Wednesday, May 20

Set bonuses, patches, nerfs

Sometimes having a set bonus on the gear can be a crutch. So much is dependant on having two or all four peices of a certain gear that once you finally get them you are loathed to break up the set.

The druid t7 bonus is a boost to Nourish. This has been amazing for things like MT healing or any other targets that need quick direct heals, but I also know there are druids out there that aren't using the full set anymore.

So when the Mantle of the Preserver dropped from 10 man Ulduar last night and I saw it had more spellpower/crit than my T7, I was torn. Do I break up my set or do I take the shoulders (I was the only one who wanted them). Sure enough, I decided to break the set. It sucked and that's when I thought "I'm going to have to break the set anyway for the t8, might as well start picking up what I think will work."

Rawr says I made the wrong choice, ratings busters says they are close, and I'm waiting for some test runs to see how it actually will play out.

I suppose this wouldn't be so difficult if my role was a bit more defined. I have now proven that I can raid heal and tank heal, which leads me to tough choices about my gear.
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Patch notes:

# Innervate: This ability has been redesigned to grant 450% of the casting Druid's base mana pool to the target over 20 seconds.
# Improved Moonkin Form: Now grants 10/20/30% of spirit as spell power.

For some reason I thought this went live already, but officially now it has. This is an important change to innervate, as I have already commented on, and maybe now I can drop the glyph to grab the Wild Growth Glyph.

Not sure how I feel about the boomkin change. I don't have a lot of spirit on my gear but maybe upper end, full time nukers will see some boost to their dps.

Ulduar was nerfed again on several different difficulty levels. I find it interesting that the World First XT hard mode kill happened after the nerfs went in... Oh silly Blizzard.
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With those many changes, our 10 man last night was the smoothest run to date, with us clearing to Hodir in two hours. After banging our heads against the 25 man version and with the nerfs, I swear 10 man seemed like a much more relaxed adventure. I look forward to more progression.

There are rumblings of just doing 10 man all the time and saying screw it to the 25 man version. I'd rather not, but I understand the temptation. It's like herding sheep sometimes to get all 25 people to do what is needed, the healing is stressful, and the dps have to carry other dps.

All we have to do is look back to our Kara days and remind ourselves why focusing on 10 man raids is teh suck. Heck, even the cluster that was two ZAs. The drama was insane and cycling in folks to make sure there wasn't an A team and B team mentality forced some to quit and others to just merely want to fall off a cliff. We have 15 or so core raiders, which would either leave folks on the sidelines, or vie for attention from the raid leaders. In addition, getting the healers situated is also a pain.

In addition, unless we do 10 man hard modes, the item levels and significance of the upgrades is marginal between 10 and 25 man versions. Sometimes the itemization is a little different, but I hear more and more folks saying they are waiting for large upgrades and not small ones, which 10 man doesn't provide for us at this point.

I've already spent points on a staff and ring, dropping me below the other healers when it comes time for the T8 to drop. Others are still sporting player made items and are hogging their points for a shot at a certain item (this I can get behind, as they got screwed on RNG in Naxx and are seeing Ulduar as a chance for a very important upgrade).

I have no problems spending my points. I know t8 will drop for me eventually, and I'd rather have steady increases to performance than rely on one large one. In addition, the Ulduar drops have more HP than naxx versions (at least the items that I picked up) which in turn means more survivability. Can't do jack when you are dead.

It is all a personal choice, and I can't begrudge folks on their decisions.

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