A Look At Cata Healing, Part 2: Class Design

So I'm posting this a little later than originally anticipated, but mostly because of a bug with druids on the beta that I've been waiting for them to fix to get a more accurate scope of the class. They still haven't, but I suppose it's not a huge deal. Anyways, after many, many Cata heroics, I must say, I'm having a blast with the new healing system. I told myself I wouldn't spend so much time on beta and I'd enjoy the last bit of the expansion, but wow. They done good.



Recap

In part one of my look at Cata healing, I went over how healing has worked in the past, where it is now, and where it's going. This time around I want to just take a brief look at each healing spec and how it handles in heroics. One thing to keep in mind throughout this is that this is just a look at healing in heroics. Raids are not yet available for testing, and a huge part of healing is how the classes work together, so this really is just a general look at how things feel when healing something solo.

Druid

My druid has gotten the least playtime out of my toons on beta, but not because it isn't a total blast, because it is. There's just a bug right now that makes lifebloom not work with mouseovers or click bindings, and it's rather frustrating. But, it's not too difficult to work around, and the class is a blast.

I've mentioned before that druid gets the least of my attention in live. There's just something about it that makes me prefer my other healers. To be honest, the only reason I specced it resto was because I love tree form, so, when they announced that that was going away, I was a little apprehensive. That is, until I played it.

Trees became extremely strong tank healers. You can slowly roll out your lifeblooms, pop up a regroth and rejuv, and then your nourish will keep lifebloom from falling off. Throw in how incredibly powerful healing touch is, and if you're in a bad situation, you have the tools to get out of it. As for mana, trees now provide replenishment, and your hot ticks have a chance to restore mana. This is a little interesting, because they're the only healing class that doesn't have to do damage to get mana back. You can also spec into free wraths that can proc instant starfires, so leveling as a tree wasn't too bad, and it's quite a bit of fun in pvp.

Tree of life was something I was disappointed in, but after playing with it in it's cooldown form, it's one of my new favorite spells. It's very well designed for group healing, but I don't feel like it has a large amount of single target use beyond the extra 15% healing. For lifebloom, it lets you put it on more than one target, which I never really felt the need to do, but again, lifebloom is buggy. It makes regrowth instant cast, which is wonderful for large amounts of raid damage. It also makes wild growth heal 2 additional targets, putting the final glyphed count up to 8. Between that,  and swiftmend proccing a new ground based aoe heal, group damage is no problem either.

Overall, I wasn't disappointed with my output or my mana use, but I did find it interesting that this is the only healing spec that doesn't do damage for mana.

Shaman

This is the spec I felt changed the least. It plays fairly similar to live in that shaman really were the only healer that I feel uses their entire toolkit in wrath. That continues on, and they added some cool new spells.

One big weakness of shaman is that movement hurts them a lot. They did a little to combat this by giving them a new instant heal that heals for a small amount and increases healing done by your next healing spell by 20%. This does affect individual riptide ticks, so it's a good spell to pop before that for a little more healing on the move. They also get a 2 minute cooldown that allows casting while moving for 10 seconds. I didn't find myself needing it a whole lots, but there were a few fights where I found myself relying on it for heavy damage periods. It definitely has it's use.

Healing raid is a nice new aoe that solves the problem of people being too far out of range to bounce chain heal, since it puts a visual marker on the ground that range can use to make sure they get healed. It expands the toolkit a bit to take it from melee healer to being able to heal the entire raid effectively.

As for mana regen, the basic tools are still there. Water shield and mana tide are the big ones, but you also have the ability to cast lightning bolt, and as long as it lands, you get some mana back. The only problems with this though, are that it still has a cost (1400) and after factoring that in, at least in my current gear it's only giving me about 300 mana (1700 total, minus cost). This wouldn't be a huge issue, except the spirit->hit talent isn't really attainable by resto shaman, or at least it's not desirable to get it. This makes even one miss a huge deal as it takes almost 5 lighting bolts to make up for the one miss. I found myself hitting this when I had nothing else to do, but I don;t see myself using this much in raids unless they either remove the cost, or grant resto shaman hit in a more desirable area of the talent tree.

So output is good here, the two biggest problems in live are lack of mobility and difficulty healing range. Both of those have been addressed. The only problem I'm having with shaman right now is how undesirable the mana regen mechanic through lightning bolt is. A good compromise there would be to remove the cost, but lower the return a bit. Hopefully we'll see some fix in that area.

Priest (Disc)

Disc priests are going to be doing a lot more damage than other healers. Smite is becoming a powerful tool in their arsenal, providing a plethora of benefits. It not only smart-heals someone within 8 yards of the boss for 80% of the damage caused, but it also gives you stacks of evangelism to use with archangel, and lowers your pennance cooldown.

With mana return, we again have to do some math and take the cost of the spell into account. At level 85, my smite costs me 3088 mana per cast, and a 5 stack evangelism gives me about 17k. This is only ~2k mana profit for quite a bit of ramp up, but, it scales with man mana, and smiting is providing all those other benefits as well, making it worth it. Missing is still a problem, but as gear levels get higher this will just get better.

Absorbs are working well, and there's some exciting new tools for tank healing, such as lowering the duration of weakened soul when you heal a target. This has made tank healing fairly simple. Between that, smite, and penance, it hasn't been a huge issue to keep tanks up. With group healing, Power Word: Barrier provides a little time to catch up on the aoe damage.

Mana hasn't been a huge issue, and if you're a fan of bubbles, disc is still a blast. Having to do some damage while healing is a bit odd, but it grew on me really fast.

Priest (Holy)

This spec I've been having a blast with, and is probably one of my favorites right now. Much of the same things going for disc still apply, but there's a few differences.

Mana is a little tighter, as smiting doesn't give you any benefit other than evangelism. Missing is costly, and with no hit, it can be a problem. Use your cooldowns well though, and you'll be fine.

Chakra is incredibly fun. It's a little hard to explain, so here's a link to the 3 talents that apply to it: Chakra, and state of mind to keep you in a chakra state. Basically, you pick your chakra state, and you can be in it as long as you want, but you can only change it once every minute, as chakra itself has a cooldown. Picking the right state is really a fun mechanic. We also have revelations, which gives us a new spell based on our chakra state. It took some presence of mind to get myself to use this extra spell a lot, but once I got into the habit it really was a ton of fun.

I have been having a blast with holy, but mostly because of the large toolkit. I cast every spell I had at least a few times throughout each instance. All of them have a job, and using them at the right time is quite a challenge, and very fun. (Yes, even Lightwell.) Mana was tight, but once I got used to using the right spells, it wasn't too big of a deal. Just make a macro for your water key that lets the tank know you're drinking.

Paladin

After you get over crying that your crit chance is like 5%, down from the 50 you're used to, and your holy light only hits for a god 5k, paladin is a ton of fun too. Our new aoe heals work well, mana isn't too terrible, we have a good amount of cooldowns, and holy power is awesome.

It's quite odd using holy shock every chance I get, but the large amount of instant casts we have really add something to the game that we didn't have before; We can move. On top of granting holy power, which lets you use word of glory, which saves you a boatload of mana, holy shock is also our most efficient heal, and you'll want to use it as much as possible. Between procs and it's short cooldown, you'll be firing it off a ton.

Holy power is a little odd, but you generate it really quickly between holy shock and tower of radiance. With beacon only transferring 50% of your healing, you'll get some use out of tower.

Beacon is something a few people have expressed concern to me about, but my advice to you is this: Don't freak out. It was overpowered before, just accept it. The new design makes it so you can't ignore the tank, but don't have to focus on him the whole time either. Trust me, it's fun.

Mana was a little annoying on my paladin because of the low amount of mana returned by seal of insight and the low-ish proc chance, but, take into account that other healers have to spend mana on their gaining attacks, and missing is a big deal for them, and it's not so bad. The new divine plea is a little tough to pop though. With how weak heals are, it's difficult to cushion.

We have some powerful cooldowns now between lay on hands only having an 8 minute cd, and guardian of ancient kings only having a 5 minute cd. The guardian copies your next 5 heals, which effectively doubles your output for a few seconds. It's enough to get you out of a tight spot.

With the pally, the aoe has been fun, mana has been manageable, and we've retained our utility spells that drew me to it in the first place. It's a pretty good balance.

~~~

Overall, I've been thoroughly enjoying the changes. It's going to take some getting used to, but don't freak out.

/bubblehearth