2.1 Shaman idea

[Sinomin]

Some info on down ranked spell usage from Wowwiki related to +damage and healing. You can use the formula there to find a nice medium, something that doesnt cost as much mana and doesnt get penalized too bad.

Seems spells under lvl 20 take a penalty from the difference between the highest spell lvl, a penalty just from being under lvl 20 and a penalty from a lower cast time. Clipped a section related to spells under lvl 20:

Penalty Rules
[edit] Spells learned before level 20

Many spells have multiple ranks. To avoid abuse of lower ranks to have a similar effect at a negligible mana cost, any spell learned below level 20 receives a large penalty. If such a spell has a shorter cast time than a higher rank, this is also taken in to account. This penalty can be calculated by subtracting 3.75% for each level lower than 20.

(20 - Level Spell is Learned) * .0375 = Penalty

[edit] Downranked spells

On 23-Oct-2006, Drysc posted this to the General forums:

"In the Burning Crusade, we’ve decided to make a fundamental change to the way spells calculate the bonus they receive from +healing and +spell damage effects and items. This is because we have seen a growing trend in using “downranking” and large amounts of +healing items, which we feel negatively impacts game balance. Downranking involves high-level players using lower level spell ranks and +healing gear to conserve mana, but maintain a high rate of healing done. Through this method, it has become possible in the live game for healing characters to heal large amounts of damage indefinitely without running out of mana. To maintain progression of use through spell ranks, we are changing how lower ranked spells relate to characters of higher level.

Spells will now receive a smaller bonus from +healing and +spell damage based on a comparison of the level at which the spell was learned and the caster’s current level. Take the Priest spell Heal 2 as an example:

The spell is learned at level 22, and the base points for healing on the spell keep increasing until level 27. So, level 27 is considered the spell’s max level in our calculation.

This system gives an additional 6 levels of slack before applying any penalty to casting Heal 2; so, players up to level 33 can cast it with no penalty.

In this example, we will use level 34 (one level past the cast level of the spell) as a starting point.

The bonus from +healing is multiplied by this ratio:

((spell level)+6) / (player level)

That means the level 34 player only gets 97% of the normal bonus from +healing items when casting Heal 2. A level 60 player would only get 55% of the bonus, while a level 70 would get 47%.

The exact same system will also apply to damage spells. However, as healing classes tend to use downranking more often than others, healers are likely to see more effect from this change than other classes. As a general rule, players will be able to use the top 2 or 3 ranks of each spell before receiving any penalty. All of the existing ratios for the +healing and +spell damage bonuses on spells are also still in effect; so spells with a short casting time will continue to receive a smaller bonus than spells with a longer casting time. Spells learned below level 20 will still receive substantially smaller bonuses."

As of patch 2.0.1, this reduction in the effectiveness of +damage/+healing has gone live.

The above text has some confusion about the "spell level" that appears in the ratio. At one point, it says that the penalty is "based on a comparison of the level at which the spell was learned and the caster’s current level." In the example with Heal (Rank 2), though, the level used in the calculation is not the level at which Heal (Rank 2) is learned, but rather the level at which, quote, "the base points for healing on the spell keep increasing until".

What Drysic almost certainly meant was that the "spell level" that appears in the ratio is one level below whenever the next higher rank of the spell is trainable. Since Heal (Rank 3) is trainable at level 28, the "spell level" of Heal (Rank 2) is considered to be level 27. Hence, the formula for the penalty becomes:

1 - (((Level at which next higher rank of Spell is Learned) + 5) / (Player's Level)) = Penalty

For example, druids first learn the spell Healing Touch (Rank 6) at level 32. For a level 60 Druid, the Downranked penalty for casting Healing Touch (Rank 5) will be 38.3%, so the spell will only get 61.7% of the druid's +healing bonus.

Drysc's last sentence implies that the "Spells learned before level 20" penalty described above is still in effect, and in fact is multiplicatively cumulative with the downranked spell penalty.