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< Eternal >

Fizzcrank

0. Does anyone find it funny that... 03/15/2009 09:38:49 AM PDT

Blizzard nerfs the crap out of healer regen so we are forced to bring more healers come Uldar, yet the don't do anything to force us to bring more tanks?

I wish we could have all the mana regen we possible could be given. Get thrown actual hard content (not hard because lolwegotnerfed), put some RNG damage everywhere, have enough crap to have five tanks constantly busy, and that be that.

Ghostcrawler

Blizzard Poster

1. Re: Does anyone find it funny that... 03/15/2009 09:58:32 AM PDT

You don't generally bring more healers because the healers you have are OOM. You generally bring more healers because the healing per second you need to achieve can't be managed by the number of healers you have. (There are exceptions of course.)

Look, it's in your (as healers) best interest for groups to want to have many healers. You are in a bad place when the guild starts to say "You know, we could probably clear Naxx faster with just 2 healers because we could bring another dps."

It might be a peaceful utopia if 25-player raids scaled directly from 5-player groups, meaning that you had 5 tanks and 5 healers and 15 dps. We just don't think the encounters are as fun with that setup, and they certainly start to have a sameness after awhile (lots of adds or tank rotations on every fight for example). You have to do a lot of crazy things to enforce only 5 healers, because as soon as the group brings 7 or 8 healers, the content might get a lot easier.

Cripple

Archimonde

2. Re: Does anyone find it funny that... 03/15/2009 10:03:29 AM PDT

That's actually pretty interesting it never occurred to me that bringing less healers to 25 man Naxx is actually a bad thing for healers in general. Even I think it's better to take less healers in stuff like Naxx so we get through content faster but at the same it doesn't occur to me that there's less overall slots available for healers.

Lissanna

< Ergo Bibamus >

Cenarion Circle

3. Re: Does anyone find it funny that... 03/15/2009 10:05:14 AM PDT

Easier content tends to need fewer healers, as the tanks outgear the bosses and need less healing done in the first place... and the healers can outgear the instance enough that one or two of them are not adding anything above what the rest could do alone.

Harder content always requires more healers because the tank doesn't outgear it anymore, so they're getting hit harder - and while the raid is learning the fight, they all take more AOE damage from standing in things they could easily avoid, et cetra.

Creating mana problems just makes learning the content harder for the healers that are there, but at a certain point, adding more healers doesn't make their mana problems go away.

Lissanna, 80 druid, Elune

My new druid blog, for all things druid: http://www.restokin.com/

Johnny

< Conviction >

Zangarmarsh

4. Re: Does anyone find it funny that... 03/15/2009 10:06:30 AM PDT

GC has a very valid point there. My guild has been running with 4-5 healers for weeks now. We only had 3 for our naxx run the other day. When 6 healers sign on I might as well go afk and auto follow somebody.
At the same time though, I feel like healers are being forced to carry most of the "keep content challenging" load than tanks or dps with 3.1.

Caiaphina

< Ascended >

Caelestrasz

5. Re: Does anyone find it funny that... 03/15/2009 10:06:49 AM PDT

Way back far too long ago it used to be that healers (priests) would have a healing/wanding rotation on a boss judged with wisdom to recover mana. If the regen nerfs require it that might happen again.

mene mene tekel upharsin

Rilga

< After The Fall >

Echo Isles

7. Re: Does anyone find it funny that... 03/15/2009 10:29:07 AM PDT

Q u o t e:

Look, it's in your (as healers) best interest for groups to want to have many healers. You are in a bad place when the guild starts to say "You know, we could probably clear Naxx faster with just 2 healers because we could bring another dps."

This might be the case if you are in a large guild competing for raid slots. However, in a smaller guild with a set number of people there is no competition among healers or other roles. In fact, I tend to find that the more healers we bring the more boring and inefficient healing becomes. Too many cooks in the kitchen, that kind of thing.

Dps never gets more boring or trivial as you get better gear or bring more dps. I see this as a bit of a problem with healer/encounter design personally. From what I've seen on the forum, some other healers feel the same way but there is no easy solution to the problem.

Eriseley

< Seaghyn >

Emerald Dream

8. Re: Does anyone find it funny that... 03/15/2009 10:44:40 AM PDT

Q u o t e:
Look, it's in your (as healers) best interest for groups to want to have many healers. You are in a bad place when the guild starts to say "You know, we could probably clear Naxx faster with just 2 healers because we could bring another dps."

I somewhat disagree. You've given every healer nice dps specs with nice utility. In fact it seems like a whole lot of the raiding caster dps buffs are tied to "healer" classes' dps specs. Now, I can't be in the only guild that has trouble getting enough healers for raiding in the game...but even if we had enough, we'd still want a couple more druids/priests/shaman (we do have lots of ret paladins because...pvplol) for the caster buffs.

So as healers only, sure. But as players of a priest/druid/shaman/paladin, I dunno but from my experience plenty wouldn't mind not having to heal all the time, and enjoy the other options they've been given which would also get them into raids.

[ Post edited by Eriseley ]

Using Clitter while pregnant may result in sparkle babies.

Jabbar

Uldaman

9. Re: Does anyone find it funny that... 03/15/2009 10:59:48 AM PDT

I just hope that Blizzard remembers Sunwell as well as I do. The biggest problem with that bloody instance was fight specific healer requirements. GC is right on when he says the number of healers is a function of how much HPS is required. But what he left unsaid was that different kinds of healers bring different flavors of HPS, even now after all the homogenization. We had to bring 11 healers, mostly chain healing shaman or priests with CoH to Twins. M'uru or Brutallus would only allow 6 healers, due to DPS requirements. Felmyst required 4 priests, at minimum for Mass Dispel.

We ended up bringing 40 people to our Sunwell raids. The 15 people on the bench would be rotated in and out to meet healer or DPS demands... which in turn required us to rotate out people for gear, because we wanted to make sure the bench people had the gear to perform. I don't think we had less than five people rotate out before a given boss. And I would know... I was one of the warlocks summoning them in and out.

So I REALLY, REALLY hope that blizzard figured out that this makes raiding an unbearable pain. I really, truly hope that they figure out how to make raid encounters require less substitution between boss fights. And, most of all, I hope they never ever let dual speccing be a solution to that problem.

Ghostcrawler

Blizzard Poster

10. Re: Does anyone find it funny that... 03/15/2009 11:12:38 AM PDT

Q u o t e:
Way back far too long ago it used to be that healers (priests) would have a healing/wanding rotation on a boss judged with wisdom to recover mana. If the regen nerfs require it that might happen again.

That was partially because OFSR was so potent back then. Honestly, we're not trying to recreate the MC days or healer rotations, though I can understand if some of you are nostalgic for them.

In Ulduar, you should run out of mana if...

1) You don't have enough gear for the instance.
2) You aren't playing the encounter well enough.

If you have good enough gear and good enough skill and aren't standing in fires and are kiting adds correctly and doing all the right things, then you aren't designed to run OOM.

The reason we wanted to nerf regen is that having infinite mana was allowing too much of a buffer on those two factors (it allowed for too much "slop" in organization and execution). Take Saphiron as an example. When mana regen is very high, the dps can sit in the blizzards for a little while because the healers can just heal through it and make up enough mana when they get a clearcasting proc or are running for ice blocks (because OFSR regen was so good). In previous tiers of content, the guild probably would have had to farm the earlier bosses for several weeks to get enough gear to have a chance at the final few.

Now Naxx was designed to be easy, and Ulduar isn't going to be a lot harder. Hard modes on the bosses though are designed to be very hard. That means being inefficient with mana has to be a liability instead of a tool used to make the content less challenging.

Pajamasalad

< No eXcuses >

Mannoroth

11. Re: Does anyone find it funny that... 03/15/2009 11:15:10 AM PDT

Q u o t e:

That was partially because OFSR was so potent back then. Honestly, we're not trying to recreate the MC days or healer rotations, though I can understand if some of you are nostalgic for them.

In Ulduar, you should run out of mana if...

1) You don't have enough gear for the instance.
2) You aren't playing the encounter well enough.

If you have good enough gear and good enough skill and aren't standing in fires and are kiting adds correctly and doing all the right things, then you aren't designed to run OOM.

The reason we wanted to nerf regen is that having infinite mana was allowing too much of a buffer on those two factors (it allowed for too much "slop" in organization and execution). Take Saphiron as an example. When mana regen is very high, the dps can sit in the blizzards for a little while because the healers can just heal through it and make up enough mana when they get a clearcasting proc or are running for ice blocks (because OFSR regen was so good). In previous tiers of content, the guild probably would have had to farm the earlier bosses for several weeks to get enough gear to have a chance at the final few.

Now Naxx was designed to be easy, and Ulduar isn't going to be a lot harder. Hard modes on the bosses though are designed to be very hard. That means being inefficient with mana has to be a liability instead of a tool used to make the content less challenging.

Is Algalon suppose to be Sunwell hard?

Q u o t e:
"Stupid people take meters at face value
People who think they're smart ignore meters
Experienced players know to interpret meters"
-Chanamel on Chromaggus

-Thistlebees Signature

Brucity

Mannoroth

12. Re: Does anyone find it funny that... 03/15/2009 11:18:11 AM PDT

Q u o t e:
I just hope that Blizzard remembers Sunwell as well as I do. The biggest problem with that bloody instance was fight specific healer requirements. GC is right on when he says the number of healers is a function of how much HPS is required. But what he left unsaid was that different kinds of healers bring different flavors of HPS, even now after all the homogenization. We had to bring 11 healers, mostly chain healing shaman or priests with CoH to Twins. M'uru or Brutallus would only allow 6 healers, due to DPS requirements. Felmyst required 4 priests, at minimum for Mass Dispel.

We ended up bringing 40 people to our Sunwell raids. The 15 people on the bench would be rotated in and out to meet healer or DPS demands... which in turn required us to rotate out people for gear, because we wanted to make sure the bench people had the gear to perform. I don't think we had less than five people rotate out before a given boss. And I would know... I was one of the warlocks summoning them in and out.

So I REALLY, REALLY hope that blizzard figured out that this makes raiding an unbearable pain. I really, truly hope that they figure out how to make raid encounters require less substitution between boss fights. And, most of all, I hope they never ever let dual speccing be a solution to that problem.

Though what you said is correct, it gives a narrow scope of the way things actually were.

Everyone remembers Sunwell as the face of BC raiding because it was the last thing most of us saw before Naxx. However Sunwell was a very specific example of overdesign, and was nothing like BT and below where most fights were more flexible in what healers you brought.

Anything that looked like it worked against certain healers was just accepted as a challenge, not a design flaw. And for a lot of people, running up those hills while it seemed like everyone was rolling down was part of the fun of it.

Razormaid

Staghelm

13. Re: Does anyone find it funny that... 03/15/2009 11:37:17 AM PDT

Q u o t e:

If you have good enough gear and good enough skill and aren't standing in fires and are kiting adds correctly and doing all the right things, then you aren't designed to run OOM.

C'mon, man. You know there are retards in every group. There are always going to be people standing in fires or screwing up on adds. You shouldn't balance mana regen on everyone else doing their job perfectly because that's just not going to happen.

Ellin

< Chances Are We Pwn >

Mug'thol

14. Re: Does anyone find it funny that... 03/15/2009 11:37:18 AM PDT

Q u o t e:
It might be a peaceful utopia if 25-player raids scaled directly from 5-player groups, meaning that you had 5 tanks and 5 healers and 15 dps. We just don't think the encounters are as fun with that setup, and they certainly start to have a sameness after awhile (lots of adds or tank rotations on every fight for example). You have to do a lot of crazy things to enforce only 5 healers, because as soon as the group brings 7 or 8 healers, the content might get a lot easier.

GC, what should all the tank that are tanking 5 man heroics and 10 man content do when they wat to move up to 25 man content? respec? Most tank didn't become tanks to later dps or heal, they want to tank. DPS seamlessly go from heroics to 10 man to 25 man, same for healers (healers actually become more in demand in 10 and 25 man content, while tanks are unwanted. And guess what, there is gain a heroic tank shortage, since prospective tanks dont have much to look forward to. In my 25 man guild we have 4 active tanks, and most of the time, we just need 2 tanks, so we either have 1 or 2 sit out or respec and dps... and so because u dont want to create more complex fight where multiple tanks re required, tanks a whole get to suffer for it, we aren't asking for the old school 4 horseman 8 warriors or bust situations, but at least make 3-4 tank required for 25 man content :(

Tyena

< Casually Serious >

Emerald Dream

16. Re: Does anyone find it funny that... 03/15/2009 11:53:40 AM PDT

Q u o t e:

In Ulduar, you should run out of mana if...

1) You don't have enough gear for the instance.
2) You aren't playing the encounter well enough.
3) You don't have replenishment.

Now Naxx was designed to be easy, and Ulduar isn't going to be a lot harder. Hard modes on the bosses though are designed to be very hard. That means being inefficient with mana has to be a liability instead of a tool used to make the content less challenging.

Added one in that you forgot.

At present the number of healers required to run most content is declining because of gear and to be honest experience with the content. The great tank shortage of TBC is pretty much over now. If anything its hard for tanks to get spots now because of this abundance. If 2 are required for Ulduar events there are going to be a lot of tanks hanging around Dalaran fishing for coins.

I actually find multi-tank events pretty fun. It gets us away from the single target tank/spank. Examples are the 4-horseman and the starter bosses for Thaddius. I would say the funnest events are ones where timing and coordination are required from multi-tanking.

Will take your word on being efficient with mana in Ulduar. With the regen nerf, the removal of serendipity as a mana return tool and HC being gutted I forecast lots of standing around wanding because I am going to have to chose who and when to heal more carefully. Hopefully this hesitation won't result in big repair bills but I suspect at first it will.

Anyway, the die is cast. There is nothing much to do other than hope Ulduar is both challenging and fun and doesn't turn into blue bar management over green bar management.

Ghostcrawler: You should get raid slots because you know what the blank you are doing, not because your buff is the awesome.

Obitussancta

< Twilights Void >

Terenas

17. Re: Does anyone find it funny that... 03/15/2009 12:10:45 PM PDT

Q u o t e:

That was partially because OFSR was so potent back then. Honestly, we're not trying to recreate the MC days or healer rotations, though I can understand if some of you are nostalgic for them.

In Ulduar, you should run out of mana if...

1) You don't have enough gear for the instance.
2) You aren't playing the encounter well enough.

If you have good enough gear and good enough skill and aren't standing in fires and are kiting adds correctly and doing all the right things, then you aren't designed to run OOM.

The reason we wanted to nerf regen is that having infinite mana was allowing too much of a buffer on those two factors (it allowed for too much "slop" in organization and execution). Take Saphiron as an example. When mana regen is very high, the dps can sit in the blizzards for a little while because the healers can just heal through it and make up enough mana when they get a clearcasting proc or are running for ice blocks (because OFSR regen was so good). In previous tiers of content, the guild probably would have had to farm the earlier bosses for several weeks to get enough gear to have a chance at the final few.

Now Naxx was designed to be easy, and Ulduar isn't going to be a lot harder. Hard modes on the bosses though are designed to be very hard. That means being inefficient with mana has to be a liability instead of a tool used to make the content less challenging.

The only problem I have with this statement GC is that it doesn't feel like you are making the encounter harder by making tougher encounters and bosses, but by nerfing healers and healer class mechanics.
Heck while you are at it why not just start nerfing DPS and tanking.
If you do it right you can get every one back to BWL type stats and not have to come up with anything too new.

[ Post edited by Obitussancta ]

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Lockslyn

< Dark Legion >

Terokkar

19. Re: Does anyone find it funny that... 03/15/2009 12:27:48 PM PDT

Q u o t e:

GC, what should all the tank that are tanking 5 man heroics and 10 man content do when they wat to move up to 25 man content? respec? Most tank didn't become tanks to later dps or heal, they want to tank. DPS seamlessly go from heroics to 10 man to 25 man, same for healers (healers actually become more in demand in 10 and 25 man content, while tanks are unwanted. And guess what, there is gain a heroic tank shortage, since prospective tanks dont have much to look forward to. In my 25 man guild we have 4 active tanks, and most of the time, we just need 2 tanks, so we either have 1 or 2 sit out or respec and dps... and so because u dont want to create more complex fight where multiple tanks re required, tanks a whole get to suffer for it, we aren't asking for the old school 4 horseman 8 warriors or bust situations, but at least make 3-4 tank required for 25 man content :(

I think it's a good thing to design it the way it is.

Think about it: with a position so crucial like a tank, what happens if one can't show up? Cancel the raid? What is someone is away for a week? Cancel raids that week?

Every role has surpluses. We tend to notice it more with healers but especially with tanks because there are fewer of them. It's also, IMO, more natural to expect a tank to shift to a DPS role because it is still a melee role directly interacting with the enemy, whereas switching from healing to dps can be a much bigger change.

Forum > CLASS ROLES > HEALING