WoW IRC Dev Chat

[Xanthix]

That is an excellent writeup on tanking requirements and abilities. But I wonder where the shaman would fit in. It seems to me that people want paladins to be able to tank better, but from the devs' point of view they should be comparable to shamans in terms of tanking ability.

So right now, warriors are the best tanks followed by bear druids. Paladins may be far behind, but if shamans are also then the devs may feel that is "balanced." What would be necessary to do if paladins are made better tanks, would be to buff shamans to let them also fill the role.

To this end, it would be interesting to see a comparison of warriors/bears/shamans in tanking roles from the horde perspective. I have never played horde so I have no experience there.

[oldmandennis]

Awesome post. It helped me understand the paladin issues in a way some of the other posts here didn't.

Shaman _shouldn't_ be tanking stuff. I'm fine with the emergency clothie saver mode. Earthshock will usually grab a mob and rockbaiter is enough to hold them if you are duoing with a mage, but the rest of it is not there - mitigation, itemization, AOE taunt.

Out of curiosity, could a raiding (half blue half purple) Pally solo heal a 5man live strath without extreme difficulty or ubergeard partymates?

[oldmandennis]

What addons do you think would break with the elimation of decursive? Whispercast?

Given the implementation of 15min blessings, I don't see the elimination of whispercast as game breaking. And decursive is breaking some encounters.

[Warlock]

A Paladin in green/blue healing gear can solo heal 5 man live strath, provided your group is willing to let the tank have aggro. Holy Light with Blessing of Light and some +heal gear is a very good spell indeed. The time I did this I was on my warlock and a fair few healthstones were used (no instant cast HOT to heal up people taking random target/AOE damage) but I'm sure a skilled group could do without.

Gear is the key. If he's using Str/Sta plate, don't expect much healing. If he's asking whether he can roll on cloth caster drops, you're golden.

[Kevin]

Out of curiosity, could a raiding (half blue half purple) Pally solo heal a 5man live strath without extreme difficulty or ubergeard partymates?
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You don't even need purples to do that in a good group. Probably couldn't do it a PuG. Shaman can do it as well in blues and greens. It's really not much more difficult for a paladin to heal a 5 man than it is for a druid.

[Kevin]

And the thread and a reply that I put in there with some comparitive info adding shaman as well is gone. Sigh.


Edit: Hmm seems the whole paladin forum is down. Nevermind.

[Dozer]

Shaman can do it as well in blues and greens. 
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Shamans can main heal in blues and greens if you have 200 potions, enough CC to reduce each fight to one at a time, and want to drink up from no mana after every pull.

[oldmandennis]

Shamans can main heal in blues and greens if you have 200 potions, enough CC to reduce each fight to one at a time, and want to drink up from no mana after every pull.
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/nod

The mana pool is gonna be the tough thing. You aren't leaving yourself much room for error, especially on the boss fights. I did it, but I'm blue/purp and was working with a good and geared tank, usually our guilds #2 tank. The rest of the players were more average. The Cannoner was close, and we wiped on Balnazzar when he Mc'ed the tank twice. The second time I don't know if he bugged or people just resisted (come to think of it, my standard gear has a lot of shadow resist) but nobody got mind controlled.

[Treesh]

Shamans can main heal in blues and greens if you have 200 potions, enough CC to reduce each fight to one at a time, and want to drink up from no mana after every pull.
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Mogo has almost never had to drink a mana potion when she is the only healer. Yes, CC helps a lot (it helps any healer out), but you can still heal through more than one critter at a time as long as there isn't a ton of shadow and arcane damage being thrown about. Mana tide totem, the trinket that summons an ancient mana spring totem, and yes, even that piddly piece of crap regular mana spring totem all help keep your mana up. Physical damage can be mitigated by stoneskin totem, fire, frost and nature can be mitigated by the corresponding resist totems (yes, this means that if there's a lot of fire thrown around too you can't have your mana regen totems up). If there are folks in your group that got hurt but aren't still taking damage, bandage them or ask them to bandage themselves. You can also use crystal restore to give a tiny HoT on folks. If you're specced for it, nature's swiftness can help keep your tank up if you start falling behind on the heals. If you're tauren, warstomp to buy time. If your cloth wearers are getting pounded on, earthshock to get them off the squishy until the tank or offtank can come over and get it off of you. In Mogo's caster gear, she's got almost 6000 mana and about 3100 or 3200 health unbuffed. Those are better stats than Aleri (my priest) had when she started playing in the big kid instances. Mogo is only wearing blues and greens. Frequently, I'm the only healer in the group with her and we don't often get tons of CC. Does it get rough? You bet it does! Sometimes someone in the group dies (AoEing mages are tough to keep alive for a shaman), but very rarely does being a shaman healer cause a complete wipe. But I absolutely refuse to listen to folks who say shaman just can't heal. You spec and gear them right, and they're right in there keeping the group alive and kicking. It has gotten harder to be main/solo healer in the end instances because of the shadow and arcane damage being thrown around, but it's still completely possible. It takes skill not only on the healer's part, but on the rest of the group as well. Do I main heal in pickup groups with Mogo? Very rarely, but I very rarely put up with that crap on my priest as well.

Edit: I was a bit off on Mogo's health and mana in caster gear. She's got 3297 health and 5486 mana. I must have looked at her mana pool when she had the mark of the chosen effect on. And btw, she's dressed all in mail. Doesn't have any leather or cloth on to help with her healing or mana pool, but she has been lucky with drops. :)

[VoiceMan]

I'll take Mogo as my healer anytime in a group. I have complete confidence in Treesh and her healing tactics with her shaman. :D I'll take her over two PUG priests.

[Kevin]

/nod

The mana pool is gonna be the tough thing.  You aren't leaving yourself much room for error, especially on the boss fights.  I did it, but I'm blue/purp and was working with a good and geared tank, usually our guilds #2 tank.  The rest of the players were more average.  The Cannoner was close, and we wiped on Balnazzar when he Mc'ed the tank twice.  The second time I don't know if he bugged or people just resisted (come to think of it, my standard gear has a lot of shadow resist) but nobody got mind controlled.
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OK what I didn't say was that the shaman and the paladin both need to to be heal spec'd and wearing the gear for healing. You should easily be able to crack 5K mana if you are willing to wear gear for healing from just blues and greens at L60. That puts both the shaman and paladin in cloth, leather, and mail unless you are lucky on some drops. If you aren't wearing healing gear then no you can't do it. My paladins healing rig didn't have any plate in it for some time. I still, even with some of my purples use some greens and blues because they have higher int on them. Spi doesn't help the paladin as much.

My paladins mana pool in blues and greens was just as big as my druids in blues and greens at the same level. Treesh's shaman had more mana than either of them at the same stage of the game.

The cannoneer is rough for a druid or priest in blues and greens too, so is Balnazzar. I don't see your point on that. I've seen level appropriate groups wipe to Balnazzar with priests around too. Of course those fights are hard for a blue/green geared group, they are supposed to be. But they can be done, you did them. They are stressful for any healer in the gearing you would have at that stage.

The overall HP/s and HP/MP for all the healers aren't that different.

Having healed this stuff with a druid and with a paladin I can tell you at times it is easier with the paladin because of the speed of the cast. I also don't have the pressure of if someone dies it might as well be a wipe because I can't rez them with that 30 minute timer and the respawns aren't letthing them back in. Yes the paladin needs to have holy light on the target for flash of light to do anything and so you put that on the tank but having the option of a 1.5 sec cast over the horribly mana inefficient 2 sec cast of a druid is huge. You don't need to CC everything. The warrior was tanking 2 or 3 mobs on several pulls. I didn't drink a mana potion (I pretty much never drink mana potions). I did drink water after many pulls, but I did that on my druid too and I watch priests have to as well. And so what? You are drinking while they are pulling the next group and you keep drinking until you need to heal, it doesn't really slow you down that much.

The paladin has the advantage of blessing of protection or blessing of sacrifice to help with AoE at times. Shaman can use earth bind and the AoE'r can kite to mitigate damage. Druids have to hope their HoT's balance things out enough for a 3.5 second cast heal (I did it on my druid before 1.9 so I couldn't knock it down to 3.0 sec) to land. It took me a few deaths to figure out how to keep a warlock alive with a druid.

And actually when I'm healing as a paladin or druid, I want the damage split onto a couple of people because I need to use slower heals to save mana and if all the damage is focused on one target I can't always do that.

So yeah you don't have a lot of room for error but neither does a solo priest. Since you can wear the exact same gear a priest does plus have options for other stuff, it should actually be easier for a shaman or paladin to have a larger mana pool, if they plan on getting gear to heal in. If you are the only healer in an instance you shouldn't be thinking about damage at all, all your gear should focus on healing.

[swirly]

Shaman _shouldn't_ be tanking stuff.  I'm fine with the emergency clothie saver mode.  Earthshock will usually grab a mob and rockbaiter is enough to hold them if you are duoing with a mage, but the rest of it is not there - mitigation, itemization, AOE taunt.
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I don't really agree with this. They tank differently than other tank classes, but I would by no means say they shouldn't tank. Their mitigation is about the same as a warrior without a shield (little less without parry), which for the instances below UBRS is plenty. Half the time warriors will go two handed in those instances just because they don't need the extra mitigation and the added dps helps speed things up. Now if you are refering to things from UBRS and on to later raiding, then sure they probably shouldn't be tanking. In those situations though blizzard has been pretty clear that they expect all classes to be there and so one could say that only a warrior "should" tank. Not that other classes couldn't.

As to itemization, shamans don't get the +def gear or as much stamina as other classes. However, they do get enough stamina that even the hard hitting bosses in the < UBRS instances will not kill them in 1-2 hits. This means that they have enough stamina to stay alive and tank as long as they have a healer on them. Now you might say that they are using the healers mana faster then, but you also have to consider that the shaman can heal themselves as well with a 70% chance to not be interupted on their lesser healing wave (and if you are tanking as a shaman I feel you do need that talent). This means that they can help the healer and so in the end the healer uses about the same about of mana keeping the shaman up as they would keeping up a warrior.

As to an AOE taunt, its true that they don't have one. I also don't feel they need one though. I've held 3 mobs without a problem on my shaman. Basically you just have to change targets alot, making sure to earthshock the others some, but also making sure to shock the main target enough to keep it on you. This is no different than how warriors usually do it, making sure to sunder/revenge the other mobs. Its also the same in that its more likely that a crit or a class going full out on the main target will pull it off the tank more easily. I'm not argueing that a warrior can't do it better, but a shaman can do it. Now there is also the case of when a Mage/Warlock is AOEing. A warrior will try to hold the elite mobs off of the AOE class for as long as possible (or the whole fight if they are good). A shaman can do this as well with 1 or 2 elites just by spreading their shocks around. They will lose the mobs easier than the warrior, but they can generally do it well enough. They also have the added bonus that if they do lose the mobs, they can switch to helping keep the AOE up with their heals. Thus where in a group with a warrior tank the AOE could die if the warrior loses aggro on the elites in a group with a shaman tank its not always as bad because the shaman can help keep the AOE up in other ways (really, the warrior tanking the elites is just how they keep the AOE up anyway).

My point is that if you can get a good warrior, then by all means take the warrior for tanking. A shaman can fill the job fine if you can't get a good warrior though. Things may go slower because, depending on gear, the shaman may have to drink more after each fight, but they can get the job done. In truth, there have been many cases where my group has told me (on my shaman) to tank even when we have a warrior. There are a lot of bad warriors out there. There have been many times when we will be playing with a warrior tank in the group and mobs will be beating on the priest/mage/whatever. Then I will tell the warrior to go dps and I'll tank with my shaman and all of a sudden nobody else will be taking damage. I remember back when I used recap that it was interesting to watch the damage taken field. We would do places with a warrior tanking and when you look at the damage taken field you see that the other classes have taken more than they should. Then we would try it with my shaman tanking and the amount the other classes took would be much less.

In the end, it often comes down to the people playing the characters. With equal players a warrior is easily a better tank than a shaman. The choice isn't always between equals though and when you have a bad warrior then by all means have the shaman tank if he can do a better job. I guess you could say that the shaman "shouldn't" be tanking, the warrior "should" be doing a better job. I guess in a perfect world shaman "shouldn't" be tanking because you should always be able to find a good warrior to tank for you. Things sure aren't perfect though. : )

BTW, you may notice how much I meantion shaman healing in the same breath as shaman tanking. My personal belief is that a shaman tank should have points in restoration because a shaman tank should be healing theirselves when necessary. I also tend to tank with my +healing gear on. I've tried swapping it out for stat gear and I always find that it doesn't work as well. I have enough stamina in my +healing setup to survive and the added healing helps more than more stats do. I also believe that elemental/restoration is a better tanking build against non-nature immune bosses (immune to earth shock bosses are bad for shaman tanking). I've tried the enhancement tree and found that it just didn't work as well. Being able to shock things more often and for more damage from elemental helps me hold more mobs at once and restoration helps keep me up better and also helps if I need to heal an AOEer. Basically I feel that a shaman has enough mitigation without the enhancement talents and while the damage ones do help with rockbiter, I feel that improving earthshock is more beneficial. Many shamans will argue with me about this though so it may just be my playstyle. I've found that my shaman can tank anything < UBRS though I've not tried 5 man dead strat past the baroness (we did 4 man runs of her for the dreadmist sandles) or UBRS for that matter....maybe I could tank there too. Half the time UBRS is such a zerg with 15 anyway that it might be possible.

So having said all this I can kind of see why paladins are complaining. Here you have me saying how a shaman is an adequate tank (and I also feel they are adequate healers....I hate how much I hear them get ragged on for their healing. I've healed just as many things as I have tanked). Meanwhile you have the paladins saying that they can't tank things. So it does seem that there is an inbalance there. If shamans can be adequate tanks then so should paladins. Not that they should tank in the same way, but they should be able to do it better than it sounds like they currently can.

[swirly]

If you are the only healer in an instance you shouldn't be thinking about damage at all, all your gear should focus on healing.
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BTW, I'd just like to point out that I think this is why shamans ge ta bad rap as healers. Not because they can't be good ones, but most shamans as healers will try to do damage too. Its not so much that they can't do damage as well, but that it takes more skill. You have to know if you can spare mana for an attack. You have to know if you can afford to get up in melee range of a mob. You have to pay attention to more than just what you would if you were only healing. It can be done, but it takes practise and alot of work. In alot of situations shaman would be better off not bothering with the damage. Its their paying attention to other things than healing that often results in people dieing or in wipes. In the end it all comes down to the skill of the player like always, but I do think this is a big reason behind the hate for shaman healers.

[Treesh]

BTW, I'd just like to point out that I think this is why shamans ge ta bad rap as healers.&nbsp; Not because they can't be good ones, but most shamans as healers will try to do damage too.&nbsp; Its not so much that they can't do damage as well, but that it takes more skill.&nbsp; You have to know if you can spare mana for an attack.&nbsp; You have to know if you can afford to get up in melee range of a mob.&nbsp; You have to pay attention to more than just what you would if you were only healing.&nbsp; It can be done, but it takes practise and alot of work.&nbsp; In alot of situations shaman would be better off not bothering with the damage.&nbsp; Its their paying attention to other things than healing that often results in people dieing or in wipes.&nbsp; In the end it all comes down to the skill of the player like always, but I do think this is a big reason behind the hate for shaman healers.
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Very excellent point. :)

I really need to get my butt in gear and write up my guide to main/solo healing as a shaman.

[Kevin]

BTW, I'd just like to point out that I think this is why shamans ge ta bad rap as healers.&nbsp; Not because they can't be good ones, but most shamans as healers will try to do damage too.&nbsp; Its not so much that they can't do damage as well, but that it takes more skill.&nbsp; You have to know if you can spare mana for an attack.&nbsp; You have to know if you can afford to get up in melee range of a mob.&nbsp; You have to pay attention to more than just what you would if you were only healing.&nbsp; It can be done, but it takes practise and alot of work.&nbsp; In alot of situations shaman would be better off not bothering with the damage.&nbsp; Its their paying attention to other things than healing that often results in people dieing or in wipes.&nbsp; In the end it all comes down to the skill of the player like always, but I do think this is a big reason behind the hate for shaman healers.
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Agreed, you can do damage. Often when I'm main healing with my paladin I will do as much damage as the MT does because I can afford to get up there and swing and often times I can even put my two hander on with seal of command (though I lose a good 300 mana doing this) to help with damage. Of course I want to be swinging at the mob too as I can use skills to make them a mana battery for me. Healing shaman have 2 totems and at the high end a trinket that can help a lot with the total mana pool as well so they can also if they play it right put the damage out too.

It's much much harder for a druid main healer to contribute damage because the melee damage you do in caster form sucks, moonfire doesn't add a lot either and you have no wand. Insect swarm helped this out in 1.9, though I still value it more for the drop in hit chance of the mobs, but again you better be sure you can spare that mana. I will often times start the pull in cat (so that I don't lose mana when I change out to heal) and do some damage until I need to heal. Resto spec druids of course have innervate to push that mana pool back up.

And yeah I think that alliance expect paladins to be more of a healer than a horde expect shaman too. I remember Treesh getting in a mostly PuG BRD run they kept trying to get a healer until a few other guildies convinced them to go with just her shaman as the healer. It wouldn't have taken that much effort for a PuG BRD to go with a paladin main healer. We also had a UBRS run the other day were a paladin in one of the newer guilds to join the avarice alliance was asked to stop healing and do DPS. He wasn't quite sure what to do. He was asked because we had some newer priests that wanted to do more raid healing. He said, "but everyone expects a paladin to heal in UBRS". Not use get up there and do some damage! :) Different attitudes.

Of course this is part of the problem for paladins shaman can easily deliver DPS, or heal, or tank lower stuff (though they have a stigma of not being able to tank). Paladins it's a bit different.


As to your other post, I'm not a great paladin tank. I can hold multiple mobs but I also need so much help from the group to make sure I don't lose a mob and if I do, I just can't get it back. I'm very glad that I do have the healing talents when I'm tanking and I'm glad that I have the DPS adders. As you mentioned the tree that should help tanking for paladins really doesn't because they don't need help in the mitigation department, they need it in the aggro control department. More damage and a few self heals will help that out some. But I'm still not a good tank with my paladin.

Actually since I have a 60 warrior, paladin, and druid all on the same server I'm thinking that in 1.9 I just try to maximize the paladins healing. The warrior is already protection spec, and then I'll go full feral with the druid again so that I can use her as my DPS toon if I feel like it. Right now I have her 31 resto/20 feral, though 5 of those resto are furor. This is a way to help maximize her flexibility. I think I'm just going to give up on that and use her as a DPS class who can help with healing. If I really want to do more healing, I'll use my paladin. :)

[Chesspiece_face]

What addons do you think would break with the elimation of decursive?&nbsp; Whispercast?

Given the implementation of 15min blessings, I don't see the elimination of whispercast as game breaking.&nbsp; And decursive is breaking some encounters.
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Well it depends on how they "fix" decursive. if they fix it by removing the Passive Targeting system that it uses than any other Addon that uses such systems will also be broken. BuffAhoy, Paladin Assist, Healer Helper, and a lot of other addons that aren't game breaking but help A LOT to make the monatonous aspects of buffing less grating.

Specifically BuffAhoy and Paladin Assist won't work anymore. The addition of 15 minute buffs don't even come close to making up for the use of group cycle buffing that is offered with these addons. And the cost of the items required for the 15 minute buffs is restrictive in how often they will be used. if i'm in a 10 man group i'm not gonna be burning my money to buff 1 or 2 people with a 15 minute buff. The bonus of BuffAhoy is to make up where these new 15 minute buffs are lacking (small groups).

Another aspect of some of these buff programs is to auto select the appropriate level of buff for your target. Now this part is only a relatively small aspect of the addons but still helpful. If blizzard fixes decursive by altering how it automatically assigns the correct buff than that part of these other addons will also not function.

And if they use a fix that mixes both of the above practically nothing from those addons will work. So they will have given us a 15 minute buff that helps only in large 40 man raids and made buffing in smaller groups much more of a hassle because of the lack of addons to reduce the monatony.

This all depends on how they will actually alter decursive however. we will see.

[oldmandennis]

5400 is quite a bit of mana. It's substantially more then I had at that point. Did you make a point of hunting down a bunch of + int items? I didn't really target gear until I capped.

Maybe I'm overestimating a solo priests ability, as for some goofy reason both of my highlevel characters are hybrids, so I haven't done many instances with just a solo priest. Closest I came was WC with my druid beartanking the whole way.

But I absolutely refuse to listen to folks who say shaman just can't heal.

Who said that? I'm just saying I wouldn't do it strath level stuff in greens and blues solo healing unless I was really confident in my teammates. I'm not saying its impossible, it would just probably exceed my frustration level. E.g., during the strath run I'm using as an example, we explained the cannons to the hunter. We thought he understood, but then didn't do it right. A green/blue shaman wipes, only my purples and the purples on the MT saved the day. That was an important save, because we did wipe on Balthazzar when he MC'd the tank twice (I don't think many parties are going to survive that), but since my ankh was still up, we were able to finish the run (which was nice, since Bal dropped the Truefaith pattern and I made more then 100g :) )

As far as the tanking goes, the baroness doesn't hit very hard, IIRC. I think for the end game stuff we are talking about, we are talking Baron, Balnazzar, Immolthar, and probably Drakksaith. It sounds like doing those with a pally is possible but tough, and pallys want it to be more reasonable (and some are agitating for MC tanking). It's not really reasonable for a shaman to do those.

As far as decursive goes, none of those things sound like game breakers. Would it be annoying? I guess, but if it elimates the fact that decursive is a mindless get out of jail free card, I'm for it. If it breaks Healer Helper, that sounds like a bonus. The emergency monitor is enough of a crutch, IMHO.

[Treesh]

5400 is quite a bit of mana.&nbsp; It's substantially more then I had at that point.&nbsp; Did you make a point of hunting down a bunch of + int items?&nbsp; I didn't really target gear until I capped.

Maybe I'm overestimating a solo priests ability, as for some goofy reason both of my highlevel characters are hybrids, so I haven't done many instances with just a solo priest.&nbsp; Closest I came was WC with my druid beartanking the whole way.


Who said that?&nbsp; I'm just saying I wouldn't do it strath level stuff in greens and blues solo healing unless I was really confident in my teammates.&nbsp; I'm not saying its impossible, it would just probably exceed my frustration level.&nbsp; E.g., during the strath run I'm using as an example, we explained the cannons to the hunter.&nbsp; We thought he understood, but then didn't do it right.&nbsp; A green/blue shaman wipes, only my purples and the purples on the MT saved the day.&nbsp; That was an important save, because we did wipe on Balthazzar when he MC'd the tank twice (I don't think many parties are going to survive that), but since my ankh was still up, we were able to finish the run (which was nice, since Bal dropped the Truefaith pattern and I made more then 100g :) )
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No, I didn't specifically hunt up intell gear. I didn't run the lower level instances over and over and over again just to get the intell gear either. Mogo grew up healing, grew up restoration spec. It wasn't until she hit 60 (or close to 60) where she ever had another healer in the group. Oh, wait. Once or twice before 60/high 50s I had a druid in the party. If there was mail/leather loot that would boost my intell and stamina, I'd roll on it or ask if I could roll on it if it was something BoP. If it was strength/stamina instead, I would roll on it or ask if I can roll on it for her melee outfit. I still don't go out and target specific gear with her really. There are still enough quests for me to get done for me to go into the end instances that there's a good chance I'll still end up with nice gear. But since she grew up healing, it was much easier to get the mana gear piece by piece. For a while she was all mail, then she was a little bit of leather thrown in, but she's been all mail again for quite a while.

A solo priest is a good healer for an entire group, yes. They have the best group heals in the game and shield really is a great tool. Growing up, the instances felt just as difficult to heal with Aleri as they do with Mogo, but I had the safety net of prayer of healing, holy nova (sometime in the 40s? Basically as soon as I could get it, I had it), and shield. Sometimes it was enough, sometimes it wasn't. ;) A shaman heals are quite dependent on just how idiotic the group is. If the group is completely out to lunch, yeah, there are definitely going to be more deaths. If the group has some clue, it'll be easier to avoid stupid deaths. If it's a really good group, you don't even get close to anyone dying. With priests, you have fade if you have to heal early and heal heavy so you can take care of yourself easier and the easier it is for the sole healer to stay alive, the less likely you'll have a wipe. And that's why PuG groups want priests instead of any of the other healers. Good priests have enough tricks to save idiots if they want to and not have to sacrifice an important character to do it. The other healers have to be a bit more selective and so the idiots die more frequently. If the idiot isn't in a crucial role for the group, let him die if he decides a fight isn't exciting enough and decides to purposefully bring in another group of 5 critters to fight. So there are plenty of idiots in WoW who then believe that any healer less than a priest sucks because they only die if it's not a priest healing them. So yeah, I got more defensive than I should have about shaman healing and being told I couldn't do my job in anything less than purples with some blues. ;) And in case my rambling point doesn't come through, I completely agree that a healer's life (regardless of class) is definitely made so much easier if you are in a good group.

[oldmandennis]

No, I didn't specifically hunt up intell gear.

I think you got lucky then. My 58 druid is not at nearly 5400, more like 4500 in his heal gear, though I passed up 15 intel on pants in favor of Abysal Pants of Restoration.

And in case my rambling point doesn't come through,

It is rambling a bit :)

I completely agree that a healer's life&nbsp; (regardless of class) is definitely made so much easier if you are in a good group.
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/nod

[Chesspiece_face]

As far as decursive goes, none of those things sound like game breakers.&nbsp; Would it be annoying?&nbsp; I guess, but if it elimates the fact that decursive is a mindless get out of jail free card, I'm for it.&nbsp; If it breaks Healer Helper, that sounds like a bonus.&nbsp; The emergency monitor is enough of a crutch, IMHO.
[right][snapback]98095[/snapback][/right]

Well i'm not really validating whether it will be a worthwhile change or not. Another thing to think about is all the assist programs running on CTraid etc. Main assist/2nd assist all operate on passive targeting. if passive targetting is removed those aspects of popular mods will fail to work any longer as well. There are a lot of aspects of mods that can possibly be damaged with the changes to disable decursive. That is probably why it is taking them so long to put those changes in game. It's a fine balance to get rid of decursive and keeping as much of other acceptable mods working as intended.