Mailbag: Patch 3.0.2
Published on October 17, 2008 by Phaelia 
Community, Mailbag, Patches 
40 Comments Visitors have been sharing their healing experiences since the release of Patch 3.0.2. Here are just a few:
Andurial of Alleria (US) writes in:
I thought I would give you a bit of preliminary data on 3.0 raiding (with more to come after tomorrow’s BT raid). Although my guild had intended to raid yesterday, Alleria was in the toilet so that didn’t happen. However, we did throw together a ZA tonight to check out how our numbers were doing. I have to say, it was mightily impressive. The place was in the bag with 24 minutes left on the bear timer though of course there is no longer any bear to be had. [My spec is] an 8/0/53 build including Wild Growth. We were running with myself and a Discipline Priest (as apparently Disc is now where it’s at for priests who can let go of their CoH teddy bear that they cling to). As it turned out he and I were neck and neck on healing through most of the instance.
Instantly, I could tell a difference in HPS with it jumping up to about 1300 instantly and going as high as 1900!. Running with a Shadow Priest and Ret Paladin, there were no mana issues at all (which was incredibly comforting) that were not solved with an Innervate during a particularly daring set of pulls going up to the Lynx boss (including pulling the entire Lynx room and boss at the same time). Amazingly we never wiped, only lost one player to the Lynx’s cleave and Wild Growth actually came out shining. Now, here’s the thing. It is a fundamental change in play style. Lifebloom which used to do between 60-70% of my healing was now down to a roughly equal 35% with Wild Growth with Wild Growth passing on some fights like the Lynx or Dragonhawk. I also was using HT a bit (with the Glyph) for some quick throughput heals while HoTs were ticking. All in all, I’m not hyperventilating like I thought I would be, but it’s going to take some getting used to. I’ll let you know how it goes in a 25-man real raid environment after tomorrow and Friday.
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| Image credit to Eggo |
Metrogon commented on An Early Thanksgiving:
I ran my first raid since the patch tonight on Mount Hyjal. Usually the druid healers (including myself) way dominate the other classes on overall (trash) healing meters. Tonight, however, I and the other Druid were at the bottom. At first analysis it seems that the other healing classes got a larger boost than druids from the patch. I used to feel useful in that instance especially, but after tonight I feel like they could replace me with a Paladin of less skill and still turn out better.
Am I doomed to respec to Moonkin to become comparably useful again in a raid? Or am I just suffering from "learn2play_again" issues and will eventually catch up to the other classes as my skills with the new spells increase?
Keeva responded to Metrogon’s concerns on An Early Thanksgiving:
I wouldn’t worry about it too much at the moment, Metrogon… post 3.0 mobs have less health, they’re hitting for less, and there’s so much mana regen flying around that our healers were just spamming constantly (not best practice, but they were like kids in a candy store and I couldn’t very well tell them to heal less). To quote one of the priests though:
“I don’t normally spam like I did last night. With the changes to CoH, the changes to PoM, the free flash heals (awesome LOL), and whenever I dispelled someone it heals them, I was just going nuts to see what my best HPS would be.”
So basically he was going nuts, spamming everything he possibly could – I think he got something like 4000hps at one point. We can’t possibly compete with that, especially on trash. I felt wholly superfluous on Hyjal trash to the point where I stood and tweaked my mods for most of it rather than wasting my time trying to squeeze any heals in. I wasn’t missed.
Understandably, it all made me feel a bit slighted. A few days ago, I was a superstar healer in my guild; last night.. I could barely get any heals in, and even rolling Lifebloom seemed to contributing very little.
I tried not to let it get to me too much though. I think that once we get into the expansion and mana becomes a little more of an issue, when other healers won’t be able to go nuts and spam constantly, things will be a little more balanced. When we go back to having actual assignments rather than “snipe heal anyone with a health deficit yay” and/or spam group heals constantly to “win” on the meters, we will be back up towards the top of the list for effective healing.
I’d like to hear YOUR stories of raiding and/or instancing. Is Wild Growth as hawt as I’ve heard? Is anyone toying with Nature’s Splendor instead? (Sadly, I have none of my own experiences to share, yet, as I only just got my UI configured this morning!)
