exog

fuckit, i have absolutely no experience from healing classes so ill drop it...

tho ill make a comparison: as a rogue, my main job is to choose the best target and dps it without dying. this is the MA target or the ffa target.

afaik: the healers job is to heal/decurse/buff/whatever a member of the raid party, either an assigned target(ie mt) or ffa target.

now im not sure exactly how much of the healing job thats automated, but lets say the dps job had a lot of automation: then my mod would: pick the right target, cast the correct attack, count combopoints, feint etc etc, all i would have to do would be to keep in melee range and press this one button, now that would be boring and lame...

so while being in the constructive corner today: what exactly do these mods automate for the casters?
- pick the right target to heal?
- Pick the right kind of heal?
- shield/decurse?
- brush your teeth?

edit:
hmf, it thought that was what healing was about... namely staring at bars and healing the low ones...

 

sp00n

Just think that you would have to attack 40 different mobs, one by one, in a time span of say 30 seconds.
Then, after 1 minute, repeat.

Now you have your lucifron fight. ;)

 

• Daboran

Exog, I suggest you borrow a Druid/Priest/Shaman healer account sometime and try it - most raid ui mods (obvious exceptions include Decursive) are not doing the job for you - they are filtering the information so that you can do the job more effectively. :)

While I can see some of the reasons for changing this Blizzard seem to be missing the point. Most raid mods are made in reaction to a flawed mechanic or UI functionality in the game, not as a conscious effort to circumvent having to actually play. This change could make healer burnout more prevalent.

 

Skytor

1 - Nope
2 - Nope
3 - No / Yes
4 - Cost option only

Heres how my set up works ... Spells bound to mouse clicks:

Left = Healing touch 4 -- Alt + Left = HT7, CTRL + Left = HT11
Right = Rejuv max rank - Alt+Right = Swiftmend
Middle = Regrowth 7

Scan the assigned targets look at their situtation, make a single click to apply the option of your choice
Repeat for 10-15 minutes

No mods...

Scan the assigned targets
Click to target
Hit a key bound to the correct spell
Repeat for 10-15 minutes

How much of a loss is it ... imagine every spell or SS/BS or shot cleared your current targeting and you had to retarget before the next action - thats about how much more time consuming and annoying it will be (for me its enough to consider a main switch out of healing classes)

 

Goggles

Bartender2 would work with these changes. It just manipulates the current Blizzard bar frames. That said it isn't quite as customisable as other bar mods (you're stuck with 5 bars of 12 buttons).

Not actually a member of Refusion on Burning Blade.

 

• Chicken

I'm pretty certain it's not going to break action bar mods. What it seems to break is making keypresses perform actions without pressing an actual action button; in other words, a mod could create a valid set of action bars using the 120 buttons provided for this purpose by Blizzard, but won't be able to make a button press do different things dependant on who/what you're mousing over. That'd mostly break click-casting mods though, as well as the Necrosis style mods and possibly autobar mods, I'd suspect there's a work-around possible to make something like Decursive work again, but it'd require a lot of re-coding on the part of other mods.

As for the skill required in manually decursing. It's about as skillful a job as doing 'conveyor belt' work. Especially in some of the worst examples in MC.

I'm more worried about the thing mentioned by Gibybo. Though Target's Target and Raid frames should still work; I'm more wondering how it affects things like raid#target or targettargettarget.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Revenj

Honestly, if FastCast will indeed stop working then this is literally a game-breaking change for a lot of us.

The disability of Decursive and other "Click" mods will affect the playstyles of many people - but nothing close to the effect the loss of FastCast will have.

I hope Blizzard considers this. I really fucking hope they do.

 

ninor

I'm rerolling rogue.
Then I can talk shit about playing with skill too.

I'll stab you ingame exog.

Can you jam with the console cowboys in cyberspace?

 

Pater

There's no reason to remove click-casting (like clique). I'd be hugely disappointed if they broke that functionality.

 

enshula

If blizzard breaks fastcast they have to allow spell queuing.

Without that i dont think ill bother playing.

 

SquattingCow

I'm not sure on the specifics, but you could still use CTRA or similar to target a player and hit heal still, right? Or have an enemy selected, click heal, then, target the player. That's how healing works at least so I don't think it's the death of raid parties, but they're going to be much smaller anyway.

 

Rogar

I'm holding out hope between this change and the introduction of Mass Dispel, Blizzard is affirming it wont be introducing new dispel clickfests in The Burning Crusade. I'm still quite leery though, considering there's no Mass Remove Curse nor Mass Abolish Poison.

 

LadyVex

To give you an example of what a healer feels like on a raid...

Get a priest friend, or watch a friend do the benediction quest. Hit the "V" key. Watch, click, heal/dispel the health bars. Scream as they overlap. Curse as you try to pinpoint the 3 or so npcs that need dispelled. That's about what it is.

Current mods don't pick your target and automatically heal them, it's basically just streamlined information. Allows you to know what's going on in your raid without having to sort through a mixed jumble everytime.

Ever the optimist, I'm hoping they change this. Emergency monitor is not a giant deal, decursive will suck but whatever. Some mods are just irreplacable and will make the game far less enjoyable, without implementing any skill value into it.

 

Vhal

Do we know if this applies to macros along with ui mods?

One of my favorite enhancements to my WoW experience is a macro I wrote which backstabs and then turns combat on if it's off after the backstab (i.e., it turns on autoattack if the backstab fails due to position or lack of energy).

Not game breaking, but annoying if I won't be able to do it anymore.

 

Kaacee

Hoping they don't add a heavy decurse/dispell fight is a waste of time. They added them before, they will put them in again, regardless of decursive.

Personally, I think these changes add more annoyance/frustration to the already irritating life of a healer. I'd be happier if they just put all these elements into the default UI. Either that or take out autoattack. Better yet, have autoattack only work if the rogues/warriors/warlocks can successfully predict which of 40 boxes they need to click next. Kinda like Simon.

 

Dromakis

Not trying to be all elitist here, but I guess going with the minimalist approach to mods and addon's may turn out to be an advantage for me. Even with decursing I started doing it manually in AQ. Like previously stated, however, I would be disappointed by more 'chromaggus' style fights where mass decursing is the road to victory. That mechanic is rediculous, not to mention boring. My hope is that with the lowered raid size Blizzard is trying to take some of the more mundane aspects of the game out. Sitting in one spot and spamming the same button until you either A. Run out of mana, or, B. win, would be a huge disappointment.

http://wow.tachyonsix.com.nyud.net:8...13206KEXso.png

 

◊ Quigon

One would hope they include a built-in alternative to fastcast...
Doing patchwerk for some healers is simply not possible given time constraints if they have poor pings.
The decursing crap is interesting and all... and I dont think decursing Noth will be neither fun nor skillful, just a pain in the ass.
Most of what they're removing here seems to be mods oriented around making menial tasks simpler - but I suppose its to remove all the automation you can encode. Versatility of mods was one of the best things about them imo... almost felt like certain encounters assumed you were using them.

 

LadyVex

You have 40 healthbars up on your screen during raids and watch each one for any kind of debuffs which you automatically attempt to dispel?

 

Jaete

I don't know the specifics but I'm kinda willing to bet they're not gonna break too many mods too badly. This thread so far seems to have more speculation and less facts than I personally prefer. ;) So, does anybody have more info? As in, what exactly is becoming impossible to do, are there any suggested workarounds?

 

Mendoza

I guess I'm not the norm, but this is what I do too. I used decursive for my first couple of Lucifron kills way way back, but then decided it was basically cheating and that I didn't need it anyway. The only raid mod I've ever used is CT raid, and that only to see everyone's health, debuffs and MT targets.

Having 40 health bars and their debuffs up the whole time doesn't make me responsible for the whole raid though, we still do assignments but this way if something goes wrong I can still see everyone's status. It allows me to do everything I need to do.

Basically, I've just never been convinced I actually needed any mods to help me heal. :)

 

◊ Quigon

A lot of people do...
Just ctraid and show debuffs, the icon is pretty big for your particular class of debuffs; these changes shouldn't affect that. I'm not saying tedious is fun, just that this is very common.

 

LadyVex

I usually have alot of health bars on my screen but use another mod to sort the people needing dispells, which is simply easier than having your bars show debuffs especially given limited space.

I'm just trying to think of how frustrated I'd get with my screen like that. Heh.

Also a list updates with who needs the curse; in small raids I use only healthbars generally, don't you find you waste time trying to decurse someone who is already decursed by the time you get to them or does your raid group assign priests to a particular class to dispel?

 

◊ Quigon

I agree, its not necessarily skill as much as tedium and annoying...
But I think Vhex already covered that angle :)

In short its a clear attempt to remove automation, which is a shame cause the current GUI system is incredibly powerful - and by no means plays the game for you.

Again, removing fastcast is debilitating enough to some players alone to have them quit. Although I think even that was mentioned already...

 

Rogar

Quick Heal, Simply Magical Healer, Healer's Assist, Genesis and others do just that with the single push of a button.

 

LadyVex

I was unaware, who needs their target picked for them? -.-

Anyways, speculation ahead of the game or not, I'll be very sad if I can no longer sort people the way my mods do now. =(