Musically Inspired; A Priest's Story.

2.4 Regen, redux.

2008-02-14T12:02:00.002-07:00

I'm back again, on the topic of mana regen for the new patch. despite all my work I didn't make it any farther then anyone else. There's no "set in stone" stat that is superior. But the crew of Priestly Endeavors came to the same conclusions as I did.

The inflection point is where your Spirit is twice that of your Intellect. So if you have twice your Intellect in Spirit, an even 400/800, one point in Spirit will do the same thing as a point of Intellect to increasing your mana regen.

If the balance is upset, moving back toward balance will be more rewarding then skewing the stats even moreso. But it's not like you don't get regen either way, just more of it per point.

I figured less math in this post would make up for the over-abundance of Math in the last one. Hopefully this post makes more sense!

~Because my Brain Hurts now.
Bob

My Turn. Theorycrafting 2.4 Regen.

2008-02-13T23:05:00.002-07:00

You saw it coming, I'd hope. Intellect shall cause Spirit to scale mana regen as of Patch 2.4. Bloggers are going crazy. I'm sure there's more, but I didn't want to elongate that sentence any moreso then neccesary.

So, I stole the basic formula from the Elitist Jerks, and went to town. I figured there's gotta be some way to compare Spirit and Intellect in a general manner, and that I might as well put my Calculus II classes to work.

If you want to know the nit-picky numbers and details, read on. Otherwise... Well, you've been warned!

The basic formula they dug up for active mana regen (PER SECOND):
.009327[ (.001 + SPIRIT) (INT^.5) ] = X

Removing the constant from the variables side (Int and Spirit):
(.001 + SPIRIT) (INT^.5) = 107.2156106 X

Now this is where I'm trying something new, atleast from what I've seen. I'm going to solve for Spirit and Intellect in respects to each other, then plug in one value in the formula for the other. It's the same method used to solve intersection points between graphs with two variables, exactly what we have here. Just not in simple non-classroom Math X and Y.

This is what I came up with...

SPIRIT = (107.21561x / INT^.5) - 0.001

And because Intellect is never used in it's full form in this formula, it says as a square root (^.5 is a square root without the powers of drawing), I'm just solving for INT^.5

INT^.5 = 107.21561x / (SPIRIT +.001)

Now, if you were to try and plug one of those in to the other formula right now, you'd end up just solving for INT = INT or SPIRIT = SPIRIT. Wanna know why? This is a tri-linear function. X is still a value, so we need to remove the X values from these two formulas. How, you may ask? By substituting it with our starting function. This step stumped me for a bit, but just bear with me on this.

*Wipes Dry-Erase board clean, begin page 2*

... It was at this point I realized you can't ACTUALLY do this. You can plug in one value and see where the inflection points would be for the other when one value is constant, but you most certainly can't find ALL points of inflection without any set values, on both sides. My Math was clean, but my logic and memories of RULES of Math were certainly faulty. And for that I paid about 2 hours of my time. But it was totally worth the mental sweat I broke!

So, I spin off on a new tangent, basing numbers off of base points. Let's test this formula with some numbers and see what this does to my regen! I'm assuming you can add in the MP5 from gear directly, because I'm not picking gear in particular; just random numbers from the air.

I'm just going to scale from 300 to 450 for this example, but it'll work with ANY numbers. This is just to get a feel for what the graph would do. If you've followed this all the way to here A) I applaud you; and B) you need to multiply the number you get by 5 for the actual Mp5 value. This base formula determines Mana per second. I'm just going to multiply for Mp5 for common comparison values.

INT 300, SPIRIT 300. MP5 = 242.32
INT 300, SPIRIT 350. MP5 = 282.71
INT 300, SPIRIT 400. MP5 = 323.09
INT 300, SPIRIT 450. MP5 = 363.48

INT 350, SPIRIT 300. MP5 = 261.74
INT 350, SPIRIT 350. MP5 = 305.36
INT 350, SPIRIT 400. MP5 = 348.98
INT 350, SPIRIT 450. MP5 = 392.61

INT 400, SPIRIT 300. 279.81
INT 400, SPIRIT 350. 326.44
INT 400, SPIRIT 400. 373.08
INT 400, SPIRIT 450. 419.71

INT 450, SPIRIT 300. 296.78
INT 450, SPIRIT 350. 346.25
INT 450, SPIRIT 400. 395.71
INT 450, SPIRIT 450. 445.17

So what's better? Spirit of Intellect? To be honest, all this work I've just done shows me that you can sacrifice a fair chunk of mana to increase you mana regen by even more then the buff it's already going to get. Is it worth it? I'll leave that much up to you. Do some number-crunching, Planeteers; The power is yours!

Going from 400 INT, 300 Spirit to 300 INT, 400 Spirit is a change of 73 MP5 non-casting. a fair chunk of regen, but you're also LOSING 1500 mana. There's the plus damage and healing, to account for as well, but I'm not going QUITE that in detail at this time of night. I've been at this for nearly 3 and a half hours now. Perhaps some music and WoW to soothe my now-running brain?

~And people say I think too much!
Bob.

PuGs. Oh, Glorious PuGs.

2008-02-12T19:02:00.000-07:00

Have you ever needed just ONE more person to fill a run? No required class, just something that can poke at mobs. Last night I ran Blood Furnace with some friends. Me, healing at 63; My good friend Dugrel on his Prot Warrior, level 64; and a friend of his on a 60 Hunter. While we weren't to concerned about the run, we knew we needed atleast one more to smooth things over. Enter "swiftedge" the 60 Rogue.

When we summoned him, and I saw the 45 greens, I was ready to boot him and say we 3-man it. But alas, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He currently sits on my friend's list.

He sapped, which any proper Rogue does, but the big kicker came when the fighting actually started. He waited. He gave a good 5 seconds for Dug to grab aggro, then even opened up from stealth with a Kidney Shot to stop a Shadowbolt! That would be a new trick in my book, I'd never seen it used in such a manner, beyond starting the stun-lock that kills me.

When I got aggro from one of the minions a summoner produced, he ran back to it. He grabbed it, then popped evasion to tank it so I could focus on keeping the Tank and Pet up! He is by far the greatest Rogue I've ever run with. But I distrust somebody who can drop combat while everyone else dies, so that list IS limited... (Here's looking at you, Hunters! O:<)

So I guess the moral of the story is, never start off distrusting a PuG. Wait till the first pull to make assumptions. :P

~Bob

That's How I Roll...

2008-02-08T02:31:00.001-07:00

Have you ever sat back and realized that if you were to change the spell rotation you've ALWAYS been using, switch out a piece of the gear you have for another piece in the bank, or even just move one talent point you'd make a humongous difference in the amount of time it takes to kill something, or your general efficiency? And, if so, have you ever ignored that fact because you just don't play that way?

Everyone says I play WoW the painful way. When I told a friend IRL that I'm levelling a third Priest, he asked if I was a masochist. After my first Priest hit 70, I started a Warrior because the guild was short on Tanks at the time. I levelled Prot to 56. "Dude, you're crazy, how do you stand it? Killing is SO SLOW!" But compared to my Priest, which I levelled Holy, I was owning face! I told a guildy, who was levelling a Warrior alt at the same time, to try Prot out when he hit Outlands; he didn't look back.

Now, back to the issue of levelling my Priests Holy... I generally bubble before I pull, then bust out some Holy Fire. If he's far enough away, I may throw a Smite before he gets in melee range; then I use SW:P. Then the rest of the fight is wanding. That's right; I bust out the almighty Mage-stick.

If somebody is riding by when I'm fighting a mob, they generally laugh and tell me to L2Play. That kinda stuff. Then they go and burn down a mob as quick as possible and eat and drink every two pulls. Meanwhile, I spend the extra 10 seconds to kill a mob, and spend the 20 seconds they're drinking to recover killing another mob. Using my low-mana Bubble-Wand methods, I end every fight with full mana and nearly full health, nothing a Renew can't fix.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, no spec is really "The Best" for levelling. Sure, a Shadow Priest does multiple times my DPS, but he takes a beating and drains his mana at the same time. I'm taking longer to kill things; but in exchange I don't need to worry about toting all that water around, or getting ganked after a pull. Nobody's gonna gank you if they watch you fight without taking damage or losing mana!

You win some, you lose some; efficiency is in the eye of the beholder. So, you laugh all you want. I'm playing the game my way. Has anybody else (if there's ACTUALLY anybody reading this as of yet) noticed any similar patterns with themselves, or even others? I'd like to think I'm not the only person doing this, but I'm really not too sure. I'm yet to see a Warrior tank NOT using Mortal Strike on trash. O:

~Bob

P.S. : Zangarmarsh has WAY too many herbs for my own good. "GOTTA PICK 'EM ALL!"

A Little Explaining

2008-02-07T16:48:00.001-07:00

Now, some of you are probably a little confused as to why I named by blog as I did. So I figured I'd go into details.

I'm a Musician. I can play Guitar, Violin, Piano, Trombone, and Drums. All my characters I've created are some form of musical term.

Jubilate, Sobrique (No longer around), Jubilaté (actually Shadow and no longer Guilded, wtg Armory!), Allegretto, and Sfortzando are ALL musically related. I'd like to think it adds a bit of character to myself and my toons, while also allowing people to recognize my alts.

Still working on the site a bit, but it's getting there! Took me almost an hour to find a BE Priest picture on Google that fit well. And I'm off to healbot my way to level 63. To Zangarmarsh!

~Bob

The First Post

2008-02-07T15:16:00.000-07:00

Well, I figured I'd give it a go, so here I am. I'm Bob the Smurf, and welcome to my humble new WoW blog. You may notice that there's nothing here yet, that's because I'm new to this whole thing and I've spent ALL day setting this up. :P

Updates may be a bit slow at first as I get a hang of this whole thing, as I'm working on a banner and resources listing as of right now. But once the shell is all finished up, I'll be filling it with fancy stuff!