We ran some TSO content tonight, so I created a dog spec to test the curing. I ditched it for SF because it was dying all the time, but when I went back to TSO, I had no trouble at all (just like before SF). Does anybody know if there have been improvements to the AE immunity in SF content (both heroic and epic)? PS. I maxed out the cures for the dog, and the results were better than I thought. I'm going to spend some more time with it. Still WAY up there on the parse for me is spiritual leadership. Just the damage proc and kill proc keep that thing running like a champ. Up to 250hps on some fights. wowza.
I too have seen exceptionally good returns on Spiritual Leadership. Far more impressive than Aura of Warding. This is the direction I'm leaning for SF . . .
I was looking at some SF raid parses and decided to go str, Agi, wis. Why? Well I am in an OT group and between me and the templar cures are fine, no reason to spec faster speed it seems. The dog, even when he dies, is still like 3% of my heal parse on average, not bad at all imho and Spiritual leadership simply rocks. There are enough non direct AE's too that I saw the dog must have saved because while other groups were standing there with uncurable dets my group was not because dog dog blocked it. Do I have to be a tad more careful on when I send him in? Yep, but 3% of my heals plus the occassional AE block still seems more worth it to me than a shield slam and faster cures for curing that isn't an issue. I think it really comes down to what someone is comfortable with rather than whats genuinely better at this point. /shrug
Gisallo wrote: For a long time, I was as avid a supporter of the quick cure line as anyone, but at present, I also am Str, Agi and Wis. However, I'm literally tettering on the edge of dropping the Str portion. Here are the Pros and Cons in my mind... Str line offers an excellent complement of warding, AE immunity and the pet attack offers a convenient addition to any macro. An extra pet attack provides an extra opportunity to proc all of the beneficial abilities he provides in this spec. However, the pet dies far too easily these days in raids. The way AEs read, frontal and rear components prevent AE immunities from working and thus on those fights where you need the extra warding.... the pet can't provide it. Getting a good zw % out of your pet is meaningless to me if it is all gained during fights where no one was every in danger of leaving yellow health. The problem is that the same AEs that are killing the pet are often incurable, so its not like the Sta line is that dramatically better for those fights either. The int line... well... yeah. The only benefit out of Sta line is that it frees up more AAs to use elsewhere since capping quick cures only requires 14 AA compared to the 24 necessary for Str line (with its endline). On my mirror, I keep an Sta spec, so I guess I'll have to test it out.
See, that's almost EXACTLY what I've been thinking. I don't need to put 10 AA's into the cure speed, I've already got a lot of cast speed. So maybe I really only need 4 or 5 AA's there, the power cost is so low already it's not relevant. Coagulate? Bah, I mean, yes, every now and then it's ok, but you know what's better? Not letting someone get that low on health in the first place! Getting less heavily invested there and in STR allows me to move AA's into areas where I can really USE them.
Banditman wrote: I thought that too believe me. I was frustrated as ALL heck watching Dog Dog die. BUT I looked and that parse. Then I said "I need 70 points to get to Shaman SF endlines anywho" and nothing I could seem to get in the Mystic line made up for anywhere from 3-5% heals lost when Dog Dog was used correctly. Could I perhaps = that? Maybe with the torpor thing but until I get the red adornment that is still an oh crap spell because of the inherent issues it causes the tank speed and haste wise. Ancestral Runes is still not working as described and while the bonuses to Bolster are pretty good right now its not keeping my tank up thats the problem its keeping up the damn chanters and bards up that insists on putting on lots of new gear without crit mit to up their Parse so thats not as useful as it could be. I am going to get the Bolster buff eventually. Still on the fence with either Torpor or Oberon buff (I use Oberon a fair amount on fights to cover for doing other stuff) but those are things that can wait. So in essence I found myself in my experiment losing 3-5% just on the parse on 80% of my raid fights and 99% of my instance fights. I also then lost the AE blocker, then the damage and the haste while getting what in return? Yeah its annoying watching the puppy drop and having to recast him and some say that the extra he brings you is more trouble than he is worth cause I will grant that the balance between trouble and benefit has certainly gotten shorter this go around, but the balance is still leaning in the direction of benefit for the parses that I have seen. Do I make sure I hold the dog back until I can get him to do a side attack on raid encounters and some instance ones? Yeah and that's is an extra pain in the but. Hit the green button move till he's behind you, postion, launch. Its like doing a square dance to keep him alive thats for sure...but if you can pull it off it still makes him more useful than much of the stuff that is currently in play I think. Now if they would have kept the lines intact...eg. must have Stam line to get Witchdoctor's herbal Recipe, it would be a different story, thats proven pretty useful and I could see myself losing dog dog for faster reuse on my group cure...but they didn't so there you go.
I think you missed what Debase was really saying. Yes, the dog seems to parse well ZW. That wasn't his (or my) point. The point was that when you most need the help, you don't get it. In tough fights, the dog dies because of the nature of the new AE's. Basically, all the "challenging" AE's are now directional, which cuts through the immunity. You can't look at a parse on this one. You have to think about the situation. The dog will still work fine in heroic content, and probably fine in down tier content. If that's your niche, great, use the dog. It'll work fine. However, for progression based raiding, the dog just isn't bringing the same return anymore.
With the new issue with the dog I see a bigger problem that has not been worked in here. Our group wards. As far as I can tell the dog gets a benefit to our group wards, which means while he is taking damage with very low avoidance and mitigation he will burn the group ward out sooner and leave the rest of the real players unprotected. For that reason I do not send my dog into fights that he will take damage on. The few things he actually does does not seem worth it to me. If anyone has any different information on this I would love to read it.
That's an interesting point on the dog eating Group Wards, and he definitely can eat them. When damage shields are in play, it's definitely not worth it to have him up there. I would love to know what the logic behind "Ward order" is in a Group Ward. I'm pretty sure that the order is not proximity based, so his proximity to the mob doesn't guarantee he will be the first to eat part (or all) of your Ward.
Banditman wrote: No I understand that, really I do. I just don't see anything else outh there that makes me say "DAMN THATS BETTER THAN MY DOG". Does he die on occassion to the directional AE's? Yeah, but I am also careful of when and where I launch him. In the Shaman line I need to put points in somewhere to get the SF end lines and I simply still don't see the pay off of the Stamina line being any better and the Int line is less than meh. Is the dog worth less than he used to me yeah, but he's still worth a few more cents, imo of course, than my other choices, and pennies count to me I guess, even if there is annoyance to get them.
Actually, there is something that makes you go "That's better than my dog!". Spiritual Leadership. Through Lair and Labs last night, the MT Defiler was running the dog, I was running Spiritual Leadership. The dog parsed about 3% of her entire night. Spiritual Leadership parsed about 9% of my entire night. We healed "approximately" equal amounts, I think she might have had 7.5 million total, I might have been around 7 million total. We are equipped pretty equally. Both have REH. We each have one other healer in our group. Both have a Coercer. I was melee'ing VERY little, so the SL procs were all incoming damage based. The comparison was pretty solid, and Spiritual Leadership came out the clear leader.
Banditman wrote: I'm newly in love with Spiritual Leadership. I dropped the 8 points in RoA duration in favor of that. Totally worth it. No need to drop the dog tho.
I'm only investing 90 points in Shaman atm. I cut WAY back on the STA tree. I only have like 5 AA's into Herbal Expertise. With all the casting haste I already have, the extra 5 points were not making the cure cast any faster. Base cast time is 1 second, and with 5 points in my cast time is .53 - and it cannot go below .50. I think my current "raid" spec is AGI endline (10 in crits), WIS endline (10 in re-use), 5 in Herbal Expertise and the rest scattered around the tree. 8 in Spiritual Leadership, 8 in Group Cure and 4 in Ancestral Channeling.
Banditman wrote: I have spiritual leadership. Basically my spec is Full chieftan (inculding spiritual leadership) old school ROA, 8 points in group Cure and old school dog dog, so I have both dog dog and SL going atm. I am FULLY aware of how great that is and have loved it since Beta. What I am talking about is before I even get to Spiritual leadership I needed to spend 70 points in the Shaman tree. Now of course to get the AE blocker on Dog Dog I had to spend more than 70 points total BUT right now I am just REALLY meh on the Mystic tree. I mean I guess the mit and crit mit on Bolster is kinda cool, but I am still trying to figure out what to spend 5 points in to get to 10 spent, but really in my mind its just a matter of blowing points to get the End line there for the damage proc for my melee dpsers. Thats why to me dog dog is still a viable, though currently more annoying, option because atm at least I don't see a lot in the mystic tree to make me go all oogley over to justify losing the dog. Together with Spiritual Leadership it seems to work well and I am getting pretty good at lining him up for side attacks in order to avoid the directional AE's. /shrug guess in the end it doesn't matter how, just as long as we keep our respective groups up no?
Banditman wrote: A while back Profe did some testing on warding priority when group wards take hits, and figured out that the first person invited to the raid in your group gets priority over people invited later on. Here's the link.
Okay, let no one say I am too proud to admit I may have been a little too broad. I did the math on Tox's lair. In their dog dog is still pulling his weight. He healed for more than he wasted in terms of sucking up group wards etc. I just did Sarah Greenleaf tonight though. Dog dog was fine up to that point, but on that fight healed for exactly what torpor was healing and I wasn't throwing torpor everytime it was up. Without Dog dog I have torpor maxed with the new SF tree, and at least till my tanks a little better geared, points in Bolster. With Torpor now spec'd for more AND the fact the group ward will not get eaten up by him taking hits from the 3 AE's she throws, its probably more efficient to be without him, but I am going to test it. Moral of the story. Every zone, sometimes every fight, is different.
Side attacks don't avoid directional AE's. Check some of them out. What you typically see with these "new" AE's is that there is one that says "Does X damage, if in forward arc of 180 degrees" and another line in it that says "Does X damage, if in rear arc of 180 degrees". There just isn't a way to avoid that. You're either in front of the mob, usually taking more damage, or behind the mob, usually taking less damage, but because of the way the damage is structured into directions, it cuts through AE immunity. There is a good screen shot showing the design on page four of this thread, about halfway down.
Banditman wrote: That's what was causing an issue in Labs. In Tox, most of the damage dog dog was taking was from damage shields which of course is, typically, lower. My point I guess is, and I think I will either /feedback or /bug... "whats the point of non-direct AE immunity" if there are few if any non-direct AE's. Now if they were to make dog dog and even or even a ^ rather than the down^ that he is, MAY be it would be worth it, but as long as our heals and wards don't do as much for him as other toons and as long as he loses the immunity, there really is no point. I understand the changes to keeps raid mobs challenging, but to make these changes without taking pets into account just continues to show SOE's myopia.
Oh, I agree, the structure of AE's in Sentinel's Fate has really changed the dynamics around. I just don't think we're going to have much success getting this issue looked at with the other more pressing concerns on the table.
