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Q u o t e:
thing is... I haven't been 80 long, I got there shortly before Divine Plea got gutted to 50% reduction.
/snip
so how does the little guy get geared?

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So at this stage of the game crafted gear is cheap as chips getting cheaper - my suggestion is take advantage of it.

I have a druid that dinged 80 and went to Naxx a week later (and did fine tyvm) Started with Epic mace (BS) then Epic pants and boots (lw) Epic belt & shoulders (boe drops farmed from the A/H :P) Epic chest and gloves (tailor) Epic ring (JC) some very good blues from rep and A/H BoE's and I was well enough geared.

I also had a pretty good balance set and after the same process. The 6k gold it cost was a weeks farming and questing + some support from my main of course. Mind you I didn't just buy everything - guildy crafters ftw.

Entry level blues will cause you some issues - but why be in those?

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Q u o t e:


whereas switching from healing to dps can be a much bigger change.

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or even worse, when our guild pally MT had to fill in a healing spot for us on malygos. He still thought he was tanking and accidently taunted it off the warrior by habit when we all landed after a vortex . That was hilarious.

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Q u o t e:


It isn’t. We had to fix some problems, and very rapid mana regeneration was one of them. Another big one was amazing tank cooldowns (mostly from the DK). However we stepped up the difficulty on the encounters too. There is no “just burn him down” boss like Noth. The trash will require crowd control on some pulls. Ulduar is not Sunwell. It is not a huge leap up in difficulty from Naxx, but it is a step up. If that isn’t enough of a challenge for you, then I suggest you try the hard modes and pay a visit to Algalon.



The content is not balanced to a point where if one player gets hit by a blizzard you will wipe. If that was true, you wouldn’t see groups clearing Naxx with 2 healers (in 10-player mode). Yes the responsibility of healing the raid is yours. The responsibility of doing things that let you do your job is that of the dps and the tanks. If the tank doesn’t blow her cooldowns and then blames her death on you, she is a bad tank. Giving you more mana isn’t going to fix that.



Marxalot is correct. By the same token, we don’t expect every player to come to a consensus before we make a change. That would be silly. So we read as much feedback as we can and try and make informed decisions. Some players want content to be harder and some want it to be easier. We can’t satisfy both extremes, and we don’t really try to. Our solution for this patch is to make the standard content more difficult, but not soul-crushing. However, if you like soul-crushing, you should be able to find that too.

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Long quote for a long point.

I don't remember doing Nax 10 man with 2 healers until we were rediculously overgeared for it. We can 2 man Kara now too, I really don't think that either is a good justification to apply as many changes as you are to healing all at once.

Question:

We keep bringing up "players standing in fires" as being a burden on healing and a waste of mana. Can this not be likened to Ret paladins killing themselves to do relatively lower dps? (because they are a hybrid)

If mana is tight, why should any guilds bring a player that "intentionally stands in the fire" just to do more dps?


edit:
Sorry if this is offtopic. But the constant talk about standing in fires and wasting mana made me think about this related issue.

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Q u o t e:
The elite should also note how many players here are worried about Ulduar shutting them out. You can call it srs bzns and all that, but yet a lot of players who are sophisticated enough to post on forums (true casuals don't do that) are worried that Ulduar may be too much. This is the kind of thing we have to balance.

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This is certainly an interesting dilemma. I can attest to the fear of being "shut out" of Ulduar. In the raid that I lead we have very much a casual atmosphere. I have no issues bringing family members, friends, etc to my runs, and have yet to kick someone for performance. This causes some personal issues for me considering I can from a guild that started late and wanted to down content quickly in pre-BC, so we were very hardcore. I have to humble my own elitist perspective because there are people out there who really don't grasp things like mechanics or spell rotations/priorities. They also have no real desire to, they just want to play to have fun playing with their friends/family. This gives us about 5-7 people in our raids who really know what they're doing and basically carry the rest of the group, another 10-ish who sort of know what they're doing, and the rest is fluff.

With that said, Naxx is too easy. For us. Hell, we nearly have 2D down (yeah, I'd be laughing right alongside all the srs bzns people if this were a different time and place). Honestly, there are really only a few fights that push my group -- Malygos, Sarth+Drakes, and KT when things go bad (like, our MT dies to a fissure, which we typically would still recover from). Everything else is just a pinata. And we're what the elites are refering to when they say "scrubs" and "terribads." But at the same time, these people are paying just as much as everyone else, and they're genuinely good people and fun to be around -- they're playing to the best of their level and capabilities, and they really do have the right to see the storyline for this game unfold just like the rest of us. A lot have been playing Warcraft far longer than I ever have, some of these things mean much more to them than they do to me.

Personally, I really appreciate the "easy-mode" "hard-mode" way things are set up now. With all that said, let me put back on my mechanics/theorycrafter hat and go back to the topic at hand.



I think mana regen in general is going the right way with these changes. I worry that this actually isn't far enough though, and that things will get worse before they get better. There is a very bottom line to mana regen, there IS an absolute target, not just a relative target. That target is how much mana you spend during an encounter, as long as your regen is enough to make up for that spent mana, you're golden.

There is also an absolute amount of time it takes for you to spend that amount of mana based on the spells that are cast. If an average fight is balanced around being 6 minutes long, and you're chain casting though all 6 minutes now....then you'll still be chain casting through all 6 minutes in a fight in Ulduar.

The o5sr nerf to mana regen is not a significant mana regen loss. And it does nothing to those people who already spend 95-100% of the time i5sr already. It does shift around some stat values (like Intellect being worth even more than Spirit, and mp5 getting a very slight gain). But really, the o5sr change is next to negligible -- if it were the only change, no one would even notice a difference.

The "extra" changes on classes aren't really that limiting either. Rapture got nerfed for Disc priests, but PW:S, Holy Nova, and a few other spells are getting reduced mana costs. Holy Conc got changes, but not drastically. These extra changes aren't really that big of a deal. Honestly, they'll probably be easily offset by the fact that mana regen in general is still an increasing returns system. If the value of regen from gear is X, and the length of time you can last is Y, then the relationship is more along the lines of:

Y=X^(1.2)

Yes, this is all just prediction right now, no real numbers -- but I honestly don't think the changes go far enough. Replenishment, I still believe, should be nerfed to 0.2% per second. Mana costs could probably use a 5% increase across the board. From a Priest perspective, because I like Spirit -- I would like to see Holy Conc double Spirit instead of increasing regen. I would like to see Rapture be a "proc" ability that gave you an amount of mana equal to 50% of your Spirit (give or take).

Basically, I think mana regen could use a further nerf or two, and I think Priests should be altered mechanically in some way to encourage Spirit over Intellect for mana regen again.

Also: lol at paladins grumbling over hurting themselves. I don't know how many SW:D kills I have under my belt =D

You guys still do not get the lifebloom nerf issue. It isn't that druids are getting weaker as healers. Most people aren't even concerned with that me included since if it happens we will just have our direct spells buffed.

Its that lifebloom in its current state isn't useful as a stackable buff. Maybe on fights that are 20 minutes we could slowbloom it for efficiency but most of the time we will rejuv and regrowth the tank and spam nourish, maybe lifebloom too but really 1 application is to much work for the return unless its for nourish. Why does our fast heal require hots anyway?

As to how the regen affects healers. I think in the long run its probably a good thing since it does force healers to scale more. As it was a lot of guilds were looking foward to duel specing healers out to speed up content and having them change back as needed. I get that you did not want that.

But you need to balance playstyles and not just classes and that's a serious issue. You also need to look more at long term scaling. I do not see these changes honestly fixing anything come 6 months from now.

I do not see how these issues do not crop up again and every time you make massive changes people WILL get unhappy.

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Q u o t e:
What is the most you have ever been bled for on a Judgement crit? Maybe 10K? And that’s a crit.

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This really made me laugh, I know it is only one situation and is controllable, but our last Immortal attempt was ruined by a ret judging for 500k on Razzuvius's Understudies (one shotting himself).

For those who don't know, when Raz dies he casts:
Hopeless
Instant
Increases the damage dealt by nearby Death Knight Understudies by 5000%.

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Q u o t e:
The fires typically do a lot more damage than Seal of Blood. What is the most you have ever been bled for on a Judgement crit? Maybe 10K? And that’s a crit. No offense, but your healers probably laugh at the kind of damage you are inflicting on yourself. The tank is getting hit for much more, much faster and the fires or big AE sprays generally do more. A stray PoM or CL can probably top you off. I know you don’t want to use Command, but if you’re sitting at 10% of your health or you know the dragon is about to breathe, it may be an attractive option until you get healed back up again. I know the self-damage is a concern of the paladins though, and we’ll keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t feel like too much of a liability in raids.

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Seal of Blood is already the choice for anyone in PvP with half a brain, though, GC, so obviously the penalty doesn't mean much as far as keeping people from using it in PvP. What I find rather silly is the fact that though Blood was originally made to deal us damage to give us mana through Attunement, now that you are taking attunement from ret we are still keeping the penalty.

Why should Retribution have to deal with a unique DEbuff that does nothing useful whatsoever for us, and only makes us slowly kill ourselves? Why should we deal with this when we're doing marginal DPS, at best, in 3.1 so far?

Is there even a point to have the 5-Second-Rule anymore? With all these nerfs, you might as well have mana regen be based on an in-combat and out-of-combat system, much like health. Mp5 would be the only way to regen mana naturally in-combat.

When not in combat, mana would regenerate very quickly. Perhaps even a percentage per 5 secs, coupled with the regen that happens at all time.

Spirit would provide a set amount of in-combat mp5 (and perhaps a greater out-of-combat amount). Every X amount of Spirit (scaling with level) would provide Y amount of mp5.

Obviously it would require a revamp of regen for classes that use mp5 which would take a major patch worth of work, but it would make it a much more stable and desirable stat.

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Q u o t e:
A stray PoM or CL can probably top you off.

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Sorry to take this on a little bit of a tangent, but the self damage done from seal of blood doesn't trigger Prayer of Mending. Could you guys fix that?

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Q u o t e:


its a good thing every healer doesn't have a dps spec right? lets just start knocking out dps specs though that way only one pure per raid!

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Go sulk on the DD forums.

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Q u o t e:
Is there even a point to have the 5-Second-Rule anymore?

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At some point GC has mentioned that they wanted to overhaul the mana regen system (which is long overdue IMHO). That overhaul wouldn't make 3.1 however (may not make this expansion).

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Q u o t e:
Read all the way and i found this post, and i had to jump in

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You shouldn't have bothered. You may disagree with what GC said, but the way your disagreeing doesn't tell us anything useful and doesn't actually help improve the game in any way.

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Q u o t e:

A stray PoM or CL can probably top you off. I know you don’t want to use Command, but if you’re sitting at 10% of your health or you know the dragon is about to breathe, it may be an attractive option until you get healed back up again. I know the self-damage is a concern of the paladins though, and we’ll keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t feel like too much of a liability in raids.

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This would be true...EXCEPT...Prayer of Mending does NOT proc off of Seal of Blood self-damage!

Make it so. Please.

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Q u o t e:
Do not run with bad players, IMO. ... Still, if the idiots stand in the fire, guild kick them. If you don’t have that power, then find a better guild.

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Oops, they are my friends IRL. I'm the one who made it possible for many of them to get by in heroics tanking with 22k hp or doing 1100 DPS while standing in poison clouds or aggroing pats. I'm the one who tops the healing meter (who cares, I know) but always comes in 8th on overhealing--out of 7 healers.

And now we're halted on Thaddius 25 (!), because half the DPS kill themselves, and for two weeks now, they haven't been willing stay for more than four wipes to learn a fight as trivial as even that.

So yes, they're *bad*. They are also low investors who don't know enough about the game to even realize they are bad. They are also the people who make the game fun for me.

And they enjoy seeing content--I'm not talking about Ulduar but *Naxx*--and if the other healers and I can't carry some of them once our O5SR regen is cut, it isn't going to happen.

And when they start to deactivate until next expansion, the game actually becomes less fun for me than failing on ridiculously easy encounters.

Oh well, I guess, but that's the view from the shallow end of the server.

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Q u o t e:


Sorry to take this on a little bit of a tangent, but the self damage done from seal of blood doesn't trigger Prayer of Mending. Could you guys fix that?

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it also goes through pws / divine shield etc :|

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Q u o t e:


Long quote for a long point.

I don't remember doing Nax 10 man with 2 healers until we were rediculously overgeared for it. We can 2 man Kara now too, I really don't think that either is a good justification to apply as many changes as you are to healing all at once.

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Other than Saph and KT, we had no problems running it with 2 healers, even with most of the raid in bad gear. If all healers had bad gear, then you'd need three, but "bad" in this case means "not even crafted epics/blues" which you really have no excuse not to have.