You’re sure to gobble up this group of wonderful pictures from readers who donned both feathers and beak in celebration of Turkey Day, 2008!
Blizzard recently announced that all items with +Healing will be gaining an automatic amount of +Damage equal to 1/3 the item’s +Healing value. While this may not sound earthshattering, it’s worth noting that for the same item stat allocation, a healing item will typically have double the +Healing as the equivalent +Damage item. If we consider a very simple example, if an item has 300 +Healing, the damage caster equivalent would have 150 +Damage. With the upcoming change, the healing item will gain a “free” 100 +Damage (1/3 * 300). That’s an amazing 66.7% of the spell damage available to pure damage casters, all while retaining the amazing +Healing stat. To be honest, I’m surprised there hasn’t been more protest from damage casters…
Nhara of Rajaxx wrote in this weekend to share her experience on the Public Test Realms. Bedecked in her shining Primal Mooncloth Robe and with 60 points invested in Restoration, she videoed her encounter with Uvuros of Shadowmoon Valley, a level 70 Elite mob that typically takes 2-3 players to kill. Of her experience, she writes:
I started with Zahna, the elekk in Nagrand which is part of the “kill
an elite of every animal race in nagrand” quest series. The fight was pretty easy, and I downed her on first try, so I spread out my wings in search for a greater challenge and ended up in front of Uvuros, which some of you may know from a 5-man elite quest in Shadowmoon Valley. I didn’t really think that I would stand a chance, but I just had to try it.
While Nhara doesn’t manage to kill Uvuros, she does manage to drop his life to a very respectable 66% before running out of mana. In her current healing kit, her 1830 +Healing will convert to an additional 610 +Damage. Imagine the havok she will subsequently be able to wreak on Outland elites! All in all, a very impressive feat and one that is promising for the rest of us, especially given the upcoming spell damage bonus. Thanks, Nhara!
Note: Normally, I like to embed these sorts of videos in my blog so that you don’t have to leave to view them (unless you want to). However, the DivX web player is giving my Vista system fits and crashes my browser when I attempt to preview the video. I do not, however, have any issues viewing the video through the DivX site.
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uh there seems to be a minor misunderstanding
the free +heal ist NOT live on PTR (it will be released with patch 2.3; PTR is 2.2wtfhalloween). I just did it on PTR because I was to greedy
As soon as 2.3 hits the ptr I’ll try to make another video and hopefully kill him
<3 Nhara - EU Rajaxx
This is good news. I won’t be so helpless in my healing gear now!
This is good news for moonkin leatherworkers too, as now they get an extra bit of spell damage with their set!
The greatest part of this is now it won’t be so hard to keep both a good healing and farming gear (do some decent damage while keeping the huge +heal? give now!). I think I’ll change talents when patch 2.3 comes; now I’m 1/13/47, and 14/0/47 may be better then. Blasting wraths while keeping HoTs on myself.. yummy
The coming/proposed change to +healing gear to give it +damage is a TERRIBLE idea. I hope it crashes and burns, personally.
Sure, it’s tough playing a pure healer – but the utility in groups is unparalleled – why give an extra boost?
Perhaps we should bolt on +heal to all +spelldamage gear – gotta let the pure casters heal a bit.
And maybe +dmg to all +sta gear – after all, it’s not as easy soloing with a tank than it is as a DPS class.
Terrible, terrible idea.
Karthis, (most?) everything that has spell damage already has an equal amount of healing.
My current healing set +1124 heal and around + 170 damage. My damage set +650 dmg & healing.
I’m still very hybrid – just barely tipped to resto now for swiftmend.
I’m gonna carry lots less gear *grins* and throw out some bugs and moonfires that won’t be pointless between heals when everything is going smoothly. Weee!
Adendra
Scarlet Crusade
The thing is casters with +dmg can already heal! It hurts me to say it, but a balance druid is better companion in 2vs2 than a resto, since he can do great damage plus quite acceptable healing. When my mate dies, we’re basically screwed, unless there’s only one left and he’s already low on health.
Let’s face it, you get PvP gear, you suffer in instances, you finally get your nice healing purples but then.. what? You can’t kill a bee alone. You still need to spend a lot of time and money getting your “solo set” (good luck getting to /roll in a PuG) Sure, tanks want dps gear, but it’s not the same since you can still use some tanking stuff for grinding. And druids are lucky, we have kitty form. Holly priests suffer even more.
I’m not sure if this will unbalance the game or not, because I see it’s a great change, but I wouldn’t dare write “TERRIBLE” yet (well, I wouldn’t complain either way, since I’m resto
). After all, healers will still have their talents, as dps’ers will have their own.
Ermengol, EU Shadowsong
Damage casters shouldn’t be mad. This is a nice little change but it’s not going above and beyond the norm. Above and beyond would be giving it ½ instead of 1/3
A lower level epic priest mace is about +300 healing. If that turns into a +100 damage mace it’s close to a level 70 blue. Now if you have the epic healing mace it’s a good change you’ll already have the level 70 blue damage weapon anyway. So this boils down to having fewer items from 2 different sets.
There’s nothing that made me more mad when I played my mage than when the holy priest running with your group rolls on large damage upgrades for you because they might go shadow one day or it helps them farm. I understand it, but it makes you mad. This helps that. I think it helps out the healers and the damage casters.
PS none of this relates to PVP..I dont like PVP so I dont care about it but this coudl have large pvp effects.
Necroleanan – mage
Calandris – priest
*wince* I deleted my comment because I tried to link my armory and it didn’t work. I’m sorry.
@Nhara: Oops – sorry about that. I did misunderstand. I’ve edited my post accordingly. And now I’m even more impressed at what you did without the spell damage improvement!
@Ermengol: Hey, good point. That will make the pure +Healing pieces better for Moonkin trying to stay with only leather armor. And I’m really looking forward to cleaning out the “Balance section” of my bank, as well! I’m surprised that you feel that a Balance Druid is a better 2v2 partner than a Restoration, though. As far as I’m aware, Restoration representation currently far outstrips Balance representation in smallscale Arenas. With this change, however, I am strongly considering a 34 Balance/27 Restoration build for Arenas, however (more on that later).
@Karthis: I think that many people may have the same reaction you do because we’re all so accustomed to the paradigm that Healers are intended to give up their soloability in exchange for their necessity in groups. But keep in mind that, while Protection Warriors may have trouble farming, Bear Druids do not. It’s a fairly simple swap for them to move from Bear to Kitty since they retain many of the important DPS kitty talents (even if they do have to collect additional pieces of cat gear). I’m thrilled at this paradigm shift and hope they will consider doing something similar to help out Protection Warriors.
@Necro: Exactly. It’s going to be wonderful to not need to consider rolling on spell damage items (not that I ever would over a Mage, Warlock, or Shadow Priest). And all while still being able to wear leather.
Well it’s pretty nice. My resto gear will sadly have almost more +damage than my moonkin gear after this change, but there’s no reason for casters to get mad.
+hit, haste and +crit are pretty huge for most casters, and we’re not getting any of that. All we’re getting is pure damage. In a PvE environment pure damage is pretty gimp because half of our stuff will resist, and most resto druids are sitting at like 6-9% crit. Really, it’s a pretty fantastic change. I’ll be able to do dailies in my resto gear but really have nothing on a REAL caster.
I still don’t understand the justification behind 50g to respec. I would rather just have free respecs and need to farm multiple sets. There’s a whole other side to the game when you respec, why does Blizzard insist on limiting your experience? Why not allow you to experience all aspects of gameplay? Not to mention, this would reduce lfg times enormously.
Well, I have to say I’m not so excited about the idea of free respecs (yeah, you’ll think I’m crazy!
).
There’s a bit of identity feeling with talent trees (no pun intended), and random specializations would also make things confusing (I hate when people try to play classes/roles they don’t know well; changing on a daily basis would bring a lot of that). I know in the end one knows who’s good at what, but I think you get what I mean. Specialization is supposed to be about what you are; even if you change, it should be a semi-permanent choice.
Besides, everybody would be rolling for everything! (hey, I might be tanking tomorrow!) /scared
I agree with ermengol, if people could respec daily or hourly with no cost then there would be no identity for that character. WOW has already watered down the classes and their roles. If you could respec any time you wanted for free then why wouldn’t we all choose Druids. They can do everything, and pretty darn well if they spec for it. And if that the case then Blizz should just get rid of all the classes and make one class that can do everything…might as well make one race too…and only one character model. No thanks.
Okay, okay, I know That went a bit far but I hope you can see the point. Lol.
Necroleanan – Mage
Calandris – Priest
I wish they had done this back when I was still running SSC. Damn you Leo fight!!!
I think it’s wonderful that you can stand your groud even in your healing gear. I’d say it’s not that fantastic as people think. The reason for this is spelled “gems and chants”. Atleast for me, 400 much of my 1600 +heal comes from gems and chants so I’d actually only get 400 +damage from healing my gear. That is even less than I have in my unchanted, shitty blue balance gear. To sum it up, it’s not that good a change, it’s barely halpful for those that don’t have the time to gather separate balance gear.
Great news, Sormlam! This change will include your gems and enchants. You’ll be getting the “full value” of free spell damage for your gear, enchant, and gems! That’s more than 525 spell damage! =)