Evoker Healer - will it be just another Restoration Druid / Mistweaver Monk?

[Caerrona]

They specifically said that their healing will be focused on HoTs though (and their chargeable breath heal).

Does it matter if they are?

Druids are the only full HoT healers and the rest of classes HoTs are just fillers or passives, with the exception of renewing mist allowing cleave healing to function.

[Nyel]

Does it matter if they are?

Druids are the only full HoT healers and the rest of classes HoTs are just fillers or passives, with the exception of renewing mist allowing cleave healing to function.

I beg to differ. The only classes not relying on HoTs are Paladins and Priests (Renew is what, about 10-15% overall healing?). Druids are completely dependant on HoTs, so are Monks (except Vivify). And even Shamans, to a greater extent (Riptide, Healing Rain, Healing Stream Totem, Healing Tide Totem). So I just want to see how they design yet another healer that's focused on HoTs and will be different from other healers. With Monk they already gutted that by the removal of Chi, which made them just another kind of Resto Druid. I don't want Evoker to be that, too.

[Caerrona]

I beg to differ. The only classes not relying on HoTs are Paladins and Priests (Renew is what, about 10-15% overall healing?). Druids are completely dependant on HoTs, so are Monks (except Vivify). And even Shamans, to a greater extent (Riptide, Healing Rain, Healing Stream Totem, Healing Tide Totem). So I just want to see how they design yet another healer that's focused on HoTs and will be different from other healers. With Monk they already gutted that by the removal of Chi, which made them just another kind of Resto Druid. I don't want Evoker to be that, too.

The only healer designed around HoTs is a druid.

Everything you mentioned is a filler, a cooldown or something that the class is not designed around.

[Nyel]

The only healer designed around HoTs is a druid.

Everything you mentioned is a filler, a cooldown or something that the class is not designed around.

Renewing Mist, Enveloping Mist, Riptide, Healing Rain, Healing Stream Totem and some other of their healing skills are neither fillers nor cooldowns and have a HoT-component attached to them. The mentioned skills are basic abilities both healers use frequently. And depending on the content, over half of their healing comes from HoT or HoT-like abilities. So I disagree.

[Caerrona]

Renewing Mist, Enveloping Mist, Riptide, Healing Rain, Healing Stream Totem and some other of their healing skills are neither fillers nor cooldowns and have a HoT-component attached to them. The mentioned skills are basic abilities both healers use frequently. And depending on the content, over half of their healing comes from HoT or HoT-like abilities. So I disagree.

The point you are not getting is that the classes arn't designed around those abilities. Every single one of them could be removed and you'd have a functioning class (assuming the initial hit of Riptide and essence font stayed) after a couple buffs. Remove druids HoTs and you have regrowth...... no class fundamentally relies only HoTs to function, except druid.

The only other arguement you could make would be holy priest's mastery, still a passive though and if it was changed to a non HoT the class would still function.

Do they have HoTs? yes. Do they use them? Yeah some of them. Would those classes still function without HoTs? Yes.

They arn't designed around HoTs just because they have HoTs.

[Nyel]

The point you are not getting is that the classes arn't designed around those abilities. Every single one of them could be removed and you'd have a functioning class (assuming the initial hit of Riptide and essence font stayed) after a couple buffs. Remove druids HoTs and you have regrowth...... no class fundamentally relies only HoTs to function, except druid.

The only other arguement you could make would be holy priest's mastery, still a passive though and if it was changed to a non HoT the class would still function.

Do they have HoTs? yes. Do they use them? Yeah some of them. Would those classes still function without HoTs? Yes.

They arn't designed around HoTs just because they have HoTs.

But they wouldn't? I don't know what's the problem here. Both Shamans and Monks have half of their toolkit be HoTs. They have talents and passives build around them (you even mentioned some of it). If you remove those skills, the classes aren't working anymore. So again, no, I disagree. A Monk without its HoTs would be non-functioning, so would be a Shaman. Just because a Druid would be even more useless it doesn't mean that you can remove HoTs from Monk and Shaman and still have working specs. You don't. Spamming Regrowth is barely worse than spamming a mix of Healing Surge, Healing Wave or Vivify.

[Caerrona]

But they wouldn't? I don't know what's the problem here. Both Shamans and Monks have half of their toolkit be HoTs. They have talents and passives build around them (you even mentioned some of it). If you remove those skills, the classes aren't working anymore. So again, no, I disagree. A Monk without its HoTs would be non-functioning, so would be a Shaman. Just because a Druid would be even more useless it doesn't mean that you can remove HoTs from Monk and Shaman and still have working specs. You don't. Spamming Regrowth is barely worse than spamming a mix of Healing Surge, Healing Wave or Vivify.

A the only things a shaman would be missing would be healing Tide, healing rain and the hot from Riptide, no uses stream, it's cloudburst. = Still functioning.

The only thing a Monk would be missing the Essence font HoT (which is garbage), renewing Mist and Enveloping Mist (which outside of m+ is pretty terrible). = still functioning.

I took a look at mythic anduin and Shamans would lose 1.5 abilities out of their top 6.

And Monks would lose 2.5 out of their top 6.

Can you guess how many druids would lose?
(Hint the answer is 5.5 abilities out of their top 6) making them not function at all.

You have more of an arguement for Monks than Shamans but regardless of that, if evoker ends up being a full hot healer they will be nothing like Monks or shamans.Shamans.

edit- I just realised the irony of your crying, you should be worried about them taking stuff away if they end up like shamans and monks as the middle pack of healers kinda uses both direct and hots and NOT be worried if they end up like druids on the far end of the scale as there is only that class designed around HoTs.

[Nyel]

edit- I just realised the irony of your crying, you should be worried about them taking stuff away if they end up like shamans and monks as the middle pack of healers kinda uses both direct and hots and NOT be worried if they end up like druids on the far end of the scale as there is only that class designed around HoTs.

To be precise, I worry about both, because I already expect them to remove things from Monks (because Monks already use "Breath" type of abilities). I worry about Evoker being too similar to Druids and Monks, exactly because of how those classes work and how Blizzard talked about Evoker back during their reveal.

(By the way, Mythic+ is a huge contributing factor next to raids and there the priority of skills is very different for Monks (and even Shamans) from raids - fact is, none of the mentioned classes would work and be complete without HoTs; Druids can still trait for Nourish, can't they? It's a silly argument, but Healing Stream is still a HoT, even if many take Cloudburst; but let's put this discussion to rest, for you Monks and Shamans are not HoT-healers, for me they are)

[neescher]

To be precise, I worry about both, because I already expect them to remove things from Monks (because Monks already use "Breath" type of abilities). I worry about Evoker being too similar to Druids and Monks, exactly because of how those classes work and how Blizzard talked about Evoker back during their reveal.

(By the way, Mythic+ is a huge contributing factor next to raids and there the priority of skills is very different for Monks (and even Shamans) from raids - fact is, none of the mentioned classes would work and be complete without HoTs; Druids can still trait for Nourish, can't they? It's a silly argument, but Healing Stream is still a HoT, even if many take Cloudburst; but let's put this discussion to rest, for you Monks and Shamans are not HoT-healers, for me they are)

Shamans would absolutely work in m+ without hots.

Riptide would be a bit weaker, but if the initial heal and the buff stay, it would still be ok.
Cloudburst is NOT a hot. All the healing of cloudburst is instantly, at the second the totem expires.
Healing Rain in m+ isn't that great to begin with, unless you have a full melee group.
Healing Tide is just a cooldown, if everything goes as planned you don't even really need it, and just place it so you have more GCDs available for damage.

Resto Shaman is NOT a spec "designed around hots". Healing Rain becomes more important in raid, but it's still not centered around hots.

[Nyel]

Resto Shaman is NOT a spec "designed around hots".

Then let me rephrase it: it's a spec heavily featuring HoTs for its playstyle.

[neescher]

Then let me rephrase it: it's a spec heavily featuring HoTs for its playstyle.

It's a spec that has a few hots. I wouldn't say "heavily featuring". The only "rotational" ability that's really only a hot is healing rain, and pretty much only in raids. The other spell with a hot component is Riptide, but I'd say the HoT is the least important part about the spell. The important parts are the instant heal (which is about 50% higher than the hot portion), and the buff you get by casting it, which makes your next flash heal or heal better. The hot is not what defines the ability.

[Katchii]

They specifically said that their healing will be focused on HoTs though (and their chargeable breath heal).

I haven't seen or heard much of anything outside the announcement back in April, which didn't say they would focus on HoT's just that the healing specialization would be focused on Green and Bronze magic. Do you have a source for where they specifically say it will be focused on HoT's?

[enigma77]

I imagine they won't be all that different. They'll have their breath heals, which is a new kind of mechanic and maybe they'll be able to snapshot the raid's health and turn back time, like Alter time for mages.

[Nyel]

I haven't seen or heard much of anything outside the announcement back in April, which didn't say they would focus on HoT's just that the healing specialization would be focused on Green and Bronze magic. Do you have a source for where they specifically say it will be focused on HoT's?

It was either the Dragonflight announcement or when they talked about Evoker later on. Don't have time to check it now, but I can do it tomorrow. I mean we don't have that much material where they could have said it, lol.

[Therougetitan]

Aesthetically they are just druids. The bronze aspect of the class was barely shown at their preview other than a mention they can make their hots which is just Flourish for druids. Green healing spells because they are too cowardly to make red dragonflight part of the healing spec like Mistweavers were going to be red crane themed initially but they did not like red spell effects for healers.

Gameplay-wise the way they will be unique is their mid-range playstyle with breath and the healer version of deep breath. It might play out unique depending how they handle that.

[Katchii]

It was either the Dragonflight announcement or when they talked about Evoker later on. Don't have time to check it now, but I can do it tomorrow. I mean we don't have that much material where they could have said it, lol.

I know, which is why I was asking because I looked through and re-watched that material and didn't see/hear it, it's possible I missed it though.

This is as much a sanity check for me as much as a question of "are you SURE that's what you heard them say?" kind of thing. Just making sure I'm working from the same page as you when I give any commentary.

[Athorha]

Aesthetically they are just druids. The bronze aspect of the class was barely shown at their preview other than a mention they can make their hots which is just Flourish for druids. Green healing spells because they are too cowardly to make red dragonflight part of the healing spec like Mistweavers were going to be red crane themed initially but they did not like red spell effects for healers.

Gameplay-wise the way they will be unique is their mid-range playstyle with breath and the healer version of deep breath. It might play out unique depending how they handle that.

I like seeing hots as a testing ground for what spell effects are actually readable by allies. Alex is fairly workable, I see her being highly related to one form of evoker healing.

If there's no ally damaging flame buffet which you can enhance into a flame based cauterize ill be very surprised.

A deathwing "you can't heal me" cooldown like old reck

Alter time but on allies

Arcane godzilla breath

Not that they'll translate directly from hots, but if it speaks to their mind on gameplay development, they manage making dragons unique .

[Therougetitan]

I like seeing hots as a testing ground for what spell effects are actually readable by allies. Alex is fairly workable, I see her being highly related to one form of evoker healing.

If there's no ally damaging flame buffet which you can enhance into a flame based cauterize ill be very surprised.

A deathwing "you can't heal me" cooldown like old reck

Alter time but on allies

Arcane godzilla breath

Not that they'll translate directly from hots, but if it speaks to their mind on gameplay development, they manage making dragons unique .

They said green/bronze for healing and red/blue for devastation. Hate to break it to you but sadly the devs don't care about red dragon lore. Brian Holinka said in his interview that Ysera and the green flight was the one to breath during the Wrathgate cinematic.

[thsevecha]

If they weren't designed around hots you would be here complaining they would be too similar to Priests and Paladins instead lol. So let's wait until we have more information on how they function. We don't even know how talents will change their possible play styles. I bet we'll get a blog post about it with talent previews soon.

[Kumorii]

Most important is the gameplay... Not if it has overlap with other classes.