Lightwell suggestion!

[Kelesti]

I'm just curious, what if "lolwell" worked like a Soulwell. You click on it (25 charges) and you get to pick up an item in your inventory. Except this item was a Wild Growth style HoT (heavy at first, light at the end) instead of just an unimaginative Healing Potion that's on a seperate cooldown.

To keep a priest from spec'ing Holy for it, and then back to Discipline (or shadow) for every fight, make the item in your inventory give you a buff. "Lightwell Radiance"; have it be a physical buff, but losing it destroys the item. (Leaving party/raid, or said priest respecs).

I don't know, I'm just grabbing at straws here, but I desperately think something needs to be done about Lightwell. How's this?

[Danner]

Agree that Lightwell really needs a makeover!

But, I'm afraid your idea does sound a lot like "soulwell, only worse". A clickable healthstone offering a hot will be in a very low demand. Should a DPSer want to heal, they don't do it prematurely. And when it's down to a "heal now or die", no hot will change the outcome. The problem about HoT effects in general is that dpsers don't pay much attention to them. They are expecting a heal within 3 seconds, or they can rightfully whine about sucky healers. A 6 second HoT, even if it is healing for a decent 10k, is not really useful when bosses regularly deal 10-20k damage on the raid. Heck, soulstones are starting to lose their worth these days for the same reason.

Lightwell would make a great healing stream totem, but I guess that is stepping on the turf of the shammies.

So I'm personally in the "Make it a healing pet" camp. Lightwell would make a great immobile healing pet; we've already seen how it can throw beams of awesome over the needing in ToC5. I'm not sure if blizzard is holding on to the healing pets for an upcoming hero class, or just don't want to handle the conflict emerging from a class having two pets at the same time (hey, let them share the pet bar!). All it really needs is a separate GCD mechanic to dish out healing asynchonously with the priest itself. I'd talent for that.

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I talent for lightwell right now as well, but only for the comic relief. Just add a randomcast macro with one of the following:

"One out of ten Healers recommend using a ligthwell!"
"Protip: Using a lightwell is awesome for your HP and terrible for your DPS"
"Please please please use the lightwell, and make me keep on pretending that I'm not utterly useless yet!"
"Ghostcrawler says lightwell is awesome!"
"Summoning personal healer for <random person failing to move out of fire>"
"Caution: Do not look directly into the lightwell. Prolonged exposure may cause blindness"
"This is a lightwell, <your guildname here>'s new and improved druid healer."
... and add your own

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Bottom line: I unfortunately suspect that even if this issue was taken by the dev team, the answer will be the old and tried "Lightwell is awesome as it is" - and that's the end of that.

[Zeuq]

I had actually had a very similar concept for a Lightwell change, but had a few other parts to it. First, I think the HoT would work just fine, provided the initial burst was high enough. For instance, the Healthstone heals for 4280 I think, so a Lightstone that heals for 3600 initially and ticks for 400 for the next 5s would probably be just as useful in the same situations. Second, it only really makes sense that someone else ought to provide a Healthstone equivalent for 10-mans, and this is is a perfect opportunity to fix it.

Some other things that ought to go along with a change like this would be, first, to make it baseline. It's cast out of combat, so there's no reason a Discipline Priest or Shadow Priest can't provide them as well. However, in light of making it baseline, they need to make a talent that improves it in the Holy Tree in a spot where pretty much any Holy Priest can get it without interfering with their build, in a spot where Discipline CAN get it but have to give something up to do so, and where it it's just not worth it for Shadow to get it.

I think a perfect spot would be to replace Searing Light and have it increase the effect by 10/20/30% instead of, or in addition to, increasing Smite and Holy Fire damage. And along with that, since Divine Fury is kind of lacking, it probably wouldn't hurt to reduce the base cast times of Smite and Holy Fire and either add another ability, like Prayer of Healing, or roll in something to make Greater Heal worth casting sometimes (like reduced mana cost). Doing this would not only make Lightwell useful, but depending on what they do, it could potentially go a long way to help with the problem with Greater Heal and it would make it so Holy Priests could actually bring something to the raid that a Discipline or Shadow Priest doesn't also bring. In addition, Discipline COULD get it if they want it, but they'd have to spend 3-4 more points in Holy which means a difficult choice of what to give up to get it.

[Ananan]

Maybe it could be an Earthshield/PoM stone. Heals instantly plus a hot on the next hit you take within 5 seconds after use. Great for predictable AoE, or when the boss targets you and casts Frostbolt, or when you get aggro from an add etc etc.

[Stormox]

In my opinion they should make it similar to the lightwell-styled thing in ToC, which shoots a small heal to a nearby mob. You could plant it like you do now, but instead of having to click it, every 1 second it would heal the lowest-health raid member within X yards of the well.

[conscript]

I'm just curious, what if "lolwell" worked like a Soulwell. You click on it (25 charges) and you get to pick up an item in your inventory. Except this item was a Wild Growth style HoT (heavy at first, light at the end) instead of just an unimaginative Healing Potion that's on a seperate cooldown.

To keep a priest from spec'ing Holy for it, and then back to Discipline (or shadow) for every fight, make the item in your inventory give you a buff. "Lightwell Radiance"; have it be a physical buff, but losing it destroys the item. (Leaving party/raid, or said priest respecs).

I don't know, I'm just grabbing at straws here, but I desperately think something needs to be done about Lightwell. How's this?

Making it an item dispenser would make it even less useful than it is right now. Lightwell is a good spell if people would use it properly. Frankly I think the only way to fix it is to either delete it and replace it with a new talent or gve the ligthwell itself some moderate AI like the ones in ToC that shoot out balls of light to heal.

[[-Spiritus-]]

I'd just be happy w/ LW being non-target-able like soulwell. The main beef is that LW drops your current target... remove that from the equation and I think people will be much more willing to use it.

I don't think they'll ever do the ToC LW because it would basically be another DH CD, only non-channeled and shorter range. Not that I wouln't like it, just don't think they're gonna do it.

The lightstone just feels like a cheap knock-off of the HS, and any mechanic that would prevent dropping a LW for stones and switching to discipline I think would just end up being too clunky.

[harky]

I think the ToC style lolwell is the best solution. If you look at how it heals it's a single target heal, similar to low level JC statues, but doesn't just target the caster. It would be like a single target version of Healing Stream. The only problem is that it would then need a decent length cooldown, or would be totally underpowered to compensate. Would be fun though, say 3 minutes CD and lasts 45 seconds. Pop it down near the tank and let it do the work. The other interesting idea I've heard is to make it not heal at all, but to increase all healing done to people within 30 yards by 3%. Basically a ground target version of the Pally healing buff to auras.

As far as not being targettable, I don't think that works. Just make it use a nova type ability when destroyed that heals everyone within 40 yards and damages all enemies.

That or just remove the stupid thing from the game and add something cool that actually works.

[Neichus]

]
I'd just be happy w/ LW being non-target-able like soulwell. The main beef is that LW drops your current target... remove that from the equation and I think people will be much more willing to use it.

This is just what I'd want, along with maybe a slight enlargement (10 yards maybe?) of the click radius so that players wouldn't feel the need to spend travel time to reach it.

[Zyrus]

what needs to be done is either; usuable through /commands (so that dps could macro it), make it a "smart healbot" or a dispenser for items.
The worst part from a DPS point of view is that first you have to find it, then click it then retarget your old target, wheras through a dispenser item you could just keybind it (and trust me, this would be a welcome change).

Its current design is just a bit worthless since you probably wont ever stand close to it (due to the 'spread out' mechanics in every second encounter) or wont be able to click it (in the 'group up' other half of all encounters).

If you could get either a usuable item or a /command interaction for them then this would be an amazing tool for say anub, for anyone getting penetrating cold (just that the amount of charges and the long cooldown needs a retuning as well).

[Parthanon]

Why does everyone say Lightwell needs a makeover? Yes DPS don't generally use it, but who cares? It's great for the healers to heal themselves, without interrupting their other casts etc. Binding Heal is way too expensive (imho), and it doesn't matter if they target the Lightwell, unless they aren't using a Healbot/Vuhdo/Grid addon. And in the event of the dps having to run away (think Sapphiron), it's useful for them to grab a heal on the way past.

The only problem I have with LW, is that it dies when the priest who cast it dies. This bug (and it is confirmed by Blizz as an issue), came in sometime around 3.1. It never died before then and it was useful for keeping the raid/party alive after the priest died, or even helping the healer get back to full health after a Rebirth/SoulStone.

[Melonberry]

You want to make the most powerful heal (and the one of the two good things about holy priests, other being wings) and make it stronger?

I guess I'd not force all the priests in my guild to spec either disc or shadow if holy was OP. Which might not be bad, since right now there really isn't a reason to bring a holy priest to a raid.

[Zeuq]

Binding Heal is way too expensive (imho)

Really? A Binding Heal is essentially 2x Flash Heal. Now, a Flash Heal costs 18% Base Mana or ~16% with the Glyph, except a Binding Heal is only 27% Base Mana which is cheaper than 2x Flash Heal. Hell, even with Discipline's Improved Flash Heal talent thrown on top of the Glyph it's only barely more expensive. Oh, and if that weren't enough, you also get 2x the chance of SoL and HC procs. So, how exactly is Binding Heal too expensive?

I'll agree that it might be useful for healers healing themselves; however, healers are going to get heals anyway with all the smart AOE heals out there and to make use of this, you have to have the healers near eachother which often isn't possible and certainly isn't enough to make me want to pick up the talent.

I could see some more use if they fixed the targetting issue, but even still, the mechanic seems clunky that I use a cooldown AND other people have to use it. I don't like the ToC style mechanic because then it's really just like having another Divine Hymn, except weaker and with a shorter cooldown and not channeled. So, it might be worth getting then, but then it would be kind of boring; although I could see it being desirable if it was and Improved Divine Hymn for Holy that removed the channel and reduced the cooldown. Either way, I'd rather see that sort of mechanic worked in with something like the "Holy Friend" talent I suggested a couple months back.

[Abandon]

You want to make the most powerful heal (and the one of the two good things about holy priests, other being wings) and make it stronger?

I guess I'd not force all the priests in my guild to spec either disc or shadow if holy was OP. Which might not be bad, since right now there really isn't a reason to bring a holy priest to a raid.

It might be the most powerful heal (which I really, really doubt, if you could post some numbers that show this as much stronger than, say, Divine Hymn that would be great) but in reality, that doesn't make it good because it is a pain in the arse and it causes a lot of problems, and really requires your raid to focus on using it, as opposed to your DPS to focus on DPS and your healers to focus on healing.

[I heal in Shadowform]

or just teach your guildies how to use it ??? ??? ???

[Danner]

or just teach your guildies how to use it ??? ??? ???

Using it means outputing lower DPS, as you will switch targets while pressing it. For this reason, noone will use lightwell unless it's during downtime, or absolutely nescessary. Since it is a HoT, absolutely nescessary means all healers are dead - everyone expect to be healed within 3 seconds or so as long as healers are alive. And should all healers be dead, a lightwell will not make any difference!

Frankly, the spell doesn't fill any niche in its current form. It's an awesome heal, but without any purpose. That is why its failing.