One of the most wonderful things in warcraft when it concerns classes is that there are no two that are truly the same. Each class plays differently and as such there is usually something that will fit the play style of the person, it is just a matter of finding the class that plays the way you like it.
For every person that loves the rapid fire button mashing quick decision making always something to hit play style of the hunter there are many that dislike it. For every person that loves the methodical waiting for combo points and slow building energy for a planned and oft times delayed for maximum effect attack of ferals and rogues, there are many that would find it too slow. There is a little bit of difference, sometimes not very pronounced, between each and every class that makes this game great. It is great because if you look you will be able to find something that fits, or very closely fits, the style of game play you enjoy.
But healing right now doesn't seem to have that, at least not for me. All play styles are exactly the same as far as I am concerned, at least at their base level. All healing play styles are basically "I'm out of mana". All healing play styles lost their inexpensive heal for triage healing. All healing play styles lost their movement abilities in the form of instants when we are now required to move more than we ever have before.
There is nothing fun about that type of play style. Not even in the slightest. There is nothing fun about feeling helpless when out of mana or forced to move when someone is dying and there is nothing you can do about it. The fact that none of the healing classes can escape that is what makes it even worse. At least with damage dealers if you do not like the mana conservation needs of an arcane mage, or the waiting on energy for the planned attack of a rogue, there is another game play style that you could embrace, one you could enjoy. But all healers are limited by the same set of factors. The exact same set.
At the beginning of an expansion it is always harder on healers than it is on all other classes in my opinion. Each raid group rides on the backs of their healers at the beginning of every expansion. It has been like that as long as I have been playing. The soft enrage timer of bosses are not the timers blizzard puts into the game, but the timer on when the healers go OOM.
So it is not like I am inexperienced with this feeling of overwhelming uselessness of being a healer at the beginning of an expansion, but it is the first time I did not feel as if there were something I could do about it, gear wise, gem wise, enchant wise, food wise, to help out the situation. With no way to regenerate mana outside of the built in mechanisms that do, so there is no "help" you can seek when first starting out.
I took some time yesterday to run all the LFRs on a few healers. Not so much to practice my healing only, but to test out some new abilities, new styles of healing, new ways to make myself not feel so helpless as soon as the fight passes some mark where I am constantly OOM for the rest of it. I played around a bit and saw myself getting better with the mana management part of the game play. All while actually healing for more in the process. But I was not enjoying it. Not at all.
While I have managed to get better at mana management and I only found myself going OOM when there was a serious lack of healing and I tried to make up for it, and was incapable of doing so as it made me go OOM faster which in turn made it even worse, I started to get more disconnected with the classes I was healing on. It was not fun. I was doing okay, I was getting better, I was just not enjoying myself at all.
Even if I started to do well, doing well does not equal having fun. I can do well on a class and not have fun playing it. So this complaint about healing is not because I feel I can not "do well" because I can, it is because it is not fun. If I am to heal, I want to have fun while doing it, is that too much to ask?
The main thing is that even if I have started to get better at managing my mana, I am not enjoying it. Healing should not be only about mana. I can adapt to losing my triage heal, I can adapt to losing some instants, I can adapt to losing some other utility, but I am not adapting to the mana issues, because I should not have to because healing shouldn't only be about mana and that is what it feels like now. It should be about choosing the right tool from your toolbox. It should be about teaming up abilities so one will buff the next for maximum effect. It should be able timing your burst healing for when needed, timing your big direct heal or defensive cooldown for heavy tank damage, knowing when you can let someone sit missing a little life and when you need to throw a heal on them or the next unavoidable AoE might get them. Healing should be about healing. It should not be able mana conservation.
Even more so it should not be about mana conservation when there is so few places to get increased mana regeneration. From the sometimes seemingly impossible task of finding a piece with spirit on it, to no spirit gems, enchants, foods, you name it, they are doing everything they can to make healing about mana and mana only. That is not a fun play style. They do not deny my hunter with his agility flask, which is needed to better do his job but they deny my shaman her spirit flask even if it would her better do her job.
I would like to see healers have choices like damage dealers do. To have a different style of play between them. Not just different buttons with different names and different spell visuals all tied together with the exact same play style of stand still and watch your mana.
I still enjoy the challenge of healing. I still like the feeling of people depending on me. But with the lack of spirit meaning the lack of mana, the decreased number of instants with the combined need to, what seems like, always be moving and the one and a half second global cooldown, which seems like an eternity now that there are fewer instant and you know a near 2 second cast has to follow up that 1 and a half second global cool down makes me feel helpless as you are watching someones health go down and you know that you will never be able to save them. Why? Because in a game like this 1 and a half seconds is an eternity and when it is followed by a 2 second cast time it might as well be damn near forever. When you combine that with the lack of mana and always going OOM it is just not a healing style I am digging. I am doing it, I have healed up to heroic so far, but I am not enjoying it in the slightest.
I'm not exactly sure why I am still even healing at all, even at the easiest level, the LFR setting. I'd like to see them make mana more plentiful, have instants make a come back, lower the global cool down and decrease the healing done of the spells. Yes, decrease the healing done of spells. This would mean less healing is done per spell but with a 1 second global a few instants and no real mana worries you can do as many as you want, as quickly as you want, and it would mean healing would be more about the skill of choosing the right people to heal and the right combination of abilities to use to maximize the healing effects of them instead of the mana management game it is now.
I would like to see a rapid fire button mashing quick decision making healing spec like the healer version of a hunter. Always doing something. I would like it to be about making the right choices on what buttons to hit to get the appropriate heal instead of what buttons to hit to conserve mana. I am just not enjoying this warlords style of healing, how about you?
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Maining a Healer in MoP (especially in SoO) was clearly more "fun" in a way where you could, as you say, rapidfire and burst out heals. You were always doing something, always watching the meters and pushing ppl to 100%.
ReplyDeleteYep. That was fun. Today it's more challenging. I'm maining a Druid Heal this time so I can't complain when it comes to "Instants" (Wild Growth isn't an instant anymore, but paired with the tight mana this is not the "Use on CD" type of spell anymore) - but I surely understand your problems with the current mana situation.
I would wish they brought back Innervate, Hymn oder Manatide to regain your mana (especially when some classes have passive or active (like the monk) regen and some (like the druid) don't). But besides that, I'm fine with it.
Healing is tuned to fit in to the performance of your raid group - away from just carrying low-geared groups or healing away major movement- and mechanic-faults. Your group needs to know and respect mechanics for you to be able to keep them alive during phases with unavoidable damage and the other spikes where people sometimes just are not able to dodge mechanics.
The burst type healer is gone. But it's harsh to say it isn't fun anymore. It is more challenging and your group needs to work, too. Once you got your right trinket(s) and the weapon enchant, you will go OOM only if your co-healers are crap or the raid itself is crap.
And, of course, you need to adapt your rotation/priority-list to WoD. Most classes simply do their healing with other spells than in MoP. No more WG spamming, no more Healing Surge spamming, etc. You need to learn which spells bring the best output in what situation. Testing this in LFR where most healers aren't real healers and ppl have not a clue of any mechanic isn't that useful.
I enjoy the type of healing very much after some time getting used to it and finding other healers I play well with as well as building a good raid. Didn't heal in pugs as much in the past few weeks but when I did it was clear that you're forced to have way more communication and understanding of your co-healers than before and that, as well, is something I personally enjoy. It gives healing more purpose than just pushing buttons topping the meters not thinking about mana.
The way you describe it makes a lot of sense. How it is more designed to heal a "good" groups and not be able to heal thought people taking avoidable damage. It explain why I have less issue healing heroic HM than I do healing LFR. I am constantly OOM almost instantly in LFR where as, even if I do have some issues here and there, in our guild runs of heroic I have very few issues. Mostly because my guild group has been train to avoid the avoidable and LFR people just stand in it.
DeleteWith that said, I don't agree with how it is designed for that reason and that reason alone. Healing my guild group, even if it does have better players than an LFR, should be harder. Not easier than LFR. But with their design as it stands it makes the "easy" content harder content and I just can not jump on board with that type of design.
I also leaned the ABCs of healing when I first started. Always Be Casting. Sure there were down times when you would regain mana but the fights were designed for them. So that, combined with being a rapid fire hunter, is why I prefer the fact paced game play style of casting all the time over this holding back heals to regain mana format that seems to work best now.
I am adapting to it, so if I need to fill in as a healer I can do, at the very least, a passable job as a fill in, but I am not enjoying it at all.
Healing should not need to be, as you put it, something that needs communication to work best. Not in a game that is designed to be used in mixed groups more than set ones. If that is the case I will go the way I have been with my tanks for a long time now. I only tank for guild. So I will only heal for guild. I am not going to stress myself healing for randoms or pugs when it is "work" and not "fun" as it is now. At least it is still fun in guilds but blizzard completely ruined pug healing for me.
Anon, Grumpy's former Guild Leader:
ReplyDeleteThe high points of being a healer are awesome, saving a raid wipe, keeping all the other players alive...NOT. There is no high point in a healer's career. If a healer is spectacular in a particular fight, saving the day the healer might, maybe get a grats on the good job, but more likely than not nothing aside from gear the healer has earned. As much as tanks or DPS, healers make or break a group and yet little to no recognition of the value of healers is ever expressed.
Sorry but I had to get that rant out. The revision of healing in this expansion is not to my liking I admit but I also admit I am done with healing as a general rule. Will I ever heal again in a group? Maybe, but I doubt it.
I know you think that a class with a healing spec should have that spec filled out and ready to use. I disagree. My three main characters are all hybrid classes, two with all three roles covered and one with two versions of a healing spec. Guess what, none of those other specs are filled out. I don't play a paladin, I play a retribution paladin. I don't play a holy or discipline priest, I play a shadow priest. And by like token, my monk is a a whirlwinder, not some version of a healer.
Now if I were raiding, maybe you might talk me into filling out the priest holy spec but nothing on God's green earth would ever convince me to do so for either my pally or my monk.
What has this to do with anything? Simple, I don't find it fun to heal any longer, and I haven't since well before Cata was over, much less MoP. I am sure there are some who still find joy in healing and learning new ways of doing what needs to be done. Fabian Peter above is proof of that. That you don't find it fun is a matter of personal subjectivity. That I agree with you on it from a long time past is also only my own opinion. I hope that our healers are adaptable enough to adjust for the guild sake because healing really is a important part of Blizzard's holy trinity.
But I not interested in such a job myself, sounds way to much like work for my taste in something I am doing for enjoyment and pleasure.
Liking it or not is always going to be something of opinion. I know there are people that love this healing model, I am just not one of those people.
DeleteHealing does have its rewards, at least I always found them. But they are rewards you make yourself so to speak. So I do not agree that it is a thankless job. It is just one that only gets noticed when you fail at it. If everyone lives and the boss dies, you did well. If people start dying but you still downed the boss you could have done better but did okay and if you wipe due to some healing issue, you failed.
This is why I always said healing was an "easier" job in a sense. The line of doing well is as simple as pass or fail.
I like being powerful as a healer. I like being capable of healing a piss poor group in a random dungeon and making their lives easier. I liked being on my disc priest and being top DPS and top healing. I like the fact that the healer can be the backbone of the group. All that is gone now. Healers are back to a basic pass or fail design of doing good and that is boring and does not suit me. I do not find it fun when their is a very thin line between doing well and doing poorly and that thin line is a blue bar called mana. But that is just my opinion of course.
Anon, Grumpy's former Guild Leader:
DeleteYes, I can understand your point of view on enjoying it. The current pass or fail model is surely not the way I would prefer to heal. I found myself actually enjoying healing back in Wrath, though I was forced into the job by the diminished returns I was getting as a shadow priest at the time.
Even so, I know healers have to depend on self-satisfaction because they sure as hell seldom get it from anyone else. That is not totally true of course, some folks notice the more outrageously spectacular things a healer might do to save everything. Part of that problem lies in the fact that if a healer does well and everyone is alive at the end of the fight, nothing is different.
There are no stats that individually really measure any healers' real effectiveness. Over-heals vs heals per second vs mana regen vs off duties and by that time everyone is two bosses ahead. Whereas a tank either holds the aggro or doesn't and nothing else much matters truly for a tank and as compared to the DPS who have the number that names their position as the single most important stat in the game.
Now I don't begrudge DPS that. I actually agree that more DPS is almost always better. It makes it likelier the tank will be alive and it makes it easier to heal. But I got tired of the no recognition and combined with the stress I felt when healing, it lost all fun to me.
You know I always took any party member's death as an insult almost, and surely a failure somehow on my part, even when it was obvious that there was nothing else I could have done to save the idiot who died. It was an even worse feeling when it was not an idiot but a good player who I felt like I let down. So yea, I am truly glad others can make healing a fun way to play but it isn't for me anymore.
Agreed that for the most part if when the fight is over and everyone is alive they just move on to the next boss. It is rare that anyone would thank the healers for a good job, unless the fight is already known as a healer fight, which there are not many of them that are outwardly like that. Even if it seems every fight at the beginning of an expansion is a healer fight as far as I see it.
DeleteI always try to keep everyone alive too. I find that to be a major fault in my healing actually. Even more so now in the world of watching mana. Trying to keep one person alive that is a mana sponge can actually make the whole group die. I have learned sometimes letting someone die is the best thing you can do for the group.
I really think Blizzard needs to straight up remove Spirit to make things better. They have always had a problem where the beginning of an expansion healing looks nothing like the end of the expansion because of increased Spirit levels as the expansion goes on.
ReplyDeleteThey balance regen somewhere in the middle of the expansion it seems. So early on you are starved for mana and at the end you are flush. There is no real solution to this with Spirit on gear existing, they have minimized it some with removing spirit off the true armor pieces. But that just lessens the swing instead of remove it.
There should just be a baseline mana regen for the whole expansion. They can add on something similar to active mitigation (kind of like the monk has) to actively regen mana. I think flasks could still have spirit and food. Those values shouldn't change over an expansion and give the healer a choice in more potent heals (int) or sustain (spirit). But spirit as a stat that increases over an expansion causes problems on both ends.
If they removed spirit and just had a set, reasonable middle of the expansion type regeneration, I think it would work fine. But then the spells would become more powerful as time went on which "could" end up with the exact same results. But I do think I would prefer a world with no spirit gear personally.
DeleteI agree that regen should be the same for the entire expansion. Maybe not go as far as caster DPS where mana does not matter, but more along the line of arcane mage DPS where you can blow through all of in super fast if you are not behaving yourself, but it regenerates just as fast if you do. I think that would be a good point for healer mana.
This may be a YMMV thing. I just had a conversation with one of my healers last night that he wanted more chances to heal we have been abusing his offspec shadow spec and he really enjoys the healing game and want's more time at it.
ReplyDeleteLike anything else there will be people who love it, that is no surprise. If everyone liked the same thing we would all be playing hunters. ;)
DeleteI am sure there are people that had quit healing that came back because they like this running on fumes style of game play. I am just not one of them. I play to have fun and sorry, but sitting there watching someone die because I have no mana, or I have a long cast time, or I don't have the instant I need to buy them time, just is not fun. Feeling helpless is never fun.
Two weeks ago I hit 100 on my mistweaver and set about lining up for the legendary quest, gearing for heroics and LFRs! Etc. Silver Proving Grounds was easy, although I did notice I was getting a tad low on mana by the last wave. Then I tried my first normal Skyreach. Disaster. Barely got through the first boss, could not keep the hunter and mage alive if I kept the tank alive, and vice versa. DPS kept standing in bad, tank kept pulling everything at once. After about 4 wipes before we even got to second boss, I dropped group. I let it get to me and have not tried again.
ReplyDeleteThing is, in Mists I could compensate for the double whammy of bad group and constant movement. I am not sure I will be able to do so in this expansion. Like you said, feeling helpless is never fun. Prior to this xpac, healers warned of huge problems if instants were removed from high-movement fights at the same time mana regen was decremented, and Blizz patted everyone on the head, said there there don't worry we will configure fight mechanics to allow for less movement. Ha ha ha ha, good one, Blizz.
That sounds like so many people I know. They try to heal and have one adventure like that and give up. A friend of mine did that in cataclysm during the Zuls and had the same experience and never returned to healing since.
DeleteThis, in part, is why I dislike he mana problems. It really scares away people that were willing to heal. It is hard enough when you are a fresh 100 to heal with the low numbers you are pulling, but with weak spells and mana issue, it is a nightmare, and it has been like this at the beginning of every single expansion. Blizzard needs to do something to fix this.
I get a laugh out of it every time I hear someone that believed blizzard when they said they would design fights with no instants in mind with less movement. All I can think of is that person was born yesterday. Blizzard is about as full of shit as it is possible to get.
"It should be about choosing the right tool from your toolbox. It should be about teaming up abilities so one will buff the next for maximum effect. It should be able timing your burst healing for when needed, timing your big direct heal or defensive cooldown for heavy tank damage, knowing when you can let someone sit missing a little life and when you need to throw a heal on them or the next unavoidable AoE might get them."
ReplyDeleteIt *is* about all those things. I can assure you of that as a Mythic raid leader and someone who's healed all of Heroic and some Mythic bosses. It is *also* about mana conservation so you don't blindly spam AoE heals to top off two people or mana inefficient heals to heal someone not in any immediate danger.
I don't understand why you say
"I can adapt to losing my triage heal"
For priests, at least, I most definitely have my "Heal" spell that's very mana efficient. I just can't spam Flash Heal all the time (unless I REALLY need to get that guy's HP up).
"I would like to see a rapid fire button mashing quick decision making healing spec like the healer version of a hunter. Always doing something. I would like it to be about making the right choices on what buttons to hit to get the appropriate heal instead of what buttons to hit to conserve mana."
The problem with that is you'd be expecting to go full tilt all the time -- but healing doesn't work like that. There are often periods where little to no healing is needed surrounded by heavy single target damage or heavy group damage.
Either your class would be extremely weak on fights that vary (since you can't conserve resources to burst more heals during specific periods) or your class would be overpowered (since you could continuously spam massively high HPS).
Pick your poison.
Let me explain what I mean by "I can adapt to losing my triage heal".
DeleteThat meant the small heal, which used to be something like healing wave on the shaman, or heal on the priest. It was a lesser heal that cost less and was very nice for spot healing someone that was injured but not really hurting. Hence triage healing. That is what triage healing means.
How I used to always manage my mana was as simple as "when my triage heal is mana neutral I am good to go". And it always worked. When I could spam healing wave or heal 24/7 during battle and my mana did not move I knew I was in a good place and ready to go. It was a very cheap and weak spell, but it was the triage spell and it is gone and I miss it.
The "heal" a priest has now is not the "heal" the priest had before the changes. Being you are healing I am going to assume you know that. The "heal" you have now is "greater heal" renamed to "heal". There is no heal now. I would like heal back however.
Abilities like heal allowed me the play style I enjoyed. I always had something I could cast even if weak which fit my active game play desire and it was triage healing, something lacking from the game now because there are no such things as mana neutral cheap and weak spells any longer.
Would it really have hurt blizzard to leave "heal" in? Add that one simple thing and I think more than 80 percent of my issues with healing this expansion would disappear.
"The problem with that is you'd be expecting to go full tilt all the time -- but healing doesn't work like that. There are often periods where little to no healing is needed surrounded by heavy single target damage or heavy group damage."
I don't see any problem. DoC wrath during down time as a druid, fistweave a little as a monk, smite as a priest, lightning bolt as a shaman or elemental blast if you are speced into it, you get the idea. Down time as a healer does not mean standing there scratching your ass. Damage dealing spells as healer do not waste mana really anyway, so do something. There is no such thing as periods where there is nothing to do. (well there are, but I am sure you get what I mean)
Also, no class would be over powered because if that was how healing was designed the fights would be designed around it. Also, as you might have noticed. I mentioned lower the amount of healing, so no, no one would be over powered, they would just need to work harder and play better to keep people up instead of the way it is now, whoever has the most spirit has the most fun.
I like active play, don't like waiting on resources, which is why I have never been fond of rogues or ferals, and why I am not really fond of healing right now and really miss my triage healing and cheaper spells.
Having to watch my mana is the same as waiting on resources. I hate being told, "you can't do that now". I just want to play, not wait. I would love to see them change the GCD on all classes to 1 second, or even less, just to make game play more active.
Hey, being a hunter spoiled me, what can I say. It is the only class you can actually "play" the game with because there is always something to do and no dead zones where you can not cast anything, ever.
Maybe I am asking too much for a healer to be like that, but we all have opinions and I am of the opinion I think a more active healing style would be more fun than sitting there waiting on GCDs, mana, or what have you.
(Side note: Mana issues do NOT always equal bad spell selection, at least not when first gearing up. A fresh healer can go an entire fight with no AoE healing and not one single flash heal and still be OOM half way through it. You can't just assume mana issues equal bad spell selection because that is flat out false.)
With baseline spirit this high there is absolutely no point in getting the old heal/healing wave back, I just took off all spirit gear and spammed riptide/double healing wave and the rotation is still mana positive, so if you are going oom on your shaman, you are spamming too much expensive heals (healing surge/chain heal/healing rain).
DeleteResto shaman healing in SOO was especially braindead, pop Healing Stream and Healing Rain on CD and use CDs when appropriate, adds up to > 70 % of your healing. Now you actually have to choose the right spells.
Were you in battle? I would think not. With base spirit, no spirit gear, I could do the same standard rotation, riptide double healing wave, and I would be OOM in about two minutes or so, maybe less. It is not mana neutral unless you are out of battle and have increased mana regeneration.
DeleteWhile I am by no means a great healer I do know how to heal, trust me on that. I never use HS unless it is a life or death situation, never have and never will. Even when mana was plentiful I never used it because it would have been a bad habit to get into. It is not a part of my regular healing toolbox. I use chain when needed, like chaining legs on butcher because it is great for that, and rain the same. I use it when it can get the best use. So healing normal or heroic I am fine.
However, with that said, in LFR, I absolutely go overboard. I have to go crazy hog wild healing with rains and chains because it is not like anyone else there is going to do it and I go OOM near instantly.
And that is my point. How come it is "easier" to heal heroic than it is to heal LFR? Mana. It should not be like that. Mana should not be an issue. It should be easier to heal easier content. The reason it isn't is because of a mana issue, not content difficulty issue.
That is what I am getting at. It is designed wrong linking "difficulty" to mana.
LFR is not more 'difficult' than normal or heroic. If people stood in fire and half your healers were AFK in heroic, you would go OOM a lot faster.
DeleteThis is not a healing or mana issue.
This is true, however in heroic you expect smarter people, that is why it is easier. Healing should not be designed that when doing random content with "stupid" people it is harder. Mana is what makes it harder. Not me having to cover for the AFK healer or DPS that queued as a healer. It should be easier even with that but mana makes sure it is not.
Delete"Being you are healing I am going to assume you know that. The "heal" you have now is "greater heal" renamed to "heal". There is no heal now. I would like heal back however."
DeleteYes, I do know that, and that is indeed the triage heal. Unless you're trying to avoid spirit or something it'll be mana neutral, usually mana positive. No one ever used the "tiny" heal (aka Lesser Heal that turned into Heal).
"there are no such things as mana neutral cheap and weak spells any longer."
That's exactly how you use Heal right now : / If anything I find I can rarely ever use it as a Disc Priest in relevant since Penance, Power Word: Shield, and Flash heal tend to be much higher priorities. It just doesn't have the output in many cases, even if it has the mana efficiency.
"I don't see any problem. DoC wrath during down time as a druid, fistweave a little as a monk, smite as a priest, lightning bolt as a shaman or elemental blast if you are speced into it, you get the idea."
I get the idea, yes, but you are completely missing my point. Those are all basically mana neutral or positive because the act of using those spells allows the priest to conserve mana for the burst periods.
But your proposed one class would not have any resources to save up! While all the others would, which means your unique class would not be able to handle the higher healing phases of fights.
"However, with that said, in LFR, I absolutely go overboard. I have to go crazy hog wild healing with rains and chains because it is not like anyone else there is going to do it and I go OOM near instantly."
This is something that makes me wonder if you're trolling because people don't even take damage in the current LFR. You can solo heal a 25 man raid without much effort.
"Mana is what makes it harder."
If you're running out of mana then your average HPS is higher than your gear is supposed to allow. If mana didn't existed then your HPS would just be flat out lower (spells would do less) and those people would die since you couldn't keep them up.
I always used heal for small heals. But than again, I am at best a 3rd healer for those fights like thok when a third one is needed, I am not a main healer.
DeletePerhaps that is where the difference in opinion comes from. Maybe if I were a healer first and foremost I might feel differently.
I treat flash heal like the plague, are you saying I should actively embrace it in those oh shit moments? Not being snarky, I actually would love to get better and make my life easier in the process. But my mind is trained that the fast expensive heals are the devil.
I am not trolling about the LFR, I swear to you. I am OOM usually within the first minute of the fight because if I did not spam the fastest most expensive heal on someone they would die. Be it the tank, the DPS that somehow is tanking, or any other person that managed to find a way to damage themselves. I really do have mana issues in LFR. I don't so much in heroic, as I am getting better with practice. Still missing 1 piece without spirit, but I am usually only at fumes in the last 30-45 seconds of the fight if everyone is doing what they should. I am sure getting a cloak with spirit would solve that, but in LFR I am constantly OOM. Maybe just bad groups? But my luck can not be that bad to always get groups with slacking healers.
For the record, I do less HPS in LFR than I pull on the same fight in heroic. So by what your saying, I am doing something horribly wrong here somewhere. It is not me whoring meters in LFR.
"I treat flash heal like the plague, are you saying I should actively embrace it in those oh shit moments?"
DeleteCorrect. I can't speak for druids, but once I've used Penance and PW:S on my target then I'm spamming a few Flash Heals if it's an "oh shit" moment. I'd prefer not to since it eats through my mana quickly but sometimes that's what you need to do to keep the target alive. And that's why mana management matters.
"For the record, I do less HPS in LFR than I pull on the same fight in heroic. So by what your saying, I am doing something horribly wrong here somewhere."
How is that even possible, though? You pull more HPS and use less mana? Something's wrong here.
The answer likely lies in the fact that you feel you need to "spam the fastest most expensive heal on someone they would die." That shouldn't be happening except in a disaster in Heroic and never in LFR. I mean, I was able to stand in the fire pillars on Kargath and just use Heal to keep myself alive because I was so bored and there was nothing to heal.
Could do a HM group with you at some point if you want to look at the "issue."
Mana needs to be a limiting factor or the only option is the highest HPS option, Single Target or AoE.
ReplyDeleteI do think it is a shame that Blizzard abandoned their plans for Active Mana Regen in the Alpha, I think it held fantastic gameplay opportunities and would probably have given you the style of healing you are seeking. Mistweavers had something similar with their Mana Tea but not sure if that is the same now.
Anyway, I hope Blizz look into this system again at some point.
If anyone is selecting all the right spells and still going OOM halfway through a fight, they are probably in the wrong content (which is easily done when gearing up). Drop down a level, get more gear, go back up again.
I would have LOVED active mana regeneration like on the beta. That is how healing should be if they want to tie to to mana.
DeleteI will repeat what I posted in another reply here because it is easier.
I said I can heal normal and heroic just fine and went on to say this about LFR...
" I have to go crazy hog wild healing with rains and chains because it is not like anyone else there is going to do it and I go OOM near instantly.
And that is my point. How come it is "easier" to heal heroic than it is to heal LFR? Mana. It should not be like that. Mana should not be an issue. It should be easier to heal easier content. The reason it isn't is because of a mana issue, not content difficulty issue.
That is what I am getting at. It is designed wrong linking "difficulty" to mana."
I know people might not agree with me, but that is how I feel. Tying mana so tightly just makes random content and pugging harder on healers than it needs to be. Easier content should be easier. Not harder.
LFR design (and the attitude of those in it) is more at fault than healing or mana.
DeleteIf you want LFR to be possible with half the raid afk or stood in fire then change lfr, not healing.
I see your point about difficulty though, you are definitely right, but it's that frustrating "Can we at least try to follow tactics please?" difficulty rather than anything else.
I don't know why Blizzard dropped the Active Regen but I was really looking forward to it, it would have transformed healing (maybe it was too big of a change?) and I think it could have been a lot of fun.
Weaving in Lightning Bolts between heals can still be good fun if you want the ABC style but it's not really Active Regen.
"I don't know why Blizzard dropped the Active Regen"
DeleteBecause it would have meant larger spikes in terms of non-burst healing versus burst healing. If you can recover 80% of your mana between periods of heavy raid damage then those periods of heavy raid damage have to require at least 80% of your mana to heal. Which means you can't really have a steady decrease in remaining mana pool over time because it oscillates so much.
Right now you could go something like...
100% -> 70% -> 80% -> 50% -> 60% -> 30% -> 40% -> 10% -> 20% -> Wipe due to OOMing.
With active regen you'd go
100% -> 10% -> 90% -> 0% -> 80% -> Wipe due to OOMing.
That's the problem with active regen.
Fair enough, that makes sense. Especially as they were trying to move away from the massive spike damage model anyway.
DeleteI still like the concept, giving healers more control over mana regen could produce lots of fun gameplay options. Off the top of my head I can't think of a way of implementing it without causing those issues though.
@Wes M
DeleteI understand where you are going and I do agree but I have to say that easy content should be easy for everyone, not just easy for people that aren't healers.
I personally think the active regen would solve everything. Seriously, from Balkoth with his mythic, to me with my alt doing LFR, and everything in between.
@Balkoth
And that could have been fixed by creating a more smooth and less spikey raid damage system instead of what it is now. It is a balance, and I personally believe it would be easier to balance active mana regen between difficulties than it is what we have now. But that is all guess work, who really knows, we never got to really give it a try on beta.
If it was more smooth then you'd just constantly be spamming a mana efficient heal rather than having to splurge mana during large incoming damage. Which means you'd never bother to use active regen.
DeleteAs Grumpy said, different strokes for different folks.
ReplyDeleteAs a die hard healer in WoW, I enjoy healing this expansion. My toolbox is smaller but feels relevant. Mana was tough at first but I find the challenge of maintaining a good output balanced with not mindless blanketing to be... a challenge that I enjoy. Spam healing has never appealed to me and this focussed healing is better, especially now I have to think about my most mana saving spells for situations all the time now.
But on the flipside, I find I enjoy DPS more in WoD. YOu may laugh at how stupid I am but I struggled with the proving grounds as a DPS. Now it seems easier and more fun and I'm actually venturing out as boomkin for the first time... maybe ever!
Well, I never read your blog because of your love of healing. So this post doesn't really surprise me :)
Mind if I ask if you had the same challenge mode experience as a druid as I did? My next post talks about it, if you look there. Basically I finished my silver at 100% mana and my other healers where on fumes. I did not have the same mana issues as a druid as I did on my priest and shaman.
DeleteDPS proving grounds is only an issue the first time you do it. Once you know the routine, it is the same for every class. Nothing to laugh at there. You are not a damage dealer. Sure I can kick your butt at DPS most likely, but you will heal circles around me 100 times before I even get a cast off. ;)
I actually do love healing, or did. I like it when I am in one of those "I want to be in control" moments. As a healer I run the group. Always acted that way, always will. People live and die at my command. Sometimes I like that. It is the deeper evil I keep hidden in me, don't tell anyone.
the 40 or so LFR, no healers ever healed me anyway, but I have learned how to keep fido alive and she me.
ReplyDeleteMy sister says it sucks as a priest (I call her an " orc nun", and she gives me crap right back). And with what I have read here, I see she is right. thanks again for an insightful post,
-roo
Healers always have to do all the work it seems, even more so at the start of the expansion when it is hardest on them to do so.
Delete