Healing Mastery Weakened in SoO?

[Orcbert]

With what they've been telling us today about how they would like to fix health pools and spikey damage it seems we'll deal with a lot more time of people being slightly damaged as opposed to large chunks being taken out and needing a few globals to pick them back up to full.

Does this new system make our mastery weaker?

It may be too early to judge but that was my initial impression of what I was reading.

*edit: I made the title wrong. I meant in WoD*

[Anonymitylol]

It makes our mastery more consistent to say the least.

[Rabb]

i wouldn't think so. considering they said they want people not to be at 100% hp for the entirety of the upcoming encounters, mastery would actually have a place. everyone seems to be stacking crit after hitting a haste breakpoint because current damage in heroics will one shot you if you're not at full health, which is also why resto shaman mastery has been broken/bad in SoO. Good thing they have like 6 healing CDs

[Orcbert]

I've always stacked mastery pretty hard for newer content in my raiding setup. It seems to really save people who mess up mechanics as long as it isn't a one shot thing. I guess right now it's 'just wait and see'.

If it's a state of constantly working to top people off than it seems to me like it will weaken it. In addition, since smart heals won't be so smart many of our spells will lose some synergy with the mastery. One of the reasons healing totems were so nice is because they really helped boost up damaged people fast.

[Blithe]

Currently useless in PvE, but a deciding factor in PvP sadly. I wouldn't mind a different Mastery, honestly but knowing that they won't change it makes complaining about it useless. It'll definitely help in Warlords of Draenor because there'll be less 'sniping' from the other classes so I'd say it's technically getting an indirect buff.

[Bullettime]

If anything it provides Mastery a more consistent value and not vary so heavily between encounters.

The game needs to get away from the model used in Throne and Siege of nonstop one shot mechanics where effects chunk someone for like 90% of their health or killed if not capped.

[Blithe]

If anything it provides Mastery a more consistent value and not vary so heavily between encounters.

The game needs to get away from the model used in Throne and Siege of nonstop one shot mechanics where effects chunk someone for like 90% of their health or killed if not capped.

With the amount of times my guild has been hindered by these such effects, it makes raiding almost unbearable. We live in Australia, and as such suffer from a 200 to 300+ latency issue. Americans and others close-by seem to have somewhere between 10 and 50, yes? Anyway, ~300 milliseconds of latency is over half of a Humans 500 millisecond response time so of course it's going to be hard for us to react to one-shot mechanics.

I'm glad healing and encounter mechanics are being changed to be less about reaction and more about decision making. This should at least help my guild, and a lot of other foreign-playing countries in such areas.

[whyabadi]

Hots will shine.

[shamantime]

I think they should switch Ancestral Awakening and Deep Healing. Make deep healing like twist of fate.

Deep Healing
[Passive]
Whenever you heal an ally below 70% health, all healing will be increased by 10% for 10 seconds.

Mastery: Ancestral Awakening
[Passive]
Upon casting healing, you have a 10% chance to heal a low health ally for an additional X%.

[Deleted]

I don't want to track yet another thing (mastery uptime) so please no.

[Blithe]

I think they should switch Ancestral Awakening and Deep Healing. Make deep healing like twist of fate.

Deep Healing
[Passive]
Whenever you heal an ally below 70% health, all healing will be increased by 10% for 10 seconds.

Mastery: Ancestral Awakening
[Passive]
Upon casting healing, you have a 10% chance to heal a low health ally for an additional X%.

Deep Healing sounds cool, but Ancestral Awakening would effect Echo of the Elements in such a way that one or the other would need to be toned down to make one balanced, and it's also too similar to Elemental's Mastery (just that it's a healing version).

[Tiberria]

The changes really can't possibly make our mastery in a worse spot than it has been for most of this expansion (i.e. in most cases 1/3 to 1/8 of the value of other secondary stats). It's too hard to tell right now, but it's going to depend on how they implement the changes and whether they are successful in actually getting healing/health pools to a place where people really stay sub-100% HP for extended periods of time. They attempted to do exactly the same thing during Cata, but even during T11 in 25 man raids, you rarely had people not topped for sustained periods. If it really sticks this time, the value of our mastery has nowhere to go but up.

[Shamburger]

I think they should switch Ancestral Awakening and Deep Healing. Make deep healing like twist of fate.

Deep Healing
[Passive]
Whenever you heal an ally below 70% health, all healing will be increased by 10% for 10 seconds.

Mastery: Ancestral Awakening
[Passive]
Upon casting healing, you have a 10% chance to heal a low health ally for an additional X%.

They just said they want to tone-down the smart heals and you just suggest another one o.0?

[Shockeye]

I think Mastery will have more value in WoD given the triage model. In that scenario, a Mastery-fueled heal will be a more effective triage heal than a Crit-fueled on, as it will be reliable and consistent, you will have a very good idea of how much health you will restore to a player so it speaks to the decision-making design intent Blizz have spoken about.

[korlach]

They just said they want to tone-down the smart heals and you just suggest another one o.0?

You do realize that Ancestral awakening and Deep healing are both things we already have right? He is suggesting swapping their places and a way to modify them to work. We would not be adding anything.

[dean771]

Currently useless in PvE,

Its useless for topping meters, for actualy completeing hard encounters during progression its quite good

[shamantime]

They just said they want to tone-down the smart heals and you just suggest another one o.0?

One smart-heal is fine. I would think that HST would be changed(come WoD)since it does so much of our healing.

- - - Updated - - -

You do realize that Ancestral awakening and Deep healing are both things we already have right? He is suggesting swapping their places and a way to modify them to work. We would not be adding anything.

Exactly this.

[Blithe]

Its useless for topping meters, for actualy completeing hard encounters during progression its quite good

Maybe progression, but in a world where your heals are sniped by Priests and Paladins (in addition to their Mastery) it feels quite useless. Our Mastery's the second worst as a healer, next to Monks simply because it 99% of the time ends in overhealing.

I've wanted a rework of it since it made its debut, it makes PvP hard to balance around and it inevitably makes Raiding useless for us (due to overhealing). If our Mastery turned overhealing into a heal over time, or something, I'd be pretty happy.

"Increases the potency of your healing spells by up to 24%, based on the current health level of your target (lower health targets are healed for more), and causes 24% of any overhealing done to heal the target instead over 6 sec."

[dean771]

Maybe progression, but in a world where your heals are sniped by Priests and Paladins (in addition to their Mastery) it feels quite useless. Our Mastery's the second worst as a healer, next to Monks simply because it 99% of the time ends in overhealing.

I've wanted a rework of it since it made its debut, it makes PvP hard to balance around and it inevitably makes Raiding useless for us (due to overhealing). If our Mastery turned overhealing into a heal over time, or something, I'd be pretty happy.

So what your saying is when it matters our mastery is good, and when no one cares what happens its poor, expect for ranking and flexing your epeen

I'm cool with this

[fenrez]

Its useless for topping meters, for actualy completeing hard encounters during progression its quite good

This is untrue at least from a 25 man PoV. Even during progression it is rare that people will actually stay at a low hp, especially in Siege it was 100 to dead in 1-2 seconds or instantly topped. It is useful for tank healing on Paragons and I suppose you could maybe consider Thok a semi-hard fight? In which case mastery could be described as quite good for two bosses in SoO.

Any change to our mastery seems unlikely as Blizzard seems very content with it.