Intro
Blizzard recently made a watercoolor post about the drastic
changes in healing in WOD. Rather than painstakingly
go through each line and dissecting it, which I was originally going to do, I decided
to just give my opinion on the overall changes and message from Blizzard.
The Changes
In a nutshell, less spikey and more consistent low to
moderate damage to heal, heals will be smaller overall, triage healing will be
back, no abilities will 1 shot players anymore, heals will be less smart, many
instants now have cast times, and OMG…healers won’t be able to spam anything they
want incessantly anymore?! DUM DUM
DUM!!!!!!! That is IT! I am quitting WOW!! How DARE they? I want to just have every one of my heals
keep everyone at 100% and never see a health bar move, and never have mana
issues, and I want healing to always be easy, and I don’t want to have to stop
and heal, and I want ALL instants….
Blizzard, you ruined my life……I am going back to Ultima Online (my first
MMO)
Seriously Now
WAAA WAAA WAAA to all
those not embracing the changes incoming.
Healing has become boring in T16.
It has become a product of, who can bubble better or spam heal
better. No one really is in jeopardy of
dying unless they get globalled. Healing
HAS to change, I have been saying it for a while now how homogenized it feels. I am reading on forums where people are drawing
a parallel to early Cata and T11 healing being too hard and this being like
that. I CAN ONLY WISH they brought back
that difficulty and healing style, it separated many of the skilled healers vs.
people that just wanted to heal as a change of pace. Blizzard already said that it will NOT be
like that, there were severe mana issues in early Cata (and I LOVED that by the
way), but they already stated they are aware of the healer QQ back then. Mana regen will be buffed in early WOD to
compensate and then taper off in each tier (we shall see). The problem with the last tier and a half
becoming spam fests has been an ongoing Blizzard/WOW issue since I have been playing
and healing.
Wait…I have to think?
Every healer will now need to strategize and know when heavy
raid damage is coming and be prepared for it.
This is a nice change. The whole ‘set
it and forget it’ healing style sucks and is boring. E.g. Drop this totem or cast this spell and
it heals ALL the most injured people automatically with no decision making by
the healer. It sounds as if Blizzard is
going back to the proximity healing and I say GOOD, it is about time. Stop dumbing down the game and especially
healing. To me, the harder and more
thought provoking healing becomes, the better.
I love the challenge, crave the challenge, it is why I began healing and
never looked back and abandoned being rDPS on my warlock.
Conclusion
BRING IT ON! I love
the changes and cannot wait to heal in WOD.
It sounds like it will reignite the healing fire in my belly. It may turn some away from WOW or to other
specs, but these changes bring me closer and back to what I love to do in game,
heal raids and have to strategize my spells, use my entire arsenal, worry about
my mana, know when and how to regen it smartly…..well…..and raid lead at the
same time….let’s not forget about that.
I am excited and for all those QQing, I wave my private parts at you.
Mav - "I am excited and for all those QQing, I wave my private parts at you."
ReplyDeleteBAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! ROFLMAO!!!!
Don't make me bite those private parts!
ReplyDeleteBlizzard had no choice but to buff mana regen, since most WOD gear will not have spirit on it (save for necklaces, rings, trinkets and weapons), which means we'll be stacking much less spirit right off the bat.
One of my concerns is how they're going to rework the mechanics that rely on overhealing (shroom blooms), unless they just don't want us to bloom our shrooms anymore? Given that will be druid instant AOE, I think we'll be blooming a lot MORE. But it will take a very long time for them to be bloom-ready.
They're going to have to re-tune every fight in SOO in order to accommodate these healing changes. Thokk will be a pain in the ass. All other movement fights are going to be a lot more difficult. If I wanted more difficulty, I'd be doing heroic raiding. =P
I'm good with less spikey damage. That is a welcome change. There have been some fun healing fights over the years that actually made us pay attention - Chimy in BWD, Healbot (Loatheb) in Naxx. And I'm good with interweaving those kind of fights into the game. But across the board? I'm not sure, my brain hurts thinking about it.
For the current spamfests... as a druid, I don't spam 1-2 buttons, I use a lot of spells. Holy pallies back in Wrath, THOSE were 1-3 button spamfests. Ugh. I did that for 3 years. Once I went druid, I never looked back. (ok maybe once or twice), but I'm still a druid!
-Aly
For the shrooms, I'm guessing that'll be something we have to ramp up before the fight. I do that anyway now but I'm guessing that's the direction they're going to take that.
ReplyDeleteI'll admit I was a little peeved about the changes to begin with only because they made them sound like the change was coming because of PvP reasons. I absolutely hate they constantly change PvE things because of what happens in PvP. It's total BS.
Still looking forward to all this though. Here's to hoping the new xpak is just as good if not better than MoP was!!
The 6.0 release will make every SOO boss a joke as it did in DS with the MoP Pre-release. All the DPS back then did like 25% more dmg due to changed mechanics. Thokk is a joke now. We get him to 25% in first stack up and only reason we stop, is to just let people get their buttons back! When 6.0 releases, even with the healing changes, he will be a bigger joke. Just time the WG and can still Rejuv blanket+genesis to bump people up. They want you to think and plan on how and when to use WG, not just use it off CD. All good changes coming IMO and not just due to PVP as Reluu thought.
ReplyDeleteYes it's hilarious to kill Thokk before the fire phase now.. he's already been nerfed. I suspect we'll see a big fat 5%-30% nerf across the board in SOO though as we get closer to 6.0 to accommodate the changes.
ReplyDeleteBlizzard is making changes to how spells and abilities work in PVP that doesn't affect PVE at all - they stopped fucking with PVE to balance PVP. Finally.
I'm still not 100% sold on the changes, but I'm still looking forward to WOD. This xpac needs to die in a fire.
My question with WG though... if used with SOTF, does the talent tack the haste on to the cast time of WG now or the WG hots like it's supposed to?? I might have to un-glyph RG to see if it works that way... I know when I accidentally used SM and hit RG after, it sped up the cast time... but with the glyph I don't have a HoT on it, so I couldn't tell if it affected the hots. Bah.
Not sure Thokk was nerfed (unless I missed it), its moreso you outgear the encounter now. I agree with you, with a Fall release, blanket SOO nerfs are coming.
ReplyDeleteMoP was a wonderful raiding xpac, the rest, who cares, but that is me and I'm sure Ive blogged about it. I get your frustrations with it though. I do plan on writing my own version of identity crisis blog...called Identity Found...lol...but more than just in
WOW...
Hmm, interesting on SOTF. It MAY shorten the casttime of WG and not the ticks in 6.0. I don't now for sure. I suspect itll be obvious, but it would defeat the purpose of the 1.5s cast time, so, I bet blizz changes SOTF to only affect ticks or something or change it entirely.
My resto druid is 4 titan runestones from 12 and I can taste that cloak. 4th legendary and I cant wait to see what he can do in a big boy raid.
Thokk was nerfed in a recent patch or hotfix... Blizzard increased the time between the interrupty roar thing.
ReplyDeletei thought that was just heroic....ugh if it wasnt...
ReplyDeletehate nerfs
Found it.
ReplyDeletehttp://wow.joystiq.com/2014/01/22/patch-5-4-2-hotfixes-for-january-21/
I stand corrected, it deals less damage. Although I could have sworn they also increased the time between the screeches. But I could be wrong.