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#1 Dec 03 2009 at 4:33 PM Rating: Excellent
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This is not just a priest thing but it does affect us and there's no general "healing" forum anyhow.

Here, first GC sez:

Quote:
Health pools will be much larger in Cataclysm and healing will be lower. That should help address some of the overly binary feel of PvP and PvE encounters.

You'll still be able to kill people as well as be able to heal them. The pace will just be a little slower and both healing and killing should require more than 1-2 buttons.


Then he sez:

Quote:
Imagine a boss that takes say 3-4 hits to kill a tank, but it also takes a healer 3-4 heals to top her back off. Now efficiency of a healing spell can be as much of a consideration as direct throughput, since the tank is unlikely to die in your next GCD. Now coordination among healers can be a bigger deal since efficiency will matter. Now maximum health on the tank classes will matter less because the question of how long you can survive without a heal landing is largely academic. Now avoidance on a tank can matter a little more because saving healer mana becomes as important as being table to take the next hit.

As an aside, healers will actually need enough healing tools and enough distinction among them so that they are really choosing the big, expensive heal vs. the small, cheap heal vs. the fast, expensive heal, to name just a few examples.



I like this change for PVP, because my mind is strong, but my joints are weak, and I'd rather WoW be more mental than physical. Smiley: tongue I'm all for anything that's more a test of how well I know my class versus how close my reflexes are to those of a nubile nineteen-year-old raised on Mountain Dew and video games.

I think this sounds like it'll make healing more fun in PVE as well. I'd be interested to hear what you raiders think.

Discuss.
#2 Dec 03 2009 at 6:11 PM Rating: Decent
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Actually, I had a discussion regarding PvP with one of the top Paladins on the server two days ago and the only way to really 'fix' PvP in both our opinions was to change health and healing in the way GC just mentioned in that quote. So yeah, I'm definitely happy with this. It'll make PvP more about drinking again á la TBC, but right now I'm happy with that - in current PvP you can roll a dual warrior team and get 1800 rating just by using charge and Bladestorm.

Regarding PvE, I think it's an excellent change as well, and it will make really draw the tank healing efficiency of disc priests a lot closer to the level of holy paladins - our current problem is that once Penance is used, we have nothing to counter the humongous amounts of burst with that still land on the tank. If healing shifts back to being efficiency based rather than sick bursts, discs will possibly be able to viably tank-heal any (hardmode) encounter in the game in a similar fashion to paladins.
#3 Dec 04 2009 at 6:37 AM Rating: Good
I think one of the fundemantal problems they have is that the mechanics for PvE and PvP are very different, but the tools are the same. In other words, it's hard for healing to be scaled to both raid PvE and PvP encounters. This is nothing new, I remember chatting with guildies about this problem back in vanilla wow.

I certainly don't have any answer, but I'd be happy if we moved away from burst damage. Wrath was the least enjoyable phase of WOW in terms of PvP healing for me. Arena amounted to pillar humping because of the burst. It's one thing not being able to kill oppponents as a healer, it's quite another to be barely able to survive 5 seconds of sustained attack.

I still think Blizzard have an impossible on their hands. Balancing the 3 specs of each classes so that they are all almost equally viable both in PvE and PvP is a near-impossible task.

But yeah, this change seems promising.
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#4 Dec 04 2009 at 12:26 PM Rating: Decent
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Quote:
I think one of the fundemantal problems they have is that the mechanics for PvE and PvP are very different, but the tools are the same. In other words, it's hard for healing to be scaled to both raid PvE and PvP encounters. This is nothing new, I remember chatting with guildies about this problem back in vanilla wow.

I don't completely agree with this, actually. While the idea is true, it's also true that when TBC was about efficiency in PvP, so was it in PvE. And now that PvP is about burst damage (and healing through it), so is PvE. There are definitely similarities to be found.

On another note, I hope you don't mind I've stopped rating you up Tea - your rating can't get much higher anyway.
#5 Dec 04 2009 at 11:01 PM Rating: Good
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RedPhoenixxx wrote:
I think one of the fundemantal problems they have is that the mechanics for PvE and PvP are very different, but the tools are the same. In other words, it's hard for healing to be scaled to both raid PvE and PvP encounters. This is nothing new, I remember chatting with guildies about this problem back in vanilla wow.


I wish Blizz would just break down and accept that different affects in PvP and PvE isn't the end of the world.

As for the PvE effect of greater health pools all around I feel it will shift balance more towards avoidance and mitigation over health. Efficiency in healing over spamming nonstop will also be nice.
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#6 Dec 08 2009 at 12:22 PM Rating: Excellent
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This same topic is being discussed more specifically in terms of healing in this thread.

Highlights: regen based on % mana will change, as will Int's relationship to regen and mana pool. It sounds like they want Int = throughput and Spi = longevity in a fairly black and white, never-the-twain-shall meet kind of sense. That is in line with the whole simplify theme, I suppose, but it's still the same juggling act we have today (balancing your heals being big enough with not running out of mana), just with fewer stats contributing to it. In other news, GC admits that Lightwell sucks, but insists they will never, ever let it die nonetheless.



Edited cause I forgot the actual link.


Edited, Dec 8th 2009 1:26pm by teacake
#7 Dec 09 2009 at 11:10 AM Rating: Good
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teacake wrote:
This same topic is being discussed more specifically in terms of healing in this thread.

Highlights: regen based on % mana will change, as will Int's relationship to regen and mana pool. It sounds like they want Int = throughput and Spi = longevity in a fairly black and white, never-the-twain-shall meet kind of sense. That is in line with the whole simplify theme, I suppose, but it's still the same juggling act we have today (balancing your heals being big enough with not running out of mana), just with fewer stats contributing to it. In other news, GC admits that Lightwell sucks, but insists they will never, ever let it die nonetheless.



Edited cause I forgot the actual link.


Edited, Dec 8th 2009 1:26pm by teacake


Sounds interesting. I'm looking forward to some of the changes.

Re: Lolwell sucking ... well, duh. When you've got 95% of the people spec'd into a tree that do NOT take the talent ... that says something.

On a related note, I did see a priest the other day who was spec'd into it. And used it. Well, he placed it. After us DPS got over the laughter fits, we never so much as glanced at it again. Smiley: lol
#8 Dec 09 2009 at 11:34 AM Rating: Excellent
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The One and Only Shamandin wrote:

On a related note, I did see a priest the other day who was spec'd into it. And used it. Well, he placed it. After us DPS got over the laughter fits, we never so much as glanced at it again. Smiley: lol


And there you have it. Lightwell sucks because you make it suck. Smiley: wink The only people I've ever seen use it successfully are people who always run with guildies or similar team of people who work together a lot, and therefore their DPS will use it. Those people are generally all, "What do you mean Lightwell sucks??" because when it's used right it's actually not that bad.

To GC's point in that thread though, it's not that DPS won't use things to heal themselves, it's that they won't use inconvenient things to heal themselves. People who are into damage meters are not going to waste globals trotting over to the Lightwell.
#9 Dec 09 2009 at 12:29 PM Rating: Good
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The funny thing about lolwell is that while I was halfway through that post I said in /g (quite literally):
"EUREKA!
Lightwell should be a passive buff healing people on low health with weak flash heals"
I then continued reading and noticed that's exactly what was suggested in the topic.

Nevertheless, I came up with a better idea lateron - what if it works like Guardian Spirit and increases the healing done to targets within X yards of it by 20%? It'd still be fire and forget, but at least it'd be a useful cooldown.
#10 Dec 09 2009 at 1:54 PM Rating: Excellent
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Mozared wrote:

Nevertheless, I came up with a better idea lateron - what if it works like Guardian Spirit and increases the healing done to targets within X yards of it by 20%? It'd still be fire and forget, but at least it'd be a useful cooldown.


I think they're still afraid that anything you drop on the ground that has a passive effect is too much like a totem. Yet they acknowledge the active effect is crap (as already said, asking DPS to drop everything to run over and click it is not practical). So the only solution I can see is to not drop anything on the ground at all. Maybe it could be a little birdie that flies around healing people.
#11 Dec 09 2009 at 5:26 PM Rating: Good
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Quote:
I think they're still afraid that anything you drop on the ground that has a passive effect is too much like a totem. Yet they acknowledge the active effect is crap (as already said, asking DPS to drop everything to run over and click it is not practical). So the only solution I can see is to not drop anything on the ground at all. Maybe it could be a little birdie that flies around healing people.

Pfff, they need to stop QQing. A talented 10 second lasting cooldown 'well' used for emergency group healing really isn't *that* much like one of four shaman totems that last multiple minutes and provide the entire raid with a static (mostly DPS) buff.
#12 Dec 10 2009 at 8:05 AM Rating: Excellent
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teacake wrote:
Mozared wrote:

Nevertheless, I came up with a better idea lateron - what if it works like Guardian Spirit and increases the healing done to targets within X yards of it by 20%? It'd still be fire and forget, but at least it'd be a useful cooldown.


I think they're still afraid that anything you drop on the ground that has a passive effect is too much like a totem. Yet they acknowledge the active effect is crap (as already said, asking DPS to drop everything to run over and click it is not practical). So the only solution I can see is to not drop anything on the ground at all. Maybe it could be a little birdie that flies around healing people.


That's part of my issue with Lightwell. If it's placed where the priest is, it's usually in a rather poor spot for the DPS to make even moderately inefficient use of it. If you've got mostly ranged DPS (who stand a better, but not THAT much better) chance of being near the priest to use it, then they won't be taking too much more damage to need it. If the priest takes the time to run to where the DPS are, drop and then move away, it's distracting him from doing what needs to be done healing wise. And probably get more healing done just standing there slapping FH or Renews on the folks, instead.

If it gave a raid wide 6% boost to heals and lasted longer, I could see it being useful. And that 6%? Didn't just pull it out of my backside. That's what the Tree of Life aura gives as well as the Imp Devotion Aura talent for Paladins (but why it's a Prot talent ... I'm still trying to figure that one out). Gives an extra buff for Holy Priests in 10 man raids where there may not BE a Resto Druid or a Protection Paladin (who took Imp Devo Aura) or even Holy Paladin who took the talent.
#13 Dec 11 2009 at 6:48 AM Rating: Good
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I have a question.

Does your target shift when you click Lolwell?

Because it doesn't when you eat a lock cookie.

Yes, I have never actually used a Lightwell and maybe seen one.. ummm... twice.
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#14 Dec 11 2009 at 8:31 AM Rating: Good
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It's like clicking on any other useable object on the ground. Your target doesn't change. Doesn't make it anymore convenient to use, though.
#15 Dec 11 2009 at 8:40 AM Rating: Good
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I have a feeling they're going to have trouble sticking to this to be honest. The only way they can do this is to nerf mana regen like crazy and make raid damage very infrequent and very large.

At the moment raid damage is usually unpredictable and frequent. This means we are in the situation where you use your highest hps spells all the time regardless because you need to prevent people from dieing. Very much the "nail with a sledgehammer" argument.

If they go about this differently and give people comparatively large health pools, then from a pve perspective you would have to punish players for overhealing and using their low cast time high output spells. The only way you can do this is to reduce the amount of available mana and get people into a mindset which is more like "that person has 'enough' health" as opposed to "oh crap that person isn't on full health!". Its going to be interesting to see how they maintain the challenging aspect of healing whilst forcing this healing slowdown as a lot of the threat in current encounters stems from losing people due to insufficient healing/healer reaction time.
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