Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsMana regeneration changing dramatically in 3.1
by Eliah Hecht 
Feb 5th 2009 at 3:35PM
The devs have been telling us for some time that they're not happy with the current state of (most) healers having infinite mana, and it looks like the reckoning is going to come in 3.1. And make no mistake, we're getting hit hard.
- Outside-of-5-second-rule regeneration is decreasing. They think the combination of HoTs and clearcasting let us stay OO5SR too long and get too much mana back.
- Mana regenerated by Spirit is being decreased "across the board."
- However, talents that boost while-casting regen (specifically, Arcane Meditation, Improved Spirit Tap, Intensity, Mage Armor, Meditation, Pyromaniac, and Spirit Tap) are being buffed.
- Since Paladins don't really use Spirit for regen, they're getting a different nerf: the healing penalty on Divine Plea is getting raised from 20% to 50%. Spiritual Attunement is also going to be nerfed for Holy paladins somehow.
- They're "taking a close look" at clearcasting abilities. "One likely outcome" is changing them so they restore mana instead of making spells free to cast, which would still give you mana back, but would not kick you OO5SR.
- It has finally been spelled out that they balance around even 10-man raids having Replenishment. Although I think this is silly (why not just remove it from the game, if everyone should have it all the time), it makes me feel a bit better that they said they are "likely to offer this ability to additional classes" (it's already been announced for Destruction warlocks, for instance).
Overall, although this feels very "sky-is-falling," it's important to remember that Blizzard is not trying to make healers sad, or break the game, or ruin your class. As they spell out at the bottom of the post, this is for the purposes of giving encounter designers more room to play. If healers can't run out of mana, they only way to make the encounter hard for them is to throw huge amounts of raid damage around, which is not always the best choice for an encounter.
This will be going up on the PTR, of course, so we'll get a chance to see exactly how it plays out. But I know a certain Holy paladin who will probably want to stop completely avoiding gear with MP5 on it in the near future.
Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.Filed under: Druid, Mage, Priest, Shaman, Patches, News items
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 9)
RiddleExec Feb 6th 2009 1:51PM
LOL 7 healers???? Tell your raid leader to l2p. We bring 4 or 5, and we are still fighting for heals. I dont mind any of the healing changes even as a holy paladin (who is getting the biggest nerf). It will suck for PvP, but for PvE we will just have to be smart about when we use Divine Plea instead of using it on CD, and on some fights I am sure I will still be using it on CD.
Chipsky Feb 5th 2009 4:01PM
They better not botch this... healing has become tedious enough.
MMMMMM
MMMMMMM
MMM
jaybrous Feb 5th 2009 5:05PM
Some people say it's too stressful, some people say it's too tedious...
Now I'm confused.
Hestledon Feb 17th 2009 8:36AM
It's both stressful and tedious.
Hestledon Feb 17th 2009 9:07AM
Let me expand on that a little.
Healing is stressful in that we get yelled at a lot for heals, dispels, etc. When dps or tanks mess up, it's our "fault." If tanks/dps go out of range or out of line of sight, it's our responsibility to make sure they get the heal they need. Some people fess up when they make mistakes; there are a lot of people who'd rather blame the healer or the tank.
It's also rather boring. I've done tons of heroics and raids in LK, but it wasn't until I was doing them again on my dps toon that I actually saw the dynamics of the fights and what everything looked like. When you're healing, it's like being at the movies but being stuck looking at your feet. You get to hear all this cool stuff going on, but all you get to see are your 10 little piggies down there. When you're healing, especially raid healing or the main healer, you basically stare at those green health bars and your own mana bar. You spare a little attention to get out of the fire or whatever, but really, the entire fight is looking at those bars and making sure that they don't go empty.
If you're on a pleasure drive in the mountains or on the coast and all you get to watch are the meters on the dashboard, you'd get a little bored, too. It gets a little stressful when the meters start chewing you out for not paying enough attention or dispelling fast enough or yelling "heal me NAO!"
As far as these changes are concerned, it mostly means that I'm going to run out of mana faster when my group inevitably doesn't have the new necessary class role (replenish). I'm going to get more stressed out trying to eke out my heals as long as possible (sorry, dps, you're just gonna have to die so I can keep the tank up. I know you can't prevent all that damage, but wth, the tank dies we all die). When I do run out of mana, I'm going to end up dying and running back and doing the same thing over again.
And lemme tell ya, if I get to look out the windows instead of at the meters on the same stretch of road (aka running out of mana and wipes), it's generally more frustrating than pretty. Stressful. Kinda gets old and boring, too, after a while, especially if you don't get to play with the meters as much.
I do have fun with the oo5SR to try to maximize my efficiency in case I have to do some ohshit healing. Blizzard's taking that away from me too, now.
GG Blizzard. /checks AH for more boomkin and feral gear for her new dual specs.
Irian Feb 5th 2009 4:01PM
Weeeeelcoooome to the resto shammy world.
Clegane Feb 5th 2009 5:15PM
Not hard to figure out. It doesn't have to be mutually exclusive.
Stress = Tedium
Sitting on a couch watching TV while spamming three DPS buttons != Stress or Tedium.
Usdom Feb 5th 2009 4:04PM
Nerfing healing has to be the stupidest, most dick move blizzard can make. We already can't find healers and you want to make it HARDER?
Did you miss the 70+ page thread on WHY THERE ARE NO HEALERS?
franz Feb 5th 2009 4:05PM
I play a holy paladin. I run out of mana while I am healing all the time. Can someone please explain to me what I am doing wrong or point me to a website with some tips.
FailedNinja Feb 5th 2009 4:25PM
The biggest contributor to Holy Pal neverending mana was using DP very liberally. You don't really notice the 20% reduction if you keep the holy lights coming to keep people topped off. The cooldown is very short and you can use it several times during a long boss fight.
Beyond that, make sure you have a lot of int to get a large mana pool and +crit will return mana.
Iwanttobeasleep Feb 5th 2009 6:51PM
If you usually run with replenishment, stacking int is a big help. The bigger your mana pool, the more you get out of replenishment and divine plea. If you aren't having trouble with your healing output (which you likely aren't, as a healadin) then you can ditch some of your haste for int or crit. Without gearing for it, you probably already have plenty of haste anyway.
Assisthock9 Feb 6th 2009 3:36PM
at level 40 before adding in a whole plate set i have almost 3K mana unbuffed and 1.5K health (basically a lock 3 lvls lower than me had more health than i did lol) I never/rarely oom. Stack int out the butt and do crit/haste/sp and you're set... mind you i also have 37sp... not exactly top notch and that is after a Wizard oil buff...
i kinda wish they would add something to lessen the endless pool of mana. make it a little more challenging. even though being a single target healer in a 5-man is a little stressful it is fun... and i'm hoping Shock of Light will help me out with party heals... and maybe a fix to the broken set focus feature? that would help pallys immensely... i remember when i first started healing instances that was a winner. tank is main target next highest threat maker was focus... kept both topped off and it was easier to dispel diseases/poisons and then every now and then switch targets to heal a clothie. please fix this...
wow i went way off subject there lol.
ADD anyone?
Jon Do Feb 5th 2009 4:06PM
It was either this, or a healing hero class.
Seriously, between in-game lag and patches that introduce major bugs, and generally feeling like I'm playing a nerfed class (holy priest), I'm finding that I'm not wanting to play WoW so much anymore.
I like healing, and I started to level another healing class. Then I decided that I'd not pay a fee to spend my playtime working around what I consider to be a directionless design marked with knee-jerk fixes to problems they introduced themselves.
I used to consider Blizzard's WoW team to be a good operation, but the software stability problems and game balance issues of 3.0 / Wrath has me seriously considering finally hanging it up.
Leon Feb 5th 2009 4:12PM
As a Holy paladin I find this very funny.
Patch 2.0 = Illumination is godly.
Patch 2.1 = Illumination gets nerfed and everything goes to hell.
Patch 3.0 = Divine Plea is godly.
Patch 3.1 = Divine Plea gets nerfed and everything goes to hell.
At least now we know patches X.1 are bad and we won't be as surprised next expansion when the nerf-bomb falls on us >.<
At least I still have my alts =)
NicP Feb 5th 2009 4:17PM
My main is a resto Druid. I loved the mana regen buffs that came with 2.8, making healing so much easier, while still being challenging. Basically they took off the soft enrage by ensuring that the healers almost never ran out of mana.
I still haven't reached that phase in WotLK. My mana is always low, I use innervate on every boss fight, and a potion. I usually end up stopping my heals at some point in the fight due to a lack of mana. yes, i heal all out, but why shouldn't I? How well geared are your tanks and your other healers that you can spend more than 1 second outside FSR? I find myself rarely regenerating mana at anything less than my inside FSR rate.
What are other healers doing that is making their mana pool endless. in the case of holy pallies I think I know.
Maybe i should stop going full out then I'll always be full on mana?
Blizz should not mess with all of this. Maybe cut back on the spirit on the highest tier of gear, but for everyone else let me have my mana regen.
AyaJulia Feb 5th 2009 4:40PM
Regarding what other healers are doing to make their mana pool endless, check out the comment I made earlier about how you struggle and struggle and struggle, stack mp5 to crawl out of your hole, then eventually break a point where mana is endless. There's no real middle ground. You just burst into infinite mana. :\
This, for example, happened to me on a 10-man trash pull in spider wing about 3 weeks ago. I had a flask, buffs from mage/druid/paladin (BoW and BoK), inner fire, replenishment, and both of my trinkets fully active. Insane. I wasn't even trying to gear for mp5 anymore at that point, and I just regemmed for more crit this morning.
AyaJulia Feb 5th 2009 4:41PM
And gg me, I forgot the link. http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a31/ayajulia/WoWScrnShot_011409_200748-Copy.jpg
threesixteen Dec 7th 2009 12:53PM
i realize this is an old thread, but i've got an 80 holy priest (Bix on Quel'Dorei) and i always have critical mana issues. i definitely have an 'all out' play style; meaning, i am generally tops on the overhealing list, but i find that mostly that's due to spamming group heals (CoH, PoH)... generally i find in a group of undergeared players (and there are many youngsters out there that confuse their desire to hit ToCr with their geared ability to do so) i'm OOM lickety-split. even trying to be judicious with heals, i'm still using a mana pot, shadowfiend, my BE mana racial (what's it called again?) and Divine Hymn.
the problem i think is perhaps i'm confusing the efficacy of gemming and gearing spirit... maybe i don't need spirit if i'm almost never in the 5-second rule because of having to string heals together all the time... should i make the switch (at least gem-wise) to MP5?
Also, i usually eat Cuttlefish for my food buff, but maybe i should be switching to SpellPower or Fangtooth.
Any other Holy Priests wrestling with the same dilemna?
Alch Feb 5th 2009 4:19PM
In 10 mans manna can be be an issue. In 25 mans its not even something I think about.
Once they took manna pots away from us as a way to save yourself it really went down hill. I do not mind being challenged by the game but standing around not casting is not fun.
Guess we will have to wait and see how this pans out.
SunwellVialist Feb 5th 2009 4:19PM
Well... as a Resto Druid this somewhat concerns me.
I usually am one of those people who *adores* to heal, but all too often I run with others who aren't as well geared as they -should- be for certain instances, which often enough taxes my mana. With this coming, it will become a ton harder to do so...