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What’s most interesting to me about the change to have Intellect affect Spirit-based mana regeneration is that it’s a further buff to the longevity of Priests and Druids, two out of four of the healing classes (Shamans have received similar boosts to their mana regeneration in previous patches). This is on top of the changes to Intensity/Meditation that came with Patch 2.3. An exciting change to be sure, but one has to wonder what Blizzard is thinking as they continue to make mana less and less of a stumbling block for content completion.
Those of you familiar with the raid content from EverQuest 1 will likely remember something called the CH-rotation. This was a chain of Clerics dedicated to casting the Complete Heal spell every X seconds. The harder-hitting the boss or less geared the tank, the faster the rotation needed to be. Your raid lost when your Corps of Clerics ran out of steam. Or when one of them exploded in a fit of drama over loot, shattering your guild into a meelion tiny fragments. (Clerics in EQ were notorious for their sense of entitlement, perhaps because they had one of the most mind-numbingly boring but nonetheless essential roles in the endgame.) Blizzard seemed to initially carry this idea into their first raid content. Despite encounters which were much more dynamic, the responsibility for a raid’s success often lay squarely upon the shoulders of its healers; just think back to fights like Lucifron and chain decursing.
Now with TBC raiding content, healers’ roles have further diversified. We focus on different stats (spell crit for Paladins, Spirit for Druids and Priests, MP5 for Shamans, +Healing for all). Rather than the pre-TBC focus on direct healing at varying speeds, we now fill different niches (direct heals, group heals, “jumpy” heals like Prayer of Mending and Chain Heal, and heals over time). Add to this the buffs to mana regeneration we’ve seen over the past year and a much increased emphasis on healers in PvP content, and it’s a great time to be a healer.
While healers are expected to do more in terms of movement, positioning, and decision-based healing — and thankfully, far less in terms of decursing — TBC encounters also tend to have a much higher emphasis on high DPS. With soft enrage timers (whereby the mob in question hits harder but not to the point of becoming unmanageable), “hard” enrage timers, and mechanics like Gruul’s progressively harder-hitting growth stages, it’s become more important than ever for DPS to be on the top of their game. Because while mana may be less of an issue, eventually the HPS of your raid’s healers won’t be able to keep up with the DPS of some encounters.
I personally view this as a positive paradigm shift. When so much of the responsibility for my raid’s success lay upon my shoulders and the shoulders of other healers, failure often felt personal. Now the responsibility is more evenly distributed among all raid members, and it’s less a case of finger-pointing (or branch-pointing) than it once was. Although it is amusing to watch healers blame DPS and DPS blame healers on Gruul’s.
Admittedly, my experience is limited only to Gruul’s Lair, the first few encounters in Serpentshrine Caverns (Lurker, Hydross, and Morogrim), and a couple of as yet unsuccessful attempts on Magtheridon and Void Reaver. I’m very interested to hear the perspectives of those readers who have advanced further. I know from previous comments that there is a increased emphasis on increasing HPS via +Healing since mana regeneration becomes less of an issue. Is this due to enrage mechanics or something else altogether?
Just a real quick note of apology about my lack of responsiveness the last week or so. I’m in the middle of a big project release at work and don’t have the spare time I sometimes do. I’ve been working my way through comments today and will be turning my eyes to contact requests over the next week. Again, sorry if I haven’t answered your requests yet. I’m working on it! 
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Funny that you bring up EQ. I was complaining the other day to our GM that healing in WoW seemed a bit more chaotic compared to EQ where a CH rotation would have a heal land every second of the fight (Avatar of War anyone?!?). Don’t get me wrong, it was as you as you say mind numbing but more orderly.
/ooc WTB Fishbone Earring!
I agree with this whole-heartedly!
The emphasis has often been “Tanks need to know what they’re doing, healers need to know what they’re doing, dps…um…well, I guess they can come too.” I was thinking about earlier if you could do some of these instances without some dps, and the answer is no. You can’t. They need love too.
ahh the days when clerics were the healers in demand. Shammys, druids, and other lesser healers just there because they could dole out helpfull buffs and debuffs.
Once mana regen gets at and surpasses 150-160 and up to 190 regen becomes a complete non issue. Once you get a base regen of 150-190 extra regen becomes very pointless, less if you are actually in the Spriest group. Thouge we have the best mana efficiency even for the other healer classes i have not heard a call for an innervate in a long time. If someone dies one of the ferals might spit out one but other than that. Even then ushually healers dont need one.
The reason for these things isent really the enrage mechanics. This is because the healers once they atain a peak in their mana regen they can keep away from the dreaded oom without any effort at all. Healers stats gearing up go from a split between stacking regen (different kinds depending on what class you are) to pure stacking healing, at least for us trees. Any more regen becomes pointless. One of the reasons for enrage mechanics other than pushing the DPS to gear out to the best of their abilitys is that any fight would become pointless with the amount of regen they give us.
Once you start to get into the higher tier 25 mans regen because pretty much a non issue. As a druid when i first started out thouge i never really had a problem with keeping my mana up where it needs to be at all times (well most of the time anyway
)i felt alot more pinched than i do now. The more mana regen you get as you go from first hitting 70 and healing to better and better epics you go from knowing you can hold one lifebloom and maybe a few other patch heals for a boss fight to feeling confidant that you can hold 2, 3, or even 4 lifeblooms for the enitre fight without going oom(of course depends on the fight when were talking about 4). Getting off topic it kinda reminds me of The Wheel of Time and how they weave multiple flows of The One Power. (sorry getting off topic ><)
I agree that healing in WoW is alot more chaotic than EQ ever was. Thats why healer synergy and asignments are key to any succesfull raid, even on trash. When you raid for a long time with the same people you get a good feel for how, who and how much they heal for. *starts singing “ive got this feeeeling! this heeeeaaling feeeeeling!”*
Hm, I have to say alot of encounters have become more DPS dependant than it was pre TBC.
Nevertheless, there are still alot of fights that have the same or longer timespan than stuff pre TBC(Illidan, Kaelthas, Vashj, Council).
With the Itemmization in raiding, you get so many mp5 items, that at the T6 level, you basicly cant go oom, (i use like 3 manapots in a BT run)because of that i think stacking +heal is indeed the way to go.
I finally got a few more spinels and resocketed a bit, sitting at 200mp5/2190ish heal. My goal is to stick to a 190-200ish mp5 and get a few more spinels, a T6 chest and an illidan trinket, which would get me to some 2300ish heal at that 200mp5.
So yes, go for +heal, and let the feral druids handling the innervates to priests
In my guild we’re still struggling through SSC and TK (5/6 and 3/4; run for your life, Vashj. You’re next!), but my impression is quite the same. I take practically no potions unless learning a new boss or when things go worse than expected (mainly when I get combat-ressed, or the raid setup is far from the best), and I don’t recall priests or druids asking for innervates in probably months.
I tend to focus on spirit and healing bonus these days, given how MP5 seems to suffice: emergencies require bigger innervates, and once you can hold your spell rotations for long enough, you just want to increase your HPS. Too bad I won’t be able to get rid of my PvP pieces soon, given how little I can raid lately.
Last time I needed way more than a drink, however, was pretty recent.
The other day I was doing Ramparts with two hunters, a rogue and a protection paladin, all of them skilled and well-geared, but specially the paladin (the only non-guildy, but 25-man-MT-kind of “well geared”). We had just started the Vazruden/Nazan event when both hunters got disconnected at the same time (they had to be hunters). For those who have never tried to 3-man heroics I’ll tell you, fight was so ridiculously long I had to blow everything, potion, drums, innervate.. Totally out of mana. There was a point (I don’t remember exactly, the dragon probably somewhere under 20%) when I had to wait for mana to cast the next lifebloom, and it was then when I thought: crap, I wish I had more MP5.
That day I confirmed two things I’ve always believed: 1) a great tank can often make up for poor DPS and 2) even healers must carry bandages.
Anyway, I still think MP5 is not a priority.
I welcome increased mana regeneration but I’m not quite sure what Blizzard has in mind here. Ever since we left Karazhan behind I haven’t had mana problems unless I need to cast Regrowth a lot which is pretty rare (Vashj Phase 3 comes to mind here).
In my experience so far (Kara, ZA, SSC 6/6, TK 3/4 and working on Kael) healer Mana is rarely an issue as long as they get a SPriest (I don’t, hello MT Group!), but HPS is. Especially when starting out in Zul’Aman I noticed the strain on healers because many mobs hit so damn hard unless you’re pretty overgeared for the place. Many times it is just an issue of healing fast enough (e.g. whenever a warlock has to tank anything like Leotheras oder Caperniwhatever in the Kael’Thas fight). So the increased mana regeneration is helpful in one way: we can concentrate on other stats than manareg. The reduction of the global cooldown via spell haste is one and the other is +heal. The latter is my current objective and I’m spending way too much gold on +18heal gems.
What I have noticed is that our healers are coping with the pressure put on them much better than DPS is. Fights have started to become more complex starting in late Karazhan and there are fewer tank and spank fights. Fights when the DPS actually has to do something other than “stand there and dps without getting aggro” are the most difficult ones for us. The responsebility shifts from laying solely on the tank’s and healer’s shoulders to the DPS’, too. Many of them are not used to that and it’s a pretty slow learning process. Many wipes can be attributed to that
Ah, I remember those pre-bc days. Where most fights depended upon the healers to keep the tank up. Those fights were stressful and hard on healers. Now most fights are more dependent upon everyone in the raid fulfilling thier role. Very few are just straight tank and spank fights.
My guild is in SSC & TK. We are working on the final boss now. The mana is never really an issue especially when we have spriest and resto shamans. I think this is partially attributed to the fact that healers are down ranking some spells. Not really druids, but the other classes are certainly doing this, plus each healing class plays a key role in the raid. Shamans for Raid Healing (Love that golden beam), Paladins for Tank Healing (Can u say 8k heals?), Priest for Frisbees and Tank Healing, and Druids to smooth out spike damage with HoTs and instant heals. Another thing to consider, is that if your guild has the DPS then the healers are less likely to go oom. I’ve noticed this in our guild when we are beating Boss enrage timers by matters of minutes versus seconds.
Either way, this change is great for healers all around. All Boss fights do not solely depend upon the lasting power of healers and tanks ability to survive but on all aspects of the raid even more so for DPS now.
Brunnor Gorgonnash Horde
Haaaa! I remember our first MC, when BWL didn’t even exists… with green and some blue stuff… our tank had the krol blade, because it was really great at this time… We used the heal rotation then, but times have changed my friends.
Actually, the current problem is not the stuff (we can see for exemple that a chinese guild killed Illidan only 3 weeks after the release of Black temple, with T3 stuff and some TBC blues) it’s just a matter of getting the technique and not having a 7k hp tank
And yeah dps is much more important than it was, but on some fights like reliquary of souls (is this the correct english name? :p) DPS HAVE TO BE LEGEND -wait for it- DARY…
HPS is a HUGE issue in the later 25 mans, a druid’s (or two) HoTs are almost necessary to help level off the spike damage that these bosses do. It has nothing to do with the enrage timers (if you even get close, your DPS is slacking, or dead from lack of heals).
My guild is currently going through a period of healer inadequacy (most likely laziness, inattention to detail, and failure to precast), which is magnified by the lack of a quality resto druid. The guild leader is the tank, negitive reinforcement is in full swing. Fun stuff.
Well, not going to say too much here due to time constraints.
I do remember the Complete Heal chains.
/gu “Complete Heal on <<>>”
/wait 30
/gu “OtherCleric go now!”
As much as we used CH chains through Velious and Luclin, CH chains started dying out eventually - when they nerfed CH to make it 7500 instead of 10000 it didn’t help the chain, especially considering new expansions were coming out, new heals were coming out, and although the efficiency of CH couldn’t really be beat, mana pools and mana regen kept increasing, so why keep using that 10 second heal when people can spam the 3 second one for not quite as much and still be fine?
I don’t exactly remember, but I don’t think I saw many CH chains in Anguish. It may have just been because they were in a healer channel then, but I don’t remember them as being nearly as potent and required as they used to be. Other healers started doing more, namely druids and shamans. Even Paladins would throw their HoTs when possible - every bit helps, except for that accursed buff limit you ran into.
Healing in EQ was different. Aside from tank assignments, there were no default raid window UIs, so healers were pretty much responsible for their group. Get a healer in each group - and of course, we’re talking groups of 40-70 people. Because of the raid window, WoW healing is indeed different, and I find it more enjoyable overall.
Rezzing people mid combat was also important as well - EQ fights were big on healing, but dying didn’t mean you lose that person for the fight. It means you lose them for about a minute while they painstakingly load into PoK and a free cleric click-sticks em.
Although a limiting factor was heals and healers mana, this was by no means the only one. Admitidly, the DPS didn’t often have much to do, but your enchanters, bards, offtanks and tanks were pretty busy. It was the same thing the whole fight sometimes (Emperor SSRA), but you didn’t want to lose one of the mezzed adds. Didn’t want the Paladin to lose aggro on one of the 3 mobs he was tanking. There were definite mechanic checks, although I’d wager there are more in WoW from my experience. Less straight up tank fights with a few variations - there’s some interesting stuff going on, which I like.
Perhaps this is an influence from other RPGs I’ve played, specifically those of the Tales and Star Ocean series, but I like the idea of, “Do everything right and you’ll eventually win.” I don’t care for enrage timers, at least not the scale they’re at when people are downing new bosses into the enrage timer. I like the mechanics of fights, but I hate being constrained by time and losing because someone whose sole purpose is to do damage (not being concerned with any real mechanics aside from aggro) dies. I don’t mind gear checks at all - I usually prefer them in terms of damage taken by raiders, but I just don’t like it to the extent it currently is.
A problem is that it doesn’t stop people from taking 10 tanks and 15 healers, slowly killing stuff. I like the rampup system of Gruul, for instance, which eventually will kill you, but it isn’t so clear cut as a single enrage timer. I like bosses that get harder but not impossible.
As it is (and with the Int-Spirit regen change) I see healers being less and less of an issue. They’re throwing regen at us, at least. I cast Regrowth liberally by many druids’ standards, and I rarely have any mana issues. Some priests I know are complaining because they have to flash heal all the time to stay competitive - more regen encourages that. It’s going to turn to a game of how much +healing you have over anything else, because casting sure isn’t going to be an issue for any of us.
I’m not really sure where I’m going with this, and it may sound like I’m saying DPS should be worthless, but that’s not quite what I mean. Death is bigger in WoW due to ressurection restraints in terms of a kill. You take 8 healers, one dies, no big deal. Two die, still possible. Until you’ve killed a guy, if one DPS dies, that could very well be it depending on your guild’s makeup. I almost feel DPS is becoming more important, and that’s something I’m against.
Unfortunately, WoW is different in terms of respeccing compared to other games, but in general I do feel like the tanks and healers should have an overall more desired place in any party or raid makeup. And in general, they do. You’re giving up the damage, and often the soloing capabilities in other games, of other classes and/or jobs. Your compensation should be desirability.
Okay, I don’t really know what I just said … but I like mechanic checks. I don’t like the mechanics to be a simple enrage timer :p
@Bullar: It definitely was more orderly, but man! Those clerics! >.< @Bellwether: And we love them. Very much. <3 <3 clever Hunters with their Phae-protecting Frost Trap and Gnomish Mage with a well-timed Sheep. And that Rogue with a Gouge to the eye of our assailant. And that Warlock for — hey! Don’t use fear in here!!
@Zackoria: I think I may have reached the point where I don’t need more regen. I’ve actually been able to hand out my Innervate lately and my mana potion consumption has drastically reduced. I think I may be regemming come Patch 2.4 to take advantage of some of those +Healing gems I’ve been hearing about. With the change to Intellect affecting Spirit regeneration, I’m sure to be over the top in terms of mana regen. On the other hand, I’m still sittin’ not exactly pretty at 1661 +Healing. Nice number, though.
@Ammeli: My favorite person to give an Innervate to is the Shadow Priest. Then it’s like giving fuel to everyone!
@Ermengol: That’s pretty amazing that you managed to 3-man Vazruden on Heroic. And here I was proud of 5-manning Heroic Black Morass a couple of nights ago!
@Kuhbi: Here, here. ZA has really made me recognize that I need better +Healing. Some of those bosses hit ridiculously hard, and I could stand to provide a bit more padding against the harder spikes. It sounds like your guild has the opposite problem than ours does. Our DPS seems to handle movement and special instructions pretty well, but when it comes time for the healers to do something other than stand there and heal, we’re kind of borked. ^_^
@Hikilune: You’re the first people I’ve heard of to try to use a CH-rotation-like strategy! I’m so glad that isn’t the standard practice in WoW.
@Doug: Seems like Resto Druids are in short supply these days. Most guilds only have one. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like they are particularly interested in picking up any more. T_T
@Nilianil: That was a pretty loose time constraint!
Thank you for the summation of healing tactics from EverQuest. Admittedly, I stopped playing right after the release of the expansion that came after … the one with Tipt and Vex’d. Gates of Discord? I do remember the nerf to Complete Heal which really infuriated a lot of people. And I’d forgotten that you could actually rez party members during combat in EQ.
Are you against DPS becoming more important than healing or just more important than it once was? I’m personally happy that the responsibility isn’t only on my shoulders for our success. Of course, if DPS is slacking off, it’s still a lack of healing that will have ultimately been responsibile for the raid’s demise…
Okay, given, I shouldn’t have typed as long as I did - oh well :p
Well, I’m definitely against DPS becoming more important than healing. I don’t mind them being more important than they are, but my experience with various games has remained the same - there is less stress involved playing DPS than there is with tanking and healing. Far less. In many games, not only is there less stress, but it’s less work overall and is genuinely easier. By that, I don’t think they should be as important as tanks or healers.
I think if the mechanic checks are passed, DPS shouldn’t be a huge issue. I don’t mind it being a factor, but I hate races. I think I’m just really against the notion of a “You lose” time limit. Just as above, I kinda like Gruul in the sense where DPS definitely helps, but you can technically keep going for a good bit longer than an enrage timer gives you.
Oh, and if the DPS do slack and it’s ultimately a lack of healing that kills the raid, I wouldn’t be so sure if I would call it that. After all, we can only heal up to max HP, and if you get hit for more than that…nothing we coulda done :p No purple club in WoW.
I kind of like the fact that the responsibility tends to shift around from fight to fight.
As an anecdote, last night we did Gurtogg Bloodboil, Reliquary of Souls and Mother Sharaz and it ran the whole gambit…
Gurtogg: healing, coordination
Reliquary: coordination, DPS
Sharaz: gear check, personal responsibility
I love Gurtogg because it is a healing check that has you casting virtually nonstop from start to finish. The over to Reliquary where you get to watch the DPS (especially the melee interrupters in phase two) go under the microscope. I think you have to give props to Blizzard in TBC for providing fights that emphasize different roles and generally increasing the overall level of personal responsibility.
I still like the healing checks though