Cataclysm healing (early)

[Deleted]

I finaly had to think about who to heal and what spell i used since mana was an issue now compare to the mindles healingspamm from ICC.
i loved it!! and i want it back <3

[Deleted]

In fact cata made me ragequit healing. Not even tried it in MoP. Say what you want but i had "fun" spamming chain heal in Wotlk.

Cata healing (especially at start) felt like health bars were barrels of water and i was trying to fill them with sieve.

[l33t]

The question is quite subjective. Healing was fine, though it wasn't fun for me. Fun for me equals not drinking mana after every thrash pack, and way less stupid unneeded triaging due to uber low potency of healing spells. Not that I liked healing in WoTLK either, when all you needed to do was spam flash. I have most good memories of BC healing - maybe its because holy priest rocked hard in BC, maybe its because I liked metagame of spell downranking. Cata's healing was too stressful, and almost unreal to do if you run LFG group (oh, I do remember times when tank charged and died while I was loading in dungeon, and after his death he immediately left just the second I was loaded, lol). If you ask me, even flash spamming crap was way more fun than Cata's metagame of filling barrels of water with spoons - that is the process that describes Cata's healing most precisely.

If you ask me, it is pretty stupid making healers overwatch their resource (mana) while making every other mana user don't care about resources at all. Damage dealers should be manastarving too.

[Infernix]

Healing in early cata was horrible. Going OOM constantly on 'trash pulls', for god's sake.

To sum up, though, 'everything' about early Cata was horrible and terrible. Everything. It's like they had a meeting at Blizz HQ...

"Okay guys, we've got 12 million subscribers, healers are having fun, tanking is easy and fun, people are entering Norm/Heroic Raiding in record numbers with ICC and people love our LFG feature."

"Clearly, we have to change all of that. How should we start?"

"Well, let's overhaul healing and make it hard because a few people on the internet said that Heroics are boring and should be harder."

"Agreed. In fact, let's just make all Heroics give crap gear, require CC on trash pulls and make it possible to get put into a Random Group with classes that can't CC at all. There's some challenge, right?"

"That'll get rid of the more casual players. What can we do to shed some Raiders?"

"Let's remove 10man/25man split lock-outs. That way, we'll have fewer opportunities for people to raid. They'll have to choose between Pugging a group and doing guild runs."

"Smart idea, that'll kill the Trade-chat Pug scene."

"Great plan, guys. That'll bring our sub base down from 12million down to a more reasonable number. If we're lucky, in a few expansions, we'll be down to about 7million or so."

[Schizoide]

MMO-champ polls skew heavily to the hardcore. Poll results here at the time also said Cataclysm heroics weren't difficult.

In fact, very good chance people will respond to this post agreeing with the statement in my last sentence.

[Perryn]

I had forgotten that hpalas were rather OP in early cata, hm (no I didn't play one but I now remember the frustration :P)

I was main boomkin but had raidhealed frequently on the druid during wrath and did the same in cata, and as a rule I liked the changes but mostly when you had a competent group. With randoms you ended up drinking a lot and taking the blame for people dying to unavoidable damage, not all the time but rather often. It was overall fun tho, you had to think a little bit more about how to heal and couldn't just spam. I'm cautiously optimistic about the WoD changes even tho my main since early ToT has been my prot pala and druid is sidelined a little bit.

[Lovestar]

MMO-champ polls skew heavily to the hardcore. Poll results here at the time also said Cataclysm heroics weren't difficult.

In fact, very good chance people will respond to this post agreeing with the statement in my last sentence.

The problem is that difficulty is a subjective perception, not an objective fact.

They weren't difficult to heal if you had a good group of people you trusted/coordinated with — challenging yes sometimes but not "WTF THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE ARRRGH". They were insane if you had a group of miscoordinated randoms or were less practiced/dedicated/skilled/whatever.

It's reasonable to say they were challenging and unforgiving, especially relative to what WOTLK spent 2-3 years getting people used to. Some players rose to that challenge (perhaps eagerly), others were blindsided by it and left traumatized and shaking in their chairs. :p

A separate factor, outside difficulty, was just how mis-tuned healing was. Certain specs just couldn't do their job properly unless they were in a very coordinated group with balanced CC and had a PhD in their spec skills and mana management. I don't see that as a problem with the dungeon design, just with heals not being balanced properly at the entry level.

Finally it was just delivering wrong content to wrong people. Tuning something for groups of friends means that you expect some wipes and trial-and-error as everyone learns. Unleashing that on matchmade content? What were they thinking?

[Deleted]

it was bad, not because of difficulty, but because of a shitty "stare at mana bar" type gameplay.

[Fizzelkazoo]

I think the healing was pretty nice at the start of Cata. I would argue that it was made worse with pugs, and groups not utilizing CC and standing in stuff. Too much of an abrupt change from the WotLK style, without enough explanation/communication to those who do not stalk the forums or play beta. All in all, I look forward to a return of early Cata design, since they seem to be addressing a lot of the short comings that were present at that time.

But, it's all pretty moot at the moment. We'll be able to make better comments after beta launches.

[draykorinee]

It was a problem because we went from AFK spam what you want to stop chain pulling I'm OOM. It was too much in one go. In the end I was fine with it.

[Sierra85]

i didn't think it was that bad in early cata. You couldn't go crazy pulling mobs fast, healer had to drink.

That has been a part of the game for ages, once you have gear - yeah go ahead and pull fast.

[Pennoyer]

I think people had an issue with Cata healing more because of the tuning of some of the dungeons, some of which were definitely designed to be harder than Wrath (like Deadmines or Stonecore). The mechanics themselves weren't that bad, just a bit of a shocker to people who were used to the brainless gameplay of spamming every ability nonstop in ICC.

[Xeones]

My experience in cata was insane amounts of damage going out everwhere without the mana to deal with it. It sucked.

[Stormspellz]

was fine, was fun, people had issues because of used to faceroll content, the old healing model of spam your best spell none stop. Combine with dps responsibility to minimize inc damage that few pugs ever did and that is where the frustration came from.

But the only real pain of the heroics was to much trash.

[Rogabr]

i rushed a resto druid to max level, was participating in heroic dungeons right out of the gate with very few people since we were cap so quick

i had to follow a very strict priority system or i would go oom stupidly quick

people standing in stuff usually just got a rejuv or died

[Lime]

This poll is entirely dependent on what kind of groups you ran with.

If LFD:
it was bad

If with premade:
it was fine

[Asana]

grumblegrumbleworstspecforthewholetiergrumble

Ret was far, far worse.

[Sidney_illidan]

I had the most fun healing in Cata (at the very beginning) and on Cata beta. It wasn't "hard" it just wasn't as forgiving to mistakes and forced us to become better players. It was definitely the most enjoyable for me but I also had groups that understood they couldn't just stand in fire, they had to interrupt and do mechanics properly. When they didn't, I wasn't blamed.

Having to pick the right spell all the time was how healing should be. I hope they bring something similar back. As much as I'd love for it to be like Cata start again, I know many others don't so there has to be somewhere in between that works for all of us and I hope they find it.

Honestly, I think they should add a % based DPS nerf that stacks when you stand in fire or take damage from avoidable sources. That way mistakes reflect in their dps instead of "oh the healer will save me and if not, I'll blame them". It would force dps to care more. They could make up for any extra healing they felt we needed to do by tuning the encounters.

[Lovestar]

Honestly, I think they should add a % based DPS nerf that stacks when you stand in fire or take damage from avoidable sources. That way mistakes reflect in their dps instead of "oh the healer will save me and if not, I'll blame them". It would force dps to care more. They could make up for any extra healing they felt we needed to do by tuning the encounters.

That is actually awesome, since the current issue is that Healers are expected to fix people's avoidable mistakes because duh, that's what healers are there for and if you still have mana WHY AREN'T YOU FIXING THINGS?

If avoidable mechanics actually punished their Recount, not just your mana bar, DPS would probably start caring more. Like, a lot more. And stop expecting to get away with standing in whatever they feel like because "meh heals will fix it".

And even if Heals did fix it, they'd still sheepishly avoid linking their ranking after it was over.

I think I remember some boss mechanic that gave you like a 90% chance to miss for 10 seconds or something awful if you got hit by it. People steered really clear of that one. Or the Carbonated Alementals in Stormstout Brewery that Pacify you if you stand in their AoE mess — every DPS always moved out of those because WHY ARE MY BUTTONS BROKEN OMG HALP.

So, I'd say yes, this is a good motivator. Any DPS that wouldn't even move for the sake of their numbers is probably the type of player you just O_O and shake your head and stop healing because no matter how many heals you throw they're still standing in Jade Fire.

[muto]

Doing LFD Heroics at the beginning in Blues I would say was more difficult than Endless Healer, having to try and compensate for morons standing in stuff when you only had enough mana to cover the non-preventable damage.