Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Let's talk buffs

Everyone loves our buffs, and everyone seems to have a better understanding of what buff they need than we do. Never mind that we've been passing these things out for years. Sure, it's a lot nicer now that Blessing of Sanctuary is out (what a nightmare that was). Even as a non-paladin I remember that hassle. I'd either be begging for it when I was a Fury warrior - or dealing with rogues/hunters that swore they didn't need it and wanted might instead.

Idiots.

Anyway, our basic buffs are Kings (+10% to all stats), Sanctuary (+10% Str/Stam), Wisdom (92 mp5) and Might (550 AP). Around level 60 or so we get the ability to cast Greater Blessing of xyz which now lasts for 30 minutes instead of 10. Here's a salute to all the Paladins who had 5/10 min buffs to deal with in MC - what a debacle that was to watch. It's also important to note that Greater Blessings have a reagent cost of one Symbol of Kings (thank God there's no symbol for each blessing...) which have a monster cost of 24s (before faction rep cost reduction) for a stack of 20. This means to buff a 5 man, with five differnt classes in it, will set you back a whopping 6s per 30 min.

Adds up over time though, might have to kill one or two extra mobs for their greys after the raid tonight. /sarcasm

Now, any raiding Paladin worth his plate (any Paladin really) will have PallyPower installed. This mod is older than MC, and has kept more than on Paladin sane over the years. Quite simply, it lets you set the buffs (including special 10 min buffs for individuals) for every Paladin in the raid who is using it. You can also assign auras, so at least you know who was 'supposed' to be running Devo. Most importantly - it tells you the time remaining on every single buff you have out.

That's right. Every. Single. Buff

You can now spot buff that hunter who died with a 10 min buff to tide him over until everyone gets a new 30 min buff. The only drawback is it won't let you buff in combat - so you still have to manually hit the guy who just got battle rezzed.

As you may have guessed, there's a story that goes with this.

In one of my many PUG Heroic Daily runs, we had a small situation where the healadin face pulled and died, the hunter pulled agro and died, and I stood there in my PvP ret spec healing the rogue and tankadin. We pull through it, rez the dead, and keep rolling. Note that as soon as both the healer and hunter were up, I dropped quick 10 min buffs on them (and the stupid pet).

We move along, kill the nexus mana portal type guy, and are on our way to the tree-shaper when the hunter starts complaining about his buff. "New buff pl0x" (oh yes, he did) "Why ghetto buff" "Need new buff" "Might on pet".

After gently explaining to him that he had 3 min left on his buff, and he wasn't getting a new 30 min buff because he wasted his last one by dying - he started getting really irate. First he called me lazy, even though it's obviously more 'work' to keep up 10 min buffs. Then he called me cheap, until I pointed out he wasn't using Mammoth Cutters "Those are too expensive for heroics" was his response. Well, so is my 2.4s Symbol of Kings. Two if I buff your mangy pet.

My biggest beef? The rogue didn't care. He had a 10 min rebuff, and just kept on keeping on. Once the hunter started getting really pissed I started listing off the lack of buffs he gave me. "You're survival - so I get no TSA, no Ferocius Inspiration - nothing. You give me nothing hunter, and you don't even out DPS me. I give you 550 AP, 3% crit, 3% haste - you're just using me" etc. The other four were apparantly in vent together where this guy was calling me everything under the sun, while I happily face-rolled my way to deliciousness.

The moral

I don't really know that I have one. I don know that nothing will make me slower or less likely to buff than someone demanding their buff seconds after zoning in or being rezzed. Same is true in BGs - they guy who stands there going "Kings. Kings. Kings" over and over is about as likely to get buffs from me as I am to get a table from a mage by standing there and yelling for it.

Ask nicely. Ask once.

And Pallies - keep your buffs up. Even if they are 10 minute ones.

14 comments:

  1. Honestly, as OCD as most paladins are, most of the time you don't even need to ask. Of course, this assumes that the paladin is running Pally Power. One further note, I spit on all of those shaman that drop improved mana spring totem when we have four paladins in a raid. There are other more raid-valuable totems out there, and your mana spring totem wipes out a paladin's blessing. Please be a considerate shaman, our repair costs are more than yours.

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  2. I'm pretty bad about Blessings (in a good way). I keep a pile of 200 symbols on my person at all times, and whenever someone's blessing drops under the 10 minute mark, I rebless just to be safe. I probably spend a small fortune on symbols.

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  3. As long as I get Might on my dog all is well with the world.

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  4. I'm just glad to be buffed - how the pally goes about doing it is entirely up the pally. I'd rather not have might though ;)

    Gah, the sense of entitlement in WoW really ticks me off sometimes.

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  5. I'd honestly never rolled a paladin if I had known the amount of grief it would cause me in a raid. Luckily, I'm mostly prot, so Sanct for everyone :)

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  6. Fucktards are like bad herbs... they grow everywhere. Anyway I still consider the pally buffs to be cheap. Druid's GMotW is much expensive, although you only need one reagent for the whole raid/group. If you get several wipes in the end is more expensive.
    Instead of PallyPower I use ZOMGBuffs and to check for overwriting buffs I use Utopia (both from the same coder). it's great because it works for all classes and makes buffing very very easy.

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  7. @Fogge - if you're in a 25 where you've got 4 paladins to cover every buff, that works. We have 2 in our 10 man, which means our buffs are confusing. I give 30 min kings to the retadin, then sanct myself - he then gives me 30 min kings and mights (10 min, but 30 w/ glyph) himself.

    We then have to run a mix of kings/might/wisdom depending on if our shamans are resto/ele/enhance for the fight, wisdom on our boomkin - might on our feral. It gets a little confusing, but because we're delicious - we get it sorted.

    @Kurnak - you're right, the cost is really trivial - especially considering the vendor cost of a single grey weapon from the run will probably cover your reagents for the week. I'm kind of surprised they didn't give a minor glyph to remove the reagent cost from buffs - but then that would essentially become a mandatory glyph. TBH though, most majors are mandatory for min/maxing - so it's a tossup.

    If ZOMGBuffs talks with Pally Power I might check it out. PP is nice simply because as long as every Paladin has it - I can assign buffs quickly at the start of the night. I use BigBrother to check that everyone has their buffs.

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  8. zomg buffs does talk with pally power, has very similar set up the buffs interface and it does extras. I switched from pally power and never looked back (one of the things I adore about zomgbuffs is that it works for all my characters, not just my pally).

    I do get so damnd annoyed when people start asking me for rebuffs when we're about to pull a final boss in a heroic and they have 5 or more minutes left on their buffs. or general when they ask for rebuffs before their old buffs ran out. dude. I'm not blind and I can count and i've done this place before. I'll rebuff you when its time, if necessary.

    when I play my hunter btw, i prefer kings. alwasy have. a lot of pallies insist on giving me might and I've basically given up on trying to convince them otherwise (other hunters who want might to the exclusion of everything else don't help either)

    sanctuary is the last blessing I'll ask for sorry. even wisdom does more for me then sanc does. any hunter worth his salt will be able to avoid avoidable damage so 3% damage taken reduction is not even close to being worth it losing extra intellect and agility from kings..or ap from might..or even less time spent in viper when you get wisdom.

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  9. Leah, I think there are times that if I had to pick between Wisdom or Sanc I would pick Sanc as a Hunter. The last 30% of Anub for example, just because of the mechanics of the fight I don't have mana issues (as MM no less) and the 3% reduced damage helps when there is no way possible to avoid the damage.

    Most of the time, yeah, Kings/Might then Wisdom over Sanc.

    As far as the Might/Kings argument, when I'm MM I prefer Might (bonus to serpent sting and chimera) and Kings when I'm Survival (bonus agi to expose weakness). Thats just me though, and it's not gonna be huge one way or the other.

    But seriously, my wolf needs Might.

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  10. Oh, and @ Tamarind

    "I'm just glad to be buffed - how the pally goes about doing it is entirely up the pally. I'd rather not have might though ;)

    Gah, the sense of entitlement in WoW really ticks me off sometimes."

    If I'm doing a heroic or Naxx or hell even Ulduar normal modes I don't really care, but Ulduar hard modes and going for Tribute to Mad Skill and other hard mode achievements in ToC and yeah, I'm gonna be pretty picky about my buffs.

    As a dps I'm there to do a job, and I need the correct tools to do my job to the best of my ability. If my buffers can't realize this, then they aren't the type of people I am gonna be raiding with anyways.

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  11. @Leah - good to know - I'll check it out. I'm always up for testing and trying new mods that work better than what I've got. Not only is sanct not worth it over other buffs - but if you have a disc priest - you're getting the same 3% reduction from their bubbles - which should be out everywhere.

    I think the argument of might vs kings goes beyond the level of the average player. There is also a point where the 10% agility will start to pass direct AP (now that it provides RAP as well as AP)

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  12. You yelled at me two weeks ago for asking for something over Sanc on Anub!!

    Thats it, we're breaking up.

    As far as Might/Kings in my build Might is actually 85 dps when you factor in Mark of the Wild. Without it Might is 4 dps higher (according to http://www.femaledwarf.com/ which is pretty spot on). So, I stand corrected on Kings/Might IF a druid is present.

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  13. *sigh* 85 dps less than Kings, stupid typo.

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  14. Hey!

    One trick with PallyPower - when you mouse over a class, all the members pop out. During a fight, left-clicking on the red name plate of Mr. Died in a Fire drops a greater blessing, right-clicking drops a normal blessing. I do wish the general class-based buffing wouldn't disable in combat, or had an option to not do so.

    Otherwise, good story with the hunter - some people are elitist about their buffs, even when it doesn't make sense to be. A heroic dungeon isn't the place anymore to get worked up about having or not having buffs these days. :P

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