Regarding Blessed Life in PvE

Rank 2 is just a 100% chance.

Not often I delve into more theorycrafty posts. Theorycrafting in general is difficult to understand for a large amount of players and that's not really the reader base I'm going for. I like simple information that is easy to understand and put into practice. A lot of times things are explained in a complicated manner and not given the proper context, which leads people to misuse the information. And frankly, I prefer to leave the numbers to those better suited to it. I do occasionally do my own calculations, but I'm a psychology student. Statistical analysis is about as mathematical as I get. However, combing World of Logs is something anyone can do so I wanted to just show some of my results here and throw in my two cents about this often debated talent.



So the first thing most people wonder about this talent is if it will work in PvE. The simple answer is yes. Most boss aoe abilities do count as direct damage and will proc this. One point in the talent is generally enough, as boss abilities generally will hit you more than once but not last more than 8 seconds. It should proc more often than not with just 1 point. Let's also look at the Wowwiki definition of direct damage:

Direct Damage, or DD, usually refers to any type of magic spell (or a component of a spell) whose direct effect is to cause burst damage (hitpoint loss) to one or multiple targets.

So is it worth the one point? Depending on who you ask, it varies. Let's look at some log reports for a week in which I had the talent, and when I did not, and see what conclusions we can draw.

Totals

Let's take a look at my power gains for two different nights. There was very close to the same amount of time spent in combat on both these nights and my total healing done was also close to the same, there was a 1 boss difference between the nights. It looks like one night we did Al'akir and one we did Atramedes. So it's not a perfect comparison but it's close, as you can see by my power gains.

Night 1, Without Blessed Life

Night 2, With Blessed Life (1 pt)

So taking a look at this, and just my Holy Power gains, my gains from Holy Shock were similar. Night 1 I gained 667 holy power from Holy Shock, and Night 2 I gained 660. Eternal Glory procs were also similar coming in at 180, and 193. Tower of Radiance varies a little more, as it depends heavily on the fights how much I heal the tank I have beaconed, so let's kind of ignore that talent for now, it doesn't have much to do with this discussion. Now, for all the holy power i gained from other sources, with 1 point in the talent, I only got 91 from Blessed Life. That seems like a lot, but this is over 4 hours. Let's break it down and look at a few specific fights to analyze it's value a little closer. For length's sake, lets look at some fights with a low amount of procs, and some with a high amount.

Low Proc Fights


The thing to keep in mind here is that I only have one point in this talent. This means I only have a 50% chance to gain it when hit, so these low aoe fights are somewhat subjected to Lady Luck. And in the case of this particular raid night, she was a cruel mistress.


Valiona and Theralion

0 Gains from 1 point Blessed Life

Took Plenty of Hits

This is a pretty low AoE fight. You basically only get hit when you stand in fire, get hit by blackout, or get hit by someone that doesn't run out of the group when they have Engulfing Magic. My suspicions in the case of a lot of these abilities is that they do not count as direct damage for the purpose of this talent. Which brings me to another point, it is difficult to determine what will and what will not proc it, and the definition of "direct damage" is a bit fuzzy. It's why I've waited to discuss this talent or stick it in my guide until I had some solid log reports piling up. It's just difficult to predict what will and will not fire it.

Magmaw

This one surprised me. It may just be the one point instead of two and a lack of luck, but I had 0 gains from Blessed Life for this encounter, and he does do a room wide ability. Let's look at my damage taken:

24 hits from Lava Spew and not one proc leads me to believe this does not count as direct damage, making this a useless point on this encounter. Again, this leads me to question the definition of direct damage.

Al'Akir

I wasn't going to post 3 fights, but this one was interesting. Take a look at my power gains, and my damage taken:

1 point Gained

I'd guess it was the melee attacks here that caused it, those were from a Stormling after a tank death, but again, the sheer number of things that cannot proc it is interesting.

High Proc Fights

Let's take a look at the fights that caused the most procs, which were actually a little surprising to me.

Conclave of Wind

My highest point gain fight in a 9/12 clear night

 Again, it's tough to tell what was proccing it here. By the amount of times I was hit and the amount of points I gained, it was probably a combination of everything up there in blue, since a lot of those ticks of ice patch were too close together to have caused multiple points.

Atramedes

9, again, nothing too game changing, but it's a few free spells.

Modulation hits everyone in the room, and had to be a contributing factor here since a lot of those ticks of Searing Flame were too close together to proc. This is interesting because this room wide ability can trigger it, whereas Magmaw's was not. Again, perhaps it was simply poor luck on Magmaw, but it also leads me to continue questioning what will and will not proc it.


Conclusion

So for those of you too impatient to look at the data there, or who just want a simple answer on whether or not Blessed Life is worth it, my answer is:

How much do you care about 5 yards of Judgement range?

Yea, it's an odd answer, but we have to consider where you can pull the points for this from. The easiest place is Enlightened Judgements because even without it, if you have a decent amount of spirit you will still be melee hit capped, and you're only losing 5 yards on your judgement and a small amount of self healing that was likely overhealing anyways.

Basically, this talent is entirely optional. It's not game changing whether or not you take it, it's just some nice free holy power if you can spare the points. I'll probably keep one point in it for awhile, since I really don't miss the 5 yards yet.

I do have a question for Blizzard though: What the fuck constitutes direct damage, and can we please get some consistency?

/bubblehearth