[Backup]Raid Cooldown nerf is a huge mistake

[cqwrteur]

The original post has been deleted. http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20419314050

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OP : 28th Jan, 2016

Sure, tuning is not done. However, the the overall issues with the healing meta - and the gap in raid value/"mandatory status" between the throughput healers and Disc/HPally isn't exactly something that has just existed this tier, or even this expansion. It has literally been a problem since the start of Cataclysm. If you remember the history of raid cooldowns, or even why the throughput raid cooldowns have ended up needing to be buffed to be as strong as they are now, it shows a trend of a huge problem they seem to be repeating all over again.

1. During WoTLK, Paladins were the first class to get access to a real raid cooldown, with Devo Aura in the holy tree, and the ability to take a specific build to go deep enough into Prot to take Divine Guardian (at the expense of some throughput).


2. PW: Barrier was added at the start of Cata, giving Disc and Holy Pallies the only 2 real healer raid cooldowns.


3. The end result of that was - the healing comp for most top kills consisted of Priests and Paladins exclusively in T11, possibly with a token Shaman for HTT. World first Sinestra kill - 3 Priest and 3 Paladin healers.


4. That resulted in them needing to buff/add cooldown power to the remaining healing specs just to keep the 3 remaining healers viable. SLT was added in 4.1, Tranq was buffed into a major healing CD (instead of a rarely used party limited spell) in 4.2; Divine Hymn was given the same treatment for Dragon Soul.


5. Not much changed with raid CDs at the start of MoP. However, the issue of HPally/Disc being stronger/more represented continued - especially in 25 man raids. This resulted in them needing to buff the amount of targets Revival/Tranq/DH (and later HTT) healed in 25 man raids vs 10 man raids, because DR cooldowns were scaling with raid size and throughput cooldowns were not.


6. With a standardized raid size, they just made all raid cooldowns heal all targets at once in WoD, instead of 5/12 targets.

See the end result here? The reason why throughput cooldowns have ended up as insane as they are today is because Holy Pallies and Disc Priests end up dwarfing other healers in terms of raid value/how mandatory they are to be brought to raid whenever those cooldowns are not insane enough. Even in WoD with the "god mode" raid cooldowns, you still have 2 specs (50% of your raid comp) locked to Holy Pally/Disc Priest, and arguably a 3rd spot locked to Resto Shaman. Is it really reasonable for 75% of your healing spots to be locked down, 3 specs left to fight over that 4th spot. How is that not going to not only continue but get worse with DR cooldowns effectively 4 times better compared to throughput CDs than they are on live? Did specs that already have a guaranteed raid spot need that further buff?

Also, the whole argument about "HPally/Disc will be different this time". Not buying it. They have said the same thing during the beta of the last 2-3 expansions, and it never ends up working out. Remember how Disc was supposed to be greatly tuned down after the SoO fiasco? How did that work out? The issue isn't even really their class design, it's the fact that Disc/HPally have so much more utility over and above HPS value relative to the other healing specs. Pallies are gaining back everything they lost through crazy artifact traits (5% haste aura, new auras, 20% tank CD with Divine Protection). Disc are now going to do a huge amount of damage while still filling a healing role. Meanwhile, Monk and Druid utility is close to non existent. Monks don't have Fistweaving DPS as an option anymore - which was always their key utility. Druids lose Stampeding Roar (which was given to Shaman as a talent no less) and have not been compensated for that. That utility gap was actually widened even before the raid cooldown changes, and these cooldown changes make it even wider.

How about figuring out how to balance utility properly across healers so you can actually bring your 4 best players to any given fight, instead of having certain specs entitled to guaranteed spots no matter what before you worry about gutting the only thing that was really propping up Druids/Mistweavers/Holy Priests the last 2 expansions to begin with?

[Asrialol]

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[Mastashifu-khaz]

Why are you "backing" this up?

[Snackwiches]

Notepad.exe

But no, they've never had any idea what they were doing with class design after Ghostcrawler and Celestalon took over. They went from unique classes to a situation where they homogenized everything, removed half the depth, gave their personal pets all the perks and utility and still can't get numbers right even with 2-3 systems designed to let them do just that.