I'm inclined to disagree. PvP is more about using everything you've got, at the same time in order to win. We can call that kind of utiliziation skills, we can call it button-mashing, but either way, the selection of rank for many of the PvP examples you've mentioned is a selection done in battle, during the encounter - not mathematical excercise performed outside of it and then applied as needed (And yes, I have never ever healed a raid. Can you tell?). Dowranking Frostbolt is a choice, a tactic. Forgoing the damage in favour of expediency for the effect. Likewise with Earthshock, or SW:P.

Whether they're intended or balanced are separate issues, but generating dispell protection with low level DoTs, downranking casts to get at specific effects and sacrificing damage in PvP is tactics. I don't mind losing it for PvE, but for PvP it deflates my bag of tricks. They weren't exactly gamebreaking tricks, they weren't huge tricks, but they made up the difference between people who looked, really looked at the available abilities and thought "Hey, what's the best way to use all of these?" and people who wonders why they keep losing even though they're clearly playing the best setup this month. I can't quite shake the feeling that as far as PvP goes, this really is a case of "If it ain't broken..."

Having said that though, I'm glad to see them shoving it in there with a bunch of other changes altering PvP balance anyway. Not sure I'd have liked the results of them going in to the present balance one bit.

From a PvE healing perspective, I really can't buy into the justification that has been given of "Hopefully removing a few more of the extra buttons you've been pressing will eventually be seen as a good thing; it might also be easier for some people to do their role without having to learn to downrank."

To me downranking is a far more obvious mechanic than the alternative, which is spam the max rank heal with cancel casting. It makes logical sense: you can choose big and costly, or small and cheap. I like having those extra buttons, if I only had max rank spells I'd have three healing spells to cast, with one (chain heal) being the only one that would ever get pressed much. At least now I get to choose between ranks of it according to the situation.

I can see it can cause balance issues (which is why they've toyed with the +healing effectiveness in the past). That to me isn't a reason to just throw it out though, it's a reason to keep on tweaking as required.

Really, my issue with this isn't the "oh no it disadvantages me" type. Balance is something that can be worked on through the beta, and I'm sure they'll more or less figure it out. My problem is that it makes healing boring if you're deprived of choices. I have never heard a healer say "gee, I wish I had fewer heals to choose from so I had fewer buttons to press".

I've searched the thread but haven't seen this mentioned, not sure if it's something new.

I just noticed that currently on beta wanding only invokes the global cooldown once at the start and then no more, I can cast any spell instantly while shooting, pretty nice.

I think any claim that removing down ranking will me more intuitive is just plain silly.

The system will now be as I level my spells cost more and more while doing only slightly more damage. I haven't read anyone listing the exact specifics like what happens if you don't train your new rank of shadowbolt. Does the cost of all your previous shadowbolts go up? Or does the downrank penalty only kick in when you train the new rank?

Either way it is very unintuitive, either:

A) You are happily leveling and questing and then suddenly your spells start costing even more mana for no apparent reason. This is especially bad while leveling a caster because your mana pool doesn't grow much with gear.
B) You go buy a new rank of a spell and your old ranks suddenly cost 20% more mana.

Neither of those make any sense whatsoever.

Even better is when a lvl 80 pvp resto shaman goes to heal his friend through deadmines. Only to discover he goes oom casting spells that cost more than his max rank lesser healing wave. (if they don't stop max rank spells going on lowbies then you just give him an earthshield and he can do the entire place with full agro)

The far better way to fix it would be to have the HPM value of your max rank heal be forced on all other ranks so there is no HPM benefit to downranking at any level of spellpwoer but you can still heal someone for 1k instead of 4k on a flash heal. This doesn't 'solve' stacking spellpower so you can downrank but the alternative of having to cast massive heals with a penalty for casting smaller ones is just silly.

The pvp implications are even worse with warlocks owning mages and shamans because we can stack some spirit to get better lifetaps but they are forced to use max rank spells just to stop a fear cast. Which I don't even lose mana on anyway >_>

Oh and several people have mentioned fear being fixed, warlock single target fear was made %mana in early 1.x, howl of terror has a long cooldown and priests benefited from the mana efficiency of using rank 1 and I don't begrudge them that.

If this hits live it is an amazing and welcomed change for all leveling casters.

I can run 5-mans on my priest (not done any heroics) as shadow without downranking and still rarely have to drink. Priests have some of the most excellent healing abilities in the game, and you can easily manage while only using max ranks in 5 man content.

Even if you think there is some skill to downranking (in reality the 'skill' goes away when most healers just end up doing what those who bother to work things out tell them what to do) it is not lost without it, as long as the classes have other healing tools to use. Arguing that this is not currently the case is not only not entirely true but misses the point; if WotLK gives us healing classes with onyl one healing spell or ability then no more downranking could constitute a loss, but as long as these healing classes have a range of useful abilities to spend GCDs on instead of just spamming a single spell then there will still be skill there. It might be a different healing spell (hots, fast heals, preventative spells, etc) or just another ability (judging, using hand spells, casting aoes, etc) but things change.

You have key 1 for spell 1, key 2 for spell 2, key 3 for spell three.

When you gain a level and get new spells your hotkeys automaticly update. So you keep pressing key 1 for spell 1, key two for spell 2, key 3 for spell three. You don't need to calculate what spell is more or less efficient, you don't need to consider your old rank at all. You just keep acting exactly the same way.

That is highly more intuitive. To keep doing a big heal, keep using the big heal. To keep doing a hot, keep using your hot. To keep doing a small/fast heal, keep using your small/fast heal. That is far more intuitive than "to keep doing a small heal use the big heal you got 30 levels ago". The only reason people might consider that it isn't is habit.

The fact that people think the only alternative to downranking is spam healing a single max rank spell and cancel casting indicates what is wrong with the game (in perception and reality), and what needs to be fixed. It does not indicate how this change will necessarily play out in WotLK.

Hold on - are you saying that there's only one GCD triggered by wanding (at the start) but that subsequent spellcasts still interrupt wanding? Or that a caster can continually wand while casting, similarly to a hunter's auto shot? If the latter, does it work with both casted and instant spells?

Sorry, I realize it was slightly ambiguos, wanding is still the same and you will interrupt it if you cast something. The only difference is that the global cooldown appears just once when you first press the key and not continuously while shooting. It's not like auto shot.

He's saying you're not permanently under GCD everytime you shoot your wand, like it is now, but no you won't autoattack with your wand while casting spells. It is a very good change for priests though, with the downranking nerf(yay link 2 subjects), priests could just wand when healing is not particularly needed, if for example they're assigned to raid healing, and instantly pop CoH or PoH whenever needed. Sucks for every other healer without a wand though ^^.

Anyway the downranking change is a big change, and a lot of people are going to cry, but ultimately probably a good change for pve(a big nerf for antirogue abilities in arenas though, even though rogues still managed to ShS/sap through AE spam). I think it's a pretty good change, I liked patchwerk healing for example. In comparison, healing in AQ was mostly Heal rank2 spam for ~1200 and 85mana(or whatever the numbers were), but that didn't cut it on patch.

Now that downranking is out of the way, and potions with it, I guess they're ready to fine tune mana regen/costs.

Good thing that neither of those are the case. If anything, the change is far more intuitive for leveling. Instead of getting a new rank that costs significantly more, the mana cost is always gradually going up because it costs a percentage of your base mana, which is also going up. There's nothing sudden or inexplicable about that.

Yes, your spells automatically update when you learn them. However if the downranking mana penalty(i.e. the extra cost over and above the base cost) isn't applied until you learn the new rank then you can just not learn the new ranks for a while. Considering the speed of leveling with the new friend features that will happen quite often because you can't be bothered going into town.

Taking another section of wow and compare the mechanics:

I have mindblade from prince and then I get my arena weapon. One day in an instance my arena weapon breaks and since I"m lazy I swap mindblade in instead. That is intuitive. If it worked like our spells then if I switched to my mindblade equivalent(lower rank spell) in I would spend more mana to do less damage. The point is it isn't intuitive to have a spell that was good 1 level ago suddenly significantly increase in mana cost. Why? I still have the same spell it still does the same damage/healing?

Taking another fun example of how this will behave.

Say I go from level 14 to level 20(warlocks don't gain a rank of corr/immo/shadowbolt in that section) without getting any gear upgrades because it all sucks. I have some base int gain but all my spells keep rising in cost compared with overall manapool. I may end up being able to do less damage before oom than I could at lvl 20 than I did at level 14.(spells increase in a little bit of damage between ranks but it isn't much) I'm sorry but that is not 'intuitive' to me.

The only similar sort of comparisons are agi-> crit scaling for melee classes leveling but they are all such a small effect. They level and do more damage with no change in their ability to continue doing that same damage.

The alternative to downranking is cancel casting massive heals. Which is essentially "I'm going to start casting this heal when I'm not sure I want it to heal or not, I'll decide that later by pressing a cancel cast button or sidestepping."

That is just a much a learned behaviour of the game as downranking. Shit you had to BANG it into the heads of people to cancel heal back in the good old BWL days.

In short the downranking change doesn't make anything about pve healing more intuitive, because you still have to learn a new style of healing to compared to when you were leveling. All the downranking changes is it lowers the number of options you have when you start doing serous pve healing. If that is what the designers want then good for them. I personally don't think it is a good change and I'm pretty sure plenty of people will agree.

What he is saying is there are 6ish levels between ranks of a spell. It does seem a little odd to cast rank 5 fireball for x mana then level up and cast the same rank 5 fireball for x+y mana while it still deals exactly the same damage. The cost for spells steadily increases but the effectiveness goes up only when you get a new rank.

Isn't there a small increase in a spell's damage or healing just from leveling up, regardless of any change in stats? Most people never notice it, and none of the WoW database sites record it, but your Fireball does gain a couple of points of damage whenever you level.

Funny, I remember noting this when I was leveling sometime in the past, and then I forgot about it. I was running some mod that tracked your highest hit with each ability. And right after leveling, my Wrath or whatever would beat the record by 1-2 points, which would be the new max until the next time I leveled.

Comparitively, you're saying that it would be perfectly fine if Warriors could spam Hamstring at a cost of 3 Rage, but at a reduced damage output. (I know that this is irrelevant in the WotLK model due to the damage removal from hamstring, but still, it's an example.)

To clarify, would you be comfortable with Rogues spamming "Rank 1 Shiv" for 75% less energy, at the cost of reduced damage? Or maybe Rank 1 Kick for cheaper interrupts? (To be consistent with Rank 1 Earth Shock)

All it's doing (from a PvP perspective) is putting people in line.

You could just as easily say that roguews and warriors should be spending energy/rage for auto-attacks, since mages have to spend mana to do all their damage. Mana and non-mana using classes mechanics are too different to be directly comparable like that.

Intuitive to who?

It was very intuitive to me on my druid that max rank heals while leveling up were nothing but overheal. I always used 1 rank lower HT. Same was true on my priest with Greater Heal. I cede, my priest was back in the day of 4.0 Greater Heal, though.

To me, max ranks were made for Tanks.... Warriors (back then), not for personal use.

I'm all for the mana change - kinda.

RE: PVE - I feel healing should be more reactive. Instead of healers spamming low rank heals for much of a fight, they will need to conserve mana by healing only what is necessary. As players become familiar with encounters, they will learn to predict better future healing requirements. Taken together, reactive healing and encounter familiarity will introduce more skill to healing.

RE: PVP - I generally agree that downranking such as mage AE (even though I play one) is unfair. If you want to negate a stealth class's advantage you should pay a penalty. Ditto for interrupts, etc..

Forgot to explain the "kinda" in my opening sentance. Being an oceanic player the change will suck since stop casting is very latency dependent. I can still see the overall game balance issue it resolves though.

Why shouldn't healing be BOTH reactive and proactive?

But still, our main argument isn't so much QQ I can't endure, its more we need mid-range heals to top people off.

I fail to see how people think healing re-actively takes more skill. Anticipating what is going to happen is a lot harder than reacting to it once it has already happened.

Despite saying you want people to do things reactively, you then go on to say you want people to anticipate, which is a pro-active not re-active skill.

Honestly, I find the stopcasting advocates to be a very strange crew. It's completely devoid of intuitive. "Let me heal you... Oh no, I don't really mean it." On long cast heals in TBC, it's become a very bizarre and often insane method of healing for priests to use in fact. You gamble at 2 seconds in that the damage isn't coming in the next 0.5 seconds and it's safe to not deliver any healing for next 2.5 seconds + the cancel time. Umm, ok.... With the spike damage we've seen, that's just not a smart way to heal. I choose to land the heals every 2.5 seconds more often than not, so, again, I'm nervous about losing tools.

And in the case of middle-rank greater heals, they'd seem to be legitimate tools. They took out the ability to use Heal a long time ago because that was considered "too low level a spell" so it stopped benefitting from +heal effects enough to be useful. And that's what's been broken about Rank 1 Arcane Exploision taking rogues out of stealth. It was too low level a spell. It won't be missed.

I believe the statements are consistant. You can't anticipate until you have an idea about an encounter, all you can do initially is react. Once you are familiar with an encounter you can anticipate, which as you point out is harder. Both of these (initial reaction and anticipation once familiar) will require more skill in my opinion than simply spamming a low rank heal constantly.