[WOTLK 4.0] Restoration Discussion - Page 8

Rijndael · 09/01/10, 11:35 PM

Originally Posted by Lightflower

What I do know though is that Druids have been superb raid healers this expansion because of the prevalence of aura type fights and the ability to blanket the raid. Change that mechanic and there's no way we'd beat out the smart heals of other classes.

This leads me to think we'll play a hybrid healer role pushing us more towards a TBC playstyle (without the LB rolling on 4 tanks).

Good exercise: of encounters we saw in ICC, which would favor healing zones? Here's the breakdown, where possible answers are "yes, no, only on tanks":

Marrowgar (only on tanks, blender phase everyone moves too much, tank/spank phase no one takes non-trivial damage except tanks)
LDW (no, too much movement)
Saurfang (people have to spread out, no real raid damage)
Rotface (no, ranged have to spread, melee don't take damage)
Festergut (yes, on melee group because of the aura)
Putricide (no, too much movement)
Princes (no, damage always coupled with movement)
BQ (yes, on melee group because of the aura, also on tanks)
Valithria (no, tank rotation on dragon, too much movement if put on raid)
Sindragosa (yes, both melee and ranged groups)
LK (no, except possibly relentless winter phase, which isn't the hard part)

As you can see, unless Cata encounters will be drastically different from what we saw before, most fights won't really favor healing zones except in stationary fights with auras or other reliable damage sources. Most of the time the zone will be useful on tanks or melee. In 3 fights out of 11 we could make use of zones in a useful way on raid, in 1 out of 11 we can use it on the tank clump. This isn't enough to roster us as full time raid healers. Our TBC playstyle _was_ LB rolling. Without that we just get put on one tank unless something about a fight makes healing zones super strong. That's a pretty lame position to be in, but there you go. Perhaps Blizzard's design goal for healing in Cata is that healers get swapped to raid based on encounter mechanics which favor their toolkit. If that's the case, I have to second Lightflower's comment, zones + WG can't compete with the versatility of other healers' raid toolkits.

Fallenangel · 09/02/10, 5:10 AM

Originally Posted by Lightflower

I just can't see SM being used as a clutch heal for raid damage scenarios unless blanketing makes a resurgence. That said, there's absolutely nothing at all wrong with its utility as a large, instant tank saving heal - assuming the SM glyph survives, it allows us to put that heal out without unduly sacrificing overall HPS. That's a specific contrast to HS which is rarely used by tank healing Paladins.

So the resto druid signature / spec ability is a tank healing on a longish CD (for a single target heal) that requires a glyph which may not even exist anymore to work properly? I don't want to sacrifice a glyph just to make an already hard to use spell slightly more useable.
Not sure why you're saying HS is rarely used a tank heal. It is at a use-me-whenever state right now since it creates holy power (2 if used on a beaconed tank) and procs cast-time reductions so it's a good opener for a string of heals.
I'm not sure if it's intended but currently druids are shaping up to be using high mana cost spells which is enabled by a very strong regen ability - Revitalize, which is strong by itself and is aided by 2 mana increasing talents. I'm not sure if that's the model they want or can balance around, and any change to Revitalize will hurt badly. Regrowth is the major benefactor from this, for now.
I don't see why you think druids are more mobile than holy priests. They have Renew to our Rejuv, PW:S to SM, CoH to WoG. In addition they have PoM, an instant heal on 15/20s CD in 2/3 of their Chakra forms and Desperate Prayer for self healing.

Arythorn · 09/02/10, 11:41 AM

Had some folks tool around with Regrowth / Effloresence effect (with the new lower cast time). I was on the fence about the 15 yd to 4 yd reduction on Eff. I absolutely think 15 yds was overkill but 4 seemed tight. I still think 5 or 6 would be a good middle ground but with the new lower cast time on Regrowth it's starting to get interesting:

1 target:

At first glance, 4 yd radius seems a bit tight but at 1.5 second cast (pre-haste effects) you can pretty quickly get to:

3 targets:

And in Go go gadget TreeSPAM!! form Regrowth becomes instant cast (given the lower cast time of Regrowth, we may / probably will get it down to 1.0 second cast with haste in Cata so I'm not sure how strong the benefit of instant cast is in tree form but that's another topic):

I'm not sure if that is the final graphic or not -- doesn't seem to fit the "bed of healing flora" description so it may be a placeholder. I want roses everywhere come Cata!! That's the OOC clearcasting in-game power aura btw. Whatever the case, looks like Blizz is definitely pulling out all the stops to retool Regrowth into a spell we pull out of the bag far more often. It's definitely getting interesting.

Whitefyst · 09/02/10, 8:14 PM

Originally Posted by Rijndael

Good exercise: of encounters we saw in ICC, which would favor healing zones? Here's the breakdown, where possible answers are "yes, no, only on tanks":

Marrowgar (only on tanks, blender phase everyone moves too much, tank/spank phase no one takes non-trivial damage except tanks)
LDW (no, too much movement)
Saurfang (people have to spread out, no real raid damage)
Rotface (no, ranged have to spread, melee don't take damage)
Festergut (yes, on melee group because of the aura)
Putricide (no, too much movement)
Princes (no, damage always coupled with movement)
BQ (yes, on melee group because of the aura, also on tanks)
Valithria (no, tank rotation on dragon, too much movement if put on raid)
Sindragosa (yes, both melee and ranged groups)
LK (no, except possibly relentless winter phase, which isn't the hard part)

I have to disagree a little with this concerning healing zones. However, my criteria is less of favoring healing zones and more of where they can be utilized or possibly taken advantage of if you are casting Regrowth anyway.

Marrowgar: There is no reason the raid or range (or groups of the range) cannot group up outside the "blender" phase, and a lot of strategies call for it. Although it is true that the raid takes little damage during the tank and spank phases, it is usually true that a lot of people have damage to be healed up coming out of the blender. A healing zone or two can be the place the range/raid groups up so that they can get the benefit.

LDW: Depending on strategy, role, or class, there can be a lot of movement on this fight, but there can also not be that much. As range DPS (on hunter or moonkin), I do not have to move much in phase 1. In 10-man, I only move enough to help DPS as the waves come out on either side and then am stationary until need to move again. In 25-man, I just stay mostly in a location where I can DPS the adds on my side and LDW and only move to get out of void zones. As a healer, I position myself where I can heal who I am responsible for and stay roughly in the center with moving very little as needed. Hence, in that phase, if a healing zone exists nearby and I am low in health, it is not difficult to move into for a few ticks. Even in phase 2 with all the movement, there are still times you stop to attack. If there is an available healing zone in a safe area nearby when I need to move, I do not see why I wouldn't go into it to get a tick until I need to move again or it ends.

Rotface: There are plenty of times during this fight where raid members are relatively close and could take advantage of a healing zone until something forces them to move.

Festergut: Groups stack together to get spores and could take advantage of a healing zone then. If you have people assigned to whom the spore group always collapses too, that person can have the healing zone cast on them.

Putricide: True that this is a large movement fight, but there are also times when you are not moving and attacking. If there is a healing zone down in a safe area around where I am or am moving to, I can always step in it for some ticks if I need healing.

Valithria: Another movement fight but one where ranged can possibly move into nearby healing zones.

Lightflower · 09/02/10, 11:39 PM

Originally Posted by Rijndael

As you can see, unless Cata encounters will be drastically different from what we saw before, most fights won't really favor healing zones except in stationary fights with auras or other reliable damage sources. Most of the time the zone will be useful on tanks or melee. In 3 fights out of 11 we could make use of zones in a useful way on raid, in 1 out of 11 we can use it on the tank clump. This isn't enough to roster us as full time raid healers. Our TBC playstyle _was_ LB rolling. Without that we just get put on one tank unless something about a fight makes healing zones super strong. That's a pretty lame position to be in, but there you go. Perhaps Blizzard's design goal for healing in Cata is that healers get swapped to raid based on encounter mechanics which favor their toolkit. If that's the case, I have to second Lightflower's comment, zones + WG can't compete with the versatility of other healers' raid toolkits.

I may not have expressed my point correctly and I apologise. What I was trying to get across is that I agree that healing zones in current content would be fairly pathetic.

What I was also trying to get across is an imaginary scenario where a much larger proportion of healing needed to go onto a tank than what is currently the norm. Consider a fight similar to the end stages of Thorim HM in Ulduar (except we'll imagine that Sif doesn't do her Frost Nova so much or at all). The tank damage is extreme and requires 2 or perhaps even 3 healers to cope with it. Raid damage is high but predictable and there are compelling reasons why limited clumping is favoured in some scenarios. In such a fight, tank healing abilities with throwaway raid stabilisation with a positional requirement become good.

Wall of text I know, but several other fights fit the bill: Kalecgos (both realms), Brutallus, portions of Kil'jaeden, Illidari Council (place the zone after people move out of blizzard etc), Karathress, Anetheron and Loatheb. In addition, several fights have raid damage but support clumping: Mimiron p2 (several small camps of players), Freya, Iron Council HM and Auriaya.

The key thing to remember is that the expectation won't be to heal people to full instantly. Under that scenario, we'll be taking the Efflorescence patch into account when we cast Regrowth and it may just work out to a positional HoT.

So the resto druid signature / spec ability is a tank healing on a longish CD (for a single target heal) that requires a glyph which may not even exist anymore to work properly? I don't want to sacrifice a glyph just to make an already hard to use spell slightly more useable.
I don't see why you think druids are more mobile than holy priests. They have Renew to our Rejuv, PW:S to SM, CoH to WoG. In addition they have PoM, an instant heal on 15/20s CD in 2/3 of their Chakra forms and Desperate Prayer for self healing.

This is almost pure "grass is greener" syndrome.

- everyone needs glyphs to make their abilities work properly. SM is not special in that regard. It is like a Shaman complaining that they have to glyph for 4% LB damage or Paladins having to glyph for extra Beacon duration. The spell works without the glyph, it works much better with it

- Swiftmend isn't hard to use, it's a 2 step decision making process. The change away from blanketing means that it won't be our clutch raid heal anymore which is why RG has been pumped up quite a bit. The same 2 step decision process is required not to waste a GCD attempting to shield a target with Weakened Soul or required to use or consume a Riptide for Chain Heal

- I'm not sure why it's a problem to have an iconic ability on cooldown modified by a glyph. It's substantially similar to Penance and Desperate Prayer in that respect

- Finally, the issue is not whether Druids or H Priests have more mobility. The issue is that both are substantially more mobile than other healers

ttyl · 09/03/10, 2:17 AM

Yeah, the current Efflorescence can be good.

The main problem with it is the same reason Shamans are getting Healing Rain. When Chain Heal isn't effective or enough healing they need Healing Rain. When PoM and/or CoH aren't effective or enough, Priests have PoH. When Wild Growth isn't effective, Efflorescence won't be. When Wild Growth isn't enough, Efflorescence sometimes works. RJ was WG's supplement.

Compared to Cata's tank healing homogenization, it seems obvious that Efflorescence leaves too big of gap/niche between raid healers. Even Paladins got 2 complementary AoE heals...

Arythorn · 09/03/10, 2:27 AM

I'm not sure I see the issue. We still have RJ. We still have WG -- granted the cooldown went up 4 secs but mana cost stays largely the same with latest reduction). Now we also have a functional RG/AoE spell that will also get pulled out of the bag more often. To me it seems the raid healing tool kit has expanded, not shrunk . . . maybe I'm just an optimist but I see opportunity here.

ttyl · 09/03/10, 3:57 AM

Originally Posted by Arythorn

I'm not sure I see the issue. We still have RJ. We still have WG -- granted the cooldown went up 4 secs but mana cost stays largely the same with latest reduction). Now we also have a functional RG/AoE spell that will also get pulled out of the bag more often. To me it seems the raid healing tool kit has expanded, not shrunk . . . maybe I'm just an optimist but I see opportunity here.

We still have a HoT named RJ... It's nothing like WotLK RJ, which was the backbone of druid raid healing. The current Efflorescence is too situational to make up for that loss. This becomes more obvious when you compare it to other "small" raid heals, like I listed above.

Fallenangel · 09/03/10, 5:28 AM

Originally Posted by Lightflower

- everyone needs glyphs to make their abilities work properly. SM is not special in that regard. It is like a Shaman complaining that they have to glyph for 4% LB damage or Paladins having to glyph for extra Beacon duration. The spell works without the glyph, it works much better with it

These analogies just don't hold. A beacon would be just as useful if it wasn't for the glyph and I know as I've used it extensively. LB glyph is totally unrelated as it's simply a power boost. Oddly enough discussion of these abilities never resolves around or mentions the glyph. SM on the other one tends to get it linked to it quite a lot. For instance:
"That said, there's absolutely nothing at all wrong with its utility as a large, instant tank saving heal - assuming the SM glyph survives"

Well it might not survive. And even if it does, you're saying the merit of the spell is linked to it.
Another annoying side effect of SM's current implementation, by the way, is that if you want to Regrowth->SM there is some lag until you can SM, similar to how Destro locks can't go Immolate->Conflagrate.

Originally Posted by Lightflower

- Swiftmend isn't hard to use, it's a 2 step decision making process. The change away from blanketing means that it won't be our clutch raid heal anymore which is why RG has been pumped up quite a bit. The same 2 step decision process is required not to waste a GCD attempting to shield a target with Weakened Soul or required to use or consume a Riptide for Chain Heal

It's not about a 2 step decision, it's about having to make 2 actions to cast an emergency heal. The Weaked Soul thing has nothing to do with that, it's a lot more akin to checking the CD of SM to know if you can actually do what you want to do or not. I'm not too familiar with Shaman healing, but riptide is not a preq to casting CH.

Originally Posted by Lightflower

- I'm not sure why it's a problem to have an iconic ability on cooldown modified by a glyph. It's substantially similar to Penance and Desperate Prayer in that respect

Not a problem, but the glyph is too instrumental to the spell, mainly because of Rejuv's high mana cost. Seeing as it's a fixed heal now, I'd be more than happy to see the glyph turn SM to useable on all targets regardless of a hot present. It would only put SM on somewhat equal grounds as an emergency heal with tools other healers have.
By the way DP is no longer the holy priests' ability, they got another instant heal instead

Originally Posted by Lightflower

- Finally, the issue is not whether Druids or H Priests have more mobility. The issue is that both are substantially more mobile than other healers

Just showing druids are not more mobile than holy priests. A holy priest in the Renew Chakra is shaping up to be a druid with benefits.

Arythorn · 09/03/10, 10:06 AM

Originally Posted by ttyl

We still have a HoT named RJ... It's nothing like WotLK RJ, which was the backbone of druid raid healing. The current Efflorescence is too situational to make up for that loss. This becomes more obvious when you compare it to other "small" raid heals, like I listed above.

I guess I missed something then -- only changes I've seen to RJ have seemed positive (instant ticks via talents, haste/crit effects, etc.). What happened that suddenly made it bad?

EDIT: so I see mana cost is up, time is down to 12 seconds, frontloaded tick, it can crit. On a pointer toon with significantly less spell power than my main toon in live (pointer toon 2469 sp vs live toon 3842), it was accomplishing nearly as much healing on average in 12 seconds (crit dependent) than live does in 18 -- or that live could do in 13 or so if I glyphed Rapid. Cover that extra ~1400 sp, and I would expect it to be doing quite a bit more on average. Actually, I shed gear to bring my live toon down to the 2450 sp range, beta was healing for more than live even with just one crit tick (20% crit).

Anywho, I'm fairly confident that spamming RJ 15-wide has gone away and, if you believe Blizzard, the damage profiles, health pools, etc. may not demand it. I wouldn't be surprised if, by the time they are done tweaking it, we are casting RG nearly an equal amount to RJ in Cata -- especially if we get it down into the 1 second cast time range with haste. Right now mana values seem to be a bit all over the place -- LB and Nourish at 244, Regrowth and Healing Touch at 1200 and 1300 plus . . . I have to believe some of this is going to get changed. Once they sort the mana costs, I do like the toolkit that is getting built. I guess we'll know more how we're situated as 1st raids become available on beta and we start to see how things really look -- but I'm not convinced the sky is falling quite yet.

Rijndael · 09/03/10, 12:59 PM

Originally Posted by Fallenangel

Just showing druids are not more mobile than holy priests. A holy priest in the Renew Chakra is shaping up to be a druid with benefits.

This is the key. Right now Rejuv is basically equivalent to chakra'd renew. If WG + zones + Rejuv is enough of a toolkit, then holy priests will be overpowered because of their amazing toolkit on top of renew. One of the following things needs to happen to prevent it:

(a) We get some other toy
(b) Renew gets nerfed or Rejuv gets buffed
(c) Priest gets some sort of generalized nerf, possibly to mana costs.

ttyl · 09/03/10, 2:04 PM

Originally Posted by Arythorn

Once they sort the mana costs, I do like the toolkit that is getting built. I guess we'll know more how we're situated as 1st raids become available on beta and we start to see how things really look -- but I'm not convinced the sky is falling quite yet.

You're still only looking at druid. Also, those mana costs won't change much. In Cata, mana is balanced around efficient heals: Nourish, Heal, Healing Wave, and Holy Light. RJ was our efficient heal in WotLK. That's the big change.

Originally Posted by Rijndael

Right now Rejuv is basically equivalent to chakra'd renew. If WG + zones + Rejuv is enough of a toolkit, then holy priests will be overpowered because of their amazing toolkit on top of renew.

Exactly.

Njald · 09/05/10, 12:21 AM

Originally Posted by Rijndael

Good exercise: of encounters we saw in ICC, which would favor healing zones? Here's the breakdown, where possible answers are "yes, no, only on tanks":

Marrowgar (only on tanks, blender phase everyone moves too much, tank/spank phase no one takes non-trivial damage except tanks)
LDW (no, too much movement)
Saurfang (people have to spread out, no real raid damage)
Rotface (no, ranged have to spread, melee don't take damage)
Festergut (yes, on melee group because of the aura)
Putricide (no, too much movement)
Princes (no, damage always coupled with movement)
BQ (yes, on melee group because of the aura, also on tanks)
Valithria (no, tank rotation on dragon, too much movement if put on raid)
Sindragosa (yes, both melee and ranged groups)
LK (no, except possibly relentless winter phase, which isn't the hard part)

I would like to add that Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader are also instances made with "modern" design philosophy and should be included in analysis since they are just as a almost as good a model for what we can expect from raiding encounters in Cataclysm. Many of these were undertuned even on hard/heroic but the fight mechanics is the interesting part and they do tell a bit about how encounters have been handled by both Blizzard and raiders "recently".

Are healing zone healing really useful for these encounters?:
Flame Leviathan: NA
Ignis: Mostly clustered raid (no penalty for bunching). Yes.
Razorscale: High mobility fight. No.
XT-002: Clustered raid except single players running out with debuffs. Yes.
Iron Council/Assembly: Depending on fight order. "Hardest" mode with Steelbreaker last was highly dependant on clustered raid with healing synergy a top prio. Yes for that, maybe for the other 2.
Kologarn: Small area for fight. Lots of player sharing areas even if not clustered/bunched. Yes on melee and tanks, maybe on other.
Auriaya: Raid in a small area yet again. (most infront, large aoe cone). Yes.
Freya: Depending a bit on execution. Several times during fight where players bunch up but just as much spreading out at times. Big Maybe.
Hodir: Chasing moonbeams and releasing npcs as well as constant moving out of falling debris make it a mobile fight: No.
Mimiron: Firefighter was very mobile but the raid often grouped due to simple lack of space to move. Maybe.
Thorim: No for tunnelforce, yes for arenaforce. With current reach it would not be useful for second phase. (only part of melee/tank force would be possible targets for multiple healing). Overall I would say No.
General Vezax: For the last phase of the manaless hardmode it would definatly come in handy for melee/tank force. Yes.
Yogg: Most of fight highly mobile and would be utterly wasted. Maybe some use in last phase but healing in that phase isn't benefitting much from a manaeffective miniheal on tanks. No in total.
Algalon: Some use for recovery and buffert from the collapsing starts but the repositioning of tanks and the focus on output rather than effeciency makes usefulness dubious. On the other hand a fight like this is exactly what blizzard seem to be leanign away from with the changes to healing strategy and oneshot/0.5 second health windows. No in LK enviroment, Maybe / Yes in a 'clysm one. (really hard to compare since fight is such a WotLK fight imho)

On to the ToGC encounters
Beasts: Only on Gormok and mostly for tanks. Rest is too mobile. No
Jaraxxus: Damage/positioning really isn't lending itself for healing zones to be useful in this fight. No
Faction Champions: I really don't know here. Having zones of "free healing" for raid members to use while trying to surviving with a focus on mobility might be a good use. Especially if this encounter would appear in the mindset of cataclysm with "huge healthpools with slow refill rate". Maybe
Twins: Depending a bit on execution but definatly lot of clustered raid members taking constant damage. Yes
Anub: Tightly packed raid but spread out tanks. (depending on executionstyle). Could have been contraproductive in last phase if heal outpaced the leech by too large a margin. Maybe.

So I would say that not knowing what design philosophy the Cataclysm raids will have and the big variance we had in WotLK raiding I think that general statement "will/will not be useful" is still too early to tell. There is definitly a lot of potential in this idea and if it will continue to be unlimited AoE healing with high heal/mana ratio it will be useful in a lot of potential type of raidencounters.

Yeni · 09/05/10, 5:48 AM

Having done most of the 5-mans on beta, I feel lifebloom as a tank healing ability needs to get some love. 1.2k ticks on 3 stacks, on a 100k+ hp tank (and thats with mix of Deepholme quest greens and a few ICC 277 leftovers) feel kinda underwhelming, more like a bonus to revitalize procs than a heal. I don't mind "bigger health pools, smaller heals" concept, except that when your tank gets 30-40k hits you don't have an easy time with keeping him alive. Surely, it should be easier with Uldum and Twilight Highlands quest rewards (which are currently not itemised at all), I'm just not sure if that will make that much of a difference.

On a sidenote, rebirth seems to resurrect people with full hp without the glyph, very handy.

Anaram · 09/05/10, 7:29 AM

Originally Posted by Rijndael

This is the key. Right now Rejuv is basically equivalent to chakra'd renew. If WG + zones + Rejuv is enough of a toolkit, then holy priests will be overpowered because of their amazing toolkit on top of renew. One of the following things needs to happen to prevent it:

(a) We get some other toy
(b) Renew gets nerfed or Rejuv gets buffed
(c) Priest gets some sort of generalized nerf, possibly to mana costs.

Rejuvenation does get mastery bonuses. Druids also currently have vastly superior regeneration talent in revitalize compared to priests' Holy Concentration. There's additionally a pretty convenient interaction between regrowth (nature's grace) and rejuvenation (WG) given that haste can give extra ticks to hots. Either way I don't think it's very useful to start comparison between priest and druid from rejuvenation vs renew, they seem too costly to form a significant bulk of either classes' healing.

This isn't to say that I wouldn't be a bit envious of the priest toolkit, still so much of the relative balance between healer classes will depend on things which tend to be too small to really judge with gut feeling (mana regeneration being one).

Lightflower · 09/05/10, 8:25 PM

Originally Posted by Rijndael

This is the key. Right now Rejuv is basically equivalent to chakra'd renew. If WG + zones + Rejuv is enough of a toolkit, then holy priests will be overpowered because of their amazing toolkit on top of renew. One of the following things needs to happen to prevent it:

(a) We get some other toy
(b) Renew gets nerfed or Rejuv gets buffed
(c) Priest gets some sort of generalized nerf, possibly to mana costs.

Perhaps I missed something but doesn't Chakra have a cooldown?
Doesn't Chakra also only allow one Chakra'd state at once due to the cooldown?

If so, then what you're saying is that Priests can get an equivalent HoT to our RJ but on a cooldown and by foregoing a corresponding boost to other spells. I'm not seeing the problem sorry.

It's not about a 2 step decision, it's about having to make 2 actions to cast an emergency heal. The Weaked Soul thing has nothing to do with that, it's a lot more akin to checking the CD of SM to know if you can actually do what you want to do or not. I'm not too familiar with Shaman healing, but riptide is not a preq to casting CH.

I don't understand the bolded bit. SM vs Nourish currently:

- Roughly the same cost (16% base mana vs 18%)
- Roughly the same heal amount and spell coefficient if you're consuming RJ and have Empowered Touch & Nourish Glyph
- Both require a HoT on the target to achieve the functionality
- Both cast in 1 sec when properly geared
- Both can leave the HoT still active on the target
- SM frontloads by 1 second over Nourish

ergo, if SM is on cooldown, Nourish is a functional substitute.

In Cataclysm (and please correct me if I'm wrong), SM is becoming a much larger heal but still roughly equivalent in strength to Nourish but that will increase the frontload time since Nourish's cast time increases. It seems to me that those changes remove it from the emergency raid heal category and push it into the emergency tank heal category. Doubly because Blizzard have repeatedly stated that raid members will spend more of their time between 0% & 100% than at either extreme.

Regrowth seems to be our emergency raid heal with the fast cast, short duration HoT which ticks for much more than it does now. It's a 1 GCD spell with a powerful follow up which is similar to how we use RJ + SM now (except in reverse order).

Rijndael · 09/05/10, 9:55 PM

Originally Posted by Lightflower

Perhaps I missed something but doesn't Chakra have a cooldown?
Doesn't Chakra also only allow one Chakra'd state at once due to the cooldown?

If so, then what you're saying is that Priests can get an equivalent HoT to our RJ but on a cooldown and by foregoing a corresponding boost to other spells. I'm not seeing the problem sorry.

Imagine the following situation. Warriors get a new stance, called "stance of the archer." What this stance does is nerf their melee damage, but gives them hunter autoshot and a bunch of their melee abilities get converted into ranged abilities. In archer stance warriors end up doing about equivalent dps of a hunter, while in zerker/battle stance they keep their normal warrior dps. Let's imagine warriors can change into and out of this stance once a minute. Now:

If a fight favors melee, warriors stay in zerker/battle stance. If a fight favors ranged, they pop archer stance and go be ranged. Don't you think other classes would complain that warriors are getting too much flexibility with no real downside? Sure, their melee damage is nerfed in archer stance, but they only use that stance in fights where melee damage is not favored. Same with their ranged damage in zerker/battle stance. Sure, they have a cooldown on changing into an archer and back, but the point is that encounters as a whole generally favor a particular damage style, and this cooldown isn't really a huge limitation given the huge additional tactical flexibility it offers.

This is the situation with holy priests and us.

re: Anaram's post about numbers being important for balance:

Of course that's true, and we can't start making definitive statements about balance until we see the first raid tier, and the numbers they expect us to fight with in that tier. All we can do is try to divine designer intent based on their posts (the healer homogenization post seems relevant) and based on the state of the beta. My intuition based on current info is druids are a bit "off" right now, raid healing wise.

lissanna · 09/05/10, 11:41 PM

Originally Posted by Rijndael

This is the key. Right now Rejuv is basically equivalent to chakra'd renew. If WG + zones + Rejuv is enough of a toolkit, then holy priests will be overpowered because of their amazing toolkit on top of renew. One of the following things needs to happen to prevent it:

(a) We get some other toy
(b) Renew gets nerfed or Rejuv gets buffed
(c) Priest gets some sort of generalized nerf, possibly to mana costs.

I've been saying for a couple weeks in various blog posts & forum posts that we need another AOE healing tool. Our "raid" healing toolset is not even good enough for feeling like we have all the tools we need for 5-mans, let alone what will happen when we get into raids.

Unfortunately, GC & the other devs seem to be totally uninterested in even thinking about AOE/Raid healing class balance & rotations, based on his latest round of posts (such as: World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Beta - (English) Forums -> My holy paladin feedback. )

Making rejuv overpowered or nerfing priests to compensate for them having better toolsets than other healers won't really work. They need to balance druids & pallies to have real healing toolsets.

Lightflower · 09/05/10, 11:50 PM

Originally Posted by Rijndael

Imagine the following situation. Warriors get a new stance, called "stance of the archer." What this stance does is nerf their melee damage, but gives them hunter autoshot and a bunch of their melee abilities get converted into ranged abilities. In archer stance warriors end up doing about equivalent dps of a hunter, while in zerker/battle stance they keep their normal warrior dps. Let's imagine warriors can change into and out of this stance once a minute. Now:

If a fight favors melee, warriors stay in zerker/battle stance. If a fight favors ranged, they pop archer stance and go be ranged. Don't you think other classes would complain that warriors are getting too much flexibility with no real downside? Sure, their melee damage is nerfed in archer stance, but they only use that stance in fights where melee damage is not favored. Same with their ranged damage in zerker/battle stance. Sure, they have a cooldown on changing into an archer and back, but the point is that encounters as a whole generally favor a particular damage style, and this cooldown isn't really a huge limitation given the huge additional tactical flexibility it offers.

This is the situation with holy priests and us.

I don't agree, but I also think that this is worth discussing because it seems to be a recurring theme lately.

Nitpicking firstly, I don't think that the analogy holds because the benefits conferred by Chakra are much smaller than a shift from melee dps to ranged dps. The equivalent might be a stance that allows a percentage of warrior DPS to be converted to magic damage for fights where there is a high armour boss. That would be a fundamental play change for them but, to keep the analogy going, this world would be one where Warriors were underpowered relative to other DPS classes (hard to imagine I know).

That aside, a Renew Chakra allows the Priest to mimic our RJ functionality for 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time, they're back to 1.5 sec GCD and 10% off its healing which is a very significant drop in effectiveness. The opportunity cost for them doing so is giving up PoH Chakra and Heal Chakra while we do not share the same opportunity cost.

You're asking "why bring the Druid?". The answer is for that other 50% of the time when Renew Chakra is on cooldown. Or for the 50% of the time when Heal Chakra is on cooldown. Druids are likely to be better baseline healers but Priests will shine (literally!) when they have Chakra up. For fights where you have predictable healing changes on definite timers (eg. Festergut, Mimiron), I can see Priests excelling over Druids. For fights where the healing is a little more chaotic then I see Druids having a baseline advantage over Priests.

The issues I see with Druid healing revolve more around our lack of powerful cooldown combined with a lack of ability to apply 10% DR to tanks. We are the only healer that brings neither and historically both have been extremely important in progression content eg. Shamans chain healing through tank on Brutallus & chaining cooldowns on tanks for pretty much every progression fight in WotLK

My intuition based on current info is druids are a bit "off" right now, raid healing wise

Believe it or not, I actually agree. What we lack is a raid burst type spell which most other healers seem to get. Our sustainable throughput on raid damage seems shaping up to be low unless Effloresence zones become much more user friendly than what they currently are. I don't think we're going to be down to Disc Priest throughput levels, but I do fear that our RJ will be sniped so much that it will only be used in a small number of situations.

I believe that a paragidm shift is underway and that RJ will go from our most used spell to virtually our least used. That will hit people hard but it will give my F3 key a rest

lissanna · 09/05/10, 11:53 PM

Originally Posted by Lightflower

Believe it or not, I actually agree. What we lack is a raid burst type spell which most other healers seem to get. Our sustainable throughput on raid damage seems shaping up to be low unless Effloresence zones become much more user friendly than what they currently are. I don't think we're going to be down to Disc Priest throughput levels, but I do fear that our RJ will be sniped so much that it will only be used in a small number of situations.

I believe that a paragidm shift is underway and that RJ will go from our most used spell to virtually our least used. That will hit people hard but it will give my F3 key a rest

Well, I'm pretty sure that any smart raid group will just assign druids to tanks, since our HOTs plus direct heals should actually be great for tank healing.

For keeping alive the DPS in raids, I'm spamming a lot of rejuv and regrowth (with wild growth when we're grouped up), and then running OOM due to not really having alternatives.

moowalk · 09/06/10, 1:04 AM

Originally Posted by Lightflower

That aside, a Renew Chakra allows the Priest to mimic our RJ functionality for 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time, they're back to 1.5 sec GCD and 10% off its healing

This isn't true. There is a talent which extends the duration of a chakra by 4 seconds for every corresponding spell cast. Renew will be the easiest one to keep up, and will have close to 100% uptime.

State of Mind - Spells - Sigrie

ttyl · 09/06/10, 1:19 AM

Originally Posted by Lightflower

You're asking "why bring the Druid?". The answer is for that other 50% of the time when Renew Chakra is on cooldown.

State of Mind changes that. Regardless, this RJ-Renew equivalence was only brought up to show that RJ can't be our supplemental "small" raid heal anymore. If it were, that'd only add more versatility to Priests.

Originally Posted by lissanna

Unfortunately, GC & the other devs seem to be totally uninterested in even thinking about AOE/Raid healing class balance & rotations, based on his latest round of posts (such as: World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Beta - (English) Forums -> My holy paladin feedback.)

That is disappointing. After all of their fast/cheap/slow heal homogenization, I can't believe they would ignore the large differences in AoE healing.

Lightflower · 09/06/10, 3:18 AM

Originally Posted by ttyl

State of Mind changes that. Regardless, this RJ-Renew equivalence was only brought up to show that RJ can't be our supplemental "small" raid heal anymore. If it were, that'd only add more versatility to Priests.That is disappointing. After all of their fast/cheap/slow heal homogenization, I can't believe they would ignore the large differences in AoE healing.

I hadn't seen State of Mind but I don't see it making a huge difference since it forces a Renew cast every 4 seconds to maintain the Chakra which is a substantial constraint on the flexibility of their overall healing cycle.

Perhaps comparison of healing toolkit is in order.

Raid Healing:

CoH vs WG - historically a wash with both being fairly equivalent (obviously Chakra'd CoH will win)
Renew vs RJ - RJ wins outside of Chakra and if they have a Renew Chakra then CoH = WG
Flash Heal vs RG - RG wins hands down provided the HoT can be utilised so Druids will be superior at fast patch up
Prayer of Healing vs Efflorescence - Priest has a toy we don't have and can't match unless Efflorescence is much more usable than it seems atm
PW:S vs Living Seed - Probably a wash since both can be very usable in different situations. Holy Priest shield is fairly average compared to Disc and if RG is our go-to patch up heal then LS will proc a lot
PoM vs ??? - Another toy for Priest and one that has no equivalency in our toolkit

Tank Healing:

Heal/GHeal vs Nourish/HT - should be a wash going by Blizzard comments
Renew vs RJ - with a Heal Chakra, this is probably a wash. Endless renewal of, er, Renew vs a stronger HoT from us
Flash Heal vs RG - obviously RG wins due to HoT + Efflorescence, even with Heal Chakra
Inspiration vs ??? - 10% DR is huge and one of the things I definitely think we need
??? vs LB - rolling LB stack refreshed by Nourish should provide greater throughput and longevity than Priest
DP vs SM - not sure if these are direct competitors but they feel like it, SM is a clear winner for the shorter cooldown
PW:S vs Living Seed - clear winner for LS since it's no loss of throughput to put it up
Guardian Spirit vs Tree of Life - GS is a clear winner as it stands

I think we're shaping up to be a very reasonable tank healer except for the lack of cooldown and lack of applied DR buff. I also think that we're moving away from a pure raid healing role and that, yes, we may struggle with heavy raid damage.

Fallenangel · 09/06/10, 3:45 AM

Originally Posted by Lightflower

I don't understand the bolded bit. SM vs Nourish currently:

- Roughly the same cost (16% base mana vs 18%)
- Roughly the same heal amount and spell coefficient if you're consuming RJ and have Empowered Touch & Nourish Glyph
- Both require a HoT on the target to achieve the functionality
- Both cast in 1 sec when properly geared
- Both can leave the HoT still active on the target
- SM frontloads by 1 second over Nourish

ergo, if SM is on cooldown, Nourish is a functional substitute.

In Cataclysm (and please correct me if I'm wrong), SM is becoming a much larger heal but still roughly equivalent in strength to Nourish but that will increase the frontload time since Nourish's cast time increases. It seems to me that those changes remove it from the emergency raid heal category and push it into the emergency tank heal category. Doubly because Blizzard have repeatedly stated that raid members will spend more of their time between 0% & 100% than at either extreme.

Regrowth seems to be our emergency raid heal with the fast cast, short duration HoT which ticks for much more than it does now. It's a 1 GCD spell with a powerful follow up which is similar to how we use RJ + SM now (except in reverse order).

I'm really not sure what this comparison is. Are you comparing SM to the live version of Nourish? This has no bearing on the healing situation in Cata. And if we have doubts about the SM glyph - trust me, the Nourish glyph is not going to stay the same.
If SM is becoming much larger, then clearly it won't be equivalent to Nourish which is the slow, mana efficient and low throughput spell.
You are happy with SM being tank-only and later on say we need a raid burst healing spell. Well, why not rework SM to be more usable as such?

Originally Posted by Lightflower

I hadn't seen State of Mind but I don't see it making a huge difference since it forces a Renew cast every 4 seconds to maintain the Chakra which is a substantial constraint on the flexibility of their overall healing cycle.

Perhaps comparison of healing toolkit is in order.

Raid Healing:

CoH vs WG - historically a wash with both being fairly equivalent (obviously Chakra'd CoH will win)
Renew vs RJ - RJ wins outside of Chakra and if they have a Renew Chakra then CoH = WG
Flash Heal vs RG - RG wins hands down provided the HoT can be utilised so Druids will be superior at fast patch up
Prayer of Healing vs Efflorescence - Priest has a toy we don't have and can't match unless Efflorescence is much more usable than it seems atm
PW:S vs Living Seed - Probably a wash since both can be very usable in different situations. Holy Priest shield is fairly average compared to Disc and if RG is our go-to patch up heal then LS will proc a lot
PoM vs ??? - Another toy for Priest and one that has no equivalency in our toolkit

Tank Healing:

Heal/GHeal vs Nourish/HT - should be a wash going by Blizzard comments
Renew vs RJ - with a Heal Chakra, this is probably a wash. Endless renewal of, er, Renew vs a stronger HoT from us
Flash Heal vs RG - obviously RG wins due to HoT + Efflorescence, even with Heal Chakra
Inspiration vs ??? - 10% DR is huge and one of the things I definitely think we need
??? vs LB - rolling LB stack refreshed by Nourish should provide greater throughput and longevity than Priest
DP vs SM - not sure if these are direct competitors but they feel like it, SM is a clear winner for the shorter cooldown
PW:S vs Living Seed - clear winner for LS since it's no loss of throughput to put it up
Guardian Spirit vs Tree of Life - GS is a clear winner as it stands

I think we're shaping up to be a very reasonable tank healer except for the lack of cooldown and lack of applied DR buff. I also think that we're moving away from a pure raid healing role and that, yes, we may struggle with heavy raid damage.

Flash heal (and nearly every single holy priest heal) has a hot associated with it. Besides, the RG hot is not free - it comes at a higher mana cost and a significantly weaker front loaded heal. Until we have the numbers, it's hard to say who wins out. That said RG is certainly has a strong point for it at the moment, because of the inflated crit which in turns inflate LS and Eff.
You are forgetting SM vs the Renew chakra instant heal (Holy Word: Aspire - Spell - World of Warcraft), which doesn't have an preq to cast and leaves a hot on the target instead of consuming one. And there's also Holy Nova which is now raid wide. Finally the much-forgotten Inner Will, a great mobility / mana saving ability.

As for tank healing comparison, the interesting one would be to disc which is back as the tank heal spec. Lacking inspiration hurts more than a tank CD I'd say since these are easy to apply from another healer. Inspiration is not applicable on demand and requires a lot of casts, certainly with the lower crit rates.

Originally Posted by Anaram

Rejuvenation does get mastery bonuses. Druids also currently have vastly superior regeneration talent in revitalize compared to priests' Holy Concentration. There's additionally a pretty convenient interaction between regrowth (nature's grace) and rejuvenation (WG) given that haste can give extra ticks to hots. Either way I don't think it's very useful to start comparison between priest and druid from rejuvenation vs renew, they seem too costly to form a significant bulk of either classes' healing.

This isn't to say that I wouldn't be a bit envious of the priest toolkit, still so much of the relative balance between healer classes will depend on things which tend to be too small to really judge with gut feeling (mana regeneration being one).

I've posted about Revitalize a bit back. It's certainly much stronger than other total-mana-% regen mechanics. Designing a class around hot spam / high mana cost spells and compensating with a strong regen tool can work but it's so susceptible to targetted nerfs down the road that I'd rather not go there. It feels the entire tree is kept together by 2 OP talents - Revitalize and Nature's Bounty.

lissanna · 09/06/10, 3:36 PM

I'm 99% sure that by the time they are done with number balancing, we will come out as strong tank healers. The number balancing part is what is hard at this point, since numbers are all over the place and there are still a lot of bugs (like Nourish refreshing lifebloom reducing how much lifebloom is healing for). I'm pretty sure that HOTs combined with our direct heals will weave together into a very solid tank healing toolset in the end.

At this point, that's about the only thing I can say without sounding like "the sky is falling".

Relying on a couple OP talents to make us not totally fall on our face is a bad long term strategy to keeping the spec viable. Having lifebloom be OP in Burning Crusade was a bad strategy. Having rejuv be OP in WotLK was a bad strategy. Having regrowth be OP in Cata is a bad strategy. The problem is that we've never had the right toolset for all of our spells to shine together in a rotation, so we've had to over-specialize every expansion to compensate for it, and then the devs get mad when we overspecialize due to the lack of having the right toolset.