Healers: How good or bad does your class have it in WoD?

[steveyboy]

Healing to be honest has gotten really boring these days, just spaming the same spells over and over again, with much less reward than dpsing.

[Kaq]

Having Resto/Holy/Disc heals im just really happy to hear that healing will be similar to cata's, i know alot of people dislike it but for me and my guild we enjoyed it thoroughly

[Anprionsa]

Little input from Shaman's standpoint.

First of all, Riptide. It has a cooldown, in contrast with Rejuv, which doesn't. You can remove the cooldown via a glyph, at the cost of 75% of the initial heal (used to be an hps loss in most scenarios). Either way, i certainly would NOT put it in one bag with the likes of PW:S, Rejuv, EF or RM. It is just much weaker.

Next, onto the main problem in your comparison: Chainheal. You put it both in "spread" and "stacked" toolkits. Which is it? Because if you're under impression it's a superuniversal tool for any occasion, you're very much mistaken:|

You never "spammed it as fast as buttons let you". You always had to pick targets, because of the interaction with Riptide (it flat buffs the chainheal by 25% iirc). It was also never our main spell, more of a filler, all of those had a higher prio: HR, HST, Riptide on cd, Earthshield recast (past 5.4 with 2p t16). Prior to 5.4, with the healing dropping off with each consecutive jump, the spell would usually yield barely more healing than a single target heal, unless the raid was 100% stacked, that's how crappy it was.

Then came the range problem. On vast majority of fights, the heal would not chain beyond the first target unless you glyphed it. Sure, the glyph doesnt put a cd on Chainheal anymore (and it used to ><), but we actually have to glyph for it to be even considered in a non-100%-stacked scenarios.

Now, short explanation of "High Tide" talent. It has been confirmed by Celestalon on twitter that the cap of Riptided targets it will additionally jump to is 3. So "all targets" means "3 targets". You have to also bear in mind Blizzard's design philosophy of not allowing one talent to be vastly superior to others (unless they are all crap, then it's fine). Atm High Tide, on paper, is worth MULTITUDES of what the other 2 talents bring to the table. Hint: it's going to get nerfed, because design philosophy.

To put it in perspective, so you really, really realise how utterly bad shaman spread healing is/was: ToT, with all the high movement/spread fights, we were down to 3 rotational spells: Healing Stream Totem (now 50% nerfed), Riptide and SINGLE TARGET HEALS. "WoD model is going to be more tbc-like healing" i heared. Whelp, that's how it already was for us, boys, for a good, long while.

I understand the "grass is greener" mentality. I dont deny monk's toolkit is lacking in several areas, that's what personally put me off the class. But i do havesome experience with 90 lvl of every healing spec and i can, without a shadow of a doubt, say - spreadhealing isn't as disastrous for you as it is for others (esp. shamans). Just think about it: the major "high spread, high movement" raidtiers in the past are historically the ones where shamans perform the worst (Firelands, ToT). Sometimes as bad as below 50% of the average expected hps.

Still is disastrous. Especially in 10man.

[Totaltotemic]

Still is disastrous. Especially in 10man.

10 man doesn't exist in WoD. There is only 20 man. That's an extremely important distinction when talking about WoD healing.

This is a diagram I made to illustrate what a spread-out 20 man raid looks like so you can see the effect various heals have.


PoH and glyphed Chain Heal be in range of roughly half of the ranged at any given time, which means at least 6 people.

[Lovestar]

PoH and glyphed Chain Heal be in range of roughly half of the ranged at any given time, which means at least 6 people.

Can CHeal 'backtrack', or is it stuck going in one direction once it hits someone?

Sorry if that Q makes no sense, I can clarify better if it doesn't.

[Tiberria]

Can CHeal 'backtrack', or is it stuck going in one direction once it hits someone?

Sorry if that Q makes no sense, I can clarify better if it doesn't.

It can't bounce twice to the same target within one chain if that's what you mean. Other than that, it can jump around in any random direction within its range. Even with High Tide specced, they have confirmed that it will be capped to 3 extra Riptide bounces, and if the jump hits some (or all) of your 3 Riptide targets within the initial chain, you just get less extra jumps from High Tide.

In theory, Chain Heal with a 25 yard jump range can jump 100 yards across the room - if the 4 people it chooses are in a straight line, each exactly 25 yards apart.

[Stormspellz]

seeing we have literally zero actual hands on time for it, its impossible to say.

[Lovestar]

Putting this here so I don't forget it inside my PM inbox that I never check, which usually happens when people PM me something useful because I never check my PMs, until I find time to edit all this info into the OP:

Hey just wanted to clarify something without adding clutter to the thread.

In regards to Tree of Life. Its sort of a a Hybrid between an Aoe CD and either a throughput CD or a mana regen CD.

It is an aoe CD in one respect only, it increases WG from 6 targets to 8: a 33% increase. Given the WG CD, In casts you get 6 extra targets over the duration of Tree of life. (cast 3, get 1 for free...over 30 secs)

The playstyle you described, which is spread LB across raid targets and use Regrowths on Omen of Clarity procs is the mana regen CD method. It's an HPS loss compared to the throughput method - and as such is hardly used anymore (was more common at the start of MoP when mana was tighter). Not sure if you are aware but the Lifeblooms from Tree of life have 1/10 the normal % chance to proc omen of clarity. So its not like you are flooded in them.

The throughput method is to just cast your heals as normal and benefit from the 15% increased healing. Spreading those stronger rejuvs around is much more useful than the LB casts. With the meta gem and plent of mana regen, its easy enough to spam some rejuvs out during the duration of the CD (was alot harder to do that early in MoP - hence the mana regen style above)

So in reality its almost exactly like wings for a pally (a straight up throughput CD but 15% instead of 20%) with 2 perks: WG hits 2 more targets and Regrowth procs can be cast while moving (given that its already a 1.5 sec cast before haste, its not usually hard to squeeze those in anyhow - more a pvp use but not relevant here for raiding)

Hence why I suggested putting ToL in a throughput CD category (with perhaps a disclaimer) - its not strictly that, as we do get some aoe from it, but its mostly that. (like many druid things, its a hybrid that gives several options in 1 button)

A side note is that unless you need a throughput CD - most druids use Soul of the Forest which ups your normal WG healing by a metric fuckton - the only fight i swap to Tree is Garrosh, since the only hard part to healing are the whirlings.

Also - regarind Riptide, treat it just like holy shock. You hit it on CD because its cheap, instant, decently efficient, and most importantly generates a resource. HP for shock, tidal waves for Riptide. Also you can think of it just like ReM for the same reasons, on top of you want 3 riptides out so you have targets to bounce chain heal off of, much like ReM for Uplift. - So Riptide is Holy ReM

seeing we have literally zero actual hands on time for it, its impossible to say.

People keep saying this, people keep not comprehending that it is wrong, probably because they read only the title and not the body of the OP.

We're not comparing numbers, we're comparing projections based on what your mechanics look like. Inaccuracy is to be expected, the point is to compare "Grass is greener" feelings across specs and find out how green it actually looks when you hear what other classes have to deal with in their day to day gameplay, something which often gets lost in the noise of class-specific discussions.

[DrMcNinja]

Healing in it's current form is boring.

Paladin: Judgment, Holy Shock, Holy Radiance, Light of Dawn, repeat.

That's it. It's boring, it's simple and not skillful at all.

[Daws001]

Healing in it's current form is boring.

Paladin: Judgment, Holy Shock, Holy Radiance, Light of Dawn, repeat.

That's it. It's boring, it's simple and not skillful at all.

Pretty much. Which is probably why MWs are the only healers I like atm. When I'm bored, I can dps, switch things up, and bounce around.

That said, I have been in a few terrible raids this week where I've actually had to pay attention because everything was going wrong.

Good times.

P.S.- I'm not mad at the MW alpha changes. I'm excited for beta to see how they feel.