Going Forward: Cataclysm Discussion - Page 24

Needforcreed · 06/12/10, 4:11 AM

Originally Posted by Dav1l

It's yet to be seen what that'd make with Subtlety, Revitalize and Efflorescence. The first one seems to be quite useless right now. Revitalize is way too overpowered, 3% mana in current gear will resilt in something like 700-800 mp5 which is quite insane. Then Efflorescence looks either very good or very bad. On one hand, it's pretty RNGish and wouldn't be usefull on many encounters. On the other hand, you could abuse regrowth spam to get some sort of insane hot coverage on healing intensive fights

Subtlety is marked for replacement, it's a placeholder.

Revitalize must work off base mana like Innervate, I think, as your maths are correct and it would be OP.

I like Efflorescence. Perhaps there will be a couple of nominated melee in the raid who are encouraged to get to 25% health and aren't allowed to be healed by anyone else but druids!? Finally, a rogue raid buff...

Rijndael · 06/12/10, 4:36 AM

Originally Posted by Needforcreed

I like Efflorescence. Perhaps there will be a couple of nominated melee in the raid who are encouraged to get to 25% health and aren't allowed to be healed by anyone else but druids!? Finally, a rogue raid buff...

The more I think about Efflorescence the more broken it seems. Lifetap + efflorescence seems ripe for abuse.

Paona · 06/12/10, 5:13 AM

Originally Posted by Beanna

Are you sure about that?
I mean, Ravage still has an energy cost of 60 which is quite huge, and, although Improved Feral Charge allows to use Ravage without stealth, it will be impossible to spam Ravage during those six seconds.
Moreover, at a switch, we are often low in energy if we refresh our dots before leaving the target and the time it goes up the Improved Feral Charge buff may have already disappeared.

I'm definitely not convinced by this talent that seems totally unworkable without a reduction in energy cost of Ravage or the use of Berserk in parallel.

I agree that this doesn't seem workable as far as a Cat target-switch talent is concerned, especially given the increased crit-rate granted by Predatory Strikes. After that 90% mark, Ravage should probably be left alone, assuming the energy costs of abilities remain largely the same.

But as far as an opener is concerned, Talented Feral Charge -> Mid-air FFF(assuming that Cats still get to do something with their FFF once it becomes a Sunder Armor) -> Mangle -> Rake -> Ravage -> TF -> Berserk -> Standard Cat rotation appears to be a very potent opener.

Vaccine · 06/12/10, 5:56 AM

^
Thats a lot of points you're using to buff an ability you're only using above 90%.

Originally Posted by Mjoedgaard

I belive you have missed everything Blizzard have said regarding healing on cataclysme. They have stated that a healer have to make choices betwen the small and light on mana heals, the fast but expensive heals and the long but medium on mana heals. They also said that they want dpsers to think about not taking to much dmg as that will drain healers mana to quick. Therefor any talent there can help healers out even by recieving more healing or taking less dmg from spells is a major plus.

This is the sort of decision you make BEFORE a fight. Say theres a random shadowbolt goes out to someone in the raid every 5 seconds. This does 40k damage for example. The healers aren't going to wait till it hits, then think "Hmm, what should I use on this guy?". They know what the incoming damage is before it occurs, so they already know which heal they are using. Adding a bit more to received healing is very rarely going to change this, unless you're assuming its going to be required to have ferals and other classes with +% healing received to complete encounters without healers going oom. Majority of the time all NI does in PvE is increase overhealing.

I also don't think healers will leave people at 60% to save mana or whatever you're talking about. People need to be topped still to the point they can't die from the next random AoE. Maybe hots will be left to tick a bit more than now but I think you're kidding yourself if you think players will be sub-100% for prolonged periods.

Mjoedgaard · 06/12/10, 6:46 AM

Originally Posted by Vaccine

^
Thats a lot of points you're using to buff an ability you're only using above 90%.

This is the sort of decision you make BEFORE a fight. Say theres a random shadowbolt goes out to someone in the raid every 5 seconds. This does 40k damage for example. The healers aren't going to wait till it hits, then think "Hmm, what should I use on this guy?". They know what the incoming damage is before it occurs, so they already know which heal they are using. Adding a bit more to received healing is very rarely going to change this, unless you're assuming its going to be required to have ferals and other classes with +% healing received to complete encounters without healers going oom. Majority of the time all NI does in PvE is increase overhealing.

I also don't think healers will leave people at 60% to save mana or whatever you're talking about. People need to be topped still to the point they can't die from the next random AoE. Maybe hots will be left to tick a bit more than now but I think you're kidding yourself if you think players will be sub-100% for prolonged periods.

Maybe I put to much into what Blizzard is telling us what there plans is for cataclysme. Because every blue post I read about cata healing state they want dpsers to think about taking minimum amount of dmg or heals end up going oom (see my earlier quote for a statement about that)

also this:

Restoration Talents
I'm seeing a lot of Resto druids say something like "I won't take talents that buff Nourish and Healing Touch because I won't use those spells." You will probably use those spells more in Cataclysm. That doesn't mean you won't also be using Rejuv, Regrowth and Lifebloom.

Critical heals aren't useful now because they often just result in overhealing. In a game in which your heals aren't always topping someone off, then a critical heal represents a lot of "free" healing which saves you both GCDs and mana. It's in players' nature to want to minimize the impact of random elements, but you should be careful not to marginalize anything that gives you extra healing just because it isn't 100% predictable

MMO-Champion BlueTracker | Feedback on recent Druid Resto talents.

This tells me that any free healing inform of extra healing on a target or less dmg taken is very welcome and might be a big thing for progression fights.

aceofsween · 06/12/10, 9:27 AM

Originally Posted by Vaccine

Majority of the time all NI does in PvE is increase overhealing.

I disagree. This comes down to the skill of the healer and his knowledge of his raid members. I know that from personal experience playing as a Warlock during the BC days (when Fel Armor boosted healing received). Healers loved the fact that they could hit me with cheaper spells and still get off good throughput. They took advantage of that at a time when mana actually mattered. You can choose to disregard this of course and it probably won't hurt, but it may come into play every once in a while.

Krag · 06/12/10, 10:00 AM

Originally Posted by Rijndael

The more I think about Efflorescence the more broken it seems. Lifetap + efflorescence seems ripe for abuse.

If that ends up being an issue that is more the fault of the Regrowth part of Nature's Bounty though. I would certainly hope they don't kill efflorescence over it as it seems like a nice new effect. They could make Regrowth heal for 50% extra on targets at or under 25% instead if gaming it becomes something of practical use.

Obligatory · 06/12/10, 1:31 PM

Originally Posted by Fallenangel

If your healers aren't prioritizing targets on 30% over ones at 90%, I think you might have an issue there

My point was more so that healers will really only be healing targets at low health, because those at higher health will "naturally" get healed up. I would imagine players sitting at 75% health will probably never have a heal cast on them, because a) even if they eat damage, said damage won't kill them, and b) either they still have a HoT ticking on them from when they were lower, or they will eat smart heal bounces from players that do need health. I would also imagine that ILotP, JoL, and Healing Spring will be redesigned to be identical, since I doubt blizzard will want to throw something like that away when it has the potential to be interesting again. Whether they become more like ILotP or more like Healing Spring/JoL remains to be seen, of course, but I would still bet on them staying around and being a non-trivial source of raid healing.

Also, when I see "DPS will need to focus on taking less damage" without a profusion of survival talents in other DPS trees, that says to me that that raid damage will come much more in the form of shadow crash and slime pool type mechanics, and much less in the form of raid-wide damage auras. Otherwise, the only point of linking a damage taken meter is to see which class has the best survivability talents, which kind of goes directly against "bring the player". Once again, survival talents will be nice to have, but I can't see many raids wiping just because a DPS doesn't have them.

• Hamlet · 06/12/10, 2:02 PM

Efflorescence I think is a fine idea; the problem lies in Nature's Bounty. You don't want to provide that powerful an incentive for players to get below a certain HP threshold--it's abusable, and also simply clunky and not fun to continually try to pick off 25% HP targets in the hope of some reward and probably usually not get it. Deep Healing is fine since it's more continuous (assuming from the description).

Paona · 06/12/10, 7:05 PM

Originally Posted by Vaccine

^
Thats a lot of points you're using to buff an ability you're only using above 90%.

I assume you are referring to allocating points into both Improved Feral Charge and Predatory strikes? (4 points total)

I think we need to separate out our Ravage talents here. I'm going to walk this back slightly and say that the increased crit rate when attacking a mob over 90% is nice? But if our current raidbuffed crit levels remain comparable to how they currently are in WotLK, Ravage will certainly have a healthy crit chance to start, Predatory Strikes will just likely make the crit guaranteed when the target's HP is high enough. So let's ignore Predatory Strikes for a bit.

There is nothing stopping us from using Feral Charge (as many of us currently do) to get back into position after running away from a mob for whatever raid mechanic. I see being able to re-Ravage a mob again as a bonus. (I'm especially of the opinion that we will see MANY "run away/in!" mechanics, given the Time Warp and Stampeding Charge abilities from the preview, but I will confine further inanity in that regard to a blog post.)

As far as talent point allocation, The way the preview trees are currently set up now, once you allocate points into Ferocity, Sharpened Claws, Feral Instinct Feral Swiftness and Feral Charge, you need to put two points somewhere in order to advance further down the tree, whether you are Cat, or Hybrid. As a Hybrid, you can put off allocating those points until after you get Thick Hide and Primal Fury, but you still run into the same problem of needing to put two points *somewhere*. As a Cat, after getting Shredding Attacks and Primal Fury, I find myself needing to allocate three points. Putting them into IFC makes as much sense as anything in either situation, and is probably a better use of those two points than putting them into, say, Predatory Instincts. As far as Predatory Strikes is concerned.... yes, I suppose Predatory Strikes becomes optional now that it is a Cat-only talent, but I feel that it does help to address the "long cat windup" problem.

I acknowledge that you could dedicate those two or three talent points to Fury Swipes? But doing some quick napkin math here, Bear attack speed is 2.5 without any haste, which translates to about 24 attacks per minute, which (12% proc chance) translates to about two or three extra attacks per minute, which sounds like it should just enough to smooth out our rage gain as our gear scales higher as a direct function of Haste, but not an impressive amount. Cats, this is likely to be a much more complicated calculation of value, but at face value, more auto-attacks = More procs for OoC = more Clearcasting procs for Shred = More DPS. Never mind the added white damage output.

♦ Carebare · 06/14/10, 1:40 AM

And this thread is toast. Sorry if any conversations were cut off midway, but it's time to segregate things so that discussions can be more easily followed. Thank you everyone for keeping this thread pretty well on course and interesting to read.