Druid Stuff
Rejuvenation, part 4
0October 14, 2009
To be honest, we may revert the Rejuv nerf. This isn’t 100% finalized yet, so please don’t say we promised anything.
We definitely wanted to nerf Rejuv. However we also wanted to fix Gift of the Earth Mother. That change wasn’t necessarily aimed at further nerfing druids, even though that was the outcome. It was aimed at not making haste such a wonky stat for Resto.
In short, we think the GotEM change both nerfed druids and fixed the haste scaling problem so the Rejuv duration nerf may not be necessary. Stay tuned.
Good news. I don’t have anything to say about this possibility, yet, however, as I’d have to number crunch the scalability of all three raid healers. Which is something I’m sure Blizzard will do in assessing the issue, but I may do it myself if I can find the time between recruitment and midterms (but that’s unlikely).
Rejuvenation, part 3
0October 13, 2009
Gift of the Earthmother now increases your total spell haste by 2/4/6/8/10%
From the PTR patch notes. Nourish already clips the GCD with Nature’s Grace active. This will benefit mainly healing touch and regrowth, both of which are extremely niched to begin with. The removal of a tick of rejuvenation is already a substantial nerf. This will nerf our general raid healing further beyond substantial. The addition of the glyph is only a situational buff (as already discussed in this article).
Rejuvenation, part 2
3October 7, 2009
We are trying to make haste a slightly more attractive stat for classes that utilize a lot of damage or healing over time spells, specifically Shadow priests, warlocks (though especially Affliction) and Resto druids. We realize other classes use hots and dots too, but I think we can all agree that it’s a bigger problem for the ones I mentioned.
So after my post, the blues are planning to address the way haste scales with HoT and DoT classes. Which is a good start, but I think they run the risk of making druids scale too well in early content (which was one of my points in the earlier post). Then again, with the nerf to rejuvenation’s base duration, the two changes may balance each other out.
We have new tech that will allow specific hots and dots to tick faster — the time between ticks would decrease. This means more damage or healing per time but also having to refresh those spells more often. Since there is a trade-off, we’re not sure the change is a no-brainer, especially in the healing case.
They are correct in assessing the problems of the change. By making the HoT tick faster, and lowering the duration of the HoT as a consequence, they will remove some of the utility of HoTs in dealing with damage. One of the strengths of rejuvenation right now is that I can stack it 18 seconds before incoming damage and the ticks will heal as many people as possible given my haste value. This is a huge boon on Algalon and XT, where merely one tick can save someone from almost certain death by extraneous damage (constellations on Algalon, and light bomb on XT).
Because of this, we are planning on introducing the concept through glyphs. Glyphs represent a great test bed for new ideas because they are easier to change (and easier on the players when we do change them) compared to core spell functions or even talents. If we like the way it feels and players like the way it feels and the glyphs prove popular or fun, then this may be the kind of thing that shifts from glyphs over time — not unlike the way some favorite set bonuses eventually become talents.
This is a great way to potentially deal with the problem. It will be great for dealing with isolated damage, as well as tank damage. For example, the faster ticks would likely be beneficial for raid healing on fights where the healing is more reactive or not as predictable, like normal Freya, Faction Champs, Yogg, etc.
But they should keep it as a glyph, not a talent, because there are times when faster HoTs are detrimental. For example, a faster rejuvenation on Iron Council hard mode could cause the HoT to heal at a faster rate than his aura deals damage (particularly if all your raid healers have the talent or glyph). So we’d have to either set our dual specs to counter that, or pay 50 gold every time we don’t want it. I would easily sacrifice my current rejuvenation glyph (or nourish glyph, depending on the situation) for the faster ticks in situations where it would be better, instead of sacrificing my moonkin spec or paying 50 gold.
For 3.3 we are talking about introducing three new glyphs for Shadow Word: Pain, Corruption and Rejuvenation that would allow these spells to tick faster with the more haste you have. There are glyphs of Corruption and Rejuv already, and we’re not sure how we’re going to resolve those yet.
Different names. Some classes already have glyphs for the same ability that just have different names. For example, Glyph of Typhoon and Glyph of Monsoon both affect typhoon.
In any case, this is a good way to address some of the concerns I mentioned in my previous entry.
An alternative I would suggest is frontloading HoT ticks, rather than backloading them. Decrease the duration by one tick, and put a tick at the front. Such is why druid T8 was extremely good (and still is in a lot of situations). Of course, that would cause issues with riptide losing its niche. So that might not be a way to go.
The Rejuv Nerf, or: Situations Determine the Spells You Use
13October 4, 2009
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. =)
Now Is Not the Time to Evaluate CoH and WG
15November 6, 2008
Circle of Healing and Wild Growth are definitely on our radar. This would be a good time to discuss them.
Our concern is that they are turning two classes with a large arsenal of healing spells into single-button healers. Meanwhile, ironically, the other two healing classes have fewer heals to use in the first place.
We have seen raid parses where 75 to 90% of a priest’s healing is through CoH. It’s a good spell, useful in a variety of situations. But I think you can understand our concern.
A priest said to us the other day “Please nerf Circle of Healing so I can push another button!” He’s even thinking of going Disc.
–GC (src)
In my opinion, it would be a mistake for the development team to evaluate this now. 3.0.2 has nerfed the current content so hard that people are using circle of healing and wild growth so frequently because the tanks are taking virtually no damage at any given moment. Further, it is because a lot of the existing raid encounters were designed with raid-wide damage in mind. What’s more, there could be sarcasm, exaggeration or ignorance underlying a statement like “Please nerf Circle of Healing so I can push another button!”
From Felmyst on, in Sunwell Plateau, the raid-wide damage is enormous. It’s only natural that you’re going to see a large amount of raid-wide heals going off, especially when the tanks are taking so much less damage than they were pre-3.0.2.
Furthermore, Naxxramas and the Obsidian Sanctum are entry level raid dungeons. You can’t possibly balance spells solely around entry level content. Especially when you consider the fact that a lot of Naxxramas’ fundamental encounter design was based around level 60 tools.
So to evaluate CoH and WG now would be a mistake. One of the reasons CoH was changed and WG added was because you only had the group-only CoH and chain healing to deal with high amounts of raid damage. So tack on heroism, and shamans were too highly valued, making the change to CoH and the addition of WG necessary to make sure shamans didn’t dominate the scene also in Wrath. So to go back on this now would be tragic.
While there will definitely be some need to balance the spells against each other in the future, depending on just how well CoH or WG scale in comparison, now is not the time to do it. The current content is not a good benchmark for it. Especially when you additionally consider that the parses are showing high percentages largely because these classes are assigned by their healing leaders to cover raid-wide healing, while others are assigned to focus on the tanks.
When and Why WG Is Used, and When It Is Not: A Look at Specific Encounters
Rage Winterchill
The tank takes virtually no damage in this encounter. Even before 3.0.2, the tank literally had to stand in death and decay to artificially generate rage (or mana, in the case of a paladin tank). Because he hits for virtually nothing and spends a lot of his time casting spells, very little focus is placed on tank healing, which is best combated through single-target heals.
He does, however, cast a frostbolt that entombs someone in a block of ice and deals heavy damage to this target. A druid will not use WG when this happens. I would be casting regrowth, a nature’s swiftnessed healing touch, or rejuvenation followed by a quick swiftmend to keep this person alive.
Death and decay is a raid-wide damage spell. When he uses this spell, I am naturally going to use WG. What’s more, he cannot cast a frostbolt and this spell simultaneously, so I don’t have to worry about looking for the frostbolt the moment it goes up. And because he hits the tank so softly, I have time to cast WG. Often more than once, even.
Kaz’rogal
There is very little raid-wide damage that goes on during this encounter. The only time the raid-wide damage is high is when someone runs out of mana and blows up on people. If there is a high amount of WG or CoH casts during this encounter, it’ is because someone didn’t manage their mana well, or because the raid’s DPS is so poor they didn’t kill him before people started blowing up.
Because my raid kills him so quickly, I spend most of my time keeping single-target HoTs up on the tank. However, even then, because 3.0.2 nerfed the boss’s melee so much, this is usually only when he cleaves the tank. So 3.0.2 has lowered the amount of single-target heals I cast even in this encounter.
Azgalor
Rain of fire is the big damage dealer in this encounter. And because only the cleave does significant damage to the tank, I primarily focus on making sure I have full HoTs up on him only when the silence is incoming. This is because the paladins won’t be healing him at all during the silence, and I don’t want the cleave to gib the tank. Otherwise, outside of the silence, the paladins are focusing on the tank and I’m focusing on dealing with rain of fire damage. WG is the natural choice for this.
Archimonde
I don’t use WG as much on this fight as I do single-target heals. This is because the damage is concentrated on people randomly, given the very nature of doomfire’s random trajectory and the erratic synchronization of various abilities. The only time I do use WG on this fight is when a large group of people standing next to each other get doomfire at the same time. Otherwise, I’m using single-target heals.
He can still hit the tank relatively hard compared to other bosses, even after 3.0.2, so I often throw heals on the tank. Also, as a raid healing leader, I can’t micromanage my assignments given the random nature of the abilities people have to deal with. So everyone is going to be casting single-target heals when the tank looks to be in danger. This is because other people might be busy running from a doomfire, flying through the air, preparing for a fear, or decursing.
With my guild, usually only one or two people in close proximity get doomfire at a time. This is because we’ve been dealing with this encounter for ages and most people are familiar with the fight. So instead of spamming WG, I just throw singular heals. The only time a lot of people get doomfire is when Archimonde throws down a fresh doomfire next to people right before he fears them into it. Otherwise, you have time to get away from an existing doomfire and tremor totem usually pulses before people get anywhere near them.
Supremus
During the “tank and spank” phase, people don’t generally spread out. However, they are also not taking a lot of raid-wide damage. Post-3.0.2, it is primarily the off-tanks that take the damage, as special abilities weren’t nerfed damage-wise. However, the primary tank takes little damage. With the focus mostly on only two people, I’m primarily casting single-target HoTs on them.
During the “loose” phase, when he’s running around at people and spawning volcanoes, people are too spread out sometimes for WG to be profitable. For this reason, I have a mixture of both WG and single-target heals.
If you are seeing parses with a lot of WG during Supremus’ loose phase, it’s because the people have a hard time taking a peak away from their raid frames at the player out on the field. So sometimes people will just spam WG because they’re not cognizant of just how spread out people are from the person they’re casting on. Me? I tend to use player health bars and cast on someone who is actually close to dying near me. I imagine I likely save more people’s lives doing that than someone who is indiscriminately spamming a raid heal (unless it’s CH, because its healing is concentrated on the first target, meaning lack of discrimination is less impactful).
Teron
In 3.0.2, the damage on the tank is a joke. Even before 3.0.2, when he was considered one of the more hard-hitting bosses of BT, you could keep up the tank merely with two people spamming chain heals through him or her. So, post-3.0.2, you can imagine that my raid is mostly assigned to raid healing, of which there is a fairly substantial amount. I think I assigned only one paladin to heal the tank and the rest just threw him heals when it was needed (which was virtually never). So, naturally, people were spamming their group heals in high concentration.
Gurtogg
This fight is designed for raid heals, be they chain heal, wild growth or circle of healing. Even before 3.0.2, I assigned bloodboil by group number, meaning we could use CoH to explicitly deal with the mechanic. With the way the encounter is designed, you are simply going to have people who cast primarily raid-wide heals.
Illidan
This is a fight where the spell use depends on the phase and situation. In phase one, there is pretty much no raid-wide damage. The only damage anyone other than the tank can take is from flame crash (the fiery circle Illidan leaves on the ground), and parasites. Flame crash is avoidable by the melee, so they should take no damage from it if your tank positions well and your melee pays attention. Meanwhile, parasite is cast only on a single target. If the resulting parasite mob spawns are dealt with in the correct manner, no new parasites should spread from it, either. So only single-target healing is used in this phase, typically.
Phase two is a mixture of single-target and raid-wide damage. The two flame tanks are going to be taking heavy single-target damage. However, once you have assigned enough single-target healing to them, the rest of your healing is going to be focusing primarily on the raid-wide damage thrown out. This is due to Illidan’s fireball, which does splash damage. There is not enough space on the grate to spread people evenly out and avoid the splash damage. So the way we deal with it is to clump into groups of four. So roughly five or more people are going to take damage, making WG and CoH ideal in this case.
Then you have the final phases. During the human phase, you have to deal with the same thing as phase one. However, instead of merely parasites and flame crash, you also have agonizing flames. However, if your raid is positioned properly, agonizing flames should not be spread beyond its initial target. So only two or three people should have agonizing at any given point. And because these people should be at range and spread out, WG or CoH is not ideally worth using. For this reason, single-target heals still reign.
During the demon phase, however, it’s a different story. You will have residual agonizing flames from the human phase, and possibly a residual parasite. Following this, the damage will largely be focused on the demon tank (usually a lock). So most of the healing is going to be single-target in nature on the demon tank. But we will use an ability called flame burst, which does damage to everyone in the raid. After a flame burst is when people will definitely be using WG or CoH. Otherwise, single-target heals are still best.
The use of WG and CoH is concentrated during phase two and right after a flame burst. Phase two is less than half the fight, though it is an important part. And flame burst isn’t constantly being cast during his demon phase (which many call “phase four”). So WG and CoH have their place, but they should not dominate the choices people make in an optimal rotation for the fight.
This parse shows masterfully how the design of Illidan makes it so WG does not chew up 70 to 90% of his casts in an ideal mixture of healing spells. Gian did more healing than anyone else on the fight, even the priest whose cast mostly CoH during phase two and then random spots of DPS, renews and shields.
Kil’Jaeden
WG has its place in this fight, no doubt. But mostly when you collapse and spread after collapsing. It also has its place during flame darts and right after the fire blooms go up. But once the fire blooms are up and people react to them, the spread of people is too large for WG to be ideal. At this point, I’m stacking single-target HoTs and casting regrowth to keep them alive.
This is another parse where Gian tops of the meters. The parse shows that WG was ranked third in the number of his casts.
Spell Use Depends on Encounter Design and Assignments
Some of the examples I’ve given weigh heavily towards the over-use of WG and CoH that the developers are worried about. However, I have also given adequate counter-examples as to where the use of those spells depends on encounter design. To change these spells now would likely throw a wrench into the encounters currently being designed, since the raid developers consider what tools people have available to them. This is why DPS in Sunwell was balanced around the pre-3.0.2 use of heroism and why a lot of raid-wide damage was based around chain healing. In order to create a high level of difficulty, the designers had to consider the best tools for the job. And the major problem was that the people who could bring such tools were limited in number. With the change to CoH and WG creates a situation where more people are capable of bringing those tools.
So it astounds me the process through which the ideas have been implemented and reconsidered. As a joke, I used to reply to people asking for advice on how to beat the Twins by saying, “Just throw resto shamans at them.” While amusing, it was absolutely true. That was the best way to approach the encounter. CoH was just too terrible for dealing with flame sear, given that it that flame sear was not limited to groups, as CoH was. This made recruitment frustrating, as the pool of resto shamans was so limited. So the change to CoH and the addition of WG were extremely welcome and have provided a more than solid fix to what was once a huge balancing issue.
But now the development team is concerned with the overuse of such spells, even though the overuse is merely indicative of encounter design and sometimes unideal approaches to healing by individual players. Parses are not suggestive of the optimal approach to healing, merely of what is adequate. And the fact that people are beating content with tons of priests and druids spamming one spell is simply because the content is extremely easy right now. As the encounters become more finely tuned in the later content of Wrath, you will discover people who only spam CoH or WG becoming less and less successful as they continue to use a strategy that is not prime in every situation. When two people in close proximity are taking a steady stream of damage, prayer of mending is better to use for a priest. When one person is taking heavy damage, stacking single-target HoTs is best. Not CoH. Not WG.
I’ve provided ample counter-examples that already exists to show when CoH and WG are not ideal to use to maximize healing throughput. I’ve also provided counter-examples that explain what is best used for keeping people alive, not simply for topping the meters.
CoH and WG for PvP?
I should also perhaps mention PvP, since it’s relevant.
Players are going to adjust their strategies based on the spells people use. If WG and CoH are keeping up a raid in AV against an AoE strategy, players are going to shift to single-target DPS. This is what is called the “assist train” and it is used to combat area of effect healing and force healers to adjust and change the spells they use. I saw this in Dark Age of Camelot, where AoE healing was so strong, and it is a valid strategy to combat it by shifting to an assist train.
Also, WG and CoH will have virtually no place in 2v2 or 3v3. I doubt a lot of priests and druids will even spec for it.
Not Now
Let’s not jump the gun on changing WG and CoH based on statistics. You can’t rely only on statistics to make adjustments to spells. We have yet to even begin to see enough truly complicated encounters to fully understand where they lie over other spells. And, even then, current encounters suggest that WG and CoH isn’t the only thing there is to raid healing. So let’s not consider changing these spells here and now.
