So what is the deal with Healing Rain now?

[Axelond]

Shaman also have the lowest RPPM chance for legendary to compensate for HR and now they nerf HR but left the cloak RPPM at the same level?

[Mirean]

If they keep it this way, it's a HUGE nerf to 25man.
I did some simple calculations, if the raid is taking 10k damage every second (or if you have to heal 10k damage, because other healers will take care of the rest) and is stacked up, this will account for ~76% nerf to previous incarnation of HR on PTR.
If HR currently heals for ~20k, that's 120k total healing per tick, or 4.8k (let's say 5k) healing per tick per person in 25 man raid. The purification buff brings it to 10k.
If we'd theoretically have so much haste that it would tick every second (elemental mastery, bloodlust, ...), we would be doing 250k HPS from HR.
Now, if you take the 250k total healing and divide it by 6, you gain healing per person with this change. It's ~42k. So in this situation, we will again do 250k HPS. BUT, because there is only 10k per second to heal, from the 42k heal will 32k go to overheal, so our HR will hit 6 people for 10k = 60k HPS.

In a current situation, without the purification buff, it would do 125k HPS.


So, in this theoretical situation (which I think doesn't exist in SoO), it would be ~52% nerf against live and 76% nerf against previous PTR build. That is unacceptable. Nerfing the spell which accounts for 40% of our healing by 52% will bring our throughoutput down by 20%. Yes, there is the chain heal and healing tide buff, but that means, that our throughoutput will be similiar to what we see on live, so 20-30% behind.

I honestly can't imagine a situation, where this change would be a boost to our healing. Maybe some kind of stacked AoE which targets only 6 people at a time, or doesn't tick consistently on all target (but would have to tick for a lot), but for that situation, we have heals like CoH, PoM, CH, uplift, LoD. Imagine, if Holy Radiance took the same treatment. The forums would be all QQ from paladins that this will make them useless, but guess what, it would make them useless as much as it would us. It would affect their mastery (absorb) by a lot, as much as it affects our ancestral vigor and earthliving weapon.

IF this change has to go through, it would be nice to at least revert back to 14 target cap in 25-man instances, so it wouldn't be THAT bad. I even consider rerolling to my druid / priest for next patch if this is all they do.

[Tiberria]

The problem is not necessarily the redesign of Healing Rain itself; in theory, a 6 target smart heal should be about the same healing as it diminishing beyond 6 targets. However, the problem is everything else that it causes that hasn't been compensated for and just guts the spec.
-In a 25 man raid, you typically have 15+ pets, guardians, wild imps, etc out at any given time. Upwards of 10% of my output typically comes from passive healing to those pets. That output has just been removed. On top of that, the overhealing from that pet healing increases the healing by Ancestral Guidance, Ascendance and the legendary cloak proc by a large amount. I suspect that both AG and Ascendance take a 20-30% nerf from this change. On live, we are probably getting 15%+ of our total output from healing on pets. Sure, it isn't useful throughput, but if anything, that means that Resto Shaman performance in 5.3 is actually inflated, and we are probably more like 45% behind than 30% on live.
-We are looking at about a 7% nerf on stacked fights from ELW being on 1/4 as many targets as it currently is. It makes the ELW haste breakpoint nearly worthless to gear to, because our ELW output will cap at maybe 3% of our total healing
-We can no longer reliably keep up Ancestral Vigor on targets within our HR, which hurts our raid utility and the overall usefulness of AV. They may as well just remove it at this point.
-On top of that, they nerfed Healing Rain by 30% (over the 100% buff that it was given on the PTR), so it's now only 40% stronger than on live. There is no way that we will be the best stacked healers with HR hitting only 6 targets, ELW gutted and Ascendance and AG heavily nerfed due to the pet healing interaction. At the very least, that nerf needs to be reverted

On top of that, I don't understand the need to gut Healing Rain for input lag purposes, especially with how disastrous the impact is for our spec. If it is necessary, the following changes also should be made
-Limit Spirit Shell to 5 targets
-Holy Radiance needs the same treatment as Healing Rain
-Limit Illuminated Healing shields to 6 targets
-Prevent Renewing Mists from jumping to more than 6 targets per Mistweaver

Those sound ridiculous, but they are really no more ridiculous or more core than HR is to Resto Shaman.

[Kyuuseishu]

The problem is not necessarily the redesign of Healing Rain itself; in theory, a 6 target smart heal should be about the same healing as it diminishing beyond 6 targets. However, the problem is everything else that it causes that hasn't been compensated for and just guts the spec.
-In a 25 man raid, you typically have 15+ pets, guardians, wild imps, etc out at any given time. Upwards of 10% of my output typically comes from passive healing to those pets. That output has just been removed. On top of that, the overhealing from that pet healing increases the healing by Ancestral Guidance, Ascendance and the legendary cloak proc by a large amount. I suspect that both AG and Ascendance take a 20-30% nerf from this change. On live, we are probably getting 15%+ of our total output from healing on pets. Sure, it isn't useful throughput, but if anything, that means that Resto Shaman performance in 5.3 is actually inflated, and we are probably more like 45% behind than 30% on live.
-We are looking at about a 7% nerf on stacked fights from ELW being on 1/4 as many targets as it currently is. It makes the ELW haste breakpoint nearly worthless to gear to, because our ELW output will cap at maybe 3% of our total healing
-We can no longer reliably keep up Ancestral Vigor on targets within our HR, which hurts our raid utility and the overall usefulness of AV. They may as well just remove it at this point.
-On top of that, they nerfed Healing Rain by 30% (over the 100% buff that it was given on the PTR), so it's now only 40% stronger than on live. There is no way that we will be the best stacked healers with HR hitting only 6 targets, ELW gutted and Ascendance and AG heavily nerfed due to the pet healing interaction. At the very least, that nerf needs to be reverted

On top of that, I don't understand the need to gut Healing Rain for input lag purposes, especially with how disastrous the impact is for our spec. If it is necessary, the following changes also should be made
-Limit Spirit Shell to 5 targets
-Holy Radiance needs the same treatment as Healing Rain
-Limit Illuminated Healing shields to 6 targets
-Prevent Renewing Mists from jumping to more than 6 targets per Mistweaver

Those sound ridiculous, but they are really no more ridiculous or more core than HR is to Resto Shaman.

Bloody hell wait until you get some degree of official confirmation on whether the 6 target thing is a bug or not before you throw out absurd suggestions like those above. Chances are it actually is a bug since they've removed your only raid wide stacked heal, the base healing nerf is perfectly understandable.

[Tiberria]

Looking at WoL for last night's raid, 21,600 of my 45,300 Healing Rain ticks were on pets, guardians and other non player entities. That is 48% of the Healing Rain ticks. Assuming that Healing Rain accounts for 60% of the healing that is being redistributed during Ascendance and Ancestral Guidance, it means that both of those cooldowns just took nearly a 30% nerf. Removing pets from being healed by Healing Rain alone (which is confirmed as intended) is probably in excess of a 20% overall throughput nerf to the class.

That, on top of a 75% ELW nerf, a 75% nerf to Ancestral Vigor, a 30% nerf to Healing Rain baseline is far too much. Our throughput (once you factor in that PTR logs are already inflated by lower than realistic overheal, lower gear scaling and higher than realistic mastery gain) is likely to be nearly as weak as it is in 5.3 with these changes. Our stacked healing will also be beaten out by other classes.

[Kyuuseishu]

And again wait for some degree of official confirmation on the literal 6 target healing, your ELW and AV nerf are based around that fact alone. You're jumping to conclusions based on something you've observed but not a single person who is control of these things has made a note of, and to be honest, having the healing be redistributed off pets just inflates healing and is right to be removed.

[Deleted]

Bloody hell wait until you get some degree of official confirmation on whether the 6 target thing is a bug or not before you throw out absurd suggestions like those above. Chances are it actually is a bug since they've removed your only raid wide stacked heal, the base healing nerf is perfectly understandable.

The patch is going live next week. How long exactly do you want to wait before discussing these changes? There's a really damn good chance that these changes are going live now, because they're sure as hell not keeping it at the risk of creating lag in 25man. It's pretty clear that the goal of the change is to reduce the number of combat log events from 100+ events per second down to a little less and the only way that's happening is by either removing the interaction between HR, ELW and AV or by making HR hit fewer targets. This is not a bug.

(edit: some german news site is actually saying 10/11th sept. You heard it here first!)

[Lei]

Bloody hell wait until you get some degree of official confirmation on whether the 6 target thing

And again wait for some degree of official confirmation on the literal 6 target healing, your ELW and AV nerf are based around that fact alone. You're jumping to conclusions based on something you've observed but not a single person who is control of these things has made a note of, and to be honest, having the healing be redistributed off pets just inflates healing and is right to be removed.

Sorry, what? Healing Rain IS capped on 6 target. (Healing Rain)
There is no bug here, it's the SIDE-EFFECT of this small simple change, which has been posted by a blue (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...8602?page=2#25).

[Tiberria]

Sorry, what? Healing Rain IS capped on 6 target. (Healing Rain)
There is no bug here, it's the SIDE-EFFECT of this small simple change, which has been posted by a blue (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...8602?page=2#25).

It's not CAPPED at 6 targets, it heals for its full healing amount on up to 6 targets and then it proportionately diminishes (but still heals all target) for all targets in the area of effect when there are more than 6.

It is a completely unacceptable change to make if the reason is to deal with server lag unless they are willing to also make corresponding changes to fix all of the synergies that healing less targets (even for larger amounts) breaks for the spec. That isn't a bug fix, that is something that GUTS 6 other core abilities that are tied into how many targets HR heals.

[Deleted]

It's not CAPPED at 6 targets, it heals for its full healing amount on up to 6 targets and then it proportionately diminishes (but still heals all target) for all targets in the area of effect when there are more than 6.

On live it does. I thought you said it caps out at 6 targets on the newest PTR build?

[Tiberria]

to be honest, having the healing be redistributed off pets just inflates healing and is right to be removed.

And, we are balanced around the healing that is being inflated off of it healing pets, or rather very poorly balanced, considering that on live, we are 30% behind even with our healing inflated by that. It absolutely makes sense to remove that, but only if we are compensated for the lost output somewhere else and properly balanced. It's pretty ridiculous that not only are we 30% behind in 5.3, the subpar healing output that we do provide is also inflated by the pet thing. We are probably more like 45% behind.

- - - Updated - - -

On live it does. I thought you said it caps out at 6 targets on the newest PTR build?

On the PTR, yes it only heals 6 targets. I was responding to someone trying to quote the tooltip as saying that it's only supposed to heal 6 targets, which is wrong.

[Kyuuseishu]

Sorry, what? Healing Rain IS capped on 6 target. (Healing Rain)
There is no bug here, it's the SIDE-EFFECT of this small simple change, which has been posted by a blue (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...8602?page=2#25).

Okey let me just correct you, you see that tooltip and the calculations that have been done?, it says that healing diminishes beyond 6 targets which works like this. If it heals for 20k per tick normally, healing 6 people it will do 120k total every time it ticks. When you now add a 7th the healing no longer increases but distributes this 120k maximum across the 7 people within it. Thats how healing rain and other similar spells work, it is capped on its total healing it can do, but not the number of targets than it can heal.

I would test to see if a similar change has been done to lights hammer, but there is so much lag on the PTR atm I can't actually do anything. (EDIT: A similar change has gone through, LH only heals 6 within its radius, which is quite heavy since LH doesn't actually have a target limit)

But being balanced around how many pets in your healing rain? thats more absurd than you're suggestions. So a shaman heals subpar if the raid does not contain any classes which makes use of pets?, how does one balance around the actual class composition of a raid. They did say insignificant, like the voodoo gnomes and imps, they'll probably still affect Fire elementals and warlock pets since I wouldn't count them as insignificant.

[Deleted]

Well it's definitely not a "bug", it's not a coincidence it came out around the time they started looking for the healing-related lag fix.

[Deleted]

Looking at WoL for last night's raid, 21,600 of my 45,300 Healing Rain ticks were on pets, guardians and other non player entities. That is 48% of the Healing Rain ticks. Assuming that Healing Rain accounts for 60% of the healing that is being redistributed during Ascendance and Ancestral Guidance, it means that both of those cooldowns just took nearly a 30% nerf. Removing pets from being healed by Healing Rain alone (which is confirmed as intended) is probably in excess of a 20% overall throughput nerf to the class.

That, on top of a 75% ELW nerf, a 75% nerf to Ancestral Vigor, a 30% nerf to Healing Rain baseline is far too much. Our throughput (once you factor in that PTR logs are already inflated by lower than realistic overheal, lower gear scaling and higher than realistic mastery gain) is likely to be nearly as weak as it is in 5.3 with these changes. Our stacked healing will also be beaten out by other classes.

Wow, I never realised HR is actually doing 50% of it's raw healing on Pets. In effect, both AG and Ascendance will benefit 30% less from HR compared to live (despite a 40% buff to the spell). Add in the fact that ELW won't be ticking on as many targets, this will be absolutely devastating to both of these CDs. I still think it's a good idea to get rid of this pet-scaling mechanic, but they'll need to compensate both of these CDs accordingly.

[Tiberria]

But being balanced around how many pets in your healing rain? thats more absurd than you're suggestions. So a shaman heals subpar if the raid does not contain any classes which makes use of pets?, how does one balance around the actual class composition of a raid. They did say insignificant, like the voodoo gnomes and imps, they'll probably still affect Fire elementals and warlock pets since I wouldn't count them as insignificant.

Yes, the amount of pets that are in a raid have a significant impact in the amount of raw healing that Healing Rain does, which in turn has a huge impact on the raw healing of the class, which is then built into how effective Ascendance, Ancestral Guidance and the legendary cloak are. However, the variance isn't as much as you would expect, because almost every class has guardians/pets/wild imps/voodoo gnomes/totems/etc of some type. The bottom line is, this "hotfix" is a massive nerf to the class. It absolutely doesn't make sense to have our class mechanics constructed in such a way that we are that dependent on pet overheal. However, the reality is, they can not just nerf something like that without providing appropriate compensation. They are better off leaving Healing Rain working the way it does and then figuring out something for next expansion than making a knee jerk move that does more harm than good based on questionable research. Why not revert the damn combat log back to the way it was in 5.0/5.1? HR has worked the way it has worked since 4.0, and has only become a problem in 5.2.

Also, it doesn't matter if the 6 target hard capped HR will heal warlock minions/elementals, because it will still only heal 6 targets. It also isn't comparable to Light's Hammer. Light's Hammer isn't 30-40% of your effective healing and 60-70% of your raw healing, and it isn't like Shaman can just pick a different talent and get similar results.

[ganiccus]

I bet Wild Mushroom isn't even affected by those changes, Resto druids will just murder us all on stacked healing with the shrooms and that gong-ho insane Glyph of Efflorescence.

[Tiberria]

I bet Wild Mushroom isn't even affected by those changes, Resto druids will just murder us all on stacked healing with the shrooms and that gong-ho insane Glyph of Efflorescence.

If they are going to gut our class due to input lag that they think is caused by Healing Rain healing too many targets, they better well cap things like mushrooms, Holy Radiance, Renewing Mists, Spirit Shell, Halo, etc so they can also not heal more than 6 targets at a time.

[Lei]

On the PTR, yes it only heals 6 targets. I was responding to someone trying to quote the tooltip as saying that it's only supposed to heal 6 targets, which is wrong.

Sorry for that, my bad, it was a poorly written comment, originally it was a longer, but I cut some off of it before posting, ending it up being like that, but it didn't mean suggesting that it's only supposed to heal total of 6 target. I should have cut the whole first part off, as it was a longer speach dumbed down to basically nothing. Sorry sorry sorry.

[Tiberria]

You aren't constructed on the notion of the amount of pets in a raid make you more powerful, you seem to have this in your head that it must be true because you think it is. You started about being balanced around overheal % of 80+ now you're balanced around having a significant number of pets, how many more things do you want to state that your spec is balanced around, seriously. You can't balance around how many voodoo gnomes and wild imps are going to be in your healing rain at any one time, thats absurd to think that this is true. They said INSIGNIFICANT, which means procs off trinkets and abilities, but hunter pets/elementals/warlock pets will still be counted if you want to continue with your mad theories, but in essence its healing inflation since pets don't count towards the target limit of those types of spells. But now you are playing the card that holy paladins were playing when the EF change went through, "why they can't just leave it and deal with it next expansion".

If the 6 target literal cap wasn't put through the pet change would be completely insignificant, if the research was so questionable it wouldn't have any effect whatsoever but by the looks of things it has, so sit back and enjoy the ride like everyone else, since this change doesn't just affect you. We'll see what gets done about this change in terms of healing compensation.

Specs aren't balanced around specific things, they are balanced around the amount of output they do in testing/raiding/etc. The pet healing division thing has been part of our spec since 5.0, so we absolutely have been balanced around the output that this interaction has been causing. They can't remove the interaction without compensating for the lost output caused by this change. Also, you are 100% wrong that it would still be fine if they just removed the 6 target hard cap but removed the ability of HR to heal pets/non player units. 48% of my HR ticks in the WoL sample I took were to pets/guardians/non player targets. That means that 48% of the Healing Rain contribution to Ascendance, Ancestral Guidance and the legendary cloak mechanics are removed. It's still upwards of a 30% nerf to all of those, even if they change the 6 target hard cap. The 6 target hard cap effects AV and ELW. If they want to remove the pet healing component, the 30% nerf they put through to HR on the PTR at minimum would need to be reverted. If they want to leave the 6 target hard cap in place, they need to at least buff ELW by 300-400%.

It's also not comparable to the Paladin EF thing. They changed EF because they didn't like the way Paladins were all taking the talent and that it was a mandatory playstyle. This is a change being made because they have no idea how to fix server lag, not something meant to change the mechanics of our play style. The problem with the change is, it absolutely guts the spec.

[mmines]

I have no words for this. If they think this is seriously gonna be okay they have a shitstorm coming. With all these recent shaman changes they've been doing I have to wonder if they really do know what they're doing.

On a side note I wonder how many people I lagged out with dropping healing rains after lust is popped.