Are using different ranked spells dead in TBC?

[Healzerbot]

I've never played during TBC and trying to get ready to hit the ground running but I was reading that you should be using the max rank spells in TBC instead of using lower rank spells.

Is that true?

[Mysterymask]

...umm yes and no
I believe priests and shaman do but Pallys and druids dont

But the big downrank nerf happened in wrath

[Thage]

Depends on the class. It's still very useful for healers to downrank, especially in Arena, if I recall.

[Healzerbot]

I'm going to be playing a holy priest for TBC.

[MiiiMiii]

It's still viable to use lower rank spells. Speaking from a Shaman perspective. In PvP. Remember that for instance Earth Shock Rank 1 costs significantly less mana than max rank, if your intention is just to interrupt your enemy. Also using rank 1 Purge when enemy only has 1 ability to debuff saves a lot of mana.

In PvE, the scenario I assume you are primarily focusing on. It's less viable in TBC for sure but it's still quite common. It is still concidered the best option to downrank. An example is this https://legacy-wow.com/tbc-shaman-guide/ . As you see downranking to rank 4 chain heal is the most common in TBC.

I am no expert on priests but please look up guides I am confident some cenarios make you downrank too.

[Kralljin]

You're using higher ranks but it's not completely dead, no more R1 Flash Heal spams, basically.

[thefinalwarden]

I only healed as resto shaman in TBC, but it really depends on the class. On one end of the spectrum, you have Paladins who have stupid amounts of mana efficiency with healing, while resto shaman was obscenely inefficient to a point you were downranking most of your heals to strike that balance between cheap and high healpower efficiency. The more int/heal/mp5 lets you play around more, but once you start factoring in haste, you spam more but burn mana faster so the cycle repeats. I do think with how people are used to things, and how many QoL changes from Vanilla to TBC there were, it should be pretty easy this day an age. Nowhere near the battle mechanics that you have now a days. You will find the best possible choices once you get a feel of it all.

[gaymer77]

I'm going to be playing a holy priest for TBC.

Basically if you're a tank or dps no. If you're a holy priest or resto shaman, yes in terms of the tank/tanks. Disc priest, holy paladin, and resto druid don't usually. The reason for holy priest and resto shaman doing this is using a rank 1 healing spell can still proc inspiration (holy priest talent) and whatever the buff is that ancestral healing provides that increases the target's armor by 25% on crit. Using a rank 1 spell allows you to barely spend in mana while essentially having a 100% up time on the buff. If you're going to be healing on a paladin be ready to basically spam flash of light because that's your most effective healing spell and keeping your assigned judgement up on the boss. Druids are basically keep hots up on the raid and tanks or they are tank healers that also throw out some hots to the raid as needed. Paladins and druids get nothing out of downranking spells unless they are low on mana (which paladins rarely are).

[A Blue Smurf]

Obviously there's been a lot of contradictory information from various people and I haven't played any private versions of TBC so I can only recall from the original release having raided through the entire expansion and every raid on both a paladin and priest.

IIRC as a Paladin you downranked Holy Light to R5 as it provided the highest HPM, subbing in a max rank Holy Light for when you need a big heal or FoL for quick spot healing.

Similarly with Holy Priests you would use R2 Greater Heal for the same reasons and to maintain its buff however you generally didn't down rank anything else as there was no significant benefit.

That's my memory of it in any case. Down-ranking most definitely still had a place however that place became one of maximizing heals per mana for efficiencies and buff maintenance and not for HPS.

[Soon-TM]

I've never played during TBC and trying to get ready to hit the ground running but I was reading that you should be using the max rank spells in TBC instead of using lower rank spells.

Is that true?

Priests/shamans will be downranking heals all the time, at least in PvE. Mages can also use R1 Frostbolt for a cheap snare in PvP.

[Zka]

You absolutely cannot heal PVE without downranking. At least not on a priest and I guess other healers also need to downrank.

[shise]

You absolutely cannot heal PVE without downranking. At least not on a priest and I guess other healers also need to downrank.

Depends.

Holy priest should take up to 14 spells or so per fight in average, specially on the first couple of tiers as you will need to optimize your mana usage / power output. So you do use ranks.
Honestly, after t5 and with enough spirit (that is all you want to go for, spirit), you will not need ranks you use the best out of the box.

Anyone saying (haste is better), no, Spirit, even in SWP (ok, maybe there you dont need to go full blast spirit but that is still about the best, specially with brutallus in mind if you do not have 2 holy paladins). Being able to endlessly heal was always a far superior path than having slightly quicker or stronger heals.

[gaymer77]

Priests/shamans will be downranking heals all the time, at least in PvE. Mages can also use R1 Frostbolt for a cheap snare in PvP.

I totally forgot about rank 1 frostbolt when I said if you're a dps then no. You are absolutely right on this. Rank 1 frostbolt puts that damn slow on people for virtually no mana but also the fastest cast time of them lol

[Teamrandom]

I remember back in the days hunters draining holy paladins mana with level 1 sting. It was a bite since cleanse requires more mana to cast compared to what the sting would drain at level 1

[Beuargh]

you'll find out by yourself pretty soon

[Pivotal]

Downranking is at least useful in arena/pvp in general, such as r1 arcane explosion to get stealthies out, and r1 frostbolt to slow people etc.

[AeneasBK]

I played Holy paladin in TBC first time around and used downranked spells more often than max rank.

[Deferionus]

There are still uses for lower rank spells. For example, if you are a mage in PvP and you are killing a shaman's totem you would want to use a rank 1 ice lance to conserve mana.

[Katchii]

I remember raiding in T4 and T5 and the Holy Paladins in the raid would downrank to be more mana efficient I don't remember by how many ranks though, and they would only do so once they had enough spell power/ healing gear to make that downranked spell heal for nearly the same amount as the baseline max rank spell I think (may not have been the max rank, I wasn't a healer back then and paid very little attention). It meant that they could essentially just stand there spamming Holy Light with VERY little mana usage and absolutely dominate in terms of healing capability.