Comments on: What Makes Healing Fun?

By: Imakulata

Imakulata — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 08:09:39 +0000

I am in favor of mana restrictions too. The alternatives that I experienced so far – either healing being really easy or having to react within very short time (I hated this in ICC) – were something I didn’t like. At all.

As for regen mechanic, I’d rather see something like old judgements or TC – use a skill, get some mana back. I haven’t played yet but I heard priests got a skill like that too (PW: Solace), I’m not sure about druids and monks though.

By: Frigg on Icecrown

Frigg on Icecrown — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 04:32:34 +0000

I think they should either shorten the cast on healing touch or make it heal for more, buff mushrooms – like maybe have it refresh all hots on people who get hit by them, cut ironskin duration in half and double its effectiveness, and make our dps spells free and hit harder so we can do something meaningful when conserving mana.

By: Evlyxx of Shadowsong (@Evlyxx)

Evlyxx of Shadowsong (@Evlyxx) — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 22:47:43 +0000

Yeah I agree entirely, beginning of expansions always seem hardest on healers and that in part is because our tanks take too much damage and our DPS fail to put out big numbers and yet we’re the ones suffering for their shortcomings with a lack of fun.

Why is it that the resource issue is a non-issue for DPS and tanks and it is only healers that get gimped this way (OK maybe Arcane Mages have the same problem)?

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Sun, 14 Oct 2012 13:30:12 +0000

[...] ponders what makes healing fun in [...]

By: Bear

Bear — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 19:10:54 +0000

I thought the fixed mana bar was a rather elegant way to move healers away from int/haste and into spirit/regen. With enough regen, you can (theoretically) get to the point where you never run out of mana — just as if you’d grown your mana pool to handle a fight without sucking wind.

I don’t think it’s fun to feel gimped. We felt this when Cata launched and spells were expensive or slow. We were forced to triage and it feels like we’re back there today with a slightly different spin.

By: Lalinla

Lalinla — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 06:42:43 +0000

I’ve gotta agree with the people here. I know when you are upset about something, the last thing you really want to hear is people disagreeing with you, but personally I love the new healing style. My guild is 6/6 already, and I was one of our main healers though out. I found that when I reverted back to my DS style of healing, I went OOM, and we’d eventually wipe. But when I consciously went about conserving mana, with lots of Nourish spells, and less WG and Rejuv spells going out, I found that the fights were engaging and fun.

One of my favorite things about this heal style is that it limits overhealing by a lot. You really are depending on your other healers to do their jobs and I find that less and less of my Rejuvs and WG hots are being heal sniped from under me by our Resto Shaman or Holy Pally. They know that I will place HoTs on targets and are okay with leaving a dps at 75% hp because they know my hots will heal them to full.

As for your Meditative states… you just described priests Inner buffs. They have Inner Fire which gives them more Spell Power (throughput) or Inner Will which gives them a decrease in mana cost on instant cast spells. And when I healed on my Disc Priest there were times that I would rotate between the two of them. It’s not a bad system, but for me, it feels clunky and a bit off putting to have to switch between the two.

All in all, I am sorry you are not enjoying your raiding experience as much as you’d like and I am sorry that you are having mana issues. I hope, in time, these problems work themselves out for you and you get back to enjoying the game the way you did. And if not, then you can at least look by at these last 8 years and smile and enjoy the good and the bad of World of Warcraft.

P.S. I’ve actually been utilizing the healing mushrooms. I know you and I had a personal talk a few weeks ago about the wow forums and getting Blizzard to help us with the shrooms. And while I still think they are underpowered, I have found a lot of use for them in fights like Spirit Kings and Elegon. Spirit Kings I use them a lot during the shared dmg swing mechanic (the first phase of the fight) and Elegon I use them right after the small add explodes, with WG and Efflo already on the raid for the pulsate.

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 04:42:20 +0000

I’m a casual player and altoholic, druid healing was my first foray into heals and is still where I’m most comfortable healing, with the extent of my experience being 5-mans, so take this idea from whence it comes. Also it’s entirely off-the-cuff, no deep thought given to how it might play out:

How about a mechanic similar to that of the mage’s Arcane Blast/Arcane Barrage for Rejuv whereby each successive cast increases mana cost but also increases healing done and adds to a stacking “debuff” on caster which could be cleared/reset by time decay or by casting something else (no idea what at this point RG? HT? SM? Would have to be something with a cooldown that we’d want to cast so I’m thinking probably SM). This resets the debuff and give a benefit of increased mana regen based off of the number of stacks you had of the debuff. Properly balanced this could be a way to toss out multiple rejuvs when needed and trigger the reset effect strategically to regain mana.

Variations: 1. Instead of increased regen it could shorten the cooldown on Innervate.
2. Rejuv cost is static but each one heals for less until the reset trigger is used

/random thoughts

By: Meliika

Meliika — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 01:29:38 +0000

I’m with you on this – I love the period at the start where mana is really tight because it really challenges me to get the absolute best out of what I have to work with. I have to utilize every single mana cd I can come up with, every time it’s available, in order to ensure my mana lasts. And even then, if people screw up a lot and take extra damage, you’ll usually run out and wipe. Which is good in my opinion, because a kill shouldn’t be a kill just because the healers carried people with bad raid awareness.

At present (working on 5th boss) I find all our healers mana pools run out at very similar rates. I’m quite happy with how it’s looking, although the different numbers of tanks/healers required for each boss is a bit annoying.

By: infamydeferred

infamydeferred — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 20:38:00 +0000

Shamans do still have a Telluric Currents glyph, though it’s a bit different.

By: Talarian

Talarian — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 20:31:39 +0000

Your proposed solution already exists in the game today. You just described Divine Plea, which as a Holy Paladin healer since Wrath, I hate, hate, hate with a passion. The problem with them isn’t making meaningful decisions, it’s you’re making a meaningful decision *to do nothing*. And that’s boring. That’s why they removed the Vanilla-esque 5 second rule for mana regen to begin with. I either have to cast heals, or sit and do nothing for protracted periods of time. It’s one thing to say, cancel this cast because it won’t be effective, it’s another to say “All right, I have to do 0 casts for the next 10 seconds to get enough mana back, and trying to cast through it is counter-productive because my heals-per-mana are through the floor.”

The other issue with making resources less constrictive is you then return to the Wrath style of healing, which is spam your best spell because resources don’t matter. The difficult part with the model in Cata was that we pretty much went back to the Wrath model (less severe, granted. Most tanks didn’t die in 2 GCDs if you weren’t spamming your biggest heal, unlike in Wrath) by Dragon Soul, which is what static mana pools are supposed to help prevent to a degree (to stop the exponential increase in available resources and make it linear). By making the entire fight count, rather than just the ten seconds before and ten seconds after this exact moment in time, you add a level of complexity to the game that rewards thought rather than reflexes.

Given the chance, I would not go backwards. Each expansion has added a level of strategy and complexity, and dare I say, at least to me, fun to healing in general. It always comes down to resources, be it mana, cooldowns, another energy bar, etc. and what can you do with those resources.