Raid Rx: Bored of healing
by Matt Low 
Apr 29th 2010 at 4:00PM
Don't get freaked out just yet! I'm not actually bored of healing on my priest. But in the last week, I've tried to do a little bit of healing on my shaman and my paladin. The last time I tried to do it, I felt drowsy and nearly fell asleep during a raid. Unfortunately, these recent attempts proved no different. The Cataclysm changes can't come soon enough.
While we're on the topic of healer boredom, Ghostcrawler (lead system designer or otherwise known as the guy who has the power to nerf and buff classes at will) happened to shed a bit of light on healing philosophy. It was about cooldowns and finding ways to make healing just a little more interesting.
At first glance, how would you feel if Circle of Healing or Wild Growth had the internal cooldown extended to 8 seconds?
That is a bit of a stretch, isn't it? Those spells are "signature" spells for priests and druids respectively. It isn't set in stone yet or anything, but if the cooldown was raised hypothetically, my stomach would lurch just a little bit. I think the first thing that went through my mind was that I would need to use more filler spells before it was up again.
And that's when I realized the point.
I would need to use more spells. In other words, I'm being asked to use other spells in my arsenal other than Circle of Healing on every cooldown.
Ghostcrawler - Re: There goes Wild Growth...
Raising the cooldown on spells like Wild Growth and Circle of Healing are good things for healers. It's one of the few* things that will buy you GCDs to actually cast other spells. With a 6 sec cooldown, you really only get to cast maybe 3-5 other spells before you need to hit that magic button again.
Let me put it another way... if there was no cooldown on Wild Growth would you ever hit another button? The frequency with which druids use it today suggests the answer is: not often.
...
Raising the cooldown on spells like Wild Growth and Circle of Healing are good things for healers. It's one of the few* things that will buy you GCDs to actually cast other spells. With a 6 sec cooldown, you really only get to cast maybe 3-5 other spells before you need to hit that magic button again.
Let me put it another way... if there was no cooldown on Wild Growth would you ever hit another button? The frequency with which druids use it today suggests the answer is: not often.
...
If Wild Growth was replaced by Circle of Healing, I'd agree 100%. I can begin to see a bit of distinction between vanilla players, Burning Crusade players, and Wrath players based on the reactions alone. Vanilla players seem to heave a sigh of relief, Burning Crusade players are questioning it, and Wrath players seem to be the most upset.
But don't take that seriously as that was from a sample size of 3.
Vanilla healing
I want to emphasize how simplistic raid healing was back then. It was complicated from an assignment perspective, but if we zoomed in and approached it from a micro perspective, it was incredibly easy. For me, I would alternate between low rank Flash Heal and low rank Greater Heal. Of course, I'd always have the max ranks available just in case I needed them. Healing itself wasn't all that great but the shock and awe of the encounters amazed me during my early raiding career. The closest feeling I had to working with other players on such a large scale would have been playing Battlefield: 1942 and deciding which bases to defend or assault.
Burning Crusade healing
It improved by leaps and bounds. However, this was the period where Circle of Healing did not have a cooldown and holy priests just dominated the raiding scene alongside shamans. In other words, 2-button healing was still prevalent but we had more options available to us. Did we ever use them as often? No, not really. One spell was able to do all the work. What was the point of having to rely on others?
Wrath healing
They got most of it right. At least, priests and druids feel fine to me. As a healing shaman, I felt I could hold my own and I had to think a few times about what my targets and the spells. Yet when I heal on my paladin, I'm just not into it. Maybe it really is just me. Maybe I've grown so used to having a myriad of spells to choose from that I felt stifled when trying to heal on a paladin. The point I wanted to drive home is that while additional healing spells don't have to be further added into the game (other than the ones they were planning to add anyway), no single spell should dominate in every possible situation to the exclusion of others. Otherwise, we're going to get the same situation as we had in Burning Crusade where Circle of Healing was just too awesome and it was the answer to everything.
If you're curious and wish to learn more about how organizational healing has evolved, be sure to check out this piece.
Other methods?
One idea proposed was to crank up the mana required to cast Wild Growth. Make it punishing for the healers and force them to manage their mana appropriately. By making such a spell overtly expensive, it would get most healers to rethink which spells to use at which times. I suppose it would mean that I would resort to gemming hard for regeneration attributes.
Here's another idea I thought of. What if spells were made progressively stronger based on the length of time between uses? Remove the cooldown component entirely. If a player wants to rapidly spam Wild Growth, let them have it. The subsequent casts won't be as powerful as the initial one. Have the healing effectiveness increase by a scaling amount to a certain point. It could function as a power up mechanic where after a spell discharges, it takes time to rebuild the potency back up to full.
In the meantime, I suppose I'll head back in and try to find ways to make healing more interesting. There is an upside to the whole 2-button healing thing however. At least I can watch me some playoff hockey and not worry too much about losing players as much! Team Vancouver is now in the second round!
Want some more advice for working with the healers in your guild? Raid Rx has you covered with all there is to know! Need raid or guild healing advice? Email me at matticus@wow.com and you could see a future post addressing your question. Looking for less healer-centric raiding advice? Take a look at our raiding column, Ready Check. Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Raiding, Raid Rx (Raid Healing)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
swimstarguy Apr 29th 2010 4:08PM
I really like the idea of having a spell grow weaker if you're spamming it.
If that spell also buffed other spells or added additional effects to them it would force you to play a strategy where you have to plan ahead but also allow for changes in your rotation.
PictoKong Apr 29th 2010 4:13PM
That is called Eclipse version 4.0
Eyhk Apr 29th 2010 4:40PM
Although an interesting idea, it goes completely against Blizzard's stated goal of removing confusing stats and ideas. What is the internal cooldown? Will we have to track two cooldowns, one for the regular cooldown/global and one for the charge-up? What would be the optimum time between usage? How much will it differ when I choose this piece of gear versus that piece of gear?
That is definitely not a place I'd like to be.
Simply increasing the cooldown to allow more diverse spells to be used inbetween would make things more interesting, and definitely create a concious choice on should I use it now or let it off cooldown for 2 or 3 more seconds to use after a certain boss ability coming up?
Rob Apr 29th 2010 4:49PM
I think this is a great idea but would require a rethinking. I can see this for a heroic healer class though. In a sense however the palys sorta have this spell mechanic, a small spammable heal and a big heal.
To me i think the issue is one of lack of boss mechanics focused on healers, a mechanic that rewards healers for whack a mole play, a lack of effective healing options, and a lack of a true hybrid class that could dps or heal within a single encounter. Maybe it would only be 80% as good as the right spec but it would alleviate boredom from healing at the least.
To me this expansion really wasn't about the healers, it was about making sure specs and classes were similiar to each other. Now that we're mostly there, can we please get excited about healing again?
Vogie Apr 29th 2010 4:53PM
I too would love to see a spell that you can't spam effectively like that.
Perhaps they could use a system like the inverse of the Vial of the Sunwell, with no cooldown. You start the fight *energized* and every time you hit that Circle of Wild Healing Growth, it goes down by X. You can spam it until it does nothing, or you let it recharge as you continue to heal.
Kay Apr 29th 2010 8:07PM
It seems that this mechanic already exists, to a degree, with Serendipity and Prayer of Healing. As you heal, with Surge of Light procs and such, you'll "naturally" gain serendipity from flash heals, and when you need to PoH, it will be hasted and much more useful for it. However, if you try spam PoH, after the first cast it will have a long cast time and be far less effective. Most Holy priests will agree that this is a fun and interesting mechanic, and i think it would be nice to introduce elsewhere, as you suggest.
SeanOr101 Apr 29th 2010 4:09PM
Good article, very thought provoking. The most thought provoking part was at the end when I pondered how many games it will take for Vancouver to stomp the Chicago Blackhawks. GO CANUCKS GO!
Rob Apr 29th 2010 4:12PM
I think balancing out the heals would go far. I was trying to remember the last time I threw a healing touch out, and it was a long long time ago. It's just a very slow spell for todays world. I'm not even sure how efficient it is at my level of gear. I do inefficient things now because a) there is alot of damage and b) my most efficient heals are continually sniped.
If HT got to the point where it was better than nourish, then it would make the druid more versitle. We may even be MT healers; give us say a flash heal in the form of nourish, have our dots, and have our big heal = HT. And nourish isn't great, don't get me started on how crappy that spell is. But the point is that there is alot of tweaking that can be done. At least for druids, we do have alot of options, but some of them are jokes. And the encounters are real jokes too. Healing specific encounters...lets see green dragon in ICC, festergut, twins in TOC (sorta), Jax (sorta w the incinerate flesh).
I remember back in BC there were a bunch of encounters that utilized healers more, but I didnt heal then. I'm thinking of the BT guy who did the boiling blood to the 5 people furthest away and you had to a complex dance, and occassionally he would tank people. Yeah that guy. Anyway I think that would be somewhat different in that anyone could be the tank for a bit.
I think ICC is a step in the right direction but too many fights are spam heal spam heal spam heal.
Matticus Apr 29th 2010 4:15PM
Bloodboil was the bane of my healing career back then. I fell under a wave of despair. The first 5 hours on the fight were me spent questioning my own abilities. No combination of healing juggling had any major effect.
Turns out all we had to do was tighten the positions further and force groups to stand on water and move back in after their turn was up.
Angus Apr 29th 2010 4:43PM
God Bloodboil was an utter pain.
Even if you did everything right with the raid rotating and such, you had to get lucky on the Fel Rage or it was over. I remember him 1 shotting the lock before any healer could switch, then working his way through the DPS like candy.
flint Apr 29th 2010 5:08PM
Oh the nightmares of Bloodboil. Even worse, my guild was adamant on putting me in the 2nd bloodboil soaking group, meaning that after 5 bloodboils he'd transition to phase 2, while I had to spam heals on the FR target all while BB drained my health. I ended up having to make a macro that would target the boss' target and cast binding heal. It killed my mana, but it kept us alive.
Healr Apr 29th 2010 8:12PM
Healing Bloodboil was by far the most fun I've had throughout my WoW career. The complexity, the mana strain, the stress, the unpredictable parts of who was target in the random-player-targeted phase combined with the preciseness of the boiling blood dance.... Bring it back pleeeeease!
Chrissie Apr 30th 2010 6:04AM
Mmm, Bloodboil. I got newly appointed as our guild's healing lead when we were on Bloodboil and this fight was an absolute pain.
Also, we were in short supply of healing priests as it is (I was playing a druid), and the ones we did get I had to force into speccing CoH instead of Divine Spirit.
Juggling the bloodboil mechanic, debuffs on the tanks and the Fel Rage crap was an absolute nightmare.
But darn, was I proud and happy when that bastard died.
Hyacinthe Apr 29th 2010 4:24PM
I am determined to get my paladin to the level cap someday, but that day might be several expansions in the future. I know shaman healing is more interesting than it's probably ever been before, but I'm not enjoying it as much as I like priest and druid healing. However, I have been encountering a number of healers who seem obsessed with the meter and throughput, and I get self-conscious about it on my disc priest, even though I know it's not a valid measurement. I just think, "I know that person is watching the meter and cussing me out because I literally am just a blip on recount's screen." and I can't move past it.
Anyway, that's pretty irrelevant. I just wanted to say that am another healer who can't play a paladin. I really hope Cata changes that.
Gaurth Apr 29th 2010 11:13PM
Download skada, it's a damage meter that shows absorbs along with healing, the numbers might surprise you.
LT Apr 30th 2010 2:38PM
World of Logs shows the shields as well
fromnowear Apr 29th 2010 4:26PM
Awesome article! I could not agree more about your assessments. I find druid and priest healing to be the most enthralling because of the variety of tools for different jobs, while shaman and paladin healing is almost too simple (though at least my shaman has some built-in rotations of spells).
As for CoH and WG getting longer cooldowns, I don't think you'd notice a huge difference. I think a druid's Swiftmend is a good spell to compare them too. It has a slightly longer CD, higher mana cost, a pronounced effect (though, not aoe like the other two), and as a result people use it more judiciously than WG, even though it often does less healing overall.
A better design for WG and CoH might be something similar to how shaman use Riptide to proc talented bonuses to their spellcasting rather than for the outright power of that spell.
However, I also like your idea of charging-up "power for potency" and I think that would be a nice fresh mechanic to weave into a healing arsenal. Any specific ideas on how the UI/talents might incorporate this?
HappyFunNorm Apr 29th 2010 4:35PM
I thought they were going to move away from healing as whack-a-mole. I was really interested to what they came up with. Given what we know already, while the rotations may change, healing will basically be the same as always, and priests will have a fancy new spell to do it with... "heal"
Oh, creativity, where are you?
Angus Apr 29th 2010 4:45PM
if you play whack a mole and try to keep them up, you will be OOM.
The point is to co-ordinate and let some folks just sit there with damage on them. Raid damage is likely to go down significantly, and so you will be able to leave them injured.
Greeni Apr 29th 2010 4:47PM
as a healing shaman, i often find myself using all of my healing spells. when the tank's almost dead, i pop riptide, nature's swiftness, and healing wave, which gets him to about 50%, and then lesser healing wave spam back to 100%. also, chain heal is a must in AoE fights. so, honestly, i think that shaman healing is pretty exciting, especially when there's a low-armor tank to keep alive =)