Cataclysm class previews

[Splishy]

Perhaps it's holy shock then, but we definitely have one

[Faphnir]

Perhaps it's holy shock then, but we definitely have one

Holy Shock, nope  Third time lucky?  (I like these guessing games )


P.S. Is it just me that the links to WoWHead don't give the popup anymore for?

[Dar]

I win this game, took me about 20 minutes of searching trough wowhead and some memory digging to find out that the HoT that was added on tier 8 (or 9) bonus, which was changed into a bonus when they gave the HoT trough talents.
tadaa

[Choleric]

If what Daff says is true then it sounds like all healers will have a more interesting experience as opposed to whack-a-mole (or practically nothing to do - VH springs to mind) in 5mans - surely a good thing?

[Dar]

whack a mole, in 5 mans? it is in raids, but in 5 mans its just:
/s hey guys
the guy that gives the most polite / normal answer is targeted
/follow
/buff my 3 priest buffs
/tar tank
/cast pw:s, PoM, HoT
/cast AoE heal

rinse and repeat every... 3 mins or so, alt-tabbing back once in a while to see if we are done yet
I'm not truly alt-tabbing out, but i could, its that boring to be healer in 5 mans, there is nothing to heal if the tank is even vaguely geared and the dps have brains 'nuff to not pull aggro. and even if they do i let them get close to death before i shield and heal them, just to let them know i don't like them taking aggro.

[Daffyd]

If what Daff says is true then it sounds like all healers will have a more interesting experience as opposed to whack-a-mole (or practically nothing to do - VH springs to mind) in 5mans - surely a good thing?

They explicitly want to do away with whack-a-mole, this is the philosophy for Cataclysm...

I have found this philosophy to be a tough one to communicate. Painted broadly, we have some players who chose healing because they like to be challenged and we have some players who chose healing because they like to be the hero. In LK, raid healing can definitely be stressful at times, but we're not actually convinced the challenge is there. After a tough fight, whether it was succesful or not, ask yourself what you should have done differently. Did you use the wrong heal in the wrong situation? I'd suspect not since most healers have pretty stringent rotations these days where you use your strongest heals on cooldown and fill in the time left with your next strongest heals and so on. Did you heal the wrong person at the wrong time? Probably not because anyone you failed to heal was probably about to die. You probably overhealed a lot because there is little consequence for overhealing.

Go back and look at a few videos of BC raid encounters. A couple of points may be strking. One, several characters may be at various stages of injury -- the healers could not keep them all topped off. Second, the healers may be at various stages of mana -- in other words, it's not just a matter of having more GCDs before everyone is fine again. It's a matter of triage.

Triage is one of the things missing from today's healing game (even though you likely learned First Aid through a triage quest). Loosely defined, triage is deciding who needs immediate attention (vs. who is stable vs. who is a lost cause). We want healers to be able to make decisions like "The tank is wounded, but she is unlikely to die in the next few hits, and hots are ticking on her, so she's probably okay for a moment and I can heal this Ret paladin over here," vs. "The rogue is wounded, but my big heal would overheal for a ton and I need the mana, so I can use a small heal." We want the dps to likewise be thinking about ways to minimize damage on themselves, not because they'll die in a global (i.e. before they could respond anyway) but because the healers are going to risk running out of mana.

Today, in LK, healing risks feeling even more like whack-a-mole. Injury? Heal. Injury? Heal. You're testing your reflexes more than your decision-making ability. Whack-a-mole can be challenging, but it doesn't have much depth. It's easy to add depth though. Let's start with the notion that there are two hammers. The little hammer can dispatch most of those moles, but sometimes you can use your big hammer too. The big hammer has limited charges or whatever. Now let's have some of the moles pop out a little slower so that you have time to consider which hammer to use. See where I'm going with this?

Running out of mana doesn't have to be, and won't be, the only reason you fail an encounter. But it is a point of failure that we don't have today. Adding it back in will make the encounters feel more distinct from each other and will actually, we believe, make healing more interesting and ultimately more fun. I agree it's going to be a tough sell though. In one of our playtests recently, the healer came back frazzled. "I couldn't keep everyone topped off," she said. "It took me half the dungeon to realize that I didn't have to." Once that clicked, she said she started having fun. Hopefully it will click with other players quickly too.

Dar: Heroic 5 man healing wasn't like that with a tank in blues and a healer in blues, look at all the complaints from Paladins about Loken for starters.  Yes he was doable but it was a bloody tough gig, ask Splishy what he thought of healing it if you have an hour or so to listen to random swearing.

[Dar]

yea, i know about loken. I wiped alot with my DK on that guy, 3-5 wipes in HoL wasn't that bad back in those days. But as Disc priest atleast i've never found stuff "hard" or whacky in 5 mans. Yes things die sometimes (over confident tanks for example, that try to pull half an instance. Or PoS, the tunnel, a new tank with just full epic will near sure die without a heal while running) but i guess being a shielding bastard made my life alot easier. having a 6k pre-heal on everyone, that is instant cast + Prayer of mending, that, with the small amount of ppl in 5 mans, heals the right ppl very often makes stuff trivial, even when not outgearing.

the only thing i found really hard in 5 mans was ToC5, rogue on the first encounter made healing in blues impossible as i can't dispell it, the fearing second boss nearly oneshotted me with every smite she did and i couldn't keep up with the dark knight with his 6k-ticking diseases and AoE damage.

Anyway, i don't mind all healing classes getting new tools. Blizzard tries very hard to make every class unique and i love that. Try comparing the AoE heals of a druid, priest, paladin and a shaman...
Druid: HoT's on the raid
Priest: You cast a heal on a target that heal the nearby groupmembers for the same amount
Paladin: Radiation heals players around you
Shaman: Passive AoE + chain heal, that heals 2 (right?) low health targets after healing your target

i love the diversity that achieve the same goal, healing your group / raid with one spell instead having to cast multiple single target heals

[Jozef]

Chain heal hits 3 targets, 4 if glyphed. Earthliving Weapon and Blessing of the Erternals make AoE healing kinda easy.

I tanked VH once and at the second boss I noticed we had no healer, just a priest that healed me up to full after every group. Renew was enough most of the time. Its even worse on my shaman, my earth shield heals so much that I dont have to heal the tank normally.

[Dar]

We have gone a bit offtopic, so to get back on topic, they clarified some stuff and explain on how they see the pala healing now compared to what i should / will be in Cat

Here's a bit more clarification on some of these changes. Also, please keep in mind that this is merely a preview and we'll still have more to go in testing up to and including any other changes that aren't listed here in the preview.

We've updated the Flash of Light reference to make it a bit more clear in the original post as follows.

    * Flash of Light remains a fast heal, but will be more expensive to justify the cast speed. Holy Light will be the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput. Beacon of Light needs to be changed so that its benefit is letting the paladin heal two targets at once, not letting the paladin get two heals for the mana cost of one. It’s intended to save GCDs and targeting time, not mana.


In addition we’re changing the paladin heal design to match that of the other healers. Holy Light is the middle heal. It’s very efficient, but not particularly fast and doesn’t have a lot of throughput. Flash of Light will be the faster heal that costs more mana. (Currently paladins sort of flip the model around by having a fast, efficient heal.) Holy paladins can talent into an additional heal that is like a giant Holy Light. It might take three of these big heals (or two crits) to get a tank from death’s door back to 100% health.

Currently on live, Beacon of Light is a tool that allows paladins to target more than just the main tank. In Cataclysm if it just doubles their healing, it is going to be overpowered. We have two ways we might handle this and we’ll experiment to see which feels better. The first is that Beacon only works on some heals, such as Flash of Light or Holy Light (but not the big one). An alternative idea is that Beacon increases the mana cost of a heal cast on a beaconed target, since you’re essentially getting a double heal. Under this model, Beacon itself would cost no mana.

Also on the live realms currently, paladins have huge mana pools and massive throughput. The trade-off is that they are excellent single target healers and much weaker in other roles. We want paladins to be slightly more interchangeable with other healers. In Cataclysm, you should be able to have a Holy priest on the tank and a Holy paladin on the raid. We’re not sure we’ll back off of the current healing roles completely, but we definitely want to add more breadth to those whose roles are currently too narrow.

As for the Guardian of Ancient Kings. First, it's important to understand that this is not a pet nor does it have a pet bar associated with it. Second, it's also not meant to last for very long. So, it's not a pet in the traditional sense. It's a friend in need when you need it, but not a permanent companion. 

[Splishy]

As I said, I'll be more than happy to have more buttons to mash

[Daffyd]

From last night's dev chat...

Q. Why are Restoration druids the only spec in the game not receiving a new spell?
A. Restoration druids are actually getting a fair bit. For one, Tree of Life is getting a whole new model (think Ancients of War) and will also “morph” some of your spells to do crazy things while in the form, such as cause Regrowth to be instant, or Lifebloom to apply two applications at once. Tranquility will be raid-wide. We’re also touching nearly every Restoration druid spell to make sure each has a niche and feels good. In general, playing a Restoration druid should feel a lot different (better!) in Cataclysm than it does today.

GIEF ANCIENT OF WAR SKIN!  NAO!

[Choleric]

how. frigging. cool. I can see my druid getting dusted off soon.