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 6 of 9)
redmatrix Feb 6th 2009 5:38PM
Paladins are officially the red headed step child that everyone blames and scapegoats
Usdom Feb 5th 2009 4:34PM
This also demonstrates brilliantly blizzard's blind obsession with "Game balance at 80" Sure at 80 a priest might have no trouble at all getting mana in a 25 man raid.
But you know what? 90%+ of the game DOESN'T HAPPEN AT 80!
Blizzard has screwed over EVERYONE under level 80 over and over and over trying to target the end game raiders when most of the people I know don't raid all day long. They raid once or twice a week.
It's like building a car that is really gas efficient and fun to drive on a specific road that is only open once every three days. WHATS THE FREAKING POINT?! Give me a car that is fun ALL THE TIME. Either let me buy characters AT 80 or stop screwing over the ENTIRE GAME BASE to appease only a few players who have nothing better to do than sit around Dal and make "Anal [Hemorrhage]" jokes.
Gryph667 Feb 5th 2009 4:34PM
This is so effing fail. If a pally outgears an encounter, then yes, they don't need to worry about running out of mana.
Healers aren't running out of mana while wearing gear that prepares them for Ulduar, which hasn't been released yet. Healing is going to be so boned in T8 content.
"The beatings will continue until morale improves. Have a nice day."
Moss Feb 5th 2009 4:36PM
As a resto druid, I never have any mana problems in PVE. I clear all content with the exception of sarth3D (which could very well be a completely different ball game. There are only rare occasions where I actually have to use innervate on myself and not on a priest (which often doesn't happen either), so I'm not concerned about mana issues in PVE. This could be due to the awesomeness of the sartharion spirit trinket.
I'm more concerned about resto for PVP, where the gear has dismally low int, and you can't really compensate for this with gemming, b/c resto druids are currently so squishy.
toddcore Feb 5th 2009 4:43PM
There are a few important factors one should consider when thinking about the current state of healers (and in fact every class/role).
The first is that, by their own admission, Blizzard has made current end game raiding content *extremely* accessible. And by accessible I mean anyone can do it. What does this lead to? Well, it leads to everyone running around in the best gear that the current end game has to offer.
When only a small percentage of the population is clearing bleeding edge end game content (as was the case throughout vanilla WoW and TBC) then it's logical and fair and not game breaking that people doing so have far better stats than people who didn't raid or couldn't get out of Kara after two years in the place.
But when a large MAJORITY of the level 80 population is killing KT and other endgame bosses and benefitting from best-in-slot gear then suddenly it's a problem.
What everyone should really take away from all of this is that Blizzard still hasn't decided whether they want to cater to casuals and make content accessible to everyone (and therefore end game gear also accessible to everyone), or if they want to cater to the more hardcore and keep gear exclusive and raiding content difficult. As a result they're pleasing very few on either side with the announcement of changes like this.
Heremod Feb 5th 2009 4:40PM
Nerf regen? fine
Eliminate clearcasting? lower O5SR bonus?
So what you're saying is, no more tricks. Just give us more talents to reduce spell cost? What?
Passive abilities are DULL. Give me tricks to get out of FSR. Let me react to the clearcasting proc. Let me plan and think and react.
And here I was looking forward to incentive to mix flash/binding and PoH . . . /sigh.
Usdom Feb 5th 2009 4:40PM
"So tanks aren't intended to worry about aggro, but healers should have to worry about mana."
Oh, no, get this. While they are nerfing mana regen they are making it so that warriors will gain rage while absorbing damage from PW: Shield and every time they dodge and every times they block.
So the healers suck more and the tanks get to do more things that put them in greater danger! Yay for raid wipes!!
Aldheim Feb 5th 2009 5:02PM
...how exactly do you get from "warrior dodges and gets rage" (meaning he takes less damage and therefore needs fewer heals, AND refills on his vital resource that allows him to keep tanking the boss) to "puts himself in danger and wipes the raid?"
If he's DODGING and BLOCKING, he's not putting anyone in danger, he's TANKING.
Roger Feb 5th 2009 4:45PM
I raid as a holy priest mainly Naxx 10 mans with my guild. One of the things that excited me the most in WotLK was the promise of 10 man raids. I am concerned that the effect on smaller guilds trying to take 2 tanks/2 healers/6 dps for most fights is gonna become too darn hard and that we will have to go with 3 healers which honestly we don't have right now (several people are leveling alts...).
My guild just cleared Naxx for the first time this week and my gear is reasonable (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Dragonblight&n=Rogerwilco) and I think my guildies are decent players but I constantly struggle with going OOM in most fights especially when we don't take a class with replenishment.... I am willing to accept that I could be better with juggling O5SR and being more efficient with my overhealing but I don't need it to be much more difficult or the healing I love today becomes a chore and I burnout.....
My personal experience is that going OOM in 25 man fights has been way less problematic for me....
TLDR: don't make 10 man raiding any harder.....it's already harder than 25 mans
Usdom Feb 5th 2009 4:46PM
At this point, if they do this, if they are really, so monumentally stupid as to do this, the only way that I would even CONSIDER being holy EVER is if I got a instant cast Rez spell that could be used in combat.
Short of something THAT DRASTIC, no one is going to want to play a priest or even have a priest in the raids. Why would you?
I just wish we could trade in the classes they SCREW OVER for levels on our alts.
Stone_Rhino Feb 5th 2009 4:48PM
This is going to completely bone holy paladins.
I enjoyed mine to some extent, but starting out in 5 and 10 mans was hardly easy, and I often went oom in 5 man boss fights.
With these changes and my current gear (1800 sp, 25% crit) Healing will become impossible. 1 in 4 of my spells gives some mana back, often flash of light for a paulry 140 some mana. Add in the fact that I have to MORTAL STRIKE MYSELF to get mana back, and I wont even be able to heal an instance.
Ive even seen tier 7.5 pallies going oom in 5 and 10 mans because of a lack of these magical replenishment classes we all have, guess they are screwed too.
Talamarr Feb 5th 2009 4:50PM
You forgot, "THIS IS A SLAP IN THE FACE!"
zappo Feb 5th 2009 4:50PM
In the end I think Blizzard might be missing the bigger picture. The issue doesn't have so much to do with spirit on a priest, as it does with replenishment scaling with intellect. Yet for some reason they decided to take away passive regen and turn certain classes into our mana battery. I wouldn't say this is a nerf so much as a fundamental game shift. Basically there's going to be 5 components to this game:
+ tank
+ healer
+ dps
+ replenishment
+ cc
What strikes me as sort of wacky about the whole thing is that Blizzard wants to "take the player not the class", then they sort of homogenize the classes and make "super classes". With the added fun of the fact that you don't just need a Warlock... you need a DESTRO Warlock.
Well at least I don't feel so stupid taking gear with MP5 on it now. Even when I do the math and the mp5 stuff comes out ahead I feel sort of silly passing up stuff with spirit.
Usdom Feb 5th 2009 4:52PM
Wow insider needs to put this post on the front page so people will know. None of this pushing it down under other subjects.
NO ONE CARES WHAT ELSE BLIZZARD IS DOING IF WE CAN'T PLAY THE GAME BECAUSE WE HAVE NO HEALERS.
Hal Feb 5th 2009 4:57PM
If this echoes something already said, my apologies for missing it.
Is Spiritual Attunement just getting nerfed for Holy Pallies, or all Pallies? I worry that nerfing it overall is going to hurt Tankadins in a big way, because a great deal of their mana, needed for tanking, comes from the healing they receive.
Aldheim Feb 5th 2009 5:02PM
The post said it mentioned nerfing SA for Holy paladins in specific. Perhaps a new rider on Illumination or something.
Riverrun Feb 5th 2009 5:01PM
Good thing I gear my resto druid for mana conservation already--even if I don't currently need all that mp5. I would like more detail on the spirit nerf, though, since it seems that every class benefits from spirit differently.
Tiis Feb 5th 2009 5:04PM
Is this part of the you must have replenishment for your group?
Tiis Feb 5th 2009 5:05PM
Maybe I will finally just go Shadow
Aldheim Feb 5th 2009 5:20PM
Hmm. (I am a holy paladin, for reference.)
I will grant you this: I never run out of mana in Naxx 10, which is the content my guild is focused on (along with Sartharion, but sadly the guild is pretty conservative and we've never even tried it with a drake up, to the best of my knowledge.) We clear Naxx-10 every week, though, and there is no fight in that place that I could really call "hard on my mana." I almost always end up with mana in the 70% range or higher at the end of the fight.
Now, part of that is our group composition: we usually run with three healers so the healing load isn't that heavy and I rarely need to go balls to the wall on my heals. In addition I often run with at least one skilled restoration druid, which has always been very synergistic. But part of it is also simply that mana isn't much of an issue for me at my gear level.
Frankly, for holy paladins, I can't help but think it's better fixed by simply lengthening the cooldown on Divine Plea. I think if it had a 2 minute cooldown instead of one minute (which would cut the mana regen in half) it would be enough to still be a great, class defining ability without giving us endless mana. Changing it to be a 50% heal penalty, though... I mean, if nothing else it's annoying because I'll have to call out in Vent every time I use it. I usually crit on a Holy Light for about 15k or so... Getting 7.5k as a maximum on my best heal seems pretty dangerously low to me.
It seems like this is a fine change for 25 man raiding, but it scales pretty badly as you get fewer people. In a 25 man if one of your healers is on the new Divine Plea, you're only losing 1/14th of your raid's total healing capacity (assuming 7 healers.) In a 10 man you're losing either 1/4 or 1/6 of your healing capacity (2 or 3 healers respectively) and you're of course losing 1/2 in a 5 man. That lack of throughput at the 5 man level means that holy paladins are going to have even more troubles healing small groups, which is problematic since we already have a number of issue there.