Infraction for Sarjin: Useless Post

Juice · 08/15/08, 1:29 PM

Post: [Priest] Discipline and Holy WotLK Talent Preview and discussion.
User: Sarjin
Infraction: Useless Post
Points: 1

Administrative Note:

Message to User:

Don't post split like this

Original Post:

Originally Posted by Brinas

You can't downrank in every situation. Do you downrank when tank healing? I don't. I'd much rather overheal the tank than underheal him and cause a wipe. If you're able to look at someone's health and decide you can use a spell that takes just as long to cast but costs less mana and heals for less, then there isn't enough pressure on the healers. Imagine if people downranked Power Word: Shield, or hots because they were able to say "well I know this person won't take more than X damage/second in this fight so I can use this lower rank spell".

Yes, I do downrank in tank healing. There's plenty of situations where a tank can take pretty unpredictable burst damage, but the damage incoming outside of these burst isn't extremely high, and requires much less HPS. The result? Have people keep the tank topped off using smaller heals, with healers also being ready (and some of them possibly cast-cancelling max ranks) to counter the big bursts. In a situation where the tank requires to remain topped off to counter burst, you don't keep him topped off with max ranks; that would mean a rather quick OoM. Keeping tanks topped off with Flash Heal wouldn't cause you to fare much better. Nor can you take the risk of letting the tank's health drop down a few thousand, as the following burst could kill him.

You don't downrank Power Word Shield, since due to its efficiency (or current lack thereof) you will not use the spell when it's really needed: an inefficient emergency shield to keep someone alive. Obviously you want to use the spell at maximum power, and it will not 'overheal'. And FYI, to my knowledge HoTs do get downranked. I have done it occasionally in the past, and I am pretty sure Druids also downrank Rejuvenation at times.

Regarding pressure on the healers: It actually requires more skill and focus for healers to manage their mana pool over the course of the fight, modulating their healing output to fit the situation, while being ready to counter burst thrown at them, than to have them operate at max HPS during the entire fight.

Downranking is not the same mechanic as mana pots, but its a way of improving mana efficiency, and is effective Mana per 5. You called mana pot chugging a "dumb and counter intuitive mechanic". Well so is downranking.

-Mana pot chugging: Blindly drinking potions every cooldown, since while you may not need the mana now, you could possibly need it about 5 minutes in the future. Giving the bonus of a full tier of gear.

-Downranking: Fitting your heals to the magnitude required by the encounter, this way not wasting mana because the highest rank of a spell is too powerful.

Which of the two is not intuitive?

No one does it but healers.

Have you ever heard a rogue complain "Damn, I wish I had a rank so I could have damaged that boss for 200, but because I can only use one rank of Sinister Strike, I hit him for 1000. I wasted 800 there on overdamage." ?

The answer is 'no', obviously. Overdamaging does not exist, and with their infinite resource pools, there is no incentive for them to manage their manapools and downrank because they might not make it through the fights. For mana users, their finite resources are very much possible to run out, and for healers managing the manapool to endure a fight is one of the essential skills.

When you get a higher rank spell it should be better than the previous rank in every way, and it should make the previous rank completely obsolete. That was the comparison I was making to Rogues/Warriros.

Again, you cannot compare Rogues and Warriors at all. With their steady generation of energy/rage and their roll being to DPS, there's basically no reason why they would not want to operate at maximum capacity. The only time this happens is when they are close to pulling aggro, which means they have to lower dps and may actually end up with excess rage/mana and downranking would be pointless as well. With healers, encounters and situations which develop during them call for priests to cast spells of various ranks to respond to the healing demanded, since the palette of max rank skills each class gets for this is insufficient.

Similarly this change would mean that Spellpower would be less beneficial for Healers than for DPS (AP for physical classes). These classes benefit across the board as their output increases. For healers, this will essentially mean it's only useful if the gap is bigger than the max rank of the heal, as beyond this it might often just be overheal. I will never need the full power of a max rank to heal a non-tank, nor would I like the tank's health to drop far (if at all) below this value at regular frequency.

Yes they have unlimited resources, but mana classes aren't supposed to. Downraking and mana pots have caused running out of mana to be less of a threat since the spirit fix. They're basically moving healers back to where they were before the insane mana regen.

Balancing the resources perfectly is not going to work, but similarly you can't exactly compare them either for the same reasons. No, rogues and warriors are not supposed to run out. Healers however, are not supposed to run out of mana during a fight, as this means people start dying. That doesn't mean that they should have unlimited mana, it means they should be capable of managing their mana to last the fight, and have the tools to do so. If you think healers should be massively overhealing their spells because otherwise they would not run out of mana, you are balancing in a way which takes all the skill out of healing, a situation in which tons of mana are wasted to make sure mana is still an issue. This is a stupid situation: what should happen is that with the potion nerf in mind (which actually simplifies matters, and I fully support) Blizzard adjust the mana regeneration so that skillful management of the mana pool means people will be able to not run OoM during the fight, while people who waste mana do. That's an intuitive situation where people need skill to properly heal.

Yes, there is skill in using a cheaper rank of greater heal to conserve mana, but there is also skill in judging risk versus reward of choosing whether to use renew, flash heal, greater heal, etc. All this does is make holy priests, paladins, and shamans less of a one trick pony using various ranks of the same spell.

When it comes to judging whether or not to heal a tank yet, like I mentioned you can often not even make this decision since leaving the tank with a health deficit is too risky. Similarly there is fights like Naj'entus where people need to be topped off (typically 2-3k deficits) or die, you don't have the time to wait for HoTs to tick, and using Flash Heal for the entire fight is likely to run you OoM.

FYI, I do not only use various ranks of GHeal, I use the other spells to, in the situation they are tailored for:
-Renew: Damage buffer on tanks, moderate damage on raid which does not need to be hurried fast, but with me needing to mainly focus on other targets.
-Flash Heal: People needing a quick but inefficient heal to prevent them from dying.
-Power Word Shield: An emergency spell to save people from dying when even Flash Heal is not enough. Also added protection for easily anticipated damage, and to protect squishy classes.
-Binding Heal: People needing a fast heal while I simultaneously need one myself.
-Greater Heal: Highly efficient heals, for situations requiring the highest HPS and throughput, as well as situations calling for efficient healing which doesn't need to be applied in emergency fashion.
-Prayer of Mending: Aggro generation for tank on pull and aggro resets, situations with multiple people taking damage so it bounces around.
-Circle of Healing: Raid healing with clumped groups (currently parties) taking damage.
-Prayer of Healing: Healing on party on range which has taken considerable damage when the party is in range, often used together with Inner Focus. Also for party healing when people are too spread out to use CoH.

I already use all these heals in the situation they are designed for. I do already make these choices. Together with the rank choices, it's what makes healing fun as a priest. The issue though is that Flash Heal is not designed as a small heal. It's an emergency heal that is inefficient and happens to not be overly huge because it would imbalance things. It's not intended to do the task downranked heals are currently used for, and it will not with the removal of downranking since GHeal bombs are in most cases still more efficient. Basically, in any situation I previously used these spells, I still will. In situations where I used downranked GHeals, I will likely be dropping max rank GHeals with Serendipity. How this increases the choices made, and makes for more intuitive and skilled healing is beyond me. As I detailed in one of my previous posts, it causes an extremely idiotic situation in terms of efficiency, where spells reach their peak efficiency when overhealing for over 50% (and less than 60%), since you get 50% of the spell for 40% of the cost. How do things like this create an intuitive situation promoting choice?

Basically the one thing I end up wondering from your posts in this thread is what your actual experience is with healing in raids, looking at your guild and gear (PvP, shadow spec), as well as your apparent impression that Priests only use GHeal currently. I don't mean to be condescending or elitist (it's not like I am 'elite' when it comes to my own progress), but based on your posts I don't really get the feeling you truly know what you are talking about when commenting on priest healing and downranking in raids.

I'll pose this question. How often do people downrank in arena? Does this mean they are less skilled at healing? No, you just can't afford to downrank in arena because there is always that threat that someone can be bursted down.

Exactly, in PvP the incoming damage normally speaking means that in 5v5, full power healing is required on the character tanking the damage, as all power is needed to counter this. Talking about 2v2 and 3v3? I've frequently downranked there. Often enough you want to keep people up to reduce the risk of a burst (or the healer getting crowd controlled/silenced) but current incoming damage and deficit does not justify max rank usage.