So...

I believe this means heal cancel mods will not work anymore. Now it would still be possible to make a macro like this (pseudocode):
In order for that to work, though, it would mean you'd have to be spamming that button over and over, and get carpal tunnel.

Now I imagine the intent of this change is to make healers have to decide themselves whether or not they should cancel their heal, as opposed to having the UI mod decide for them. On paper that seems like a reasonable idea, but the main issue I see with this is that the default UI does not really make judgement calls like that reasonably possible. You have to know that there's a "StopSpellCasting" script command, and map that as a macro, because jumping or moving back and forth is to inefficient. Furthermore, the casting bar and the hp bar are so far apart on the screen, by default. It seems to me if they're going to get rid of heal cancel mods they should at least tweak the UI so it supports the idea of judgement calls on cancelling heals better.

I could see this making some of the already intense fights from a healing standpoint even moreso, and it especially seems like it will hurt on fights with burst damage. What I wonder is if this change will make "slacker healers" better healers in that they have to pay more attention, or if it will make them far worse :P.

I've always moved to stop spellcasting. It's not that inefficient. Lag does make it tricky though.

Heal-cancel mods don't work for me anyway because I often acquire my next heal target while the current heal is still casting, and that borks mod.

The removal of mana conserve will make a massive difference when healing large amounts of people. Keeping track of a tank's hp and manually cancel? Sure, I'll do that, np. Keeping close enough track of current target's hp to be able to cancel, and my cast bar, and scanning raidassist to find my next target to heal/dispel at the same time? That's going to be tricky.

I am a fan of jumping. I love my space bar.

Jumping is bad because you have to wait till you land before you can recast. Simply moving around is the best way.

Bind spacebar to

"/script if SpellIsCasting() then SpellStopCasting() else Jump() end"

I never used mana conserve anyway, you dirty cheaters. Quit crying and get back to hammering your old decursive hotkeys. :P

What he said. The more people you have to keep an eye on the harder it will be to keep track of the situation while avoiding overhealing. Previously I could switch targets as soon as I started casting a heal and let manaconserve determine if he needs the heal or not while I was preparing to heal the next person. I suppose this means that I'll have to be either a bit slower or a bit more inefficient at raid healing. Depends on the situation which one is better I suppose.

For single target/group healing, this just means one more button press.

i heard a different interpritation of that code change. however, yours makes more sense.

Hmm, now that I think of it, a mod which showed a frame with the healthbar of your spell's target and your own casting bar, irrelevant of your current target, would be quite useful. Shouldn't be too hard to code one either.

word.

As has been said a million times on these forums, EM is added information, like a MT target window or something. Heal-cancelling mods, like Decursive (does Decursive work in 1.10?), are automation. World of difference.

The removal of spell interrupts also likely will lead to more use of long-cast GHeal and shaman HW. Reliably canceling your heals at the right time when chain-casting 1.5's is significantly more difficult than doing so with 2.5's.

Mm, it's not about that, or I at least never used manaconserve as a tool for not paying attention. What it did was help concentrate on faster healing / keeping track of the raid's status without having to worry about efficiency since the mod handled that.

For single-target or small group healing all it does is remove 1 click, so basically nothing. Here I can understand the "l2p slackers" argument, but think about a situation where a large portion of the raid might be taking damage in bursts(ie. BWL trash, sartura) and everyone needs at least some healing to survive. There without manaconserve you need to:

1) Target a person and start casting flash heal
2) Look for the next person to heal while keeping an eye on the overall raid situation and trying to consider who will need the heal the most
3) While doing 2), monitor the current heal target's health and your own cast bar to make sure you abort casting in case he gets healed sufficiently before your heal lands
4) After heal lands/is aborted, return to 1)

Manaconserve took care of step 3. 1.5 seconds was plenty of time to find a new person to heal and monitor the situation of the whole raid, but if you also have to keep an eye on the previous target's health till the last second before the heal lands to make sure you don't overheal, you will inevitably be either more inefficient or slow than with manaconserve. It was a great tool for this purpose, one that I will miss anyway.

As for using slower heals, it's not viable in all situations where you simply need to be fast. Hopefully you can afford to be inefficient tho.

EDIT: Note to self: l2quote :(

I use EM but set on really low bounds. I use -200 as the setting just to stop my heals if the person just got slammed by 3 heals before mine. I dont really see whats wrong with it as long as you know when to turn it off. (most of BWL)

And by "EM" you mean mana conserve. EM is EmergencyMonitor.

UI mods shouldn't be able to automate player actions like that. Yes, obviously, having an AddOn cancel your heal 0.3 seconds before it lands is an advantage in most situations. In many cases, the script can consistently react in situations that a human would occasionally miss. It also takes player skill out of the equation. It will make for more attentive healers.

And no, I don't buy the argument of "by isolating this one variable, it lets me focus on these four other things even more!" The really good healers will be able to handle all five at once.

Of course we will be able to handle it. It will make me a worse healer in chaotic circumstances though, because I have to sacrifice some part of either speed or efficiency, whereas before I could focus fully on speed.

One line up:

One thing is for certain, Twin Emperors will be made considerably more difficult and frustrating for healers. They're frustrating enough as it is!

Yeah, I don't think it will be a big deal in fights that are like "heal the tank and only the tank." But, for fights where you need a lot of cross-healing, it will become noticably more difficult.

After giving it some more thought, it's actually quite ingenious to break mana conserve in 1.10. The patch noticably increases endurance for priests and druids, as well as encouraging people to use less "spammy" heals, so it's really the ideal time to break mana conserve. Well played Blizzard, well played.

I think it is a positive chance, makes it somewhat less boring to play. On the other hand, if you are lagging (and i always seem to be on warsong), it can get a little tricky.

I am looking foward now to get 2 mods that can aid me on my healing.

1 - A mod that can MOVE the damned casting bar to a spot closer to my target hp. I play in 1600x1200 and it simply is too far off for me to see both the target hp and the casting bar to cancel.

2 - Since i live on a foreign county, i am usually plagued with 300-500ms. It is something that you need to get used to, since you cannot cancel a spell, unless you still are .5s away from the cast. A mod that displays how many seconds have gone by and still needed to finish the casting time would be awesome.

with these two the trasition can be a lot smoother, i believe. Does anyone know a mod that does any of that?

http://ui.worldofwar.net/ui.php?id=1527