Tag Archives: items

Playstyle

Entitlement Mentality

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I wrote this as a reply to a thread on the PTR forums where the original poster was complaining that you could buy T6 loot with BoJ. I felt it’d fit here as a general statement of my opinion, too.

The only real problem with having high-level loot accessible via badges of justice was that it was going to be more appealing for guilds to farm Karazhan than to progress through Tier 5 content, which is obviously a bad thing. Now that 25-man bosses will drop badges of justice as well, some of that issue goes away (although Kara’s still the best rate of return timewise); that solves most of the issue.

Honestly, anyone QQing over the fact that pre-T6 raiders can buy 5-6 pieces of T6 loot (out of 17 gear slots) by spending 485 badges (ie 22 full Kara clears, or 7-heroics-a-week for 22 weeks)… needs a sense of perspective.

Everyone knows who the good progression guilds on their server are. If you’re in a casual raiding guild that’s in the middle of T5 content right now – like mine is – no-one’s going to ooh and aah over you when you get your phat T6 loot or when your guild uses the leg-up in gearing to finally hit MH and BT… because everyone who cares about that kind of content will have the same opportunities to do it. It ain’t going to be a status thing by then, and that’s fine. The ‘top’ guilds on the server will still get the respect they’re due for the dedication and ability they’ve displayed for their server firsts and their pre-nerf clears (minus any respect they loseWeight Exercise for being arrogant jerks about it)… and that’s not going to change either.

Making better loot available to those of us in the mid-levels of raiding does not mean that BT is suddenly going to be full of scrubs in greens with a handful T6-level badge epics — or if it is, they’re going to have an expensive and wipetacular night, and more power to them if they want to waste their gold like that.

It just means that those of us who started late, or who have reasons to stay in less-progressed guilds, still have a chance to see some of this pretty awesome endgame content before WotLK hits… and none of that is going to threaten the status of the serious achievers in PvE.

There’s a popular quote that says “the right to swing your fist ends where your neighbor’s nose begins”. Stop trying to ruin our fun – it’s not going to be impinging on yours.

Game Info

Gems for Healadins

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I’ve made myself something of an expert on Jewelcrafting, ever since I wrote a levelling guide for jewelcrafting during the TBC beta (which is now somewhat error-prone thanks to Blizzard changing recipes and skill levels around; I’ll redo it someday).

There are a number of gem options that are suitable for healadin pallies, but you should make your choices carefully. Let’s look at a few of them:

Choices

The A Team:
[Teardrop Living Ruby]: red. +18 healing.
[Luminous Noble Topaz]: red, yellow. +9 healing, +4 int.
[Royal Nightseye]: red, blue. +9 healing, +2 mp5.

The three cuts above are all popular with paladin healers, and with good reason. Choosing between them is mostly a matter of personal taste, personal playstyle, and sometimes restrictions on gem color to activate a meta-gem or socket bonus.

[Dazzling Talasite]: yellow, blue. +4 int, +2 mp5.
[Gleaming Dawnstone]: yellow, +8 spell crit.

Both of these are decent second-string contenders, the talasite more so than the dawnstone. You wouldn’t want to focus on using either of these to the exclusion of the better gems, as your +heal would just fall too far; however, they can be useful to boost a problem stat (particularly the talasite) or to meet gem color limitations for socket bonuses or meta gems.

Do not, on the other hand, use [Lustrous Star of Elune]s. Compare them with [Royal Nightseye]s or [Dazzling Talasite]s; you loseWeight Exercise 9 +healing or 4 +int, for what? One measly mp5. Don’t do it. (Also, do not even think of using a [Sparkling Star of Elune]. You will be fired from the paladin club. Seriously.)

Picking Your Gems

Unfortunately, for most holy paladins, there’s no One True Rule for picking gems to put in your healing gear. (The exception is for paladins in a decent amount of T6-level gear, who are advised to stack pure +healing gems, as they don’t generally have mana issues.) Instead, you should consider how fights generally tend to work out for you. Are you desperately throwing mid-rank Flash of Lights while desperately counting the seconds til your potion cooldown refreshes? You might want to add some +mp5 or +spell crit gems to extend your mana longevity. Are you having to use inefficient Holy Light spam just to keep a tank up? Throw in some pure +healing gems to increase your healing output, allowing you to use a more efficient spell rotation. None of the good pally healing gems is a bad choice; it’s just a matter of knowing your personal healing style and how it meshes with the rest of the raid team.

Now, if you look at this Elitist Jerks thread (which is some excellent healadin theorycrafting, if unfortunately aimed at players who have access to the best of the best gear), the poster sets up a system allowing you to numerically compare the value of different gems.

If you put a point value to the gems comparing blue vs epic, say 18 pts for a blue to equate it to healing, you get the following level calculations:

1 healing = 1 pt
1 mp5 = 4.5 pt
1 int = 2.25 pt
1 spell crit rating = 2.25 pt

Because mp5 can only be applied in whole values however, the actual worths of mp5 on epic gems is greatly diminished because of the other stats you are loosing.

This is a really interesting system that’s good for comparing gems at a glance, but one of the big problems with it is that it gives +Int more Lose Weight Exerciseing than it deserves (because Int is magnified 10% by the Divine Intellect talent, and also contributes spell crit (from basic game mechanics), and damage and healing (from the Holy Guidance talent)).

Systems like this are tempting, because it gives you one easy answer: Gem A is categorically better than Gem B, because the formula says so, so there. If you pick your gems based on this system you’ll wind up with a huge mana pool because of the way it favours +Int, and that will contribute to your spell crit and +heal — but, in my opinion, not by enough to warrant the loss of mp5 or +heal directly. Instead, you really need to examine your playstyle and the effects of that playstyle, and decide on gems for yourself. (Which is not to say you shouldn’t socket gems with +int on them; I’ve used quite a few. Just don’t use them to the exclusion of everything else.)

Why Purple Isn’t Always Better (But Sometimes Is)

There’s a strong temptation to make use of the epic gems that you get in Heroic instances. However, most of them aren’t that great, and are definitely inferior to using more appropriate rare gems.

Let’s look at a couple:

[Blessed Tanzanite]: red, blue. +11 heal, +6 sta.
[Durable Fire Opal]: red, yellow. +11 heal, +4 resil.
[Soothing Amethyst]: red, blue. +11 heal, +6 sta. (This one’s actually from a Karazhan quest to kill Nightbane, not a Heroic drop.)

Don’t they look great? Look at that awesome +11 heal! And they’re epic!

…Yeah. And look at the other stats. +6 sta? +4 resilience? Useless to a PvE healer. (Unless you’re specifically gearing up a stamina set, of course, but as a general rule you shouldn’t be consciously sacrificing healing power for stamina unless your survival is more of a progression stopper than your tank’s is.) Leave the stamina and resilience for PvP healers, and stick with PvE healer stats.

On the other hand, there are some really really nice epic gems that are very suitable:

[Iridescent Fire Opal]: red, yellow. +11 heal, +4 spell crit. From Heroic Hellfire Ramparts.
[Rune Covered Chrysoprase]: yellow, blue. +5 spell crit, +2 mp5. From Heroic Shadow Labs.

These are both very tasty, because you don’t find spell crit on healer gems when you’re looking at the BoE gems from jewelcrafter cuts. (Don’t believe me? Check the chart!)

(There’s also [Luminous Fire Opal], [Royal Tanzanite] and [Dazzling Chrysoprase] from Shattered Halls, Slave Pens, and Old Hillsbrad heroics respectively. You should recognise all three as being epic ‘upgrades’ of the cuts recommended above in the ‘Choices’ section.)

Meta Gems

There are two reasonable options in the meta gem selection (although many helms these days don’t actually have meta sockets).

[Bracing Earthstorm Diamond] – this gem is a lot easier to get now that the prerequisites have been relaxed (now it only requires more red gems than blue; it used to require more yellow gems than blue as well, which was very hard to juggle). However, it still requires some jiggery-pokery to get it working, and the reduced-threat bonus isn’t nearly as appealing for paladins as it is for other healing classes.

The most popular choice is [Insightful Earthstorm Diamond]. The Int bonus is nice, the proc goes off a lot, and the activation is easy to manage. It’s an all-around winner.

Socket Bonuses

Socket Bonuses tend to act like a homing beacon. You see your shiny new shoulders with two yellow sockets, and you think “omg, must socket yellow gems!” and before you know it, you’ve put in two [Luminous Noble Topaz]es without actually checking to see if you need more int – or would mp5 suit you better?

There are some socket bonuses you just don’t need. For instance, I just picked up [Crystalforge Pauldrons] – two yellow sockets and a +4 stam socket bonus. I really don’t care about that 40 health, so I’m under no obligation to socket yellow-compatible gems in there. On the other hand, you better believe I stuck to the socket colors for my Mask of Introspection – the socket bonus is +9 healing; that’s half a rare gem right there!

In other words: yet again, there are no hard-and-fast rules. Look at the socket bonus and decide if it’s worth getting, then look at the gems you’d put in to achieve it, then decide if you’re sacrificing too much for the socket bonus to be worth it overall.

Game Info

Nethers as BoE Drops

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Primal Nethers and Nether Vortexes are currently Bind on Equip on the PTR, instead of BoP (confirmation here), and this has sparked quite a lot of discussion; I just watched a debate scroll past in guildchat while in an instance.

To be honest, I like the change; it’s something I’ve been hoping for for a while. It puts the onus to get the nether on the person who wants something crafted. I realise it may affect people who’ve made a lot of money from crafting and charging a premium for their nethers, but there are other ways of making money.

Two things I’ve found problematic about nethers being BoP:

  1. guild crafters are expected to provide nethers for guildmembers who want things crafted, regardless of whether the nether (which has usually been ‘earnt’ on a guild run) is going to a cause that benefits the guild or not.
  2. it becomes hard to allocate BoP crafting patterns if they’re for recipes that require nethers; you have to try and assign the patterns to people who are reliably going to have access to nethers, without offending the crafters who don’t make the effort to do heroics.

This change cuts through all that: you provide the mats, the crafter makes it for you. If you don’t put the work in to get the nether, you don’t get the item made. The crafter is under no pressure to provide a nether, either. And, finally, if you want nether-requiring gear on your alts you can now go and instance for the nethers on your main, without having to take a badly-geared alt into a heroic and drag the group down.

Game Info

Sneaky Gear Buffs in 2.4

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With thanks to Big Bear Butt for pointing this out: WoWhead has a nice list of items that have been changed in patch 2.4. There’s been so much attention on all the new content in 2.4 that this hasn’t got much mention yet.

Well, check this out, happy healadins:

[Libram of Mending]
Old version: Your Holy Light spell grants 22 mana per 5 sec. for 10 sec.
New version: Your Holy Light spell grants 22 mana per 5 sec. for 30 sec.

For 20 Badges of Justice, you can permanently up your mp5 by 22, just by casting a Holy Light – downranked or otherwise – every 30 seconds. I found my Libram of Mending useful enough before this change; after 2.4 it’s just going to be magic. I heartily endorse this event or product.

(A note on how to use it: you can switch relics in combat, so I start casting my Holy Light spell and then equip this libram while the HL is casting – equipping an item will trigger the GCD, but your Holy Light cast time is longer than 1.5 seconds so it ‘absorbs’ the GCD. Then I cast the next spell and flip back to my previous libram while that next spell is casting.

I do this with a fairly clunky macro, but you can do it just by putting the librams into actionbar slots if you prefer. I recommend swapping between this and a [Libram of Souls Redeemed] if you’re healing a target buffed with Blessing of Light, or a libram that boosts Flash of Light or Holy Light if not.)

And wow, all of a sudden the Libram from Lurker Below becomes awesome:

[Libram of Absolute Truth]
Old version: Reduces the mana cost of Holy Light by 27.
New version: Reduces the mana cost of Holy Light by 84.

I need to check some WWS parses to confirm, but my rough estimation tells me I probably cast about 8 Holy Lights per minute. This would be a mana saving of 672 mana per minute, or an equivalent of 56 mp5 that I wouldn’t need to have.

Wow. This thing’s going up to the top of my wishlist, that’s fer shure. Switch between that and the [Libram of Mending], and that’s a really nice boost to mp5 come 2.4.

Now all I need is the Libram. C’mooooon Lurker…

Game Info

One (More) Good Reason to Play the Lunar Festival

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So, tonight I noticed one more good reason to go and collect at least some of these coins.

Festival Dumplings.

You can get 8 dumplings for one Coin of Ancestry from Valadar Starsong in Nighthaven (53,35 in Moonglade). They stack to 20, so 5 coins will get you 2 stacks.

Now, look at the effect. 4% of your mana returned every second for 25 seconds. Drink for the entire 25 seconds, and that’s a guaranteed mana bar refill. Compare that with Conjured Manna Biscuits, which would only give you 100% mana return in 25 seconds if you had 6,000 mana or less. For someone like me, with a 12K mana pool, I’m getting mana back twice as fast as I am with mage bickies.

(And, of course, all of the above applies to people who are after the health regen rather than the mana regen, too.)

Obviously, the big downside is that they’re soulbound – but if your bank isn’t full to the brim already, why not go and spend a coin or 50 and stock up on some of these bickies? They’re incredibly useful for farming, soloing, or even instancing when you don’t have a mage in the group – and they’re one of those quest rewards that people just look right past, time and again. I know I’ll be buying as many as I can fit in my bag, and nibbling happily on dumplings for weeks to come.

Game Info, Playstyle

For God’s Sake, Get Me Out Of Karazhan

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As you’ve probably seen eleswhere, much is being made of Drysc’s little comment that Patch 2.4 would include “BT-quality badge loot”.

I’m… torn.

On the one hand, yay. It’s always nice to have more avenues to gear up – and this makes it easier for endgame-clearing guilds to gear up rerolls and new recruits. Not that I’m in an endgame-clearing guild, but I can see it’d be an issue.

On the other hand, there’s a couple of negatives, and the biggest for me is: Now it’s going to be even harder to ignore Karazhan and Zul’Aman. I am sick to death of Karazhan. I would be quite happy never to set foot in there again. But it’s the single best source of badges; four hours in Karazhan nets over a dozen badges – more if you’re clearing fast, with a well-geared team. There aren’t many other places where you can get more than three badges an hour – Heroic SH (if you have a tankadin handy) is the standout there.

If badge loot is going to be so very alluring, there really needs to be a 25-man route to get badges, because right now there’s a big conflict between the time demands of raiding (to see and beat the content) and the time demands of badge farming (to gear up). Feeling the pressure to cancel, say, Gruul or Void Reaver so we can send two or three Kara teams off to farm badges instead… well, that’s not a step forward.

Game Info

The Mighty Tabard Collection

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Everyone has their little foibles, right?

Well, apparently I’m addicted to tabards. Some time before TBC was released, I realised I had almost every tabard in the game (available to my faction, obviously). What a worthy goal it would be to fill out that collection, I thought.

I’ve always been a bit of a reputation junkie; this just sealed the deal. I’m still missing a few of the tabards, but let’s take a bit of a tour through the wardrobe:

Tabard of the Argent Dawn Tabard of the Protector

Left: Tabard of the Argent Dawn, awarded during the Scourge Invasion when Naxxramas was introduced in patch 1.11. Right: Tabard of the Protector, awarded during the opening of the Dark Portal at the launch of The Burning Crusade. As you can see, they’re identical, except that the Tabard of the Protector has a Use: effect on a 5-minute cooldown that looks like a Holy Nova. Neither tabard is available now.

Private's Tabard Knight's Colors Stormpike Battle Tabard

Left: Private’s Tabard, purchasable under the old honor system at Private rank, or now for 3 AB Marks of Honor and 3 WSG Marks of Honor. Centre: Knight’s Colors, purchasable under the old honor system at Knight rank, or now for 20 AV Marks, 20 AB Marks and 20 WSG Marks. Right: Stormpike Battle Tabard, previously purchasable at Exalted Stormpike reputation (the Alliance faction in Alteract Valley), now purchasable with 60 AV Marks of Honor.

Tabard of Frost Tabard of Flame

Left: Tabard of Frost, purchasable from Upper Deck Entertainment with points obtained from buying packs of the WoW Trading Card Game. Right: Tabard of Flame, obtained via a rare “loot card” in the WoW Trading Card Game. In both cases you get a special code from UDE, the publisher of the game. You redeem the code and get an in-game code, which you take to Landro Longshot (a goblin in Booty Bay); he gives you your reward.

Green Trophy Tabard of the Illidari Tabard of the Scarlet Crusade

Left: Green Trophy Tabard of the Illidari, a quest reward from Battle of the Crimson Watch (a fun group quest in Shadowmoon Valley). Right: Tabard of the Scarlet Crusade, a random drop off Scarlet Trainees in Scarlet Monastery, the non-elite who run in to be AoEd to death after you kill Herod in the Armory wing.

Cenarion Expedition Tabard Consortium Tabard Honor Hold Tabard

Cenarion Expedition Tabard, Consortium Tabard, and Honor Hold Tabard respectively: all attainable at Exalted with the relevant faction.

Kurenai Tabard Lower City Tabard Ogri'la Tabard

Kurenai Tabard, Lower City Tabard, and Ogri’la Tabard respectively: all attainable at Exalted with the relevant faction.

Scryers Tabard Sha'tar Tabard

Scryers Tabard and Sha’tar Tabard respectively: both attainable at Exalted with the relevant faction.

Skyguard Tabard Sporeggar Tabard

Skyguard Tabard and Sporeggar Tabard respectively: both attainable at Exalted with the relevant faction.

Update: 24 Sept 08

Keepers of Time Tabard Tabard of Summer Skies Competitor's Tabard

Left: Keepers of Time Tabard, attainable at Exalted with Keepers of Time. Center: Tabard of Summer Skies, a reward from this quest to kill Lord Ahune, a seasonal boss during the Midsummer Fire Festival. Right: Competitor’s Tabard, a reward for competing in a Battleground during the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Tabards I Haven’t Got (Yet)

  • Arathor Battle Tabard: requires Exalted with the Alliance AB faction. Such a grind. Ugh.
  • Silverwing Battle Tabard: requires 60 WSG Honor tokens. I just haven’t got around to this one yet.
  • Tabard of Brilliance (white), Tabard of Fury (yellow), Tabard of Nature (green), Tabard of the Arcane (purple), Tabard of the Defender (orange), and Tabard of the Void (black). All are purchased using UDE points from the WoW card game. They have the same design as the Tabards of Flame and Frost (above), just in different colours. Tthey’re being implemented in stages; as of September 08, the Tabards of Brilliance and the Defender aren’t in-game yet.
  • Purple Trophy Tabard of the Illidari: One of two random quest rewards, the other being the Green variant listed above. You can only get one of the two, so I can never get this.
  • Tabard of Summer Flames: One of two rewards from a one-off quest during the Midsummer Fire Festival. You can only choose one tabard each year, so I have to wait til next year for this.
  • Aldor Tabard: I’m a Scryer, so I can’t get the Aldor tabard without doing a very long handin grind to abandon my Scryer standing. I already did that once in reverse, from Revered Aldor (for Jewelcrafting recipes) to Exalted Scryers (for Jewelcrafting recipes and the shoulder enchants).
  • Tabard of Stormwind: Not in game yet.
  • Tabard of the Hand: a Draenei-only tabard; part of the quest reward from the final quest on Bloodmyst Isle, which is not available to non-Draenei.
  • Blood Knight Tabard: part of the reward for the level 60 epic mount quest for blood elf paladins. Obviously, I am not a blood elf, so no dice.
  • Any of the seven Horde-specific factional tabards (Defilers [AB], Warsong [WSG], Frostwolf [AV], Mag’har [equivalent of Kurenai], Thrallmar [equivalent of Honor Hold], Scout [equivalent of Private], and Stone Guard [equivalent of Knight]).

I think I need a new hobby.

Playstyle

Heroic loot imbalances

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Now this is something that really bugs me. Heroic instances are a regular part of life for many (most?) level 70s; they’re the next step after gearing up at 70, and provide a good transition between standard instances and raids. There are heroic versions of every TBC dungeon, from Hellfire Ramparts through to Shattered Halls and Arcatraz.

Unfortunately, the loot is a little imbalanced. Heroic versions of pre-70 dungeons (ie Hellfire Ramparts, Blood Furnace, Slave Pens, Underbog, Mana-Tombs, Auchenai Crypts, Old Hillsbrad, and Sethekk Halls) have all-new loot tables on every boss; the early bosses will drop a level 70 blue item (iLevel 115), with a chance to drop an epic gem, while the final boss will drop similar stuff and a nice Heroic-level epic (iLevel 110). (And every boss drops a Badge of Justice.)

Heroic versions of level 70 dungeons, however, are a bit different. (ie Shadow Labyrinth, Black Morass, Steamvault, Shattered Halls, Mechanar, Botanica and Arcatraz.) The final boss has the same sort of tasty loot tables as the final bosses in other Heroics, but the earlier bosses have exactly the same loot tables as they do in Normal-mode versions of the instance! The only difference is that they have a chance to drop an epic gem, and they drop a Badge of Justice.

This has always felt like a real gyp to me. Heroic dungeons are not easy until you’re fairly well geared, and when you’re running them to try and gear up (rather than just farming them for badges and nethers) it feels like a total ripoff to slog your ass off to a boss, often dealing with brutal trash on the way… only to get just the same junk you’d get from a Normal-mode run of the instance. It makes PuGs a particularly dicey proposition; if you’re not confident that your group is going to go the distance to the final boss, there’s almost no point in starting.

It’s not a huge deal, but I do hope that if Blizzard retains the Heroic-mode concept for WotLK, the Heroic versions of level 80 dungeons will have more generous loot tables.

Game Info, Playstyle

2.3: Healers Get Some Loving

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With 2.3 scheduled to roll in a couple of days, one of the changes I’m eagerly anticipating is the revision of healer gear. Almost all healing gear is being modified to add spell damage as well, approximately equal to one-third of the item’s +heal value. As an example, Breastplate of the Lightbinder (a plate healing chestpiece with +88 healing) is being updated to add 30 spell damage in addition to the +heal.

This is a welcome change for almost every healer in the game; healers have long bemoaned their itemisation, and the frustration of one’s complete inability to quest and farm has led to a lot of healer burnout (which is bad for pretty much everyone, as high healer turnover harms raid groups and guilds alike).

This change, however, is going to make raiding life a lot more interesting, from two perspectives:

Paladins
Holy paladins can generate a pretty solid amount of DPS (stop laughing, I promise it’s true) with what’s known as the shockadin playstyle, relying on Holy Shock and Seal/Judgement of Righteousness to deliver a decent amount of holy spell damage (which has the advantage that Holy resistances are very rare, too). As an example, with about +750 spell damage on my DPS set, I can pull around 350 sustained DPS – which is far from great, but I’m specced for healing/offtanking. If I ditched the OT part of my spec and sacrificed a little bit of healing efficiency, I’d be looking at more like 450 DPS – considerably more against demons and undead. (In fact, I’m going to go test this on the PTR after I’ve written this post.) In comparison, in healing gear one’s DPS looks more like the 80-100 range.

However, raiding shockadins are so rare as to be all but non-existent; holy paladins on raids are pretty much always healers. At the moment, despite the fact that we wear plate and a goodly portion of our raid synergy (the seal/judgement mechanic) comes from melee, there’s zero incentive to get into close combat – the bonus of a judgement on the target is generally not worth the added healing load of an extra body in melee. So healadins sit back, the seals and judgement on their actionbars going virtually unused.

This may change in 2.3 – obviously, a healer paladin is still going to need to spend most of their time healing. However, the potential to actually deal some worthwhile damage while still in healing gear really suits the paladin’s nature as a hybrid; assigned to spot-healing (or a pull with lower healing needs)? Join in melee, put up judgement of light on the target, and half your healing work is done – you can whale away with seal/judgement of righteousness while your melee swings keep judgement of light active, and just throw some flashes of light to top people up. Obviously, this isn’t going to happen on every fight – or even most fights – but the fact that it’s at least a worthwhile option adds some much-needed versatility to a spec whose contribution to a raid consists of mashing two buttons.

Speaking as a healadin, thumbs up.

Off-Healers
Many raids have one or more off-healers – people who can heal if needed, but are far better suited to pewpewing away. Shadow priests, elemental shammies and boomkin are the classic examples (since holy shockadins just don’t tend to raid, and ret pallies/feral druids/enhancement shammies have totally different gear needs for their roles). Using these people to best advantage tends to be a dilemma for heal leads and raid leaders: what happens when you have a target who needs a bit of healing, but not much? Why, you put an off-healer on the job. But what do they do in between, or after the healing? They pewpew half-heartedly while stuck in heal gear.

The High King Maulgar fight is a perfect example, for those of you familiar with Gruul’s Lair. The offtank for Blindeye needs some healing, but not that much, and not for long; Blindeye is the first kill target, and doesn’t do much damage even while he’s up. An off-healer would be perfect for healing the Blindeye offtank, but what gear should they wear? If they wear healing gear, they’ve got all the DPS ability of a bag of wet feathers and they may as well AFK for a coffee once their heal target’s done tanking Blindeye. If they wear DPS gear, they’ve got sod-all in the way of mana efficiency and conservation for healing (since healing and DPS mana regen/conservation mechanics tend to be different for most classes), so by the time they’re done healing they’re low on mana, and there’s nothing sadder than seeing a shadowpriest resorting to wanding.

2.3 fixes this kind of dilemma. You put your offhealers in healing gear, and they’ve got the mana longevity and efficiency to finish their healing duties with a goodly amount of mana left – and then they can turn to pewpewing and still do 60-75% of the damage they’d do in full DPS gear. (Of course, this assumes that your offhealer is nearly as well-geared for healing as they are for DPS, but in my experience that’s generally true.) Suddenly, your hybrids really are hybrids, able to do more than one job reasonably effectively, rather than people who can do more than one job – but only one at a time.

Speaking as a healer lead, thumbs up.