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Welcome to the answers thread for our World of Warcraft "Ask the Devs" global Q&A. These answers are in response to the round #11 questions on Healing, which can be seen here: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2226267974
Q: I spend a lot of my time in raids keeping Water Shield up, which I rely on to maintain enough mana. There have been times I've neglected to heal someone because I had to refresh Water Shield. Why are shaman healers less effective compared to other healing classes? – Epistemology (NA), Ерз (EU-RU)
Shaman raid tank healing is, if anything, underrated. With a combination of Earth Shield, Riptide, and Greater Healing Wave fuelled by Tidal Waves, a shaman’s throughput can be quite impressive. Yes, a Holy paladin using Beacon can more effectively heal two tanks who are simultaneously taking damage, but on the other hand, a shaman can deal better with multi-target damage or healing clumps of players. Healers have different strengths and weaknesses, which is fine as long as it doesn’t get too extreme, but we recognize that the core functionality of being able to heal a single tank who is taking heavy damage from a boss is something all healers need to be able to do, and we’re satisfied with the current balance in that regard. We will, of course, make adjustments if inequalities begin to appear. The Mana Tide change in 4.2 was primarily aimed at reducing the mana available to non-shaman healers in raids. In short, shaman are balanced around always having their own Mana Tide, but other healers are instead balanced around their personal cooldowns (Shadowfiend, Innervate, etc.). Adding Tide on top of those often led to other healers having access to so much mana that managing the resource became a non-issue in many situations. The change from Improved Water Shield to Resurgence was designed to offset the Mana Tide reduction’s personal impact to the shaman. Q: Is it intended for “smart” heals and target capped aoe spells to heal companions/pets like bloodworms instead of players? Can you redesign Shaman’s Chain Heal, so that it can jump over full HP players to a target without full HP? Do you have any plans to make chain heal stronger/more appealing for 5man/10man content? – Epicfail (NA), 珍妮佛羅培根 (TW), Pikapika (NA)
Chain Heal is inherently a situational spell – that situation tends to arise more often the more players are present, but we don’t have any plans to redesign the spell to make it the go-to heal when there are fewer players present, or they are all spread far apart. We’d rather augment other tools, or add new ones, if it appears that Shaman healing is inadequate for particular situations. Q: At the start of Cataclysm, the the idea was given that developers wanted to step away from niche healing and let all healers be capable tank or raid healers. Has this goal since changed? Is there any plan to change the dogma “Holy Paladin = Tank healer”? As I remember, devs said that they wanted to change this formula in a past interview but Holy Paladins are still considered as a tank healer, indispensable for raid. Even thought other healers can heal tankers, there are people who say that this job is hard for other healers. – Frazlo (NA), 트롤학개론 (KR)
We suspect several paladins would turn your question around and argue that it’s not that they are indispensible tank healers, but that they can’t compete against other healers for group healing. Ultimately, we think the problem is Holy Radiance. Light of Dawn is a finisher so it’s never going to be continuously available for periods of intense group healing without unshackling it from Holy Power. Holy Radiance could be changed however. Our original concept of Holy Radiance being a tool the paladin used to heal those around her never quite panned out – we had to keep bumping the range to make it a useful heal, which removed much of the positional gameplay. Currently it is potent, but fairly “fire and forget.” A paladin is never choosing not to use Holy Radiance, unless perhaps mana is very tight. A better model for Holy Radiance, and something we are considering for the next content patch, is as a cast-time spell with no cooldown that generates Holy Power (for Holy paladins at least). This would give Holy paladins an actual area-healing rotation – Holy Radiance and Light of Dawn – that they could use instead of the single-target heals. Currently Holy Radiance can just be layered on top of the other heals, so the paladin isn’t shifting into group-healing mode the way a shaman can focus on Chain Heal or a priest can focus on Prayer of Healing. Q: Are you still considering creating a new heroic class of healer? Are there any plans for adding any new class with a healing talent tree in future expansions? – Molatuna (EU-FR), Elvenadoren (EU-EN)
Q: What are the developers' thoughts on perhaps giving Discipline priests three strengths/types of shields/absorbs, in a similar manner as all other healers have three main heals? Discipline priests (especially those purely going for absorb) always were unique through this absorb, I mean: Shields. Why does this become shorter and shorter, always saying we should go for direct healing instead? In that case you could play another healing class that has better direct heals. – Kahlan (NA), Zerreshju (EU-DE)
Q: When healing, it is hard to see the overall screen because healers must keep an eye on the Raid frame. And due to PVP balance issues, dispels are only allowed for healer’s. This situation makes it too harsh for the healers and gives to much responsibility and also a burden because healers have to heal and move at the same time during raids. Isn’t this a little too harsh? – 스페이드 (KR), 신기하군 (KR)
While we agree that we’ve had fights with too much “urgent dispelling” as you put it, we’ve tried to be better about that in more recent content. The dispels on Valiona and Theralion or Ascendant Council need to be done at the right moment, which is emphatically not as soon as the debuff appears. You need a smart dispeller for those mechanics, not a quick dispeller. We also had fairly “urgent interrupts” in Blackwing Descent and Bastion of Twilight, which are often the responsibility of melee, we continue to have situations where tanks need to respond immediately to something (say a tank swap or incoming adds), and we have mechanics where anyone who isn’t aware of their surroundings can wipe their whole group. We definitely use incoming damage as a tuning mechanism, but we also use berserk timers to set a high bar for the DPS specs. There is a risk that if berserk timers are too tightly tuned that raids may attempt to replace healers with more DPS, which isn’t doing the healers any favors either. Note that limiting dispels to healers isn’t just a PvP balance issue. We wanted to know for sure that every 5-player group would be able to dispel magic. The alternatives were that there could never be important debuffs to dispel or some healers just wouldn’t be viable for some content. Q: Healers are usually responsible for the loss of the teammate, but not all the mistakes are made by healers, such as over taunt or damage zone avoidance. This also happens in the 5 man dungeons frequently. Is there any chance to add a design to punish damage classes with inappropriate behavior? Is there ever going to be a clear indicator that the indivdual died from "unhealable damage" in combat logs/on screen warning? – 明亮 (TW), Galadruin (EU-EN)
Q: How do you plan on addressing our inflating spirit and mana pools later in the expansion to keep mana a resource, rather than a solid blue bar? Do you plan to preserve a principle of rational use of mana, which makes it interesting to play a healer? In the beginning of Cataclysm we had to use almost every spell to succeed, while now everything is about pushing a couple of your best healing spells. With the release of a new patch the level of equipment will raise significantly, and we won’t have to think about mana regeneration any more. Do you plan to somehow adjust encounters or healing mechanics perhaps? – Nehalim (NA), Ксенас (EU-RU)
In heroic raids, even today, healers often rely on their inefficient heals a great deal, so there isn’t a ton of room to expand into becoming even more inefficient (and therefore requiring more mana regeneration). As such, you should consider Spirit somewhere in between the stat continuum of hit and something like haste or crit. For the former, there are hard caps. For the latter, there are inflexion points where the value of a stat grows faster or slower, but in general more is always helpful. For Spirit you need enough to feel good about your healing longevity and anything beyond that is probably of diminishing value. We think this actually makes itemization as a healer more interesting for the player than just grabbing more and more of a particular uber stat. With the raid content we have released for Cataclysm so far, we feel like we can put pressure on healers to keep tanks alive without repeating the gameplay we had in Wrath of the Lich King, where the smart way to play was to keep heals constantly going because of the risk of the tank dying in two back to back hits. Even with increasing regeneration, we don’t think we’ll get back to a two-shot the tank situation for Cataclysm. If your tanks are dying faster than you can heal them currently, again, you’re probably missing something about the encounter or aren’t quite ready for it yet. We had originally planned on having bosses in later tiers scale so that players would need more crit, hit, expertise, dodge and parry for later tiers. We ultimately decided not to do this, at least for the current expansion. That decision was driven partially because we couldn’t figure out an elegant way for stats like haste to scale with boss power and partially because we weren’t convinced our planned UI would communicate the concept clearly enough to players. For example, would just bosses be affected? Just raid bosses? If not, would you want separate sets of gear for dungeons vs. raids? Those are solvable problems, but we weren’t convinced the path we were on would solve them as well as we would like. Our current numbers wouldn’t work if we had a dozen raid tiers before increasing the level cap, but that’s not our plan. Q: Are there any plans to give Holy Priests access to a viable 3-minute raid cooldown? There are concerns that without a cooldown along the lines of Power Word: Barrier, Spirit Link Totem, or Tranquility, we may need to play disc a lot in firelands. Maybe simply an improved Divine Hymn? – Maladi (NA)
Q: Looking at the healer changes with patch 4.2, there are changes being made to paladins and druids, but there doesn't appear to be any for either the priest or shaman. Do you feel comfortable with where these two classes are? Where do you feel the other healers are at currently? – Sergan (LA)
Q: What is the reasoning behind certain classes that lack a healing spec (such as a rogue) being able to self-heal better than a dps spec of a healing class (such as a balance druid)? – Idej (NA)
Our definition of hybrid class is a class that has a tank or healing spec. We don’t spend much effort to make sure that the DPS specs of hybrid classes are more “hybridy” than the DPS specs of mage, warlock, rogue or hunter. Sometimes hybrid DPS specs might be able to throw out a heal, but unless used very strategically, those contributions are often in the rounding error of the healing provided by the dedicated healers. And when DPS specs are healing themselves (Frost and Unholy DKs before 4.2) or others (Ret paladins before 4.1) too much, we take action there as well. So it’s not a priority for us that Balance druids are great healers. We recognized going into Cataclysm that rogues had a lot of down time while solo, that they didn’t have many options for spending combo points after a target died prematurely, and that too much rogue survivability was based around crowd controlling an opponent. Thus we thought there was a need for Recuperate. If Balance druids have similar challenges, then we’d look for solutions for them as well, but they would hopefully be unique or at least kit-appropriate solutions. Q: With the changes being made to critical heals, do you feel that crit will become a more prominent stat for healers, up there with haste and mastery? Or is it a less important change aimed at balancing between the pve and pvp aspects of the game? – Derëk (LA)
Q: Do you feel that the three-heal model you implemented at the start of Cataclysm is a success? Have you changed your expectations or goals in regards to the three-heal model after watching a tier of raiding? How do you feel about how the various specs are using or avoiding these three core heals? – Anohako (NA)
When comparing classes, the intent was always that the druid and Disc priest would use those three core heals the least. It is a design problem (though not a massive one) that those two specs can specialize so much in 25-player raids that they can forsake their three core heals to a great extent. In smaller groups, they still need to look at their full toolbox. We like the way the shaman works, particularly with Tidal Waves providing synergy among the three core heals. The paladin model is close but as mentioned above, they have to rely on the three heals too much because they don’t have another heal like Riptide or Penance to add to the mix. Holy priests still suffer a bit of the reverse where there are so many heals that it’s hard to provide niches for them all. We’ve talked about a spec model where there are even more specialization spells (like the ones you get at level 10) so that we can have more spells for each healer without players having to spend talent points on them. |
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15/07/2011
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Expected way more discussion of healer balance in high-end raiding, and their approach to it, although there are some interesting insights into more basic healing matters.
Regarding the first question, druids also have to keep up Lifebloom, while paladins have to judge (and holy shock) on short cooldown. |
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First. this is not the pvp thread! also I quite like the answers here, there well written and full of infomation. There should have definatley been more answers for shaman though :D |
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I have to admit, that even though i quite enjoy these Ask the Devs topics, im very disappointed with this one as it in no way touches the subject of lack of Spirit cloth gear from Firelands.
Quoting Aluarose from the US forums Why are priests being given no options besides valor gear, to upgrade, when all the other healing classes are not being limited in such a way? This is a question that I imagine that all priests would've liked a good answer too. Me playing a Holy priest as a main myself would've loved to have a proper explination to the above question. It's even more sad as I recall a US blue saying that us priests should 'Wait for Ask the Devs: Healing' for this subject to be touched. |
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What a slap in Resto shaman face...
So u guys rly think CH is OK, reapplying Water shield every 10-15 sec is OK, our T12 x 4 set bonus is OK (even tho CH is "situational spell") and shaman healing isnt inadequate for particular situations? Just no words to express what i think about all that !!#!... |
What a slap in Resto shaman face... I wouldn't call it slap, but I'm a bit disappointed when it comes to Chain Heal. In a 10man raid, chain heal is a gamble, there are fights that I simply can't heal, because people aren't grouped up. Shannox and the majority of the time on Ragnaros comes to mind. Our 4th set bonus actually relies on this very spell you can "situational". We're not asking it to get imba, but atleast you should buff the range (yes, again) a few yards so we can compete with other healers when the entire raid takes damage and we're all spread out. There are some fights in Firelands that brings me right back to Ulduar when shamans had to reapply Water Shield between every other cast. I wish other classes had to rebuff themselves between casts. |
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Edited by Ulfgar on 15/07/11 19:31 (BST)
I have to admit, that even though i quite enjoy these Ask the Devs topics, im very disappointed with this one as it in no way touches the subject of lack of Spirit cloth gear from Firelands. Where on earth is the answer on the priest gear issue? The thing is they think they've answered this with their reply of "you can get Spirit cloth using VP". I agree it was a rubbish non-answer given to try and shut us up and while I would have loved a bit more insight into the decision I wasn't seriously expecting one. |
Where on earth is the answer on the priest gear issue? This was already answered in a blue. I would have liked to see answer on a holy priest scaling/performance issues. |
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Long time ago there were implemented this 3 heal strategy where you have fast, but inefficient heal, slow but efficient heal, slow but heals alot heal.
Now as i've been playing Disc priest in all raid tier's appart from Heroic modes. I've realised that i have probabley used my "slow but efficient" spell called "heal" maybe 20 times in last 6 month. "Spell heal" is in my opinion too weak to use most of the time. What are you're thought's about Priest spell heal? Do you really think that 10k heal can keep someone alive where with same cast time you can land 60K heal. |
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What a slap in Resto shaman face... this |
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1. Design fights around coordinated cool down use
2. Take the time to give every healer spec a raid cooldown except holy priests Do you really think it is good design? Really? Also: 1. Resto druid numbers are ok, their logs are just inflated by their raid cooldown 2. We can't give holy priests any raid cooldown, if they healed for more they would be overpowered Do i need to point out the hypocrisy? |
Q: Are there any plans to give Holy Priests access to a viable 3-minute raid cooldown? There are concerns that without a cooldown along the lines of Power Word: Barrier, Spirit Link Totem, or Tranquility, we may need to play disc a lot in firelands. Maybe simply an improved Divine Hymn? – Maladi (NA) Well represented? Hmm, let's see shall we... http://www.worldoflogs.com/rankings/players/Firelands/hps/ Only looking at heroic modes, since normals can be done with pretty much any combination of Healers. I can't see a single Holy Priest here. There's barely any Shaman aswell, but at least there's a couple. |
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this was the only Q+A i looked forward to reading and what a disappointment. just a load of fluff where they are happy about everything and nothing needs changing. Total BS, i abandoned my shaman for very good reasons but Blizz feel they are fine as they are. Oh well, not surprised as this company is becoming more and more disappointing.
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I am in this thread!
It's not doing much for me though. It's as bland as it gets. More tofu on your wheat toast and boiled white rice? Why thank you Blizzard, don't mind if I do. Answers heavy on the calories gives me such an upset stomach. |
