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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsUpcoming healer changes
by Adam Holisky 
Feb 16th 2011 at 1:02PM
The two big things to come out of this are:
- Power Word: Shield cost is going up by 33%. This nerfs disc priests.
- Shaman's Purification now increases healing effectiveness by 25%, up from 10%.
NethaeraSince the release of patch 4.0.6, we've been keeping an eye on healers and how they are performing and are currently in the process of making some additional adjustments.
Priests
The cost of Power Word: Shield is being increased by 33%. While we wanted Discipline priests to be able to utilize this spell more often and with better results, we also did not want it to be the main spell (and often the only spell) used while in groups. We don't find this to be a particularly compelling playstyle and have found that it encourages players to avoid using other spells such as Penance. We believe that using a shield in a tight moment is totally appropriate, but we don't want it to be incredibly efficient to do so with more frequency than that.
We realize that by making Power Word: Shield slightly more expensive for Discipline priests to cast that it might cause Holy priests to avoid using it. To that end, we are adding mana savings into the Body and Soul talent. The tooltip will not reflect this change until a future patch, however. Ideally, Holy priests should not notice much of a change to the Power Word: Shield costs.
Shaman
We are also applying a hotfix for Purification for the Restoration shaman passive from 10% to 25%. We think that shaman healing per second is not as competitive with other healers and while we hoped to bring down Holy priest and Holy paladins (in particular) in 4.0.6, which we did, shaman still appear to be behind. In this case, it is simply easier to buff Restoration shaman rather than nerf everyone else or rebalance the encounters.
In Addition - Restoration Druids and Restoration Shaman
We agree with the sentiment among some players that Restoration druids and Restoration shaman are lacking in the healing cooldown department. The shaman buff and Power Word: Shield adjustment above should bring all healers reasonably close in terms of throughput. The decision on who to bring then might end up being dictated by the strong cooldowns offered by paladins or priests. This isn't the kind of thing we can address via a hotix, but it is something we are looking at for the next major content patch.
As always, we appreciate your continued constructive feedback and will do our best to keep you informed of ongoing developments.
Priests
The cost of Power Word: Shield is being increased by 33%. While we wanted Discipline priests to be able to utilize this spell more often and with better results, we also did not want it to be the main spell (and often the only spell) used while in groups. We don't find this to be a particularly compelling playstyle and have found that it encourages players to avoid using other spells such as Penance. We believe that using a shield in a tight moment is totally appropriate, but we don't want it to be incredibly efficient to do so with more frequency than that.
We realize that by making Power Word: Shield slightly more expensive for Discipline priests to cast that it might cause Holy priests to avoid using it. To that end, we are adding mana savings into the Body and Soul talent. The tooltip will not reflect this change until a future patch, however. Ideally, Holy priests should not notice much of a change to the Power Word: Shield costs.
Shaman
We are also applying a hotfix for Purification for the Restoration shaman passive from 10% to 25%. We think that shaman healing per second is not as competitive with other healers and while we hoped to bring down Holy priest and Holy paladins (in particular) in 4.0.6, which we did, shaman still appear to be behind. In this case, it is simply easier to buff Restoration shaman rather than nerf everyone else or rebalance the encounters.
In Addition - Restoration Druids and Restoration Shaman
We agree with the sentiment among some players that Restoration druids and Restoration shaman are lacking in the healing cooldown department. The shaman buff and Power Word: Shield adjustment above should bring all healers reasonably close in terms of throughput. The decision on who to bring then might end up being dictated by the strong cooldowns offered by paladins or priests. This isn't the kind of thing we can address via a hotix, but it is something we are looking at for the next major content patch.
As always, we appreciate your continued constructive feedback and will do our best to keep you informed of ongoing developments.
And finally, Nethaera says on the ETA of the changes:
NethaeraWe anticipate having these in relatively soon (possibly as soon as sometime today). We'll do our best to let you know once they're in and we'll be updating the notes on the Hotfix thread as well.
Filed under: News items
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 5)
Xsinthis Feb 16th 2011 4:08PM
15% buff to healing? Of course thats worth it. Next time someone asks ask them if they would noticed a 15% damage boost
jfofla Feb 16th 2011 1:27PM
Thank God I put the Lamb's Bllod on my door, and the Angel of Nerf Passed Over the House of Holy Paladin!
erknost Feb 16th 2011 1:34PM
I think I will buy a dozen of those!
Avrus Feb 16th 2011 3:16PM
Oh LAMB blood. Now I understand where the Unholy DKs went wrong. We heard HAM blood.
Awkward.
Sky Feb 16th 2011 1:32PM
Thank you Blizzard for these changes. I have always advocated for shaman's to have a mastery that just gives flat healing (i.e does not suck balls) and I finally got something that is pretty similar (flat out buff to all healing in talents). I can finally play my shaman again.
DancePuppets Feb 16th 2011 1:37PM
Oh no! Slightly annoyed about that as PW:Shield is a pretty major part of a Disc priest's longevity when it comes to mana regeneration. Generally before it got buffed it would return a good amount of mana on collapse, so, despite being relatively inefficient in itself the return meant that a Disc priest could continue healing at maximum throughput throughout a fight where a Holy priest for example would have to slow up a little near the end which was balanced with Disc throughput being slightly lower overall. I'd rather they'd just re-weakend the shields rather than making them more expensive as it eats into the main thing Disc priests have going for them in their mana-regen longevity.
Jackwraith Feb 16th 2011 1:48PM
Re: shamans:
Well, that only took shaman underperformance and lack of cooldowns dominating the healer boards for a month-and-a-half...
worstcase86 Feb 16th 2011 2:15PM
I am so glad to see this change for shaman, and I am perhaps even more excited that the devs are acknowledging our throughput cooldown deficiency.
I can't tell you how often I pound my Nature's Swiftness + Greater Healing Wave macro on a tank that is nearly flat-lining only to see one of two ugly situations unfold:
(1) The heal fails to go through because I was just barely too late. Despite hitting my button while the tank was still alive according to my client, the slightest bit of latency (~100 ms) causes the command to be received just too late, and the tank dies. This is really my own fault, but the horrible part is that my NS cd was blown anyway, and I'm simply out of luck.
(2) My heal is successful, yet despite having nearly 4700 Intellect and stacking Mastery rating, I barely see my tank's health bar budge. Perhaps incoming damage canceled out my heal and the tank was saved by my cd after all, but contrast this to Lay on Hands. I'll take a 10 minute (7 min with glyph) cd with that kind of power over my 2 minute cd any day.
Rob Feb 16th 2011 2:36PM
Druids have the exact same issue. NS barely hits for anything. Swiftmend is nice but hardly a show-stopper, but its short CD means that it is intended to be used alot.
dyloniusfunk Feb 16th 2011 2:20PM
I blame arena for this bs. As long as disc is popular in arena it will continue to be "balanced". I guess I should just give up and change my disc spec to holy since i have no desire to participate in that e-sport
Matrillik Feb 16th 2011 2:23PM
I really wish that they had considered the impact on arena of the increased mana cost on PW:S. I'm totally screwed now.
archer75 Feb 16th 2011 2:25PM
Well this sucks. I can see where spamming bubbles might be all higher geared priests do but being lower geared it's not something I could afford to do so I balanced shields with my other healing spells and i'm able to heal heroics and usually not have mana issues.
But raising the mana cost kind of screws us lower geared up and coming priests.
cearrdorn Feb 16th 2011 2:31PM
The overall state of healing in this expansion has pretty much destroyed my guild's healer corps. we went from 12 before the expansion to 6 after, all because of the tremendous difficulty with the changes prior to the expansion and the continued difficulty with sub-raid ready gear most of them were experiencing. I've seen folks heal 5 mans that refuse to raid heal because of the knuckle-biting difficulty.
My Garona Feb 16th 2011 4:10PM
It's not just your guild. Lots of our healers cancelled subs altogether. Horrible idea this "update" to heals mixed with absurd heroics. Let the fanboy flaming begin.
Hillazon Feb 16th 2011 11:31PM
As a full-time healer since the BC days, I don't mind the occasional change to healer styles. It helps keep things fresh.
But there has been something "off" with Cataclysm. Maybe it just is missing Blizzard's secret sauce. BC was fun, Wrath was fun, but Cataclysm has sucked a lot of fun out of the game.
Bugs seem buggier. Grinds seem grindier. The streamlined quests made leveling too quick.
Taking a break for a while.
Sejarki Feb 16th 2011 2:54PM
My question is then was PW: Shield being overused in 10 mans like it was in 25? I suspect this is something to re-balance Disc in 25 man raids that then really hurts Disc in 10s.
So yeah. Ugh.
wow Feb 16th 2011 3:19PM
It depends what your disc priests role is in the 10man raid.
A tank healing disc priest was working as intended, and shouldn't take a heavy hit from this. How ever a raid healing disc priest in either 10 or 25 raids were somewhat broken.
We were suffering from the problem that all healers suffered from in wotlk, one spell, bubble, was cheap enough to be spammed, had the highest throughput of any spell (given mastery and int stacking) and could be spammed at a reasonable pace (borrowed time ftw?)
Aedimus Feb 16th 2011 3:07PM
My guess is the disc priest nerf is because of pvp. Do they really have to destroy every class with these pvp balancing issues? I don't care for pvp myself but I hate that all my characters continually get messed up because of pvp balancing. Ohwell drop disc and go holy with my priest.
wow Feb 16th 2011 3:13PM
Your guess is wrong.
It was more advantageous for disc priests to use bubble in far to many situations over any other spell. This was leading to a growing trend of BUBBLE SPAMMAGE.
Remember LK? Not your 30% buffed LK but proper hard LK where disco priests were required to have bubble on as many as possible at infest or face a wipe. Yeah, it was boring, and it sucked. Lets not go back there.
Nynn Feb 16th 2011 3:09PM
Im not one that usuall QQs over nerfs. I know that I'll just find a work around. What I don't get about blizzard is what did they expect? They nerfed Prayer of Healing the Disc only group heal and buffed shields. Of course people are now spamming it more. I use it now as a group heal. When i know a group damage is coming (maloriak) i spam it on everyone then let the holy priest get everyone up while i focus on the tank. Pw:s isn't the only spell I use by far but it of course is one of my most used ones. How else am I supposed to keep up my raid?