Originally Posted by
Yunzi
CoW was good in WoD, not only for tank healing for reducing overheal but for healing anyone who's temporarily a "tank" - anyone who takes consistent damage over a short amount of time (such as damage debuffed players), as well as giving them additional effective health to blanket large incoming damage.
Let's modify what the WoD PWS camp is saying to make it more sensible - IF your healing composition is such that tank healing is largely covered (ala one or especially two holy paladins) then CoW isn't needed on the tank and only in rare cases (such as Kilrogg in the other realm) is desirable as an alternative to PWS spam/flash heal triage.
We've actually been through this conversation back in WoD, but the ongoing arrogance of certain people reduces their memory as well as their consideration of the words of others. Therefore that conversation doesn't exist, WoD CoW is terrible and should only be used to cheese mechanics, and PWS spam is the holy grail of WoD Disc gameplay.
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That's not at all true. The major purpose of Shadow Covenant is to provide Discs a reactionary multi-player heal to complement the single-target Shadow Mend. A lesser purpose is to help ease new Discs into the spec, since reactionary healing is the common healing style which most World of Warcraft healers are used to.
Let's be frank about why Shadow Covenant is disliked in this community - what might be called the "play Holy, you fucking scrub" reason - Discs congratulate themselves on their preparatory healing, Power Word: Radiance is the primary tool in that healing style, and Shadow Covenant does not cooexist with that. Shadow Covenant makes Discs like every other healer.
Many Discs on these forums don't want to be like every other healer - they want to be special - PWR allows them to feel special while SC does not.
I'm concerned with the Helya fight, I'm very concerned with Nighthold encounters of which it's highly likely that one or more will be better suited to reactionary healing than preparatory healing, and I don't care whether I feel special or not. I want to know what's optimal not only in general, not 80% of the time, not if I'm raiding with a certain healer spec composition, but the rest of the time as well.