Edit: My initial hypothesis is under review. In the meantime, please feel free to discuss how your guild handles judgements in the comments and why you value JoW or JoL uptime in your raids. –Kurn (June 13)
All right. I’m taking deep breaths. Honest, I am. However, I have recently had occasion to go through various parses belonging to other guilds and I have noticed something that drives me a wee bit nuts:
Given two paladins (1 ret or prot and 1 holy), the holy paladin is judging light.
Don’t see why this is wrong? Think “oh, holy paladins heal, let’s have them judge light!”? Okay, then. Let’s examine what, exactly, the judgements do, shall we?
Paladins can put up three different debuffs on any hostile target:
Judgement of Light: “attacks made against the judged enemy a chance of healing the attacker for 2% of their maximum health”
Judgement of Wisdom: “giving each attack a chance to restore 2% of the attacker’s base mana.”
Judgement of Justice: “preventing them from fleeing and limiting their movement speed.”
We can basically throw out Judgement of Justice. It’s almost exclusively used in the domain of PVP. Since I’m addressing PVE encounters here, particularly 25-man raids, we will pretend Judgement of Justice doesn’t exist. (And druids and shammies who arena rejoice at the concept of a world without JoJ.)
Obviously, JoL and JoW are both important debuffs to place on the boss and even the adds at times. I think everyone can agree that 2% of your maximum health or 2% of your base mana is pretty sweet to proc, right? That’s a lot of healing and a lot of mana regen.
Now, let’s bear in mind that Divinity does not work the way you think it might when it comes to judging. That means that anyone’s JoL is basically equal to anyone else’s, at least when considering the raid group as a whole.
Let’s now look at a typical 25-man raid group.
3 tanks (say 1 warrior, 1 DK, 1 paladin)
6 healers (say 1 paladin, 2 priests, 2 druids, 1 shammy)
6 melee DPS (say 1 warrior, 1 DK, 2 rogues, 1 enhance shammy, 1 kitty)
10 ranged DPS (say 2 hunters, 2 shadow priests, 2 mages, 2 warlocks, 1 ele shammy, 1 moonkin)
That’s 25 people. All 25 of them have health bars. 7 of them do not have mana bars and 6 of them (the healers) are not going to be attacking the boss with any kind of regularity. That means that even though 6 of them aren’t really going to attack the boss, there’s still 19 people who are going to benefit from Judgement of Light versus 12 people who will benefit from Judgement of Wisdom.
Even if that wasn’t as large a difference in terms of pure numbers, let’s look at this logically:
If you run out of mana, you’re probably not going to die, you’re just going to have to stop casting spells or special attacks until you get mana back.
If you run out of health, you’re dead.
Hm. Now, which Judgement should have priority on a mob?
The answer is, of course, Judgement of Light.
Now, let’s examine why paladins judge at all. Surely there’s a reason, right? Apart from debuffing the mob in a helpful manner?
Yes, all three specs of paladin have a reason to judge the mob.
1) Retribution Paladins: Judgements of the Wise. So not only are they proccing the Replenishment effect whenever they judge, which Blizzard themselves have admitted they expect all raid groups to have, but judging is a damaging ability. ICC-geared ret pallies in my guild are judging for 7k, critting for 14k. It is an integral part of the ret pally DPS rotation. They are specced for Improved Judgements so they are judging on cooldown, every 8 seconds. That leads to really, really, really high uptime on whatever debuff they’re judging.
2) Protection Paladins: Judgements of the Just. Hey, look! It’s the prot pally version of Improved Thunder Clap! That’s to say, both those abilities reduce the mobs’ attack speed by 20%. Which is, you know, awesome. Plus, because tanks do have damage-dealing abilities to help cause threat, judging is also an integral part of the prot pally 96969 rotation. So they’re also judging on cooldown, every 8-10 seconds, depending on talents, even if the judgement debuff (and attack speed debuff) lasts 20 seconds. This also leads to a really, really, really high uptime on whatever debuff they’re judging.
3) Holy Paladins: Judgements of the Pure. 15% spell haste. Gorgeous. This talent is what allows us to reach a 1s GCD with 676 haste and is just generally awesome for getting more casts in during the same time frame. (The result being that your cast times drop pretty drastically.) However, unlike our melee-friendly brethren, our Judgements of the Pure buff lasts a full minute. We do NOT have a built-in reason to judge any more than once a minute, if we are playing as selfishly as possible and we have no mana problems. The prots and rets, however, even in the most selfish scenario, are judging on cooldown. In that scenario, we are judging once a minute.
To summarize:
– Protection and Retribution paladins judge on cooldown, Holy paladins judge at least once a minute but do not necessarily need to judge more than that for optimum self-performance. (Exception: Judging can proc Seal of Wisdom, which most holy paladins should be using if their style is Holy Light. Still, meleeing or judging strictly for mana return is not always possible, so I won’t really address that, preferring to stick solely to judgements and their uptimes.)
– Judgement of Light should be the priority debuff placed on any mob, followed by Judgement of Wisdom and Judgement of Justice should be ignored entirely.
Everyone following me? Good.
Now, then, it is a logical continuation of these thoughts that leads to ret and prot pallies judging light and leaving wisdom to the holy pallies, isn’t it?
You know that if the prot or ret pally is alive, they will be judging. This leads to near 100% uptime on their chosen debuff.
But what of the holy paladins, who are busy healing like crazy, dealing with insane tank damage, making sure to refresh Beacon of Light and Sacred Shield and trying to judge when there’s a bit of a healing slump? Sure, you can usually find an extra GCD to throw a judgement at the boss to maintain a better uptime than 20 seconds on every minute. But not always. Judge the boss more than once a minute on, say, Heroic Deathbringer Saurfang when you’re solo-healing two Marks of the Fallen Champion? Not going to happen or you’re probably going to lose your marks, unless you time it exceedingly carefully.
Not only that, but even with Enlightened Judgements, which every single holy paladin should have, you can still actually miss your Judgement. You need 8% hit to hit a raid boss with a Judgement without missing. Since Judgements are considered ranged physical attacks (like a hunter’s auto shots), they are not affected by a moonkin’s Improved Faerie Fire or a shadow priest’s Misery. Even with a Draenei in your party, for Heroic Presence, that’s still only 5% chance to hit. So you can miss, which means both your debuff of choice and your Judgements of the Pure will not be applied or refreshed. And if you then are swamped by healing, it might be a while yet before you can try to judge again.
What does that all mean?
It means that the uptime on a Judgement debuff by a holy paladin will almost always suck compared to the uptime on one by a ret or a prot paladin.
It means that the following setup is probably the best way to maintain high uptimes on the debuffs most important to the group.
1 paladin (any spec): Judgement of Light, preferably judged at least every 20 seconds.
2 paladins (ret/ret or ret/prot or prot/prot or holy/holy): Split them up, one judgement each, judge at least every 20 seconds if possible.
2 paladins (holy/ret or holy/prot): The ret or the prot gets Light, the holy gets Wisdom.
3 paladins (holy/ret/prot or holy/ret/ret or holy/prot/prot): The melee paladins split the judgements and the holy picks one and only judges more than once a minute if they feel they can — or for Seal of Wisdom procs, as mentioned above.
3 paladins (holy/holy/holy): Put two holies on Light and one on Wisdom to achieve a higher uptime on Light. The logic here is that all the holy paladins will judge at least once a minute, probably at different times, so while there will be some overlap, it leads to more uptime than just one of them judging it.
3 paladins (holy/holy/ret or holy/holy prot): The ret or the prot takes Light and the holy paladins both take Wisdom. The logic here is the same as above for Light, only applied to Wisdom.
4 paladins (holy/holy/ret/ret or holy/holy/ret/prot or holy/holy/prot/prot): Melee paladins split judgements between them, holy paladins split judgements between them, so you have the melee pallies really responsible for the uptimes and the holies are free to judge whenever, but are still judging something valuable in case one of the melee pallies dies.
Any other situation I didn’t cover: You can figure this out yourself, just make sure any melee paladins are judging Light first, then Wisdom and assign holies to be backups, basically.
Questions? Comments? Got a better method for splitting up the Judgement of Light/Wisdom debuffs? Do tell! :)
Hm. Now, which Judgement should have priority on a mob?
The answer is, of course, Judgement of Light.
*barely contained rage*
Assuming three paladins, could you not have one use JoL, one use JoW, and one use JoJ? Granted, the JoJ debuff is rarely (if ever) useful in PvE, but wouldn’t it also grant the ret/prot buffs such as Replenishment?
I can already see some issues with it (letting JoW fall off, for example, could hurt prot tanks and… Hunters, I guess?) but inquiring minds want to know. The biggest issue I see is that the healadin would have to be in/close to melee range as Enlightened Judgements doesn’t increase the range of JoJ, but I figure if you stand in the back, you won’t get cleaved. Are there aura-damage fights where it would prove to be especially problematic?
I’m wondering if you looked at our parses…
Anyway, I’m linking this back to my guild’s pally forums to see if we can get some discussion going!
Rilgon – Believe me, I completely, totally, entirely understand how important Judgement of Wisdom is for hunters, especially. While you CAN regen your mana with AotV, it’s a massive DPS loss and it’s pretty pointless, I know, whereas rets have divine plea, enhancement shammies have shamanistic rage, etc. But when you consider all 25 people, or all 18-20 people who are attacking the boss, they all have health and that has to trump mana regen. I hate running with two paladins, not only just because you lose out on buffs (ghetto kings/drums of forgotten kings anyone?) but because debuff uptime suffers hugely. But you just can’t get the healing from JoL from any other source because it’s essentially passive and costs just one GCD to heal X number of people for 20 seconds.
But trust me, your frustration at how JoL is of higher priority than JoW is totally understood. I put myself on wisdom constantly and try to judge at least every 30 seconds when at all possible. :)
X – The JoJ debuff will grant Replenishment and slow attack speed, yes, but there is no reason to not add to the uptime of other buffs. They don’t stack, they overwrite, so why not extend the uptime of a buff? Assuming three holy paladins, I’d rather two paladins overwrite their JoL to extend uptime from 20 seconds to say, 30 seconds even, rather than definitively have JoL fall off after the 20 seconds is up.
JoW doesn’t really affect prot tanks too much in raid content. Spiritual Attunement, Divine Plea and Blessing of Sanctuary addresses most of their mana issues. It does severely affect hunters, as you may have been able to tell by Rilgon’s barely contained rage. ;) It also affects paladins who go all-out with an unglyphed Consecration and enhancement shammies can usually get by with blessing of wisdom and good use of Shamanistic Rage. Casters have a lot of ways to regen mana — mana gems, evocation, lifetap, Dispersion, Shadowfiend and the like. Hunters are the only ones who *really* rely on JoW to stay out of Aspect of the Viper, which is basically great while levelling but you want to stay the hell out of it in raid content.
There are also several fights where no Judgement of Light up will cause wipes, no question: heroic Putricide 25 P3, HBQL 25, HSindragosa 25… that’s what comes to mind. Basically anything with a persistent damage aura. So basically, JoJ in PVE = not used because the uptime of the other two is just so necessary for a good raid group.
Kal – haha, no, I didn’t check out your parses. I looked at some random heroic ICC25 parses for four or five guilds and ALL of them had more than one paladin in the fights I looked at and ALL of them had the holy paladin maintaining about 25% uptime on JoL while the ret or prot had 95%+ uptime on JoW. You know, I tried to organize pally buffs back in our guild on BB, but with Tweedledee and Tweedledum as my fellow holies and with the ret and prot that we had, we had issues making it all stack nicely. Plus, JoL used to have its threat transferred to the caster, then it scaled better with rets… eventually it was all normalized, but I remember spending half an hour on a forum post trying to explain the optimum judging strat to the pallies in the guild and it basically went unheeded. ><
I get that JoL and JoW need to be up all the time, but what I was suggesting is using the holy paladin to use JoJ BECAUSE there’s no reason to refresh it constantly, whereas JoL (thanks to, say, the tank) will always be in the 969 rotation, and JoW (compliments of a ret) would be using it on every cooldown, with time to spare assuming they’re 2/2 in Improved Judgements.
The holy could hit JoJ and not worry about having to refresh a failing debuff, assuming the tank and ret are both A, sticking to their rotations, B, in range, and C, not somehow stuck without being able to attack (Frost Tombs, for example).
I suppose the deciding factor for this (in my mind) would be how often the prot/ret would really lose their debuff, whether because they had to use a GCD to taunt an add, or a string of lucky Art of War/Divine Storm cooldown procs, or one of the previously mentioned scenarios.
What it comes down to is, if there are two paladins in melee range, I don’t see why JoL or JoW should ever fall off, unless it’s a “gimmick” in the fight.
Potentially just as important, though, does immunity to snares and such mean a total immunity to JoJ? Would that mean that using JoJ to proc Judgements of the Pure wouldn’t work on bosses?
X – Well, I think it’s the whole range thing. I can count on one hand the fights where I’m right on top of the boss and in range for JoJ:
– Marrowgar, Rotface, occasionally Lich King.
On every other fight, I find myself happy to be 30+ yards out. ;)
Also, no, the immunity to the JoJ effect doesn’t mean they’re immune to the other effects of judgements and JotP is a 100% chance “proc” based on a successful hit of a judgement, so I’m 98% confident it’ll proc JotP even if they’re immune to JoJ itself. Judgements of the Just still gets applied, so would Heart of the Crusader, I believe, even if Judgement of Justice might not.
Got it. And really, I don’t blame you for being far away from the melee.
X – Yeah, melee’s got cooties! Ew! ;D
Lately my raid has been so shy on paladins. Our MT prefers JoW because he needs the mana, so I judge Light. (I think it would be better if I took care of wisdom, however, I don’t blame him for wanting to take his mana regeneration into his own hands!).
That pretty much encourages me to judge as often as I possibly can to provide as much JoL uptime as possible. However, it makes up a huge chunk of healing on progression fights, so I’m definitely not complaining because I can squeeze in one GCD every 15-20 seconds.
We need a retadin! /cry
So you’re saying that when I’m on my hunter in a 10-man it’s selfish to ask our one pally to judge wisdom?
Enlynn – hold the phone, you mean with Spiritual Attunement, Blessing of Sanctuary, Replenishment AND Divine Plea, your MT is still running oom? Eek. Less shields on him, so he takes more damage! ;) Do you have a druid with Revitalize in the raid?
Are you able to squeeze in extra judgements if you’re healing two marks on heroic Saurfang, towards the end, when he frenzies? If so, my hat’s off to you. :)
Jasyla – … yes? :) Understandable, but unless all your DPS and tanks have mana bars, still kinda selfish. :/ Unless they’re judging a mob that’s not the main mob. It’s possible to have JoL/JoW up on separate mobs…
Maybe one of the reasons Rets tend to Judge Wis is because that’s what EJ recommends, sort of?
Good post, though. I tend to run in pally-heavy raids, honestly I’ve never given it much thought other than knowing I do Wis and the other Ret gets Light. I’m going to check our logs though, because I’m curious to see what everyone does now.
And no, I don’t have cooties ;p
Aloix – Yeah, I see this:
Judgement of Wisdom
This is a strong choice for your judgement to use due to equalized JoL and the removal of blood recoil. You want to keep JoW up or you and your mana using dps (hunters in particular) can run into mana troubles. JoW’s mana return effect is limited to 15 PPM for spells and physical; because paladins use both, we can see a few more procs than other classes.
Judgement of Light
This was our primary judgement for 3.1, however it has been equalized among all paladin specs to return 2% max hp (it used to scale based on AP/SP). If there are 2 paladins in your raid, you want the prot or holy paladin to use this judgement, so you can keep JoW up. If there is heavy raid damage and you are the only paladin, JoL is a good choice. If you are specced into Divinity, JoL still does benefit from it.
The problem here is that EJ is taking *your* DPS into consideration, not the overall raid view. Ret pallies are in trouble without JoW up, lest they switch to Seal of Wisdom, which would be hilarious. ;) Purely selfishly speaking, to best min/max *yourself*, you need to judge wisdom, the same way a holy paladin should judge light to pad the meters. They’re also wrong about how Divinity works in that post (and the holy post, for that matter) so while they’re not altogether an untrustworthy source, they’re clearly able to be mistaken or out of date.
Anyways, if the judgements fall off, either of them, you start running into trouble in progression content and then it doesn’t really matter if your mana bar is full or not because you’re lying on the floor, dead. ;D Either not enough healing was done because JoL fell off or DPS was low due to JoW falling off. The end result is you’re dead.
I’m glad to hear you (being a melee) and a ret split the judgements, though. That’s ultimately the best way to get close to 100% uptime which is ideally what both debuffs should be at.
Honestly, if even 1% of the people reading this go looking through their logs to better organize their judgements going forward, then I feel like I’ve made a difference of some sort. :) Glad you enjoyed the post!
And okay, maybe YOU don’t have cooties, but I know some melee who do. ;)
It isn’t very often that in a 25 man there is only one paladin; or at least in my experience.
Having been in the ret scene and in discussions lately about it, I still wouldn’t put JoL on a priority above JoW. You may not die when you run out of mana but neither will the boss.
There are abilities and buffs to help with mana regen but there are also 6 skilled healers watching your health and in their experience, I am sure that they know how to handle mana issues.
As a holy paladin, I judge light because it is MY job to heal you, I’m not trying to pad the meters or see how high I can get my overheal, but I judge often, the last thing I want to happen is lose the haste buff that is so coveted.
The problem is that JoW is several times stronger than Replenishment for Hunters, and it’s stupid.
Looking at a recent Festergut 25H parse that was 4:07 long, I got 16,651 mana from JoW – a ridiculous 165 activations of JoW (a ridiculous 40 procs per minute, as 16,651 / my base mana = 165) – and a hilariously low 7,291 mana from Replenishment.
But yeah, nearly thrice the mana from JoW than Replenishment. It’s disgusting, and I cannot stand raids where no one will judge JoW.
We need a self-driven JoW like Fire Mages have.
Gotta say, Kurn, I don’t agree with you on this. I view the DPS loss of losing a constant JoW on the boss to be a much larger problem than not having JoL up at all times. Because it -is- a DPS loss, just as not having Revitalize is a DPS loss. Hunters, mages, warlocks, shadow priests, elemental shaman, enhancement shaman, Ret paladins… They all benefit from having to use their regen abilities less often. (Ret paladins less so than the others, obviously.) Less regen time = less DPS time = fights take longer = more mana used by the healers
If the difference between people dying and living comes down to JoL, then something is really wrong with the healers. LOL
Tarinae and Codi – Okay, speaking from experience, my raid group doesn’t have any mana issues. We typically run 1 ret (judging light) and 2 holies (judging wisdom). We don’t hit 100% uptime on either, though the ret and light come close.
On Sindragosa 25 (heroic), for example, from last night:
– 1 hunter: 0s with AotV
– 1 hunter: 2 occasions with AotV on, totalling 13s, both of which happened before frost tombs were dropped after Sindragosa had taken off
– 1 spriest: 3 shadowfiends, 0 dispersions
– 2 mages: 1 evocation and 1 mana gem between them
– 1 warlock: total of 6 lifetaps
– 1 ele shammy: total of 8 Thundershock casts
– 1 enh shammy: total of 3 Shamanistic Rage casts
– 1 ret paladin: 0 Divine Plea casts
– 1 moonkin: 0 Innervates
I think I’ve covered all the mana-based DPS, right?
82.4% uptime on JoL. And, due to some Very Bad frost tombs towards the end, only 43.0% uptime on JoW.
The kill took 8m23s, so there was no worry about enrage (10m) and from what I can tell, no one had a mana issue. Granted, this is one of the fights where you HAVE to stop now and again for a variety of reasons, but it’s also one of the fights where JoL is completely and totally worth having up for as close to 100% as possible due to the persistent frost aura.
2945 ticks of JoL, averaging 580.0 per tick for 1,708,023 healing done in 8m23s, with only 38.3% overheal. And this is essentially passive healing because it’s already woven into the ret paladin’s rotation. No healer has to heal that. When you have 15,704,568 damage from the frost aura alone, not having to worry about a tenth of that is huge. Was it causing the raid healers to overheal? Not even. The druids were under 45% overheal, the holy priest was 41%… even the PALADINS were only at 65% overheal! :)
So this is where I’m coming from: a raid group that doesn’t have mana issues that CAN benefit greatly from JoL over JoW, particuarly on a fight like this with an aura, and we have 0 issues with enrage.
It’s not necessarily the difference between people living and dying, but JoL having a strong uptime really does make a difference in the healing required for the encounter. In some cases, like BQL, you can drop a raid healer and pick up a DPS if you have JoL up over 90% uptime on an aura fight like that, shortening the length of the fight substantially.
I suppose what I will agree to is that *if* your raid group has enrage trouble and *if* JoL isn’t doing enough to justify itself, then yes, give JoW priority a try. My current experience is that we don’t hit enrage unless someone screws up big-time and dies and we’re short DPS and that is literally the only reason we have hit any enrage timers in ICC regular 25 and heroic 25. Is it that my guild’s DPS knows what they’re doing and no one else’s does? No. Obviously Rilgon is a good hunter, knows his stuff, and is absolutely adamant that JoW is required for a hunter. My question then becomes: do you have disc priests with rapture in the raid? Replenishment up near 100% uptime? How about Revitalize druids? There are so many ways to regen mana fairly passively or by expending a little bit of effort/time during a phase change/etc, but there’s just two ways to gain a steady stream of health: someone heals you or you heal yourself with JoL.
Maybe your raid groups are supremely different from mine, maybe my guild is the outlier. I honestly don’t know. But I do know that this is what works for my guild.
I also know that striving for 100% uptime on BOTH debuffs is the ideal scenario. ;)
And that I talk WAY too much. ;) <3
Rilgon – You mean like Master of Elements? That would definitely be hot. I guess that Blizzard just doesn’t care, though, given that the mana bar is going away. :/
I would very much agree on Sindy hardmode that JoL > JoW due to the mechanics of the hardmode, but that’s really the only one. Other than, like, Vezax hardmode, I guess.
The problem is that you addressed the post in an overall way and for the vast majority of fights, raiding groups will get far more out of JoW uptime than JoL. It’s not about running OOM; it is about going for that small amount of time longer before Evocating or switching to AotV. It is very similar to the argument for Revitalize. You lose healing (personal in the case of the Tree, passive AoE in the case of JoL) in order to gain a substantial DPS increase.
There -are- outliers, of course, like if you’re trying to do BQL hardmode with two healadins and three resto shaman or something. (I’ve done it. NOT FUN.) However, the point of the post was obviously to address the priority as a general rule. Removing outliers and looking at the sheer massive amount of DPS that JoW gives through the insane mana regen, I cannot support your suggestion that JoL is better. It would be like saying that Healing Stream Totem is better than Mana Stream Totem when you only have one shaman and no Blessing of Wisdom.
I so need to show this post to my current guild. They’re so clueless you won’t believe it. Oh wait. Forget it, I’m not raiding with them anymore anyway.
I don’t disagree with you saying that JoL > JoW, nor do I think Codi is wrong saying JoL = JoW with prioritization, my disagreement is saying that healadins shouldn’t cast JoL nor that Ret paladins should do JoW.
I think that if it works for your guild that is great! I fully support that and I am not saying it is wrong, I would never criticize like but I don’t see that healadins (especially like myself, who judge a lot) who judge light are “doing it wrong”.
That’s all :)
@ Tarinae: Actually, I’m saying that JoW > JoL on non-Sindy hardmode fights. LOL The point Kurn is making in regulating one Judgment each to Holy and Ret (or Prot) when you have two paladins is to keep your important Judgment in the hands of the Ret (or Prot). They are far, far more likely to keep up it up than the healadin.
So it is totally logical to say “if JoL > JoW, the Ret paladin should always use JoL and Holy paladins should not.” If you agree that JoL > JoW in importance and yet the healadin is doing the JoL, then you -are- “doing it wrong,” since your actions are countering what you want to have happen.
I pulled some numbers from a Marrowgar hardmode on Wednesday since I’m lazy. LOL It’s an AoE fight, so it favors JoL right off the bat. :D
Uptime:
JoL – 96.8%
JoW – 87.3%
Right off the bat, the numbers are going to be skewed in JoL’s favor due to uptime. We run 4 paladins, so it is generally the two Ret paladins doing JoW and the Prot and healadin doing JoL.
Total gains:
JoL – 475800 HP
JoW – 93545 MP
I can see what Kurn is saying. You get about 5 times the return on JoL than you do on JoW if you just look at the numbers in raw form. However, looking at our enhancement shaman and hunters, the mana return they see from JoW is massive. Far outweighs Replenishment. I’m no good at running mana to DPS ratios, but I’d say that having a high uptime is worth at least 1k DPS to the enhancement shaman, probably more.
If you cut the uptime of JoL by about half (a healadin should easily be able to maintain a 50% uptime), you’d be losing 240000-ish healing. It -looks- like a big number, but that is less than a single Disc priest bubble per raider. In a 4:30 fight, that is a loss of only 888.9 HPS spread out through the ENTIRE raid. That is 35.6 HPS per person lost. Bonestorm ticks for about 5k, if you want to put it in perspective.
Losing 35.6k HPS per person is far better than losing an overall raid DPS of 3-4k, I’d say.
Codi, Tarinae – I’ve been running around the last couple of days. I’m going to look at my own guild’s parses and try to see if I come up with anything different, because, shockingly, I do see Codi’s (and Rilgon’s) points. And Tarinae’s as well, because I like the take on it as “I’m supposed to be healing you, that’s my JOB”.
(You may have noticed that I am stubborn as hell.)
Codi, I’m awful at mana-to-DPS as well, but my theory is this:
Given that hunters (aotv), mages (evocation), spriests (dispersion) have abilities to regen mana that have the effect of reducing damage done (even by just being idle, like mages and spriests to an extent, since dots are still ticking) but enh shammies (Shamanistic Rage), ele shammies (Thundershock), warlocks (Life Tap — which also buffs spellpower), ret pallies (Divine Plea) and moonkins (Innervate) all have their regen abilities only take one GCD each, if these classes (hunters, mages, spriests) are not using those extended-time abilities to regen mana, then there is not a mana issue.
While I go digging through logs of all 12 ICC fights, I’m going to edit the original post to say that I’m reviewing my initial hypothesis that JoL > JoW for the benefit of the raid group. You guys have given *me* food for thought and the whole point of the post was to be informative and to get people discussing and thinking about what their raid groups judge. It would be hypocritical of me to not spend the same amount of time thinking about it. :)
<3
Kurn – you’re probably right, if we were pushing hardmodes at all, we would have to be min-maxed and the way we do things wouldn’t be working. However, we’re still banging our heads on BQ… on regular I have no problem doing the less-than-optimal thing and squeezing in extra judgements to keep the tankadin happy. Although, I would be crazy enough to judge at Frenzy.
No hats for me *cries*. My 10 man group is doing LK right now, so I’m still taking in all the horror stories from my favorite bloggers on what to expect when we get there, hopefully in the next few weeks.
It’s interesting that JoW is valued so highly for raid DPS. Perhaps my not-hardcore guild is less keyed in to that sort of thing, but I have never heard anyone request JoW. To be honest we go lockouts without replenishment, too. Although I guess my biggest question is: do your DPS actually change their playstyle based on what regen is available to them? The argument is sound (more passive = less active), but is the team actually using less active regen because of the passive regen, or does the extra regen from passive abilities just show up as extra blue bar at the end of the fight?
Enlynn – I don’t think it matters what content you’re doing. If you’re doing fights that are hard for your raiding group (ie. part of your group’s progression), you should really be trying to min-max. As you said, you’re banging your heads against BQL, so having your healing be maximized would probably really help. Just my $.02, of course. :)
Kurn – Do take a look at the parses. :D I’m interested to see what -your- group is doing. I can at least tell you that JoW is to hunters and Enhancement shaman what Revitalize is to DKs. (ie. lots of DPS!) As far as spriests and mages go, they pretty much have to use their mana regen abilities on every fight, since that is what their classes are based around. By using JoW, they just use them -less.- A Boomkin not having to use their own Innervate is veeeeery good, since we tend to lose shaman and having one for them when they pop is happy. LOL
For me, though, any amount of increased raid DPS that also carries the added bonus of the healers being able to regen some mana back, too, when they need it just far outweighs the slight loss of HPS.
Enlynn – I have to admit that I wasn’t aware of how important JoW was in general until something like midway through Ulduar. And I MAY have underestimated its importance even now, although I’m not sure I have. BQL is a tough fight for the enrage in particular. If you go through your parses and see that your mana-based DPS is just not DPSing a lot (check to see if they’re using aspect of the viper, evocation, dispersion) and you have the paladins to spare, try giving them JoW. If your problem on BQL is not hitting enrage but rather keeping people up, make sure you keep JoL up, basically.
I know that if I’m screwing around on my hunter, in a raid group with wisdom and replenishment, I tend to not go oom. If I notice I’m having mana issues, I will probably swap to viper if there’s a convenient moment in the fight for it. (Running to spores on Festergut, perhaps?) If there’s not a “good” moment for it, I’ll probably focus more on less costly abilities (Steady Shot). Of course, I don’t really raid as my hunter, so I’m really just speaking for myself and my own experience, not the real DPS raiding experience. :)
Codi – incoming wall of text! But before I paste that in, did you mean that your healers wanding for mana if JoW is up?
Okay, here are the results.
—
All right, I’ve gone through all the fights. I have to conclude that my raid group does not have mana issues that negatively affect DPS. Hunters almost never need to use AOTV, Dispersion is mostly used for damage reduction instead of mana regeneration and if the mages are fire mages with Master of Elements, Evocation is left largely untouched.
These fights are all in the last lockout, so from Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday except for LK, which was two weeks ago. They are all heroic mode 25-man kills with the exception of LK, who is a regular-mode 25-man kill.
I did not examine Replenishment uptime on all of these encounters, but with a survival hunter and ret pally in most of them, I strongly suspect Replenishment had a high uptime.
Marrowgar:
3 Hunters: No Aspect of the Viper uptime.
2 Mages: No Evocation (2 mana gems, one each)
1 Shadow Priest: 1 Dispersion (6 seconds — while impaled)
— JoW uptime = 70.9%
— JoL uptime = 86.5%
2 holies on JoW, 1 ret on JoL
Lady Deathwhisper:
3 Hunters: No Aspect of the Viper uptime.
2 Mages: 3 mana gems by one, 2 by the other. 0 Evocations.
1 Shadow Priest: 0 Dispersion.
— JoW uptime (on LDW only) = 67.1%
— JoL uptime (on LDW only) = 47.9%
2 holies on JoW, 1 ret on JoL
Deathbringer Saurfang:
3 Hunters: No Aspect of the Viper uptime.
2 Mages: 2 mana gems each. 1 Evocation. (5 seconds.)
1 Shadow Priest: 1 Dispersion. (6 seconds.)
— JoW uptime = 96.3%
— JoL uptime = 96.3%
2 holies + 1 ret on JoW, 1 ret on JoL
(normally have 1 holy/ret on each, this was a miscommunication)
Rotface:
3 Hunters: No Aspect of the Viper uptime.
2 Mages: 2 mana gems each, 0 Evocations.
1 Shadow Priest: 0 Dispersions.
— JoW uptime = 96.8%
— JoL uptime = 95.5%
1 ret on each, 1 holy on JoW
Festergut:
3 Hunters: No Aspect of the Viper uptime.
1 Mage: 2 mana gems, 0 Evocations.
1 Shadow Priest: 1 Dispersion at Pungent Blight.
— JoW uptime = 81.7%
— JoL uptime = 95.9%
1 ret on JoL, 2 holies on JoW
Putricide:
3 Hunters: No Aspect of the Viper uptime.
1 Mage: 3 mana gems, 1 Evocation right at first transition
1 Shadow Priest: 0 Dispersions.
— JoW uptime (on Putricide only) = 66.3%
— JoL uptime (on Putricide only) = 80.8%
1 ret on JoL, 2 holies on JoW
Blood Prince Council:
3 Hunters: No Aspect of the Viper uptime.
2 Mages: No gems used, no Evocations.
1 Shadow Priest: 1 Dispersion while shaking off stacks of Shadow Prison
— JoW uptime = ~40%
— JoL uptime = 97.7%
1 ret on each, 1 holy on JoW, the JoW ret died and I couldn’t always judge a mob out of my range.
Blood Queen Lana’thel:
3 Hunters: No Aspect of the Viper uptime.
2 Mages: 3 gems by one, 2 gems by the other. No Evocations.
1 Shadow Priest: 0 Dispersions.
— JoW uptime = 93.8%
— JoL uptime = 82.5%
1 ret on each, 1 holy on JoW
Dreamwalker:
Due to being in portals and the lack of a sustained target, I don’t really have stats here for uptime of any judgement.
Sindragosa:
2 Hunters: one with no AotV, one with 2 for a total of 13s, during transitions to air phases.
2 Mages: 1 evocation and 1 mana gem between them.
1 Shadow Priest: 0 Dispersions.
— JoW uptime = pathetically bad 43% due to some Very Bad Frost Tombs.
— JoL uptime = 82.4%
1 ret on JoL, 2 holies on JoW.
Lich King (regular):
1 Hunter: 23 seconds of Aspect of the Viper uptime (mostly during transitions)
3 Mages: 3 mana gems each, 5 Evocations (4 / 1 / 0) mostly at transition.
— JoW uptime (LK only) = 28.9%
— JoL uptime (LK only) = 53.6%
1 ret on JoL, 1 holy on JoW
(of course, this includes the two transition phases and the 2 minutes of speechifying at the end. The most uptime any debuff has is 77.3%, persisting through the transitions.)
Rilgon – You mean like Master of Elements?
No, I mean like Empowered Fire. Tack it onto Master Marksman or Marked for Death, and have it read:
“$CURRENT_TALENT_EFFECTS. In addition, every time your Piercing Shots ability does periodic damage, you have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to gain 2% of your base mana.”
Voila, self-driven JoW that works off of us critting (hrm… I wonder what other Hunter tree has that effect…). This would have basically solved our dependence on JoW and made switching to focus unnecessary.
But Ghostcrawler is an idiot, so.