General (7 Aug) - Did You Know?

General (7 Aug) - Did You Know?

The next expansion pack for Warcraft, Cataclysm, is officially set to arrive on 1 Nov 2010. Did you know that this is less than three months away? That's about a dozen romps in Icecrown Citadel. That's practically JUST AROUND THE CORNER."

Yea, but did you know that neither of the prior two expansion packs were released on the initial release date? Did you know that the beta test server is not even up yet? But did you also know that once we hit November nobody will be able think about anything but Cataclysm?

Cataclysm could also be labeled "Back to the Future" for healers. There is a great couple of you-tube videos about the history of healing and what is expected to happen with Cataclysm.

In the days of Vanilla WoW healers had to pay a lot of attention to mana regen and "over healing" (which was essentially healing wasted on someone who did not need the heal). Wasted healing used up mana, and using too much mana meant you'd run out before the fight was over, and the raid would wipe. These were REAL concerns in Vanilla WoW. Two techniques to combat running out of mana were popular in those days - "interrupt" healing and "down ranking." Down ranking meant using, say, rank 5 of a spell instead of it's full power of rank 9. Down ranked spells cost less mana. A lot of effort was expended determining what rank of a spell was the right rank to keep the raid alive while not running out of mana. Interrupt healing was used with long cast, high powered healing spells. The healer would start casting the spell, and if the target took a big hit he'd let the cast finish and the target would get the heal. But if the target did not need a big heal, the healer would interrupt the cast, aborting the heal so he wouldn't waste the mana.

When Burning Crusade came out, healing changes made down ranking less important, and large increases in mana regen gave healers a major boost. Tanks got some help, as well, making them more survivable and requiring less healing. Boss damage increased to compensate, but not enough. Healing still required good mana management, but over healing became less of an issue, and interupt healing became less necessary.

The Wrath of the Lich King expansion eliminated down ranking all together and took the BC changes a step further. Mana regen was insane and healing changed completely to accommodate. Well geared healers could constantly spam a healing rotation that ignored over healing. Healing became a brute force process with almost no worry that the flow of mana would ever dry up over the course of a fight. WotLK attempted to address that by making bosses more and more powerful. Bosses like the Lich King, Sindragosa, Halion (in Ruby Sanctum) could two shot a tank unless that tank was receiving a virtually endless, massive infusion of constant healing. AoE damage across an entire raid also rose and so AoE heal spams became common on almost every boss encounter. All that extra damage was added to soak up the massive healing that our mana regen could deliver. How well a healer managed his mana and selected his spells took a back seat to how fast those heals could be delivered.

In Cataclysm, the idea is to go back to the days of Vanilla Wow healing. Mana regen is getting a massive nerf. The main mana regen statistic, MP5, has been DELETED from the game in Cataclysm. Yep, it's gone completely. All mana regen will come from Spirit. Spirit will only be available on healing gear, although there will be arguments over loot distribution from elemental shaman and balance druids who must use mana for their DPS. Spell power is also being restructered. It will appear on "caster weapons", but all other spell power will be combined into Intellect. So, for healers, it seems that intellect and spirit are the two major stats in Cataclysm. Having a spell power caster weapon appears to be a must as well. Haste still has a secondary role. I'm not quite sure where crits come in; it's still there, but it does not appear on the list of stats that will be on gear. The hit stat is also still around, but again not much information about the changes to it.

Well, that took me a bit off topic. Back to healing in Cataclysm. Mana regen will be greatly reduced, while the cost in mana to cast spells is going get higher. Healers are going to have to pay close attention to how much mana they have and keep their over healing numbers down if they are going to last an entire encounter. The damage being dealt to the raid is also going to get higher, but the thinking is that the very high spike damage abilities are going away. Tanks should be able to survive those big hits better, allowing healers to plan their spell casting more carefully. That's the strategy, anyway.

For you melee types out there, your most favorite (or hated) stat, attack power, has also been deleted. All attack power will come from either agility or strength, depending on which is appropriate for that class. There are lots of other stats having to do with tanking and melee, but those just make me want to take a nap, so I'll . . . . snnnooooooorrrzzzz . . .

There is a mountain of other stat changes that will make the number crunchers go numb with excitement. More to come.