Incoming Healer Changes

[Boubouille]

Incoming Healer Changes

Since the release of patch 4.0.6, we’ve been keeping an eye on healers and how they are performing and are currently in the process of making some additional adjustments.

Priests

The cost of Power Word: Shield is being increased by 33%. While we wanted Discipline priests to be able to utilize this spell more often and with better results, we also did not want it to be the main spell (and often the only spell) used while in groups. We don’t find this to be a particularly compelling playstyle and have found that it encourages players to avoid using other spells such as Penance. We believe that using a shield in a tight moment is totally appropriate, but we don’t want it to be incredibly efficient to do so with more frequency than that.

We realize that by making Power Word: Shield slightly more expensive for Discipline priests to cast that it might cause Holy priests to avoid using it. To that end, we are adding mana savings into the Body and Soul talent. The tooltip will not reflect this change until a future patch, however. Ideally, Holy priests should not notice much of a change to the Power Word: Shield costs.

Shaman

We are also applying a hotfix for Purification for the Restoration shaman passive from 10% to 25%. We think that shaman healing per second is not as competitive with other healers and while we hoped to bring down Holy priest and Holy paladins (in particular) in 4.0.6, which we did, shaman still appear to be behind. In this case, it is simply easier to buff Restoration shaman rather than nerf everyone else or rebalance the encounters.

In Addition- Restoration Druids and Restoration Shaman

We agree with the sentiment among some players that Restoration druids and Restoration shaman are lacking in the healing cooldown department. The shaman buff and Power Word: Shield adjustment above should bring all healers reasonably close in terms of throughput. The decision on who to bring then might end up being dictated by the strong cooldowns offered by paladins or priests. This isn’t the kind of thing we can address via a hotfix, but it is something we are looking at for the next major content patch.

As always, we appreciate your continued constructive feedback and will do our best to keep you informed of ongoing developments.

[Deleted]

About time

[Nitrak]

Gonna be nice with Resto shamans having some viable tank/raid CD's!

[Rukentuts]

About time Resto Sham got the love it needs.

[zakayron]

FINALLY!!!!1!Eleven!!!

[Deleted]

Finally... Been waiting for the shaman changes for a while. Now only elemental left to fix!

[PaintOnASign]

Its about time. Even the best Shaman's have been behind other healers for a while. And Nature's Swiftness lost its edge ever since Cata was released.

[Schintus]

This is big news... Nice!

[breath]

I really don't like that they make changes that don't reflect in the tooltip, if someone doesn't read those blue posts potentially miss important stuff.

[Peacemoon]

My money is on Tree of Life form adding a +healing aura.

[DirewolfX]

Tranquility doesn't count as a cooldown? Not that I don't mind some love for resto druids, but really it doesn't compare to Resto Shamans who have basically nothing.

[Simca]

Wow, that is a HUGE scaling buff for Restoration Shaman.

That will be absolutely massive, at least 2k HPS, maybe even more in some cases.

[Vinhz]

oyeah and they forgot about shadow again, lets balance it around pve

[Dasuria]

I knew that the bubble nerf was incoming. xD

[Simca]

Tranquility doesn't count as a cooldown? Not that I don't mind some love for resto druids, but really it doesn't compare to Resto Shamans who have basically nothing.

Tranquility is one cooldown. Priests and Paladins have tons.

I think they mean they want to give Druids like 1-2 more, and Shaman like 2-3.

[Simca]

oyeah and they forgot about shadow again, lets balance it around pve

They're not forgetting about Shadow at all. These are HEALING changes.

Shadow is not a healing spec.

[Deleted]

I was just getting used to shield spamming again too

[meroko]

honestly surprised they didn't address holy pally cooldowns. We have one major raid type cooldown atm and it's Aura Mastery and quite honestly...it's shit. I know many people picked it up just for the crusader aura boost and now that it's gone it's not being utilized. I used it in raids but it never felt significant to me. 6 seconds of situational damage reduction. Blah. I miss when we could use Raid wall or spec into it. Move that up the prot tree and we are in business. It would be nice especially for 10 man groups who don't have a prot pally and can still give the addition to this wonderful ability.

[Hulrique]

WTB Holy paladin buffs.

Blizzard is retarded not balancing anything on us.
We need a big buff in PvP.

[Hellgrazr]

cool, make my disc mana problem worse