From the Mailroom: Theck on Word of Glory Spam
Today’s exciting post comes to you courtesy of Theck, patron math saint of the tank theorycrafting community. We’ve been exchanging emails lately, and I got his permission to share some of his thoughts on the blog.
A lot of us have expected a nerf to Word of Glory for some time, and were surprised to see one to CS last week instead. Here’s what our community’s favorite theorycrafter had to say on the topic of WOG, threat, Vengeance, and possible solutions.
First, on Word of Glory:
WoG self-healing is small compared to what your healers are doing, but it’s not insignificant. 1k extra HPS out of 20k total HPS (numbers pulled from our last heroic halfus kill as an example, note that this excludes overheal bubbles and should thus be an under-estimate) is still around 5% of your total healing taken. That’s small, but certainly not negligible.
The problem really isn’t that it’s a large amount of self-healing. The problem is that your only other option is more damage via SotR. And in general, the extra DPS you gain from SotR isn’t going to make or break a kill. On the other hand, that 1k extra HPS, or a lucky WoG at the right time, could prevent you from dying and turn a wipe into a kill. So the issue is not that WoG healing is OP, even if it is much better than what other tanks have; it’s that there’s really no compelling reason *not* to use it.
Unless SotR is necessary to maintain threat or the extra DPS is significant enough to matter, both of which are going to be hard to pull off without retuning the rest of our mechanics (or Vengeance), it’s not going to be an attractive trade compared to more survivability, even if it’s only a small amount. Basically, when threat/dps doesn’t matter, it gets valued as worthless while survivability doesn’t.
On the topic of balancing threat around Word of Glory spam:
To be fair, I’m sure the devs are not ignorant of these facts. It may just be a tricky balancing issue.
Vengeance ensures that a tank following a tight rotation will generate sufficient steady-state threat even without using finishers. On the other hand, a tank that’s a little sloppy with his rotation, or one that makes a sufficient number of mistakes in their ability choices, may still struggle a little for threat. This leads to an interesting question about balance.
Let’s assume that Blizzard balances around the “average” tank, who makes mistakes here and there that break the rotation and result in a slightly lower average threat output. If things are tweaked so that this average tank can hold threat against equally geared DPS, then an above-average tank will have a significant threat surplus. The above-average tank has more threat than he needs, which means he can spend more of his Holy Power on survivability in the form of WoG. Under current conditions, the disparity is so great that there’s little advantage to be gained in using SotR over WoG once threat is established. It’s a choice between a little extra threat and a little extra survivability in an environment where extra threat is unnecessary.
The average tank, on the other hand, is more constrained because he needs some of those SotR’s to hold aggro. For him, the choice is less obvious. The real problem is that we have an interesting choice (Threat vs. Survivability), but balancing constraints make it an uneven choice for tanks of different skill levels.
Later, we were talking about possible changes to WOG. Two interesting solutions I’ve seen, on Maintankadin and on the official forums, would be:
1) Giving WOG a longer cooldown- making it more of a cooldown-heal for Prot.
2) Having WOG proc off the Paladin Tank talent Eternal Glory.
Theck sez:
I actually kind of like the idea of WoG as a short-cooldown self-heal for prot. We still have it available for emergencies, some players no longer feel like dumping everything into WoG is the only sensible way to play (because that option is taken away from them), and other players no longer feel like they’re holding back their raid by using SotR. We lose options, which most people would normally complain about (and I suspect many on the forums would), and tightens the gap between “skilled” and “unskilled” (which even more will complain about), but it does so in a way that’s probably better for the class as a whole.
Fascinating stuff! What do you think, dear readers? Are you loving WOG? Do you think it needs a change? What would you do with it, if your posts were blue?
Let us know in the comments!
xoxo
Ana
Armory Feed
It’s rare that Theck misses something, but I think he has here. The power of WoG is not in it’s overall HPS, or in “lucky” timing – the power of WoG is in an enormous amount of on-demand burst healing. You are never obligated to spend your holy power, and having a threat lead means that it’s generally better to save WoG for a moment when you need it. Your healers will thank you when they realize that the first reaction their tank makes to every spike is to simply remove 30-50k (or more, with EG procs) right off the front end.
What’s worse – this anti-burst cooldown is available every 9 seconds (12-15 if you’re unlucky, but if you’re that unlucky pop DP with your empty GCDs and be back to sitting on full HP).
Having HP doesn’t mean you need to spend it, and the current threat environment doesn’t punish empty GCDs enough to encourage you not to hoard your HP. Your overall HPS may be lower by saving it, but your survivability will be higher, and the amount of mana spent to keep you alive will be lower – because reacting to spikes costs mana for healers, and if the tank eliminates the spikes they’ll spend less.
IMO, of course.
I, as a healer find paladins always more easily healable than, for example, warrior tanks. I highly suspect that WoG is one of the main reasons for that.
As a tank on the other hand, I find its output extremely low and caught myself on relying on the healer – although I still use it in emergencies I spend the most holy power on SotR.
I wouldn’t like seeing it changed. I think the possibility that extremely good tanks separate from not so skilled tanks must be there.
With healers and dps you have ways to tell who is better – on tanks, not so much.
i dont know, theres so many sides to this debate it makes your head spin sometimes. i know myself i don’t always spend the WoG on myself. Paladin is the ultimate utility tank and thats what I like to do. Meloree is right because of that great burst, especially with EG procs, its very powerful…its great being able to save the healer or the dps or even the other tank with it. but honestly, do we all remember in the beta when no one wanted to use it? to now its so awesome…they probably have to ride that fine line of how much can we nerf it until people wont use it again, then were back to all we have is SotR…i am actually interested in what the Devs ideas are on the subject.
@Anafielle
18 February 2011 at 6:15 pm #
I too am interested in what the devs have to say. I hope we’ll hear from them soon on the topic- although the fact that they haven’t said anything may mean they are happy with how it’s working right now.
Only the blues know! :)
Personally, I have a number of extremely strong healers behind me. For that reason, I tend to use the majority of my Holy Power on ShoR’s–the healing isn’t something our raid needs to rely on, and frankly I have more fun hitting things really hard. I have, however, saved wipes a few times with well-timed WoG’s, or transitioned to a more defensive playstyle when we lost a healer, so I fully understand the power that a WoG rotation has.
I think the short cooldown heal model would be interesting. It would need to be on a long enough cooldown that it’s not simply another button in our rotation, and strong enough to save the day like WoG does now, which could be difficult to balance, but it would be more engaging than “hit this button when you have 3 holy power.”
Speaking of, that’s another issue–there’s little to no downside to using it whenever you have holy power to spend. I understand that there are times when it’s better to hold your holy power back, but that’s one of the major imbalances, I feel, with WoG: since it doesn’t overheal, so long as you take damage in the next 6 seconds, there is no penalty for hitting the button.
I think that you’re slightly mistaken in your last paragraph. If there is no large predictable burst about to hit you, there is little value in throwing up the shield – you’ll simply be causing more overheal for your healers. Sure, WoG itself doesn’t overheal, but you’re not making the best use of the ability. Some kind of heal is always landing, since your healers won’t leave you alone for long on legitimate bosses – the WoG shield pays no raid benefit if it just turns it’s own overheal into healer overheal. Given that, it’s far better to use it to react to something bad, and bring yourself back to a reasonable health level before they resort to using emergency tools which cost high amounts of mana.
You’re right. I probably over-simplified too much in trying to make a point. If there is no large predictable burst incoming, and the raid is stable enough that I don’t see anyone in need of immediate heals, I tend to just default to ShoR.
On the other hand, that same shield can turn some pretty big burst damage into just another swing if you know it’s coming. If I’m pre-shielding a big damage spike, effectively turning it into a medium-sized one, then my healers aren’t going to have a heart attack trying to deal with the sudden increase in damage and maybe be able to stick to some more mana efficent heals.
The best example I can think of is tanking Heroic Anshal just after an Ultimate. With Guardian, WoG shield and other assorted cooldowns (Trinkets), I’ve managed to go the entire buffed phase without dropping below about 80-85%. Granted, the other cooldowns contribute in large part to this, but the absorb shields certainly don’t hurt and manage to make some of the enormous melee hits seem kind of trivial.
I think this has been addressed to a certain degree, but maybe this wording is better.
A WoG heal is seldom an overheal. Granted for the first say, 30 seconds of a raid boss encounter threat is your main concern, but once established as the threat leader you CAN start hording your HP for that upcoming spike in damage you’re predicting.
If I was a healer, and saw a BIG amount of damage to my tank then instantly see 20+k healing done I would opt for maybe a less mana intensive heal thus conserving better.
EDIT: heal sniping WoGs on Chimaeron is excellent for topping people up pre massacre.
how well is WoG expected to scale with increasing tiers? as HP pools grow? i feel like WoG will only get worse and SHoR will do more dps.
WoG scales with AP – just like ShoR. As Str and Stamina increase, so does WoG. I believe it scales with just AP or SP, whichever is higher – if it’s both, it’ll double dip a bit on Str – which will naturally increase with higher level gear.
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I’m a little biased since I hate the concept of healing myself as a tank, but the last thing we need is WoG turned into a 4th CD.
Wouldn’t it bring our healing more in line with other tanks though? The prot paladin mirror of Frenzied Regen., Rune Tap, et cetera?
@Meloree: WoG scales with both AP & SP together. Exorcism is the only spell we have that uses max(AP,SP).
Perhaps I should have chosen my words more carefully; certainly timed WoG heals are a significant part of its strength. I’m not convinced it’s necessarily better to sit on HP for long periods than it is to fire it immediately at max health. From a healer’s perspective, I doubt it makes much difference whether you take 70k and heal for 20k reactively or let the GbtL shield turn that 70k into 50k. The same amount of their effort is overheal in both cases. And in the latter case, you start building HP immediately for the next WoG. It’s probably six of one, half dozen of the other.
I dunno, Theck. I find myself spending most of a fight basically topped off, WoG or not – but arranging to use it during Permafrosts, for example, really stabilizes fights, and really makes an impact on how healers react to situations. It’s often the difference between following a Divine Light with another Divine Light, versus having to use a couple of Flash of Lights (or equivalents). It essentially means never having to use a cooldown while tanking Nazir – even at 6 or 7 stacks, when timed exclusively on Permafrost. It’s somewhere between marginally worse and much better than DP at dealing with a Permafrost, depending on EG and Crits. That’s pretty staggeringly useful.
At Omnitron you’ll find yourself in situations where your healers are running from something, like an exploding Power Generator – and WoG has saved my life there on more than one occasion, simply by having it ready to use when “stuff happens”.
I’ve tried it both ways, and it just seems way more useful as a reactionary option than as a throughput option. As much as healer mana was supposed to matter, throughput damage in heroics still isn’t very interesting. What kills tanks, in our experience, is something else going wrong – and WoG deals with that extremely effectively.
Most of the time I use SoR as WoG is not needed however, and it’s a BIG however, for certain fights like Cho’gall (which we 2 heal) I respec to get the most healing possible out of WoG. I use it on myself when I’m tanking him and on my OT (along with Hand of Salvation) when he is the active tank. With healers spread out and MCed at times it is a huge benefit!
Personally I *love* the new flexibility I have over the old Wrath model of looking for something else to do while I autopiloted 969. Every nine seconds I have a decision to make- buff up my threat lead (which I increasingly do need to do with our best-geared DPS, but then after I saw how much passive healing seal of insight gave me in a log I’ve been using that over truth), heal myself, or snipe heal another raid member. I rarely sit on holy power unless I know for sure there’s a big damage spike incoming very shortly.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised to get nerfed though. My DK co-tank has better gear than me and my healers still insist I’m easier to heal.
What I would love to see, is a holy power ability that that reduced dmg with 5/10/15% or increased parry with 5/10/15% or something along those lines. I like having a choise between threat and survivability, but I don’t feel a direct heal on myself feels very tanky.
Hi everyone,
I always follow your discussions here with great interest, though as a very casual raider I don’t really feel knowledgeable enough to make an informed contribution. However on this topic I would be really interested in seeing some competitive heals per sec numbers on WOG healing compared to say Death Strike or Frenzied regen; we took our first shot at Cata raiding this week, knocking down the first 2 bosses in both BoT and BwD over 2 nights (as I say we’re very casual). Both nights I was using WOG fairly extensively as we learnt the fights, but I still showed considerably less healing than my Bear co-tank’s Frenzied regen. I love WOG and would hate to see it nerfed, I guess what I’m asking is whether it’s actually OP in comparison to other tank classes?
This is a great point and I think we would find that the argument (surprisingly from Paladins) that WoG is too strong will fall flat on its face. I tank with a DK, and his Heart Strike + Rune Tap is not that much weaker than my WoG + Seal of Insight in order to even be talking about this. What paladins do have is a choice: threat or survival. I don’t think having the utility of WoG healing is something different from the supremacy in utility that Blizz has always given us, in exchange for limited mobility.
The issue with that logic is that DK’s take more damage as a balance. They have less armor. They heal themselves with Death Strike for portions of their damage taken and create absorb shields based on that heal as their block. The real overpowering part of WoG is that it can’t be wasted to overheals. Any overheal becomes a shield, so as long as you take damage in the next 6 seconds (which is a safe bet if actively tanking something) then the overhealing is not wasted (though perhaps its not the most efficient use of your holy power).
Essentially what we have happening, then, is paladins with superior mitigation (block+more armor) healing themselves for about half as much HPS as a decent Death Knight–and a good chunk of it passively. Over the course of an entire fight, this leads to a lot less damage taken overall compared to other tanks, especially Druids and Warriors, whose self-healing is not even approaching a fully defensive spec’d/glyph’d Paladin.
The other issue is that Death Knights need to actively control their heals and time them based on damage taken. To do this, an addon is basically required. A paladin, however, heals near brainlessly. Seal of Insight happens no matter what you do, and hitting X button when you have X holy power is not exactly a brain-engaging excercise.
(Just FYI, Heart Strike doesn’t heal–it’s a cleave–and Rune Tap is only good because it’s glyphed to heal the whole party, for much less than a Holy Radiance [which is raid-wide] will)