Healing's evolution in Cataclysm
by Allison Robert 
Dec 23rd 2009 at 2:00PM
The model that Blizzard's looking to move towards is getting a test run of sorts in Icecrown Citadel -- lower tank avoidance, bosses hitting for more reasonable amounts, and -- in Cataclysm -- higher health overall. In other words, we'll be healing for roughly the same amount we're healing now through less damage that nonetheless occurs more frequently. This will lead to a greater risk of running OOM as the encounter progresses if you dump a ton of mana on damage that should have been healed more efficiently. Even now, there are encounters like hard-mode Vezax where you do have to do this, which I thought made for a pretty interesting fight.
But while I think it's a good solution to both of the current "Oh crap the tank died in 2.7 seconds" and "Blanket the raid in Rejuvenation and never hit 40% mana" problems, I have a lurking suspicion that it's going to make hard-mode raiding even uglier than it can be now. One of the consistent features of current Wrath hard modes is the degree to which the heal team can be made utterly miserable (Firefighter, 3-tree Freya, heroic Twins-25, phase 3 heroic Anub'arak-25), and that's without much risk of going OOM. Introducing that element when Blizzard is so fond of encounters with everyone in the raid taking hideous damage worries me more than a little.
Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Forums
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
jealouspirate Dec 23rd 2009 2:10PM
As a healer I'm looking forward to these changes. Hopefully, it will make healing more interesting and fun.
Right now I have mini heart-attacks when the tank's hp goes from 100% to 10% in 1 sec.
Csilla Dec 23rd 2009 2:57PM
I know what you mean. I was healing in HoR the other day and on one of the bosses, he gives a debuff that cuts hp by 50%, so my 40k tank dropped to 20 and then took a 10k hit following that. I could start spam heals fast enough it freaked me so much. A 30k loss in a simple 5man heroic? Geez
Edge Dec 23rd 2009 5:20PM
HoR seems like one of the worst for Healers. Healing through the Lich King chasing you is not too bad, but the mid two bosses with healers, casters, and long range DPS makes every moment of the spirits fight an "Oh $hit" moment for me.
Eisengel Dec 26th 2009 11:56PM
I recall when Blizz removed downranking everyone was wondering what was going to happen to healing to compensate. Downranking was one of the major components in a healer's arsenal, and effective use of downranked spells could make a good healer an incredible healer. First mana regen went too high, then had been iteratively cranked lower while tank avoidance got higher and higher... until we came to where we are now, mana is not quite as infinite at lower levels, but once you get past intro raids it is, and tanks aren't quite invulnerable at lower levels, but once they get past intro raids their avoidance becomes silly. In general it seems Blizz has been having a lot of trouble scaling given this new paradigm. The only thing that seems to make sense is to stretch out the space. Keep the boss DPS the same, but increase tank health and decrease avoidance while also increasing raid damage and cranking down regen a bit more. Granted Blizz did shake things up a lot all at once though; downranking removal, the Pally redesign, then the addition of DKs really muddied the healing/tanking waters.
I do agree this will likely make healing more interesting, although one thing that Blizz always seem very, very reluctant to do is to change old things. The Pally redesign was unprecedented, and the Cataclysm remake of Kalimdor is also quite surprising. Many healing specs have spells that, frankly, are terrible. I hope that in these bits of willingness to go back and re-engineer older content and class features will extend to a review of healing over the multiple healing specs (yes, not healing classes, healing specs), and will result in some rebalancing of skills and spells to fit the new healing paradigm they're putting together for Cataclysm. If the older mostly useless spells were re-engineered to be downranked versions of full-power ones (like Heal could be a downranked Greater Heal), it would be a way of bringing back what many specs lost when downranking was removed; choice of speed vs mana vs healing amount and type, which seems to be one of Blizz's stated goals for the reworking of healing.
Caelin Dec 23rd 2009 2:11PM
What's with the tauren's hands in that picture?
Also, I look forward to seeing how they change healing, because at the moment all I do as a holy paladin is beacon and sacred shield, and then essentially just spam holy light until I have to refresh one of the two...
Tori Dec 23rd 2009 2:37PM
They look like normal female tauren hands to me.
icis Dec 23rd 2009 3:58PM
Sorry Caelin but as a pally there is so much more to do then heal in a raid....Toss on Righteous furry to keep adds of the more squishy healers....Bubble and pop Divene sacrifice if you tank is a short a CD.......Put on Devotion aura and pop Aura mastery again if tank is short a CD or is going to be taking lots of damage. Cast Hand of Salvation on that trigger happy mage...lol cast hand of protection on that same mage when he pulls agro again. Hammer of justice to stun a loose add. Hand of Sacrifice on someone taking to much damage.. Hand of Freedom on CC'ed healer. There is so much to do on a holy pally other then heal.
Chamual Dec 23rd 2009 7:29PM
@icis
Yes you can do all those things, thing is, in ToC and ICC there isn't actually any need to do them as the encounters have been made so laughably easily and the trash posses an absolute minimal risk to the raid.......
ObiChad Dec 23rd 2009 2:24PM
"Introducing that element when Blizzard is so fond of encounters with everyone in the raid taking hideous damage worries me more than a little."
I'm fairly certain they said at some time in the past that the reason for the excessive raid damage was due to the high-hitting-no-oom healers. One would hope in a world where mana mattered and we had to pick and choose our spells more carefully, those all-the-raid-gets-smacked-around-for-10-seconds events wouldn't occur as often or hit for as much.
Dazdor Dec 24th 2009 4:03PM
You're right. GC said in the linked forum posts that the biggest challenge for healers using every single GCD available to have a heal inc or else someone is going to die. Thats not how I think healers should play, nor, it seems, does GC think that way either. I'm also very excited to see healing become less whack-a-mole and require more precision and accuracy.
tatsumasa Dec 23rd 2009 2:27PM
ya this is what they said would happen in icc, then they gave us marrowgar who (with the tanks stacked on top of each other) still hits for 50% of the total health pool.
elvendude Dec 23rd 2009 2:30PM
I'm ok with 50% health. That's one big heal and one little heal away from full. Less, if he had to burn through a significant portion of my PW:S.
What I'm not ok with is 75%+. That makes me cry inside.
Midas Dec 23rd 2009 6:43PM
Compare marrowgar to steelbreaker and you'll see what we mean. An undergeared tank get one shot, a decently geared tank can be kneecapped by fusion punch and finished off by the medium boss's melee if you're just unlucky.
Candina@WH Dec 23rd 2009 2:27PM
As a Resto Shaman and a Disc Priest, this change will be nice.
While I don't mind the current healing model, I would really love not to have to dump EVERYTHING I can on the tank every time the rare occurrence of them getting kersmacked down to 10%, while the rest of the group takes splash damage.
I like disc healing - mitigate, mitigate, top off, pour it on, mitigate... etc.
With my shaman, too often it feels like 'if I am not spamming chain heal, I am not doing my job'.
bremic Dec 23rd 2009 2:27PM
I am very much looking forward to these healing changes, I am looking forward to healing requiring more skill and less luck.
Playing from Australia, the Hard Modes as they stand are just plain stupid. You get a 10-15% latency variation, which is very common, and you end up with a dead tank. The few Hard Modes we did had the dps doing almost exactly the same as they were in normal mode; the tanks paying a little more attention, and the healers frustration levels so high that they were getting asked over and over "Why did you let X die?".
More damage done to the raid makes only the healers job harder most of the time, and I don't understand why that should make a fight "Hard Mode".
Hopefully with these changes will come a philosophy of making Hard Modes less based on "More to heal through" and maybe into "more to pay attention to".
zcubed Dec 23rd 2009 2:28PM
perhaps a noob question: whats OOM?
vanye111 Dec 23rd 2009 2:28PM
Out of Mana
if you type /oom in game, your character will announce that they are out of mana.
Josef Dec 23rd 2009 2:51PM
Out Of Mana.
vanye111 Dec 23rd 2009 2:28PM
Ahh, but if the raid is *not taking hideous damage*, but smaller, more frequent amounts of it (similar to the damage the tank is taking) it becomes more flexible.
Instead of:
Frozen Blows - Self buff that adds 31062 frost damage to all melee attacks but reduces physical damage by 70%. Also while up hits the entire raid for 4000 frost damage every 2 seconds. This buff last 20 seconds.
Maybe it would be something like
Frozen Blows - Self buff that adds 21062 frost damage to all melee attacks but reduces physical damage by 50%. Also while up hits the entire raid for 1000 frost damage every second. This buff last 20 seconds.
More frequent, but smaller, bursts of damage. Coupled with less of an increase in the actual amount a spell heals vs a larger health pool, it shifts a bit more towards "do I have time to heal X or do I need to heal Y first"
flint Dec 23rd 2009 5:45PM
Oh god, Frozen Blows. Led to many Hodir wipes.