cata was the expan i always healed on, now mop i am burned out
cata was the expan i always healed on, now mop i am burned out
As a Paladin healer, I LOVED it. Literally loved it. It was a constant challenge, trying to gain every single tick of mana regen you could, using Judgement on CD, meleeing at all times if possible, whilst still keeping a squishy tank up through heavy damage. It wasn't the chaotically spiky damage of early TBC heroics, where a single loose mob would usually mean a wipe, but it was, in my opinion, perfect for challenging healers with mana management.
But you have to remember, most people aren't here for the challenge. They want free gear, and they want it without putting in the effort. Sounds bitter, but it's the pure, unadultered truth. Have to work for something? NO FUN, NERF AT ONCE. Difficult content? WTF..? RETARDED DESIGN, MUST BE ABLE TO PUG WITH NOOBS IN GREENS/RES SICKNESS. Etc, etc.
First month was a bit hard to readjust for the first run or two. But once people learned CC and I re-learned mana management, it was fine.
It was terrible for LFG because people wouldn't coordinate or listen, but great for guild runs.
Putin khuliyo
Wtf are you talking about, you acted like you overcame all odds to heal as paladin and paladins had like 0 mana issues, that was the reason why everyone was begging for a paladin heals in trade if you were forming premades. I had leveled 3 out of 4 healers that first month and paladins were bullshit easy. Not that the rest were all that difficult either, but come on. When was that WoG cooldown implemented, 4.1 or 4.2 patch? Even Blizzard came out and said paladins were broken that first month.
Not to pick on you but when you preface your claim of a "constant challenge" and how you had to fight for every drop of mana before you bitch about the casuals, saying you played a holy paladin in early Cata does not validate your argument.
Healing felt slow and underwhelming. Heals took longer to cast, cost more mana, and healed for the same or less than the previous expansion. Also nerfed mana regain to the point in which you'd have to sit and do nothing after every couple pulls.
Other healers weren't brought to the same level and paladins seemed way too good and broken is- because you could generate Holy Power from Holy Light the beacon target, which made them highly mana efficient and have a big leeway unlike the other healers, I remember they even decided to scrap Holy Light from Tower of Radiance at some point early on when server were actually live and people didn't understand what's going on. That's atleast how I remember it, I'm not sure If i'm missing something else.
Yeah, I'm really not trying to be an ass to Constraint, but early paladins weren't a good reference as to how it was for the other healing classes at the time. You even had people like Aliena from Tankspot saying that holy priest was essentially unplayable (on a raid level) until those hotfixes came in.
In regards to more difficult heroics...don't get me wrong, I wish players would have risen to the challenge and thrived on the harder content. I really, really do. But we lost a lot of players utilizing that sort of model in Cata, and so far we haven't gotten them back.
I'd support the return of harder dungeon content geared towards organized premades if they could be implemented in such a way that casual players didn't feel like they "had" to do them (and therefore, avoid a massive sub loss like in Cata). For example, dungeons could be divided into heroic and mythic level difficulty and the mythic dungeons were on par with Cata content, but you only need gear from heroic dungeons to get into entry-level LFR. Challenge modes could have been content like this if it had been tweaked somewhat, it was unfortunate that a lot of the playerbase ignored CMs until the very end of the expansion.
Personally I'd run the hell out of Cata-difficulty heroics pre-nerf w/the Cata healing model again...on my main. With a guild group. Pugging on my alts? I'd rather chop one of my hands off.
Last edited by Celista; 2014-03-10 at 07:43 AM.
Hard Heroics was only one small factor contributing to the Cata crash. The entire expansion was wrought with mistakes from top to bottom and the cumulative effect is what drove people off. Like changing raiding from the comfy WOTLK "10s are easy, 25s are serious" people got used to into "RAIDING IS FOR REAL ORCS, EARN YOUR PURPLES YOU WORMS" [1]. etc etc etc.
These issues also came just as WoW was aging past its initial hype phase and people were burning out on the WoW-ish MMO design, so it was the worst possible time to give people a laundry list of great reasons to go do something else. Confluence of factors.
Anyway WoD 5-man Heroics are a gear path to Normal+ (our current Flex+), while WoD 5-man Normals are a gear path to LFR which is — I think — not intended as a gear path to 'real' raiding (or at least, will be a sup-optimal one).
So hypothetically you have Normal 5s > LFR for people who want it easy/laid-back and Heroic 5s > Normal/Heroic (like Flex/Normal choice now) > Mythic.
That's the idea at least. But yes, I'm sure we'll still see that no one will be happy on forums. "I'm gearing late, I HAVE to run LFR" ... "LFR ISN'T OPEN YET AND HEROICS ARE HARD I HAVE NOTHING TO DO FIX IT BLIZZARD" ... "OMG SILVER PROVING GROUNDS YOU OFFEND ME THIS IS A SLAP IN THE FACE" ... etc...
1. Or in Magmaw's case, from worms.
Last edited by Lovestar; 2014-03-10 at 09:40 AM.