PvP in cataclysm

Hey! I'm glad you want to find out what the heck is going on in Cataclysm. Well, here's what I've figured out:

First, healers have been 'nerfed' immensely. The heal per second relative to the size of the health pools in Cataclysm is at best a third of what it was during season eight. The mana efficiency and number of times you could top someone off with a given mana bar are equally nerfed, and so are the mana regeneration abilities (except, of course, for paladins, who now use combo points and not mana!).

Does this mean that healing is going to feel different in PvE? Not exactly, the strength of most AoE heals is insane, and the group dynamics with mana regeneration and damage reduction / extra spell power / haste etc make healers quite strong in large groups. Raid healing is another beast, I'd rather talk about healing a small group of people.

It seems that most healers now can die to a single dpser, assuming that the person attacking has very good grasp of movement, timing, dps rotations and is well geared. A keyboard turning warrior spamming nothing but heroic strike is not a threat, but someone capable of stringing the few disabling cooldowns while using the most efficient damaging abilities can often outright kill a healer, if not drain 1/3 and higher of their mana pool. I am not quite sure how I feel about this. Certainly the mana regeneration and the overall pace of combat that was present in the later seasons of WotLK needed to change, but is this a few steps too far? As it stands now, a healer can not have a snowball's chance in hell of killing any class with self-healing abilities (and I am not only talking about rogues with recuperate). In the same time, classes that have absolutely no healing still fall easily. The problem with this new scaling of damage, healing efficiency is that a healer's optimal efforts in arena are to do nothing but to heal people. In other words, if you're a healer right now, you better sit by that pillar and focus on nothing but healing and avoiding CC, because if you do peek out to throw your 20 or shorter range CC or try to do some damage, you're probably going to lose the game for your team (unless of course you already were so far ahead).

Such changes keeping healers dedicated to only specific and very one dimensional heal only playstyles will further increase the strength of both self healing, mana drains and DPS that are capable of keeping pressure.

I played a number of arena matches as Shadowcleave (Unholy DK, Affliction Warlock, Druid) with Benys and Chris, two of the best players I know. Although we were playing on the old premade characters without any epic gear, we still were able to consistently outdamage our opponents by 3-5x range, and would often find the whole enemy team rotting at <30% with full dots on them. While this was interesting, once Chris discovered the power of necrotic strike, most games weren't even fair. The only reason our opponents lived for long was because they were all paladin or shaman healers, druids or paladins would most likely fall within a few seconds of the opener, if they were silly enough to queue up.



Similarly, mana drain was so powerful that Benys could take me from full mana to zero in one fear DR. It is certainly something that should get taken a really thoughtful look at.

Priests seemed completely unable to take advantage of the Archangel talents, because the opportunities to cast smite were basically nonexistent. DPS was nowhere as useful as mana burning the healer, I am reminded of the days when matches often came down to wanding down your opponent. If we do see that again, I wonder if games will evolve into stalemates between unkillable recuperate rogues, feral druids, protection paladins, shamans or fury warriors.

The feel of the game is definitely fresh in arena: Doing damage seems to matter. I quite like this. I am just afraid that once the game is out and capable arena players get their teeth into the theorycrafting and playtesting of the different combination, we will see little diversity at higher levels of gameplay and even BG teams. Who would want to take a druid or priest whose CC and utility spells have no place in the game where most DPS posses 40 yard range CC? Who would want to take an oomable elemental shaman or boomkin when a fury warrior or enhancement shaman can heal themselves? The utility vs raw power breakdown we have now, with warlocks and mages, along with melee classes having infinite mana/rage/energy/focus, vs more utility based hybrid casters with mana pools that last about a minute in a PvP situation is not something pretty to look at. I sure hope that somehow healer utility goes up.