Why does sheep heal and fear doesnt?

[Raptorg]

When you're scared, your body has other priorities.. Like trying to get the fuck out of there, so all energy goes to running, instead of healing.

When you're sheeped, you're pretty fucking stupid, so your body starts healing because your brains don't know what the fuck to do.

[Trollpatrol]

Why on EARTH did the subject change into a discussion about Fear VS Sheep?

The real question is, why the fuck does sheep actually heal a target? I don't get it either.

Thread title: Why does sheep heal and fear doesnt?

The topic is a discussion about how one crowd control ability heals the target while the other doesn't. The discussion between the two is very relevant to the thread.

Don't bother posting if you're not going to read before doing so. Hell, you didn't even read the name of the thread before posting.

And no, it's not well put. You can't spam sheep-> Frostbolt->sheep-frostbolt someone. First of all, frostbolt isnt that strong for itself, and theres something called diminishing returns.

It is well-put. Yes, there are diminishing returns. However, even with DR it still allows you to keep a target under control and unable to act for a fairly long time.

[Tusq]

It is well-put. Yes, there are diminishing returns. However, even with DR it still allows you to keep a target under control and unable to act for a fairly long time.

The way you're putting it here, is just like it is today. It wont give the mages any advantage about the spammage of this combo(poly>FrB)

As someone mentioned, it was just the old way of balancing CC in PvE, which is very altered now, hence i see no reason of it healing either.

[Profyrion]

Sheep is a great opener/dismount/interrupt. I'll gladly take the healing component so long as I have the ability to spam it whenever, wherever I want.

[Beaavis]

I personally like the heal mechanic of sheep, and the recognition trade off it requires. I'm so used to it at this point that i'd be against removing it, not to mention it'd be way too OP"d to have a CC like that then cast times burst.

Thing that pisses me off tho is Fear works on everything, including Resto Druids. Its like the only way to beat multiples of healers is to fear bomb them then dps focusfire down whomever you can. Sheep is shit in these situations. I guess i should blame Resto Druid design more, but they shouldn't allow druids to shift out of it if they get caught in caster form. They should have a penalty for what they shift into, and where you can catch them where they are vulnerable to a spell like sheep.

[Profyrion]

Yeah I agree with that to an extent.

Druid CC immunity is pretty ridonkulous.

[Leialyn]

Both are old spells from when WoW wasn't really balanced. The healing of sheep comes from times when there was no diminishing return on CC spells.

In my eyes, fear is way more powerfull than sheep is... since you see, there are 2 types of cc spells that make you unable to act, stuns and desorient effects
stuns don't break on damage like cheap shot, kidney shot, etc
desorient effects break on any damage like gouge, etc

Sheep definately belongs to the desorient category while fear is more like a stun because it "can" break but it doesn't on dots... the whole differenciation between dots and non dots on fear is really stupid.


But there are way more obvious imbalances between classes like the spelldamage coefficients between warlocks and mages that exist since Burning Crusade Beta and Blizzard hasn't even bothered fixing them, they play around more with Retri Paladins and other Hybrids that are a much smaller playerbase than Mages are.

[Nangz]

yes it would be.

since sheep has no CD, it would be WAY op if it didn't heal

on anything sheep-able, you could Sheep -> nuke -> sheep -> nuke etc until dead

all of the other forms of cc have some form of penalty to keep them from being spammable, usually a cooldown. The heal is the mage penalty. fear is quite strong but has a much shorter duration and requires more effort to be continually applied. Fear is also notorious for pulling adds in pve settings
Fear is a good form of control but requires more attention than sheeping

I think the simplest answer is that the abilities weren't designed with arena in mind. Dot fear is something that has been unique to the warlock arsenal for a long time

/thread

[MewersTheCat]

if fear healed.. people wouldn't be able to die in one!

I know warlocks bitch about sometimes their fear breaking instantly on damage..

but.. i think that's counter balanced.. in the fact... that.. i've had a 40k health prot pally die in a warlocks fear to the warlock and boomkin.

<full life> -> FEAR! -> chaos bolt + dots + starfire + wrath = dead and with 2 seconds of fear to spare.

[Seraphmortus]

Heh, kind of off topic but anyone remember when sheep made the target sink? Had fun back in the day with that, you could sheep someone in 4 feet of water and watch them drown.

Anyway, different CC is different. Locks, particularly affliction locks, rely on fear to an extent as their main escape and way to keep melee at distance. There are a lot fewer counters to sheep to go along with the heal and mages have a plethora of escape mechanisms.

[spockette]

Sheep, PyroBlast, Sheep, PyroBlast, Sheep, PyroBlast - dead
Sheep, Frost Bold, Sheep, Frost Bolt, Sheep, Frost Bolt, Frost Nove, Frost Bolt - dead

Fear, Shadowbolt, Fear, Shadow......Your target is out of range.

Target is out of range. Good thing dots are applied.

[pande]

The are both very powerful forms of CC. Polymorph is the unquestionably better CC of the two, primarily because it is more reliable. More powerful = more drawback.

[soultaken]

This thread has to have some of the most retarded comments i've ever seen on MMO. It could almost be an official thread.
Correct me if I'm wrong but polymorph like any other CC is subject to diminishing returns.
So 12 secs, 6 secs, 3secs,immune.
pryoblast is a 5sec cast so you cannot just rinse and repeat until dead. you can get in a few casts.

Instead of comparing to fear, you'd be better arguing the toss about cyclone.
thats 6, 3, immune but you can get a few starfires in there and it doesn't heal.
It also has no cd and is relatively spamable to an extent.

Poly and Cyclone are tools in the box for those classes. For an affliciton lock fear is THE major ability of that class and spec imo. Curse of exhaustion a close second i guess (not that my lock lasts that long with only 850 resi but still).

Hex also doesn't heal - ok it has a cd.

And for those that say fear isn't a cc - wtf? Are you in control of your toon while feared? No. Then its cc imo.

[MewersTheCat]

Pretty bad when a fear makes it so the 40k hp paladin cannot bubble. lol.

yea, bubble doesn't have a cooldown.. lol you're right.. damn i'm dumb.

[Thornfallow]

Ugh, some of you guys wouldn't know mechanics if they took collective a dump in your mouths.

Fear has inherently a much shorter range than Polymorph.
Fear breaks on a very small amount of damage:

• Two ticks of any DoT
• A DoT crit

There are arguably many more anti-Fear mechanics than anti-Polymorph.
Fear is on the primary Warlock spell school in terms of defense (and even offense for Affliction).
Fear has ridiculous RNG pathing, both positively and negatively.
Polymorph is only on -a- defensive spell school for the majority of Mages.
Both are dispellable and on different DR's.

[TwistedPower]

Fear makes the target run away, thus distancing itself from the target or even losing itself from its own healer. That little fact makes it more powerfull then sheep. Fear can also be broken by a large majority of moves, where as pollymorph can only be broken through druid shapeshifting m oves (not including pvp trinket effetcts) Also if sheep didnt heal they would put it on the same DR as disorients and fears so you couldnt do all 3 and just CC for 3 min straight. Which would suck becuase i like them beeing on differnt DR. And anyways you can always just sheep the full hp target and kill the other one.

[Yvaelle]

Sheep has no cooldown, can be chained on the same target to remove them from the fight for 45 seconds, and then you just switch to chain Sheeping their partner instead. more than half the classes in the game have abilities which break or make them immune to fear for significant portions of any fight, and fear (in priest and warrior cases) have long cooldowns as well.

Do you know why RMP is so overpowered?

Three reasons:

Mage chain sheeps 1/3 of the enemy team the entire game, the game always starts as 2v3, and if you each kill one opponent anyways, its still 1v2. By the time DR is full on one target you switch to chain sheeping the next, then to the next, then DR is back off the first.

Rogue vs just about anyone is a threat when backed with a healer and a mage adding damage - crippling poison wrecks movement speed, wounding poisons turns anyone into a mana sponge, they deal high burst damage, and they have a huge array of cooldowns to fit to any scenario or opponent - not to mention stun lock.

Disc priests are the only healers who do real damage if they aren't healing. A druid who isn't healing might toss a cyclone, a pal who isn't healing might (lol) HoJ someone, a shaman will hex and shock - but a good disc priest can do 2k-2k5 dps sustained in PvP gear and if they double crit can burst for nearly 10k - that's a lot of burst coming off a healer. Additionally with a rogue chain stunning they can mana burn without breaking CC, or assist dps, and their weak armor and mana inefficiency isn't an issue with 2 of 3 enemy targets either stun locked or sheeped.

That's why RMP is so powerful - each class plays an important part - and the most important mage part is that their existence permanently unbalances any encounter to the RMP's favour. Warlocks can't do that with fear, you can't chain fear targets for nearly as long or as effectively, and you can't switch to any target and break it - DK's lichborne, priest fear ward, warrior's rage, druids resist.

No class breaks sheep with a common cooldown (apart from trinket), and that is why you pay for the universal ability to permanently unbalance any situation to your favour with the paltry cost of having to focus your burst - what's more - fear makes people run out of range of subsequent fears, sheep doesn't.

Sheep needs a nerf if anything, l2p scrub mage.

[DocQuantum]

It's obvious. Fear is a terrifying experience: the body wouldn't self-heal through it. Sheep, on the other hand, are for loving... er... um...

I just remembred another thread I need to be in.

[Xacez]

Different answers have been said many times now, you may now stop post before this turns into a Mage vs Warlock whine

[Joarrak]

yes it would be.

since sheep has no CD, it would be WAY op if it didn't heal

on anything sheep-able, you could Sheep -> nuke -> sheep -> nuke etc until dead

all of the other forms of cc have some form of penalty to keep them from being spammable, usually a cooldown. The heal is the mage penalty. fear is quite strong but has a much shorter duration and requires more effort to be continually applied. Fear is also notorious for pulling adds in pve settings
Fear is a good form of control but requires more attention than sheeping

I think the simplest answer is that the abilities weren't designed with arena in mind. Dot fear is something that has been unique to the warlock arsenal for a long time

The difference in effects between them is that in PVE, sheep lasts for 1 minuteish, so it is a form of cc for mobs and was meant for that purpose. Fear lasts for 8 seconds i think? and makes to mob run, making it fairly invaluable as CC in PVE. Fear was more meant to be for pvp, and it was what made warlocks OP in vanilla because they could fear and then rape things and it was very hard to break. They changed that in BC by making many ways to remove fear (I can't remember if we even had trinkets in vanilla to dispel CC).

This I believe was blizzards initial plan: Polymorph as CC for PVE, fear as CC for pvp.

The quote above me talks about the length, but in PVP CC won't last longer than 10 seconds so it is almost irrelevant. And anyways, there are more ways to break fear than there are to break polymorph i believe (no I won't count them so don't quote me on this). It boils down to that polymorph was not meant to be an interrupt CC like fear with which you can still dps and make melee run away from you. Polymorph was meant to be like a sheep the healer so we can burn down his dps! At least for arenas.

Just my 2 cents, I didn't read past the first page so sorry if this was said already.