MongoJerry,Aug 10 2005, 01:29 AM Wrote:In a nutshell, unless you spend a *ton* of points in the Holy talent tree, there's no benefit to using Greater Heal over Flash Heal. Greater Heal has a theoretically small numerical mana efficiency advantage over Flash Heal, but the fact that a person is more likely to overheal or waste critical heals more using Greater Heal removes most of that mana efficiency. Meanwhile, Flash Heal is much more flexible. You don't have to bite your nails hoping the heal lands before your target dies, and you can choose to switch targets quickly back and forth depending on who is taking damage in a given situation. It just overall allows more flexibility than Greater Heal does and since in practical situations it has about the same mana efficiency as Greater Heal, why wouldn't you use Flash Heal?
Of course, one could then argue that a good priest ought to invest heavily into the holy tree and increase the mana efficiency of his or her Greater Heal spells. But then again, one could also put those points into the Discipline tree and improve one's mana efficiency, total mana, and mana regeneration and therefore have more mana to cast all spells -- not just Greater Heal. It's not that Greater Heal is a bad spell. It's just that there isn't the incentive there to use it.
[right][snapback]85656[/snapback][/right]
This is probably a stupid question, but why not just slightly lower the mana cost of Greater Heal and/or slightly raise the mana cost of Flash Heal? Maybe even drop .5 - 1.0 seconds off the casting time of Greater Heal, bringing it down to an even 3 seconds? This would lower the mana efficiency of Flash Heal (forcing it into a more situational use skill, i.e. topping off or getting that one quick heal in to save the day before following up with the big one) while simultaneously raising that of Greater Heal, making it a more viable choice in the long run since overheals wouldn't waste quite so much mana? Throwing in a tiny reduction to the casting time would also help, as although .5 seconds isn't huge for such a long-casting spell, it can make the difference, and would also help push the heal efficiency into Great Heal's favor. Even adding a tiny cooldown to Flash Heal, possibly in addition to the above, would help make it more difficult to just chain-cast Flash Heal. Say, 2.5 seconds? This would make it so that, for 1 second after completing a Flash Heal, you can't use it again - just long enough to make you really think whether waiting to fire off another one, or using a bigger, better Heal (like Greater Heal) would be the better choice?
I'm not saying any of these fixes would necessarily work, but IMHO and with my limited experience, I think they'd be the perfect solution to the Flash Heal vs. all other heals argument. It wouldn't do much of anything in the way of improving the Holy Tree, but at least it would round out the healing options a bit, instead of being a one-trick Healbot (you'd be a multiple-trick Healbot instead! ;)).
Roland *The Gunslinger*