Raid Rx: Healing talents trimmed
by Matt Low 
Jul 15th 2010 at 8:00PM
First, I just want to say that members of my guild and I scored ourselves a set of drake mounts from Glory of the Icecrown Raider. Took a few weeks, but we managed to pull it off. Hard modes and other achievements are an excellent way to keep your healing in form!
Anyway, those experiences can come at a later time. Some big announcements this week about talents! Have you seen the new looks yet? They're by no means finalized. We're still months away from anything resembling completion. Many talents have been removed from the tree entirely.
General thoughts on healing
The first thing you might notice is that a number of trademark spells (Penance, Swiftmend, etc.) are granted to you at level 10. Consider them bonuses for the moment you invest your first talent point. For example, once I decide to start my path in the holy tree for paladins, I'll gain immediate access to Holy Shock, Meditation and Healing Bonus. This is a massive departure from the current talent method, since an ability like Holy Shock had to be talented into.
I love the idea. Getting healers healing right from the beginning and giving them access to iconic talents and abilities will help them get into that mindset.
I've read observations and spoken to a few players who felt exasperated about the return of cookie-cutter specs. Essentially, a cookie-cutter spec is a standard spec that almost every player will choose simply because it is considered the most optimal. There is little to no variance at all. I do remember this being a point that the developers wanted to address. What we really need to keep at the forefront of our minds is that this stuff isn't done yet. Half the talents were destroyed, redesigned or repackaged.
They're still not done yet.
A member in my guild suggested this, and I really liked the idea. As a healer, at some point in your healing career, you are going to be concerned about your throughput and your endurance. It would be interesting to see a spec that leans slightly towards a spec where mana regeneration is beneficial and another spec where healing spells were amplified in some form -- in other words, a mana bonus spec versus a healing bonus spec.
It doesn't have to be one extreme or the other, but something that will give a healer pause and allow them to evaluate where points should be invested. What could end up happening again is that there will be talent point distributions that are universally considered the best. So if we want some diversity, we need to have some type of incentive or trade-off.
It looks like Meditation is a staple in all of the healing trees except for paladins. I found that odd, but I'm pretty sure that all paladin talents are supposed to change in the next build so that they will gain it. This talent will increase the mana regeneration of healers. For now, 50% of your mana regeneration will kick in while casting. That does seem like a lot, but don't forget, a number of regeneration talents and buffs have been removed.
You'll notice that the other healing classes have some baseline form of pushback resistance, but paladins will be getting theirs as well. If you're not sure what pushback is, typically what happens is that when you get struck by a mob and you're casting a spell, the time it takes to cast the spell gets lengthened. The casting bar might have gone back a little bit. What normally takes you 1.5 seconds to cast might take you 2.3 seconds to cast, because a random wolf is attacking you and causing you to momentarily lose your concentration. Now what pushback resistance means is that you have a chance to resist this effect. If you get attacked by something, it won't push back your spell cast.
Let's check out some of the classes.
Paladins
I'm a little hesitant about going too in depth about paladins, since they are getting a fairly large overhaul. The one thing that stands out to me the most is the various mechanics that seems to revolve around judgements. Purifying Power? Pull off a Cleanse on an ally and watch as the target gets nailed by a judgement. Inspired Judgement? Whenever you judge a boss, it will also heal your beacon for half the amount. Very intriguing to see other abilities triggering judgement effects, although that might be more of a global cooldown saver than anything else. It saves you time from having to keep up some judgment on the primary target.
Check out paladin expert Gregg Reece's thoughts.
Druids
Druids are another class whose talents aren't as far along as the others.
There are two big talents that jumped out at me here. Efflorescence happens to be one of them. I might have mentioned it in an earlier column, but position matters. If a druid gets this talent activated, anyone standing on it gets to benefit from some of the heals. At the same time, the onus is also going to be on other players to spot the friendly void zone and stand on it.
I guess the question to ask now is if we can teach other players new tricks.
Tree of Life is the other big change, as it isn't a "form" anymore. Druids will be doing most of their healing in humanoid form. Personally, I find that fantastic. I can finally see what druid tier armor looks like! When Tree of Life is used, some spells become enhanced. I'd love to see how they're buffed. I'm hoping an extra line or two will be added on the descriptions of the affected spells.
For example, casting Wrath with Tree of Life is active causes multiple lasers to fire from the heavens, leaving a 200-yard crater.
Priests
I wrote about my initial reaction about some of the priest changes but I'll touch on a few other things here. I didn't realize it until today, but there's no Power Infusion! It was one of those spiffy offensive or defensive situation spells that you could place on yourself to heal faster or feed to a mage to get them to squeeze more DPS time in. Did it become a baseline spell that's trainable? I have no idea.
I was a little surprised at Desperate Prayer's being the main thing that holy priests get, until it was clarified that the Desperate Prayer of tomorrow isn't the same as the Desperate Prayer of today.
GhostcrawlerDesperate Prayer is a pretty different ability. They really only have the name in common. In Cataclysm, Desperate Prayer has a 45 sec cooldown (down from 2 min). The lower cooldown will let you use it often as leveling.
Holy also has a talent that when you use Desperate Prayer (to heal yourself), it also heals the most injured ally (a portion of the healing done to you), turning it into an instant, smart Binding Heal.
Holy also has a talent that when you use Desperate Prayer (to heal yourself), it also heals the most injured ally (a portion of the healing done to you), turning it into an instant, smart Binding Heal.
Cool!
What about Lightwell?
GhostcrawlerIn the current beta build (or possibly the next one), clicking Lightwell no longer switches your target to it. That was one of the changes we've been waiting for to reevaluate the talent. (Enemies can still target it normally.)
I am not quite sold on that yet. But, I haven't yet experienced it first hand, so I can't say.
Shaman
The Earth Shield talents were removed. They're one of the first things you pick up at level 10 when you start going down the resto tree.
The talents feel a bit rough around the edges. It does appear that your shock spells will be seeing some love due to Focused Insight. I am very curious to see how that will pan out. Telluric Currents' being way down that tree feels a bit odd. I figured if you were leveling as a resto shaman, you'd want access to that a little earlier. Maybe in the second or third tiers, perhaps? Who knows?
Anyway, I can't wait to see what's coming up in the next build of the beta! The wait is just killing me. How are you liking the direction healing is going right now?
Swan dive.
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: Analysis / Opinion, Raid Rx (Raid Healing)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Wild Colors Jul 15th 2010 8:09PM
If you're looking for a description of how the druid spells are currently buffed in ToL form, check out the tooltip in Lissanna's suggested redo of the tree. The only thing she changed, afaik, is how Lifebloom changes. In the current beta build, Lifebloom applies two stacks instead of one when you're in supertree form. As Lissanna points out, that's not all that useful since Lifebloom can only be running on one target at a time. See her talent tree here http://www.war-tools.com/t69695.html and just mouse-over ToL form to see the tooltip.
Wild Colors Jul 15th 2010 8:14PM
For the record, I'm in favor of changing Wrath to your laser suggestion. Do you think we could involve sharks somehow?
Lissanna Jul 15th 2010 8:29PM
http://www.war-tools.com/t68670.html
this one has the full tree form effect.
Dass Jul 15th 2010 8:49PM
Right now I used a talent calculator and I see that as a druid there basically one pve spec and one pvp spec. Would like to have more fun ability's like Efflorescence plz blizz
Chris Ambrose Jul 15th 2010 8:43PM
I, for one, am very excited for the changes to paladins. After being a dps since wow first came out, I finished leveling my pally recently and have been healing and enjoying it immensely. My favorite part is how it feels somewhat more active in regards to having to judge, etc. With the changes in Cata, it appears that it is only going to happen more-so. I am also looking forward to be able to have a real AOE heal so I am not shoehorned into being a tank healer in raids. This will be immensely useful with the advent of the 10man guild being a common base raid unit.
ToyChristopher Jul 15th 2010 8:43PM
"I've read observations and spoken to a few players who felt exasperated about the return of cookie-cutter specs."
I've seen these two but don't really understand them. Especially the word "return" as if cookie cutter specs left?
You are right though, they aren't done yet, and blizzard didn't officially reveal the trees even though I'm sure they knew the info would be out there once the closed beta build went live.
I think the reason they seem so "cookie cutter" is because blizz was taking the most successful talents that everyone likes as they start to move to a 31 point talent tree.
Pata Jul 15th 2010 10:00PM
"I didn't realize it until today, but there's no Power Infusion!"
I have a question about that. According to the Wowhead talent calculator we have Power Infusion, but the MMO-Champion calculator has Inner Focus there instead. However, if you look at MMO-Champion's Priest page (http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/1123-Priest-Cataclysm) they list Power Infusion in the tier 3 column 2 slot instead of Inner Focus! I'm so confused! Every site seems to be saying something different, or in the case of MMO-Champion, contradicting themselves.
Which one are we keeping? Can someone on the beta please clear this up for this confused Disc Priest!
Lissanna Jul 15th 2010 10:08PM
We don't know what they're keeping because this build isn't anywhere close to actually being complete enough to know.
Pata Jul 15th 2010 10:14PM
Oh, I understand that these are no where finished. I just find it odd that there's such a lack of consistent information. I'm just curious what is currently in build 12479 because as I said both Wowhead and MMO-Champion are saying different things about what's there.
Vogie Jul 15th 2010 10:22PM
I'm confused. Maybe wowhead is a bit behind, but I see power infusion as the 11-pt talent in the disc tree.
Okay, now I'm confused. Wowhead has it as the 11pointer in Disc, but MMOChamp has Inner focus there. They both show Swiftmend still in the talent tree, although we know that SM is the Resto Druid level 10 ability.
On the Tree of Life change, I think that will be more of an OSH cooldown, not really an "win-while-winning" button. Spamming instant Regrowth for Efflorescence procs, 1-2 supersized Wild growths are both great... but not as great as instant Roots. It's like Frost arrow on steroids... and I don't think there's a one-mob limit on it either.
Rob Jul 15th 2010 10:42PM
I find it interesting that most of the tree healers are hating the new TOL changes, while others (non-druids) are cool with it. I'm not cool with it, but so be it. I can do something else beside resto druid.
Kole Jul 15th 2010 11:33PM
"Druids will be doing most of their healing in humanoid form. Personally, I find that fantastic. I can finally see what druid tier armor looks like!"
Yeah cause riding a mount you must be naked, or doing any number of other things where you can see your armor. Lame excuse is lame.
The reason I chose to level a druid in the first place was because it was a shape-shifter class and if I want to stare at my armor I can do that with EVERY ONE of my other classes. Take away one form, take them all away.
Seriously this could have all been avoided if they just took away the passive bonuses or allowed offensive spells to be cast. Then those who want to stare at their armor (oh shiny!) can and those of us who play a shape-shifting (go go gadget tree!) class to, well shape-shift, then we can.
Toranja Jul 15th 2010 11:49PM
Nobody targets ToC's lightwell, why would mobs do that? D:
LEAVE LIGHTWELLS ALONE! /cry
zdave Jul 16th 2010 12:01AM
not to be melodramatic about it, but i'm done with my druid now. my main is a priest and i rolled a druid to see another healing class. i thought tree form was cool and unique, but apparently seeing that fancy gear is more important. but only for resto.
wait you mean i can manually shift in and out of tree form if i wanted to see my gear? well wtf.
oh, i get it. resto druids wanted more offensive capabilites in pvp. sure that makes sense. i always see druids in battlegrounds/arena standing around not having people to heal.
wait no, they heal their asses off in pvp. i doubt they even have a spare gcd to fire off instant wraths. instant wraths which, by the way, have no damage bonuses other than your spellpower. so that doesn't make sense either.
oh i get it, druids leveling as resto wanted more effecient questing. but that has nil to do with tree of life....
ah fuck it, axe the tree and let's get a beer. nobody plays druid anyway.
Anon Jul 16th 2010 12:06AM
Hmm... You know, now that talents are making spells and abilities a lot more interesting, what will become of the glyph system?
I mean, it originally was suppose to be similar, giving allowing players to tweak spells but quickly fell back on 5% damage boost here and 10% cooldown reduction there.
Maybe this is why they're so quiet about it....
Hagu Jul 16th 2010 1:03AM
I will miss cleansing totem.
And I suspect Paladin healing will continue to deteriorate like it did through almost all of WotLK.
Arbolamante Jul 16th 2010 1:11AM
Seeing your armor is a very, very stupid reason to be in favor of the change to tree form. There may be all kinds of legitimate reasons to favor it - it depends on, well, everything else they do to the class, but seeing your armor is silly nonsense. You know what I see when I'm healing? Health bars. If I'm paying attentions, void zones -- or their equivalent, depending on the boss fight. I could care less about my armor.
Zenith Jul 16th 2010 5:58AM
Just to clarify pushback resistance, you described how it used to work in vanilla and tbc. In patch 3.0 (I think) it was changed to always provide a reduction of the extra cast time.
Say you cast a 2.5 second heal and have 50% pushback resistance, in the older system you would have a 50% chance of resisting pushback completely. This was very random and fast hitting classes like rogues could keep you permanently busy casting one spell.
With the new system if one hit adds 1 second to a cast, it will now only add 0.5, but this will always happen. A limit has also been added to the time you can be interrupted, something like the spell's base cast time. Your 2.5 second spell will thus only be pushed back to 5 before you become 'immune' to more pushback for that one spell
Zenith Jul 16th 2010 6:07AM
Just to clarify that with the old system you could also be interrupted completely if pushed back far enough and the time of pushback was the same no matter your resistance to it(if it was not resisted of course)
Zenith Jul 16th 2010 6:15AM
Just to clarify, I don't usually start all my posts with "just to clarify" - wait...
/blame mobile/iDevice site version for the small edit box where you can't see more than one paragraph and the keyboard filling half the screen