LiquidHAL

Would a glyph along the lines of "Lowers mana cost of Greater Heal by 50% but also reduces healing done by Greater Heal by 50%" solve anything? Perhaps a raid strategy would be to have one healer with it for heal spamming, while leaving another with a full-power main heal for bursts.

 

Lamaros

Two points about stopcasting:

1. Stopcasting is intuitive. If you know it takes you 3 seconds to cast a heal and that someone will be likely to get damaged soon and you cant afford for them to wait too long, but can't afford to waaste mana, it makes sense to start casting it before they get damaged. Calling it off if they don't get damaged also makes sense. (This is not to say that chain stopcasting is good, fun design.)

2. Stopcasting is better than not stopcasting because more healing is done faster. However spam stopcasting big heals is not necessarily better than mixing up big heals, hots, small heals, shields, aoe heals, and so on according to the situation.

I find it odd how often people talk about game changes in respect to the current game. We're talking about an expansion; many things have changed, and more will change yet. To consider one change by itself in respect to the current game is daft. It doesn't take into account other class, mechanic or encounter changes that may have taken place or yet take place.

If everyone only had one big heal and the encounters were not changed from what we know then maybe some of what is being said would make sense, but that's not the case. Things are being changed and can be further changed.

 

Vihermaali

I can only talk from PvE healing priest point of view, but only place where downranking is even remotely useful is when healing a tank that requires steady stream of heals, and only spell powerful enough to keep up with damage is Greater Heal. There are not many of those encounters in game (TBC). In short, you downrank because it saves mana.

If I remember correctly, crushing blows were removed from ???-level boss mobs. This means boss damage dealt is drastically less bursty. Add into mix some spellhaste to make casts go faster and you should very well be able to time your heals for maximum healed/manacost-ratio.

This does not make healing simpler. Well, for priests at least. I can't talk for paladins and shamans really, their healing toolbox seems pretty small. Anyway, instead of pure Greater Heal spam now you use Renew, Prayer of Mending and PW:Shield efficiently in the mix. Another reason why I may be biased: being a troll helps here immensly, since Berserking goes to full 30% speed increase very, very fast and is OFF Global Cooldown. Get an "oh shit"-situation, and you can finish your gheal, cast PW:S/Prom INSTANTLY after, use berserking while global cooldown is ticking and then start a new hasted gheal. Much less boring than constant spam of mid-ranked Greater Heal (or any variant of The Big Heal).

Then comes the issue of "no mid-range heals". What does the mid-range heal mean? The spammable, cheap spell that heals for decent amounts? Again, for priests there are options like renew, flash heal, pw:s and prayer of mending. Make your pick to fit situation best. You may have to gem for bit more regen and spellhaste when healing this way, but the safety-effect is much greater than "stack +heal and downrank".

PVP and non-healing specs/classes are a whole another matter. I haven't played them in raids/serious arena so can't comment there.

TL;DR: I wouldn't worry about mana aspect of downranking. It can be fixed with gear. Boring-aspect on other hand shouldn't be too much of a problem either. Maybe you have to pay bit more attention but thats only good, right?

*Edit* Won't make a new post for this but..:

Renew, Power Word: Shield, Prayer of Mending, Flash Heal. All these fill the spot you describe fairly well, that spell toolbox (in addition with CoH) topped me on KJ meters, at least. I know this may not be universally applicable, and that healing meters (Recount in this case) are not very good thing when looking for quality of healing. But one thing a healing meter should prove is ability to dish out efficient heals in large amounts and I think this describes exacly the 3rd spot. Assigment was general raid healing.

 

Calantus

Downranking was simply supplying a healing spell in a niche we lacked one. If priests had a spell that healed for GHeal4 (or whatever you downrank now) and cost the same mana there's no real need for it. People like multiple downranks but to me that's a bit anal and can be done away with to no ill effect. I healed with only 2 ranks of the heal line bound in vanilla WoW and rarely felt the lack. Some fights I bound an extra one but only rarely, and if I couldn't I would have been fine doing without.

Basically the healer toolbox can have the following direct, single-target heal tools for PVE:

1) Quick small heal to top off random damage and move on, or for when a slower heal won't hit in time (FHeal).
2) Massive heal to counteract known burst like a huge hit with a windup or timer, or for quickly restoring health to full when the spam heal is not getting the job done fast enough (GHeal).
3) Spammable heal to counter semi-reliable incoming damage (downranked GHeal).

All we need is the 3rd spot filled and the downrank change has very little impact. The question is whether Blizzard wanted to do away with the effect of downranking (providing a spammable heal) or the mechanic itself, and it seems likely they simply wanted the mechanic gone. Since they've said they'll look at adding new spells amongst other things to address the changes I'm pretty confident we'll get the hole filled in.

 

glowacks

All the changes in healing seem to point to far less burst damage on tanks. They can keep auto attack damage the same and just not give bosses additional abilities that function as an extra attack. Lots of bosses have cleaves or Saber Lashes, and Nightbane and Maulgar are awful in this regard as they have two different extra attacks that when used right after a auto attack can kill a non-overgeared tank from full life. That significant gear from Karazhan was required to allow your tank to survive Maulgar's burst seems like absolutely awful design to me.

Now this might mean that there will be an even larger focus on raid healing if the MT doesn't need an absolutely insane amount of healing, but it also can mean multiple "hateful strike" effects, lots of adds, or very long fights where healers are more worried about endurance than keeping tanks up. Fights like Moroes were great in this respect.

I also see this as a huge nerf to Healing Way and Light's Grace - with many heals being canceled and these two classes extremely worried about regen there quite likely are times where the buff is goign to fade because it would be a waste of mana to keep it up. Priests definitely have tools to deal with it, Druids are getting a good mid-range spell, but the non-spirit classes that have talents to increase their effectiveness when constantly healing seem profoundly hurt. It almost makes all the holy Light talents in the Holy tree completely worthless when Paladins will be able to cast so few of them without going OOM.

 

Hypatia

It will be interesting to see, with this downranking change, if Blizzard adds (or considers adding) some additional heals that fill the "niche" of downranked heals, at least a little bit. With downranking, there's really no need for such a beast, since the downranked spells take care of it nicely. But without them, that niche opens up the possibility of a separate spell.

And as a bonus, a separate spell would probably make it much easier to balance the effects of spell power compared to adjusting the downranking rules.

My projection: Blizzard eventually (perhaps not until a post-release patch) adds a "downranked heal" replacement spell for at least some classes, although it probably won't be as efficient as downranking was.

 

Shakes

Most healers in most encounters don't just target the tank and spam a single rank of heal like a warlock spamming their max rank shadowbolt at the boss. I think that's a gross oversimplification of the current game. The current game works much like you suggest it should: you see what just happened, anticipate what will happen next, and heal accordingly. All that taking away downranking does is limit the number of things you can do to heal accordingly.

I guess my complaint comes mostly from a shaman and paladin perspective, where there are less mana regen options available than druids and priests. Shaman and paladin's only mana regen option has been to be efficient with our heals, and given the small number of heals we've had (3 for shaman, 2 for paladins) it's really meant choose the right rank.

I'm all for this change if it means that they're going to be giving those classes a greater variety of heals and something equivalent to the spirit regen priests and druids have. My fear is when they start talking about us not missing having those buttons they're actually thinking we want fewer options when every paladin or shaman I know would love more than we currently have, not less.

 

Axanor

Lesser Heal and Heal getting pulled out of mothballs to fill the downranking gap would be pretty cool (and an easy fix.)

 

Vihermaali

On topic of anticipation, yes you can anticipate without having an idea of the encounter. Here is how it goes.

First you go way over the top with spell usage, cast too much too often and way more healing than needed. Don't worry about mana, you will most likely not survive long enough to run out of mana anyway. When you get the feeling about how damage is incoming, you reduce amount of healing until you find the optimal spellcasting amounts.

This is fairly easy once you learn how game mechanics work, and get the feeling right on default boss swings timing. Possible surprise-bursts come as surprise of course, but it shouldn't take too many attempts to master dmg an encounter deals.

No downranking required.

 

kysta

I seriously doubt it will work that way. Every report I have read indicates that all spell costs will be % of base mana, with the higher ranks slightly lower. So the mana cost should scale as soon as you level, not when you train.




I actually think the new mechanics more closely match your analogy, oddly enough.

New Mechanics:
You go from a max rank spell to a lower rank spell, you lose some damage but mana cost is about the same (actually slightly higher). Clearly you are best off with the max rank spell, the choice is immediately obvious.

Weapon Swap Analogy:
You go from your best possible weapon to a weaker lower level weapon. You lose some damage, but mana cost is about the same. Clearly you are better off with the best possible weapon, the choice is immediately obvious.

Old Mechanic:
You go from a max rank spell to a lower rank spell. You lose some damage, but to compensate for the loss of damage the mana cost is greatly reduced. It's somewhat questionable which spell is best to use, instead of being an obvious choice you need to consider if the extra damage is worth spending more mana or not.


I, for one, welcome the new down ranking penalties. I always found it annoying while leveling up that when you get a new higher rank spell it also costs a lot more mana, so it's not always a 100% clear upgrade. In particular, some abilities actually become less efficient as they are ranked up, which is kind of annoying when you are in a low mana situation and your new high rank spell you just bought isn't useful at all. There is enough strategy in the game without down ranking, IMO.

As well, I think it's all part of the "fixing mana regen" that blizzard seems to be working on. Down ranking just overly complicates things for blizzard, it adds a lot of variables and makes it harder for the developers to really predict what mana costs a healer will have to deal with. By removing down ranking, the system is equalized a great deal, which makes it easier to balance.

 

glowacks

I was actually thinking about this, since as a priest in MC I used max rank Heal quite a bit. Given that there's some evidence that the spell was just renamed as higher ranks were attained though, I wouldn't be surprised if the increase in mana cost was put through all of the priests' "slow" direct healing spells. If they didn't reverse the downranking nerf to go along with this mana change, they'll probably heal for next to nothing anyway.

However, if they don't change the mana cost and undo *all* nerfs to downranking such that those spells get the same benefit as they should based on cast time, it might be Blizzard's way of saying "there's your cheaper low-through put heal". Doesn't help Paladins and Shaman though, who are quite likely more effected by the change.

 

Copernicus

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - [Suggestion] Bring Back Heal!

 

Prinsesa

The only reason they had to implement spell ranks in the first place was to make up for the fact that spell damage, which is supposed to scale casters the way weapon damage and AP does for melee, simply does not exist (in large enough quantities) for the first 60 levels or so.

Look at it from the POV of a Rogue: You use Sinister Strike from level 1 to 80. I don't think anyone would ever notice if they removed the base damage, and you wouldn't even need any ranks of SS if they just used "weapon damage + (level * some multiplier)". It would amount to the same thing. A Rogue who never trained rank 2 SS might never really notice the difference, because his damage keeps scaling with the stats he gets on gear.

Then, look at it from the POV of TBC spells: Mages got one rank of Arcane Blast. Druids got one rank of Lifebloom. Warlocks get two ranks of Incinerate. These spells remain viable and useful from the moment you get them until the day you take down Kil'Jaeden for the last time. Why is that? Because at the 60-70 phase of the game, stats that cause spells to scale upwards are as abundant as stats that cause physical abilities to scale upwards. You're no longer relying on new ranks to provide increased power for your spells because your gear is doing it for you.

That being said, I think this flaw in the design was something that began a LONG time ago, from the Classic Beta. Back then, spell damage didn't exist, and the devs probably thought that max spell ranks would be enough for the casters. Until of course people started discovering that caster progression involved increasing amounts of INT: You'd be able to cast Fireballs for several hours longer than you could before, but they would never hit harder than on the day you hit 60. Meanwhile, Warriors were getting better weapons, getting more STR, and so forth.

That's why you barely see any spell damage for the first 60 levels (revamped quest and instance rewards have changed this, but only a little), but then have it tripled or more after the first few Outland rewards.

If we could do it all again, we would probably see a gradual increase in spell damage, such that even the [The Staff of Twin Worlds] is considered an incremental upgrade instead of ZOMGWOW and we'd only ever see one rank of each spell.

This base mana cost change is like a band-aid fix: The scope of changes required to make a rank-less caster leveling experience relatively pleasant would be quite large, and almost all of it would be in poor, lonely Azeroth. So instead, force people to always their max ranks.

EDIT: Incinerate correction from Clandestine.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Clandestine

In point of fact, you get two ranks of Incinerate, one at 64 and one at 70. But I digress.

 

Calixtus

Game systems that "put people in line" might be cute to look at it and easy for the new guy to comprehend, but balance is far more important. Does access to PvP downranking for only some classes create a situation in which classes without access to downranking are penalized? Is the system imbalanced as a result of downranking?

Do warriors and rogues suffer balance-wise because they can't downrank?

Flat out removing downranking is not neccesarily a balance improvement, which I'm inclined to say Blizzard realizes which is why we're seeing it in an expansion where they're tweaking everything else as well. Removing downranking, as is today, favours the perpetual motion classes and the classes that usually don't downrank anyway. Unless all of these classes actually need to be favoured for game balance, removing it downranking is a bad idea. I'll argue that no class - though hey, maybe I'm missing someone - that cannot downrank or does not downrank needs help against classes that do use downranking.

So, to anwer your original question, I have no principle objection to rogues spamming Shiv at a reduced energy cost assuming the overal effect was not overpowering in favour of the rogues. Is downranking overpowering in favour of the classes that use it today?

 

Hylo

I have to agree here. The main reason for paladins to use rank7-9 HL is to fill the spot 3. If you look at the healing values of FoL7 and HL11 it's easy to see that if the other heal is doing almost triple the healing than the weaker one there HAS to be at least one heal to fill the spot for paladin to function even in it's main niche: MT healing.

FoL: 2000
???: 3700 <==
HL: 5500

I'm seriously fearing that even while devs are saying "yea shuuuure, we'll introduce new spells if needed", they will deny us this spell and reduce us to the FoL-bots again - because that's exactly what happens if the changes go live like this.

 

Mideci

We'll just agree to disagree. Due to client-server latency, you have to stop the cast with about 0.5 seconds to go. Once you do, you guarantee you don't land another heal for approximately 2.7 seconds if we are talking about greater heal. You gambled on the 0.5 seconds not being the damage window and that the gap time isn't fatal to your tank because, well, it won't be enough to kill him or someone else's heal will land and they didn't also stop casting.

It's a terrible mechanic for a million reasons. The fact that I'll get most of my "overheal" mana back in Lich King makes me worry somewhat less about this because I won't be forced to play tank roulette just to save mana, although I'm sure others will to optimize their mana pools.

Pre-casting is not cancelcasting, btw. They aren't the same thing, even though they often go hand in hand.

 

Hylo

This is all nice and dandy if you are priest and HAVE the tools. There is a healing class that will be totally unaffected by this change and that's the druid. I've never heard resto druids downrank anything in PvE (I have a decently geared one myself too). Priest have enough tools to mostly become unaffected by the change just by changing their playstyle and, as you said "make your pick to fit situation best". Also: the healing difference of FH/GH is much smaller than FoL/HL.

The problem comes when we talk about shamans and paladins. Shamans as a supreme raidhealer have traditionally used CH2 and CH4 to suplement their max rank. They don't use LHW or HW that much in normal raid setups (it seems that Blizzard is trying to change that though). We actually did our last Sunwell clear so that our two resto shamans used grand total of nine HWs - for LHW you'll want to use max rank anyway. I don't pretend to know shamans well enough to comment their situation further than that they will be affected more than druids but less than paladins.

Paladins don't have anything else than ~2000 FoL and ~5500 HL (Sunwell-gear numbers). From these spells you can't mix a steady stream of medium-big heals that is required for current MT healing. Either you are healing too little (FoL spam), the healing is too sporadic (mixed FoL and HL) or you are out of mana (HL).

If something is not made to the holy paladin situation we're seeing our last niche destroyed.

(And please don't suggest HS as using it can result in 4.0 seconds gaps where you are not healing *at all*)

 

Resiana

Flash of Light: 2000
Holy Shock: 3700
Holy Light: 5500

Yes, Holy Shock has a 6 second cooldown, but it should be powerful enough to get the tank back up and to let you go cast Flash Of Light, along with Sacred Shield making it even better.

 

rhea

New spell ranks has always been a "yay, new more powerful spell" -mechanic. It doesn't really have anything to do with gear but character progress. It's also a gold sink.

@Hylo, FOL -> 3700 -> HL .. for arguments sake the boss hits for 4000 (downrank for 3700 would heal this), with the new mechanic you'd either spam FOL + HL (7500 healing over two hits 8000dmg) or you'd stopcast to save mana.
Yeah, I think I agree stopcasting might be annoying. I don't think spamhealing is that fun either.
My point is that I don't see a replacing heal spell to be necessary because it can be filled with the tools we already have (and variate the healing game more with different spells like beacon of light).

 

Nemeth

Definitely. In the current build these spells still suffer from the old downranking penalties for low level abilities, gaining nothing from Spell Power. But that's easily fixed, along with perhaps adjusting the level at which new ranks are learned, as well as balancing the mana costs with other abilities (they're too high at the moment).

 

timski

I did not see much coverage of IGN's Kaplan interview - possibly because IGN is too mainstream for the average EJ lurker. But huge chunks of WotLK information are getting missed at the moment. By way of example, half of fishing has been implemented, and nobody noticed! Well, almost nobody ** .

At minute 29 there is a specific reference to Inscription. Specifically: Players might gain multiple glyphs from Inscribers, and be able to apply different glyphs in different circumstances. The implication is that a character could perhaps know 10 glyphs, and could swap these into 6 active slots. Those numbers are my speculation. Critically they couldn't know all 15-20 class glyphs LeCraft theorises will be available from Inscribers, so a major re-evaluation of play-style might still trigger the purchase of fresh Inscriptions, while a specific dungeon encounter might trigger a slot-switch.

There is a clear design conflict between the need to keep the Inscription profession relevant after the initial wave of characters have purchased Inscriptions, and the need to keep at least the traditional level of "gear swapping"/"respec" flexibility within classes. It seems like Blizzard are really getting stuck into that dilemma, and highlights just how unimplemented "current" the system is: Even the most basic mechanic is still being worked through at the strategic level.


[ ** In fairness, critical cooking recipes are still missing, so those only interested in the practical implications for raid buffs will learn little aside from how to become gnomes. But when sites like WoWInsider are running stories on what isn't in the latest beta build, it makes me wonder how hard they've looked for what is? ]

[Edit: Typos]

 

Hylo

Ok let's assume 2 healing scenarios where a 20k HP tank takes 8k damage every 2 second:

Scenario1:
-0.7 - Casting HL7
+0.0 - Tank takes 8k damage when cast is at 0.7 seconds (tank at 12k)
+1.8 - HL7 heals for 3700, Light's Grace goes up (tank at 15.7k)
+1.8 - Casting HL7
+2.0 - Tank takes 8k damage (tank at 7.7k)
+3.8 - HL7 heals for 3700 (tank at 11.4k)
+3.8 - Casting HL11
+4.0 - Tank takes 8k damage (tank at 3.4k)
+5.8 - HL11 heals for 5500 (tank at 8.9k)
+5.8 - Casting HL11
+6.0 - Tank takes 8k damage (tank at 0.9k)
+7.8 - HL11 heals for 5500 (tank at 6.4k)
+8.0 - Tank takes 8k damage (tank dies)

Scenario2:
-0.7 - Casting FoL
+0.0 - Tank takes damage when cast is at 0.7 seconds (tank at 12k)
+1.3 - FoL heals for 2000 (tank at 14k)
+1.3 - HS heals for 3700 (tank at 17.7)
+2.0 - Tank takes 8k damage (tank at 9.7k)
+2.8 - Casting HL11
+4.0 - Tank takes 8k damage (tank at 1.7k)
+5.3 - HL11 heals for 5500, Light's Grace goes up (tank at 7.2k)
+6.0 - Tank takes 8k damage (tank dies)

Let's assume we don't know exactly how much damage the tank is going to take. Some points:

- Both scenarios are unhealable without crits so we can only check how long it takes for tank to die
- When downranking HL7 the tank survives 8 seconds instead of 6 seconds
- When downranking HL7 I need to make the decision to switch to HL11 much later (at 3.8 vs. 2.8) than when using FoL/HS and STILL the tank survives longer.
- You have 1.8 seconds reaction time (tank at 7.7k) to switch to HL11 when using HL7 as opposed to 0.8 seconds (tank at 9.7k) when using FoL/HS. The need to change is also more obvious (2k less hp)
- Tank goes "dangerously low" later in scenario1 than in scenatio2 (4.0 seconds vs. 6.0 seconds)

 

Hylo

THIS gap is what makes using HS as main MT heal unacceptable in my opinion.

besides, had I used HS in a manner that it's cooldown implies (emergency heal), I could've saved the tank for 2 additional seconds in scenario1. 10secs vs. 6 secs is huge difference.

EDIT: Sorry, I understand that this kind of discussion goes better to class mechanism forums. Will check the amount of details I go here in the future ^^

 

kysta

Hylo, I don't think anyone disagrees that healing will be more challenging with down-ranking removed. Removing an option from a character almost always results in a weaker character. However, after the change has had time to sink in blizzard will balance the game around it, so I don't see how this is all that relevant. If some fights in WOTLK are just unhealable because of lack of down-ranking, I'm sure blizzard will re-tune them.