Double whammy for priests inc.

[ajax34i]

Didn't know that.  Thanks.

[Trouble]

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.

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.

[trias_e]

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.

[lamaros]

some words.

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.

[Trouble]

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.

[jpark]

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.

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.

[lamaros]

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.

[Calantus]

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.

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.

[jpark]

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.

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

[ajax34i]

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.

[Evil Elvis]

Things have changed a lot since MC.

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

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.

[jpark]

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.

[Trouble]

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

[jpark]

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.

[Zetor]

You mean ping. :p


-- Z.

[caladein]

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.

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.

[lamaros]

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

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.

[Zane0]

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.

[lamaros]

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.

...

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.

[Trouble]

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).

[lamaros]

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.

[tkinnun0]

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

I think I'd rather stay in Shadowform.

[ajax34i]

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.

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.

[bhodi]

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.

[Malathor]

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 individually, and thus require people to think on their feet more, then you will probably push the "skill" requirement too far for a 25+ group.

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.

[jpark]

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

[Trouble]

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.

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.

[Chenghiz]

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.

[lamaros]

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.

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.

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.

[Fordel]

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.

[Zetor]

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.

[Valmorian]

So you basically want to PvP? :)

The randomness that you seem to desire will only come from other players.

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

[Ironwood]

Daft.

[Sogrinaugh]

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.

[Triforcer]

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.