A New Healing Class and Mechanic?

[Deleted]

Ok, It's late in the UK. 20 to 1 in the morning. I'm freakin' tired. This is more than likely a non-sensical brain fart. Just roll with me though.

What if there was a healing class which used energy as a resource, much like a rogue. Let's say they start with 100 energy, just like a rogue, and regen an unchangable amount of 5 energy per second (I'm assuming this class would have an inherant 1sec GCD as opposed to the conventional 1.5sec GCD). They would need to have 3 heals, as well as some CDs to be similar to normal healing classes. These would be;

[Slow, Efficient Heal - Costs 8 energy, 2 second cast time. ] The idea behind this is that this spell is similar to a paladin's holy light spell. It doesn't heal for much at all, but it can be spammed forever at pretty much negligible cost and allows a small amount of regen to occur while being cast.

[ Slow, Powerful Heal - Costs 25 energy, 2.5 second cast time ] This spell would be equivalent to a paladin's Divine Light spell. Spamming of this spell would result in a net loss of energy, but not as fast as the next heal.

[ Fast, Powerful-ish Heal - Costs 25 energy, 1 second cast time ] This spell, like a paladin's Flash of Light spell, totally 'rapes' your resource, but provides quick, fast emergency heals.

[ Instant, Low Heal - Costs 10 energy, Instant ] - Heals for the same amount as the first heal, but for slightly more resource and has no cast time. This spell would also most likely be spammable and have no CD.


Now, CDs.

[ 20% haste increase - 20 second duration - 2.5 minute CD ] A CD for when damage is occuring fast. When activated, puts all other CDs on a 30 sec CD to stop all CDs stacking and allowing for imba healing.

[ Instantly restores 30? energy - 3 minute CD ] - CD to save someone with a large heal when you're low on resources. Would initiate a 30sec CD to stop CDs being stacked.

[ Increases Energy regeneration rate by 100% and healing continues at 75% efficiency - 10 second duration - 2 minute CD ] Allows you to spam more heals, but they heal for less. Initiates a 30sec CD to stop CDs being stacked.



So yeah, as you can see I have some rough outline of a design of a new healing class. I will probably add to this IF i get bored enough and I get positive feedback! So yeah, let me know what you think, and as you can tell, it's all very rough atm :P




EDIT: To stop Spirit and Intellect being null stats, I have one idea. Spirit would instead convert itself into Spell Power at the rate Intellect currently does for other classes. Intellect for this class would however lower the overall energy costs of spells as well as providing spell power at the rate it does to other classes. This would be inherant of playing the class and would not be talented.

[Grenzstein]

I wish we had a class like the Warrior Priest from Warhammer Online, a melee heavy armored healing class. Imagine a Ret Pally healing while he is beating down the boss. The damage would be low, just to trigger his heal abilities and buffs. Could even be mid damage / mid heals, and raid wide buffs.

[eternalwhitemoon]

Speaking as a healer wiping on the current raid environment, I just have to say:

100 points is WAY too restrictive. They'd go "oom" in four casts. Four.

Further, the whole point is to make mana matter. If you're setting it up like rogues and ferals, if they do it right, they're never ever out of energy and can go on forever. Much as the concept is cool, it flies in the face of the healing structure they have nowadays.

[Deleted]

Speaking as a healer wiping on the current raid environment, I just have to say:

100 points is WAY too restrictive. They'd go "oom" in four casts. Four.

Further, the whole point is to make mana matter. If you're setting it up like rogues and ferals, if they do it right, they're never ever out of energy and can go on forever. Much as the concept is cool, it flies in the face of the healing structure they have nowadays.

Not really imo. Regen would continue unabated by casting, so the efficiency is higher. I would also plan for these heals to have a rather large heal amount so they don't NEED to be spammed as much as regular heals.

The difference between the healing model for this class and the healing model for everyone else is that here Mana only has to be managed short term, where as for any other class, you're thinking more long term. I think ,when tweaked right, it would bring a new healing philosiphy to the table which would be both enjoyable, rewarding and unique.

I also believe if the efficient heal had absolutely AWFUL throughput, it would help this. Basically, we'd have a class which heals quickly in large amounts, but can't do it for very long at once, but will always be ready to heal again in about 20 seconds! I hope that made sense >.<

[Deleted]

A healing class that never worries about their resource running out long-term - I'm pretty sure thats EXACTLY the opposite of what Blizzard have aimed for.

[eternalwhitemoon]

Not really imo. Regen would continue unabated by casting, so the efficiency is higher. I would also plan for these heals to have a rather large heal amount so they don't NEED to be spammed as much as regular heals.

The difference between the healing model for this class and the healing model for everyone else is that here Mana only has to be managed short term, where as for any other class, you're thinking more long term. I think ,when tweaked right, it would bring a new healing philosiphy to the table which would be both enjoyable, rewarding and unique.

I also believe if the efficient heal had absolutely AWFUL throughput, it would help this. Basically, we'd have a class which heals quickly in large amounts, but can't do it for very long at once, but will always be ready to heal again in about 20 seconds! I hope that made sense >.<

True, but there's still a few problems. Not being able to heal for 20 seconds due to a screwup in your healing choice will result in undue stress on other healers and quite possibly some death flyin around.

Also having overly generous heals could easily be PVP imbalanced, and you know how Blizz loves to nerf PVE for the sake of PVP :/

A healing class that never worries about their resource running out long-term - I'm pretty sure thats EXACTLY the opposite of what Blizzard have aimed for.

Also, again, this. The whole reason they changed the entire face of healing was because we didn't run out of mana.

[Deleted]

I like the unique style you think of and I too wish for example the next hero class would be a new style of healer or something along those lines . Paladins have the new holy power charges now (holy power may be called something else, cannot remember at this moment haha), why not give the whole class something like that, I like it!

[ericyeahright]

A healing class that never worries about their resource running out long-term - I'm pretty sure thats EXACTLY the opposite of what Blizzard have aimed for.

I agree. There is no possible way Blizzard could balance that into WoW as far as I can see. You have absolutely no worry about the long term and wasted heals.

[Shuyin]

[Slow, Efficient Heal - Costs 8 energy, 2 second cast time. ] The idea behind this is that this spell is similar to a paladin's holy light spell. It doesn't heal for much at all, but it can be spammed forever at pretty much negligible cost and allows a small amount of regen to occur while being cast.

[ Slow, Powerful Heal - Costs 25 energy, 2.5 second cast time ] This spell would be equivalent to a paladin's Divine Light spell. Spamming of this spell would result in a net loss of energy, but not as fast as the next heal.

[ Fast, Powerful-ish Heal - Costs 25 energy, 1 second cast time ] This spell, like a paladin's Flash of Light spell, totally 'rapes' your resource, but provides quick, fast emergency heals.

[ Instant, Low Heal - Costs 10 energy, Instant ] - Heals for the same amount as the first heal, but for slightly more resource and has no cast time. This spell would also most likely be spammable and have no CD.

i found a nice name for this class and spec: holy paladin

[buttheal]

Why am I picturing you kidnapping a hapless rogue, tossing him in a brown rucksack and carrying him to the Stormwind Cathedral, where Archbishop Benedictus brainwashes him and Jaina uses her magic to turn the rogues stuns into healing spells.

Then, this "thing" roams the streets trying to stunlock people but all he can do is heal them...roflllll

Oh btw, your new "class" is just a rogue who was brainwashed into thinking he's a paly with priest CD's.

[Kuniku]

the "kinds" of heals u propsed are too generic, as a previous poster pointed out - much like a holy paladin, you've jsut changed the blue bar yellow =p

the key to making a new healing class would be to:

A) use a different (new?) resource to replace mana

B) make it a different play style to existing healers
and
C) come up with some new healing spell variants

I do kinda like the idea of a melee based healer, as its completely different, that way you could have a melee dps spec, a healer spec (with very little damage output) and a spec in the middle that does medium damage, medium healing and possibly does a lot of raid wide buffing.

possibly to make it more interesting have it use either a rage type mechanic where you attack and have 1 or 2 "free" melee attacks, that generate rage which you then use to cast spells (but casting doesnt interupt auto attacks and could possibly include a melee attack too)
or more DK style and have runes that you use to do melee attacks which generate runic power used to cast heals . . .

i quite like the DK rune idea (bear with me i'm thinking this out as i type it all =p)
have:
2 DPS runes, 2 Healing runes and 2 Buff runes.
DPS runes generate more (say double) runic power when you're not dps spec (and visversa for dps spec) to promote the use of the "off spec" abilities.

runic power would be used to cast your typical healing spells, to fit in with the exsiting expensive fast, expensive slow and cheap slow blizzard template, but possibly have one slow one leave a HOT (like the old regrowth perhaps?) and have the cheap slow be buffed by a buff that one of your melee attacks leaves on the raid (like nourish)

possibly have a Healing Rune based melee attack that does an AoE heal on impact etc (uses one of each rune type?) possibly have a chain heal type heal sprouting off of another melee attack (1 Heal 1 Buff etc)

i'm not sure what i'd do weapons wise, could roll with caster sword/mace and shield, to help negate boss AoE attacks (and in turn provide spel power) or could roll with 2 handers and have a stat conversion talent in the non DPS trees to icnrease spell power by a coefficient of the weapon dps/str or whatever =)

anyways that was just off the top of my head, but doesnt sound half bad xD