The Rejuv Nerf, or: Situations Determine the Spells You Use
by Lume ~ October 4th, 2009. Filed under: Druid Stuff, Raiding.We don’t want rank 15 to have that extra tick. It is technically a bug in that we didn’t intend for it to have that behavior, but obviously we sat on the change for awhile. However since the popular Resto style has now become Rejuv on as many people as possible, we thought the extra tick had become problematic. Frankly we think druids can absorb the small nerf without hurting their overall healing much.
We’re not trying to hide a nerf, and we can certainly change the patch note to not say bug fix if that makes it go down any easier.
We’ll look into any discrepancy in numbers between rank 14 and 15 and make sure things are working as intended.
This is a quote from Ghostcrawler. I’m about to pick it apart, because I really feel the druid community is being done a disservice by this nerf.
We Need That Extra Tick, Otherwise We Lose Our Biggest Niche and Drop Below Other Healers in Competition and Available Healing Tools
Consider the ramifications of losing that extra tick. Did you know renew is roughly comparable to rejuvenation? Raid buffed, glyphed and talented, it’s only slightly worse than rejuvenation (but also with that heal on application that mimics our 4PT8 bonus). On Anub’arak hard, my priest partner and I were each putting a HoT on targets of penetrating cold. My rejuv was ticking on average for 3000 non-crit. His renew, meanwhile, is ticking for about 2500. But his gear is worse than mine; I have three ilvl 258 piece and four pieces of T9, and only two pieces of gear otherwise that aren’t ilvl 245. Remove the tier bonus on me and level out our gear and I’m only slightly ahead of him. If not for the extra tick, the percentage difference would be miniscule.
Now, consider the spell coefficient is going to change if they nerf rejuvenation’s base duration to 12. You get the full benefit of spell power when a spell is 15 seconds. Nerf it to 12, and not only do we lose an extra tick, we lose some benefit of our spell power. So the nerf (when talented) is not 26%. It’s more than that, unless you have absolutely 0 spell power. That would actually drop its effectiveness to at least the level of renew, if not below it.
So tell me why I should continue playing a druid and not reroll a priest? They have so many different tools compared to me. PoH. PoM. Renew. CoH. Shields. Hymn of Hope. Holy Hymn. Shadowfiend. Offensive dispels. Mass dispel. The ability to respec and become a damn good tank healer. I’m tempted to drop out of constructive argument and simple ask, “What the fuck?”
The only thing that gives me pause about switching is the fact that some damage is best healed by multiple HoTs, especially when there’s only two people with that sort of damage coming in on them. For example, Brutallus’ Burn was best dealt with by a druid keeping HoTs rolling on the burn victims. One person got burn, I could stack HoTs on them. Then when the next person got burn, I could switch off the previous burn target to stack HoTs on them, without risking the first person dying. We’re also good compliments to the DPS downstairs on Yogg0, because retadins can’t decurse and shifting out to decurse for a feral is technical decrease in the DPS you need for decent stuns. Oh, and I like playing moonkin, but we’re talking about healing here.
These non-raid healing situations where we are extremely strong, however, are so few and far between, I could probably just keep my druid geared w/ badges and come in when the situation calls for it and it’d do just as well. Otherwise, other classes have similar or better tools to bring. To elaborate:
- One person takes spike damage while running around? Just riptide/PoM/shield them. These spells are comparable to swiftmend, and better if that person doesn’t already have rejuvenation running on them and the healing needs to be immediate.
- Clumped up and moving while taking heavy raid damage? CoH + PoM + Renew. And PW:S if someone is about to die and needs preventative healing while PoM is not active and on CD.
- General HPS on stationary fights? We’re definitively going to fall behind priests with this nerf. I already have to struggle with good priests to keep up with them on fights with constant raid damage. And shamans are already catching up with CH as they get more and more haste and crit.
- Tank healing? Don’t get me started. We’re terrible tank healers. And the generic resto spec, we have to spend so many GCD’s refreshing HoTs just to make us viable with nourish. If we spec HT, we’re no better than paladins or shamans (and paladins are better, because they can heal two tanks at once, or someone in the raid while they heal the tank). We also provide no inspiration buff, so we’re not complimentary to paladins in most situations and make the tank healing actually more difficult in general if you need just two tank healers.
The Heals Used Are Not Determined by The General Strength of a Spell, but by the Situation
Why is Blizzard seeing such a high percentage of rejuvenation by druids? It’s not because rejuvenation is so overpowered. It’s because our other spells either have a cooldown, or they are generally weak in dealing with the majority of the style of damage you see today.
With the introduction of metric fuckloads of raid damage, increased because of spells like WG, CoH, targetabble PoH, and the fact that pallies can now also heal other people along with the tank at the same time, Blizzard has compensated in most fights by simply increasing the raid damage. Regrowth, in dungeon blues and greens, was the best for dealing with this damage early on. But once you got enough mana regen, rejuv took its place. By this point, rejuv is far and away the best in terms of HPS for spells without a cooldown.
If the idea is to get us to not put so much emphasis on rejuvenation, which is the vibe I get from Ghostcrawler’s post, they need to realize the emphasis is there largely because our other tools suck for general HPS output. It’s why shamans cast mostly CH for general HPS. Why priests cast most PoH for general HPS when full groups take damage. Why they cast PoM whenever it’s off CD, too. Etc.
Think about the encounters that all have massive raid damage that is delivered either predictably or in a straightforward manner. XT. Kologarn. HM IC. Hodir. HM Thorim. HM Freya. Mimiron. HM Vezax. Twin Valks.
On XT, as soon as my BigWigs timer tells me tantrum is going to happen in less than 18 seconds, I start spamming rejuvenation around like crazy, because he’s likely going to tantrum when those 18 seconds are up, and I’ll have rejuv ticking on people. Even before then, when I have free time, I tend to spam rejuvenation, because people are going to take damage from people with light bomb during the second or two before they get far enough from the raid. WG has a CD, so I can’t spam that all the time, even it is better in terms of total HPS. And lifebloom doesn’t do as much healing per cast as rejuv (on top of its issue with making your mana drop extremely low before you get the return value, effectively decreasing your mana pool while a bunch is active). Regrowth is too slow, though I might cast it when tantrum has between 18 and 27 seconds left. But, otherwise, what the hell else would I cast?
It’s a similar situation given all the encounters listed. It’s not because it’s overpowered in general. It’s because it’s our best spell to use between WG’s for the style of damage being used in the encounters.
To further pick apart the problems with our other spells (in a raid environment):
- Regrowth:
- It’s too slow. The reason its healing per time spend casting is so low, is because it has a base of two seconds. For this reason, rejuvnation has more HPS potential at mid and upper levels of gear.
- It’s also not instant. Can’t cast it while running.
- And its HoT is too small for predictive healing situations. It wouldn’t top people fast enough on Algalon, for example.
- Lifebloom:
- As it currently stands, lifebloom’s healing isn’t enough to raid heal with it. My rejuvenation currently heals for about 18K per cast, disregarding tier bonus (w/ T8 and T9, this number is 20K or above). At one stack, currently, my lifebloom only ticks for roughly 600. Even if I were to overestimate and claim 650, to cover for the fact that my parses might be a little off, the HoT portion would heal for 5850, meaning the end-heal would need to heal for 12150 to match rejuvenation’s healing potential. At one stack, LB’s bloom doesn’t even come close to that.
- It’s backend heal is also very difficult to time, if not impossible, in most situations. It either gets stomped by other heals, or the timing doesn’t coincide with a boss ability because it doesn’t happen at rigid intervals.
- Lifebloom also has a problem in the sense that it lowers you mana temporarily before you get the mana back from the blooms. If you have like 2000 mana left, for example, you will likely get to 0 mana after only three or four casts (depending on what mana you get back in the time it takes to apply three or four), and then you’ll sit at 0 mana for a while. You’ll get some mana back as they begin to bloom, but if you’re going to hit 0 mana during that time, it creates staggering issues, which also decreases its effectiveness in that situation.
- Wild Growth:
- It has a cooldown. When it’s on CD, you can’t cast it. So rejuvenation is the best substitute.
- It requires people to be clumped. If multiple people are taking damage, but they are farther than the jumping distance of WG, rejuvenation is our best option.
- It requires three or more people to be taking damage. If only one or two people take damage, rejuvenation will generally do more healing per cast.
- Nourish:
- Its heal per cast is really low. Simply put, on fights where your raids needs to put out a lot of HPS in general, any time you cast nourish, you waste the time you spent casting it that you could have spent casting a rejuv or WG. Both rejuv and WG have far better healing per time spent casting. So the more nourishes you cast, the less raid healing you do, the more your raid falls behind, the worse off you are in the long-term.
We really need rejuvenation to be strong for us to be effective. Because it’s really the only spell that allows us to compete in general HPS (which has become an important stat, given the number of raid damage-heavy encounters). And I don’t know if Blizzard has noticed, but other classes have either caught up to us in HPS potential, or are passing us. Priests already do more HPS than I do in situations where the raid damage is reactive and people are clumped. CoH and PoH are better reactive raid heals, and PoM supplements their healing such that they can have high HPS output (and, oh yeah, renew is not half bad in situations where they can talent/glyph it without losing heals for other situations). Even in predictable situations, a priest can compete and outheal me.
And CH is catching up for stationary fights, given that shamans’ haste and crit are increasing with each tier level (whereas druids don’t get as much benefit from haste due to haste stacking being multiplicative, and our base haste for rejuv starting at 20%). On some fights, our top shaman now matches my healing, whereas previously he used to be only capable of doing 60% of the amount (using primarily CH).
If not for four-piece T9 allowing rejuv to crit, the scaling comparison would be even worse.
What Blizzard should do is fix the scaling issues. Rejuv does really well early on because of GotEM. But at the later stages, it slows down. So a nerf seems necessary for Naxx and early Ulduar (and for the fact that bad druids can put out a lot of healing in general because it’s a simple concept spamming rejuv), but unnecessary for when people are decked in ToC and IC gear and for when you’re comparing good druids with good priests or shamans.
But what do I know. I only have been raiding with a druid since Molten Core. =)
October 5th, 2009 at 5:04 am
I’m having a hard time understanding this post. On the one hand you say “Why is Blizzard seeing such a high percentage of rejuvenation by druids? It’s not because rejuvenation is so overpowered.” But then right after that, you say “If the idea is to get us to not put so much emphasis on rejuvenation … they need to realize the emphasis is there largely because our other tools suck for general HPS output.”
Most of your arguments against spells like Nourish and Regrowth boil down to this HPS argument. They aren’t as good because they are underpowered compared to Rejuv. Isn’t that the same thing as saying Rejuv is overpowered?
I haven’t played a druid in a while but it sounds like the rotation is: WG, rejuv until WG is off of cooldown, repeat. Wouldn’t it be good if you used other spells every once in a while, instead of having rejuv as the answer to every question?
October 6th, 2009 at 2:56 am
If we’ve established that Blizzard wants you to cast other spells besides Rejuv, then instead of saying how nerfing Rejuv is bad, why not suggest ways to improve your other spells to make them more worth casting? Because as it is, just saying how much you’re other tools suck in comparison makes the post kinda come off sounding like ‘waah’.
October 6th, 2009 at 6:43 am
@Mike: I never actually said rejuvenation was generally overpowered. I never make that statement outright and any citation of “overpowered” is made in reference to the false perception that it is.
The statement about rejuv being used a bunch is referring directly to the post by Ghostcrawler. He says it’s being used a lot. I explain why by comparing it to our other spells and showing why they aren’t optimal for those situations. I’m not trying to say “rejuv is overpowered compared to these spells.” Those spells actually have their place. But I’m saying form a raid healing standpoint, rejuv is better for a good reason and that’s why druids cast it a lot (a direct response to that blue post).
I then went on to explain that while rejuvenation scales well early on and we seem to dominate the healing, that shamans and priest catch us at some point. Priests in mid-Ulduar, and shamans in early ToC. By doing so, I am saying rejuvenation is not generally overpowered (and I say as much).
So then I talk about how Blizzard either needs to look at our other tools to make them better to give us better options in other roles to find some kind of niche, or they need to increase the situations where HoT rolling on one or two people is optimal (because we do have a lot of HoTs still, and that’s something we have over the other healers).
I thought I pretty clearly laid that out in the post. And I’ve read it multiple times to make sure I did. So where you missed that beats me.
Furthermore, I have no problem with rejuv being cast a lot in the raid healing situations presented to us. You might think it’d be good, but I don’t. It’s already challenging doing stuff like running around and catching and dodging orbs while rolling rejuvenations in an optimal manner. And if I thought it was a good idea, why would I argue against the nerf? I don’t think it’s good to try and make other spells the answer to raid healing when there’s always going to be spells that are optimal for any given situation for every class. CH is generally the best spell shamans have for raid healing. PoH/CoH for priests. WG/Rejuv is it for druids. There’s nothing wrong with that.
A brief part of the post also hints that if Blizzard really is going to make it clear they want us to use other spells that they either need to change those spells or increase the situations that are optimal for them.
@Gizen: Not proposing fixes to the spells does not invalidate my arguments, nor does it make it “come off sounding like ‘waah’.” Everyone reads the title of a post about a nerf and comes into it with predispositions and preconceptions that contain ‘waah.’ Simply because it’s addressing a nerf.
But this isn’t the WoW forums. It’s a constructive post. Plain and simple. The intention is to get people to realize the ramifications of this change. I don’t have to suggest changes to get people to notice the problems.
If I tell Michaelangelo “I don’t like this color scheme. It clashes too much.” He’s not going to tell me “well, come up with suggestions.” Whether or not I make a suggestion for change is up to me. If I make it, I’m sure he’d appreciate it. But any good artist will accept criticism as it comes, regardless of whether or not it comes with a plan about how to fix those problems.
Feedback is generally better than no feedback.
October 6th, 2009 at 8:49 am
The way I read it, you aren’t really saying that rejuv is overpowered. You are saying that everything else is underpowered. With the exception of WG (cooldown), the only real drawback to the other spells is that they don’t heal enough (and lifebloom uses too much front loaded mana).
Its also hard to read stuff like this and not just see a QQ: “On some fights, our top shaman now matches my healing, whereas previously he used to be only capable of doing 60% of the amount (using primarily CH)”.
How should I read that other than, “i used to be 2x as good as a comparable shaman but now he can *sometimes* catch up with me”.
I really have no idea how the top level healing stuff is playing out, I haven’t raided in a long time. All I have is this post to go on, and you just aren’t making a very good case.
Hmm, maybe you did say that rejuv is overpowered: “By this point, rejuv is far and away the best in terms of HPS for spells without a cooldown.”
October 6th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
[...] Druid QQ from Lume the Mad. An interesting read for priests. I was under the impression druids were currently pretty much on top healing-wise ATM, but Lume thinks otherwise. Grass is always greener, etc. [...]
October 7th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
@Mike: The comment about the shaman catching up is more to show how scaling affects each class. Early on, CH is very weak. But as it benefits highly from both crit and haste, it begins to catch up. The same is very true of PoH, which is why priests can now overcome druids on stationary fights.
Is it QQing to objectively compare classes?
No.
It’s pointing out scaling issues. Rejuv is too good in early content, but it is far from being “too good” in later tiers of gear. That is why I never said rejuvenation was overpowered in general. It may be overpowered in early content, and that’s something they need to address, but it most certainly is not overpowered in the later tiers.
Blizzard merely needs to fix such scaling issues (which you’ll note I said at the end of my entry).
October 7th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
@Turkey: If they are unable to compete with druids on Ignis, XT, IC, Hodir, Mimiron (normal), and heroic Twin Valks when they’re standing in a group, your priests are not performing optimally (or they need more gear). Perhaps you should inform your raid leader that he should position and group people such that your priests can make good use of PoH, if he or she is not doing so. I’m not going to try and guess about any of the other problems in their rotation.
Fights where they should be losing to druids, currently, are Algalon and Mimiron hard. They should also lose to resto druids if they are also catching orbs on heroic Twins. But otherwise, no (unless I forgot something).
This is comparing holy priests that are raid healing to resto druids that are raid healing on heavy raid damage fights. Not priests actively healing tanks and vice versa.
But they should also be beating druids on fights with lots of isolated damage (like FC, or normal Freya), as FH & PoM & PW:S > Nourish & Regrowth & slow stacking HoTs (and SM has a longish cooldown and requires rejuv to already be running).
October 7th, 2009 at 10:44 pm
@Lume: It was more a perception since the PoH nerf that druids were getting better use from high levels of spell power. Probably similar to the perception generated by your post that priests are now on top after druids got nerfed.
Personally I don’t have a firm opinion regarding druids or priests being better at raid healing, as both seem to do just fine. If anything i’m seeing well geared resto shamans charging back into the fray raid healing wise and from the noises i’m hearing about 3.3 they will be increasingly strong raid healers in the near future. Oh just read your comment @Mike above. I see you have already covered shaman.
We are going to hear a lot about scaling and healing in future as the sheer amount of spell power floating around is starting to reduce the relevancy of the base heal component of healing spells.
Interesting times.
Gobble gobble.
October 8th, 2009 at 2:14 am
They switch back and forth between the top spot, at the moment, based on the fight. But a truly good priest with good gear will overcome druids mid-Ulduar on stand-and-cast fights like XT, IC, etc. That said, shamans have since caught up with more haste and crit.
But druids are still fairly good at fights where a few people are taking prolonged damage that aren’t in the same group. Hence why my post addressed situational healing, as our strength as a class will be determined by such situations in the future if they nerf rejuvenation.
I’m… not aware of the PoH nerf. I suppose I should read up on that as it would potentially change my perspective on things.
October 8th, 2009 at 7:01 am
This post does come across as pretty whiney and arrogant in parts – OMG Shaman coming close to me on metres!
In terms of Renew coming close to RJ, it nearly is and things will be a bit closer in 3.3 but why shouldn’t it be close behind? Becuase Druids are King of HOTs? Renew being good wont tarnish that – you still have the best HOT in RJ plus the breadth of other HOTs. Plus Nourish is by far the best “Flash Heal” equivalent, yet Druids are King of HoTs. Becuase I have something good does not diminish your strength in this area. IMO Holy Priests are by far the worst Tank healers and so should be higher up the Raid healing stakes.
Also, there is potentially an upcoming Glyph boost to RJ that will give Druids an incredible boost in upcoming fights by giving them extra flexibility – do I want 15 sec RJ (bug fixed and talented) for this fight or hasted RJ – swap in/swap out.
POH’s spellpower co-efficient was nerfed heavily from 0.8 to 0.5 (can’t recall exact figures) in 3.2 (at the time this equated to about 20% less healing per cast) and whilst this spell is very good in certain situations, those situations seem to crop up less and less often – or people are being healed up quickly to make this 1500/1800 mana spell overheal too much.
The RJx5, WG tactic was a cheap and easy way to gain EHPS and has contributed to a lot of success for guilds, but you must admit it can be pretty mindless. Look at most high end raiding Priests’ spell breakdown and you will likely see something like POM, COH, POH in high teens/twenties, Renew/Flash in low to mid teens and other spells – surely reacting by choosing the right spell for right situation should be rewarded by more EHPS then going through a rotation? I lovely the HOT aspect of my Druid but do wish to see our other spells empowered – with RJ readjusted – so I can choose from the wide variety I have in my spell book and thus get more fun out of it like I get from my Holy Priest.
Overall, I am pretty pleased with the balance of fights in TOC as it gives most healers the chance to shine, if not “win”, including Paladins. I hope to see this continued into Icecrown.
October 8th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
@Jes: Is there any part where I actually use the same tone as your perception? I said pretty plainly that shamans have caught up and will pass druids up by the end of Icecrown. Stating plainly a trend is not whining. I’m simply pointing out that shamans will be better than druids by the end of Icecrown. Blizzard can either believe me or not.
Doesn’t mean rejvuenation wasn’t OP in Naxx. It sure was. But it is no longer.
Let’s remember that in SWP, imbalances were a problem. It won’t be as much of a problem as it was in SWP, because you don’t need a heroism for every group, and druids and priests are generally better raid healers than they were back then (which is a positive), but imbalances in PvE for that sort of stuff creates problems when you feel you need to stack a class to succeed optimally. And for the most difficult content in an expansion cycle, that’s a very real possibility. So I’m sticking up for the class I’m stuck playing this late into content, and I have said they either need to introduce more situations where each class shines in Icecrown, or not change things that will create imbalances.
Also, while the glyph will help with isolated damage, it will not increase the amount of healing rejuvenation does per cast. So for steady raid-wide damage, it will do nothing and actually be detrimental (because a lot of our rejuvenation ticks will then become overheal). For isolated damage, however, it will be a buff. But it’s up to Blizzard to include that situation in Icecrown for it to be beneficial on the whole. Hence why I stressed that situations are part of what determine a class’s strength.
As I said in a previous comment, I wasn’t aware PoH’s coefficient was nerfed in 3.2. We haven’t had a full-time healing priest since 3.2 came out, though we now have one on recruit and another about to trial. I just remember a recruit priest that we picked up mid-way through Ulduar hard mode was outhealing me on almost every raid damage heavy fight except Algalon and Mimiron (because people are too spread out). But if it was nerfed, well then my comparison goes out the window for stationary fights and I’ll have to do a lot of calculations.
In any case case, both priests and druids will be in probably the same boat. How will priests feel when shamans outheal them on stationary fights in Icecrown by a good 20% by the time they hit Arthas? Probably not very good. So why should they not argue along with me? It wouldn’t be “whining” in either of our cases.
Bit then shamans should be complaining that they felt behind the curve all the way through the end of Ulduar and are only now becoming competitive. Why? Because CH at a base level is very poor, whereas rejuvenation as a base level is very strong. So there needs to be balancing on both sides of the coin.
All this is not “whining.” Gamers’ connotation of “whining” is far off-base. Argument is necessary to the health and balance in a game. And people who view all arguments as whining are simply narrow-minded or don’t understand the definition of the word.
…
On a different note, a rejuvenation rotation is no more mindless than a lot of other healing styles. You do have to pick your rejuvenation targets wisely on a lot of fights. On Algalon, you need to know who is going to receive less of a benefit from rejuvenation (no self-buffs to increase healing), or who will take more damage (fire mages) and then maximize the uptime on rejuvenation on those people specifically. On Mim hard, this is especially true, as where people are standing relevant to fire is a big concept and requires intelligent rejuvenation applications, because it doesn’t reactively heal (meaning it is a less effective heal for actually keeping people alive through burst, and requires a lot of intelligence to make it succeed on that fight). On Twin Valks heroic, this is true of people who get the DoT and are catching orbs.
It’s not mindless like people think. And people who think it is aren’t exactly optimizing the way they approach it or view it. Not to mention that the rotation you cited doesn’t apply to every fight. It only really applies to XT leading into tantrum, IC hard-mode, Algalon, Kologarn leading into his oblivion thing, Hodir, Freya hard, Mimiron p2/p4, Vezax during animus and Twin Valks. Well, I guess also Sapphiron, but lolNaxx.
Every other fight? We have a completely different rotation and approach. On heroic beasts? I’m stacking and maintaining lifeblooms, rejuvenation, regrowth (and timing the heal on regrowth) on the tanks. Rejuv/SM/nourish fire targets. Stack all different kinds of HoTs on poison/fire targets. And time stacking all my HoTs on the tank right before the stun wears off Icehowl.
These types of fights are not subject to simplistic tools.
And even on the fights I listed, my rotation is not just WG and rejuvenation. I SM people who take burst and could die. I nourish those people when SM is on CD. That’s no different than sitting around and stacking serendipity in preparation of PoHing whatever group looks low on a stationary fight, and then PoMing someone who is about to die, etc. No different than flashing or shielding those people when PoM is on CD. No different than riptiding someone who gets particularly low, and then CH groups of people who need attention. No different than single-targeting someone is great danger before continuing a high raid HPS rotation that each class except paladin really has.
October 9th, 2009 at 1:58 am
Thanks Lume for your response. I came across this blog via Bob Turkey’s and with a lot of my healing blogs “quiet”, I’m glad I came across yours – very interesting read.
I am looking forward to seeing what bosses come out in IC. However, each encounter will likely have a healer which will pull ahead of the others. As has been mentioned many a place, low, steady, DOT like auras are a godsend to Druids and from what I have seen, no-one is able to touch a Druid on Twins, except maybe Disc Priest spam shielding – 9k+ shield + 1.5-2k Glyph heal every 1 second, plus POM bounces. Whilst little of this is overheal, it does max out, whereas Druids can pump out more raw healing usually some of this is OH bringing them into line with a Disc, if a little ahead.
1 of 5 bosses of current end game where you are practically gonna be “top” healer is fair play for a game with 5 healing specs.
One other great thing about Druids is that they scale a lot better with the number of healers in the raid. Druids perform a lot better in raids with 5 healers than with 7, which is somewhat true of Paladins as it lets your sheer througput shine through, knocking your massive OH into effective healing. This is especially important for progress fights with a DPS race
I really can’t see most guilds stacking one type of healer, except for some gimmicky encounter – and I don’t think Blizzard’s design philosophy will allow them to produce an encounter with 5 Priests or 6 Shamans or 4 Druid healers without nerfing it to hell and back. IMHO a mix of healers is usually the best way to heal an encounter and that will continue.
October 9th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Nerfing a fight in light of other healers’ nerfs would be a mistake, as you will not have any fights high in difficulty if it requires nerfs to the fight itself to balance healing composition. The heals themselves are what should be balanced, to keep the encounter at a high degree of difficulty. Or the encounters should be designed with different niches in mind. Because even after nerfs, the optimal strategy would still be to throw whatever is best at it if it doesn’t include niched healing. That was the problem with SWP. Different types of healers were fine on Kalecgos, Brut, Felmyst and K’J. But shamans were so ridiculously good on the Twins and M’uru that it really put the hurt on the rest of us and made us feel despondent. The only thing that really saved druids on M’uru is that you could formulate a complex LB rolling strategy. But on the Twins? Ugh.