most get over it pretty soon. It's only information after all, how you use it is up to you. It's easy to use it to judge epeen but it's not the only stupid epeen flexing herring out there. My favorite is the one that started this -- bragging about a healer's mana pool (irks me no end).

If I change my healing tactics or ranks, or take a different assignment, I like to see how it affects my overheal (I guess DamageMeters doesn't do this but SW_stats does). If I know the % of my healing that is done via renew, or flash heal, or greater heal, then I can prioritize my talent point distribution and gear based on that.

It's fashionable to bash meters etc. (especially here with us snooty folks at the lounge) because of their abuse... but like teske says it can be very useful. And Bolty, even using it just to identify bad play has a lot of merit, particularly if you are in a fluid guild alliance. If a particular healer averages over 40% overheal over a couple of runs, you've identified a problem that you can address somehow. With SW_stats, you can even see who healed who and find those annoying snipe healers that drive up others' overheal.

If you've got a priest that doesn't do much healing, doesn't do much dispelling, and doesn't do much damage... what is he or she doing? Buffing? Saving their mana for a rainy day?

A DPS example: if you consistently see someone with inferior gear outdamaging others of that class (hello Marntruehorn;)) without pulling aggro... I bet the other members of the class in the raid might have something to learn.

You switch weapons -- how does your damage change? You switch specs... how does your white/yellow ratio change? What does it tell you?

Sure you have to make sure you take all the factors Bolty makes fun of into account. But just because it's easy to misuse the information and change your tactics to be #1 doesn't mean it isn't useful for many good purposes.

[teske]

Still off-topic. Anyway the important bit about damage meters is: They are a tool. That means it can be misused, the most frequent misuse is posting the damage list. Another one is just looking at the damage list.

Still they help me understand how I play. For example it counts how many Swiftmends or how many hots I cast.
It tells me what my mana effiency is. And a lot of other things.

Now one tool can never tell you everything. One of the most important tools is your own eyes. Wanna know if a warlock banishes a add? Simply look wheter that add runs amok.

And all the healing meters count effective heal, which is a little complex but can be thought as heal minus overheal.

[Kevin]

And all the healing meters count effective heal, which is a little complex but can be thought as heal minus overheal.

Right, but sometimes it's nice to see that 40% of the healing a person did was overhealing. While you could calculate this from DM (and it might be in the newest version) it's nice to just see it out there.

Personally I still run recap for much of my personal skill use information because the interface is so much easier for me to use than DM or SW_Stats.


Of course overheal becomes interesting for holy spec paladins. The big concern on overheal is mana efficiency. well when a paladin crits with a heal, they get a full mana refund. Sure crits for all classes are free healing and counting on a crit or a not crit when choosing rank doesn't matter much but the issue works a bit different for the paladin since a crit heal means the base heal was free too. I'm actually looking for a tool that will record how much overheal I got from crit heals and how much I got from non-crit heals on my paladin to see if I want to adjust healing methodology to help extend the mana pool. This also means that I value spell crit pretty highly on a paladin since it is a very good way to extend the mana pool, I'm not sure if it is better than +healing, but it's simpler to deal with than trying to stack enough +healing to down rank on the heals. :)

[lfd]

Right, but sometimes it's nice to see that 40% of the healing a person did was overhealing. While you could calculate this from DM (and it might be in the newest version) it's nice to just see it out there.

Overhealing is calculated in the newer versions of DamageMeters, yes.

The problem is that overhealing is almost _always_ caused by someone else using an inefficient fast heal (or instant, in the case of druids/shamans) while your slower, efficient heal is casting. I've lost count of the number of times I've been hit by thunderclap for 1k damage, cast a renew on myself, and then received about 10k healing from the other healers. Given client/server lag it's often difficult to interrupt a greater heal especially if my target hits full health in the last 0.5 seconds before my heal is cast. Result? Someone else moves 'up' the healing meters, whereas all I do is move up the overhealing meter, despite me being the one casting efficiently. It doesn't take this happening often for it to look like I'm constantly overhealing through being efficient.

DamageMeters for healing are pretty much universally pointless.