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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-15-2011 @ 11:51AM
Cthulu said...
Let me say this. I did read the entire article but I totally disagree with your theory that mastery is bad because it only pads the meters. Part of your justification just now for opinion (although I don't mind that it is different than mine) was a friend getting top world parses. How do you make an argument against something based on a meter then use the meter winning as a justification?
Top world healing parses are total jokes and mean nothing. If I go in with a 6 heal comp on nefarian, no other priests, both druids innervate me, I get DI, and maybe even have someone stand in fire..I can be world #1 for healing. If I go in with another holy priest, disc priest, 2 druids, shaman, and 3 pallies...of course none of us will rank but the encounter might be the smoothest ever. Top healing parses are totally dependant upon the healers around you as there is always a finite amount of damage going out at 1 time.
I agree with EJ is quick to give infractions. I have gotten them myself but realized you have to have math and not respond to bad people posting. EJ's is for a very high level of player if you want to do more than just read. My reference however was to haste vs. mastery arguments. I think they do a good job of comparing the two and then you can get into personal experience etc. and playstyle. I have used both gear setups and prefer mastery over haste. I was turning in top 10 parses in the world on my holy/disc priest at the beginning of the expansion.
To reiterate my issue with your opinion is the baseless assertion to padding the meter. I believe firmly that meters are a tool when used correctly are powerful. They let you know who was healing who when they died etc. A druid assigned to a tank and the tank dies because he only got hots but the druid "topped" the meter on the wipe is a good illustration of a fail of assignment.
But Dawn, I did read the entire article. The best thing about this patch was making disc at least viable again.
Reply
2-15-2011 @ 1:28PM
Dawn Moore said...
Because my friend is a DPS. I'm sorry if I didn't clarify that before you wrote all that. I'm sure you know that at the end of the day you have to play DPS to do the best damage you can possibly do. Healers are different but I was using my friend's story as an example of just how close-minded EJ can be to new information, even if there are facts to back up the theories. EJ is not theorycrafting when you can't present a theory without getting banned.
Anyway I never said Mastery was bad, just that it's underwhelming right now because the ticks we're getting aren't enough to weigh in as healing that will save someone. If a person needs 10k healing to get above Chimaeron's Low Health threshold and you cast a 7k Heal, Mastery is not going to tick him up to over 10k. By next tier? probably. Now? no. You can't get any stat high enough at the moment to make a big difference, but as soon as you get enough gear that it is significant, there is nothing to keep you from reforging/gemming whatever to wherever you want to go.
Healing hardmodes right now I find myself losing more targets when I'm stuck in a GCD than I'm losing players to a heal that landed but did not heal enough to prevent the next blow from killing my target. It's getting that first heal to a player who needs it and being stuck on cooldown because you have a 1.3 or 1.4 second GCD that makes haste a lot more appealing. After a player has been healed you're typically going to move on as a raid healer. Mastery isn't saving anyone sitting at 10% health, it's topping off people who already got healed to sufficient enough levels that we stopped healing them. That's not exactly baseless.
2-15-2011 @ 2:09PM
Cthulu said...
I am one of 2 holy priests in our guild that raid on 25 man. ( I am also an officer/raid leader and we are top 50 us). I personally find the tradeoff for the amount of haste to stack to shave the GCD down vs. the % of extra healing I can get with mastery to favor mastery. I cast a lot of instants. On magmaw heroic my breakdown is CoH>PoH>Renew>EoL(MasteryHot)>PoM>Binding>Lightwell. My mastery hot is 31.1% overheal and PoH is 29.5% overheal. I reforged for haste for a few days and found that my healing was no better and I couldn't shave enough down to be able to really fit in an extra PoH. With the renew change since it is GCD capped through talents, Haste is less useful for it since I can cast it without penalty.
That is my experience and what I favor. Mastery for me lets me do more healing and doesn't hurt my mana at all so I can use the spells I want.
As far as EJ's go, your right about they are very fickle and really think they are unique snowflakes. They still have some very intelligent posters there and are of value. At the end of the day, you need to enjoy how you play and have your stats match your playstyle.
I don't mind your opinion as you stated in this last post. That to me is a very responsible posting backed up with your reasoning. I just really get torqued if I see someone post an opinion without the thought behind it. Too many players will do it just because you said so without knowing way. I am all for better players..not little dawn clones..no matter how cute they are.
On a personal note, your column has gotten by far and away better and better since you first started posting for Wow.com in my humble opinion. It is a very good resource for priests of all skill levels and worth the time to read.
2-16-2011 @ 7:13PM
Dawn Moore said...
Sorry I didn't reply back sooner. I had to run out the door as soon as I wrote that last response to you.
I'm guessing it would be late second tier at the earliest that we'll be able to get our GCD down significantly, but that said, every bit helps and I've never been one to think more haste means more spells casts, means more mana spent. If you look at spells cast at the end of a fight with more or less haste, it's a difference on just a few casts usually. It's the time in between one cast to the next that I think is important, particularly when you're in a raid team where most of the healers are too busy trying to be one on the meters and healing 5 people at 90% health than healing that 1 guy at 1%... Sadly I end up in these scenarios more often than not, and when I was a casual raid and/or pugging I found the same thing. Regardless, gear is at a point at the moment that really no matter what direction you go in, you can't get anything really great without screwing something else over. You can do just about anything and as long as it's not Agi it's going to help something.
That said I may go back and fill in some stuff on this post to clarify the thing I said on mastery, maybe just linking to these comments to flesh out the statement for readers. I usually would have been more clear about everything, not just that one point, but since the year started we're changing things around on the site and we're encouraged to keep our columns between something like 1200 to 1800 words. If it's going to go longer we should spread out the information across two weeks. My original column was about 3k words, but I didn't want to spread out 4.0.6 stuff over two weeks so I pruned many points and tried to make everything very concise. But I remember saying to a friend right before the article went up "I hate this article, it's too short, I don't think I explain everything as clearly as I'm used to." Probably what I'll need to do in the future is handle fewer topics at a time so I can still provide the type of explanations I'm happy with.
Thank you for the kind words too. I'm curious if I know you actually, I know quite a few priests in the top 50. I'd be shocked if I hadn't at least heard of you. I moved to a top 200, 3 day a week guild just last month, but I used to raid 5 days in the top 50. I'll have to snoop about.