druid-healing-in-cataclysm
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Looking back on healing in Cataclysm
Now, this is a forum post that I think merits a little more attention. We all know that developers weren't happy with the spamfest that healing often was in Wrath of the Lich King and that they looked to make it a far more cerebral activity in Cataclysm. Now that we're approaching the end of the expansion, Practical, one of the Blizzard forum MVPs, recently started a thread examining how healing turned out and what can be improved. Most of the people in the thread generally agree that healing started out pretty fun in tier 11 but declined afterwards. Reasons given range from boring boss mechanics to fights with random elements that made healers feel useless when they couldn't control or prevent player deaths. Practical observes that a lot of the later problems with healing in Cataclysm might actually be the result of a surfeit of raid fights that required constant stacking, and the inevitable effect they had on certain healing spells' being too powerful. Having recently looked at healer numbers in Dragon Soul, I'd also venture that AoE healing spells that aren't numbers-restricted (for example, Circle of Healing versus Holy Radiance) on top of that raid stacking are making healer balance look worse than it actually is. So what are your thoughts, healers? How did healing work out for you this expansion, and are you looking forward to the Cataclysm changes? And are the problems we're seeing really the result of healer mechanics or raid design?
Shifting Perspectives: When healers run out of options
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, the upcoming Wild Growth nerf gets us thinking. As with our previous Shifting Perspectives on tanking and healing the Zandalari 5-mans introduced in patch 4.2, I'd like to run an edition on tanking and healing the new Hour of Twilight, Well of Eternity, and End Time heroics. While I prep that, we've been left with an unpleasant but perhaps not totally unexpected nerf to Wild Growth as of last week's PTR patch notes. Let us be frank, my brethren. Is Wild Growth overpowered? Yep. Is it doing too much healing for too little effort? Probably. When even I can keep your ungemmed, unenchanted premade group's collective ass alive on my first trip into a new heroic despite getting lost and arriving at the group a minute late, a spell is way too good. But is that completely irrelevant to why Wild Growth is really a problem? Yep.
Shifting Perspectives: Do restoration druids need a cooldown?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration, and balance druids. This Tuesday, we equivocate on whether a point made in Shifting Perspectives: Healers, selfishness, and trouble ahead was prescient or just another beneficiary of Allie's usual dumb luck. The title of today's Shifting column is maybe a little misleading. Strictly speaking, restoration already has a cooldown -- the still-controversial Disco Soul Patch Groovy Tree that has wildly gesticulated its way into all our hearts (well, some peoples' hearts) -- but now the developers are considering other possibilities in light of some data from tier 11 raids. Not that we have access to said data (or anything to go on besides our usual rampant speculation), but a few trends have emerged from tier 11 that make the possibility of getting a big cooldown a bit more likely.
New Tree of Life form in all its video glory
The new Tree of Life form went live on last night's beta build, and I've shot a short video to show you what it looks like in action. As mentioned previously, the Tree currently shares the male orc skeleton and animations, so you won't see anything too unfamiliar here, but the new form is just beautiful. If anything, it's kind of depressing that it's now a cooldown. The new forms are colored by race, and here's the breakdown: Night elves get the purple form. Tauren get the brown and green form. Worgen get the dark brown form. Trolls get the light brown form.
Shifting Perspectives: Restoration talents in 13066
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting feral/restoration druids and those who group with them. This week, we eschew the future in favor of the present, and are also delighted to discover that the Mac video capture bug appears to have been fixed on the beta. Many thanks to Raylis of Wyrmrest Accord for putting together a guide to troll form associations and allowing me to use it. We'll have a worgen version up once the barbershop starts cooperating! Resto's picked up a lot of interesting stuff recently. Whether these changes survive to patch 4.0.1 intact is anyone's guess, but today's column is a comprehensive look at all restoration talents as of build 13066 on a level 85 premade druid (average ilevel 335). Because the subject matter's on the dry side unless you're a healer, I've also included: Some notes concerning Cataclysm questing Why Anduin Wrynn is awesome Video of male worgen interrogation techniques (now that my video capture is actually working, you'll see more videos popping up soon) Video of said male worgen casting most of our heals with the user interface active to give you a sense of the numbers and efficiency you'll see at level 85 with pre-heroic blues
Shifting Perspectives: Healers, selfishness and trouble ahead
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we stress the importance of pattern recognition. Cirocco: I enjoy a healing model based around triage, quick reactions and maximizing output. I very much doubt I'll enjoy a healing model based around parsimoniously doling out mana and yelling at people who snipe my HOTs. I've been guilty of a little pessimism concerning the restoration tree in Cataclysm. Many of my experiences healing on the beta haven't been good, and while I'm willing to allow for the likely possibility that that's just because I suck, it hasn't escaped my attention that a lot of druids have had the same hard time. Normal Cataclysm instances aren't bad if people are well-geared and play sensibly, but when things go wrong, it feels like you're emptying your mana into a group with nothing to show for it. To be frank, it really is too early to evaluate whether the 5-man experience is representative of what we can expect in raids at 85, but I'm not worried about the numbers themselves. As Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) has reminded us, numbers are pretty easy to fix. What worries me is more systemic; right now, it's hard to escape the conclusion that what made the restoration spec succeed in Wrath of the Lich King is a bad fit for Cataclysm, and a lot of our effectiveness is going to depend on player behavior that I'm not sure is going to change. EDIT: Naturally I had to finish this article shortly before new information concerning beta build 12857 became available. It's not live on the beta servers yet, and may not be (12857 might be a purely internal build, in which case I wonder who Boubouille paid off), but there are a few things there that would have impacted how I wrote this column.
Shifting Perspectives: Beta build 12803
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting feral/restoration druids and those who group with them. This week, we ponder change. Beta build 12803 dropped late Friday, and with it a number of changes to the feral and restoration specs. Some are what you'd expect after some recent forum conversations with Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer), and others came out of left field. We'll take a look past the cut.
Shifting Perspectives: A limited number of people know the troubles I've seen
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting feral/restoration druids and those who group with them. This week, we equivocate on the best means of filling a bottomless pit. Beta build 12759 dropped early Saturday morning, and with it the introduction of mastery and quite a few changes to the feral and restoration specs. I think Blizzard may even have fixed some of the issues with feral damage, but the newest bug on the block is making that a little difficult to tell. The default scrolling combat text is now broken -- you can't see how much damage or healing you're doing to hostile mobs or friendly players, respectively -- so at best, you're confined to guesses based on how much health the mob's losing when you hit it. For me, this requires squinting at a very small portion of a laptop screen with my nose two inches from the monitor, and I'll be damned if I'll wind up financing the purchase of another Maserati for my ophthalmologist.
