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The latest patch 5.4 newsLooking back on healing in Cataclysm
by Allison Robert 
Jan 31st 2012 at 8:00PM
Practical observes that a lot of the later problems with healing in Cataclysm might actually be the result of a surfeit of raid fights that required constant stacking, and the inevitable effect they had on certain healing spells' being too powerful. Having recently looked at healer numbers in Dragon Soul, I'd also venture that AoE healing spells that aren't numbers-restricted (for example, Circle of Healing versus Holy Radiance) on top of that raid stacking are making healer balance look worse than it actually is.
So what are your thoughts, healers? How did healing work out for you this expansion, and are you looking forward to the Cataclysm changes? And are the problems we're seeing really the result of healer mechanics or raid design?
Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
Revnah Feb 1st 2012 7:56AM
I do love healing, still love it and that's "although" I'm a holy priest. I like that we are more powerful than we used to be, because frankly, tier 11 was a pain with me being either oom all the time, or way below everyone else in terms of healing output, or both.
Things have improved, although I think Dawn Moore has a point when she says healing has turned into a cooldown rotation. On almost every fight we set up who uses there cooldown when. Healing assignments used to be: "A and B heal tanks, C and D help on tanks and dispel, E and F on raid", these days it's "Cooldowns: First stomp/explosion/whatever A and B, second C and D, ..." We never even had to set that up before, people used cooldowns when they perceived it was necessary. It took insight and deliberation. To me, healing feels restricted these days.
matt Feb 1st 2012 8:45AM
Healing LFD heroics pugs in T11 was the worst shit I can imagine, never wanted to quit WoW more than when I needed to LFD to get my daily H in during T11. T11 Raid healing was challenging, but fun. I really respected all the healers I worked with on that tier, we worked our butts off.
But as with everything else in WoW, gear eventually ruined that. Mana pools and regen scaled too well with gear so pretty soon healers could afford to drop AoE heals for an entire fight. That combined with the addition of the "heaaing puddle" spells forced the encounter devs into a very small design space. Look at T13, there is a ton of raid-wide, unavoidable dmg. In the absence of a mechanic that FORCES you to spread out the default strat is to stack in the healing puddles. In the old days, fights contained "expand/collapse" mechanics, no they just contain expand mechanics because you are already collapsed, always.
slightly related: we 4 healed a 19 man group in 25m Morchok and Yor'saj last night. and when we did 10m ultraxion 2 of the 3 healers were below 20k and "red healer" was only at 30k. These nerfs pushed this content into the silly zone, I hope they have something new for us soon because this is not going to hold anybodies interest very long.
dk Feb 1st 2012 9:50AM
Druid healing has been satisfying. I'll admit trepidation when GC said 'heroics are hard', I was a bit nervous to begin in Cata.
I love it now and am not bored at all; I use raid icons to set kill order in five man pugs, I use my mushrooms to mark where bosses will appear and I love using my tree of life form to spam wrath when I can.
I feel I'm "pushing" the dps when they see me using moonfire and wrath on a trash pull; it's great!
Jordan Feb 1st 2012 10:03AM
I leveled a resto shaman from 1-80 in wotlk, healing through heroics and having fun. Would have raided if it were my cup of tea. In Cataclysm I initially had fun healing reg 5-mans, but quickly got burned out and never saw heroics for two simple reasons:
1) healing as it played out in Cataclysm just didn't work. I agree that wotlk was too mindless, in that one could simply spam OP heals when they were off cooldown. But much of Cata healing itself was a mindless spamfest, as you really only had one option (spam generic heal forrreeevveerrr). Spamming generic heal over and over is much more boring than spamming overpowered heals that actually put up big numbers and are cool. Additionally, the really crucial design error is that the fight encounters were not synergized with the new healing philosophy. The healers were designed with the philosophy of "make heals count, make them expensive so that players must carefully select which to use", while the damage done to the players during boss encounters was "ZOMG AOE".
2) the few number of regular 5 mans at launch ensured rapid burnout. Running the same 5 mans on reg, then redoing it all on heroic just wasn't inspiring. Additionally many of the dungeons themselves were simply not that exciting.
To summarize:
The cata healing model just traded one spamfest for another.
The above was coupled with aoe-heavy damage bosses which made healing miserable.
Endgame content was lacking and uninspiring.
Healing was my favorite role in the game, and I've stopped completely. All I do is tank, and my two tanks are capped at 70 and 80. (It's worlds more fun reliving the 70 and 80 end-game than trying to push through cata's uninspiring content).
I see nothing coming in future designs that could make me want to start healing again.
extomar Feb 1st 2012 10:10AM
I thought Healing is in the best state it has been in quite awhile. The synergy between classes is good. Effects are unique but not so unique it raids demand one or another. Although roles are still around ("Paladins are the best tank healers!"), they are being broken down to the stage it maybe nicer but it isn't necessary to have one or the other.
However saying that, I do believe this style of Raid Healing is going the way of the dodo. The Healing role in raids all centers around selecting targets but that has created a system so complex it takes knowing the specific class special quirks inside and out. As a Holy Paladin I can't explain to a new Resto Druid what they should do beyond the the fundamental let alone how to improve or refine their rotation because neither of us have analogous advanced/power effects. The Raid Healing Game requires concentrating on the "raid frame" looking for hard to observe or unobserved effects instead of looking what is on in the fight.
The future of healing needs to be less "select target, select heal" and more "Now is the time I need to heal". Heals need to be more positional and directional instead of selecting the target to heal. That will get eyes off the raid frame and back into the game.
Emma Marie Feb 1st 2012 10:32AM
I started playing my holy paladin near the beginning of BC and raided with her all the way through ICC. Yet when I got to Cata heroics, the people not cc'ing, or moving out of anything vaguely harmful, or just plain old ignoring mechanics. The constant harassment finally forced me to abandon my long term main around the time troll heroics launched. Those were a nightmare, that I don't want to relive. I'd post my thoughts on raiding, but my guild broke up after the launch of cataclysm to try some other game after hating the new design.
Viva la mage!
Ctmcstomperq Feb 1st 2012 2:05PM
At least the other classes have some sort of crisis recovery if they get behind. If a druid gets behind, folk are dying.
eel5pe Feb 1st 2012 2:10PM
tranquility? swiftmend?? natures swiftness??? i actually feel the worst for shamans in this regard.
eel5pe Feb 1st 2012 2:08PM
I've healed on my Paladin every patch since late Vanilla, and Cataclysm was the most fun I've had healing. We finally got away from the two-heal model, and you actually had to pay attention to which heal you chose rather than "spam your biggest heal on the most injured person."
Dragon Soul has been a disappointment though. Holy Radiance still isn't a very reliable AoE heal outside of situations that consist of everyone stacking together. Fortunately almost every DS boss has a phase which involves stacking up and healing really hard, but I'm sure this won't continue for all future patches and it will be interesting to see how paladin healing will end up then.
Vandell [XBL: Keazra] Feb 1st 2012 4:01PM
I'd like to see a cooldown-based healing system in 5.0, even though I know it won't happen. I am so tired of clicking around raid-bars like crazy, spamming my heals non-stop and having to pay attention to a bunch of stats instead of shooting off one or two powerful heals where they're needed and waiting a few seconds.
priestessaur Feb 7th 2012 12:15PM
I am not sure I agree. To me, waiting a few seconds would be extremely boring. I like to be doing things as a healer, not just sitting there waiting for damage.
Vandell [XBL: Keazra] Feb 7th 2012 3:40PM
When healing, I'd rather make an impact with my choices than just spamming a heal.
I almost preferred Wrath to Cata, because at least in Wrath I didn't have to worry about my mana and I could just spam my heals as I liked. Now all the choices I have to make relate to how much of my resources I should spend, and that's not fun to me.
Ctmcstomperq Feb 1st 2012 8:29PM
In my experience, tranq breaks you out of nourish spam, nature's swiftness is seldom worth the two globals it takes to use(in a crisis you NEED it to crit and it never does), and Swiftmend is a drop in the bucket if the tank is hanging by a thread. Compare this to a pally, priest and shammy who all have a very fast, very powerful heal. Meanwhile, druids have Regrowth, which while fast, has a lower healed amount because of the meaningless HoT tacked on.
neil_skipper Feb 3rd 2012 10:19AM
I am a discipline priest. It's all I do so my comments are restricted to this.
Healing at the start of the expansion and all the way through cataclysm was pretty hard but was fun.
As people have stated mana become less and less of an issue as the gear got better. When mana was in short supply you had to think more and I liked that.
My real problem as an all out healing priest was and still is that the fights have been set up in such a way that I am constantly asked to go dps! I know this makes me sound like a non team player but how can I gear for 2 completely different specs and be expected to be as good as the others on the meters.
I understand why the fights need changing tactics but how can it be that the majority of fights need only 2 healers.
Vandell [XBL: Keazra] Feb 7th 2012 3:38PM
When healing, I'd rather have to make choices that have an impact than just spamming my heals nonstop.