Herbal Expertise Max?

[Daine]

Hello all from a budding defiler whose main is a fury.  I'm raising a defiler to raid with my guild when we have too many druids present or not enough shamans, and I've been messing around with my AAs a bit.  I started with the STR line, then got soul ward, then got cannibalize.  Now I'm starting on the STA line for Herbal Expertise...the defiler's slow heals seem UBER slow to someone whose main is a fury.  Herbal Expertise starts at 10% reduction, but what does it max out as with 8 points?  Thank you very much for the help <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img mce_tsrc=" />

[tjhanson2001]

<p>It maxes out at 80%. It doesnt effect heals though. Only your basic cures. Still pretty nice though since it only takes .55 seconds to cast and costs 20power with a .28 recovery.</p>

[Daine]

Aaah I misunderstood the AA, I read 'cure' as 'heal.'  I was like there's no way that maxes out at 80%, that's SO broken...your clarification changes that <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/2786c5c8e1a8be796fb2f726cca5a0fe.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />It is still very useful though.  My fury has to spam trauma cures for a few EoF raids so the tank doesn't get instakilled, and that sucks a lot of power.  With my defiler and this AA, Inner Sanctum should be much easier!Thank you very much for the reply  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Libras]

To be honest, that whole line is quite useless to raiding.  The reason your fury spams cures is so the defiler doesn't have, and doesn't have time to.  There's lots on the plate of a raid defiler: ward spamming, straight heals, keeping up debuffs, keeping mana in check (canni/forced canni).  They have absolutely zero time to spam cures.  It's a semi-decent line if you're just into grouping and stuff, but not for raiding.  Coagulate is useless in raids as it scaled AWFUL with RoK, and unless your healers are bad, nobody in the MT group should EVER drop that low without it already being an unpreventable wipe.  IMO, you're much better off going all the way down the wis/str line and going down agi and max out heal crit.

[Beastmage]

<cite></cite><p><b><i>Double post ftl</i></b></p>

[Beastmage]

<cite>Libras@Najena wrote:</cite><blockquote>To be honest, that whole line is quite useless to raiding.  The reason your fury spams cures is so the defiler doesn't have, and doesn't have time to.  There's lots on the plate of a raid defiler: ward spamming, straight heals, keeping up debuffs, keeping mana in check (canni/forced canni).  They have absolutely zero time to spam cures.  It's a semi-decent line if you're just into grouping and stuff, but not for raiding.  Coagulate is useless in raids as it scaled AWFUL with RoK, and unless your healers are bad, nobody in the MT group should EVER drop that low without it already being an unpreventable wipe.  IMO, you're much better off going all the way down the wis/str line and going down agi and max out heal crit.</blockquote><p>I strongly disagree with this statement.  In most fights i find myself with plenty of time to throw in cures and debuffs.   I don't understand why people tote the str line when it only increases your healing 4-6% zonewide, or less if your on top of things.  God forbid the wolf dies mid fight, the whole line becomes wasted points until you get it up again.</p><p>Let's not ignore that there are times where getting a cure(s) off quickly can be more effective than throwing on a heal or a ward.  That alone would make cutting your cure time in half worth it.</p><p>Power problems? Not since rok!  There are plenty of items from questing/faction/drop that proc power when you cast a healing spell.  Hell, with my power items on I can cast a group ward and gain power from it.  If casting soul canni and canni are a time consuming part of your fight than you need to work on your items so that it isn't.</p><p>I would agree that coagulate didn't scale very well, but when your facing a mob like the overking, and your tank can get quad hit totaling over 20k dmg you want to throw every scrap of hp you can at him, unconcious or not.  And its a thing of beauty when you land a soul ward on an unconcious tank.</p><p>Defilers are great healers because they're versatile.  Not only can you pump out that crazy 1600+ hps when needed, but you can be one of the best curers/hp buffers/debuffers/power efficient toons in the raid.  Thats why your in the mt grp, thats why your valuable.</p>

[cggerth]

I admit I would love for that unconscious health to scale better but I VERY strongly disagree with your "it's useless in raids"  have you ever used it in a raid or groups?  That thing usually saves the group atleast once if not more times per raid right now.  My guild is still in the learning stages of the raids so we need all the health we can get right now.  I've seen our dirge drop to purple a fraction of a sec before my group heal goes off, with the AA he pops back up and doesn't die.  I've seen our MT drop to purple, and that AA gave the healers another fraction of a sec to drop that extra heal on him to bring him back up.  I redid my AA's a few weeks ago and dropped the last ability of the wis line to pick up this ability.  To be honest, this ability has done more for my groups/raid then that ability did. 

[Meniphisto]

<cite>Beastmage wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Libras@Najena wrote:</cite><blockquote>To be honest, that whole line is quite useless to raiding.  The reason your fury spams cures is so the defiler doesn't have, and doesn't have time to.  There's lots on the plate of a raid defiler: ward spamming, straight heals, keeping up debuffs, keeping mana in check (canni/forced canni).  They have absolutely zero time to spam cures.  It's a semi-decent line if you're just into grouping and stuff, but not for raiding.  Coagulate is useless in raids as it scaled AWFUL with RoK, and unless your healers are bad, nobody in the MT group should EVER drop that low without it already being an unpreventable wipe.  IMO, you're much better off going all the way down the wis/str line and going down agi and max out heal crit.</blockquote><p>I strongly disagree with this statement.  In most fights i find myself with plenty of time to throw in cures and debuffs.   I don't understand why people tote the str line when it only increases your healing 4-6% zonewide, or less if your on top of things.  God forbid the wolf dies mid fight, the whole line becomes wasted points until you get it up again.</p><p>Let's not ignore that there are times where getting a cure(s) off quickly can be more effective than throwing on a heal or a ward.  That alone would make cutting your cure time in half worth it.</p><p>Power problems? Not since rok!  There are plenty of items from questing/faction/drop that proc power when you cast a healing spell.  Hell, with my power items on I can cast a group ward and gain power from it.  If casting soul canni and canni are a time consuming part of your fight than you need to work on your items so that it isn't.</p><p>I would agree that coagulate didn't scale very well, but when your facing a mob like the overking, and your tank can get quad hit totaling over 20k dmg you want to throw every scrap of hp you can at him, unconcious or not.  And its a thing of beauty when you land a soul ward on an unconcious tank.</p><p>Defilers are great healers because they're versatile.  Not only can you pump out that crazy 1600+ hps when needed, but you can be one of the best curers/hp buffers/debuffers/power efficient toons in the raid.  Thats why your in the mt grp, thats why your valuable.</p></blockquote>I've never been a fan of Herbal Expertise. Really always considered it a waste of AA's, but that could be that I just hate curing. And often in a raid set up, expecially in the higher teirs of T8, I've got better things to do with my time then curing Pin. Thats not to say that I think curing is unimportant and that I don't cure (Venril anyone?), but for the most part I do leave the curing up to the group warden.Coagulate is worthless in a raiding situation, unless you are still learning and gearing up. At the beginning, you need all the help you can get until you understand everything about the encounter, how to time things perfectly, how to work well with the other healers. When everyone is scrambling to try to kill a mob, the extra purple health may be the difference between wipe and success, but imo, RoA is better for that kind of situation then Coag could ever be.As for aa spec in general, you really are best set as going down the full lines of STR/WIS, and then capping heal crits in AGI. The dog itself is invaluable when you get to mobs like Venril (Its so awesome when only the tank gets hit with Toxic), not to mention the haste and 4-6% heals for FREE is just great. RoA is probably one of our most versitile abilities. Having trouble keeping the tank in green? Cast it on your templar. Having trouble with aggro? Cast it on the tank. Lots more uses then with STA line. Now if HE helped with group cures, that would be a different story, or even WoTA. I use more of those then my single cures.And, as much as I hate to admit it, we aren't in the MT group for the reasons you said. HPS really mean absolutely nothing more then "this persons group keeps dying, are they even paying attention?" You can't compare heals to anyone else in the raid. Our wards are the first line of defense, so we should be either 1st or 2nd (even 3rd in some evil aoe fights). Who else can you compare that to, the mystic? I would hope they're not using the single ward very often (yes, there are exceptions). Compare it to the clerics or druids? Druids will be high for AoE fights, Inquis... well, thats pretty rare to see them high. Templars with their lvl 80 spell are our only competition... and why would we even compare? Our debuffs are awesome, yes, but that doesn't help us to be in the MT group. Cures? I'm still in the mind to say let the druid take care of most of it. Power efficent? Most healers should be that by now, expecially raiders. Queen's set, legendary drops, ect... lots of ways to keep power. The only, and I repeat this, the only reason we are constantly in the MT group is because of our heath buffs. Every other reason you stated could be just as useful in the OT group.

[Libras]

The fact of the matter is, you shouldn't have to wait as long you did to get your group heal off, your templar/warden should have already taken care of that a long time ago.  The dirge dropping to purple was his fault for not getting out of the aoe.  If you're not awful at controlling or positioning your dog, it's another shroud of armor to protect from an aoe, or to avoid an aoe completely.  The only cures a defiler should ever be casting are group noxious/trauma which is not affected by this line...all the other cures (99% of the time on the mt) should be spammed by a druid out of group.  Going down that line is basically admitting your healers are bad and can't keep up the group, your druids don't know how to cure, or your dirge is too dumb to get out of the aoe.  You can't cater to people screwing up or being bad.  And who knows, I'm sure the dogs ward has never prevented people from going into the purple before, right?

[Beastmage]

^directed to Rifts<p>Do you guys run a druid in the mt grp?  The only fight we've had to do that so far was the overking (for some reason our tank just gets owned by that mob).  Other than that me and the mt templar have been able to keep up fine with cures and heals. </p><p>In a normal trash fight hps is meaningless, but when the [I cannot control my vocabulary] hits the fan its a measurement of how much you can contribute to getting things back under control.  </p><p>I would guess that most raiding defilers are not part of the few ultra guilds that have mastered every fight.  The sta line helps the learning curve of a fight more than the str line, doesn't it make sense to advocate it more than a line that gives the greatest benefit only after you've learned the fight?</p>