LFD healing comparison: WOTLK vs WOD

[Deleted]

Healing was definitely fun in WOTLK, as a priest, i used to have a lot of spells in my toolbox, not just bubble spamming (althought it was the most effective form of playing disc), having 2 hymns was nice, one for mana, other for awesome heals.
Some mechanic of the fights were also interesting, like valithria where you had to fly picking orbs and then healing HUGE humbers to top the meters, or heroic sindragosa when you get the debuff and should wait to cast spells, while the whole raid was slowly dying, man i will never forget that feel maybe it was just a few seconds, but it was really intense.
The tank damage was so intense that you really had to click the mouse spamming heals or the tank would go from 100% to 0 in a couple of seconds (damn lagspikes).

Healing nowadays is more like click, cast, click, cast, and you don't have to many tools to choose from, makes you feel like i was doing brain surgery before, now i'm just serving ice cream cones.

^^ this defo. Healing was way more fun and purposefully intense in WotLK (my main was priest then too). maybe a bit too flash heal spam at times but yea way more fun.

Disc knowing you can spam like fuck at times then use multiple shields to get your mana back meant you could control totally how you could play your healer, I loved it ..

Holy was like being conductor to a full orchestra slowly and calmly ticking along with renews and the odd PoM being at bottom of recount with a grin waiting for those uber damage moments to spring into action and heal every fucker like a crazy bastard and watching everyones HP fill up like a spectrum analyser listening to Prodigy was most satisfying, and oh your way ahead on recount now haha so you can chill for a bit now just renew n have cake while your mana fills haha awesome times..

Everything feels boring and mundane since MoP, crap as fck.

[undeadmoon]

There felt like there used to be a whole toolbox for healers, tanks, and DPS in WOTLK and even right up til MOP, sure you didn't use *every* single ability on *every* single encounter, but knowing when to have them on your bar, when to use 'em, well even if no one complimented you, you felt accomplished. With the smaller toolboxes, the rip out of spells that felt flavorful even if not fully useful, the removal of a lot of instants...Healing feels really dull, even if is still challenging in certain difficulties.

This is the 1st time since I originally tried healing back on the release of BC, that I'm trying to main a DPS, healing just lost what interested me in WoW. (Before anyone screams " healer burn out!" I'll just say I'm still happily healing in other games, just not this one.) I feel like a lot of what's been done not just to healing but to all classes/specs/roles is change for the sake of change, and it's not fun, nor does it feel refreshing, or whatever they were aiming for.

[Pucek]

I would agree that WotLK was the most fun healing wise for me. Close second would be MoP because Mistweavers were amazeballs. Cata was just ok, while WoD fails miserably to the point that I changed from MW/WW to Brm/WW and quit soon after. Just felt like they took a lot of power from MW and didn't fix enough problems making the spec very bad at 5man HC at the begining of WoD. WotLK was when I had every possible healing character and liked all of them.

[darklogrus]

I have been an healer since wotlk (disc priest).

My quick review as a healer in dungeons now and back then.

in WOTLK:
- receiving thanks from the others was very common when you saved the party from a critical situation
- you felt more powerful/cool by fully healing targets in a few seconds
- old instant cast spell (such as pom or wild growth) were amazing as repetitive interposing spells

in WOD:
- gratitude seems to be something lost (this can be related to the increasing of stamina which killed the adrenalinic dynamicity of the gameplay)
- since cataclysm, the absurd increasing of stamina made healing boring and "slow"
- the nerf of instant cast spells gave me cancer

Please what do you think? Agree or not?
I'm seriously considering to leave retail wow because of these reasons

I thought I was the only one who fell out of love with healing this expansion. Spells being prunned and reworked, gear that was poorly optimized for my healing spec was ultra common. An at least to me at least I felt that there is just way to much unavoidable splash damage all the freakin time.

[PrairieChicken]

Spamming 1 for minutes and doing nothing else is fun?

[snuzzle]

I prefer the slower healing style. Feels more like Classic and, to some extent, TBC. I remember back in the day you used to have time to say "Casting Greater Heal on (target)" and then wind up the spell, and cast it, without the target actually dying in that five second window. Nowadays you try that and you might get "Casting---" out before your target goes SPLAT. It felt more like you had to plan which heals to cast when. It was more strategic.

I do not, will not, ever miss Wrath healing. Where you were only as good as how fast you could cast--- nope. Nope nope nope.

Just look at how long some of those health bars stay below 50%. Sacrilege nowadays.

[dexx]

I liked the AOE smart heals in MoP. Call me a simpleton but i'd rather focus on the mechanics of the encounter than micromanaging which whack-a-mole key i have to press next.

[Lochton]

I have been an healer since wotlk (disc priest).

My quick review as a healer in dungeons now and back then.

in WOTLK:
- receiving thanks from the others was very common when you saved the party from a critical situation = Still happens for me

- you felt more powerful/cool by fully healing targets in a few seconds = Sorta ruined it as well, a mighty crit and a tank was 100% healed, no thanks.

- old instant cast spell (such as pom or wild growth) were amazing as repetitive interposing spells = Instant heals became too much of the game play, in the end, you could heal a whole fight without hardly using casts.


in WOD:
- gratitude seems to be something lost (this can be related to the increasing of stamina which killed the adrenalinic dynamicity of the gameplay) = Still getting gratitude in dungeons. Thanks for healings and groups, etc.

- since cataclysm, the absurd increasing of stamina made healing boring and "slow" = Not fully, you can heal people fast still. Maybe a little feeling of slow, might be due to the setup though. Past days, 3+ instant heals was bad (I think)

- the nerf of instant cast spells gave me cancer = Tough luck, don't use shit as 'cancer' in a discussion topic, doesn't make the topic more "pro".

Please what do you think? Agree or not?
I'm seriously considering to leave retail wow because of these reasons

Overall, I think it's just you, OP. As I wrote in bold, I don't have many problems, I have 1 100% instant, and can proc another instant, as well as trigger a really fast heal, almost close to the tons of instant heals we used to have, which sorta, as I said, ruined healing for me. Every person their taste, I guess?

[papajohn4]

Healing was best in Vanilla, just like tanking and DPSing. Hear me out, I get the the button mashing wasn't as fun, but CC, strategic ranged pulls, threat, mobs running off and pulling more only to have people step their A game up with more CC or cool downs popped... Resource management was a thing, AoE threat was skill, adjusting strategies to the strengths of the group because homogeneity didn't exist. Fucking priests actually had to use Mind Control or a well-timed Blind from a Rogue could save a healer.

And people were grateful and impressed by solid performance. People knew from dungeons and raids who was bad ass and who got carried.

Yeap...i totally agred..especially the aggro! I always had a cheeling moment when my heal land because i didnt know if one of the mobs will turn against me...also timing your heals to avoid aggro was also great gameplay.

But that was also true in tbc, not just vanilla.

[announced]

i used to thank healers loads in wotlk, and i enjoyed the dungeons lots more. i also tried healing back then and was impressed with the dynamics of it and how versatile you had to be. it was more fun back then. even with easy dungeons/raids.

[Absintheminded]

Yeap...i totally agred..especially the aggro! I always had a cheeling moment when my heal land because i didnt know if one of the mobs will turn against me...also timing your heals to avoid aggro was also great gameplay.

But that was also true in tbc, not just vanilla.

Yep, TBC was very similar to Vanilla, though tanks had a little but more in their tool bag for threat.

[Zka]

WoD is harder to heal. And come on, critical situations in LK instances? Maybe when a green geared tank overpulled.

[DarkAztaroth]

I liked cata more, had a mix of danger, mana mangament, decent movement/instant that was pretty appealing to me.

MoP felt automated a bit, but it wasn't too bad. Right now feels a bit stiff and slow for some reason.

[Zka]

On WoD healing: it's interesting to see other opinions. I think some aspects of healing are the best they have ever been. I healed on priest in all expansions extensively. Always disc unless it was totally non-viable. I liked all implementations so far. They were different but enjoyable. WoD totally nailed 2 things for me: 1) mana regen 2) damage patterns.

Regen: Usually you just graduated out of mana regen problems by the end of the first raid tier. This time they greatly limited the regen improvement potential by supplying a high base regen and limiting spirit options to a few slots. It is a super concept and it worked out very well.
Damage patterns: by this I mean damage is well tuned. A couple of mistakes won't suck your manapool dry, but a generally ill-handled encounter will. I really like it that way. Heck, even mishandled encounters won't suck you dry but instead you won't be able to keep up with incoming damage. Compared to early Cata where a small mistake by someone could deplete your manabar or LK when going OOM was almost impossible this is really good. Mana regen and damage tuning gets 10/10 from me this time.

Skills aren't totally nailed: I only healed as disc in WoD. It's a mixed bag. I don't like how atonement worked in MoP, it was too strong. Now it's the opposite. These spells you are pretty much forced to use to stack evangelism contribute almost nothing to your healing done, while taking time and mana. The first raid set's bonus which made friendly penances stack evangelism should have been baseline. Going back to play without it was really painful. Some spells like PoM, heal and flash heal are almost never used in raid settings because they are just incredibly inefficient. Lvl 90 heals which are supposedly a signature ability also fail to deliver more than 3-4% of overall healing in a raid encounter and they don't even fill any important role. Just total garbage. Skill pruning is fine, PWS, PoH, CoW, penance, cds are still enough buttons to push for me, but I'm puzzled why they made some of our spells so incredibly useless. I'd like to use more of my spells more often with greater impact. The ratio of absorbs is too damn high, whenever I have to actually fill up health bars I struggle. Luckily I don't often have to do that in raids.

[Repefe]

The healing in WotLK was exciting. You were this walking fountain of health. Your heals showed and were appreciated. Starting with Cata healing became this fight of nutrition. Instead of going pew pew, bang bang everyone is alive, you went my mana is going down, my mana is going down, will this fight end already, my mana is going down.

The WotLK model may be too heal centric, but it was so fun.

[Kerath]

I for one did not enjoy WoTLK healing very much, although it's tough to compare as I played a paladin then and a priest now. Certainly for pallies , WoTLK was a case of spamming your highest throughput spell as much as mana would allow (by the time we were in ICC, that was pretty much the whole fight) and hope that you didn't get unlucky with timing and have a tank die in between your heals landing.
I actually had the most fun, mechanics wise, healing in Cata. I felt like I was using most of my toolkit, using the right spell for the right situation seemed more important, spells had some interesting synergy and triage was an actual thing.

Healing in WoD is ok, but feels a bit too "rotation-y" now, if that makes sense.

[Acidz]

As a disc priest I enjoyed WoTLK-healing (before ICC) the most, when disc priests were outstanding tank healers, only second to paladins, but best used in conjunction.
Bubble-spam, which came with ICC, was horrible and utterly boring in my opinion. The first 2 tiers of Cataclysm, with disc healing mainly based around PoH, were actually quite decent. Smite-spam/atonement healing since DS and continued in MoP was terrible: boring and not fun. I liked disc in pvp very much though during MoP, as it was strong offensively.

[Osmeric]

Regen: Usually you just graduated out of mana regen problems by the end of the first raid tier. This time they greatly limited the regen improvement potential by supplying a high base regen and limiting spirit options to a few slots. It is a super concept and it worked out very well.

I agree with this. They have fixed the scaling issue of mana regen quite well in WoD.

[PrairieChicken]

Wrath healing in short : 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 11111111111111 (boss dies, collect loot)

[Deleted]

Wrath healing in short : 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 11111111111111 (boss dies, collect loot)

Palas were always boring tho ;p