Thursday, July 5, 2007

Talkin' bout my spec

In the back of my mind, I think I always intended to respec at level 70. Well, now I'm 1/3 of a level away, and I'm torn.

My current spec is not an unmitigated disaster or anything, but it's not a paragon of efficiency. When I was level 54, I decided what spec I wanted at 60, and started aiming for it. Then BC came out, and so my spec is basically an interrupted level 60 build with 9 points more or less thrown wherever. It's good for the way I solo and for the way I do instances, and there's nothing in there that I hugely regret, though there are things I would certainly change if given a free respec.

What I'm not looking to do -
I'm not looking for a maximized raid healing spec. I don't raid at all, and I still have two zones worth of soloing and small-grouping to do, plus a lot of time in small-group instances.
I'm not going ret. I know people like this spec, but it's just not for me.
I'm -probably- not going prot. I heard lots of good things about the viability of this spec as a soloing spec and it might be interesting to tank for a change, but among my guildmates and friends, I'm the -only- high level healer, and there are other tanks. I'd be messing up the synergy with a high-level guild warrior that I've been leveling with since 54 or so, since we don't need two tanks in an instance.

What I've found, however, is that every time I try and build a spec, I wind up with something very similar to what I have now. Here's my process; maybe one of you can help.

5 points in Divine Intellect. A no-brainer.
5 points in Spiritual Focus, another no-brainer.
3 points in Healing Light. Looking good so far.
Now we're looking a little thin. We need 2 more points somewhere, so
2 points in Improved SoR. I use a mix of SoR and SoV.
5 points in Illumination. Nerf or not, this is still a winner in my mind.
1 point in Divine Favor.
3 points in Sanctified Light. Yay for crits.
Need another point somewhere. Improved SoW looks attractive, but we'll put -
1 more point in Improved SoR.
5 easy points in Holy Power
1 point in Holy Shock. It's like DPS!
3 points in Light's Grace. I underestimated how amazing this talent was originally.
1 more point in Improved SoR. Is this the talent I should be using for backfill?
5 points in Holy Guidance.
1 point in Divine Illumination.

With everything I consider important, I have 20 points left to spend. Stuff that I would consider using it on -

Holy Tree-
Blessed Life - This is kind of like 5% resistance to all damage. I can't say no to that.
Purifying Power - Both of the effects on this are things that matter to me.
Last point in Improved SoR - Little extra damage doesn't hurt.
Improved BoW - 8 Mp5 is kinda nice, plus I can share the love.

Prot Tree -
This tree is where my extra points are now, and it's full of things that I -almost- want. I have points in redoubt now that I don't really want, but improved Devo Aura is of limited value. I mean, I have it up most of the time, so it's where points would probably go, but I don't know how good it is.
Precision and Toughness are both reasonable passive utility things, but there's no way I'd take Toughness over Blessed Life.
Guardian's Favor is a bit of a wild card, because it improves two spells that I don't use as much as I should. I don't know if either effect is something I would get any real benefit out of.
BoK is the primary reason I'd go into this tree. I don't know if it's worth 11 talent points, though.
Improved Righteous Fury is another wild card. Obviously I almost never use Righteous Fury as it is, because I don't want to generate more threat. If I took this talent, I couldn't use it in instances, because I don't want my heals to generate way more threat. (It does affect heals, right?)

Anticipation would probably be where my points on this level would go if I went this deep.
There's nothing on tier 4 that would make we want to go that deep into prot.

Retribution Tree -
Benediction would probably get the nod over Improved BoM. I don't use BoM on myself, and I don't know if the extra 44 attack power, while impressive, is worth 5 points.
Tier two is all kind of iffy. I mean, they're all nice things to have, though I don't use SoCr as much as I should. I don't even judge ever 15 seconds most of the times, so I don't know if the ability to judge every 13 is really an improvement. The additional parry chance is nice, but not something I'd go into the tree just to get.

Looking through the rest of the tree, with only 20 points available, I can't dig deep enough to get anything I'm really pining for. If I'm willing to lose Divine Illumination, I can get Sanctity Aura, and two points from Holy Guidance gets me the improved version. Right now, two points in holy guidance is 47 damage and healing, unbuffed, in my sololing gear, and probably around that in my healing set. Getting Sanctity Aura is actually looking pretty attractive; it means that I lose Divine Illumination, which hurts, and it means that I lose a lot of random holy tree talents that I kind of want in exchange for some ret talents that I kind of want, and it means that my build is the nonsensical sounding 38/0/23, but there are some nice perks and I don't give up the core of my healing abilities. What do you all think. 38/0/23? Or something more like 50/11/0?

2 comments:

Michael Johnson said...

One way to handle it is going the "Shockadin" route:

http://sealofblood.scvs4hire.com/2007/06/what-is-shockadin.html

The basic idea is you stack as much +Spell dmg as you can, and use holy-shock/Judgment/Consecrate to DPS mobs down
Its -decent- for solo farming/questing, not quite as good as a prot/ret kinda build, but if you've been solo-ing with 41 Holy already, you'll probably notice the difference if you add a bit more DPS.

Other than that, if you want to help Off-tank occasionally, putting 20 points into prot's a decent way to do it, you won't be a good off-tank, but it can work in a pinch or if you want to tank a lower-level instance. Imp Righteous Fury is the key thing here, and you can get Toughness/Anticipation/shield-spec depending on what your gear looks like. Guardian's Favor will make the clothies love you. It can really help if you want to raid. You can grab Blessing of Kings too.

Personally, I wouldn't put more than 41 into the holy tree for healing's sake, and you can get by with just going to Holy-Shock as well. I've been able to heal the non-heroic lvl 70 dungeons with just 21 points in holy, but there were some wipes and close-calls that Holy-Shock could have helped with.



In the end, here's what I'd recommend:
If you want to main-heal a raid and you don't have uber-epic-gear already, put a full 41 points in Holy.
If you want to do some off-tanking and you've got GOOD tanking gear, go for 20 in Prot.
If you want to have an easier time solo-ing and still heal, go at least 31 Holy, and dump the rest in Ret for Sanctity Aura

For the record, I'm currently 41/13/7, A full 41 Holy with Imp. BoW, a smattering of prot talents for some survivability, and Imp Judgment in Ret to up my solo DPS.

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