Quote:I rarely participate in threads of this nature, but as a fairly longtime Lurker, I have to express my opinion that this thread needed some moderation guidance a while ago. However, when the moderators get involved and hostile (yes Mav you know I'm talking to you my friend:)it is time to cool off.

Artega is in the minority certainly. But he's within the rules as Blizzard has set them up. Whether or not he's pushing some particular Lurker hot buttons (everyone who played hardcore Diablo, right?) or not I don't think he is the one out of line in tone in this thread.

Quote:I don't know. A lot of healers use various levels of their heals. I know even on my alt priest, I use several different levels depending on how much needs to be healed. It may not be as big of a deal for damage dealers, but I have a feeling this'll hit a lot of healers where it hurts.

Quote:My post has been withdrawn. Despite Artega's history here, and his track record, I'm the bad guy here, evidently. And, even in my post, I did note that he was playing by the rules as Blizzard set them. I didn't accuse him of cheating or stretching Blizzard's rules in any way.

Quote:Lifebloom takes seven seconds for the payload to hit. Possibly you were thinking of Regrowth, which has a fairly abominable mana efficiency ratio. Or maybe Nourish, which seems aimed at being most efficient when you already have HoTs ticking on the target.

Flash of Light has a very small healing payload. Holy Light is mana-inefficient for paladins. Holy Shock is likely to become the new midrange heal for paladins, but will be on a 6-second cooldown. (reduced from 15 seconds in live)

My biggest concern is how to handle the '10-minute-long tank dies in 1.5 seconds' fights though. I consider myself reasonably good at cancel-healing but if I miss a beat, the tank dies. I consider that unacceptable stress. No one else wipes the raid (except in specific fights) if they don't have sub-second response time.

Quote:Tank healing in a lot of the fights that Tuftears describes is "pre-emptive" rather than reactive: if you wait to find out how much healing the tank needs before you cast your heal, the tank is dead before you finish your cast. So you choose your spells based on how much healing you *anticipate* the tank will need in 2 to 3 seconds time (depending on which class you play).

Brutallus is the clearest example of this kind of fight in TBC that I can think. He hits very, very hard, and very, very fast (duel wielder). Plus because of the Radiance effect, he doesn't miss much. During the Stomps, I *have* to cast Greater Heal 7 - the highest rank currently available. But it simply isn't feasible to sustain GH7 for the entire duration of the fight (much as I would like to).

So outside of the stomps I use Greater Heal 4 most of the time, occasionally throwing in Greater Heal 7 is the tank is low on health when I'm choosing which heal to cast next (low in this case meaning anything less than about 80% health really). Fully buffed with amp magic, GH7 heals for about 5.8K-6K, while GH4 heals for around 4.7K-4.8K. From memory, GH7 costs 700-something mana while GH4 is around 550 or so.

Unless I'm lucky enough to get a Shadow Priest, I usually use a couple of mana pots, a Shadow Fiend, and hope for some Blue Dragon procs. I also wear 2 pieces of the Avatar set for the 100 mana returned on Greater Heals that top the tank up to maximum. Even with all those bonuses, I'm frequently running on fumes by the end of the fight.

I'm a little curious as to whether Blizzard plans to remove mana management entirely as an issue for healers (which could be possible with new talents, raidwide VT and other buffs and so on). If they did, it would remove some of the skill of being a healer. "Healing a tank? Okay, set up the woodpecker on your desk to tap the Greater Heal button for the next 5 minutes".

Chris

Quote:Otherwise, your toolbox is too big to require interesting choices. If the answer to almost every healing question is just a different rank of the same spell, then you have too much flexibility, IMO.

-Jester

Quote:This rank change could also be in responce to Blizzard thinking raiding guilds bring too much dps and not enough healing. In most raiding situations raiding guilds have learned that overloading on dps solves a lot of problems. Healers being able to downrank has made them so efficient guilds can get away with this. So maybe this change forces guilds to slot in one more healer than they are now so that they can cycle regening better. Thus the overall raid dps is lower from having one less dps class and fights are no longer trivialized from excessive dps. So in an odd way, this change could be less about nerfing healers and more about nerfing raid dps.

Quote:This would be pretty retarded since they are trying pretty hard to buff healers. If you wanted to buff an under represented spec in raids its tanks that need love. You usually bring 6+ healers to a raid but only a moron with a brain tumor would bring 6+ tanks.

Quote:If we find that any of the healers is now missing a critical tool from their toolbox (specifically an efficient heal that is good for e.g. topping of a rogue), then that is something we will definitely consider.

Quote:They literally cannot do that, however.

- they stated instances will have 10 man and 25 man versions. Therefore if you require 4+ "real" tanks, then you cannot really have a 10 man version, can you.
- If you have 4+ tanks taking REAL damage, then you need like 10 healers. If they don't take real damage, then people will improvise by AoE tanking or have them tanked by DPS classes.

I think they could consistently design encounters that required a large number of tanks if they hadn't already committed themselves to 10 and 25 man versions of the same dungeons.

The healing situation is interesting. People get burned out on healing more than tanking or DPSing. When a healer switches mains to DPS, it's burnout. When a DPS switches mains to a healer it's to help with raid makeup or for the good of the raiding body. This is an area that might need some large and sweeping changes.

Quote:Being able to switch specs on the fly for free will go a very long way towards alleviating the burnout problem. Tired of healing? Switch to Retardin mode, switch gear, and go smash faces for a while and let the Enhancement Shaman switch to Restoration and take your spot as healer.

Assuming that two-spec thing makes it into the full game, raids should be much more dynamic. Hopefully.

Quote:You can already do that, it just has a 100g tax (which isn't all that much). The main issue is gearing. You can't just switch gear. It's generally unrealistic to gear two roles simultaneously while raiding. You gear for one role, and take leftovers in another. If you then swap roles, you end up trading 2 well geared players for 2 clearly sub-par players. Why would you do that?

Quote:The healers this impacts most directly, arguably, are shaman and paladins. I don't think it's a coincidence those are the two healing classes with the fewest different heals.

I really don't feel three heals for paladins (Shock on CD) and four for shammies (and ES is a cooldown) is "too big" of a toolbox by any stretch of the imagination.

Anyways, this might all be a kneejerk reaction, because I haven't read up on either on any of those two healers' new WotLK spells. All I know about them I've learnt from how they get assigned in our raids;) Maybe their toolbox is huge in Wrath, heck if I know :P

Quote:Those two classes specifically have been given a quick-casting low-throughput heal to deal with smaller chunks of damage: Flash of Light and Lesser Healing Wave. What else is needed? If a paladin needs more throughput, toss Holy Light, and accept that your efficiency is going to go down. If a shaman needs smaller heals for tank safety, cast LHW, and accept that your efficiency is going to go down. Better yet, pair healers with complimentary healing abilities on the tank, and actually work out who's going to do what, rather than everyone being able to to everything.

The toolbox is already big enough without downranking, and is only getting bigger as the level cap goes up. (Edit: Blizzard also has an eye on these things, so I wouldn't get too scared just yet, even if you totally disagree with me and think downranking is the heart and soul of healing.)

-Jester

Quote:There's no rational thought behind this change, so far as I can see. I can only see it hurting everyone, particularly healers.

Quote:If we find that any of the healers is now missing a critical tool from their toolbox (specifically an efficient heal that is good for e.g. topping of a rogue), then that is something we will definitely consider.