World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Healing Design Philosophy

Foestriker

< The Renamed >

Argent Dawn

0. Healing Design Philosophy 11/06/2008 11:31:20 AM PST

Why is it the intent of the developers now when one spell becomes over used in a pve or pvp setting to reduce it, rather than adding new effects to other heals, or re-designing encounters, or looking at decreasing mana efficiency to compensate?

First druids had lifebloom reduced twice to make it so that we would use other heals, and now wild growth is supposed to be next again after just recieving a compromised buff?

This design philsophy of punishing classes for things they've found effective to use is pretty appalling from a healing stand point, and really it's you the developers that should be putting more work into the game by improving all healing spells (if you want us to use them relatively equally). Or you could design pve encounters / pvp counters that may or may not favor certain heals in our arsenal that are not normally used.

It really is sad to see something like "Oh look I have found X to be really good here in most situations"
Dev: "Ok they are using X too much so instead of making the other heals more appealing by improving them we'll just make X less effective."

Healing is really fast becoming less and less enjoyable for me as a druid because all I have seen so far is: "Oh you can heal like a priest or a pally, but wait, you can't have your most unique spell (lifebloom) be that effective". Sure wild growth and nourish will be good spells, but there could be so many better things put into the resto tree to make healing more enjoyable. (aka a talent to make hots crit) (a talent to make ht put a stacking buff on a target the more times you use it) (a talent to make regrowth increase all hot durations by 2 seconds for a maximum of 6 seconds), just something, idk, anything.

Sanity is the playground of the unimaginative

Sonorous

< Manalicious >

Thaurissan

1. Re: Healing Design Philosophy 11/06/2008 06:34:36 PM PST

Somehow I wonder if you're not so much worried about the act of druid healing getting less interesting as you are in your output being compromised.

Keep in mind that the purpose of nerfing lifebloom is (ostensibly) to make the play style of rdruids more dynamic, complex and enjoyable.

Also recall that lifebloom was just a little bit uber through just about all of tbc. Do you remember what it was like before they buffed it? I'd done the math when they announced the buff, and kinda realised that it was going to be a little game breaking -- in fact so much so that I assumed I must have missed out a variable or made a mistake. Even since then, before I'd even used the buffed LB, I'd assumed this nerf was coming -- somethings are just inevitable, you know? Don't worry about it too much; you're still going to rock in wotlk.

Anathalt

< On a Friday Night >

Windrunner

2. Re: Healing Design Philosophy 11/06/2008 06:43:25 PM PST

Buffing everything is harder than nerfing one thing.

Underpowered buttons are much less of a problem for game design than overpowered buttons.

Foestriker

< The Renamed >

Argent Dawn

3. Re: Healing Design Philosophy 11/06/2008 11:42:00 PM PST

Q u o t e:
Somehow I wonder if you're not so much worried about the act of druid healing getting less interesting as you are in your output being compromised.

Keep in mind that the purpose of nerfing lifebloom is (ostensibly) to make the play style of rdruids more dynamic, complex and enjoyable.

Also recall that lifebloom was just a little bit uber through just about all of tbc. Do you remember what it was like before they buffed it? I'd done the math when they announced the buff, and kinda realised that it was going to be a little game breaking -- in fact so much so that I assumed I must have missed out a variable or made a mistake. Even since then, before I'd even used the buffed LB, I'd assumed this nerf was coming -- somethings are just inevitable, you know? Don't worry about it too much; you're still going to rock in wotlk.

No the thing is you don't understand, developers should be paid to find the harder solution to a problem that makes the game more enjoyable for the players, rtaher than find an easier solution that makes the game less enjoyable for players.

My output really hasn't been compromised with the lifebloom nerf and the addition of the new heals (it's pretty much stayed the same)- but if i recall, from pre-bc to tbc, my healing improved by quite alot outside of normal level scaling, from tbc to wotlk i just don't see that. I see "Resto Druids get heals everyone else already has and no real direct improvent to hot healing other than a talent or two and level scaling"

I already had a really diverse healing repetoire before the 2nd lifebloom nerf without the addition of wild growth and nourish. My healing style is less enjoyable now because i simply have spells to use that every other class has (wild growth and nourish), while one of the spells that was unique to druids was reduced.

Also healing with a 30% cut to all mob health is really, really boring, and that kind of nerf at any point in the game is really discouraging and makes things look like "Hey, I can wait until a month before the next expansion to come out to beat all the content because it will be really easy."

Sanity is the playground of the unimaginative

Foestriker

< The Renamed >

Argent Dawn

4. Re: Healing Design Philosophy 11/06/2008 11:43:13 PM PST

Q u o t e:
Buffing everything is harder than nerfing one thing.

Underpowered buttons are much less of a problem for game design than overpowered buttons.

Aye so shouldn't game design be meant to focus on solving a game balance problem the harder way if it meant more enjoyment for the player base as a whole?

Sanity is the playground of the unimaginative

Foestriker

< The Renamed >

Argent Dawn

5. Re: Healing Design Philosophy 11/07/2008 11:58:43 AM PST

/bump

Sanity is the playground of the unimaginative

Peacekeeper

Alexstrasza

6. Re: Healing Design Philosophy 11/07/2008 12:06:55 PM PST

Q u o t e:
Why is it the intent of the developers now when one spell becomes over used in a pve or pvp setting to reduce it, rather than adding new effects to other heals, or re-designing encounters, or looking at decreasing mana efficiency to compensate?

Hmmm, 90% of my healing is from Flash of Light so I should expect a nerf? Don't nerf me, Bro!

Peace

Foestriker

< The Renamed >

Argent Dawn

7. Re: Healing Design Philosophy 11/07/2008 12:09:26 PM PST

Q u o t e:

Hmmm, 90% of my healing is from Flash of Light so I should expect a nerf? Don't nerf me, Bro!

Peace

that's the way developers have been towards druids, simple fact, but i guess paladins and shamans get saved from the nerf bat because it was intended to design them around one spell, rofl, that is design fail right there

Sanity is the playground of the unimaginative

Grizel

< Mellonea >

Kirin Tor

8. Re: Healing Design Philosophy 11/07/2008 12:36:56 PM PST

Q u o t e:

that's the way developers have been towards druids, simple fact, but i guess paladins and shamans get saved from the nerf bat because it was intended to design them around one spell, rofl, that is design fail right there

In Beta Blizzard tried to loosen Chain Heal's hold on Shaman healing but fear gripped the Shaman Board and eventually Blizzard acquiesced, leaving Resto Shaman stuck as Chain Heal spammers. Too bad too, their potential arsenal in comparable to a Priests.

World of Gnomecraft:

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa167/Domvina/gnomepower2xq2.jpg

Foestriker

< The Renamed >

Argent Dawn

9. Re: Healing Design Philosophy 11/07/2008 12:39:23 PM PST

Q u o t e:

In Beta Blizzard tried to loosen Chain Heal's hold on Shaman healing but fear gripped the Shaman Board and eventually Blizzard acquiesced, leaving Resto Shaman stuck as Chain Heal spammers. Too bad too, their potential arsenal in comparable to a Priests.

I was just relating to another post Ghost Crawler made today basically agreeing with a poster that that's how blizzard designs the healing classes/specs.

Sanity is the playground of the unimaginative

Sonorous

< Manalicious >

Thaurissan

10. Re: Healing Design Philosophy 11/07/2008 04:38:08 PM PST

Q u o t e:
... but if i recall, from pre-bc to tbc, my healing improved by quite alot outside of normal level scaling, from tbc to wotlk i just don't see that ...

It's true that we got some pretty cool things when tbc came out. I see that as the moment that druid healing went from a vague concept into an actuality. The devs were obliged to put in a lot of love and attention to the spec because it wasn't really living up to what they imagined it to be. The thing is, since resto is a now functional and strong spec, their goal is to maintain their vision of the spec rather that revolutionise it. If you look at the other healing specs, you may find a similar attitude.

If this healing revisit thing goes through, you may find yourself with new buttons to push -- but because of the reasons above, I'm not sure it was right to expect the same attention in WotLK as we got in TBC.

Look, I know you're angry, mate. It's ok to be angry, and it's ok to have an opinion. Perhaps you're even a little worried about what the future may bring for rdruids. But I think you're jumping to one or two conclusions a little prematurely. That's understandable; but the problem is in these forums sometimes things latch on in the community consciousness and being to take on a life of their own.

BTW, you don't have Nourish quite yet. If you were in beta, I would have thought you'd have bought this up earlier on the beta forums.

Ghostcrawler

Blizzard Poster

11. Re: Healing Design Philosophy 11/07/2008 04:51:17 PM PST

We always prefer to buff things to nerf them, just because it does feel better for the player. But we have to evaluate the magnitude of the changes involved.

To make CoH / WG work in their current form, we would have to increase raid damage on the group, and increase the healing on your other spells to compete, and increase the magnitude of other types of damage so you want to use those other spells. Increasing single target damage means we might have to adjust tank health (which generally means gear) so that you feel like you have a chance to heal them before the e.g. 30,000 point Hateful Strikes land. It is easier in this case to nerf CoH / WG and lower raid AE damage.

This is the classic metaphor of balancing a chair -- you can try and extend three legs or just cut one down to size.

We don't always take the easier way out, but sometimes that is the more responsible thing to do. We'd rather spend a little bit of time tweaking current encounters and more time working on future encounters than the reverse. We'd rather fix other problems with healing than spend our time rebalancing a whole lot of healing spells.

Plus, since this change will happen after the game is already Live, we do owe it to the customer to attempt to minimze bugs when possible, and in this case that means changing as little as possible. (You can take this argument too far of course and argue we should never change anything. It's a balance, as with most aspects of game design.)

Remember, our ultimate goal is to make the game more fun, not slap you around. I get so many kudos and warm fuzzies when I announce a big buff to a class that I would always prefer to be greeted with that than all the bad feelings that surround a nerf. Nerfing is never fun.

Rel

< Gigantor >

Barthilas

12. Re: Healing Design Philosophy 11/07/2008 04:54:07 PM PST

I'm genuinely curious, with a 6 second cooldown on CoH, how are priests expected to heal raid damage? I'm not looking forward to flash healing people, whack a mole style to keep them alive.

If one of the problems is priests 'sniping' shamans heals (lol healing meters) then wouldn't a smart target PoH make a good solution?

[ Post edited by Rel ]

"Lots of people want to play on pre-bc servers! I miss the old instances"
"So why don't you just go run the old instances"
"I cant find enough people to run them with."

Daerilia

< Redux >

Spirestone

13. Re: Healing Design Philosophy 11/07/2008 04:56:22 PM PST

Have you considered in your number crunching that WG's large percentage of healing done for druids wasn't a property of WG being "spammed" but more because of the fact that it's a much more effective raid heal than anything else druids have?

With priests it's easy to tell the ratio of heals cast (CoH vs. other) because it's all direct heals that get logged, but with druids, a lot of HoTs that overheal simply never even get logged because they just don't tick. So that log that shows a druid with >50% healing from WG is extremely deceptive: it's showing that WG is the spell that gets to tick the most before it gets overwritten by direct heals, rather than that the spell is being spammed endlessly by druids. And naturally so, because WG is the only spell that actually ticks for a non-trivial amount every second.

I just find it apalling that you could look at any parse and conclude that druids are "spamming WG too much", because the very mechanic of WG itself is anti-spam. The only time you'll see druids casting WG in succession is to put it on multiple groups of people while the direct heals from other classes follow up on it. Is that so wrong? Isn't that the entire purpose of HoTs in the first place... to be able to have them active on multiple targets or multiple sets of targets?

[ Post edited by Daerilia ]

We all have our crosses to bear, for some it is being a single parent, for others it might be cancer or another illness, and then for you, not being able to downrank heals. - Yammers

Crypta

< Winter Wolves >

Argent Dawn

14. Re: Healing Design Philosophy 11/07/2008 04:58:02 PM PST

Q u o t e:
I'm genuinely curious, with a 6 second cooldown on CoH, how are priests expected to heal raid damage? I'm not looking forward to flash healing people, whack a mole style to keep them alive.

If one of the problems is priests 'sniping' shamans heals (lol healing meters) then wouldn't a smart target PoH make a good solution?

/agree

I am deeply concerned over this as well. I am the "Healing officer" in my raid and the proposed change has me thinking we need to stack shaman for all AOE dmg encounters because priests will no longer have the tools to do the job.

Onihoof

< Blackrock Cabal >

Windrunner

15. Re: Healing Design Philosophy 11/07/2008 05:02:48 PM PST

Q u o t e:
Have you considered in your number crunching that WG's large percentage of healing done for druids wasn't a property of WG being "spammed" but more because of the fact that it's a much more effective raid heal than anything else druids have?

This is how I feel about this as well. With no cooldown on AoE heals, the obvious choice to heal AoE damage is to use your AoE heals until the damage is taken care of. If there is a lot of AoE damage (which there typically has been), then those AoE heals are going to show up being pretty beefy on the meters. If you then add a cooldown to the AoE heals, the obvious choice is going to be use the AoE heal whenever it is available to heal AoE damage and play whack-a-mole with your single target heals while you wait on the cooldown to end. This will obviously reduce the percentage of healing done by AoE spells, but it doesn't seem like it will actually add anything to the healing experience except more button presses.

I absolutely understand the concern of wanting AoE heals to be inviable for healing non-AoE damage; it would be pretty silly if we were considering using our AoE heals to replace our single target heals, but I'm not sure where the developers got the idea that this was even on the table. I have used Wild Growth in circumstances where I knew only one person would be efffectively healed by it, but the kind of situation that calls for that is a rare and dire one (and would be unaffected by a cooldown on Wild Growth anyway).

[ Post edited by Onihoof ]

I am paper, scissors, and rock. I am Druid.

Daerilia

< Redux >

Spirestone

17. Re: Healing Design Philosophy 11/07/2008 05:04:54 PM PST

Q u o t e:

God forbid you do something other than close your eyes and mash your key whenever raid damage appears. That wouldn't trivialize raid damage or anything.

God forbit you do something other than close your eyes and mash your key whenever your tank is taking damage. That wouldn't trivialize tank damage or anything.

We all have our crosses to bear, for some it is being a single parent, for others it might be cancer or another illness, and then for you, not being able to downrank heals. - Yammers

Rel

< Gigantor >

Barthilas

18. Re: Healing Design Philosophy 11/07/2008 05:07:03 PM PST

Q u o t e:

God forbid you do something other than close your eyes and mash your key whenever raid damage appears. That wouldn't trivialize raid damage or anything.

If all you're doing is closing your eyes and mashing your keyboard, you're playing your holy priest wrong, and will go oom. You watch for SoL procs to give someone some burst healing, renew the fire bloom/fire darted person, use PoM on cooldown. You can't sustain pure CoH spam for any reasonable ammount of time with the new mana cost, new replenishment and one potion per fight. The only reason people see CoH spam for a whole fight now is because of the 30% HP nerf, and how short fights are. Its far from smashing your face on the keyboard.

"Lots of people want to play on pre-bc servers! I miss the old instances"
"So why don't you just go run the old instances"
"I cant find enough people to run them with."

Tobstark

< Slash Roll >

Thaurissan

19. Re: Healing Design Philosophy 11/07/2008 05:07:31 PM PST

Hello Ghostcrawler,

I just wanted to say that as a Holy Paladin I am very happy for this change.

One of the reasons we've been asking for an AoE heal is because everyone else's AoE haling is so strong and there is no way for us to compete.

CoH and Wild Growth simply obliterated the need for single target heals in many situations and it totally trivilizes the way healing works in general.

Even though most Priests only see this as a Shammy AoE heal v Priest/Druid AoE heal debate, it actually is not.

It is more of a debate of targeted heals v untargeted heals as the output and efficiency of CoH and Wildgrowth simply totally sideline the entire healing style of targeted heals.

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