... and healers around the world said "Wtf!?"

[Tebonas]

But like I said, the biggest impact will be felt in PvP; not only are healers currently balanced for PvP with decursive in mind, but again, it's the additional tedium/inability

If they are balanced with a third party Mod in mind then I agree and yes, Blizzard developers are dumbfucks. I have more faith in them until proven otherwise, though.

Yes, there are some healers that don't use decursive; I don't care how fast your wife's reflexes are, she'd be a faster, better dispeller w/decursive.

"She" would do nothing. Its all the Mod playing at that point. Pressing one button over and over and not even deciding what spell to cast yourself? Not playing, but watching.

I'm really wishing I hadn't have mentioned my quitting; why was that one throw-away line what you guys decided to focus on, instead of the whole 'fucktarded decursive change, after 1 1/2 years' bit?

You are right. It took WAY too long for this change to happen.

[Phred]

This still sounds like a lot of bitching and moaning because Blizzard is starting to disable easy-mode. Oh noes, you can't auto-cleanse and shit in PvP now? Good, maybe those curses and shit will actually be Useful now. No auto-bubble? Can't say I will miss it..

I played a Priest in PvP, and did that shit manually. My friend did the same as a Paladin all the way to 60. Sure, you can't look like a superhuman bot anymore, but it's not hard to contribute, if you have some skill.

In what bizarro universe is manually decursing considered a skill? Is it skill to be able to put up with mind numbing boredom while focusing solely on 40 hit bars and completely missing the fight everyone else is seeing? Is it skill plastering your screen with hp bars so the action is reduced to a 5" square you can actually see through? Get real.

[Tebonas]

If you begin to argue that way then almost nothing in MMOGs is a skill (not that I disagree). Is casting the same damage spell over and over again a skill? Is watching a health bar and casting a spell once the bar falls under a certain percentage a skill? Is shooting arrows at a target until the target falls down dead a skill?

The fact remains that you reduce the choice of various spells to the choice of one "Cure whatever that poor bloke has" button. Thats (in the Druids case, other healers may vary) a reduction of your choices and therefore possible errors by 2/3.

Nothing in MMOGs is rocket science, but you can dumb it down even more by such mods.

[Merusk]

This still sounds like a lot of bitching and moaning because Blizzard is starting to disable easy-mode. Oh noes, you can't auto-cleanse and shit in PvP now? Good, maybe those curses and shit will actually be Useful now. No auto-bubble? Can't say I will miss it..

I played a Priest in PvP, and did that shit manually. My friend did the same as a Paladin all the way to 60. Sure, you can't look like a superhuman bot anymore, but it's not hard to contribute, if you have some skill.

In what bizarro universe is manually decursing considered a skill? Is it skill to be able to put up with mind numbing boredom while focusing solely on 40 hit bars and completely missing the fight everyone else is seeing? Is it skill plastering your screen with hp bars so the action is reduced to a 5" square you can actually see through? Get real.

You guys keep responding to Strazos like he 1) has a clue outside of playing a melee class and 2) raids. 

He doesn't on either count.   He's simply parroting other board warriors on this one.

Again, it's not a matter of skill; it's a matter of fun.  But quite frankly, regarding 'skill'; if you play any class but a Warrior and have issues with Paladins in PvP...

Coincidentally, Straz PvPs with a Warrior.

Notice, Straz, none of us are bitching about auto-bubble bullshit.  Things like that are in fact the mod playing for you.  If Decursive auto-cleansed I'd have the same problem with it.

 The problem is - as has been mentioned- Blizzard's designers have begun to create content with this mod in mind because it's been in place for a year+.  It's a raiding-centric problem.  Yes, decursive is a broken, overpowered mod for PvP, but then reactive dispelling vs proactive anti-buffing is a broken mechanic as well.  The whole scenario stinks.  Hell, they gave Warlocks that "if dispelled, then BOOM" debuff just because of all the cleansing spells tossed about in PvP.  How often do you think that's going to go off for them now?

[Ratama]

If they are balanced with a third party Mod in mind then I agree and yes, Blizzard developers are dumbfucks. I have more faith in them until proven otherwise, though.

Your faith is sorely misplaced.  Remember, these are the same fucksticks that lost millions of dollars by refusing to develope any new 5-man dungeons after release (DM was already in the works before the current team took over towards the end of beta, or it never would have seen the light of day).

"She" would do nothing. Its all the Mod playing at that point. Pressing one button over and over and not even deciding what spell to cast yourself? Not playing, but watching.

Welcome to healing in raids.  And do you know what's even worse?  Having to play whack-a-mole with health bars while hitting the same damned button over and over.

At least with Decursive, healers could spare attention to actually check out the zones they're in, and the mobs they're fighting (and, in the case of raid leaders, the performance of other players).

You just don't fucking get it.

You are right. It took WAY too long for this change to happen.

Yes, it did.  And by making the change now, without compensating healers for losing an ability they've been balanced with or commiting to less tedious raid mechanics, they're going to lose a lot of money.

Nothing in MMOGs is rocket science, but you can dumb it down even more by such mods.

Making the tedious parts of the game less tedious is good, even if it means 'dumbing it down'.

Again, unless the goddamned devs actually want to take the time to roll, play to 60, and then raid/pvp with healers in an attempt to actually understand these issues, they should just leave us the fuck alone and not tell us how to fucking play.

Yes, decursive is a broken, overpowered mod for PvP, but then reactive dispelling vs proactive anti-buffing is a broken mechanic as well. 

What Merusk said.  All Decursive really does in PvP is balance an otherwise unbalanced equation.  And having to watch healthbars and manually click to remove debuffs in PvP = some boring, un-fun shit.

[Chenghiz]

Maybe you should actually play the expansion instead of flipping off the handle over your theorycraft.

[Tebonas]

Welcome to healing in raids.  And do you know what's even worse?  Having to play whack-a-mole with health bars while hitting the same damned button over and over.

Only using one heal regardless of situation? Only gonna happen if your manapool is absolutely irrelevant and/or nobody but the main tank ever takes damage.
But maybe that changes if you use mana conservation mods. Never did that either.

At least with Decursive, healers could spare attention to actually check out the zones they're in, and the mobs they're fighting (and, in the case of raid leaders, the performance of other players).

Checking out the zone? Checking out the mobs you are fighting? You sound like raids are a sightseeing tour instead of repeating the same encounters over and over again for months. Maybe I don't get it because I played a different game than you do. Two different games actually. Because in EQ a healer in our raids knew all walls by heart, and little else. Oftentimes they even were summoned to that same wall via a teleport spell directly from the zone entrance. Those poor suckers.

Yes, it did.  And by making the change now, without compensating healers for losing an ability they've been balanced with or commiting to less tedious raid mechanics, they're going to lose a lot of money.

What ability did the healers lose? No ability the game has given them. Your little rant would be true if Decursive was part of the game itself. You are not entitled to abilities third party programs give you.

Making the tedious parts of the game less tedious is good, even if it means 'dumbing it down'.

I'm all for removing tedious parts out of a game. I said more than once in this thread that if an encounter needs Decursive, that encounter is broken and should be fixed. But for me the whole raiding part of the games is a tedious part that I could do without. So take that with a grain of salt.

What Merusk said.  All Decursive really does in PvP is balance an otherwise unbalanced equation.  And having to watch healthbars and manually click to remove debuffs in PvP = some boring, un-fun shit.

You can't balance a game for PvE and PvP equally. One will always suffer for the other. You can only pick one favourite.

[Merusk]

I wasn't speaking of PvP vs PvE.  I was speaking of "wack a mole" vs "planning and strategy."   One of the best suggestions I've read to improve playing a healing class came from the FOH boards, and they stole it from other RPGs.   Add spells like "Shield" and "Reflection" or "Wall" or "Poison Shield" or whatever, and let the healers micromanage keeping those up while healing/ light DPSing instead of "omgIneedtocast8dispellsin10seconds"   Just don't make them permanent buffs a-la DAoBotsalot.

[Ratama]

That would be nice, Merusk; problem is, I think the Blizz devs are simply less talented/creative than most other large MMOG dev teams.  They're basically coasting on the game that the previous dev team had built hand-in-hand with the best artists in the industry (and one of the best IPs available, to boot).

If WoW had launched as the raid-oriented game it is today, no way would it be as popular.

Only using one heal regardless of situation? Only gonna happen if your manapool is absolutely irrelevant and/or nobody but the main tank ever takes damage.
But maybe that changes if you use mana conservation mods. Never did that either.

Only Priests and Druids use different heals. Paladins don't need to conserve mana (and yes, they mostly just spam one rank of FoL, depending on their gear), and Shamans use CH 90%+ of the time in raids (unless their raid sucks, or they're nooblets).

Checking out the zone? Checking out the mobs you are fighting? You sound like raids are a sightseeing tour instead of repeating the same encounters over and over again for months. Maybe I don't get it because I played a different game than you do. Two different games actually. Because in EQ a healer in our raids knew all walls by heart, and little else. Oftentimes they even were summoned to that same wall via a teleport spell directly from the zone entrance. Those poor suckers.

Why bring "yeah, EQ sucked' into this?  And yeah, I like to actually look around, even in a zone I've been in 40+ times already; anything's better than staring at the same healing bars I've seen thousands of times.

Oh, and way to dodge the leading-in-raids-as-healer bit.

What ability did the healers lose? No ability the game has given them. Your little rant would be true if Decursive was part of the game itself. You are not entitled to abilities third party programs give you.

Who said anything about being entitled?  I'm no more entitled to Decursive than they're entitled to my 15$/month.  And yes; the damn game currently requires Decursive.  If your healers don't have Decursive for learning Chromie and Noth, for example, you fail.

I'm all for removing tedious parts out of a game. I said more than once in this thread that if an encounter needs Decursive, that encounter is broken and should be fixed. But for me the whole raiding part of the games is a tedious part that I could do without. So take that with a grain of salt.

I couldn't agree more... and it's obvious you don't play a healer in raids, so I've taken everything you say with a grain of salt; if you had, you'd see how much more palatable Decursive makes playing one in WoW.  And like I said, forget palatable; healers *need* decursive in PvP to remain balanced with DPS/Warriors.

You can't balance a game for PvE and PvP equally. One will always suffer for the other. You can only pick one favourite.

... while that's been true in MMOG development so far, Decursive actually makes PvP *more* balanced, not less.  Unless, of course, to you balanced PvP means 'everyone PvP with your DPS alt'.

[Rasix]

Edit: not worth it.  No need to perpetuate this WoW forum board crap. For those that read it, that last line was ironic (but I used green anyhow).

Ohh, and I said decursive is a cheat. So.. go with that.

Edit#2: Oops sorry with messing up your reply Vel.  I checked to see if anyone was posting before I threw in the edit. 

[Velorath]

But playing the game the way you're supposed to is so tedious Rasix.  I should be able to have a mod that will auto-assit my main tank and automate my shot rotation for me so I can check out the scenery instead of actually focus on playing.  Maybe throw a Feign Death in there every once in a while too so I don't build up too much agro.  The game is absolutely unfun and unplayable having to push all these buttons but I felt the desire to level a class to 60 that I knew long in advance would be no fun without 3rd party mods to play the game for me.

Edit:  If there's a problem here it's the fact that healing is pretty much broken in all MMO's.  No game that I've played has ever managed to get it to rise above watching health bars and it's the reason that I almost never play a healing class in any MMO, let alone play one in a game with raiding as the main endgame.  Aside from people new to the genre, I'd expect most people to know this long enough in advance to avoid playing a healer if they knew they weren't going to enjoy it.

[Tebonas]

Only Priests and Druids use different heals. Paladins don't need to conserve mana (and yes, they mostly just spam one rank of FoL, depending on their gear), and Shamans use CH 90%+ of the time in raids (unless their raid sucks, or they're nooblets).

Might be because Paladins and Shamans arent't main healers and therefore don't have the same variety. Since usually Shaman have other duties beside healing in raids (shortage of healers nonwithstanding), they get their variety in other ways. Don't know about Paladins, only played Horde.

Oh, and way to dodge the leading-in-raids-as-healer bit.

Whats there to dodge? What people do in addition to their raid duties can have no effect whatsoever on raid balance.

Who said anything about being entitled?  I'm no more entitled to Decursive than they're entitled to my 15$/month.

You are less entitled to Decursive than they are entitled to your money. You pay for the game, not for specific addons by third parties. Of course you always have the ability to stop paying your 15$/month when the game doesn't suit your gaming needs anymore. Its exactly what I did after Molten Core because I saw no future except raiding in that game for me.

I couldn't agree more... and it's obvious you don't play a healer in raids, so I've taken everything you say with a grain of salt; if you had, you'd see how much more palatable Decursive makes playing one in WoW.  And like I said, forget palatable; healers *need* decursive in PvP to remain balanced with DPS/Warriors.

As said above, I quit during Molten Core. Everything up to that was easily manageable without Decursive. When I returned for a quick stint I got dragged to some AQ raids (not the whole zone) which were decidedly harder without Decursive but still doable. Everything above that I'll refer to those better versed in those encounters. If those encounters are indeed undoable without Decursive, one might suspect they were balanced and playtested using Decursive. Which is a big Nono in my eyes. Everything should be doable by playing the game out of the box with the right skills and equipment, or something is really screwed up in a game.

[Rasix]

Chromie is easily doable sans decursive. 

[Zane0]

I'm going through the top end of Naxx around now.  My decursive mods broke three or four months ago, and I haven't bothered to reinstall them.  It's a joke.  There is no issue.  MC stuff was annoying back in the day, and maybe a few other bosses are bothersome now, but only vaguely.  It isn't any more intensive or mind-destroying than healing the raid.

Heck, I've always found automatic decursing to be as annoying as fuck on Chrom because of all the los issues.  I almost always did it manually.

[Strazos]

You guys keep responding to Strazos like he 1) has a clue outside of playing a melee class and 2) raids. 

He doesn't on either count.   He's simply parroting other board warriors on this one.

True, I haven't consistently played non-melee much in that game, besides my priest. This doesn't mean I haven't sat down and watched friends play Every Other Class In The Game. Oh, and watched raids as well.

Also, who the fuck am I parroting? Certainly not the WoW Board drama. I abstain from that clusterfuck, thanks.

The problem is - as has been mentioned- Blizzard's designers have begun to create content with this mod in mind because it's been in place for a year+.  It's a raiding-centric problem.  Yes, decursive is a broken, overpowered mod for PvP, but then reactive dispelling vs proactive anti-buffing is a broken mechanic as well.  The whole scenario stinks.  Hell, they gave Warlocks that "if dispelled, then BOOM" debuff just because of all the cleansing spells tossed about in PvP.  How often do you think that's going to go off for them now?

I think the actions of both parties suck; Blizzard for 1) designing Stupid encounters, 2) Designing even more stupid encounters in reaction to a 3rd party mod, and 3) for not just breaking the mod when it came out. The players bitching are wrong as well for 1) relying so heavily on a 3rd party mod, and 2) for bitching up a storm when Blizzard finally breaks it, knowing that all along it was well within Blizzard's rights to break the mod.

Also, I think that warlock curse will still be viable. Granted, it might not see the immediate results that it would when you have someone dispelling everything with decursive, but isn't that the spell that triggers whenever it's removed in any way at all, including fading after its duration?

[caladein]

"In addition, if the Unstable Affliction is dispelled it will cause 1575 damage to the dispeller and silence them for 5 sec."

Nope.

[Strazos]

Bleh, got that very crossed with Curse of Doom. I've hardly even glanced at the BC stuff.

And besides the skill will not be Useless, as it still does its DoT damage. You're just less likely to get a free hit on a dispeller.

[Zetor]

UA is a fairly weak dot with a high mana cost and long casting time. Not really worth it for most pve and pvp encounters, except to make drain life more powerful via soulsiphon, and of course small scale arena pvp (where it can really put the hurt on someone on the business end of your assist train). However, if you take UA, you're not taking ruin, soul link, nether protection, backlash, shadowfury, conflagrate, and any of the other good stuff, so it's a rather significant tradeoff.

About the decursive thing: Some encounters WERE made trivial by decursive. ZG has at least 2 encounters (including the end boss) where you have debuffs that shouldn't be removed (or you basically wipe the raid); AQ40 has some of that too at Huhuran, iirc. Now, you can setup decursive so it doesn't remove these 'good' debuffs, but avoiding the dispel bombs by manual dispelling is a huge pain in the ass, especially when you're supposed to be focusing on healing. This is the one point where I sort of see why they were nerfing it in the expansion.

... however, 99% of the other boss encounters are friggin' atrocious when it came to decursing. I know it's a 25man group with (let's say) 5 decursers of each type, so theoretically you can just keep an eye on your group -- but it just doesn't work in practice. The maintank group's healer probably won't have time to do anything but spam heals, and I doubt raids will be set up with exactly one mage/druid, one paladin/shaman and one priest (in case of shaman) per group. Manual decursing is also freaking dull and tedious... note I didn't say "challenging", as picking out the one blinking red healthbar (which you can still do in BC) and clicking on it isn't any harder than hitting the decursive hotkey, and repeating this every 1.5 seconds (global cooldown).

I'm reserving judgement on the entire nerf until I've heard just what kind of encounters there are in BC. If the first raid will be MC v2.0 with lucifron/geddon/gehennas and mass cursing/debuffing trash mobs, then yeah... screw that, I'm shelving my pally and priest.


-- Z.

[Ratama]

Chromie is easily doable sans decursive. 

Easily doable?  No.  It might be easy for your wife's or Zane0's raids, but only because other healers *are* using Decursive, and taking up their slack.  Try doing Chromie without *any* dispellers using decursive.  Oh, and tell your healers to have fun!

And I was talking about *learning* Noth and Chromie, specifically; easily learnable by a raid that doesn't use Decursive?  Hell no.  I've never even heard of a raid that learned to kill Chromie or Noth without using Decursive; I'd love for you to find an example of that, if you think one exists.

But playing the game the way you're supposed to is so tedious Rasix.  I should be able to have a mod that will auto-assit my main tank and automate my shot rotation for me so I can check out the scenery instead of actually focus on playing.  Maybe throw a Feign Death in there every once in a while too so I don't build up too much agro.  The game is absolutely unfun and unplayable having to push all these buttons but I felt the desire to level a class to 60 that I knew long in advance would be no fun without 3rd party mods to play the game for me.

Using a DPS rotation, for any class, *is* as easy as using one macro (in many cases, just one ability/power).  DPS classes, and even tanks and healers in most fights, will still be able to play with one button; only decursing will remain a chore.

Edit:  If there's a problem here it's the fact that healing is pretty much broken in all MMO's.  No game that I've played has ever managed to get it to rise above watching health bars and it's the reason that I almost never play a healing class in any MMO, let alone play one in a game with raiding as the main endgame.  Aside from people new to the genre, I'd expect most people to know this long enough in advance to avoid playing a healer if they knew they weren't going to enjoy it.

So removing Decursive is ok, because healing is supposed to suck so much that... you don't want to do it?  Sorry, but you seem to be championing the 'healing SHOULD be a pain in the ass' point of view.

There are probably literally thousands of people playing healers that never thought they'd have to heal in raids just to remain competitive in PvP, and don't have the time to level a DPS alt to 60, or have friends and family members playing in their raiding guilds that really, really appreciate them continuing to play their unfun-to-raid-with healing class.

Again, WoW only shipped with one raiding zone; even though we knew more would be on the way, the bulk of character progression, even at 60, was found outside of raiding; if Blizzard had stated at ship that WoW would be 'raid or die' within a year, no way in hell would I have played a healer.  Playing a healer in the beginning of the game, though, was actually fun, before raiding 15+ hours a week became necessary to remain competitive in PvP.

...

Tebonas: if you can't see how removing Decursive will make it harder to Healers to lead raids while still doing their job (and keeping track of the job other are doing), then you've neither lead a raid nor played a healer in one.

I'm reserving judgement on the entire nerf until I've heard just what kind of encounters there are in BC. If the first raid will be MC v2.0 with lucifron/geddon/gehennas and mass cursing/debuffing trash mobs, then yeah... screw that, I'm shelving my pally and priest.

Problem is that from a PvP perspective, every battle is Luci/Geddon/Chromie, etc.  Regardless of how the raiding situation turns out, Dispellers in general, and Pallies in particular, are getting screwed when it comes to PvP.

I just wish the Blizz devs, and some of the wankers posting here, could see how encouraging people to shelve their healers in favor of Yet_Another_RogueHunterWarlockalt_03 is bad for their raiding game, and the game in general.

[Zane0]

Actually, we could not kill Noth until we revamped our curing policy; we had a limited amount of decursers, and could not remove the curse in time using straight Decursive.  The retarded random targetting would collide or get held up on people out of range, and waste time.  As a solution, we had every decurser assume specific individiual decursive class priorities, but at that point, the mod was not exactly being very helpful to anyone.

Its "requirement" in every example that I can think of is exaggerated and in some cases outright misleading.

[Ironwood]

I'm outta this one.  The guy is not only wrong, but frothing.

And I'm fed up of this SirBrucing Shit.  It hurts my fucking eyes.

I was sure that Blizzard was changing from raiding being 'the point' anyway.

[Calantus]

1 - My wife is gorgeous.  And she plays WoW.  So anyone in the other thread can knock off this 'pretty women don't play WoW'.  :)

You are hardly impartial enough to make such a claim sir!

As for the issue at hand I doubt many healers would quit over it, it IS a pain in the ass though. Hopefully they also end the need to dispell mass amounts of people and instead make it something like a random occurance on 1 or a couple of people where you need to get the visual cue and jump on it quickly. That kind of dispelling I can tolerate.

[Trippy]

1 - My wife is gorgeous.  And she plays WoW.  So anyone in the other thread can knock off this 'pretty women don't play WoW'.  :)

You are hardly impartial enough to make such a claim sir!

Well Elena's looks can't be coming from Ironwood

[Ironwood]

Hey, here's an idea !

Rather than frothing on for another four pages, let's ask in the NDA thread about how this really affects anything and whether it actually works !

Hey !

[Tebonas]

Are you purposefully playing retarded Ratama?

The game can't make it its goal that the game is trivial enough for possibly each and every one in 40 people to play his class, lead the raid and audit the performance of all the other raiders at the same time. Chance is if that one player can do THREE THINGS AT ONCE without breaking a sweat that he (and every other person of the same class) are bored beyond reason for doing just one of those three things (playing his class).

How about letting one player lead the raid and other players decide upon the performance of the other players? As a healer you don't have problems seeing how other healers are performing while doing your work by looking how they handle the work in their designated groups and how much crosshealing/crossdecursing you have to do. This informations comes to you while doing your work.

And yes, I healed at raids AND was a class mentor to help out younger members of my class and decide at their performance at the same time. Like most sane people  my guild delegates different tasks to different people though, so NO, I didn't lead the raid at the same time.

[Zetor]

I posted a longish reply, but the forum ate it. Grrr.

Anyway, I think in *pvp* you're much much better off by not using mods to heal or cleanse. In my experience, Squishy (pvp-ish emergency monitor, only shows targets in range) and Decursive hurt more than they help... it's a lot better to either heal by nameplates, manual targeting or assisting off an enemy*. The reason is, you need to be able to survey the entire battlefield (friends and enemies) and try to tell who needs healing by the actions of your enemies... if you see a friendly about to get hit by nukes or in a stunlock, casting long/big heals and dispels on them is probably better than slamming the 'flash heal most wounded person in raid' key. None of these mods can make these choices for you.

Now of course, in *pve*, if there are going to be fights like lucifron or chromaggus, I don't forsee playing my healers much (but then, my main is a lock so nyah). Watching for the blinking red nameplate so the priest can click on it and then do it 20 more times in 30 seconds isn't challenging or engaging in any way... imo.


-- Z.
* and then die 3 seconds later to a random undead rogue. Not that I'm bitter or anything :p

[Ratama]

I'm outta this one.  The guy is not only wrong, but frothing.

And I'm fed up of this SirBrucing Shit.  It hurts my fucking eyes.

I see... ask someone to try a situation on for size themselves before spewing forth ignorant opinions, then get compared to a raging furry?  Gee, thanks.    I suppose had I made a car fire reference, I'd have been accused of Booging?

My 'frothing' is solely directed at the current Blizz devs; and yes, I hope they all die in a giant toilet fire at Blizz HQ.

Did you not see the actually knowledgable posts by others in this thread agreeing that this is a problem?  Most healers that know about the upcoming changes feel the same way; and many healers *will* quit or reroll over it.

i'm still waiting to see why you think that's good for the game, or your gameplay in particular.

And you're sure WoW won't remain raid-oriented?  The same way you're sure that Decursive needs to be banninated?  Firsthand knowledge and practical experience with the subject?

...

Zetor: you don't have time to 'survey the field' against good teams in BGs; you have to be removing that sheep from your other healers/flagrunner/whathaveyou before you even know it's there; with PvP as fast paced as it is now, anything slower and you lose.

Annoyingly, none of the naysayers have raised the one single legit issue regarding Decursive in PvP come BC; that with the increase in HPs by virtue of the decreased item budget cost of Stamina, the slower speed of PvP might not necessitate superhuman reflexes to remove CC effects.

But I suppose ignorant ravings by non-healers that have never even installed the mod are much more entertaining to read, anyway.

[Ironwood]

Goodness.

Look :  It's not going to be the big thing you think it is.  That's all I'm saying.

You've got yourself totally damp at the crotch at this particular change.  I'm sure that feels like there's a special place in heaven for you right about now,  but trust me, it's not that big a deal.  Change happens and yet the sun and the stars still shine on.

I love how you're already saying that there's massive doom and gloom around the priest class and that it'll get so bad and so much worse that the whole dynamic will change. 

It won't.  This thing WON'T snowball, no matter how much you think it will.

I mean, Jesus, I can tell by your posts that you've been lurking for a very, very, very long time (or you're a banned member returned to WREAK YOUR REVENGE) and as such, I can't believe you're taking this shit so very very seriously and thinking that overnight we'll have a clusterfuck of SWG proportions.

It's going to be ok.  Priests will still heal.  They'll still play the game.  The Expansion will still sell numbers that will make your dick bust concrete and for those that have churned or burned out, new members will come who won't have a fucking clue what decursive ever was and won't care.

Seriously, you need to go get laid.  Instead of letting a 3rd party mod do it for you.

[Ratama]

(Btw, I just recalled something about SB's postings; he does the 'breaking quotes apart and respond to each one in minute detail' thing as well, doesn't he?  Ok... no more of that... or at least less, I promise.  ).

A CF of SWG proportions?  Well.. that's sort of my point. %-wise, hell no, but from a sheer #s standpoint?  Losing 10% of their healer population probably WOULD lose more money than SWG makes.  Will that happen, or even 1%?  No... but why lose any money at all?  Losing any given % of their players means they lose 10x as much $$$ as any other MMOG ever would have losing that same percentage.

They're trying to get a tick off the dog with a shotgun, that's all I'm saying.

But it's a Big Deal to me personally, yes; I happen to like many of the 3rd party mods I use (even if I don't like the need for them in the first place).  Until I saw Crusader Strike (Oh Mah Gawd; check the BC talent thread), this *was* a dealbreaker for me.

And I'm serious about the healer situation already being in poor shape; raids losing healers is *already* a snowball.  Now, just about everyone with a lvl 60 toon will be back to try BC, but 3-6 months later Healer Burnout is going to be a hot issue with raids guilds again, and the lack of Decursive is going to exacerbate it.

Believe the title of this thread; just about every raiding healer is going to have a big WTF moment when they find out about this, and many are going to quit or reroll.

I can tell by your posts that you've been lurking for a very, very, very long time (or you're a banned member returned to WREAK YOUR REVENGE)...

The Former.    My brother and I checked out Lum's religiously when we were just out of highschool (UO was just coming out, and my brother, who's younger, played until we tried EQ; I just couldn't get into it, too boring, and didn't have any concept of where to start in an online community).

Lurked through SND, UP, WT, some of the other smaller splinter sites... pretty much just Corpnews and f13, now.  No alt accounts, btw; as far as I can remember, I've only ever posted under the names Ratama, Ratman, and Rathos at any of these sites, and just Ratama for CN and f13.  Don't usually post much; if someone else posts what I think, I generally just consider that good and keep reading.

And honestly... I only posted because I DO expect better, smarter thoughts 'n writin's from you guys compared to official msg boards (although Whineplay was often a good read, back in the day).

So when I see a bunch of people whose opinions I generally respect start spouting the same ignorance-laced crap I see over on Blizz's boards... got a little over-cranky, I guess.

This Decursive change is something that will, at least slightly, negatively impact my gameplay each and every time I log on.  Reminds me of Alchemy... except in this case, the playerbase, via a mod, came up with a solution to the whole in the gameplay, and now we're being told there wasn't really a problem all along.  And that's bullshit.

Proactive vs Reactive gameplay, just like Merusk said, *can't* be balanced unless it's easier/cheaper to react than act in the first place.

Again, I refer you to the thread's title; my posts have just been this particular healer's 'WTF'.

[Merusk]

(where it can really put the hurt on someone on the business end of your assist train).

Oh yeah, that reminds me automatic Assist Trains are busted with these changes as well.  I'm not sorry to see them go at all.

Aside from people new to the genre, I'd expect most people to know this long enough in advance to avoid playing a healer if they knew they weren't going to enjoy it.

Well, ask around.  I think you'd be surprised by how many of your healers and guildmates in general are on their first MMO in WoW.  Hell, I've had to explain to at least three different guildmates that, yes, you WILL have to buy a copy of BE to remain competitive and yes, that does mean one copy for each account.

 Then there's the folks like me who enjoyed being a healer in other MMOs, but dislike it in WoW because of the pace.  Makes for a very very fun game as a DPS/ Tank/ Utility class, but very very crappy as a reactive healing/ debuff removal class.

[Numtini]

A few observations.

I think it's interesting that the fuss is about removing the bot program and not about balancing the raids to make removing curses easier. That speaks loads to me about the entire situation.

I enjoy playing healers. If you don't, then don't play one.

If your guild can't attract them, figure out what you're doing wrong. As an example, maybe tossing vault-esque tantrums based on the fundamental premise that healing is boring isn't creating the kind of social atmosphere that those of us who enjoy healing want to be part of. I've never been part of a guild in any game that had any difficulty finding people to heal.

While glacial in speed, I've also found Blizzard to be pretty good at the "getting it" part of the game. If it makes people miserable, I'm sure they will rebalance things.

[Ironwood]

And I'm serious about the healer situation already being in poor shape; raids losing healers is *already* a snowball.  Now, just about everyone with a lvl 60 toon will be back to try BC, but 3-6 months later Healer Burnout is going to be a hot issue with raids guilds again, and the lack of Decursive is going to exacerbate it..

I don't see this.  At all.  Our raids are suffering from lack of warriors, if anything.  I'm not coming to the boards here and saying that it's because warriors are broken or stance shifting macros are fucking things up.  I think you are guilty of generalising from your own experiences here.

Provide me hard evidence or stats of the priest loss please.  In percentages to help my tiny mind.



(PS : Ratman.  Aha.  I remember you.)

(PPS :  What's BE ?)

[Ironwood]

Finally, I hate, hate, hate, hate when people toss out the 'Omg, I hate playing whack a mole, or having my screen filled up and having my job just healing people and checking out bars and decursing and blah and blah and fucking blah.'

Let's be Clear :  A Priest isn't for You.

Christine loves that shit.  LOVES IT.  I personally would rather take a rusty belt sander to my fucking bollocks than play 'her' game, but I realise that it's not because of some fundamental problem with the class, but it's a fundamental problem of a class I DON'T WISH TO PLAY.

The warrior is just as boring as hell, if you look at it like that.  But I love me some tanking.

Sure, if there's a percentage of people who hate with a passion the priest game and it's affecting the whole dynamic, then Blizzard will need to go back and change that game to make it more interesting to people.  At the moment, I don't see it.

[Ratama]

Numtini, regarding Blizzard eventually making things right: If it takes them 2 years to make decursing less tedious in raids, and more tenable in PvP, then I really wouldn't have any interest in waiting around that long.  That's just *too slow*.

Ironwood, does your guild have a 'regular raider' rank, or something roughly equivelant?  Compare the numbers of healers vs non-healers that have reached that rank in the last year; the % of turnover should be significantly higher than the DPS classes (Warriors are a bit different, as they can make a legitimate claim to being 'best in game' at two different roles).

As for 'healer burnout' being an issue... I'm surprised you haven't heard the term before; it was a known issue even back in EQ; that job was simply more intensive and higher stress than the other roles, and WoW is pretty much the same way.

In fact, after character transfers became available was when I first really took notice of it in WoW (and then crunched the numbers in the 2 BWL+ raid guilds I'd been in); lots of guild openly recruiting healers from other servers (DPS classes... not a single case, that I recall).

Also, someone brought the subject up in the general forums on the old boards (might still be around, for all I know), and a terse blue response basically said "things will change" in regards to healer/hybrid roles in BC (the response indicated to me that they were aware of the issue).

In fact, I'd surmise that their stated goals of making Paladins more viable tanks and Shamans more viable healers is at least partly due to their wanting to make sure that raids continue to have healers available (I think it's really a sham; there's no doubt in my mind that Shamans and Paladins will still be healing 75%+++ of the time in BC raids).

As far as the 'A Priest isn't for You' bit; I like self-sufficient characters, and that basically means playing a healer.  People like your wife are in the minority of people that play healers at the high-end raiding level; most of us find healing in raid rather tedious, but do it to improve our characters (and I know most raiders feel the same way about raiding, regardless of class).

And I don't think I'm the Ratman you're thinking of; there's a guy that uses that name on Corpnews, Ratmantf or something like that (that's why I stopped using that name in this community; too common).  I don't recall every posting anywhere enough for anyone to remember me.

[Ironwood]

As for 'healer burnout' being an issue... I'm surprised you haven't heard the term before; it was a known issue even back in EQ; that job was simply more intensive and higher stress than the other roles, and WoW is pretty much the same way.

 

I'm suggesting that the burnout is not as pronounced as you're saying it is.  I'm looking to your guidance for figures.  Possibly even a chart.