(Note: this is directed to healing and healers, but the issue certainly isn't exclusive to them)

This is a topic that has been mulling over in my head for quite a long time. Beginning with Naxx (kind of a "ground zero" of where Blizzard realized what they were doing with class itemization), players have been scaling incredibly well from gear that is designed "efficiently" for them. This really wasn't an issue in Naxx from the player's perspective since this was the first time healers were really getting to high levels of +healing and mana regen. However that cork was popped - we've been using efficiently designed gear for a year now, the novelty has worn off. Since BC hit, the only way we've been getting more powerful is through item level increases.

The jump from Naxx gear to Tier 4 gear was fine: the gear finally "filled in" to the higher HP values and mana costs of post-expansion raiding. However moving onward from there the tangible increase of better gear declines sharply. Can you really be that excited about adding another 400 +healing from the next tier of gear when you already have 1900 of it? There's a pretty sharp plateau when it comes to power increases.

Sure, a Shaman with 2400 +healing and 210 mp5 can heal for significantly more and for longer than one with 1500 +healing and 125 mp5, but can you really say that the former is really a more powerful character for having it?
More importantly, is the former more fun to play? I would argue not.

I believe we've reached the breaking point in this regard. Moving from Tier 6 to the next expansion (or next tier if we get one), the current healing itemization mechanics are going to be trivialized by item level mudflation. A healer really only has 4 stats: Health, Mana, +Healing, and Mana Regen. All of the ways we get these stats (with the exception of spell crit, and that's paladin-only) are "rating-proof", so moving to level 75 or 80 is not going to reduce our effectiveness at all.

So what is the solution? Will the HP Pools continue to scale and the healers just keep playing catchup? Personally I hope not.

(DPS classes too! This is not an exclusive issue. DPS classes have many more stat mechanics that they need, though, so the problem is much less severe. Also the competitive nature of DPS makes more powerful gear a much more desirable thing, from a fun-to-play perspective. Getting beat on damage by other players of your same class is a great motivator, but scrutinizing healing meters like that is pointless and contrary to the way healing works in the large majority of fights)

I believe that they need to implement some sort of new mechanic to the playstyle of healing. (Spell/Physical Hit is a great mechanic for offenisive abilities, but would be frustrating and stupid to make heals miss.) Blizzard seems to realize this with the implementation of spell haste on gear. However it's pretty much impossible to get more than 10% haste with what's in-game now, which isn't really enough to make a big difference. However I hope that they realize what a slippery slope spell haste can be. Are we going to be marching into Icecrown Citadel with 30% passive spell haste, knowing that the content will be balanced around that, basically both making it necessary and nullifying the benefit of it?


So I guess in conclusion, there are 3 questions that need to be asked: Do we want to be healing in exactly the same way we have been a year from now, with bigger numbers? Is Haste the answer or even a good thing? and What do you think would make healing more interesting, dynamic, and/or fun?

I'm not really a huge fan of spellhaste. It's nice to get those quicker heals out, but ultimately it contributes negatively to your efficiency. You're throwing out more weaker heals than you would have if you stacked +healing where you'd be using fewer strong heals(or downrank a little)

IMO they would do well to add more abilities with a reasonable cooldown and a stat that lowers the cooldown. Swiftmend is a nice example. Great to use when a HoT/HT won't cover it quick enough. If each resto tier piece lowered the cooldown by 1-2 seconds you could integrate it further into your playstyle, using it more often and mix things up as far as what skills you use.

What other new bonuses could they give us, really? We have spike(crits), accuracy(hit), attribute stats, speed (haste), longevity(mp5), and steady throughput (AP/Dmg/heal)

From a priest's perspective, I think Blizzard is indeed attempting to address the issues you're presenting. It's most obvious in the newer spells priests have gotten since the class review and the implementation of the BC talent trees (Circle of Healing, Lightwell, Binding Heal, Prayer of Mending) And also, through set bonuses in Tiered gear. Again though, I haven't really kept track of other healing classes too well and I'm speaking purely from a priest p.o.v.

I think they have been very sloppy with what they are doing thus far though. There are nearly no raiding situations that demand you make use of these spells in such a way that the encounter hinges on it. I don't believe Blizzard wants to do that either because of their mantra of "letting people play as they please".

Also, in terms of the spells themselves, there has been much debate (to put it lightly, more like 'angry temper-tantrums') about the mana/healing efficiency and even if you can find a creative use for the spell is it really worth it in the end or is it more novelty than anything? It's very easy to accomplish the same results using different methods. This is even more true with the raid viability of shadow priests now.

So, to answer your concluding questions: I think at this point healing is less about gear/stats, as you pointed out, and more about skill and the spells/abilities available. The only way to solve that problem would be to make more changes to spells OR make current spells more relevant to raid encounters. Blizzard is trying with priests (I don't know about other healing classes), but so far have missed the mark in a big way. It is good to know that they are at least trying though.

That's a good point: my experience is on paladins and shamans. Besides Earth Shield (which is a fire-and-forget spell that doesn't change playstyle at all), these two classes have gotten nothing tangible that makes the healing experience any different than it was in Naxx or even before that. (I'm including 2.0 and 41-point talent trees with the expansion, even though they were released previous to it)

Personally, I'd like to see them get rid of MP5 altogether and fix Spirit so it works properly for all classes. If Regen were simply a non-broken mechanic that was standardized across classes, we wouldn't have this crazy dichotomy between these different kinds of regen when realistically almost no healers ever get any significant time outside the FSR thus making Spirit mostly useless except for the talents where it increases your healing/dmg.

I'd love to see them make Spell Haste workable. Right now it's so poorly itemized, and is generally itemized in such a way that it replaces the necessary Regen attributes, that it's simply not usable. If they fixed Spell Haste, itemized it without sacrifices for critical aspects, then I think it would be an excellent stat to grow moving forward. Just using the Mystical Skyfire and the Scarab of the Infinite Cycle makes a *huge* difference in a healer's effectiveness today, and there's clearly more room to grow there.

So, overall, I'd rather they spend the time on fixing Regen. Secondarily, I'd love to see more useful itemization of Spell Haste -- putting it on gems would work well too.

Maybe spell haste as a yellow gem, meaning more options for casters

+heal/haste, or +haste/mp5 for yellow sockets instead of often ignoring the socket bonuses. For us the pure yellow BT gems are just stockpiling like mad (lionseyes).

Adding more cooldown based abilities (like Swiftmend) and giving gear the attributes to lower the cooldown on them is quite good, perhaps even allowing gems to enhance this allowing greater depth on your own playstyle.

They really need to find a way to incorporate a stronger mana regeneration mechanic into the game for casters, its a prevailant issue that currently requires dependancy on either another class (SP) and or potions to satisfy it.

Im not quite sure what else they could add to physical damage dealers rather than perhaps a flat +damage per attack (think like the old Belt of Never-ending Agony), ofcourse it would have to be scaled with the classes that use it somehow (restrictions on class only) else the disparity between some classes would be imbalanced, haste however is a good stat for these classes.

That would help things. Otherwise I can see farming Mother trash in the future just for gems. :P
We are so far behind the demand with red ones, we won't ever get there really.

Maybe I'm missing some fundamental point, but I reject your basic argument. The whole point of the game is to take more hits, to land bigger heals, to do more damage per second. Healer A with 500 more +heal than Healer B is strictly better. As long as mobs continue to hit progressively harder and have progressively more health/mitigation this will hold true.

Is this thread addressing an actual issue or just a thinly veiled "healers what are your ideas for new skills/mechanics in the expansion"?

My point is that we're getting to the point where this just isn't compelling character progression anymore - it's boring. Would you want to fight Magmadar but tuned for a Tier 6, 25-man raid? No, because boss design has become several orders of magnitude more complex and dynamic since then. But Paladins are still using the same two heals, in the same way, that they were in Molten Core.

One issue that concerns me is ratings, when your 80 you will need between 28-31 rating per crit, meaning more item budget needs to be spent on it to maintain the same value.
So alot of the newer raiding items will have to keep these stats at a higher value to be 'equal' to what we have now.

So you dont actually progress on your character from now where they are concerned, you will be shunted backwards and be playing 'catch-up' again.

So even though my gear has gone up from ilvl 146->206, I still have the same amount of Crit, the same amount of Hit and I've only gained around 500AP, some -armor and perhaps a small value of Haste.

Back in Naxx (some off slot items, some T3) our Rogues had 31-33% crit unbuffed, now (T5 + offslot items from BT/MH) they have 30-32% crit unbuffed.
No doubt a full T3 Rogue at 60 has very similar Hit & Crit %'s as a full T6 Rogue does now.

60 ilvls of gear has simply increased AP by about 600-700 and added a few specs of a new stat (-armor), not to mention 200-250 of that AP has simply come from the removal of Str in return of AP.

I can predict the same situation in the next expansion, full T9 gear and loot from Arthas etc... (assuming its there); 22% Hit, 35% Crit, 2500 AP.

Using 86-146-206, jumps of +60 ilvl from each 'end level gear' setup, Bonescythe vs Slayers + off items. And ratings increased by either the former +50% @ 60 (14+7+7) as the minimum and +50% @ 70 (21+10) as the maximum.

imo, this is far more than a gear/abilities issue. Sure, more choices in itemization and new abilities are fun for awhile, but when the novelty wears off, you're right back to where you started, except now it starts looking more and more tempting to use a speradsheet to make most of your gear/spec/playstyle decisions.

The sure-fire way to make playing a healing class more fun is to make encounters that don't follow the usual "Spam rank X of heal Y on the tank, and keep an eye on the raid." or "keep players X, Y, and Z topped off from the AoE of death". Things like loatheb's healing debuff come immediatly to mind, since they force you to chose gear that allows you to contribute to DPS while still being able to heal sufficiently (plus, you do some pew pew for a change), but other options include having chaotic encounters like vashj phase 2, where the healing itself isn't very intense, but you also have to look beyond the health bars on your UI and actually interact with the fight.

Basically, good and varied encounter design is what makes raiding enjoyable - not just for healers, but for DPS as well (no idea about tanks, never done any serious tanking outside of heroics and karazhan). Having played a rogue pre-BC, I find that most of the fights I enjoyed the most (C'thun, nef, and Heigan being my top 3) were fun because I had to do more than Backstab, Backstab, Backstab, Backstab, Backstab, Slice and Dice, repeat. Going back to do a few of these fights just for shits and giggles post-BC on my paladin, I still find them highly enjoyable, whereas most of the ones I disliked on my rogue (Grobbulus, and pretty much all of MC) are still crappy on my paladin.

Now, this is not to say that new gear and abilities wouldn't be nice. If blizzard managed to add enough talents and abilities that healers would have 2-3 options of playstyles, similar to the dreamstate/HT and tree choice that druids have, that would at least add a level of customization that is currently lacking, but if encounters continue to be the same-old same-old in terms of healing, those options really won't add a lot of enjoyment, unless you like to argue the merits of your prefered spec on message boards

DPS Casters have: Spell Crit, Spell Hit, Stamina, Intellect, Spell Damage, Spell Penetration, Mana per 5. All of these scale downwards in effectiveness as level increases except for stamina, spell damage, mana per 5, and half of intellect.

Physical DPS have: Crit, Hit, Stamina, Strength/Agility, Attack Power, Armor Penetration, Weapon Skill. All these scale downwards in effectiveness as level increases except for stamina, attack power, and strength.

Tanks have Stamina, Defense, Dodge, Parry, Block%, Block Value, Armor, Strength/Agility, Hit, Weapon Skill, and even Spell Hit. Once again all of these scale downwards except for stamina.

Healers get Intellect, Stamina, +Healing, and Mana per 5. That's it. None of these scale.

Haste applies to all of these but that's a separate issue.





That seems like an itemization issue to me, I dunno about you. Four stats scale a lot faster than 9 do, and the numbers are becoming meaningless the higher they get.

I think dios' point is that there is no way to make the bosses/mobs hit for less. You can't rework people's stats. Thus in the next expac yes mobs will hit for a lot more and players will have a lot more health. thus gear will also scale. I don't see how that will ever change. People will go gaga about the first 200+ dps 2h weapon, or the first 1000+ healing weapon, or whatever.

Now sure there is a lot they can do with adding new abilites, talents, gear set bonuses and so on but the underlying premise of WoW itemization is not going to change. This game is about numbers, whether that be the big ones on the dps weapons, or the big ones on armor or the big ones for healing/spell damage. I just don't see Blizzard at this point in the game changing itemization. How would they do it anyways? Have everything be special on use/passive effects that are very hard to balance? Even if they did add more special effects, it still is going to be about the stats.

Your thread title sets this up as a discussion of itemization, but now you're talking about fun vs boring, dps vs healer, and the basic stats which define each role. None of that has anything to do with itemization unfortunately.

I'm a rambler

I'm more wondering about how stats will be handled 5 expansions down the road where everybody would be sporting 5k spell damage, 10k healing, 6k AP. Right now it's getting to be pretty borderline, but it's going to be ridiculous with raid bosses hitting for 20k a swing. I wonder if they won't do some sort of reset so that numbers stay reasonable.

Why are those numbers unreasonable?

It's all relative. Doesn't matter if a raid boss hits 20 per swing or 20,000,000 per swing on its own. You've got to factor in the armour, hp and mitigation of the guy on the receiving end.

Lets be honest, with the rating system we now have, we're always going to stay at roughly the same stats. Speaking as a feral, even tooled in Tier X(First tier of xpac, probably 7?) I'm going to have roughly the same stats as in Tier 4. Thats not to say I won't have 1500 stamina instead of 1100, but relative to the hits received I'm gonig to stay around the same. Same with armour, it will increase beyond my current 32k but so will the cap, so i'll still stay at 75% reduction. The ratings like dodge and defense will all scale too so I'll stay the same dodge %. This will happen forever and ever because its the only way to balance things. The rating system essentially forces you to continue upgrading your gear as level caps increase (which it looks like may be an annual thing) so in essence you're never really gonna get more powerful then you are at the moment. Doesn't matter if bosses start hitting for 20,000 at 80 like you say, because tanks will probably have more hp.

On to the specific case of the topic, healing gear.

I think fixing spirit and actually making the choice between MP5 and spirit a debatable one would definately be a step in the right direction. Vastly increasing regen outside the 5sr would be a good idea to make casters think about balancing these two stats.

But I see your point. We can only hope that Blizzard introduces new spells for healing classes to use that will vary their game play, but hand in hand with that encounters that need them to do things other then spamming heals on the MT.

I like the reduction of CD abilities, they seem a good way to go for all classes. But they scale too well really. Unless they change that to a rating system too it would still be better than most stuff at 80, unless thsoe pieces also had that stat reduction on, and then you start to set a precedent that all tier gear (to use your example) for druids must have Swiftmend reduction or it isn't worth the upgrade. Of course this could also be applied to other classes, differently though as in - energy cost, - rage cost and - casting time for spells. Throwing in the odd piece that could significantly alter someones playstyle is nice, and to change the optimal cycle.

Ultimately I feel a brand new stat must be added for healing. I don't know what it would be but something different to change up the playstyle and make itemisation more varied. The only thing I could think of off the top of my head would be a stat that added a secondary effect to your spells. Lets say for example you have one called Fortifacation.

Forticiation spells grant your target a temporary increase of their maximum hp. Lasts for 8 seconds When it fades it comes off their max hp (so if they have 10000/10100 hp with your fort of 100 and it fades, they are on 10000/10000).

Obviously thats just a crude example but I feel thats the route they may go, that is add another stat in parallel to +healing that requires you to rework your gear to have a decent amount of both in it.

Ulitmately they are probably going to have to keep adding the odd stat to prevent things become stale. As you say we've seen the spell haste/haste being added as a static stat in Tier 6 level gear, but also you forgot to mention the armour penetration stat. This could be balanced to be essential in some degree to melee that gives them another stat to focus on. Offensive casters don't do to bad as it is, a complete rework of spell penetration would be useful though as its current state is pretty dire post-T1/2 era (when everyone had 70ish FR in tier gear).

Another point to note is we saw the introduction of Resilience as a new stat in TBC. This was to make pvp more in depth but also as a method to differentiate and make pvp gear better for pvp then pve gear without scaling stamina to absurd levels.

So there is a precendent for adding a new stat to make gameplay more varied and interesting, I think thats the way we'll be heading.

While I agree on many of your premises about continued itemization for healers in future expansions, I have to disagree on the apparent mundaneness of healing in its current form that you speak of, at least in terms of Druids. When used effectively, a restoration Druid uses nearly every heal at his disposal to keep his raid healthy and alive.

During a raid, I have several decisions before me. Do I use 1 lifebloom, or stack 2 or 3? Should I roll the lifeblooms or let them pop for the big heal? Should I toss out rejuvenations on anyone who currently catches aggro, or has damage against the raid intensified such that i need to pick it up and start spamming a low rank regrowth? Who's health is about to spike for my swiftmend? Do i need to upgrade my regrowth to cover even more damage? This does not even include the times I come out of tree just to NS a big HT.

Unlike many other classes, Druidic healing has changed dramatically since vanilla Wow and there is nothing routine about it anymore. The days of spamming rank 4 heals on one target are over. Though I look forward to further enhancements to our class I can honestly say that the continued bumping of the obvious healing stats on items is fine for me. From a Druid's perspective, the numbers are irrelavant, either my way of healing is enough to keep people alive, or it isn't.

I think it is very much in the nature of the classes that druid and priest healing will be more varied and involve a wider variety of spells.

For itemisation, it becomes increasingly obvious across the board which types of spell scale better with which gear. Short of a complete redesign of +spelldamage to make it more like weapon damage, I think we're likely to be stuck with this.

My main concern going forwards is what they plan to do with crafting. Is it going to be standard on each expansion that you check the high end crafted gear for BoP, drop whatever you have, and pick up the uber-craft-du-jour? In any case, I hope they have enough of a reset to outdate the tailored gear.

What if the debuffs and buffs from using the legendary Kael'thas weapons were more of a standard mechanic of each class? Such as heals on the MT increase armor by 5%, dodge by 2%, health by 3%, etc, so that 4 healers on a tank will make for a lot mitigation for bosses that might hit for a lot more.

For tanks, for example, debuffs that make the boss swing slower, hit less hard, increase cooldowns on moves, etc, (though I guess half of that really already exists with Thunderclap and Demo Shout).