After 22 hours spent at 84 (much of that running around, testing things, not getting XP in instances and the like), I finally hit 85 on the beta.
Suffering through zones and quests that weren’t itemized, meaning I get beat on within an inch of my life was probably not the best choice, but I wanted to get to 85 and get my guardian dude thing and then focus on instances and not questing (as ret, no less).
Some quick numbers.
At 85, the following spells cost…
Flash of Light: 6323 mana
Holy Light: 1405 mana
Divine Light: 7026 mana
Cleanse: 3279 mana
Holy Shock: 1873 mana
Beacon of Light: 1405 mana
Light of Dawn: 4918 mana
Holy Radiance: 9368 mana
Yeah, I want to cry, too. I have about 60k mana, I think it is.
At 85, I also got Guardian of Ancient Kings. He looks like a moron. (Click for a larger image.)
He’s wearing some kind of bastardized Lawbringer armor, it looks like, is carrying a Val’anyr and is wearing a mask reminiscent of Batman.
Not only that, but he’s on a 5-minute cooldown. He lasts 30 seconds or 5 heals, whichever comes first. Here’s the effect.
I haven’t run an instance with him or anything, but… ugh.
And he … cries out in what sounds like pain. Or anger, according to Walks.
I want to heal on beta later today and report back on some of the instances. At the very least, I’ll comment on this post MMO-Champion put up. It’s by our friendly neighbourhood Lead Systems Designer, Ghostcrawler:
Right now on the Beta videos a lot of the healers seem to be spamming the weak “Heal” for 90% of the time. So spamming is ok and we are expected to spam for most of the fight as long as what we’re spamming is a weak spell? is this truly what is intended for Cata healers?
No, that’s not the intent. We made those heals very cheap so that healers wouldn’t be in constant terror of running out of mana. We also are making the normal modes easier than the heroic modes. You’ll have to pair the right heal for the right situation to a greater degree in heroic modes. I think part of what you’re seeing is that healers are using the base heal because they can get away with it. It’s also possible that in our effort to distinguish them from the more expensive heals that we made the base heals too cheap or efficient. (Source)
I have so many things to say in reply to this and I just don’t even know where to start.
Anyways, more later as the day goes on. Gotta love Tuesdays!
Grats.
I have found your posts on the Beta illuminating thank you for taking the time to write it up.
Quick question about gems – did you bother to switch out your +int gems while levelling?
space ghost? how did you get into WoW? >_>
god I hope that graphic s is a placeholder, because it looks like a cheap 70ties cartoon superhero on this screenshot O_O
also
“Flash of Light: 6323 mana
Holy Light: 1405 mana ” ???
Leah: Yes. Yes indeed. The healing model for casted spells for all healers is roughly
Medium Heal: Long cast, low mana cost (Holy Light, Heal, Nourish, Healing Wave)
Quick Heal: Quick cast, high mana cost (Flash of Light, Flash Heal, Regrowth, Healing Surge/formally Lesser Healing Wave)
Big Heal: Long cast, high mana cost (Divine Light, Greater Heal, Healing Touch, Greater Healing Wave)
But this is about Paladins! And Holy Paladins, none the less! I am here to bring you something very, very important that Madrana failed to mention. It could change our gameplay in so many ways! That thing? Animations.
Oh yes.
A breakdown of the current spells animations:
Flash of Light, Holy Light: The same.
Divine Light: Looks as though you are casting Seal of Vengeance/ Corruption on another player. May cause other paladins to go “WTH?” much like the Black Heart’s original BoP animation did.
Cleanse: The same (but now it’ll hit even if there is nothing to Cleanse).
Holy Shock: The same. Word of Glory is similar, but has its own bassy sound effect to differentiate.
Beacon of Light: Same as it always has been.
Light of Dawn: While first lame, it has grown on me. Close to a sideways beacon, but with some random cloud animations. Not as cheap looking as first though, but it has issues. 1) It does not properly convey length and width of the heal, and 2) the animation can shift annoying upward dependent upon your casting animation.
Holy Radiance: Uses the Renew spell effect, but constantly pulsing. Same as the character effect for Holy Word: Sanctuary.
Guardian of Ancient Kings: Outfitted from ToC 25 and Ulduar, needs to cut back on the cheeseburgers. Uses Tirion Fording’s attack sound files.
Divine Favor: Still uses the same animation as Seal of Righteousness / Inner Fire / Divine Plea, but blue. Same as current Divine Illumination. WTB another animation for this.
I realize that the whole healing mindset for most healers is going to have to change from keeping everyone topped off to it being ok for people to be finishing each encounter with less than 100% HP. Blizz may need to give some differing examples of how they are expecting to see the healing classes managing an encounter or the forums will be exploding with people not understanding what the intent is. I think Wrath really screwed us up with limitless mana and regen mechanics. Once things go live and people start getting used to it I think it will more interactive and challenging for us healers….although more chances for those not as skilled to make life difficult.
I think that GC and other Dev’s are going to keep reducing the lowest cost heal until it is useless in order to force use of all other spells. Then be absolutely flabbergasted that people complain they run out of mana. This is standard behavior for Dev’s, they want something but can not wrap mind around human factor that they can not force into what they want.
They have to do one of three things:
A. Lower damage in all game so less panic of running out of mana.
B. Accept that they can not fix the problem of people being people.
C. Just make healing so horrid no one is left to heal.
Leah – I completely agree. I am wholly underwhelmed by my guardian. :(
And yep, what Walks said about the heals and the healing model.
Walks – Pfft, just because I have a crappy video card… ;)
Curiosly – I agree, Wrath just ruined a lot of us, even those who know better that this model can’t last.
I don’t even try to keep people at full in beta instances. I try to keep them around half. But the biggest change is that I’m back to being a reactionary healer instead of a spammer. You just don’t have the mana to spam at all. That’s not a bad thing, but this is throwing us back a couple of expansions and it’s certainly hard to get used to, particularly when you’re taking so much damage! And you ARE. There’s a lot of damage going on.
Richard – I’ll get into this more later, but I would agree on the lowered damage. That would be spiffy. I also think the difference between Holy Light and Flash of Light is insane and Holy Light and Divine Light is ridiculous, both in mana cost and in heal effectiveness.
At 85, my heals are still barely changed in potency. 7k Holy Light still, with Holy Shock just under that, Word of Glory (3 stack) just over that…
hmm, thing is right now, if they did balance the game around steady damage and high hitpoints vs what we have right now, I can see myself mostly casting holy light with very little else….in other words, nothing has changed, except holy light is not spammable.
the disparity in spell cost is just too ridiculous, and honestly, I probably wouldn’t be using flash of light at all, ever with its current beta cost.
Maybe I’m not seeing a full picture though.
Leah – No, Holy Light is absolutely spammable. Except it’s going to take two forever to spam it enough to get your target out of the danger zone.
Sometimes you WILL want to use FoL because Holy Shock is on CD or you don’t have enough Holy Power for Word of Glory. There’s a place for it (and Divine Light) but you honestly cannot cast it much.
I have a lot of thoughts on the matter and I’m trying to think things through, but here’s part of what I’m thinking:
1) If your tank charges in and tries to tank everything the way Wrath tanks do, without any CC, you will go oom and lose people. Period.
2) With proper crowd control, you should not need to use your more emergency heals (FoL, DL) all that often, relying more on a combination of Holy Light, Holy Shock and Word of Glory, with the odd Light of Dawn or Holy Radiance to help and, in the case of a big oh crap moment, get out your angry guardian.
3) Gearing up appropriately SHOULD help significantly in that your mana pool will be much bigger. I’m in 264/277 gear mostly because I went through the quests without itemization and missed out on a lot of potential upgrades that will be patched in later. Given the staggeringly large numbers on items I’ve seen, I’m currently not anywhere near the mana pool I should be, nor is my own health all that high (although I have 71k health unbuffed).
I haven’t run an instance yet at 85 (instance servers have been down today) but I do plan to do so and will report back on some details like health of tanks, etc, etc.
Sagan – whoops, sorry, didn’t see your comment in moderation ’till now. :)
I did actually switch to all spellpower gems around level 82 to see if that would make much of a difference. It didn’t, really, but I didn’t want to switch back to all int. I was considering going all reckless, but I didn’t have enough Ametrines.
However, all spellpower gems have now been converted to intellect gems. The only place we will see spellpower is, I believe, on weapons (possibly enchants), but spellpower gems are no more. Also, intellect gems are now red, so you now have Brilliant Cardinal Rubies.
I type gud :/ I mean it will be spamable, unlike now where I can conceivably spam it but with my current mana pool (about 40k I think, buffed, I need to play my pally more >_>), I noticeably run out of mana if that’s all I cast..on the other hand fights don’t last as long.
I supposed, I’ll just have to wait and see and figure it out once its finalized.
Thank you for the reply.
If all intellect gems are red now what happens to equipped Brilliant King’s Amber gems? Do they chnage to Brilliant Cardinal Rubies?
Leah – We’ll have to find a balance in the content and learn from experience what is useful when and rely on HL when all else fails, basically. I’m a little scared. :/
Sagan – My pleasure. :) And I would imagine that Brilliant King’s Ambers will turn to Brilliant Cardinal Rubies, although I can’t confirm that 100% right now. I’ll check some older gear of mine that was intellect-gemmed, though.
Sagan – Yep, 20 int gems and 23 spellpower gems both became Brilliant Cardinal Rubies (20 int).
Thanks for checking Kurn.
He is pretty underwhelming, isn’t he? I’m not in a rush to 85 to get him, that’s for sure! (Alas, no banana shoulders from him, a travesty, that is!)
You should come up with a name for your guardian.
Sagan – No problem. :)
Alfimi – He’s ugly, he sounds ridiculous and no banana shoulders makes me a sad panda. Period.
Osephala – He’s so dumb that he doesn’t even DESERVE a name. My water elemental is AWESOME and deserves the name of Clyde. My Earth Elemental is AWESOME and deserves the name of Josh (courtesy Sephden). My Fire Elemental is AWESOME and deserves the name of Steve (Tan, we miss you!).
This guy is a moron.