I must admit; I’m a little bit afraid of the coming end of the world. No, I’m not afraid of 12/21/12. I am though, somewhat, of 12/07/10 – the Cataclysm release date. Although the recent patch 4.0.1 brought about most of the major mechanical changes, Cataclysm will see the effects of those realised along with a host more. I going to talk here about healing/mana regen, sky rocketing health totals, and a couple other things.
I probably should add potential spoiler disclaimers to my posts, so here’s one for this. If you don’t want to risk spoilers for Cataclysm, you probably shouldn’t continue.
Don’t Nerf Healers, Bro.
I’m a WotLK healer. It’s true, I never healed much prior to Wrath so that’s what I’m used to. Guess what? I actually like it. I like the high incoming damage, the split second reactions needed to keep the tanks and raid alive. I like being able to heal a dps from 10% to full in one big Holy Light crit, but at the same time needing to know when I can cast HL and when I have to cast a quicker heal. The goal in Cataclysm is for healers to not be able to keep players at full health. We’ll have to use a “triage” system to keep players with just enough health while not wasting mana on big heals. Low health on my raid frames drives me nuts, and can you imagine the reaction of a Holy Paladin when he’s told he doesn’t get to spam big heals anymore? Big heal spam = out of mana for all healers, at least that’s the plan. I does make sense though and I couldn’t have expected to have unlimited 30k heal spam forever, doesn’t mean I won’t miss it when its gone. I am worried that I won’t enjoy having to watch people stay at half of their health and not having the mana to top people off. This leads me to my next point, the other reason players will be hard to keep full.
Omg I’m an Elite
We’ve already seen some changes on our gear and an overall increase in player health with 4.0.1, I’d say my paladin gained nearly 10% with the same gear on. In Cataclsym, health pools will skyrocket. Beta players are reporting 80k+ at 85 in dungeon blues. Tanks are sitting pretty with over 100k health. I really think it’s too much. There’s something called “Power Creep” where a character (literature, movie, game, etc) slowly gains power and eventually is too strong. Here’s a cool article on it. We’re gaining too much health. 40k Fury warrior at 80 in full epics turning into 80k+ in blues at 85 is too drastic of a jump. The reason behind the increase in health? Probably their healing goals. As you level, there has to be a natural power increase, or else there’d be little point. On the other hand, if I can already heal a player to full in 1-2 global cooldowns AND my power increases, nothing would change unless the toons I’m healing have a much higher health pool. I know why they did it, I’m just not sure how well this massive health increase will work out. PVP is going to slow way down unless our damage is also increased dramatically, which will then lead to bosses easily being over 100 million health regularly. Just seems to fast. If dps are 80k in lvl 85 blues, I expect tanks to break 200k health by the end of the expansion, considering we went from 25k hp tanks at Wrath launch to 65k tanks at the end. What would we look like at level 90? Will this lead to players breaking 1 million health? Imagine going back and soloing ICC without needing a special spec or build.
Wasn’t There Supposed to Be ‘A Couple Other Things’?
Yes, there was.
Personally, I love the healing changes. Yeah, it was fun having to react quickly to incoming damage at first, but it turned into spam-healing. In 5-mans, I was able to use my spells situationally, but when I went into ICC I had to spam Holy Light, there was just no other way to keep up with the spikes. If I wasn’t constantly casting Holy Light, I would likely miss a damage spike.
I’m pretty sure more people have your stance on the healing model than myself, hence the change that way. I really enjoyed the non-stop healing and the high risk of each choice.