Mage Raiding

Guys I was thinking about our mage raiding builds considering that we now have Unvi, Ely and Vrael available. Ely will no doubt be fire and we all know she does imba dps every time, every raid. The question is what should I specc Unvi?

For top dps I should go fire until I gear up then respecc Frostfire bolt for single target dps. Since we are on progress raids I was thinking about a frost utility build so I can kite, aoe and caster tank depending on the situation. This would lower my dps quite a bit since the gap between frost and fire has widened but maxing out frost dps is what I do best. Also for a utility/kiting build I wouldnt glyph frost bolt which means -5% damage (Glyph: +5% frostbolt dmg but removes chill effect). On the plus side my Blizzard aoe would be very high and completely snare all mobs when specced (freezing mobs next to melee sucks though), I would have good magic resistance and survivability to OT a caster and could kite anything snarable. 90% of this only applies to trash so it depends where we need help and if we have enough dps for some of the benchmark fights.

I dont have a preference on build since topping the dps meters is fun and so is using frost tricks to help out the raid. Until dual specs are implemented I'll have to stick with one or the other per raid but wanted some feedback on which you think we'll need.


Also I think that any spell with a knockback should be banned from use unless the situation requires or the tanks say different (sorry Ely). If it helps I think that different ranks of flamestrike apply seperate dots so casting top rank then lower rank is a dps gain in some situations. Will look into this as have seen conflicting reports.

Utility in raids is something you can do at the same time as doing what you're brought to do. The only exception to this is an encounter that requires something special. Like mage tank on HKM and warlock tank on Leo/Illidan.
As a mage you shouldn't have to tank trash only kill it. Some mobs need to be kited from time to other, but you can do that in a full dps frost spec as well.

Imo you should go frost dps, if you still love it as much as you used to. That way we also have one more replenishment character. We only have Orphya atm, no?

Also as far as mage caster tanking specs I would imagine that arcane is the way to go and not frost. Not sure about this tho.

cheers crux but frost dps <<< fire so there is no way I will gimp raid performance unless the utility is worthwhile. Replenishment might be worth it along with the boost to other mage dps since they wont have to scorch but it's probably better to have higher damage given the bigger strain on healer mana. Killing faster means healing less.

As far as caster tanking goes I would have 11 points in arcane anyway for focus magic so would acquire +80 resist talents and could put 3 points in frost talent for -6% magic damage along with mage armour plus 2 shields and fire/frost ward with 30% chance to negate all dmg, 5% chance to reflect. Arcane is probably still better since slow = less spells hitting you and has improved mage armour/imp damp magic, very close though.

If I go Dps I will most deff be fire, but I have been seriously thinking of going healer, I like it a lot and I think the time might be right for me. I will lvl Ely to 80 and then try as fast as I can to get Síf up as well. After Vraël joined I have thought it might be the way to go and I am getting more and more certain. For the guild in general it only means that I'll help you out with Ely untill Síf is ready, but I think I'll switch main when Ely hits 80, no reason for me to get gear and stuff before others if it aint gonna be my main. I know that Vraël is Fire, but I thought this might influence your decision some

/love

As crux said, we should have specs focused fully on bosses rather than on trash so i don't see the great use of kiting tbh. And afaik we won't need a caster tank until we reach The Four Horsemen. So max dps would be prefered. HOWEVER! Right now we only have orphya and tenta as healers so when we start raiding (hopefully soon) it may be invaluable to have the replenishment from frost as orphya won't be shadow. This is of course if Orphya wants to fill the healing role until we get someone else, or for good if that's what she wants.

This comment is meant as a general note and NOT directed specifically at Vraël, but please note that trialists are not members yet. This means that we can't adapt all our roles according to which trailists we have. There's no guarentee that they won't get the boot after the trial, it all depends on their performance

I will level up Tylina as well, but it will not be my main, thats for sure. I will use her when we lack healers but i will not be able to start leveling her until earliest the 13th Dec so we can't count on having her for our initial raiding

Thanks guys problem solved, I'll go for top dps.

I'll ask Orphya how she feels about healing, she's not had any experience of it before so it will be a fairly big change for her. When Rev and Sif are 80 that will still only give us 3 main healers (if Ely switches), with only Orphya and Tep able to respec for it until we start looking at alts.

I'll change my main to Síf, want to try smth new, so hope it fits in with the planning

unvincible wrote:

... and Tep able to respec ...

No, Tep will stay Protection. I had my share of healing and didn't enjoy it.

Tepisor wrote:

unvincible wrote:

... and Tep able to respec ...

No, Tep will stay Protection. I had my share of healing and didn't enjoy it.

Dont worry mate, I was only listing people it wasnt physically impossible to heal with using anything other than bandage spec. We all know you suck at healing, you actually think LoH is a good spell. Listen to The Rev

Tepisor wrote:

unvincible wrote:

... and Tep able to respec ...

No, Tep will stay Protection. I had my share of healing and didn't enjoy it.

even if its what makes a raid or not? (thinking for 1 raid only)

@unvi: I'll run all the normals and heroics with orphya needed for her to get the experience. Solohealing 5mans gives quite alot of experience rather fast and it shouldnt take long before orphya is a good healer. Going from good to great, however, is the trick and that takes ages

Vessa wrote:

@unvi: I'll run all the normals and heroics with orphya needed for her to get the experience. Solohealing 5mans gives quite alot of experience rather fast and it shouldnt take long before orphya is a good healer. Going from good to great, however, is the trick and that takes ages

She has Saphine as well, wouldnt take long to learn FoL spam to be a great healer

Orphy is currently disc specced for levelling, Unvi can easily tank and spank any quest elites this way so it is a nice MT healer (probably much better for DK tanks due to the damage mitigation rather than healing, wont rage starve them) and it gets her used to healing. I'll look up tactics and specs, prepare macros, help her learn spell choices etc to get her ready, assume we are looking for a Holy spec?

The thing is she might not want the responsibility so an alternative option could be me raiding on Orphya with her on the gnome. Whatever happens I'll make sure we have a healer.

Unvi should ding 80 this weekend, I'll then start work on eroot who will be kept as resto for whenever we need him. If I raid 3 times per week might try to heal for 1 of those to keep him geared (depending on raid needs). Levelling will be much faster next time now I know the Qs and hopefully will be less tired from work.


On a similar topic, is Endelar picking up tanking gear?

unvincible wrote:

On a similar topic, is Endelar picking up tanking gear?

Very much yes. Ive taken tanking items from quests when the dps upgrades werent that big and ive crafted tanking gear at the same level as my dps gear which i plan to keep doing. I'm basically trying to gear up to be able to fill a tanking role just as well as i would be able to fill a dps role. With the limited amount of players, flexibility is really what we need

I demand the finest wines available to humanity (and dual specs).





cookies if you get the quote.

No cookies for me

Orphya is going to try healing if we need her. She respecced holy last night to level with and get used to but will need practice in 5 mans. Not a permanent switch at this point.

Going to set her up with Grid, some mouseover macros and a clearer UI for healing. Any priest or healer tips people have to share would be welcomed, my experience is limited to druids and polymorphing low hp hordies.

Tips incoming, but not till later tonight =)

Vessa wrote:

Tepisor wrote:

unvincible wrote:

... and Tep able to respec ...

No, Tep will stay Protection. I had my share of healing and didn't enjoy it.

even if its what makes a raid or not? (thinking for 1 raid only)

If you want an 80 healer with 70 healing gear then I'll make the sacrifice. I didnt gather any wotlk healing gear.

As promised a few tips. Some are common knowledge some are not.

General healing (when using mouse-over macros):

-Keep the primary target as your target at all times. The primary target being the target of the tank that you're healing. This enables you to quickly get some heals off on another target if the tank isn't doing his job and the mob targets someone else.

-Be sure to familiarize yourself with all tank positions on the raid frames before the raid. There's usually a number of trash packs before the first boss on which this can be done. Some fights require you to switch target or to heal several targets if other healers go down.

-If the fight is stationary be sure to max-range your tank, so that you automatically avoid low range AoE spells cast by bosses/trash. If the fight is mobile make sure to stay a bit nearer the tank. That way if the tank has to move away from you when he/she is low on health you have a range-buffer in which you can still get off a few big heals before moving.

Priest specific tips:

-The healing of Prayer of Mending adds to the threat of the target that it procs on. So cast it on the tank before pulls.

-If you can anticipate how much damage you take during a fight and you know, that you aren't gonna take damage after a Prayer of Mending has jumped to you, then you can throw a Shadow Word: Death on the primary target to force the prayer to jump to another target. It's free damage, but double threat, so only use it if your threat can take it. I combined my PoM and SW: D in a macro similar to the following:

#showtooltip
/cast [nomod:ctrl,target=mouseover,help][nomod:ctrl,target=focus,help][nomod:ctrl,target=target,help][nomod:ctrl,target=player] Prayer of Mending
/cast [mod:ctrl,target=mouseover,harm][mod:ctrl,target=focus,harm][mod:ctrl,target=target,harm] Shadow Word: Death

-Downranking was highly recommended during TBC but blizzard has effectively removed that concept. I haven't tried after it was made ineffective, and I thought that Blizzard would make new ranks of the inferior "Heal" and "Lesser Heal" spells to make up for that, as priests depended highly on it, however, that isn't the case, so as direct single target heals you only have GHeal and FHeal to use. Flash Heal is very mana inefficient (or at least it was) and I ever only used it if i had to dish out a lot of HP/Sec or if I was in Spirit of Redemption form. Other than that GHeal is the way to go.

-Never cast a direct heal on yourself. Unless you're literally the only one who's lost health. If not use binding heal on the target you're healing or a random target in the raid if your target is at full health. Desperate Prayer in emergencies.

-L2Love Circle of Healing

-Maximize Renew uptime on your target without overriding.

-Maximize time outside of 5 second rule (OO5SR): After 5 seconds of not using mana (casting spells that cost no mana counts as well) you regen mana as if you were out of combat. Inner focus and Holy concentration are talents that help the priest stay outside the 5sec rule. Furthermore when a long period OO5SR can be anticipated all spirit trinkets should be pop'ed as well as weapons/off hands changed, so that you regenerate as much mana during the period. Basicly during a fight you wait for Holy Concentration procs. When one of these goes of you pop trinkets, change weapons/off hands and start stopcasting Greater Heal on your target. You keep stopcasting until your target needs the heal or until the Holy Conc buff is about to fade (Not sure if it's timed anymore, but it was in TBC) then you let it land, pop Inner focus if it's not on CD and start stopcasting again. Don't change MH/OH unless you can get both in a row, that is if inner focus isn't on CD. Stopcasting should be practiced always in order to maximize time OO5SR, and not just when Holy Concentration procs.

-If you need to move during a fight, and the tank is about to die use Power Word: Shield, PoM and in emergencies CoH to keep him up, also even if he's the only one that's gonna benefit from it.

-Lightwell should be placed somewhere between casters and melee if there's only one priest and one near each group if there are several.

That's all i can think of atm. Ask if you want to know anything specific =)

Great post mate,

I really lack experience using/abusing the 5SR so that's the kind of advice I needed (not good for a wannabe tree )

I think that PoM was changed to now apply threat to the priest rather than the tank when activated in a fight to bring it inline with HoTs etc. Certainly read a few posts about it post 3.0 but not sure if this was changed for Wrath.

unvincible wrote:

I think that PoM was changed to now apply threat to the priest rather than the tank when activated in a fight to bring it inline with HoTs etc. Certainly read a few posts about it post 3.0 but not sure if this was changed for Wrath.

This is correct. Was gonna post last night but forgot. She didnt really have to respec as disc would have been fine as well. Must say i haven't read much on priest wotlk forums but i believe disc is considered the best single target healer of holy and disc (at least im sure thats the design) and we have tenta for chain heal spamming. Holy is a great healer as well though and adds circle of healing to our repetoir which is always a good thing.

Vessa wrote:

unvincible wrote:

I think that PoM was changed to now apply threat to the priest rather than the tank when activated in a fight to bring it inline with HoTs etc. Certainly read a few posts about it post 3.0 but not sure if this was changed for Wrath.

This is correct. Was gonna post last night but forgot. She didnt really have to respec as disc would have been fine as well. Must say i haven't read much on priest wotlk forums but i believe disc is considered the best single target healer of holy and disc (at least im sure thats the design) and we have tenta for chain heal spamming. Holy is a great healer as well though and adds circle of healing to our repetoir which is always a good thing.

My bad =) wasn't aware it had changed, but imo it's only fair. As for the Disc vs. Holy healer discussion I've only heard disc priests complaining about their output, but i havent been cruising the priest forums and priest threads on EJ much lately tbh. From what i can see in the talent trees it seems to me that both specs are fit for single-target healing while only holy is fit for AoE healing. Also, druid and warrior tanks will benefit more from a holy healer than a disc healer due to a lot of it's heals actually being absorb effects (you want the weakened soul debuff on your target as much as possible to maximize your healing power and all your crits proc shields as well). DK and Pala tanks would benefit equally from both I think.
Edit: A seemingly sweet combo for caster tanking would be Disc priest/Arcane mage (due to incantors absorbtion).

For those who haven't noticed I've begun lvling Wannabelf as well. He'll soon be lvl 72 and depending on how much time i have over the weekend i should be able to have him ding (there is only one ding! All the small pseudo-dings in between 0 and 80 doesn't count as anything but spam!!!) sometime next week. If the healing situation is as dire at that point as it is now I'll go healing for an undecided period of time.

Ironically this topic is still called mage raiding so here are some important stats to work on.

HIT RATING:

This applies to all casters.
You need 17% hit rating to be capped against bosses, new cap is 100% not 99% so you can always hit.

Of that 17% all classes can spec for 3% hit from talents.
A Draenei in the raid provides 1%
A Shadow Priest or Boomkin provide 3% hit bonus on the mob they are attacking
(17% - 3% - 3% - 1% = 10% minimum hit)

Since we should reliably have a Draenei in the raid (Tenta, Ely, Tep) it would be a good idea to have 2 sets of gear giving 10% hit and 13% hit.

10% hit = 263 hit rating
13% hit = 342 hit rating

It should be easy enough to keep a few pieces of gear with the extra 79 hit rating to use when required. You should also remember to switch to lower hit gear versus trash. As an example with Unvi I had 2 identical sets of gloves, 1 gemmed/enchanted with hit the other for damage plus a third set that was mixed. This meant I could easily hit cap for different situations without wasting stats, this was overkill but when you raided as full frost you had to try everything to max dps.

Hit still remains the most important stat for mages although Spell power is about even with it until you reach 1600SP, after that everyone should be gearing for hit until raid capped.
Locks/Spriests/Boomkins/Ele Shamies may have different stat priorities but the same figures apply (only 10% for Spriests and Boomkins ofc).

I think there are +hit buff foods now that may be able to help as you gear up.

Knowing the hit cap and working towards it is probably the most important thing you can do as a PvEer when gearing up so it will be expected.

In a last desperate attempt to turn this into a priest thread and /gloat all the mages i have to add:

Cruxhade wrote:

-Downranking was highly recommended during TBC but blizzard has effectively removed that concept. I haven't tried after it was made ineffective, and I thought that Blizzard would make new ranks of the inferior "Heal" and "Lesser Heal" spells to make up for that, as priests depended highly on it, however, that isn't the case, so as direct single target heals you only have GHeal and FHeal to use. Flash Heal is very mana inefficient (or at least it was) and I ever only used it if i had to dish out a lot of HP/Sec or if I was in Spirit of Redemption form. Other than that GHeal is the way to go.

They not only made downranking inefficient. They made all ranks of the same spell cost the same amount of mana so its completely pointless to downrank now

Endelar wrote:

In a last desperate attempt to turn this into a priest thread and /gloat all the mages i have to add:

.....

They not only made downranking inefficient. They made all ranks of the same spell cost the same amount of mana so its completely pointless to downrank now

UNLESS YOU ARE A MAGE!

Frostbolt (rank 1) is a faster cast snare than top rank and applies for all specs, situational usage but still very important, imba for arc mages when you have more than 1 target to slow.

Downranking some CCs is good as well (eg banish) when you dont want the full duration.

ummmm you can downrank portals from Dalaran to Darnassus to save on loading times....

/victory

Endelar wrote:

In a last desperate attempt to turn this into a priest thread and /gloat all the mages i have to add:

Cruxhade wrote:

-Downranking was highly recommended during TBC but blizzard has effectively removed that concept. I haven't tried after it was made ineffective, and I thought that Blizzard would make new ranks of the inferior "Heal" and "Lesser Heal" spells to make up for that, as priests depended highly on it, however, that isn't the case, so as direct single target heals you only have GHeal and FHeal to use. Flash Heal is very mana inefficient (or at least it was) and I ever only used it if i had to dish out a lot of HP/Sec or if I was in Spirit of Redemption form. Other than that GHeal is the way to go.

They not only made downranking inefficient. They made all ranks of the same spell cost the same amount of mana so its completely pointless to downrank now

That was what i meant. I know that inefficient doesn't mean useless, but why would anyone ever want to do something that's inefficient?

Cruxhade wrote:

Downranking was highly recommended during TBC but blizzard has effectively removed that concept

Priests own this thread. Do priests need +hit for healing? I THINK NOT!!!!