Healing isnt fun OR hard

[Chireru93]

the point is that you use that heal (healing surge) that has insane more mana cost when the tank is taking dmg. sure, the insane amounts of mana it costs compared to healing wave compared to how much more it heals may not be much, but that's-the-point!!! they don't want you using a fast heal that heals for 3x as much as your slow heal when it costs 3x as much mana, that makes it to where it's almost optimal to spam that spell because of how much it heals for and then just ask a boomkin for an innervate or pop your mana regen cds. in fact I see most healers spamming healing surge/flash heal/flash of light all the time anyways even when the group is taking like 1% of their hp every second (averaged) or whatever.

in short, it's different. you shouldn't use healing surge unless the tank is taking all that dmg, sure it'll blow through your mana, but that's the point! it's a risky heal that you, the player, must decide whether or not to use.

[Deleted]

I'm going to reserve final judgement until I've done some raids but so far healing has been hit and miss.

At worst it's long periods of doing very little, followed by short periods of not having enough throughput/mana or both. At best you get to use your full repertoire of spells and end the fight with everyone alive and 5-10% mana left. Thankfully most, if not all fights tend towards the latter (or are just dull) when you've got the tactic right and you've got a few gear upgrades.

So far I've found uses for all healing spells. Predominantly I use Riptide, Healing Wave and Unleash Elements as I'm sure is the case for everyone but Greater Healing Wave gets a look in when someone is in desperate need of heals or I need to catch up on tank, Healing Rain is useful when there is a heavy party-wide AoE damage, Chain Heal is similarly useful either when the damage isn't enough to warrant HR or to supplement it when raid damage is particularly heavy. The least useful heal I've found is Healing Surge and I pretty much only use it when I need a big fast heal and I don't have Tidal Waves up/Riptide is on cooldown.

[Kavalir]

Fine, i'll take up your challenge. As a holy paladin, i faced some major changed to the whole concept of healing. I now have two resources to manage, mana and holy power. I've got several healing spells at my disposal now.

Holy Radiance (AoE heal, 10 sec, major costs, mana)
Flash of Light (Relatively large heal, short casttime, really expensive, mana)
Holy Light (Cheap, slowcast and minor heal, mana)
Light of Dawn (Coneshaped healing, heals for more, when you got more Holy power, costs Holy Power)
Divine Light (Really big heal, relatively slow, major costs, mana)
Word of Glory (Instant heal, heals for more, when you got more Holy power, costs Holy Power)
Holy Shock (Instant average heal, uses mana)

In addition to this, i have several cooldowns at my disposal.

Illumination (Increases haste and crit-chance)
Guardian of Ancient Kings (Funny guy, who heals the target i heal. Basicly makes you heal more for 5 heals)
Avenging Wrath (Increases healing and damage done)
Divine Plea (Reduces healing, but returns mana)

As you can see from the list, i have a variety of heals and cooldowns now, and they all fit certain situations. In the beginning of a fight, i mostly just spam Holy Light, in order to keep the tank up, and heal people who's going low. When things get hot i have to decided to do Holy Light or Flash of Light, knowing that i'll get out of mana sooner, but be able to heal the raid more, with Flash of Light. Sometimes trying to make a combination is the best choice to make. If the entire raid takes damage i have to either get them in line to use Dawn of Light, or run into the middle of the group to use Holy Radiance, or simply spam Flash of Light to get people up fast.

Furthermore, to heal people that just take some damage i got Word of Glory and Holy Shock, which are cute little instant spells that heal for an average amount. Oh, and if the tank starts taking loads of damage, i have to start using Divine Light to keep him up.

To make things a little more fun, i have to try and generate as much Holy Power as i can, in order to use these heals instead, and save mana. This is generated by healing the target with Beacon of Light on them, or using Holy Shock. So, when healing i have to take this into consideration, because not using Holy Power, will surely make you go out of mana very, very fast.

So yeah, i feel that healing as a holy paladin now is both fun and challening, and i certain can find a use for all my healing spells. You ever considered that all the groups you join that fail, might actually have something to do with you?

To sum up - I feel like i have a lot do do now, and i have the means to do it, i just have to be fast enough to figure out when to use what, and don't use up all my mana at once.

I don't think paladins understand how good they have it for healing atm. Its not even funny the mana efficiency compared to the other healing classes. Not saying that other classes can't get the job done, but healing on a paladin you need to be a lot less careful about when to throw heals and how much you can overheal.

[monkfish]

So far I've found uses for all healing spells. Predominantly I use Riptide, Healing Wave and Unleash Elements as I'm sure is the case for everyone but Greater Healing Wave gets a look in when someone is in desperate need of heals or I need to catch up on tank, Healing Rain is useful when there is a heavy party-wide AoE damage, Chain Heal is similarly useful either when the damage isn't enough to warrant HR or to supplement it when raid damage is particularly heavy. The least useful heal I've found is Healing Surge and I pretty much only use it when I need a big fast heal and I don't have Tidal Waves up/Riptide is on cooldown.

pretty much this, i've been palying a resto shammy for quite some time now and right now i can totally say im having far more fun healing with it than in wrath, and probably tbc also..

but yeah, about the above - i'm pretty much using unleashed elements every time its off cd, costs like 1.5k mana or something, heals for easily as much as the initial heal of rip-tide and boosts next spell by 20%? or is it 30, either way.. i think its great, just gives that little extra kick.

in heroics with my guildies and im not having mana issues at all any more after getting some hc gear and i can generally just keep tanks alive with UE+RT / HS (without having to really spam anything tbh). Been raiding too, and in 10man im healing alongside a holy priest who in no way is blowing me away on healing done or anything, im easily healing as much or a ltitle more than him every time we try something so i dont feel like im falling behind other healers in that respect, though fair enough, i've not healed with a pally or druid but i guess it cant be too much different..

i found from the couple of raid encounters that ive done that things always seem to balance out with mana too - there seems to be parts where tank may take savage damage but then a phase will change or something will happen or a different mob is 'in play' and shit will get easier and you can regen a bit for a while before it gets hardcore again, also with having about ~3.3k combat regen, with heartsong on wep and 2x 1710ish +spi trinket procs it can peak pretty nice and so keep my regen up.. along with mana pot + mana tide when needed, im not really finding mana -too- much of an issue so far, sure, its tough to make sure i manage myself properly and dont run out, but thats very fun for me - im certainly finding uses for all my spells while raiding, so its all good..

[not read all the replies here, so may have repeated or something, sorry about that, just my thoughts on the first post really]

/monk

[Elucive]

Healing now is hard, but it is doable, ive healed all the dungeons, and have ran some of the heroics in elem spec, and its just what blizz did to our spells is what hurts. Our spells cost more mana now, more mana then what we regain in and out of combat. We have to mess and adjust our stats a bit more now, and have to balance it all out. But hard, yes it is harder now, but you can manage. One thing I do hate is that the mp5 while in combat is a pain to get up. But if you just a dps then yeah you wouldnt understand and expect to be healed, and if you let them die your considered a bad healer, cant heal if you dont have mana. Also you shouldnt be taking aggro from the tank, idc how high your dps is, no tank, no heals, youll die.
surge, mana wave, chain heal ect all cost more then 4k mana now. with 2.5k 3k mana regain while in combat just doesnt cut it. Have to be real careful with the gear we get now. Having tanks with over 110k health doesnt help either.
Stack Intell, Spirit, decent crit, haste if you think your spells are still slow, the main spells you use. My option, works for me so far. But im only at 335 IL.
Any other ideas on building stats for resto?

[monkfish]

im at 347 IL, 3848 int, 2145 spi (2815 combat regen with WS on, unbuffed), 13% haste and 15% crit.

im certainly trying to find gear with spi on it over stuff with just stam/int tbh, tryin to maximise my combat regen as its a massive help.. generally im going for more crit than haste atm, though its starting to balance out a bit more. at least when i was gearing in heroics i was looking for like int>spi>crit>haste and reforging mastery to spi>crit>haste in that order depending on what stats were currently on said item.. so i guess that ur list there is a good way to go, i like how im going with it at least, its working out nicely in raiding too.. its a challenge to manage still, as i said above, but i love it!

[TheDrednaught]

My 2 cents on the issue at hand...

With Cataclysm Blizzard had stated with one of their posts (Which I cannot find now but was on MMO-CHAMPION a long time ago) that if you played a Shaman Healer in WotLK then you will be comfortable with the healing changes made for Cataclysm. They were wrong. My biggest gripe is this.

In Vanilla WoW I quit my Resto Shaman because I was brought to a raid and told "Drop totems around Group ### and chain heal Group ###". That was my only utility, totems and chain heals and my mana would be sufficient to do this job.

In BC I did not play my Resto Shaman because I had switched.

In WotLK I brought back my Resto Shaman because I wanted to heal. Everyone says that WotLK was Vanilla Chain-heal Spam all over again, but I beg to differ. Good players used other spells and tried mana conservation for "oh SH1T" moments where they would have to bomb big heals on a tank or raid. I utilized ALL of my healing spells in a single raid situation.

In Cataclysm thus far it has become the closest thing back to Vanilla that I remember except for the level difference and were using two different spells. Our heals are not adequate for the damage and health pools people have now. Healing Wave is geared for level 70. My Healing Wave is under 2.2 by a fraction and crits as high as 10k if I am lucky.

With Cataclysm healing my understanding was that healers would have to be more better at maintaining their mana. They have done this but at the expense of all of our other healing spells. Riptide - Healing Wave - Healing Wave - Riptide has become the new healing rotation to maintain health in situations where people are taking large amounts of damage. If there is a Oh Sh1t moment on a tank you can cast a Healing Surge on him for a 14k-18k crit (Thats with over 6000 SP btw). Now I know tanks have more health then this but for some peoples understanding...

(Numbers are rounded)

Tank has 100,000 HP. Healer has 70,000 mana. Tank gets hit for 60,000 damage. Healing Surge with its 7k mana cost for a heal not guaranteed to crit only heals the tank for 15k, lets say you riptide first. You've spent 10,000-11,000 mana on two heals to healing your tank for 1/5th his health. Lets say your whole party is taking considerable damage and you need to get them atleast to 90% health from 40%. 5xHealing Surge = 35k mana = 1/2 your Mana Pool now GG finishing the rest of the fight and trying to do that again.

Healing Surge does not scale well and costs to much for the horrible scaling.

Greater Healing Wave has become a NS-GHW spell to use in Oh Shit moments.

Chain heal is Laughable with its 5k-7k initial hit and widdles down to 2k. Because that 2k really effects a health pool of 100,000. Chain heal is like pissing into the grand canyon.

Riptide, Healing Wave, Unleash Elements all 3 of those are decent on your mana pool. They just need to lower the casting speed of Healing Wave, or increase the amount healed.

Also if they want to make chain heal even approachable it should be something more like... "Chain heals 4 targets, each bounce reduces the amount healed. If it does not bounce, the target hit with the chain heal is healed by the first initial heal and then a HoT is placed on the target for the other 3 bounces."

That would make chain heal atleast..approachable as another HoT to be placed.

After healing Tol Barad last night with a Resto druid, I was sitting at 10% mana left when the fight ended with 9000 HPS only using Riptide/Unleash Elements/Healing Wave. The Resto druid was under me at 8k and was oom.

Scale our heals, lower the cost a little bit, or increase our mana regen from spirit substantially.

[Mammoth]

Saying healing rain is useless because people aren't inside it is wrong. If the boss does an aoe effect for an extended amount of time, the group should move together to make use of these aoe heals. Everyone needs to be more aware of what positions to be in during the fights to make healing easier.

I await raids before judging whether any of the healer classes are broken.

[TheDrednaught]

You await raids? Tol Barad last night and Magmaw. Tol Barad was two healed with myself and a resto druid. Dont know what spells the resto druid used but I only used Riptide and HW. I had 10% mana left at the end, so to say that i should of used Healing Rains for the AoE Slash is wrong because I would of OOMed a long time ago. Magmaw has massive tank/raid damage. Magmaw sucked most of the damage the boss was doing was so great to tanks and raid it was not overly easy for us to efficiently keep them up, but our issue was DPS not tanks or healers.

[Endus]

The only reason I'm having issues with healing is because I don't have two gear sets yet, and Resto's mastery is fairly meh while Elemental's is pretty darn nice. So my healing gear is fairly mastery-heavy with DPS-oriented trinkets. Even so, I have absolutely no problem healing normals, and I can heal the easier heroics with a decent group.

Healing, in Cata, is about mana efficiency, not throughput. If you're trying to keep everyone topped off ASAP, you'll go OOM fast. You should be tossing HoTs and letting those top off the DPS who take some incidental damage. If Healing Stream + Riptide + Earthliving is going to top them off, even if it takes the full duration, then tossing a Healing Wave on them to boot is wasted mana.

I don't use Healing Wave much at all, because spamming heals is a bad idea. My most-used spells now are Greater Healing Wave, Riptide, Healing Rain, and Lightning Bolt.

Because LB, with a Telluric Currents spec, means I can regen mana while not healing. One GHW and an LB or two is better healing, for less mana, in a similar cast time, as three HW.


For the most part, healing has stopped being an "If you aren't dead, you'll be full in 2 seconds, so what doesn't kill you is irrelevant" mechanic, like it was in Wrath, and has become a system of actual healing and triage. Healers need to know the fights, to know whether that DPS needs healing now or if HoTs over the next 10-15s will be fine. They also need the group to avoid any avoidable damage, including using whatever CC they have available. If your group is trying to AoE spam every trash group and DPS are eating cleaves for 20% health here and there due to bad positioning, you should be wiping. Because your group is filled with bad players. It shouldn't BE healable.

That's where most of the healing issues lie right now. DPS and tanks are used to ignoring their health as irrelevant if it's not an insta-kill, and that's a concept that makes no sense in Cata. They will either adjust, or they will struggle with heroic dungeons for their entire Cata career, and be complaining that heroics are "too hard" while the rest of us are raiding.

[Ershiin]

The thing is that you're not SUPPOSED to be able to keep everyone alive by just your merits alone.
You going OOM or someone taking spike damage is the fault of them either not utilizing their abilities/CDs or the mob's mechanics properly (such as not interrupting or standing in the fire).
Your mana is as important for the rest of the group to keep up as their health is to you.
If someone messes up it costs them health and you mana.. Mana that should otherwise be reserved for unavoidable damage and certain boss phases.
If you spam yourself OOM, you're bad.. If you're forced OOM from too much damage, they're bad and supposed to die.
You're the healer. Not their ticket to free damage.. If someone is stressing your mana, let them die for the sake of not wiping entirely. Its called triage, and is what the new healing system is about.

[TheDrednaught]

Lol I do that to our hunter... Heroic Grim Batol.. "Yeah so when he puts his shield up he spits fire out...get behind the boss and dont clip his hit box or you still take damage.." he pulls his shield out and the our hunter from our guild who is the Fing GL stands infront of it and trys to move out of the cone.. I let him die. "Oh my god thats cool..just let me die.." ... "Dont stand infront of the boss after I tell you not you." ... "Well how am I going to DPS.." "You dont.. its avoidance time." "Well thats just stupid..Ill fing stand in melee the whole fight and melee then since obviously I cant shoot ranged.." "/g LF a new ranged player..."


That was basically the dialogue lol.. He was not happy, but I am not here to waste time with him crying that I cant keep him up while he stands in a frontal cone of damage while everyone else gets behind the boss..

[trollaltdel]

wait til cata is almost finished. you wont be saying you can only use 2 spells.

[Anomoly-P4L]

Healing will always be fun because of those moments when a tank/dps is at 1000 HP and you land a heal just bringing them back from the dead.

Intense.

[Jest]

I agree with bad groups being punished. My problem is, if I'm there, and theres a mostly bad group, i should atleast turn that group into an average group.

No. No you shouldn't. If the group sucks, the group sucks. What you seem to fail to get your head around is that the group's job is more than just "You're a Tank, keep aggro. You're DPS, pew pew crap." Their job is ALSO to try not to get hit hard. If the Tank is standing in crap that he has the ability to move out of.. you SHOULD go oom and he should DIE. If the DPS does not use CC and Focus down mobs.. people will take too much dmg overall and you SHOULD go oom and everyone should DIE. This is how dungeons SHOULD operate. No one man should be able to carry 4 other people no matter how omgwtfbbqsauce-awesome that one man is. Cata is seperating the good from the bad and I love it. It sucks having to repair so much but it's worth it if it makes the Bads realize they're bad and inspires them to either A. Get better or B. Quit.

Atm, I cant, i dont have the tools to improve a groups chances of clearing an instance. If i do everything right, it doesnt hurt OR help the group at all. Thats my problem. Theres not reward for being a good healer. If you're already an average healer, theres no reward for becoming a better one.

There isn't supposed to be an ego boost for 1 player out of the group. Everyone is supposed to play an equal part. That's it. No If, And's, or But's about it. If you do a good job.. you shouldn't be going oom immediately unless everyone is just dancing in the fire.. in which case you should have your Meters to point out how terrible the group is being and tell them to get their crap together. The difference in this situation compared to Wotlk was that in Wotlk.. if you were in a group of terrible players.. they could replace you and force some other schmuck to carry them. In Cata.. they can still replace you.. but they'll still fail.. and slowly...they'll realize.. the problem clearly wasn't you. Meanwhile, you may have to wait a bit but you can get a new group that hopefully won't be so terrible.

[bluefurryfood]

Really? I've done a serveral heroics at the moment as a resto druid and I've been able to get through an instance with a bad group. The "skill" needed for heroics reduces based upon your other group members and thats how it should be. If mechanics are done right, the fight should be easy. The "mechanics" are what makes a fight hard/easy and healers are not usually expected to learn other mechanics other than the old "avoid that <insert similar spell to fire>". Blizzard has stated that mechanics done right will reward you.

As for your spells, yes, most of them are inefficent thats the point. (except for chain heal. The last jump heals for like 3-2k which is just not even needed.) Healing Wave should be used and should get you through a fight without any problems but if a dps gets hit by a flame or something, you can recover them with either surge or greater heal. (depending on the time you have until the dps might get hit again) As a healer you are expected to make the best decision, not just spam healing wave and tell the group to do the mechanics right or you go oom. Granted if they never do it right you will go oom faster than ever but a few mistakes are acceptable in some situations.

Oh and the comment about only using two spells seems BS to me. On a successful fight I manage to use only lifebloom and nourish (earth shield and healing wave for you?). But thats rare for me. Dps mess up all the time and I find myself using quick heals at times and still finishing the fight with 50% mana. I can't stress enough the importantance that toping off anyone has to be a critical decision on your part. It is one of my enjoyments because it enforces knowing the fight, predicting damage, and mana conservation all at the same time.



*If you don't want to read that heres a shorter version: Healers save people from mistakes. Blizzard just tried to reduce the number of times we could save dps (which was almost 100% chance we could in woltk, in my personal opinion. Feel free to argue against.). With that said, blizzard still has work to do on some healing spells. *

As for your question about whats hard about it for you, it's the decisions. Its not only just worry about whether to use a fast "okay" heal, or slow amazing heal but judging where to leave a health pool at to allow a dps to survive. Can't top off the whole group anymore without wasting mana. Theres more decisions but I feel like I've typed too much. Feel free to respond!

[criminalmind]

Im not trying to be a dick here here but honestly, if you want a challenging gaming experience that requires a high level of skill why aren't you playing an RTS or FPS?

I've never understood how people equate skill or difficulty with WoW. The only thing I can see as a showcase of skill is maybe having to be well organized as a team to beat certain raid encounters. I suppose the same thing can be said of PVP but in reality it seems to me that PVP left up to mostly class imbalances, RNG, and gear.

I mean, honestly, if there was a high level of skill involved a very "skilled player" could beat two (or even three or four) bad players that were better geared than him - no matter what class the skilled player was playing.

I play because my girlfriend plays as well as some friend in RL, its a social experience and the avatar development is cool. Like I said, Im not trolling here just stating an IMO.

[EndGame]

Holy Paladin's are only mana efficient due to Light of Dawn. We can cast a relatively decent AOE heal for no mana. As a comparison; our Holy Radiance costs almost 10k mana and heals for ~10k on all targets within range. So our mana cost spells are still rather costly; we just have other tools at our disposal to reduce overall mana spent.

I won't disagree that Holy Paladins are probably one of the better healers right now just because of that efficiency... but it comes at a cost. I'd stand to say that Holy Paladins are built for 5 mans right now; we're bar-none the best heroic healer. However, if you want a Holy Paly to heal a raid... it becomes odd. In order to be good at AOE healing; we need to be healing our beacon target. IE: Usually a tank. Generally it's 2 heals on the tank, then toss a holy shock on the raid... then light of dawn the melee or a group of casters. Rinse. Repeat. It's the most efficient and effective means of healing a raid with the highest heals per mana return. Use Holy Radiance when applicable.

As soon as we have to start tossing other heals out to other targets (besides Holy Shock); our efficiency plummets. Shock is the ONLY means of generating Holy Power besides healing our beacon target. So Holy Paladins will have a very interesting niche as a raid healer as a main tank help / aoe healer... I'm not exactly sure they can reliable fit any other role right now.

TL;DR: Holy Paladins are bar-none the best Heroic 5-man healer due to holy power. Raid healing will start to get interesting due to Holy Power and the ways that they have to generate it due to how reliant they are on Holy Power to be healing efficient.

[mannenabo]

shamans are fine, use earth shield, water shield, and healing wave

[btlyger]

The fact that you think chain heal is worthless is exactly why your having trouble.