Way back in April Blizzard were talking about making Haste (and Crit) affect HoTs and DoTs. Here’s what they said:

All HoTs and DoTs will benefit from Haste and Crit innately. Hasted HoTs and DoTs will not have a shorter duration, just a shorter period in between ticks (meaning they will gain extra ticks to fill in the duration as appropriate).

I should point out that this also applies to channelled spells as well, which will now have the possibility to gain extra ticks just like HoTs. Penance-lovers rejoice!
Update: This appears not to be applying to Penance on Live, as of 16th of October. I don’t know if this is a bug or not, but it was working on Beta. Feel free to comment if you spot a Blue confirmation either way.

To begin with, in response to a thread on PlusHeal, I first did a quick-and-dirty test on the Beta. I tested with Renew (nominal 12s duration, 3s tick interval) with whatever haste I was standing up in (7.53% total haste), a Potion of Speed (11.52% total haste) and Borrowed Time (23.46% total haste)

If you want the raw numbers, they’re available by clicking through, but in summary:

• The total duration does initially reduce with haste as the ticks get shorter.
• When you get a certain amount of haste you get an extra tick and the duration jumps back up again. It’s possible for the duration to go above the nominal duration (12s in the case of Renew).
• If you cast a HoT while under a haste effect, such as Borrowed Time, all your ticks will be hasted, not just the ones that go off while the buff is active. However, the spell tooltip and the HoT buff you get both (misleadingly) update as soon as the haste effect fades.
• Haste rating per 1% Haste = 128.11

Breakpoints

Erdluf and Zusterke at PlusHeal pointed out that the current thinking is that you gain the extra tick whenever the difference between the nominal duration and the actual duration gets to be more than half a tick, and that this certainly can lead to the total duration exceeding the nominal duration when the extra tick is added. This is consistent with the original statement from Blizzard that the duration won’t change, on average at least.
So if you can speed up the HoT enough to fit at least half a tick in, you get a full extra tick.

Based on this, here’s where the total haste breakpoints should be for various HoTs. The reason the HoTs have different breakpoints is because they have different tick intervals and total durations.

I went back and tested this in more detail on Renew, which is a 3s tick interval, 4-tick HoT, and it does appear that the transition to an extra tick does indeed happen at the 12.5% haste point as expected. Here’s the result of a few trials I did:

Healing per mana (HPM) and Healing per cast time (HPCT)

Here’s a look at the way haste affects the total duration and numbers of ticks of various HoTs:

Note that the numbers of ticks for Rejuvenation and Renew do not include the instant heal from Gift of the Earthmother and Divine Touch respectively, since these aren’t true ticks.

What you can see in this graph is the duration of the HoT decreasing as your haste increases (not quite linearly, haste does have a bit of a curve on it because of the way it’s calculated) and then when you reach the breakpoint the extra tick is added and the duration jumps up again, to somewhere above the nominal duration.
I’ve labelled the breakpoints to indicate the total number of ticks you’ll be getting from that breakpoint onwards as you increase your haste. So looking at the line for Riptide at the top, after the first breakpoint you’ll now be getting 6 ticks instead of the standard 5.

This graph also lets you see graphically the locations of the breakpoints for the HoTs, so if the table above wasn’t clear enough, you can use the graph instead. You can see on this graph, for example, the breakpoints for Renew and Rejuvenation at total haste percentages of 12.5%, 37.5% and 62.5%.

From a healing-per-mana (HPM) and healing-per-cast-time (HPCT) point of view, you want as many ticks as possible, because each extra tick adds a chunk of healing for no extra cost in time or mana. This makes it highly desireable to get above a breakpoint. However, HPM and HPCT only change at a breakpoint.

Healing per second (HPS)

I also wanted to look at things from an different angle: healing per second. In this case, since the result is similar for every HoT, I’ve just picked out Renew/Rejuvenation as an example. (I’ve arbitrarily given each tick a value of 2k, which is about right for Renew on the beta. Look at the shape, rather than the numbers.)

The thing to notice here is that the HPS curve increases linearly while your haste increases, it doesn’t change around breakpoints. So if you’re using your HoTs for their throughput, you’re not going to see a radical difference in HPS from stepping over a “breakpoint”.

Of course, you will notice the difference between a HoT with a 10.7s duration and one with a 13.2s duration (the biggest jump in duration for Renew/Rejuvenation) when you have to spend GCDs more often to refresh your HoT, and of course refreshing a HoT less often saves mana, so you will still want to get over that breakpoint.

Updated 3rd October: Improved clarity and readability. Added more HoTs and more detail to the main graph. Included all the breakpoints in tabular form as well, for reference.

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With Cataclysm’s release creeping closer, I’ve started rebuilding my personal spreadsheet for my Priest, so I can better understand the spells and talents I’m using. It’s not as advanced as some of the insanely complicated ones you can find out there on the net, but I like having it to tell me:

• Stat conversions (crit rating to crit % or haste to cast time, for example)
• Spell mana costs, cast times and coefficients
• Typical hits, crits, and a weighted average
• Healing per second and healing per mana
• The effect on these values of changing stats, talents or procs

Since I’ve spent the time generating these numbers, I figured I might as well put them up for information purposes. I’ll be doing a bit more conclusion-drawing in a later post, once I’ve had more of a chance to put this stuff into practice.

In the following, all values relate to beta build 12984, and were taken over the last 2-3days on Malevica who at level 85 had approximately 5k SP, 10% crit, 500 haste rating and 750 mastery rating, and a Disc spec with 2% Haste from Darkness (the trees have changed, so the link broke). When Cataclysm goes live you’ll probably have slightly better gear, but the general conclusions will all hold.

A final reminder that this is beta and all numbers are subject to change.

Stat Conversions

The first thing that’s needed is the set of conversion factors that let you convert ratings into percentages or points (in the case of Mastery):

I generated these by standing around unbuffed and untalented and slowly removing gear to generate a series of data points, and then using a linear regression to extract the conversion factor.

By way of example, here’s a graph of the results for Haste:

Because of the way I chose to plot this graph, the gradient (0.0078055559) of the graph is the haste% per point of haste rating, so the haste rating required for 1% haste is 1/ that value: 1/0.0078055559 = 128.1138733501.

Spell mana costs, cast times and coefficients

Now for some information about the spells themselves.

Mana costs are typically expressed within the game as a percentage of base mana, which is your mana pool with no gear or buffs on. (This is what lets the spell costs scale smoothly with your level.)

For a level 85 Priest, base mana = 20590

Using this number, I could work out the baseline (untalented and unglyphed) spell costs, and I also verified them in-game. Here are the current numbers (Blizzard does some funky things with rounding and tooltips so I’ve left the first decimal place for calculation purposes):

Spell coefficients are trickier to get at, and have to be worked out empirically.

When calculating how much a spell should hit for, you take the base heal amount, and add your spellpower modified by another number which can be changed to affect how spells scale with spellpower.
The basic formula is:

Heal amount = Base heal amount + (Coefficient x Spellpower)

Here are the base heal amounts and coefficients I calculated:

These were obtained by standing untalented and unbuffed (except PW:B, for obvious reasons) and recording the average heal amounts at varying spellpower levels. Like with the combat ratings, a linear regression was used to extract the base heal value (the intercept of the graph where SP=0) and coefficient (the gradient of the graph).

Here’s the values in graph format, for those interested:

The scaling on PW:B is a bit odd, since it scales very well with spellpower. That might change as the beta goes along, but remember that having such a long cooldown on a spell allows it to be a bit more highly-powered because it can’t end up dominating at high gear levels.

Typical hits and crits

Armed with the information above, I was able to work out what a typical heal should land for. In doing this, I have also included the ability to take into account the various talents available and their effects on the spells.

To work out the average hit, I used the following general formula:

Heal amount = [Base heal amount + (Coefficient x Spellpower)] x [1 + (% effect from talent A / 100)] x [1 + (% effect from talent B / 100)] x …

Those “6% increase” type talents are multiplicative, rather than additive, so if you get 6% from Twin Disciplines and 15% from Empowered Healing, you get at 22% increase, not the 21% you might expect (1.06 * 1.15 = 1.219).
At this time I want to say a huge thank you to Blizzard for trimming some of those passive healing increase type talents, it made my life a lot easier!

Anyway, for information purposes, here are the numbers untalented:

And in a typical Disc spec:

In these and the other tables (BT) means the spell is being cast while Borrowed Time is up, (G) refers to either a glyphed version of a spell (Renew) or the glyph component of a spell (PW:S). The numbers in brackets after PoH are the number of targets the spell hits.

What I’ve included in the second table is a column of typical crits (heal x 1.5) and then a weighted average illustrating what all of your casts, a mix of hits and crits, would average out to over time.

These tables are really useful for helping with spell selection. If you have an idea of how much each spell heals for, you’re able to pick the right size for the job, and understand where they fit into the healing toolkit.

Healing per second and healing per mana

As well as raw healing amounts, healers also need to know how quickly they can crank out healing with a spell, and how mana-efficient those spells are, especially in Cataclysm.

Here are the values untalented, assuming no crits:

And once again, in a typical Disc spec:

Once again, I’ve added extra columns to the second table. The HPS and HPM columns are based on that weighted average I talked about in the previous section, and should give a better estimate of the HPS and HPM you might achieve if you consider a whole fight.

I’ve not included HPS for PW:B because it’s not a repeatable cast, and I’ve not included HPM for the Glyph of PW:S because it’s essentially cost-free.

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I wanted to post about this a while ago, but with testing as much of the game as possible (which is the point of the beta, after all) I’m still not quite 85 yet, but I have now done most of the levelling content.

I’ve levelled exclusively as Discipline, to see if it’s possible, and because I didn’t fancy resetting a Shadow and healing spec every time a new build gets pushed out.

How long will it take to get to 85?

The big question everyone will ask. Here’s my response.

First, a caveat: all I can offer here is an estimate. Everyone will level at a different pace depending on how focused you are, how efficient you are, how quickly you kill mobs, how much competition there is for spawns, and so on. Plus, numbers are the one thing that you cannot count on in a beta, so this all might change.
And remember I’m levelling as a non-DPS spec in partially unfinished zones without level-appropriate gear, so take all that into account too.

Just don’t complain if I’m miles out, that’s all I’m saying!

On the beta I levelled from 80-82 over two evenings, so it took maybe 4-5 hours per level. Level 82-83 was a lot slower because the XP per level jumped from around 1.7 million to around 6 million (if I’m remembering those numbers correctly), so it took me about 3 evenings to reach 83. Levels 83-84 and 84-85 require relatively similar amounts of XP as 82-83, and thus roughly the same time, although it’s taken me longer because of incomplete zones and other things being introduced into the game that I’ve been testing instead.

Overall, I’d estimate that level 85 will be within reach within about 40-50 hours of /played, which means roughly 2 weeks of real time, and you could shorten that quite a lot if you played more on the weekends, played a more suitable “levelling” spec or ignored professions, for example.

Levelling as a healing spec

Impressions
I’ve got Malevica to 84½ as Discipline and I’ve not had any problems at all until Twilight Highlands, which is because on the beta these zones aren’t itemised, so I’m behind the curve in gear; I’m still wearing quite a bit of my T10 gear. This won’t be a problem when Cataclysm goes live.
You do still need to pay attention to your HP and weave healing spells in though, which is no bad thing.

Choice of spec
I spent most of my time as a standard Disc healing spec, but I switched to a specific levelling spec as the content got harder and I haven’t been running many instances since queues are pretty horrific even as a healer.

For the levelling spec I picked up Reflective Shield, Focused Will and Atonement, as well as Evangelism and Archangel.

It looks something like this at 85. You can take your pick about which of the extra talents in Holy or Shadow to take first. I personally pushed points into Holy to speed up my Smites before putting points into Shadow, and left the Shadowfiend points for last as my mana regen started to tank at higher levels. I didn’t theorycraft the decision much though, just went with what felt right.

The foundation of levelling as Discipline is Evangelism, since every Smite you cast grants you a 4% increase to the damage of your Smite, Holy Fire and Penance (and reduces the cost by 6% per stack) so getting it stacked to 5 is vital. Holy Fire is also still powerful, so keep that on cooldown as much as possible.

You get 15s from your last Smite before Evangelism fades, so you’ll need to pull again fairly quickly if you want to avoid having to restack it.
I’ve generally tended to keep Evangelism stacked from pull to pull rather than consuming it with Archangel. It means I have to drink from time to time if I’ve needed to heal myself as well, but you could always put those points into the Shadowfiend cooldown earlier.
If you’re not going to be able to refresh your stack in time, remember to hit Archangel so you don’t waste the mana.

The other thing to bear in mind is that Power Word: Shield will proc Borrowed Time for a 15% haste increase until you cast a spell with a cast time, which means it will lower the GCD on your DoTs. So once I’ve got Evangelism’s stack refreshed, I tend to cast Power Word: Shield on myself followed by Shadow Word: Pain and Devouring Plague and finishing up with a Penance.
From there, it’s a case of throwing out a Holy Fire and Smiting until the mob is dead.

You may or may not need to use your DoTs if the mobs die fast enough. In the gear I’m in the mobs are dying as the DoTs are fading, but if you’re killing faster you could just drop the DoTs from the rotation.

Extra tips

A few more things to remember:

• For Atonement to work, you need to be within 8 yards of the mob you’re Smiting, in order to get healed. Just bear it in mind when attacking casters!
• Glyph of Smite

is really good to switch in while levelling. I also have the Divine Accuracy glyph, which helps too.

What about Holy?
I tried levelling a little as Holy on my other Priest, although she’s not got very far yet. I do like the Chakra system so far though.

The way it currently works is that you cast Chakra on yourself and then Smite your opponent, which gives you a buff that grants you 15% increased Shadow and Holy damage for 30 seconds, refreshed every time you Smite. This lets you maintain a pretty much 100% uptime if you want to.

The cooldown on Chakra is currently 1 minute though, so you can’t change your Chakra state any more often than that.

The questing experience in general

The first thing is that the zones are big. You definitely won’t be short of questing locations.

Vashj’ir and Hyjal are at roughly the same level so you can pick either one to begin with (just like Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord in WotLK). I’d recommend doing the other zone afterwards as well, because they’re both pretty cool, but you might be able to skip straight to Deepholm instead. Uldum and Twilight Highlands are the 83-85 zones, and seem to be at roughly equal level (like Storm Peaks and Icecrown in WotLK), so you have another choice of destination here.

The quest progression within the new zones is a lot more linear than it was in most of WotLK was. It’s much more like the kind of progression you got in Icecrown with the phasing, only every zone is like that.

I love this because it makes for much better story-telling, but it does mean that there are occasional bottlenecks where low respawn rates or tricky quests can hold you up (which is again why we have a beta, so we can catch these things early).
Hyjal in particular is a great use of story-telling as you work your way through the zone helping out the Earthen Ring, and it’s combined with some great use of phasing to make you feel that you’re really making a difference as you quest through the zone.

Thumbs up from me!

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Since the last time I posted about this, Blizzard has listened to the feedback and revisited the party/raid frames a little bit with more options that we were asking for.

The new options pane

Backing up one step, in the current beta build (12942) the new-style frames appear to be off by default. You turn them on by ticking the “Use raid-style party frames” option in the Interface-Unitframes menu screen, as shown below:

Customising the actual raidframes is in the Raid Frames menu, and now gives you the following options:

I’ll step briefly through the new additions, working down the columns.

A toggle for power bars

I think all healers will probably want them on, and it’s a shame in a way that you can’t choose to show mana but not show rage/energy/runic power, but that’s a minor point.

Do you really need a screenshot for this?

Border

A slightly odd-looking grey border, which can be turned on or off. I imagine most people will want it off, but it’s on by default. It shows around the raidframe box, as well as putting lines around the individual frames and power bars, as you can see below:

Resizeable frames

This was high up most people’s wishlists, and I’m glad to see it make it in.

You can scale width and height independently, and the range of sizes goes from low to high, with very fine control in between (the slider has around 35 steps, so plenty of adjustability there). Here’s the two extremes for your viewing pleasure:

Low (default):

High:

Now there’s some interesting scaling things here. The name text, power bars and debuff indicator (upper-right) don’t change scale, although the health remaining text and debuff icons (lower-left) do. I’m going to assume this is a result of this being beta and not yet finished, but it does look a bit odd.

Numerical health display

You now have options for the numerical health display, although it’s turned off by defauly. It’s got options for absolute health remaining (long-form, i.e. 49516 rather than 49.5k), health lost (same format) or health percentage. A short-form option would be the icing on the cake, but definitely a leap forward.
Here’s the selection dropdown:


And some examples:

• Health Remaining:
• Health Lost:
• Health Percentage:

Class-coloured health bars

By default this is set to off, but you can turn it on if you want to. Another one I’m very pleased to see make it in.

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I happened to spot that yesterday was my 6-month Blogiversary! Go me! It feels a little bit silly to be making a special post to pat myself on the back, but when I started this blog I had no idea if I’d be still going in a month let alone half a year and yet here I am, going strong and looking forward to Cataclysm still as keen as ever. I think that’s worthy of note.

I’ve definitely noticed that I’ve matured quite a bit as a blogger; I’ve worked out some of the kinks in my writing, settled on a ‘personality’, and I feel a lot more confident hitting that “Publish” button now, although I still get a little buzz every time I post something new. I’ve also reached out to the community, joining Blog Azeroth and spreading comments across a wide range of blogs, which is also something that I wouldn’t have done 6 months ago. Blogging has been a nice boost for me personally over these last few months.

It’s also really nice to see so many people visiting from links posted on guild forums. That’s great evidence that I’m actually managing to directly help people, which is just awesome.

What’s helped a lot is the support and encouragement I’ve recieved from around the internet.
At the risk of forgetting other significant people, I’d like to mention Zelmaru for including me in multiple Parliamentary Papers and generally being a source of encouragement; Beruthiel for highlighting me in her Community Spotlight and giving me my biggest influx of readers and subscribers to date; the fine folks over at Blog Azeroth for at least quadrupling the size of my Google Reader list as well as for the wealth of guides and tips they’ve amassed there; the Twisted Nether Blogcast for mentioning me multiple times too and for including me in the Wiki; Karatheya for getting me started; and everyone who’s commented on my posts, subscribed to my feed or linked to the blog. Thanks all!

And to end on a gratuitous statistic: according to Feedburner I’m sitting at around 55 subscribers, which is frankly astonishing to me. I really didn’t expect that many people would be interested in what I had to say.
Thank you for taking an interest, and I hope you stick around.

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