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Posted on WoW forums: Coming so recently after the decursive nerf it's like they don't want as many people playing healers.

This is pretty similar to how it's always been, with Spells learned before 20 get their +Dmg/Healing proportional to how early the spell is learned.

(Spell Level)/20 * (Cast Time)/3.5 * Raw +Dmg/Healing = Effective +Dmg/Healing, if (Spell Level) < 20 is how it works now.

Now they're just expanding it to include all spell levels (plus some slack space and removing the arbitrary sub-20 penality). Does it change how healers will be focusing on their gear? Yes, very much so, but after looking at some of the item screenshots, I can only hope the itemization will be there for when the expansion comes out. With the level of gear coming out of Outland compared to what a lot of people have, there's no point in crunching numbers right now. Healers in pre-Naxx guilds will be at the mercy of the itemization for a good while.

Still, the biggest reason for downranking was that with obscene +Healing, a full rank heal would be majority overheal in most situations. On top of that you have 12-15 Healers all healing a finite number of people actually taking damage and overheal became more of a factor in endurance then Healing Per Mana.

Probably on the whole a good change, a lot in line with the Crit/Weapon Skill changes. They want us using our newest, shiniest spells and gear, especially with so many abilities starting at 60 that would hardly ever be used because of atrocious efficiencies.

It always amuses me when game designers don't understand their own game. Reminds me of the "mosscovered twig" from EQ.

I think I can spam heal rank 2 (1400) for 6 minutes straight without consumables?  Good paladins can literally substain acceptable hps for an almost infinite amount of time.  This is a necessary change in the long term, but it is also an inevitable nerf to +healing.

Fine for me though.  I always preferred Mp5 due to its being "guaranteed".

Good change.

I have been appalled at the lack of skill of many raiding healers - but amazed they somehow get by.  The overrelianceon + healing gear is part of the problem - this exploit - removed a lot of thinking on heals - since healers rarely seem to be out of mana these days on raids.

Rather than time landing a big heal - most healers these days just spam endless low rank quick cast heals - which requires no timing whatsoever.

Yes - I used to be a 60 priest - undead :)

With a very poor understanding of how crits/crushing blows work it seems

You think so?  With 80 FR and 2 epics to my name I was one of the top healers in our guild by almost any measure you can think of.  And ya - about 1.5 years ago that guild I healed for was the top horde raiding guild on our server - first to clear MC - first to down Ony.

Begin your diatribe.  Let's see who understands healing strategies better.

Things have changed a lot since MC.

Please expand - you made a bold statement - back it up asshole.

To be fair, Patchwerk and Loatheb are 'big heal exclusive' boss fights, but those are the exception, not the norm.

I don't think it's possible to do Twin Emps by mostly using gheals f'rex...


-- Z.

I have not done twin emps - but as a tank being healed in BWL - and then subsequentlyl being healed by my bud who heals the same way I used to - the strategies that served me well in MC and Ony -  certainly work well in BWL.  My bud's healing standing was also one of the best in guild - and one of the poorest equipped (it was a new character).

There's more to casting than the spell you use - or even the timing - but also "how" you cast.

Still waiting for your erudite commentary Phred  :evil:

Yeah this will make a lot more folks fail at everything while at the same time they're trying to get folks more involved.  Should be interesting.


Oh - the two new racials were patched, as well. 


In addition, BE's get Touch of Weakness (the Undead spell) and Draeni get .... Fear Ward.

Wtf?  4 da horde?


As to the healing peen-waving.  Yes, all I've ever heard from high-end priests is "Greater Heal spamming doesn't work because of crits."   Having given the fuck up on priests in large-groups I have no experience of my own to back this up.

  I do know that I did just fine spamming G. Heal and timing my heals, but my overhealing would often suck because I'd get 'snipe healed' more often in the last second to half-second of casting. (Fuckers)  Switching to flash heal on trash and g. heal on bossesI nearly halved my healing meter overhealing.

  This doesn't mean you use G. heal exclusively.. but you rely on druids and pallys to 'oh shit' heal (used to be called infill) when something DOES get a crit and you're stuck in the middle of a cast time.  ( Or, of course, that you flash heal if you're not in the middle of casting a bigger heal, so someone else's g. heal can land.)

Goodchange.

Going back to my first point on this - this is because most healers don't know how to cast.  Greater heals are perfect for spike damage - that is exactly what shot me through the healing ranks in MC and Ony (or my friend in BWL) - but you cannot just enact the spell by the time you see spike damage since by then it is too late (nor can you just spam it - this involves a version of healer stance dancing to address both concerns).

Interesting comment you make about such changes making the class more challenging and potentially reducing participation.  For some players this will happen - this is what I refer to as the "ghetto healers" guys who think their class could be botted - and never developed any genuine interest or skill in the class.  For those committed to being a priest - no question this will add for more variety in play - and make it more fun.  Of course, if the ghetto healers outnumber commmitted players too much - you may be right.

I think this change may draw new players to the priest class.  Younger players exploring classes to play are  left with the impression that all priests do is spam the same heal over and over again - which is exactly the situation with +healing gear prior to the changes noted in this thread.

It's a good day to be a priest.

I don't have a TON of experience being a priest, as it's an alt class for me, but I have done a few raids with her; I end up having 4 heals: max rank flash, max rank greater, rank 4 heal, and rank 2 heal. And renew, max rank, of course.

Healing for me pretty much comes down to spamming rank 2 on MT if there are a lot healing him, otherwise spamming rank 4 and keeping renew up. Flash is used on squishies and gheal is used on plate classes for the spike damage. That's pretty much it, and blizzard has said they want you to be able to downrank one or two levels with minimal penalty and that's it. I personally don't have a problem with that.

I do wish priests and an instacast heal, because canceling a big heal, waiting for global cooldown, and flash heal often take too long and the person dies. I know druids and paladinsa are supposed to be the life savers, but it would be nice to have *something*. Also, prayer of healing outside yorur group, which I think they are addressing with the level holy 41 ability, assuming it gets fixed.

Don't forget that they changed the 10% to healing talent to include gear; this is a huge change and should take the sting out of the downranking nerf.

I am worried though that while it's a good change overall it will push some people away from a class that is already shorthanded. I guess we'll see where that goes.

This seems reasonable to me.  I never did understand why they let your characters keep the lower level spells when you got new ones.  They really did set themselves up for this problem.  Plus, they are now having to do more complicated systems to keep the lower levels around.  

If they didn't want there to be any advantage to using the lower level spells, why even have them?  I suppose they are nice when running your newb friend through lower level instances?

It would have been nice if they did healing like UO.  Cast the spell first, then target within 30 seconds or lose it.  You could hold a heal in queue and use it on your target when they got a crit.  Their programming probably doesn't allow for an easy implementation of this though.  It would certainly change the priests role/methods.

It could have served to be a distinguishing factor between themselves and the other healing classes too.  The others would be the current (harder to time) healing, while priests would get more pinpointed and accurate healing.

I just reread my quote. I meant I don't much experience beyond MC.  I've healed Rag fights, I've been forced to bring the (now shadow-specced) priest to BWL because a healer bailed on us, but that's it. 

So you're speaking of proactive rather than reactive healing.  Not a surprise, because you're an MMO vet. Those of us who played healers in EQ and earlier games are used to this, and like I mentioned I used to do myself.  (Hell I never understood people bitching about a 4 second heal when I was timing 10-second heals just fine in EQ.)

However, I think you'll find most healers out there, like most WOW players are newbs to the genre.  As a result they have a much more reactive mindset.  It's how you heal in almost all single player games. "Oh health is low, pop a pot/ switch to the healer and heal."  So the mindset they're coming from is  "Oh, so and so took damage, time to stop dispelling/ casting dots/ whatever and cast a heal."

 Doing things this way means, yes, you're going to miss that 4 second cast because by the time you switch targets and smack the heal button, they've gotten smished.  Nothing wrong with this approach, IMO, and it makes healers a much more friendly class.

  It seems, however, that Blizzard disagrees and wants healers to be more proactive in playstyle.  This is why I think most folks will abandon their healers.  The number of folks who want to exclusivly heal are far fewer than those who want to heal /and/ do damage.  (Which was the largest bitch of EQ clerics, "I can't do any damage!!1")    Even after that the number of folks who'll understand "oh I need to start healing THIS way instead.." is fewer than the number who'll simply roll an alt.

I think this limits priests a bit more, it doens't expand them.  In a group all your mana will need to be reserved for healing, now, or waiting on that next g. heal you need to spam.  Casting that SW:P or smite will get you bitchslapped because of the number of crappy healers out there who'll wind-up blowing their wad spamming flash heal on folks at 70% (wasting most of the healing from their gear.)

   Then again, my cynicism is probably colored by the number of folks bitching at me about my pet/ multishot/ stings because of the number of crappy hunters out there in the first place.

something that I forgot to mention that completely changes the face of healing come TBC:

All HoT spells will stack instead of overwrite. That means your MT (and others that take large, consistant damage) will have their damage mitigated by the 3 renews and 3 rejuvs on them. He'll heal back up to full every 3 seconds.

That means you won't *need* to spam heals or downrank; you simply divvy off who is assigned to keep a HoT up, and save your casting for those who take large spike damage. This also theoretically means that spirit now becomes much more important than mp/5, since you'll spend much longer periods of time outside the 5 second window.

Thanks for that update Bhodi.  Looking for us much info on the expansion as I can find.

Merusk you may be right about the player population.  If it turns out that the number of ghetto healers vastly outstripps players who are serious about the class that will be a problem.

If that happened - I would make my priest my main again and abuse the power  :-D

There is also a tank shortage too - interesting dynamics there - at the high end of the game.  I play a tank (protection) - my bud a priest - and we chuckle at the LFG channel that is screaming for one of those two classes.

The best change for the priest to address its appeal - without creating the heal bot that Phred appears to enjoy - is what they did with Holy Nova:  2 for one.  You heal and do damage.  Mana inefficient in the extreme if you try to use it for a single purpose - but perfect when you need both and add to that it is threatless - it is very nice.

I had a fucking blast with my priest in WSG with Holy Nova - there is not a better spell in the whole game when both sides clash in narrow confines.  In the expansion I understand we will see another threatless heal related ability - but it escapes me at the moment.

My jury is still out on this change, but once again it's going to be how they design encounters. Fact is that there are many encounters possibly in BWL and definitely beyond BWL that are designed with downranking in mind. Using greater heal 2-4 to heal on Twin Emps...

There are a number of subtle and not so subtle dynamics that are changed by nerfing downranking that you need to keep in mind. First off, downranking is more efficient. With +1000 healing you can pretty much double your efficiency. Therefore it makes the +healing stat an efficiency modifier, not really a healing increase per se. When you downrank, a larger portion of the heal is composed of your +healing bonus and less of the innate amount of healing the spell does. Therefore as you downrank, you get higher heals per mana. Heal rank 2 is almost twice as efficient as Gheal 5 at +1000 healing.

On top of the innate increase of efficiency from downranking, +healing allows you to downrank more to hit the 1000-1300 heal sweet spot that allows you to be effective while having a low amount of overhealing. That amount on tank healing is usually ideal because you're usually healing tanks in a team of 4-6 people. It allows higher "resolution" on heals. Instead of large chunks landing which causes more overheal, lots of smaller chunks are landing quicker and more cheaply.

As a continuation of the resolution issue, being required to use larger heals means that either the tank will be at an average lower health or you will have a larger overheal percent. Say a tank has 9000 health. If you're healing for 1000, you can land a heal when he's at 8000 health for 0% overheal. If you're using a top rank heal for 3000, the tank has to drop down to 6000 health for you to avoid overhealing. Therefore, as an extention to all this, lots of smaller heals that are allowed to land when the tank is at higher health is better spike damage prevention. If you're always required to let the tank drop a much larger portion of his health to not waste your mana healing him, you will be less able to deal with the damage spikes that hit, because the tank will always be at a lower average health level.

The Twin Emperors fight is an "ideal" for downranking. The fight lasts for 15 minutes so even decently geared people have to care about mana efficiency. On top of that, the tanks take a lot of spike damage. The result of this is that using Blizzard's new level of "acceptable" heal would greatly increase the difficulty of this fight. It would require using full consumables every run, much like Patchwerk does now, despite gear having advanced well beyond the encounter's level. You would also have many more wipes due to "accidents" with the tank dying to spike damage.

Simplified, the fight is basically two tanks with two equal heal teams of about 5-6 healers. It has a maximum duration of 15 minutes, and it usually lasts at least 13 minutes for my guild. Damage on the tanks can spike up to individual 6k hits followed by 2k hits, and an occasional flurry of 3-4 hits for 2-3k each in under two seconds (the dreaded exploding bug + blizzard + shadowbolt combo + maybe an arcane explosion dumb tank move). My rank 2 heal hits for 1300 and my Gheal 3 hits for about 2400 (I forget exactly, I don't use it often). You can assume similar numbers for the other healers, though of course there is variation. Our tanks have about 9000 health for this fight. If you look at the max damage spikes, which will usually happen at least once per fight, it requires that we keep the tank at very high health at almost all times. Luckily there is recover time when those spikes do happen, because the skill that causes that damage (unbalancing strike, exploding bug, shadowbolt, uppercut, etc) all have long enough cooldowns to give us time to top the tank off. That said, I can't assume 6500 health (what I would need to not overheal with a GHeal 3) as my baseline health. 7500 is the absolute minimum. That means that if I was forced to use Gheal 3, I'd probably hit around 50% overheal on average, whereas now I'm at 15-20% overheal. Not only that, but I'm getting those heals at a higher mana per heal rate. It'd be a stretch to last the full 13-15 minutes, despite me having top notch gear. I'm not sure we could do it without a lot of good luck.

Whereas it's pretty much a requirement on Twin Emps that you downrank, on less healing intensive fights it gives you more breathing room. I suppose by removing it you could up the challenge quite a bit on other fights that aren't quite so taxing. On the other hand, being a healer is tiring work. The amount of work DPSers have to put in isn't in the same galaxy and the only other people that have as much work to do are main tanks. Even as it is I find myself getting worn out progressing through Naxxramas, though I hope I'm not heading toward the fabled "healer burnout". The term exists for a reason. Perhaps making the healing on encounters more taxing isn't the right direction Blizzard should be heading for, but I haven't seen Blizzard's master plan so maybe there's other components being added to the mix that I'm not aware of.

Agreed on all points (I cannot comment on Twin Emps).  But that does not change anything by way of conclusions for me.  The problems you point out with greater heals are the challenge any priest has to learn to deal with (unless the become dependent on quick casts and + healing gear) - and the costs of failure are high.  You have to anticipate, know how to gear for it and know how to interrupt your casts.

This is why - imo - that it is likely the case the priest is the least gear dependent and possibly the hardest class of any to play.

Also the most twitchy. It's why I don't plan on playing my priest much after the expansion, playing with a constant 500+ ping makes healing an annoying, frustrating chore. It's a pity, because I really enjoy strategizing heals myself, dodging the 5-second rule and not relying on uber +heal downranking or auto-heal mods, even decursive (in a 5-man environment anyway).


-- Z.

Isn't that what Shield is meant to be... ?

I much prefer playing as a Proactive Priest, and they are far far better, so encouraging more people to 'l2heal' is a good thing. Even if it means some people stop playing them.

I just completely disagree.  For me, LFG is one of the most frustrating parts of MMO games.  Taking a role that is chronically the least played while at the same time typically the most needed and making it tougher so the minority of people who do it well and enjoying doing it can have an epeen waving moment while at the same time driving out those folks who do it poorly, but do it because they hate LFG more then playing a class they dislike, makes no sense. (holy crap that was a big sentence)

I honestly was hoping that WoW would be more like Diablo - no healing classes (not that I wanted a potion-clickfest, just that I didn't want groups dependent on healers).

How does such a game work?  Example - For awhile I played the sole defender (storm defender in city of heroes) with my bros/group of friends.  I had taken no healing powers.  Not only was it possible, but it was actually a hell of alot of fun because it required moving/controlling/pushing mobs (i.e. tactics) rather then the "Tank stands in one spot and taunts.  The healer heals. Everyone else watches patiently and pushes a damage button. Deviate from this one iota and we all die."

Honestly I think healers ruin these games by making them much, much less dynamic and much, much more repetitious.

Typhoon I think we just get spoiled.  In EQ healing was such a huge issue - that if you could not get a group - you just sat there.  In WoW variouis types of healers can work - and in the end - you can solo stuff.

I think if you got what you wanted you would find a game too easy - trivial.  At that point - I would just pick up a single player RPG.

Fights have been made that essentially require downranking at the gear level they are targetted. It's not so much lazy ass healers exploiting a broken mechanic, it's healers being forced to use a broken mechanic because Blizzard builds encounters around it and slaps so much otherwise marginally useful (in the present game) +heal on everything you have to do something with it.

Now personally on emps I spend some time channeling max rank gheals when I need to regen, but there has to be some priests downranking at the same time for that to work out. If one of my GHeals lands I either cause overheal or the tank was within range of just randomly dying. That's not where you want your tank to be.

Frankly I don't see it as fucking over priests, just changing a broken mechanic at a time when they can rebalance around it, but there IS a reason people abuse it currently and it's not because of lack of skill. Changes like higher HP on players, stacking HoTs, and all new encounters mean this change can go through without doing much damage. If it was introduced now the difficulty of some encounters would go through the roof. I also get the impression they are gearing raids so less constant healing is required in raids, so having less healers around and/or more healers go hybrid might be an intended effect anyway. I like this change, I always preferred winding up heals, trying to land them without overheal as much as possible. It's more fun trying to land a big heal than essentially deciding whether to heal or regen.

That's a whole other kettle of fish.

The fact is the healers currently are boring to play, or more accuratly, are not required to play with any skill to "do their job". This turn me of healing more than anything else. Perhaps the reason so many hate playing a Priest is because they play it like a robot and dont feel skilled doing it. And they have to play like a robot because it requires much much less effort. Maybe making the Healing class one where the skill is much more obvious will make MORE people want to play them.

Besides, it is MUCH MUCH harder to get a good Tank for an group than it is to find a competent healer.

Nearly any competent group of 5 random classes can complete the 5 mans currently in the game; except for specifc boss fights. When you do get a good tank and healer on those boss fights they become completely trivial.

I've been running scholo a bit recently (I want Gandlings ring) with a a few different group makeups, and I can say that there is nothing in the classes that force players to play a certain way anywhere NEAR as much as the instance design forces people to play certain ways. And even there there is some scope for variety.

The best normal group for scholo is pretty much War/Mage/Priest/Rogue/Shaman simply because: There are UD and Humaniods and Mage/Priest/Rogue CC takes care of this. There are areas where AOE helps. There are curses that need to be removed, there are mobs that are melee damage only, some that are spell damage only, there are bosses that hit hard enough and die slow enough that they need to be "tanked", having a backup healer works well for Gandling's teleport etc. Keep in mind we're not talking overgeared people here.

All the healing classes in the game, Priest the least extent, have other things they can do besides heal. They can all be played as Hybrids. The fact that they often aren't is because player mentality and instance/raid design wont let them. Even still, I play in shadowform a fair bit when the main (sometimes only) healer in Scholo, given the right groups.

Requiring more skill to heal may in fact be a boon, if it comes hand in hand with a move away from the "Holy Trinity" (Tank hard, dps and heal heavy) level design.

Anyway, I ramble.

I don't buy this:  My Teir 2 priest buddy (another one - not the same as the one I refer to earlier in this thread) - BWL eqiupped priest has HALF the mana regeneration of my partly equipped Teir 1 Priest from MC.  Clearly - there are gear choices that can be made - of course with trade-offs. 

I do believe the + healing gear has lead to poor skill development among priests.  As much as I like to think I am brilliant - and my friends - the fact we are/have made a decisive showing as healers against guys Teir 2 equipped (when we have 2 Teir 1 epics to our name) can only be explained through lack of practise by these heavily equipped priests.  When you spam low rank, short cast heals - there is not too much pressure to learn how to anticipate damage.   Priest healing is pretty poor right now - imo - so what's causing it?

Currently, in the 2 raiding guilds I have been with - there is no healing strategy.  The only heal strategy is to over heal - and put as many healers on the MT as possible.  Overhealing is a viable strategy when you have mana to burn - which is exactly what + healing gear allowed people to do.  Now that is being nerfed - time for a lot of healers to wake-up to the real task their role requires of them.

To sum up:

Half the game's about itemization. All the classes are like that; Tier1 Priest set gears for flash heal and mana regen, tier2 gears for greater heal. Obviously they intended people to downrank previously, but they've decided they want to change the mechanic, so they are doing it at a time where they can balance off all the new encounters. All of the classes are getting changes, and these changes include the gear. I don't just mean the new socket system, and I'm not just talking about priests either; they are moving away from crit for rogues, changing agility into straight +attack power, shuffling around block/parry with the 'ratings' for tanks, "fixing" the shot cycle and tweaking the agility->crit for hunters.

They have a lot of changes in mind, and part of the process is designing the new gear around their intended advancement in addition to the new spells, talent tree revamps, and removing emergency monitor and decursive.  It took them a year and a half, but they finally learned. We're getting smaller instances, token redemption system for items, and more interesting areas to explore. They're fixing a bunch of the classes, hell, the druid and hunter forums are positively jubilant. That in itself should give an indication of how carefully they're listening to the playerbase while making changes to the game as a whole.

They aren't neglecting itemization, instead they are creating it specifically with the changes in mind. The jury's out on whether or not that direction will encourage more people to play priests. I can, however, say with confidence that itemization, talent trees, new abilities, and breaking some addons are all part of the same process -- to bring all of the classes more in line with Blizzard's Vision(tm).

That there is the rub. As your gear progresses you see more and more +healing. Tier 2 for one has only 2 (I think) pieces with mana/5, and you have to specifically target offset pieces to get the regen you need. Most of the better rings are +heal without regen. Blizz just practically throws +healing down healer's throats, and while there are alternatives, there aren't enough to equip all the guild's priests. Most are just going to be drowning in +heal.

Part of me fears that won't change very much... (http://worldofraids.free.fr/bc/Blacksmithing/Weaponsmith/hammersmith/planshandofeternity.jpg)

Im fairly certain a blue has posted that there would be mutiple sets for every class (since they will be using token systems for future raid instances), which implies the choice for healing or not is (partially) up to the priest.  Wether or not the encounters themselves pidgeonhole them into picking up the healing set is yet to be seen admittedly.

Calantus - I hear you.

But there is still choice.  I think folks forget that there is a strategy to different gear combinations and assume that ALL gear belongs to a singular scale in which Teir 2 is better than Teir 1 etc.

My priest wore very little Teir 1 stuff since he had a lot of dedicated mana regen gear for slots in which no mana regen existed for those slots in the armor sets.  He made the trade-off ...

I went for mana regen rather than +heal, only had about 300 +heal.  That meant a 5/3 Prophecy/Transcendence, and various +regen misc.  Didn't use lower ranks of spells, just the top ones, interrupting when neccessary.

The thing was, more often than not I wouldn't be wearing the mana regen stuff cause I had to don resist gear.  I'm not sure if the trend will continue.

From http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=35774926&postId=369604001&sid=1#25 (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=35774926&postId=369604001&sid=1#25):

Didn't know that.  Thanks.

You're judging this based on experience in 5 mans. It's a fact that the 5 mans in the game right now are not in any sense of the imagination difficult to do. It has been my experience that whenever you are doing the hardest content that you can do at the time, progressing through MC, or BWL, or AQ40, or finally Naxx, healers inevitably have the most difficult job outside of the main tank. People who heal like robots are BAD starting in BWL and increasingly so as you progress further. In Naxx robot healers are entirely out the window except for Patchwerk.

I realize you're post was mostly directed towards the current 5 man content, but the thread is about the nerf to downranking. The fact is that downranking does not encourage "robot" healing and I don't even see where that thought lies. Downranking is basically a tool to convert the +healing stat into an efficiency modifier. That's the key here that people need to keep in mind. Without the ability to downrank, +healing becomes a hell of a lot less valuable. I do not care that my GHeal rank 5 can hit for 3100 and crit for nearly 5000. It doesn't matter. There is never an situation when that much healing doesn't inevitably become mostly overheal, or that waiting long enough for someone to lose that much health isn't simply gambling with their life. It's better to heal someone for 1k with a heal for 1k than it is to WAIT for them to need a heal for 3k and heal them for 3k. Even "reactive" healing can be proactive if you're assuming more damage is coming soon. Topping off that 1k damage in anticipation of the next 3k hit is proactive. You know what spell heals for 1k? NOT GHEAL RANKS 1-5.

The huge stamina inflation will make big heals much more important, thus changing the healing dynamic enough where downranking wouldn't really make as much sense anyway.

Umm...

There are many situations in the game where waiting for a big heal is useful. Just not at the high raid end because blizzard has whack itemization that doesn't give players enough health, and whack design that kills them very quickly.

Like I said originaly. As we're talking about the expansion and what it might change then I can see how these spell changed might prove useful to healing classes.

I agree that the expansion is a whole new ball gaming and I have hope that Blizzard will balance content around these changes. I just don't like seeing people judging things as they are now with seemingly little clue.

Yup.  Let's take this one step further:

Notice that healing over time spells can now be stacked from both priest and druid to some extent...

Prediction:  Spike damage is going be a huge factor in the expansion - and will account for far more deaths than is currently the case.

This is consistent with making health regeneration spells more powerful in the game.  And unless you heal like Phred - it also means that using greater heals in an anticipatory capacity will play a far greater role.

Only if they are predictable. Starting a big heal then cancelling it if no spike comes, for a whole fight, doesn't sound like fun.

Yes, that is the point. The healing game is fine pre-raiding. You can make use of +heal on the higher GHeal ranks just fine if you want to, but it breaks in high end raiding without downranking in the current pre-BC environment. Personally I wouldn't care, but they sling about so much +heal on the gear somebody has to make it useful somehow.

It is when you catch the spike that comes close to killing the tank. 

No, it's not.  It would only be fun if you could predict the spike, like the NPC having some sort of animation that could warn you of incoming massive damage just before it hits.  Most of the spikes I've seen aren't predictable.

The difference between even MC and BWL is huge for healing.  You can basically heal reactively for any boss in MC, even ragnaros.  If you don't have a fairly constant stream of heals being tossed on your tank during the drakes/chromag (hell, even broodlord to some extent), you're probably going to wipe.

And timing against specials in MC?  Don't cast right after shazz blinks, step back 2 feet before magmadar fears, and that's about it.  BWL is probably the first instance a healer will actually have the chance to time their heals, like making sure to have a cast ready to land after a shadowflame or one of chromags breathes.  You still need little heals constantly pouring in to ensure the tank doesn't die in a nasty 3 second damage spike.  And Blizzard realizes this, which is probably why HoT's are giong to stack.  You'll have to adjust your lazy healer stereotype to the people who spam HoT's come the expansion.

Evil - most priests behave the way you describe MC healing do and that is why their performance is lacking.  I used anticipated healing (e.g. spike damage healing) in some areas of BRD let alone MC and Onyxia (and my friend BWL).

In BWL my guild healed the same way you describe MC - no timing - just a constant stream of spammed low level heals.  And it worked - most of the time - since mana was not rate limiting.  When mana is not rate limiting - overhealing becomes a "strategy".  The concept of timing heals for spike damage was completely foreign to them (ergo we lost quite a few tanks on Ebon Roc and Nefarian - but got through).   So if you have enough heal bots on your raid - even BWL behaves like MC in the manner you describe.

I used timed heals in anticipation of spike damage in MC and Onyxia all the time - and that made me one of the top priests with shit gear (this was about 1.5 years ago now - so it was more difficult to overgear for those encounters).  My bud - same deal for BWL. 

Most priests truely do suck in WoW.

A priest who actually knows how to heal in this game is the greatest force there is.

Beyond spike damage, there is then the poor use of healing over time spells by priests.  And so on.  Bah - that's another story :)

Spike damage is coming to a town near you.  Unlike BWL - I wager future instances will offer spike damage that cannot be overcome by heal bots the same way we see in MC and BWL.  I agree that stackable heal over time spells is in anticipation of this but I doubt that will be sufficient.  Heal over time offers a buffer but no solution in of itself against spike damage in my experience. 

In the next expansion - many priests will learn their class - for the first time.

Patchwerk - 6-9k damage every 1.2 seconds. That'd be the spike damage you were looking for.

Actually no.  It's predictable.  You can deal with that with just "more" bot healing.

The essence of spike damage is that it is both big and unpredictable.  The beauty of spike damage - it's all about the skill of the priest.

You mean ping. :p


-- Z.

Yes spike damage that is encouraged not only be the gear they've been shoving down Healer's throats all this time, but also the gear they've given Warriors (because obviously Bears don't exist). A Warrior in uber-tanking gear exacerbates the spikes because they can go some decent stretches with absolutely no mitigation, or having an incredibility lucky string...

and having both a Druid and a Priest, yes healing spike damage is all about ping/lag/whatever. Priests just have a lot easier time dealing with it then Druids do.

It's a spike if it's pretictable by some factor other than a regular time pattern. Otherwise it's just heal botting with a different heartbeat. Even if it alternates 2 seconds gap with 4 second gaps all you have to do is get the pettern down and you can semi-afk heal again.

What is needed is spike damage that is based on a warning of some type, or when certain criteria are met, then the healers will have to watch the fight to know when to prepare for the spike.

This stuff is already in game to some extent, such as in Trouble's example.  Patchwerk spikes are always a bit unpredictable because parries and blocks are uncertain, and you can't spam heals per se, because the fight is very mana-intensive.

AQ40 and Naxx do have several encounters that specifically require a conscious healing strategy and a generally heightened sense of awareness from healing classes.  The average WoW player is not generally capable of this though.  Therefore, the same exclusivity may prevail in the expansion out of necessity, in one way or another.

Nerfing deranking may "help" a bit, but it's too early to really tell, I think!  Priests are getting that nice heal-upon-taking-damage seal/mark thingie, for instance.

That's still reactive healing then, in Patchwerks case. Chain big heal casting/cancelling depending if spike hits or not. Which doesn't require much more from the healer that it currently does. Just stare at the health bar.

Like you say, there is only so much they can do. If they make it require too much skill then people will find it too hard and get turned off. Still, I think the can make it a bit more interactive and fun before they get to that point.

I'm not really getting what you're getting as far as "spike" damage. I don't think you have a clear idea. How is more skill involved with spike damage? There's nothing more I can do as a priest except time my heals well based on my knowledge of the boss mechanics, for example say Twin Emps which have a decent amount of spike damage. If there was MORE spike damage, it wouldn't require better healers, it'd just require more healers to smoothen the "curve" out. There's only so much each healer can do.

I suppose if you're talking about a boss fight where the tank takes *no* damage and occasionally takes some big spike, maybe, I don't know. I think I'm missing the boat on what you guys consider skill. Or maybe you guys just have some fuzzy idea that when actually translated to reality doesn't actually mean anything.

It took skill for me to learn how to make my mana last for 15 minutes on Twin Emps. It took skill for me to learn to survive the various things that can kill me on Twin Emps. It took skill for me to learn to heal the main tank on Anub without eating impales or locust swarms. It took skill for me to learn how to time my heals correctly on Patchwerk offtank 2 to make my mana last for 7 minutes while not being too slow.

I really don't understand what you guys want. There's plenty of challenge for healers in the raiding game. At least as much challenge as any other role in the raid, except for main tanking for a few fights. Perhaps I just need a few examples of the encounters you think would push a healers skill while still being reliably one-shottable with practice (IE doesn't have a big enough random wipe factor).

While I don't disagree that those encounters require a certain kind of skills, what I'm looking or at is fights where the healer is required to be much more on his toes:

While knowing how to manage mana in certain encounters well is a skill, and learning the boss fights is a certain skill, I'm talking more about adding a certain interactivity to the fights which mean there is no set pattern you have to master, but instead have to carefully watch the encounters and play accordingly; specifically in regard to watching the encounter as it plays out in front of you, rather than watching health and mana bars.

Now I think there is much more scope for this to be added in 5 man runs than 25 man ones, because big raids work as a coordinated execution of a plan with people in set roles, with expected responses and generally one or two people guiding the mob (of people). If you make the fights more interactive individualy, and thus require people to think on their feet more, then you will probably push the "skill" requirement too far for a 25+ group.

I think I'd rather stay in Shadowform.

You seem to be talking about some sort of animation that the boss would be doing, that would be the sole indication of an incoming spike in damage, that the priest would have to watch for and know to start his casting right away, so that his heal finishes casting just as the spike hits.  On paper, it sounds good.  In practice, CT_BossMods or whoever announces things in Vent would just call it, and the priests are back to botting and watching health bars exclusively.

How can they add "more interactivity" for the healers without adding more stress?  They're already plagued by the issue that they have to be on high alert and completely focused with no breaks for 4-6 hour stretches.  I'd love to watch the game and not the bars, but in order for that to happen I'd have to have an autocast script, so that the bars get healed themselves while I spend my time panning the camera around.

That gives me an idea, what about a strategic healer class, whereby the bars auto-heal themselves according to reactive scripts, and the game is about managing the various scripts you have access to and modifying their priorities so that the right things get healed.

I think with one-two punch of cutting the raids in half and the addition of the stackable HoT dynamic, priests are going to have it much easier come expansion. Even discounting the extra stamina, there are going to be half as many 'bars to look at', and most of those will be handled by casting a spell every 10 seconds on them and forgetting about it.

Frankly, in the end game raids right now, you are too busy chain casting your heal rank 2 to look around the room or to plan for spike damage unless you are assigned a specific main tank; there are always people in the raid that need healing, and you don't generally have time to sit back and play the cast gheal - cancel cast gheal - cancel game (or damage prediction) except for specific circumstances. Even then, you are rarely watching anything but health bars, because healing requires split second reaction, and if you take your eyes off that bar for an instant your charges are dead before you can get a heal off.

I think the rise of the expansion will draw priests back out from staring at bars in the corner, and that's a good thing. I've seen firsthand how hard it is for healer classes to do this; If you want a preview, c'thun is perfect. The whole reason he is hard is because every member of the raid must have situational awareness; you need to be aware of cast range limitations, getting out of the way of crap, and moving about the room. It's tough to do.

Some of the later naxx encounters (and C'thun) do an excellent job of adding situational awareness/interactivity to a healers job. The word to note, however, is "adding". You are still staring at bars and throwing off heals on top of the other things you need to watch and react to.

Staring at a few healthbars is okay but an entire raid detracts from the experience I agree.

Now that I am a tank - I am delighted with how uncluttered my screen is  :-D

What's your opinion on Nef and the random class calls? Is that sort of what you're talking about? I'm trying to think of stuff that would fit what you're looking for to get a good idea.

Offhand I think Battleguard Sartura, Twin Emperors and C'thun would also fall into that category, although of those I've only actually done Sartura.

Things such as that would all add to what I'm thinking, especially as in a 25 man raid the individual effects are going to cause other in the group to be on their toes to compensate, but I'm not specifiably talking about 'moves' the boss would have, rather than the way the boss fight would play out.
Perhaps giving them a move table and a random selection for each fight, make it so they don't always spawn at the same time, sometimes they spawn with less health and more adds, sometimes with less adds and more health. Etc.

Basically make the overall design of boss fights to be less predictable, so it's almost like every 5 man group that goes against them has to learn the "pattern" they have to execute to win every time. I think if every boss fight is a bit more random and you feel like you have to learn what to do each time people would get involved more.

Reason being that while patterns are boring for everyone, they are the most boring for the healers. Because once the healing classes know what to do it means they can tune out from that aspect of the fight and go back to watching healthbars for more effective healing.

So you basically want to PvP? :)

The randomness that you seem to desire will only come from other players. Even if you give a mob a dozen different scripts, people will still figure them out and have the raid leader call them out, or worse and have a mod do it for them. You could have the scripts be modular and broken into subparts and people will still figure out each subpart and be ready for those as well. Keep adding more scripts and parts to the randomness and you'll eventually reach a point where players just call out bullshit and declare your fight dumb and unworthy.

Not to say there isn't room for improvement in mob fighting, certainly is, but the kind of dynamic fighting I think you want will only come from another person... and even then people are often all to predictable.

Tier 0.5 BRD arena event? It's basically a PVP fight. Not overly scripted, but rather the mobs don't have any aggro list, actively try to crowd control as much as they can, are susceptible to CC themselves, and only have 1.5x the health of a player as opposed to 10x. That encounter is infinitely replayable (the enemies you come up against are random, and the things they do are too), and I think it's the best "boss fight" in the game to date.
THAT is the direction I want them to take, at least in several boss fights.


-- Z.

Ever play a FPS with decent BOTS before?  It's not like a mob that acts like a player couldn't be done.

Daft.

I think what lamaros is (in part) trying to say is he thinks blizzard could learn from Mike Tyson's Punch Out.

I.E. instead of moves like Unbalancing Strike, which is completely untelegraphed and you can only "react" to it, more stuff like Cthun staring at you (or someone within your healing range), or Thaddius winding up a big CL, etc.  Yes crap like Vendetta and CT will try to ezmode this, but those mods exist because blizzard permits them too.

Their is so much room for blizzard to explore with regard to boss encounters.  It really just comes down to time and design budget.  I'd love to see Arugal (last boss of SFK) part deux, where you have an MC Esher type room and some bastard teleporting mage running around.  He can only use his teleport move every X amount of time so it would be possibe through co-ordinated action to have your group break off in 2 or more directions to trap him for periods of time.  No tank n Spank, he lights people up at random, you have to start casting your heal when he targets someone and starts casting his fireball/scorch/fireblast (or whatever) routine.  Maybe with some summoned crap that runs around trying to flip levers that close off bridges or stairwellls n whatnot.

That sounds awesome, but you are forgetting the basic tension between making fights more random and what the players want.  The players want to have a fight that, while difficult, if perfectly executed by the players can be eventually beaten EVERY TIME.  If you design a system where random chance occassionally steps in and will kill even the best prepared players-- well, players don't like that. 

To quote Seanbaby, "its sort of like what Super Mario Brothers would be if they randomly exploded every few jumps".  Players want predictability-DIFFICULT predictability, but predictability nontheless.

Who's to say that just because it's mor random it still can't be beaten every time by good players? The difference is they just have to good at working together and working out strategies on the fly, not just good at reading some internet site and trying to copy them.

Something does not have to be predictable to be beatable.

It'd be nice if Blizzard would just grow some balls and say, "Cry sum more, nubs." Seriously, at this point, the factthat you can practically have half your raid (at least) sleep through encounters is silly.

In MC? Sure. Depending on how overgeared you are, then a decent chunk of BWL that can also be true. AQ20/40 and Naxx? No, not really.

Totally agree there.  If you are near the top of the gear curve (BWL, AQ 40, Naxx) you can quite readily cruise controll your way through MC / ZG and most AQ 20 encounters.  Early AQ 40 encounters and some BWL encounters are probably also fairly idiot proofed by your gear level at that point also.  Naxx and later BWL / AQ encounters?  Not a chance.

About the only Naxx encounters you could remotely cruise controll through would probably be Anub, and maybe Instructor, or Grobbulous (though getting to grob requires killing Patchwerk, so meh), anything else, you pretty much need every single member of your raid functioning or you will fail.  Patchwerk, Gluth, Thaddeus, Faerlina, and Maexxna will rape you if your DPS and healers arent doing exactly what they are supposed to.  And Noth, Heigan and Loatheb are pure and total execution fights.  (no one is getting past Heigan with sloppy play).  Same goes for what I have seen of Gothik (cant comment on 4h or Saph / KT, since I have not personally seen the fights yet)

Why do you think reactive healing isnt spike prevention?

We basicly sat down, looked at the numbers for the bosses and decided how much healing we needed each second to overcome damage spikes.

Ie broodlord Ms'ed our tanks for 5.5k in a wost case senario. We need a tank with more than 5.5k hps in total, and need to have heals hit him for more than that each round. Spike prevention. If fankriss's packs hits for 350 dps max on tanks, we need 350 hps all the time.

And there isnt much you can do about this. Unless we know when the 5.5 hit is coming, we cant heal for less in any given round. Mana isnt really the limiting factor per see, in that that if we dont have enough mana, we cant do it. It's nothing more than a gear check.
Which is why in 96.6% of all high end encounters Bliz have tried to implement some sort of features to make healing intresting, which often means that bosses do an ae which you need to move out from in order to be able to continue casting your heal.....

Spike prevention in that if you anticipate spike damage you want the tank at the highest health possible. For example, on Broodlord he doesn't just do mortal strike. He has a blast wave that hits for 2-3k and regular hits that can vary from 500-1000. Assuming your top three rank heals are for 2-3k and that you're healing with a team of 10-15 other healers, your top rank heal is simply not an appropriate heal to keep the tank topped off. An apprioriate heal for this would be between 500 and 1500 based on what most of his hits hit for.

I love this line.

Is the encounter *really* infinitely replayable, or is the priest mob and the shaman mob going to have the same set of actions and abilities. I'm not saying the encounter isn't more interesting then the usual tank/heal/dps stuff, but it is still just going to be plug and play abilities for the mobs. Instead of going "at 20% the dragon will AE" people go "okay, we got the priest and the gnoll, they do blah blah". The reason the encounter hasn't been totally reverse enginered yet is due to its rather annoying pre-req's to get to the point where you can actually initiate the fight (and even then you can still just hit up thottbot for a pretty detailed description of what each mob does). I guess what I'm trying to say is the encounter still isn't going to be able to be clever. I'm sure they made the script go for the squishy/healers first, but can the script handle a party if it's made up of druids/pallies/priests ? Can it overcome two mages and a lock locking down more then half the group? Can it deal with the unexpected? Again, having the variety isn't bad, but instead of a Tank/Heal/DPS fight it's a CC/Assist/FocusFire fight.

It's just a new pattern to learn, which is still fun, but it isn't the same as PvP.


As to FPS bots, no I can't say I've ever experienced bots that made me go "wow, that was smart" or as such. Then again I haven't played many of the newest FPS's out there atm so maybe one of the new ones does have really good AI that is truly clever and I am unaware :p

I don't think any of us have ever said that pve encounters have the capability to be "smart"; get back to me after Skynet is launched or something. :P I just brought up the t0.5 arena fight as an example that 'randomized' fights do exist and they're fun. Of COURSE they have a limited pool of actions to draw from, and obviously crowd control rules (though they do break CC early and erratically, so the mages/locks have to keep an eye on them). It's also pretty much trivialized by t2+ gear, as the HP/damage gap between the players and the mobs is simply too large at that point in the players' favor. And yes, certain group makeups make the encounter easy (we had at least two iceblock mages most of the times we've done this, which does make it easy), but that's more of a limitation of the entire 5-man mechanic. It HAS to be beatable by any remotely viable combination of 5 people, so Blizz can't anticipate heavy crowd control when designing the encounter. Now, the chess room encounter in Karazhan (if the speculations are correct) will be another story.

(and yes, it is infinitely replayable, we've done it at least 6 times now just for fun, and got a different set of enemies every time; their targeting isn't as simple as "gank the healer" either, they usually try to CC as many people as they can via sheeps/stunlocks/traps and go for the squishies; the obvious way around it is to have a druid and pally as healers and have the druid shift / get a BOP when he gets 'assist trained'.)


-- Z.