LoDBlog

• * Mana will be a bigger consideration for all healers. We aren’t trying to make healing more painful; we’re trying to make it more fun. When the cost of a spell isn’t an issue, then casting the right spell for the job is less of an issue because you might as well just use your most powerful spell all of the time. We are, however, getting rid of the five-second rule, because we don’t want to encourage standing around doing nothing. We’re also going to cut back on the benefits of buffs such as Replenishment so priests (and all healers) don’t feel as penalized when those buffs aren’t available.
• Heal (available at level 16): While priests already have a spell called Heal, the existing version becomes obsolete at higher levels, which is something we intend to change in Cataclysm. Introduced at a low level, the “new” Heal spell will functionally work much like a down-ranked Greater Heal did in the past, adding more granularity to your direct-healing arsenal. If you need to heal someone a moderate amount and efficiency is an issue (making Flash Heal the incorrect spell for the job), then Heal is what you want to use. Heal is intended to be the priest’s go-to direct-healing spell unless they need something bigger (Greater Heal) or faster (Flash Heal). We will be following a similar philosophy with all the healing classes.

Well that’s interesting….

I loved the down ranking / mana management play style for healers which became necessity in Vanilla.  I think that down ranking developed an unfair reputation as being too easy while the mana management naysayers would always complain about having to stand around not casting to gain mana.  To counter the first argument of down ranking being “easy”, it was only easy in the fact that you could choose the spell/tool which best fit the requirements of the situation.  I had three ranks of Heal (1,2,3), two ranks of Flash Heal (4,7), and three ranks of Greater Heal (1,3,5) on my bar  … wow I did those ranks by memory.  Each spell gave me varied levels of healing and speed.  This definitely made healing easier, but only in the same way using a screwdriver on a screw is easy than using a hammer for a carpenter.  Down ranking allowed you to use the most appropriate tool for the situation.

Mana management and the five second rule allowed for someone to stop casting and regen mana.  This was a “boring” play style because it “promotes doing nothing”, that’s as far from the truth as you can get.  Any good healer in Vanilla used stop casting macros or stopped casts on their own when they were unneeded.  So when I spent 15-20s regenning mana out of the 5 second rule it wasn’t because I wasn’t casting any spells or engaged in the encounter, it was because I had strung together a number of cancelled casts and/or used inner focus and clear casting procs.  In fact I’d venture to say that I cast MORE spells and was MORE honed in on the incoming damage and healing requirements of an encounter because I was constantly casting and stop casting spells, lettings casts complete when necessary and cancelling when the healing wasn’t needed.

This was an engaging system which gave you multiple tools and a very healthy set of risk/reward choices which ultimately required intense concentration and understanding of the encounter mechanics.

Sure, you could mindlessly spam Heal rank 2 and never go OOM, but spamming a 1k slow heal wasn’t always best for every situation.  You could also platoon healers and heal in “waves”, spending half your time afk regenning mana, but practicing constant casting with cancelling would result in a much more successful and fun play experience

You could do either of those things, but if you did you really didn’t heal as well as you could have.  That’s a fact.  And it’s the misconceptions spread by those “bad” play styles which led to Blizzard killing down ranking in the first place.

I look forward to a system and philosophy which attempts to mimic down ranking.  However I wonder whether simply introducing one spell will accomplish this.

The best spell in Vanilla was Heal rank 2.  This was the smallest/slowest spell which still benefited 100% from spell power on gear, back then blizzard used a funky system based on the level you learned the spell and your current level to calculate how each spell scaled with SP.

Here is a post I made almost 4 years ago about down ranking and Heal 2.

Matron – Jun 12 2006 LoD Priest Boards

“What is a second worth to you?

In WoW a second as a healer is sometimes all it takes to watch your tank go from full health to zero health. It’s scary how fast it happens sometimes.

However, on most occasions there are multiple healers on the MT, so they’ll be getting heals from a number of people. It’s in these cases where you really have to ask yourself how much a second is worth to you as a priest?

My point is as follows. Priests have two spells that they cast, at least two lengths of spells. 1.5 seconds and 2.5 seconds. Recently I’ve become quite enamored with the 2.5 second spells for a number of reasons.

My main goal as a healer is to fire off as many 1,000 point heals as I can. 1,000 is a decent goal and about what the max rank flash heal will do. So I needed to find a 2.5 second spell that heals for about the same. You won’t find it under the greater heals, they’re much too big. But if you look all the way back to your “Heal” spell you’ll find that around rank 2 you’ll start healing for 1,000 hp again. You learned this spell around level 20, but it’s a most useful tool at level 60 as well.

The difference between rank 2 Heal and rank 7 Flash heal? One second and 206 mana.

Rank 2 Heal – 174 mana – 2.5 seconds
Flash Heal 7 – 380 mana – 1.5 seconds

So here’s what you’re doing when you cast flash heal, you’re paying over double the mana cost for 1 second off your heal time. Now this is appropriate in certain situations, such as a crit on the main tank, but for 90% of the healing you’ll be doing in MC or BWL that one second is not needed.

I mean, how many times has a rogue pulled agro and taken a single shot from a mob and then the tank regains control? In this situation the rogue isn’t going to be taking any more damage for a while, it was a freak occurrence that they pulled agro at all. Why pay double mana to heal them one second faster?

My point is this… there are many times where one second doesn’t matter at all for healers. There isn’t any reason to pay TWICE the mana cost for the same amount of healing. You’re paying for the quickness of flash heal when you don’t need it.

If you start using Heal rank 2, you’ll see that your mana pool goes a lot farther than it once did, especially on boss fights that are long. Geddon, Golemagg, Domo, Rags, Kurinaxx, Rajaxx, the Drakes, Chrom, Nef…. All very long fights where going oom early is a really bad thing. Instead of holding back on healing, to save mana, instead switch methods. It’ll allow you to heal and conserve mana.”

Here is the problem I see with introduction of a 2.5s Heal spell… combined with haste and the upcoming slowing of raid damage, it is going to murder Flash Heal.  Heal2 murdered FH in Vanilla, why heal the same amount for more than twice the mana cost?  Damage didn’t come fast enough that 1s mattered.

Given haste levels the difference between FH and Heal is going to be LESS than one second.  In what meaningful situation will you require a 1s heal rather than a 1.6s heal which costs far less mana?  Never!

So by introducing a slower smaller spell Blizzard is going to kill Flash Heal.  I’m of the GH school of thought, I prefer a slightly slower but more powerful/efficient spell to expensive and “quick” spells, so I don’t really mind our focus moving away from flash heal.

But if Blizzard really wants to make healing more dynamic and interesting introducing this one spell is not the way to do it.  What made Vanilla interesting was that I had 8 single target spells of varying levels of healing, mana efficiency, and speed on my bar.  Often times damage would become more intense as a boss soft enraged or healers died and I’d simply move up a few ranks of a spell, sacrificing mana/efficiency for larger HPS.  Other times I’d get a good string of regen/rng and be able to amp up my rank usage to get rid of some excess mana.  When I was low on mana I could down rank even further, continuing to cast spells, but maintaining a steady mana pace which would last me til the end of an encounter.  I wouldn’t ever STOP casting, I’d only just shift gears a bid depending on the damage and mana situations.

In Cata I fear we’ll only really be using 3 spells in GH, Heal and maaaybe Flash Heal rather than the 3 Heals, 7 Flash heals, and 5 Greater Heals we could choose from in Vanilla.  Three spells does not offer the same flexibility and pacing opportunities which 15 spells do and I don’t believe that single target-wise we’ll really be gaining a new “tool” in Heal, we’ll just be replacing FH entirely.

More thoughts on Cata changes later in the week as my cynicism subsides.