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Q u o t e:


/facepalm

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why are you /facepalm ing me :(


he said

"If a single tank is the only one taking damage, you aren't going to cast nothing but CoH."

translation into proper english

"If the only person in the raid taking damage is the one main tank , you will only cast CoH"

and that is dead wrong

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Q u o t e:
In my opinion, they can nerf the effectiveness of CoH when holy priests get the utility of blessings, DI, Totems, Mana Tide, Self Rez, Innervate, and Battle Rez.

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Maybe you missed the memo, but the utility effects of all the hybrids are much less good now than they used to be.

For example, consider my class. Paladins used to offer insane blessings; indeed being able to cast 5 blessings was an advantage to your raid and the primary reason anyone gave to stack pallies. In WotLK, the cookie cutter holy paladin will offer only BoM and BoW, both of which you can easily live without.

If you're telling me that BoM, BoW, and a wipe prevention button are the reasons why I don't get an AoE heal, I will have a sad.

I dont see how mana can be a way of restricting it. Its that good at raid healing that you can just stack mana tides and save innervates for 2 priests and thats all the raid healing you need. I just cant see priests going oom with that much regen.

If you add a cast time it takes the reflex nature away from it. I think adding a cooldown is quite good. Engineering boss encounters so that priests have something to do in the meantime shouldn't be that hard either.

Above all else i've heard nothing but "please nerf it so i have to watch bars again" from priests i've spoken to directly about this.

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Q u o t e:

The why is simple. Depending on the damage being taken, CoH becomes the easiest choice with the highest HPS and mana efficiency. If a single tank is the only one taking damage, you aren't going to cast nothing but CoH.

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I agree that this happens. I do think there are other reasons out there, too, though. However, you get 5+ people getting hurt, some are at medium health, 1 or 2 are VERY low- Well, it depends on the healer as to what happens next, but I generally Bubble/Greater Heal/Renew the VERY low folks. Someone else will take care of the medium-ranged guys.

That's part of the reason why I want to know the why's. ;) It could possibly very well be that Priests just know that spamming CoH will put them at the top of the effective heal charts (maybe) and so they do so.

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Q u o t e:

As for CoH, there was a really interesting idea here:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12368279230&postId=124532747563&sid=1#54

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Oooh, that's not bad. 4 People, 5 Glyphed. Pre-3.0, we were lucky to hit 3 people if someone didn't suddenly move out of range.

It may require even MORE use of the spell, though. :(


This is a bit off topic, but:
Another idea I got from this is "splash healing." Like a mix of ProM and CH. Cast it on a damaged target, wait a second,the spell goes off for a possible full 2500. Someone heals the target first though, so the guy's only got 100 hp left to deal with. So, he's healed for 100hp, and the spell does a "Smart" bounce to the next closest, most damaged person in 10 yards. The spell waits a second, the guy doesn't get any heals, the spell heals him for 2400hp.

Though, now that I think on it, wasn't there a Shaman ability like this in the Beta?

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Q u o t e:

I think adding a cooldown is quite good. Engineering boss encounters so that priests have something to do in the meantime shouldn't be that hard either.

Above all else i've heard nothing but "please nerf it so i have to watch bars again" from priests i've spoken to directly about this.

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I don't think the cooldown's too bad an idea- as long as it's not too long, nor too restrictive. I don't know about the priest you're talking to, they may be Sunwell raiders, but if they're not, they always have the option to take CoH off their bars. ;)

From what I've been hearing, CoH shouldn't be spamming in Wrath.

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Q u o t e:
I think adding a cooldown is quite good. Engineering boss encounters so that priests have something to do in the meantime shouldn't be that hard either.

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Putting a cooldown on CoH makes it useless, it doesnt heal for very much per target per cast, it needs to be able to be spammed when needed. If its going to get hit with the nerf bat Id rather see it go back to a party only heal but no cooldown. If they kept the 6 second cooldown on CoH I dont think you wopuld have seen very many holy priests in wrath.

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Q u o t e:
Putting a cooldown on CoH makes it useless, it doesnt heal for very much per target per cast, it needs to be able to be spammed when needed. If its going to get hit with the nerf bat Id rather see it go back to a party only heal but no cooldown. If they kept the 6 second cooldown on CoH I dont think you wopuld have seen very many holy priests in wrath.

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I dunno man, wild growth effectively has a cooldown due to its HoT nature and I still use it all the time.

I'm not saying that's the best solution ever, but I think that a 6 second cooldown CoH would lead us to run more CoH priests out there, not less.

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Q u o t e:


I dunno man, wild growth effectively has a cooldown due to its HoT nature and I still use it all the time.

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You spam it because you're targeting different groups, right?

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Q u o t e:
I'm not saying that's the best solution ever, but I think that a 6 second cooldown CoH would lead us to run more CoH priests out there, not less.

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But doesn't that just compound the problem? At that point people will complain that 25 man raids are bringing 4 CoH priests to heal because there needs to be a constant stream of CoH on someone. If you want to reduce the effectiveness, make it hit only 4 targets, if after extensive testing it proves to be too powerful still, make it hit only 3 targets.

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Q u o t e:
I would hate to see CoH nerfed. Instead, I would like to see fewer fights where Priests feel like they are best off just spamming it all the time.

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This.


Trust me when I say the LAST thing I ever want to do is spam 1 button for hours on end. However when they design encounters and healing spells such that 'The CoH Button' is far and away the best option, what else are we expected to do?

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Q u o t e:
You spam it because you're targeting different groups, right?

But doesn't that just compound the problem? At that point people will complain that 25 man raids are bringing 4 CoH priests to heal because there needs to be a constant stream of CoH on someone. If you want to reduce the effectiveness, make it hit only 4 targets, if after extensive testing it proves to be too powerful still, make it hit only 3 targets.

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I don't spam WG. It turns out that WG targets lowest health folks, even if those folks already have WG. I find that casting it every once in a while makes it more efficient and allows me to maintain my tank responsibilities.

I agree that it compounds the problem of CoH dominating raids. I'm just saying that a cooldown doesn't make CoH useless. It seems like it could have the unintended consequence of making holy priest stacking even more important to raiding.

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Q u o t e:
Trust me when I say the LAST thing I ever want to do is spam 1 button for hours on end. However when they design encounters and healing spells such that 'The CoH Button' is far and away the best option, what else are we expected to do?

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This is a tough needle to thread. How do you make encounters where the CoH button isn't the one you want to spam without making paladins far and away the best healer?

No more nerfs til 80!

/target Petition
/sign

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Q u o t e:


This is a tough needle to thread. How do you make encounters where the CoH button isn't the one you want to spam without making paladins far and away the best healer?

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That is a pretty tough pickle. A DoT-ted encounter would probably lead to HoTwinners, or instant cast timers.

What about encounters that limited the effectiveness of spell classes for x-amount of time? Holy and Nature included, so each class (or duality of classes) can get their time to shine.

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Q u o t e:
What about encounters that limited the effectiveness of spell classes for x-amount of time? Holy and Nature included, so each class (or duality of classes) can get their time to shine.

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This is a fun gimmick! However, it's a gimmick. Good for at most 1 raid fight per instance.

I don't pretend to have a solution, but current raid design tends to have one healer clearly winning per instance, and raid leaders feel strong pressure to stack that healer.

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Q u o t e:


This is a fun gimmick! However, it's a gimmick. Good for at most 1 raid fight per instance.

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Agreed: gimmick fight is gimmicky

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Q u o t e:
I don't pretend to have a solution, but current raid design tends to have one healer clearly winning per instance, and raid leaders feel strong pressure to stack that healer.

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Every time someone brings up a point about class balance and uses the argument about raid leaders stacking certain classes, I wonder just how tiny a percentage of guilds have ready-to-go geared players of class X ready to replace class Y sitting on the bench. The top 10 guilds in the world will always find a way to stack whatever class has whatever overpowered abilities, the rest of us raid with the same 25-35 every night and beat the encounters a little bit later.

My guild has survived for over 3 years now because we are a group of skilled players who are also friends and have a solid core of leaders. Excluding guilds like Nihilum, If you play this game for fun why would you be in a guild that has no concern for the player behind the toon and indiscriminately benches players because of class balance?

Finally, someone has already posted it: no more nerfs until 80. Let's see what both bleeding edge guilds and everyone else does in terms of raid strats before we cry for big changes. As helpful as beta is, it's still not a completely accurate representation of what raiding will be at 80, and I was in a beta guild that raided at 80 more than a few times.

That'd be a bit odd if they both had the same cooldown considering it takes that long for WG to hit it's duration.

If CoH goes back to a six second cooldown it needs to heal for a ton more otherwise the holy tree seems pretty crappy. Right now its THE reason to bring a holy priest to a raid.

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Q u o t e:
We've tried to keep up with all of the several threads that spawned as a result of my last comments. People have made some really good points.

Based on feedback from this forum, elsewhere and our own brainstorming, what we are thinking about right now is something like a 6 sec cooldown for Circle of Healing and Wild Growth.

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Heh didn't you try this before?

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Q u o t e:
We've tried to keep up with all of the several threads that spawned as a result of my last comments. People have made some really good points.

Based on feedback from this forum, elsewhere and our own brainstorming, what we are thinking about right now is something like a 6 sec cooldown for Circle of Healing and Wild Growth.

We're less concerned about Chain Heal, in part because it's not instant, prevents movement, falls off with multiple targets, and is the spell that shamans are supposed to be hitting, while priests and druids have many other spells.

At 6 seconds, you would still want to use CoH/WG in the right situations (though hopefully not *every* time they are up), but you'd also want to use other spells during the cooldown. To be fair, a lot of priests and druids are asking to push other buttons. :)

This sounds like a potentially scary change because it has a lot of ramifications -- one of the reasons we are mentioning it so early is to get feedback. We don't want Resto shammies to push other healers out of raids. We would change some of the encounters knowing that CoH spam was no longer possible.

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Wild Growth should be a 6 second HoT (or shorter) instead of 7 if it's going to get that cooldown, I think.