Both Grace and Chakra need to die violent, violent deaths.
Both Grace and Chakra need to die violent, violent deaths.
I agree, but with 5 seconds in PvE, it'll just be macro'd to auto switch on PoH cast, GH casts, etc. Even with -15 sec, it'll prob just go to that.
These continue to be larger and larger bandaids to a major problem. Needs to just be address and scrapped or drastically changed (affecting secondary stats instead of ST/AoE heals is a start maybe)
I personally think that chakra killed what holy priests used to be good at. In the attempt to balance classes, it just seems to me that other healing classes now do what holy priests used to do, better. Holy priests weren't the best at hotting or singletarget healing, but they were best at being allround.
Instead of being decent at everything, I now find that I'm only decent at whatever stance I'm in. If I'm in serenity (I raid 10man), but I need to toss (as an example) a few poh's, they just seem so weak and sometimes not even worth casting. In my opinion, the chakra system should be tossed out the window, fall into a very thorny bush and never recover from it.
Last edited by mmoc76b1e1189f; 2013-11-14 at 10:11 PM.
My first thought on the "15 second cooldown" was "that crap isn't going away why don't I see if I can do Malorak as disc and get rid of the holy spec". In Wrath, before the abomination that is Chakra was introducted, holy had an interested, flexible, and responsive playstyle. To beat the dead horse further, now it feels horrible. You choose where to be equal to other healers and where to suck in advance. Especially bad in a ten man, you have to maintain single target abilities, so you lose access to holy's strengths in aoe burst throughput. I don't know what 20 man healing will fall out as, but I've given up hope on what might be possible for holy. I healed Malorak last week as discipline; I'm off to see the trainer and dump holy. I was to like holy, but Chakra gets in the way.
The only thing I can think of for changing Chakra is to make it into sort of a cooldown.
Something akin to the Paladin wings in terms of throughput boost. But they'd need to find a way to have it boost either single target or aoe heals. Maybe make it like one of the older Chakra iterations where you hit the Chakra (now throughput boost cooldown) and fire off a spell to set which type of healing you'd like to boost? Each of the types having their own really cool visual, of course!
Make it the equivalent of Disc's Spirit Shell and give it a one minute cooldown? Something you could use on cooldown or maybe it'd be better to use it at certain times.
I'm not good at spell design. So be gentle.
For me personally, chakra is fun. The long cooldown is lame, and being stuck in blue is lame. But a shorter cd is being experimented with. The dominance or sheer power aoe heals have over all other heals is being rebalanced. But I always liked it when pushing hard content and it delivered on the "feeling like you're in the zone" thing when played well.
If chakra was suddenly gone, the spec would have unlimited flexibility because you'd be at full power literally 100% of the time; I'd be bored, honestly. Holy used to boast the most buttons to press and that's what made it "fun," but all of the healers have a million things to look at and press during encounters now. It would be the same empty feeling I get with the current shadow spec. Yeah, I used to hate the ramp up time that plagued the spec for 3 xpacs, and yeah I really hated how rng the mastery was in cataclysm. But once those were taken out, the spec was just a really simple and dull. Introducing insanity was literally trying to accomplish a design goal of making the non-fun gameplay slightly more interesting again (while also trying to up the low single target dps). The new affliction is frankly what shadow should have been.
Think about what your actual output would be without chakra dancing. It would be so linear and predictable. It would only fluctuate during divine hymn, and even that wouldn't be super drastic. I'm not the only one who feels this way.
Are you progressing on 10m or 25m? If you do 10m, you need to swtich chakras quite often to help with tank healing and to have the on-demand AoE for the bursty phases. Why would holy have unilmited flexibility without chakra? Because it would be at full power 100% of the time? Isn't every other healer at 100% of his potential every? Chakra dancing, for me, is not fun, it just makes me move the bullet from my right leg to my left, and vice versa. Chakra should be fun, and it would have been if it offered some cool mechanics/cds instead of passive buffs that cripple your healing on one front, and make you heal just like any other healer on the other.
Btw, Chakra is the thing making your output predictable. If you're playing 25m, you're probably stuck on Sanctuary, using the same 3-4 spells and ignoring the rest of your toolkit. How boring and predictable is that? You don't even help with tank healing aside of VS/GS cds, and that's it.
Thing is with the smart heal changes, I don't see how Holy will become more popular just with the 15secs reduction on Chakra than Disc, unless they also tweak the absorbs mechanic a bit. (And yeah drastically change Chakra)
I also don't know how you can feel Chakra dancing can be successful in the current content - in 10 man heroics at least right now, there's rarely a fight where the tanks AND the raid don't take damage at the same time so rarely do I feel "in the zone" by chakra dancing. It's always being forced into choosing which you want to sacrifice output on and hope your other healer understands this and picks up your 25% reduction in effectiveness on either one.
I don't see how being on equal grounds with other healers who don't need to shoot themselves in the foot when choosing ST or AoE would make us too powerful and thus boring.
Last edited by mmoc76daca7658; 2013-11-16 at 12:12 PM.
Sounds boring, but a Holy being able to spam for 12s is ofc also some kind of "medium output CD" that I wish for. Would much rather see Chakra being changed into that. Would make more sense to choose either one "stance" reducing manacost for xx seconds and another increase AoE/ST heals by xx seconds. Even more fun would be if they tweaked the way healing worked during the CD, something like Ascendance/ToL.
OH, how I agree with Blachshma and Piffnifty!
And exactly what is wrong with that, even if it was the case (which it won't be really). There is nothing wrong with stance dancing even if it is done with macros but to be honest manual micromanagement is going to be more effective anyway. A 5s CD works extremely well in pvp right now and it will also work really well in pve too.
With a 5s CD I am not opposed to chakras remaining as they are now. But ideally all it takes is one small change. Remove the healing buff and make it baseline. Chakras with a CD should be all about mechanics. More importantly priests would then be able to switch to red chakra and DPS in times of low incoming damage, without suffering a massive healing penalty.
Last edited by mmoc58baca37e6; 2013-11-17 at 05:11 AM.
I wish they would just have Chakra be a passive form that just increases healing dones by 20%. In addition, make Holy Word: Serenity into that chakra in the cata beta that was a HoT (Holy Word: Renew I think) an ability that is a stronger, shorter duration hot, and a new cooldown maybe increases all healing done by 5% and all spells consume no mana for 10 secs with a 2 min C.D.?
Personally I find Chakra quite fun. Makes you think about whether you are raid healing or single target healing, and its nice to feel like you can switch between the two at will. What I dislike most about it is the 30 second cooldown, which really restricts how you use it as you kind of get 'locked' in a stance. I have never played a class where you get stance locked like Chakra and Holy Priest.
Still balancing Chakra is quite precarious, since if it was buffed up too powerful, you wouldn't even want a holy priest to switch. You'd just get 2 holy priests, one who stays in tank healing mode and one who stays in raid healing mode for the whole fight.
Well Chakra is a core part of a Holy Priest. Saying you 'have to use it' to win on the metres is like Resto Shaman saying they have to use healing totems to win on the metres and be par with other healers.
Yeah but the cost of a Healing Totem is simply a GCD (and potentially using it at the wrong time, if you want to go there). It doesn't nerf their other healing.
So, no...not nearly the same.
"Auto-correct is my worst enema."
Did you play Hpri pre-Chakra? Now there is no "core" in Chakra for me. Only limitating, meaningless... If there was a DPS Chakra and a Heal Chakra, that would make much more sense.
Also; What is fun with only being able to ST or AoE heal at one time, when you can (should be able to!) do both at the same time?