Raid Rx: An unofficial look at patch 4.1 healing changes and trinkets
by Matt Low 
Feb 25th 2011 at 1:00PM
Information on the 4.1 patch has started slowly filtering through. Can you say nostalgia? I remember Zul'Gurub being one of my first raid instances. I was just a young dwarf priest then. My beard was still in the first stage of infancy. I remember trying to finish out the Zul'Gurub gear sets.
While nothing is finalized just yet, there is an interesting ability being added that'll be of benefit to healing corps of all sizes. From who? Arms warriors! Rallying Cry *New* (Level 83) temporarily grants you and all party or raid members within 30 yards 20% of maximum health for 10 seconds. After the effect expires, the health is lost; 3-min, cooldown, instant.
I don't know enough about melee DPS to determine whether or not an arms warrior is going to be attractive in raids or not with all those buffs, but I sure love seeing more defensive-minded cooldowns being spread out. No information as of yet on potential cooldowns for druids and shamans. You crazy and creative readers had much to say about it last week, so props to you guys. Although none of us will ever get to do much in terms of design, it is rather fun to try armchair game design once in a while.
Some of the preliminary data out there shows slight changes inbound for healers.
Class mechanics changes
- Word of Glory gets a 20-second cooldown. Holy paladins will have a talent called Walk in the Light that removes the cooldown from it. I guess the change is there to slow down the casts for it used by retribution and protection paladins.
- In other minor cooldown nerfs, the raid-wide last stand known as Divine Guardian has had its cooldown raised to 3 minutes (up from 2).
- Most of the changes to shaman have had their AoE effects altered. Purification has been buffed to increase healing spell effectiveness by 25% instead of 10%.
Body and Soulnow increases the target's movement speed by 12/25% down from 30/60%. This is a tooltip error. There does not seem to be any intention to nerf this holy priest talent. All I can say is -- whew!- Some intriguing Dispel Magic changes for priests are kicking in. The base version of Dispel Magic can only be self-cast on the priest to remove one magic debuff or used against enemies to remove a buff from them. However, the moment you go into discipline or holy, the Absolution mastery kicks in. This lets you dispel other players, and it can remove two magic debuffs instead.
- Divine Aegis gets a slight buff and lasts 15 seconds instead of 12 seconds. I don't know about you, but my Aegis usually gets punched through fairly quickly on most fights -- but it's not a bad change if you're trying to pre-shield your allies.
Healing loot (or at least, trinkets)
Everyone loves healing loot! We got some cool trinkets to play with this time around. The ones listed here are the heroic versions, and you'll most likely find these as drops from the raid instances coming in 4.1.
- Jaws of Defeat Can't say I remember seeing another item or trinket with this type of mechanic before. Use it and as you are healing, your spells get progressively cheaper. I'd love to get my hands on this trinket on the PTR. My first instinct is to load up as many single-target healing spells as possible before progressing over to AoE healing or really expensive spells to really take advantage of the mana reduction on the tail end of this trinket.
- Eye of Awareness This reminds me of Althor's Abacus. I suspect it'll function the same way. I'm glad to see this type of trinket brought back in some fashion. I'm not sure it'll rank compared to the other ones, but my guess is that it'll be a solid pickup for any healer.
- Fiery Quintessence This trinket will be handy for all healers. With a new tier of content, I think additional baseline spirit will be necessary, as stat minimums for raids and content will rise. Note the intellect boost for 25 seconds. I wonder if that's a typo or intentional, if you compare it with the next trinket below. Use the trinket when that extra healing throughput is needed.
- Mark of the Firelord Perhaps optimal for discipline priests or restoration shaman? There will be some possible competition with DPS casters. I'm personally not the biggest fan of on-use trinkets, but it does offer a nice a big boost to your intellect for 15 seconds. Its great if you need the extra Rapture tickets, and the increase to spellpower will be a benefit during any burst healing phases that are needed.
Which trinket attracts you the most? This is just the first of several updates that'll be coming with 4.1. I bet we'll be seeing more balance changes.
It seems like a few minor adjustments could be in store for our healing circles. I wonder if that's just a values change, an effects change, or a visual effects change. It'd be nice for a way to dim the intensity when the circles are on the ground. I've punked the melee classes in my raid group before by stacking Healing Rain, Efflorescence and Holy Word: Sanctuary on the exact same spot before. They had to put on shades just to see their DPS targets.
Need advice on working with the healers in your guild? Raid Rx has you covered. Send your questions about raid healing to mattl@wowinsider.com. For less healer-centric raiding advice, visit Ready Check for advanced tactics and advice for the endgame raider.Filed under: Raid Rx (Raid Healing), Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Oscren Feb 25th 2011 1:09PM
Rallying Cry is available to all warriors. They've replaced Inner Rage with it at lvl 83.
From the PTR coming soon news post on the WoW community site: Inner Rage is now available at level 56. It was intended to solve an excess rage problem that largely isn’t affecting warriors anymore. We’ve added a replacement ability for warriors at level 83: Rallying Cry.
Steve Feb 25th 2011 1:10PM
Its not just arms getting the love with that new talent all warriors will be able to train rallying cry at level 83. So we can now bring the pain and the love.
Terrance.TL Feb 25th 2011 1:12PM
The Rallying cry ability isn't just arms specific.
Fizzyl Feb 25th 2011 1:13PM
That Quintessence is going to be my new hit trinket ...
... even though what I'll mostly be hitting is the floor when the healers bitterly refuse to heal my shadowy spirit-grubbing arse.
Vox Feb 25th 2011 1:35PM
Precisely - my elemental shaman would love to get one of these too...
Lissanna Feb 25th 2011 1:16PM
We're getting reports from resto druids on the PTR that they changed the graphic effect for Efflorescence so that it doesn't cover the ground as much.
Como Feb 25th 2011 2:09PM
That sounds like the opposite problem I have, I have never missed "the fire" cause my circle was over it, but I have missed the circle because there was a frost trap or anything else that covers up the graphic only to be left with the "myst" I hope you are wrong....sigh.
BB Crisp Feb 25th 2011 1:25PM
Eye of Awareness all the way, baby! Smart heals make me giddy.
Necromann Feb 25th 2011 1:34PM
I play a priest disc/shadow. With the dispell change I can no longer dispel the buff on the dm mobs to mc. Also, are shaman the only ones who can remove buffs from the enemy, thus making them more viable to bring, besides a mage's spellsteal that is?
Boobah Feb 25th 2011 1:46PM
(sigh) The offensive dispel works for all priests; you just can't dispel any group members besides yourself.
And as far as offensive dispels go, it's worth pointing out that it by no means makes a priest a special and unique snowflake, since there are three other classes that can always dispel (shaman, hunter, mage), another one that can always grab a pet that can do so (warlock) and yet another that can, with the right spec, dispel every six seconds or so as part of their regular rotation (prot warriors.)
Lemons Feb 25th 2011 1:54PM
Did you read the post? You can still remove buffs from enemies.
Necromann Feb 25th 2011 2:03PM
Wow I just seemed to have skipped over that. Must be the foot or so of snow. I also forgot about those other dispellers. Not a good day for thinking.
dj.clayden Feb 25th 2011 1:54PM
2 things I want to say here:
First off, you referred to Divine Gaurdian as a raid-wide Last Stand (when this was the description you used, or could've used, for Rallying Cry).
^Nitpick, next is more of an actual post:
Second thing, with regards to Jaws of Defeat, I have a few ideas.
The text suggests "all spell casts", so this could potentially be stacked up with mana-free spells, (most importantly - 1 pt Word of Glory). I would expect this to be changed to only proc on mana-using spell casts
A duration is not specified, but there will be a different way of using this optimally depending on if the buff refreshes it's own duration upon application of a new stack or if the entire effect lasts a limited time.
In the case of former possibility then it may even be optimal (for holy paladins) at least to use mana-free WoGs to extend the duration of each stack as long as possible to glean the highest benefit.
If the latter possibility is true (more likely) then the best way of using it will be to use the fastest (aka instants whenever possible) cast time spells to trigger and benefit from the effect. This is due to the effect proccing on every spell cast, and due to the effect being a static mana cost reduction, as opposed to a percentage reduction.
Rambled on a bit, but I've covered the 3-main possibilities for the mechanics of the trinket and how best to use it in each case - would love to see if anybody has other opinions (maths to back it up would make my day, I'd give it a try with my own napkin maths if I have the brainpower left), but any opinions are nice to see :)
Final thing; I'd love to know whether other healers feel using spirit can outweight the throughput and mana pool cost of intellect - I personally find it hard to justify the use of non-int trinkets given the massive value of intellect.
Love RaidRX btw, I always get a little flutter of excitement when I see the title, 'cause I know it's going to be on a subject I know about, and they're always well written, informative, and discussion-provoking. Good writing :)
Lemons Feb 25th 2011 1:59PM
The duration is specified. It says the next 10 spells cast within 20 seconds. I'm guessing after the 20 seconds is up the buff will fade.
And it doesn't proc...it's an on use trinket.
dj.clayden Feb 25th 2011 2:02PM
Also, http://ptr.wowhead.com/item=69198 shows Fiery Quintessence (both versions) as having a 1.5 minute cooldown, as opposed to 1 minute.
No idea which information is correct, but a 1.5 minute cooldown would give the uptimes as:
Mark of The Firelord - 25.00%
Fiery Quintessence - 27.78%
Due to the similarity I think it's reasonable to expect the 25sec dur/90sec cd to be correct :)
dj.clayden Feb 25th 2011 2:06PM
@Lemons:
Both the proc and duration I'm referring to in my post are of the mana cost reduction buff itself (it seems possible to me that it could last longer than the 20 seconds it can be applied for - maybe I'm being silly), as opposed to the window in which the buff can be applied (for 20 seconds after the use of the trinket). As for misusing the word proc, I used it to mean the application of that buff, despite it not being random.
Sorry for any confusion :)
Saeadame Feb 25th 2011 2:24PM
I'm just not entirely sure how viable it would be to stack it that way. Because it's an on-use effect with a cooldown, you would want to stack it to 10 as fast as possible, and I think it would be difficult to stack WoG that fast (my paladin is still kind of a baby, level 36, but isn't the only guaranteed way for HPaladins to make holy power through casting healing spells or running up and CStriking the mob?). Granted, since it's a stacking effect, you could wait until you have Holy Power, activate the trinket, activate WoG to get your first stack off (and reduce the cost of your next spell by 125).
I think that the total duration of the effect is 20 seconds, personally, although it could be that the stacking mana reduction is separate (perhaps working like multi-lifebloom in ToL - you can put up multiple lifeblooms while in ToL, and when you drop out of ToL you can't extend the duration of your multiple lifeblooms, but they will continue healing for the remaining time they have). If it works that way, I would expect the stacking buff to have a 20 second duration as well, making it a 40 sec effect.
The only problems I see with the trinket is that it is definitely a trinket that you would use with anticipated damage. It would not be a very good trinket to activate if shit hits the fan and you need to drop some big healing bombs without warning. For anticipated damage, though, you can look at the DBM timer for such-and-such big attack, activate the trinket in advance of the attack and start stacking the buff, ready to drop some big heals when you need it.
I guess the other question would be, will it stack from any individual heals? I know resto druids can very quickly stack trinkets like Darkmoon Card: Tsunami or Solace of the Fallen with Wild Growth, because each WG HoT counts as a separate "spell". If you have it glyphed, one global will stack this effect 6 times (750 mana reduction). I expect that would be the best way to use this, as you get the benefit of the mana reduction for the longest time possible (activate, throw out an AoE heal to stack it a bunch of times, and then continue casting).
Looking at the max reduction this trinket can provide... it's decent, but it would really depend on the duration to make it "great" rather than "decent," it would be a way to "regen" mana (because you're spending less, while keeping to your usual conservative healing), but not a way to give you the ability to drop expensive spells cheaply (eg my quick, inefficient heal would still cost about 5200 mana, which would make me willing to use it outside a clearcasting proc, but it's not spamable).
I think, personally, I would rather go for the Athor's Abacus-esque trinket, or the one with a flat amount of spirit and an int on-use effect.
Tom Feb 25th 2011 3:50PM
With Jaws of Defeat -
I don't see why you would want to "start with single target healing and then move over to AoE healing at the tail end" as you talked about.
The mana reduction is a fixed amount so as long as the spells you are casting are over 1250 mana, which most are, you get no real benefit from spending more expensive spells towards the end.
Rather, what we would need to look at is the cast time to make sure we can fit 10 spells in, so whatever 10 spells you cast they need an average cast time of under 2 seconds to get this trinkets full benefit.
Assuming they do you save up to 1250 + 1125+1000 + 875 + ... 125 = 6875 mana., but the cost of the spells themselves, so long as they are all over 1250 mana, doesn't matter.
Darak Feb 25th 2011 3:52PM
What Tom said is roughly correct. It doesn't matter what order you go in, you're going to get a fixed amount saved given X number of spells cast.
However, it's not a completely fixed amount of mana because the more spells you cast, the more mana you can save. So to truly optimize the mana savings from the trinket, you would want some known amount of haste to be able to pop off a continuous string of short casts, IE a priest going flash heal bananas for 20 seconds.
Telerithis Feb 26th 2011 12:43PM
The whole point of this trinket is to save you mana. Popping off a few flashes of light is not going to be beneficial, since their huge mana cost is going to outweigh the benefit of getting the mana reduction sooner to the point that its not even funny. In fact, you should hardly ever be using flash of light. Go look at the holy pally article a while ago that talked about how much to cast what and such.
In addition, 1 point word of glories? No thanks. it may get you the mana reduction slightly faster, but its not taking advantage of the mana reduction. You could probably use one at the very beginning of the 20 seconds, but not later. because of the GCD, it only quickens spells (and therefore mana reduction accumulation) by a short time. this means that word of glory is only slightly more effective in terms of mana reduction accumulation than, say, Divine Light. When used at the beginning, the ability to get in another spell is going to be worthwhile, since you are only giving up a small amount of mana reduction on the word of glory to get in that last spell which will have more mana reduction.
(Remember, don't think in terms of "getting the mana reduction sooner", because what you're really doing is squeezing together your spells in order to fit in another, higher mana reduction spell at the end.)