07-22-2010, 11:18 PM
A lot of this is going to be stuff that people already know, some of it is stuff that people don't know but should, and some of it is wrong and you should correct me.
I know it's frustrating that people are still dying to infest, and that the disc priests are the easiest targets to blame. I also know that I don't put up as many bubbles as I could/should, compared to Zsig. But, some people really don't seem to understand that bubbles are not a magic panacea against infest. Even if everyone in the raid has a full bubble on them (as should be the case in phase 1), people can and will take infest ticks. Let's do some really bad napkin math here:
Infest base damage is 18-20k, but you can always assume 3% damage reduction from renewed hope and at least 10% resist from shadow prot.
I don't know whether the reductions are additive or multiplicative, but for napkin math it doesn't make a big difference, so let's just assume additive.
So, without any other damage reduction, infest is going to tick for 16-17k, a bubble is going to take off 10-13k of that (and no amount of bis gear or sp stacking will increase it by much; only sp procs can increase it significantly), and you're going to take 3-7k damage.
If you have full health and you take 3k from an infest? You're ok. You're above 90% health.
If you have full health and you take 4k from an infest? You're ok if you're a platewearer and remain above 90% health.
If you take more damage than that? You need to get healed up or infest ticks harder and harder.
In practice, there are a lot more factors in how much damage you take from infest even without using any active cooldowns. Lots of classes have reduce damage taken or increase resistance talents (~10% damage reduction). Half the people in melee are likely to have ancestral fortitude (10% damage reduction). Most importantly, you might get more than the minimum 10% resist. With shadow prot, you'll get 10% resist 1/4 of the time, 20% resist 1/2 of the time, and 30% resist 1/4 of the time.
So what can a dps do about it? Avoid taking unnecessary damage from ghouls and such. Take damage reduction talents that aren't out of the way and majorly detract from your dps. Also use damage reduction cooldowns on infest that you wouldn't otherwise use anyway. For example, a mage can put 1 point into magic absorption instead of student of the mind, a healing priest can put 5 points in spell warding instead of divine fury, and a cat can use barkskin. I'm not familiar with any other specs, but I'm sure a bunch of them have equivalent things they can do.
So what can a healer do about it? Time a direct aoe heal to land right as infest lands. Shamans can chain heal to clean off a melee group or 2. Holy priests can poh 1 group and coh another. Disc priests can poh a group if they're not already busy shielding people. Paladins and druids? I dunno? Do your best with wg/rejuv/nourish/fol to get people topped off?
What can the raid as a whole do about it? When top guilds were doing the fight at 10-15% buff, they rotated raid cd each infest. Nowadays they don't really need to if they don't want to. They can just heal people back up when their infests break their shields, but maybe our healers just aren't coordinated enough. Maybe we can heal people up better if each healer has a group they focus on first when healing the raid back up from infest. I don't know how to solve the infest problem. I do know that no matter how many bubbles you put on people and how much current tier gear you have, infest will break through bubbles here and there, and people will need to get healed back up.
--
Here below I'm just going to type out what I do when I'm healing as disc. If I'm doing it wrong you should correct me.
If I'm the lone disc, I just rotate shields repeatedly and do nothing else. I can usually get somewhere between 15 and 20 people. This means that melee aren't going to shielded much if at all.
If we have 2 disc priests, we each take 2 groups, and the last group is free for all (in practice, this means that the same priest will get the last group almost all the time, because once you fall behind, you stay behind). After I shield my 2 groups, I use pom on a random player. When infest is being casted, I cast a poh on one of the groups I'm responsible for. After infest lands, I cast penance on someone that still has it ticking.
--
If you have better ideas, speak up.
I know it's frustrating that people are still dying to infest, and that the disc priests are the easiest targets to blame. I also know that I don't put up as many bubbles as I could/should, compared to Zsig. But, some people really don't seem to understand that bubbles are not a magic panacea against infest. Even if everyone in the raid has a full bubble on them (as should be the case in phase 1), people can and will take infest ticks. Let's do some really bad napkin math here:
Infest base damage is 18-20k, but you can always assume 3% damage reduction from renewed hope and at least 10% resist from shadow prot.
I don't know whether the reductions are additive or multiplicative, but for napkin math it doesn't make a big difference, so let's just assume additive.
So, without any other damage reduction, infest is going to tick for 16-17k, a bubble is going to take off 10-13k of that (and no amount of bis gear or sp stacking will increase it by much; only sp procs can increase it significantly), and you're going to take 3-7k damage.
If you have full health and you take 3k from an infest? You're ok. You're above 90% health.
If you have full health and you take 4k from an infest? You're ok if you're a platewearer and remain above 90% health.
If you take more damage than that? You need to get healed up or infest ticks harder and harder.
In practice, there are a lot more factors in how much damage you take from infest even without using any active cooldowns. Lots of classes have reduce damage taken or increase resistance talents (~10% damage reduction). Half the people in melee are likely to have ancestral fortitude (10% damage reduction). Most importantly, you might get more than the minimum 10% resist. With shadow prot, you'll get 10% resist 1/4 of the time, 20% resist 1/2 of the time, and 30% resist 1/4 of the time.
So what can a dps do about it? Avoid taking unnecessary damage from ghouls and such. Take damage reduction talents that aren't out of the way and majorly detract from your dps. Also use damage reduction cooldowns on infest that you wouldn't otherwise use anyway. For example, a mage can put 1 point into magic absorption instead of student of the mind, a healing priest can put 5 points in spell warding instead of divine fury, and a cat can use barkskin. I'm not familiar with any other specs, but I'm sure a bunch of them have equivalent things they can do.
So what can a healer do about it? Time a direct aoe heal to land right as infest lands. Shamans can chain heal to clean off a melee group or 2. Holy priests can poh 1 group and coh another. Disc priests can poh a group if they're not already busy shielding people. Paladins and druids? I dunno? Do your best with wg/rejuv/nourish/fol to get people topped off?
What can the raid as a whole do about it? When top guilds were doing the fight at 10-15% buff, they rotated raid cd each infest. Nowadays they don't really need to if they don't want to. They can just heal people back up when their infests break their shields, but maybe our healers just aren't coordinated enough. Maybe we can heal people up better if each healer has a group they focus on first when healing the raid back up from infest. I don't know how to solve the infest problem. I do know that no matter how many bubbles you put on people and how much current tier gear you have, infest will break through bubbles here and there, and people will need to get healed back up.
--
Here below I'm just going to type out what I do when I'm healing as disc. If I'm doing it wrong you should correct me.
If I'm the lone disc, I just rotate shields repeatedly and do nothing else. I can usually get somewhere between 15 and 20 people. This means that melee aren't going to shielded much if at all.
If we have 2 disc priests, we each take 2 groups, and the last group is free for all (in practice, this means that the same priest will get the last group almost all the time, because once you fall behind, you stay behind). After I shield my 2 groups, I use pom on a random player. When infest is being casted, I cast a poh on one of the groups I'm responsible for. After infest lands, I cast penance on someone that still has it ticking.
--
If you have better ideas, speak up.