Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #352 - For Azeroth!: "Questionably OoM"

Transcript

#352 - For Azeroth!: "Questionably OoM" · For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast

0:00
Every single tier you have like one or two healers that uses
0:03
mana as a real resource and everyone else has infinite mana
0:07
at all times. And then the tier ends, you go
0:09
to the next tier, you rotate for the Forsaken.
0:13
For Lauderon. For the Karen Tour for Pandaria.
0:21
For calendar to the. Burning region for Gilnaeus, but
0:28
has not died, for the Lich King, for the Sindora, for the
0:34
Alliance, for the Horn for Azeroth.
0:40
Hello and welcome back to another episode of For Azeroth.
0:45
I am one of your hosts, Manny, AKA the Trueven Manny, and I am
0:49
joined by a very special guest today, Volk.
0:52
Volk Hello. And how's the World of Warcraft
0:54
been treating you? Hello and hello everyone.
0:59
The World of Warcraft has been treating me well, but we've had
1:02
a big week and we've got some big weeks ahead, so I'm pretty
1:05
excited. Yeah, like there we are in week
1:10
one of the alpha, about to hit Week 2.
1:12
But already there have been some seismic changes on the alpha.
1:17
People's heads are rolling in terms of add-ons a little bit
1:21
more literally than others. And of course, there's been
1:25
tremendous changing changes that have hit healing for all specs
1:31
and all classes. And so I really do want to talk
1:36
about that. Can you introduce yourself for
1:38
people who might not know who you are?
1:42
Yeah, so I am Volk. I do healer stuff and Wow, I run
1:46
the healer gearing and guide site Questionably Epic and
1:49
Questionably Epic Live. I write the Wowhead guides for
1:53
Preservation of Okeh Resto Druid, and I also do some
1:56
classic stuff. I run the classic disc priest
1:59
and Resto Druid guide over there as well.
2:02
And I basically just get involved with all stuff healers.
2:06
Yes. So it's always good for for
2:10
getting a pulse on healing to check in with you.
2:14
So I'm really glad that that we've got this opportunity just
2:19
from the get go. We had these massive patch
2:23
notes, 125 pages when I put it into APDF and it a lot of that
2:29
was changes that either directly or indirectly affect healing.
2:34
We've had the interrupt changes which adjust things in Mythic
2:38
Plus and a little bit in Raid, but we've also had every class
2:43
being hit by this sort of, I don't want to call it pruning,
2:47
because pruning immediately goes back to the Warlords of Draynor
2:50
where they were just straight out taking out abilities.
2:53
This seems more like a concentration and consolidation
2:57
of abilities, especially in the case of defensives.
3:01
In terms of your thoughts and how it affected healers, what
3:05
did you think about what we got on Just like the patch notes and
3:09
with this initial Phase 1 testing?
3:12
They've been talking about a larger healer event for a while,
3:16
right? Like they've acknowledged the
3:17
healing has had some problems, which we'll talk about soon as
3:21
well. And so studying in Dragonflight,
3:24
they said, OK, we're going to try and make healing less
3:26
bursty. And so they made a few changes
3:30
in that area. They buffed our Max health.
3:33
They shredded resto Druid at one point, which was a a big
3:36
cooldown healer, but they never really made it work.
3:41
And their goal was kind of diluted by adding even more
3:45
healing cooldowns to the game. Like Preservation got Flame
3:48
Shaper and the War Within, which is a massive cooldown tree and
3:53
and stuff like that. This is their first, what I
3:55
would call a real swing at fixing the problem that they
3:59
think exists. And so as a result, we lose a
4:05
lot, or rather a lot changes. A lot of the big bursty call
4:09
downs are either gone or their call downs are longer, or their
4:12
choice nodes now with other cooldowns.
4:14
So you kind of have to decide which kind of cooldown you want
4:17
to bring instead of just bringing both.
4:21
And so I think that it's pretty fair to say that healing as we
4:25
know it has changed. Yeah.
4:29
And with all these stuff being like choice nodes or the
4:35
aggressive changes with cooldowns, how does that exactly
4:42
affect how they can balance healing?
4:44
Because a lot of people look at that and they're like, I can't
4:46
do it. But like, obviously healing in
4:49
Midnight is going to be different than healing as we see
4:52
it in the War Within or in past expansions.
4:55
Because you're sad. This is like the first time
4:56
they've really made this adjustment.
4:58
So like, what do you think the goals are?
5:00
And do you think they're like getting towards those goals from
5:03
like what they're doing with the cooldowns?
5:06
If you play as a high end healer right now, you quickly feel like
5:10
that you are basically just acting out a spreadsheet right?
5:14
Like you, you use the viserio sheet while Util's great site to
5:19
plan your cool downs before a fight, and then you have a weak
5:22
horror that basically just reads it out to you.
5:24
Press this button now, press this cool down now, and
5:28
everything you do in between barely matters.
5:31
You're basically just pressing cooldowns against big bursty
5:34
damage. And there's only so far you can
5:39
take that gameplay while keeping it interesting, right?
5:41
Like it's satisfying to press your big cooldown and bounce
5:44
health bars from 10 to 100, but it's difficult to be a great
5:50
healer in that kind of environment, right?
5:52
Like pretty much everyone can just follow that same pattern.
5:56
And so with the removal of all of those big cooldowns and of we
6:00
core as apparently you will focus a lot more on your base
6:05
rotation. Will that be as fun?
6:08
I hope so. I think it's difficult to tell
6:11
from the alpha notes alone because we don't really have any
6:14
content to test on yet. You've just got like normal mode
6:18
dungeons, which are fine, but we're never really a good healer
6:21
stress test. And so I think that on paper,
6:27
this should still be very fun, but it's still on Blizzard to
6:31
make each spec actually play well without these big cool
6:34
downs. Now healing cooldowns do a lot
6:41
to differentiate 1 spec from another.
6:45
How you would use like Apotheosos, how you would ramp
6:50
and use those cooldowns as a disc priest makes you a
6:53
completely different healer than what you would see with let's
6:57
say a resto shaman and how they they use their cooldowns.
7:02
So without these cooldowns, does the base kit feel different
7:06
enough between each healer, or does something further need to
7:11
be done to like, actually make healers seem different from each
7:15
one another? I think that people have worried
7:18
that healers would end up too similar for a long time and
7:21
expansion over expansion it just hasn't really happened to.
7:24
Like if I'm playing a rest or druid it still feels very
7:27
distinct from a preservation of ochre, even in tears where the
7:30
preservation of ochre was like hot heavy or something like
7:34
that. So I'm not too worried about
7:35
healers all feeling the same. I actually think with fewer
7:38
cooldowns in the game you have more room to make them distinct
7:43
because if every boss requires you, you ping pong the raid back
7:48
up to 100 immediately before the next hit that does 90% of their
7:51
health. Then every healing cool down
7:53
either has to be able to do that or isn't really useful.
7:57
And so cool downs that were longer duration like Tree of
8:01
Life weren't really that effective unless it meant you
8:05
could cover multiple of these big spike windows with them.
8:09
And so I think with fewer cool downs, maybe they can be more
8:11
interesting, honestly. That is amazing to hear.
8:17
I guess along those same lines, it's one thing to have like that
8:22
sort of difference in a raid where you could have different
8:26
classes that kind of cover different roles.
8:28
But in Delves or Mythic Plus where it's one healer, do you
8:35
find that the this sort of disarmament is going to allow a
8:39
greater variety in like the Mythic plus meta if tuned right?
8:44
Or what are the things that they need to look for to make sure
8:48
that we get like more representation of healers?
8:50
Yeah. It's going to be interesting,
8:53
isn't it? Because since Mythic Plus came
8:55
out, every healer has definitely needed to be able to hit all the
9:00
different kinds of healing right?
9:01
Like we're not back in Rath, the Lich King, where some healers
9:05
basically had no single target at all.
9:07
Every healer is expected to be able to do like a baseline
9:11
performance level and they haven't necessarily hit that.
9:14
I know Holy Priest in particular has had some difficult tears
9:17
healing Mythic Plus, but at that really top level, the speck that
9:23
ends up meta isn't necessarily the one that can do the most
9:25
healing right? Like it's the one that brings
9:27
the best red buffs or that fits in better with the DPS in the
9:30
group who are the real main characters Of course.
9:33
And so I think that being able to bring different kinds of
9:38
healing will be valuable, but at the high end, which tends to
9:42
trickle down to everyone else, you'll still be picked for non
9:46
healing related reasons a lot of the time in mythic plus in
9:51
Delves, which I'm a huge fan of by the way, big delver.
9:55
I think that it depends on how the companion will work as well
10:00
and how well delves are tuned in general.
10:02
I found this season in particular, if you do delves as
10:05
a healer, their way of challenging you was just to give
10:08
mobs way too much health in my opinion.
10:11
And so it kind of ended up as a slower slog.
10:15
And so I'm hoping that Delves with this healing revamp can
10:18
focus more on on how you heal. I know you can run tank Bran
10:23
right now and kind of just start slapping with single target
10:26
healing until he does damage. I don't know if that's my ideal
10:30
gameplay for delves though. Yeah, Delves have been
10:37
constantly evolving through the War Within and Tank Bran only
10:42
came in part way through this this expansion, so I'm hoping
10:47
that they find a better footing. The change of defensives and and
10:55
cooldowns I hope will mean that they won't need to have of
11:02
course damage so spiky like it was in season 1 where unless you
11:08
were a tank that damage was too much to for non tanks handle in
11:13
a spike or. I just.
11:17
I'm hoping that there is a greater variety of gameplay, but
11:20
I. Wonder.
11:21
Yeah, I do wonder if Delve should just focus more on like
11:23
mechanical complexity instead of just having mobs that do.
11:27
They have a lot of health and might one shot you if they reach
11:30
you. Like I think there should be
11:32
more room to like duck and dive and kite and all of that stuff
11:35
that makes solo play really fun. Yeah.
11:38
And they kind of did do that right?
11:39
Like Kai Vezza, especially on question mark.
11:41
Question mark was just a really good mechanical fight and like
11:45
it had a little bit of ADPS check, but mostly you would just
11:49
do the mechanics for X amount of time as a healer.
11:53
X did equal 14 minutes doing it on week 0.
11:56
But it was fun because it felt like I just had to do the
12:02
mechanics well and it could die, whereas in regular delves I
12:06
don't really get that as a healer.
12:08
I, I think that regular delves is a strange one because it
12:12
feels like, like you were saying, like damage is so such a
12:18
thing in delves where if you're a high damage healer, then
12:23
you're in a better position where let's say your disk and so
12:28
you're doing the damage, you're keeping Brand brand up your they
12:32
had to change atonement so that you actually had to like think
12:35
about Brand to get his, his damage up versus perhaps healers
12:42
that just purely focus more on healing and definitely have to
12:46
opt to change their throughput in order to do the damage.
12:50
It is a very different game there.
12:54
Bran himself just didn't scale that well either did he?
12:56
Like in season 1 when I was doing Zekfir or whatever I feel
12:59
like Bran was doing like 300 KDPS and now I'm doing Kai
13:03
Vezzer and he's doing like 400 KDPS but like everything else in
13:07
the game has gone up by 5 times and Bran still just not not
13:12
doing much. I just recall in season 1 he
13:17
would basically get one shot and be stunned for forever and I
13:20
would just ignore picking him up just to do the damage.
13:25
Hopefully with our new companion it'll it'll be better testing.
13:30
So far she's she's buggy so we will will hold back judgement on
13:35
that. In terms of actually with
13:41
healers doing somewhat more damage or or less damage
13:44
depending on that. Do you find that that isn't as
13:49
important because the, as you said, damages really the star of
13:53
like the DPS rolls and I guess to a lesser extent the tanks?
13:58
It's just awkward, right? Because Once Upon a time,
14:01
healers did a little bit more as a percent of your keys DPS.
14:04
Like you might be doing 11 or 12% of the keys DPS.
14:09
But now, because healer DPS is tuned quite low, being able to
14:12
bring a buff that increases your DPS players DPS by 3% just tends
14:18
to do a lot more than optimizing your personal DPS.
14:23
And I'm not sure if that they never really talked about it.
14:25
So I'm not sure if this is something they did intentionally
14:29
or if over time here the DPS just wasn't prioritized much and
14:32
so it went down as a percentage of the key.
14:35
I'm not really sure which of those two it is, but it
14:39
definitely leads to meters where you just bring whatever healer
14:44
brings like a good buff. Yeah.
14:47
And I know this well since like Preservation of OCA does not
14:50
have a good buff. It's a very good key healer and
14:53
this season in particular it does insane DPS, like way more
14:57
than any other healer. But when you start including
15:00
Mark of the Wild or or Wind Fury then your personal DPS isn't
15:05
really moving the meter as much as those would.
15:09
Yeah, the the fist comp is definitely a different beast.
15:13
Are there like what is the healer that fits into the fist
15:16
comp? Can you remind me again?
15:19
Like I think that people like resto shaman with it right since
15:21
you bring wind fury totem and honestly just the mastery buff
15:24
it brings is good anyway. Resto druid is fitting into a
15:27
lot of comps right now since 3% versus just always good as well.
15:34
Yeah, I find that in terms of buffs, when you're early in the
15:39
season, people like to have those, those buffs that kind of
15:43
give you a little more wiggle room, a little more of a chance
15:47
to make a mistake. Ancestral giving that extra
15:51
health or being able to give that power word Fortitude just
15:58
for the the extra bump in health Shields in terms of this priest,
16:03
just so if you're veering into one shot territory, the ability
16:08
to survive a mistake and not lose the 15 seconds at the high
16:12
levels is so valuable. But are there are there buffs
16:19
early season beyond that that you think compete?
16:22
Because when I think of that, that just immediately goes to
16:24
priests, immediately goes to shaman.
16:27
The verse buff you said can help a bit, take a little less
16:30
damage. This is also just damage, right?
16:33
Like you're, you're giving everyone 3% damage basically or,
16:36
or somewhere around that. And that's just really powerful
16:39
as a buff considering you're already a healer that does
16:44
fantastic healing, you do moderate damage, and then you
16:47
also bring a good buff. I think the raid buffs just
16:50
don't fit great in Mythic, Plus I think they're really awkward
16:54
to play around, and I think that the evoke buff in particular is
16:59
just so horrendously bad that you're never bringing in Evoka
17:03
to a group for that. So do you believe that for
17:09
healers or maybe for mythic plus in general the buffs need to be
17:13
addressed to not? I actually think it's a semi
17:16
major issue. Yeah, I think that you could
17:20
make an argument that resto druid or resto shaman or even
17:23
priest brings the best buff. That's all fine.
17:25
Those all are uniquely good in at least one scenario, and then
17:32
preservation just does not have one.
17:34
Basically like no one is bringing preservation because
17:38
they want quarter reduction on their heroic leap or whatever,
17:41
right? Like it's it's OK in raid you've
17:43
got 20 slots. Preservation is OP 50% of raid
17:47
tiers so far, Fantastic. But when you can only pick five
17:50
people, it's really hard to justify spending one of those on
17:56
a spec with no boss when you could easily take someone else
17:58
in the queue that gives you 3% bursts or health or whatever
18:01
instead. I'm actually surprised that a
18:05
monk in Mystic Touch hasn't come into this conversation,
18:08
especially when we were just talking about like a physical
18:11
buff. It what?
18:14
What's the reason for that? Is there a particular reason
18:17
that that monks are being held back despite having something
18:20
that might be considered a desirable buff for particular
18:24
comps? So I haven't looked into this in
18:27
detail but a lot of melee specs now do a lot of non physical
18:34
damage if that makes sense. Like if you look at a ADK or a a
18:38
demon Hunter's breakdown, how much of that is even scaling
18:41
with the the monk buff? Some percentage sure, but it's
18:46
not like it's nowhere near as good as Chaos Brand is for
18:49
casters and it has a slightly higher percentage on it.
18:53
But yeah if you look at most malaise breakdown, if you're not
18:56
like a warrior then it's way more magic heavy than you'd
19:01
expect. Like I think red paladin is the
19:02
same. Yeah definitely red paladin
19:06
splitting their damage between holy and physical, shamans doing
19:10
elemental damage and then physical as well and so forth.
19:14
Even like a a hunter has like their arcane shot and a
19:17
different things that are doing nature damage as well.
19:20
Just a lot of points against it isn't it?
19:22
Whereas like shaman buff for example mastery.
19:27
Some specs might like it more than others but everyone's
19:29
getting some benefit. And then you also get the wind
19:33
fury effect on top it just it's just a bitter buff than monk.
19:36
Honestly. Shaman is also just a very
19:39
comfortable healer in mythic. Plus you often see it played a
19:43
lot earlier in the season and then sometimes it falls off in
19:46
the middle later on, like I think season 1 of this
19:49
expansion. It was huge for the first half
19:51
of Season 1 and then this priest kind of displaced it in the
19:55
second-half. Actually with like comfortable
20:00
healing and and so forth. What are your hopes for the
20:03
change in the matter as they make these changes?
20:06
I think that we will need to see what their new dungeon design is
20:10
before we can kind of start talking about what healers would
20:13
be good in it. We know that with all the
20:16
healers losing their cooldowns or at least being reduced in how
20:21
they can handle Bursa damage, that dungeons 2 need to adjust
20:24
right? Like you wouldn't want to go
20:27
into one of the current dungeons with midnight spec design.
20:31
Which is going to be funny because some dungeons are coming
20:33
back of course. So it'll be interesting to see
20:35
how they change those. Hopefully Pit of Sauron in
20:38
particular is completely different, but.
20:42
What was the nightmare in In Pit?
20:45
Remind me again? It's been it's been a while
20:47
since I've even done time walking.
20:49
Yeah, it's been a while, hasn't it?
20:51
There's just there's a lot of parts to that dungeon and it's
20:53
very long. I'm sure they'll do a great job
20:56
of it, but I don't have the fondest memories.
21:01
I just remember running it a bunch of times trying to get the
21:03
hilt and never got the hilt. Yeah, I never got the hilt
21:06
either. I think we got scammed on that
21:08
one. I think there's that like
21:09
gauntlet at the end, right where you're running through The Cave
21:11
with like The Cave caving in on you.
21:13
That that she sounds pretty fun. Yeah.
21:16
Maybe the hilt will be back. Maybe we'll finally get out of
21:20
time. If it does drop, that would be
21:22
wonderful. I that's one of the things that
21:26
I spent a lot of time farming back in the day and just gave up
21:29
on. But Peterson, obviously they'll
21:32
make some changes and won't be exactly the same.
21:34
And they always do this. Even when we saw things coming
21:37
back from Season 1 being shifted into Season 3 for the War
21:41
Within, they made changes to fit the current the current meta.
21:46
Peterson is very old too, right? Like, this must be one of the
21:49
oldest dungeons they've ever brought back.
21:51
It is in fact the oldest period. And so you just assume that it's
21:55
going to change a lot. Like in Wrath, the Lich King, I
21:57
hit, I healed with two buttons. And so, well, in midnight, maybe
22:02
I'll heal with two buttons as well.
22:04
But I think that there's going to be like giant changes to some
22:07
of those older dungeons. But hopefully if we heal for
22:12
less in our cooldowns, hopefully the base healing requirement at
22:16
all other times will be increased.
22:18
Like hypothetically, there's really interesting gameplay
22:20
here. Right where people aren't topped
22:23
all the time and they're hovering between 50 and 70%
22:26
life, and you have to make good decisions about what spells you
22:29
cast to stop them from going much lower than that.
22:33
That reminds me of Cataclysm. But it's such a dream, right?
22:37
Yeah, Cataclysm is definitely the closest they've come to it.
22:44
But back in Cataclysm, you had mana efficiency as this big
22:48
system, right? Since you had Spirit as a stat
22:52
still on gear and all of that stuff.
22:56
And so I don't know if we're going back down that minor
22:58
efficiency track, which we we might, I'm not sure.
23:03
But you still have stuff like efficiency and how you spend
23:07
your global cooldowns, making sure you're using your short
23:10
cooldowns like Wild growth regularly.
23:15
So I think there is the potential for such good gameplay
23:18
there, but it's very difficult to tune well, very difficult to
23:22
tune well. And so I'm very curious as to
23:25
how well they'll do. I hope they know they've got a
23:27
massive project ahead of them, but I think that it is doable.
23:32
OK, let's talk about that healing efficiency because that
23:36
like I, I remember it back from Kata, but obviously there's many
23:40
people who haven't been playing Kata Classic when it was around
23:44
just a few years ago or even way back when Kata was the new, the
23:48
new expansion on the block for healing efficiency.
23:52
There was a very real risk that healers would run out of mana
23:56
part way through through a fight and that would cause a wipe.
24:01
Was is that something that you would find as interesting
24:04
gameplay or something that maybe if it came every so often in
24:09
fights would be interesting, or is that something that you
24:11
wouldn't want people to touch at all?
24:14
So the, the secret that has been half buried about some of these
24:18
older expansions is that for some specs, because modern
24:21
efficiency was so important, you would spend half the fight AFK
24:25
so that you could spend your limited resource on the moments
24:28
where healing mattered the most. And not all healers were like
24:31
this, but certainly the one I played resto druid was and I'm
24:36
not sure that was better gameplay than what we have now.
24:41
And so I, I think mana efficiency can still be in the
24:44
game, but I think it's better when they give you ways to play
24:49
around it more right? Like resto druid for example has
24:53
abundance now for every redo you have out.
24:56
Regrowth is faster cast and cost less mana.
24:59
That introduces a really interesting healing pattern
25:01
where you put rejuvens up to make your regrowth cheaper.
25:04
That's a fun way of playing around mana, right?
25:07
Or if you have a really high HPS spell that also costs a lot,
25:11
then you can use that as kind of your throttle.
25:14
If you're behind, cast the expensive spell, catch up.
25:18
If you're falling behind too often and casting your expensive
25:21
spell too often, well, you might get screwed on mana.
25:24
And that can be good design because you're making choices,
25:29
but you don't want to end up in this situation where the correct
25:33
decision is to cast nothing for more than brief moments in the
25:37
fight. Because I've been there, it
25:39
ain't that fun. Mana.
25:42
Mana in particular the last few expansions has been weird.
25:46
Every single tier you have like one or two healers that uses
25:50
mana as a real resource, and everyone else has infinite mana
25:53
at all times. And then the tier ends, you go
25:56
to the next tier, you rotate two other healers get their mana
26:00
tune. Now they have mana problems and
26:02
the original ones have Infinity. And I don't think I've seen a
26:05
time for a long time, maybe ever, where all healers had to
26:09
care about and manage mana. So if they are going to make it
26:12
central, they don't have to. But if they are going to make it
26:15
central, then they're going to have to work out a way to make
26:18
all healers play the same game. Yeah, when I look at changes, I
26:24
play shaman. So when I look at changes where
26:27
they're taking out healing surge and just leaving the basic
26:30
healing wave, it feels like mana conservation is less likely to
26:38
be the game unless they are going to like force you to like
26:42
keep dumping chain heels. It works well as a light
26:45
resource, doesn't it? Like if I play preservation
26:49
right now I mostly don't have mana issues, but if I spend my
26:53
expensive spell on cooldown then I might start going oom near the
26:56
end of the fight. I think that's reasonable
26:58
design. It's not a big driver of my
27:01
decisions, but if I run oom when the boss is at 10% I might
27:04
adjust a few things for the next pull.
27:07
I think if mana is sticking around, I think that's fine.
27:10
OK, And what about particular abilities that refund mana?
27:17
Mana Titotium was a big one. We had abilities where you would
27:24
do some DPS and that would restore mana, or abilities that
27:27
are on other classes that would then give mana.
27:31
Most famously Druid being able to allow for a casting without
27:36
consuming mana for a short period of time.
27:38
Do you find that those abilities have a place, or do you think
27:43
that they're too polarizing? I was a big fan of the everyone
27:48
may not share my opinion on this one.
27:50
I'm a big fan of the lightning bolt restores mana reth restores
27:53
mana master shapeshifter kind of design where you might spend a
27:57
bit more mana but then during downtime you can get it back by
28:01
spamming your filler DPS spell. I'm a fan of those kind of
28:04
designs. I think they're really
28:05
interesting. They give you a way to get mana
28:09
out of haste, which is quite interesting since you can cast
28:12
more of these filler spells. In terms of the other ones you
28:16
mentioned, Innovate Monotide, I think monotide is fairly benign.
28:20
I think it's, it's fine stuff like Innovate where you're
28:24
picking someone tend to be more awkward because most of the time
28:30
the druid themselves want to keep that.
28:34
And I think that it can make for awkward social situations where
28:38
someone else thinks that they should maybe have a little bit
28:41
more. And so I'm a fan of those spells
28:44
just giving it to both people. Like power infusion is like this
28:48
right now where the priest gets it and whoever they give power
28:51
infusion to gets it. I think stuff like Innovate
28:54
could be the same way, where you're encouraged to give it
28:56
away without any personal loss. I don't know if Blizzard
29:00
necessarily agrees with me on that one because I think they
29:03
like seeing that kind of stuff used socially, but I don't think
29:08
you'll find many resto druids that are happy to give it away.
29:10
It's a bit of a different thing when it comes to like boomkins
29:13
and stuff since they have no personal attachment anyway.
29:17
But yeah, I I'm more of a fan of the DPS to get mana back kind of
29:22
design. And it doesn't have to be that
29:24
like Miss Weaver has mana T I think that every healer could
29:30
have their own unique interesting mana mechanic.
29:32
Like Shaman gets mana back on crit, stuff like that.
29:37
But right now they don't. So I'm curious as to whether
29:40
they'll care about mana at all. Honestly there hasn't been any
29:44
great indication that they will yet, but if they do, I think the
29:49
best result is that each healer has their own kind of mini mana
29:54
mini game they're playing. OK, well, from the if, from the
30:01
initial things that we've got alone right now, who do you,
30:06
which healers, which of the healer specs do you feel is
30:10
currently looking best on paper? Again, we've only had normal
30:15
dungeons, Dells, we haven't had anything to really stress it.
30:18
So it's it's mostly speculative at this point.
30:21
But which healers you feel have benefited or come out mostly
30:27
unscathed from the this pullback?
30:30
And which are the healers that you feel need more more
30:34
attention? So in terms of the bad ones, I'm
30:42
not a resto Sharman expert, but I've heard from resto Sharman
30:46
experts that that spec might need another look and I believe
30:49
them. I think there are a lot of specs
30:52
that have come through mostly in a very good state, or at least a
30:57
state that could be good if tuning is really good, but they
31:00
have like one or two core issues that they would like solved.
31:04
I think that's a pretty good place to be in.
31:06
And week 1 of alpha, since the specs that eventually go live in
31:11
four months or whatever will probably be quite different than
31:14
what we have now. The ones I'm particularly
31:19
intrigued by are Preservation because that spec got almost
31:24
remade like Midnight Preservation and the War Within
31:27
Preservation have very little in common except that they're both
31:31
weird gangly Dragons. I think that Resto Druid is the
31:37
most untouched. Like Flourish is of course gone,
31:42
which is a major change, but currently convoke the spirits
31:45
can still proc A flourish like effect and so I think it ends up
31:50
playing quite similarly to now. You've still got your core,
31:52
rejuve, regrowth, abundance engine going.
31:57
The big change for resto druid that is causing some tension
32:01
right now is the removal of skull bash, which is the resto
32:04
druid interrupt. I kind of agree with the people
32:08
who think it should come back, so I'm curious as to whether
32:12
they give any reason for that or if they bring it back further
32:16
through. Alpha Disc Priest I've been
32:20
mostly happy with. I think Avenge needs sorry
32:23
Evangelism that is needs a second look since they're
32:27
clearly trying to make the spec easier to play, but I think they
32:32
haven't quite nailed the design down on that one.
32:35
And then again, Holy Priest, I wouldn't consider myself near an
32:39
expert, but I've I've heard good things from people that are much
32:42
more knowledgeable in that area than me.
32:46
Did I leave that Miss Weaver again?
32:47
I've I've done that many Times Now.
32:50
Yeah, unfortunately Miss Weaver was the the the missing link in
32:54
this. How do they look right now?
32:59
They've got, it's weird, isn't it?
33:01
They've got this like half dragon half crane kind of choice
33:06
you have to make tough to balance that kind of choice.
33:13
And I think if one plays way better than the other, they've
33:16
always had this kind of paradigm for quite a while, right?
33:18
Like even in the War Within you've got Qigi builds and Yulon
33:24
builds and like Yulon's been better for most of the
33:27
expansion. But the when the one you enjoy
33:32
less ends up meta, that can cause some tension.
33:35
But I think it's bold to try and introduce what is basically 2
33:38
specs in one. Right where you're making a
33:40
choice is to which aspect of the spec you want to play.
33:45
I think it's interesting. I'm not sure this version 0 is
33:50
going to be similar to the final version we get, but it's it's
33:53
interesting. Yeah.
33:56
I mean, again, we do have a long way to go, but just based on
34:00
where they are right now, that seems like a good, that's a good
34:04
start. And we are once again saying
34:07
that we don't have incredibly challenging content to really
34:11
stress test the rigors of what changes have happened.
34:15
It might, we might find out that as we get into ray testing and
34:21
like actual key testing that things that we didn't really see
34:27
at first become glaring problems.
34:30
So. We just don't know, right?
34:32
Like we, we know the encounters will change, we know the healers
34:36
will change, we've seen some of the healer changes already,
34:39
we've seen none of the encounter changes.
34:41
And those are going to be really important for defining what the
34:45
future of healing is going to look like.
34:47
And I honestly, if I were Blizzard, I'd be trying to roll
34:50
the stuff out sooner rather than later because it's not just how
34:56
healers will play into it, it's how the new UI will play into it
34:59
as well. And the new UI is going to be,
35:03
dare I say, more important for healing than any other role.
35:08
And so I think they should really focus on giving us
35:11
something to test that isn't normal mode levelling dungeons.
35:16
I know we're on week 1, but it takes a long time for feedback
35:20
to go up the chain and then to see changes based on it.
35:24
And I'd hate for them to leave it too late.
35:26
Like they have some new expansion features in the past
35:30
like as a right? Yeah, that was a big one.
35:35
So then looking at UI, give the first glance that we've had of
35:41
these things, of the conversations that we've had
35:44
about how a lot of the things in combat and in instances are
35:49
being locked down. What do healers need in general
35:57
just to have a proper functioning UI in the base game?
36:00
Let's say we can't use any add-ons.
36:03
Let's say it is pure nuclear. If you walk into an instance
36:08
there is not a single add on that can help you.
36:12
What do healers need in order to function properly?
36:16
Or what if? I guess a better question is
36:19
what are the stresses in the war within that they need to avoid
36:23
by either adding it to the UI or not designing that way?
36:28
So there are two like key pieces of your interface as a healer. 1
36:33
is particularly important in raid, but in mythic plus a
36:35
little bit too. That's boss timers.
36:38
You need to know when healing is going to be severe so you can
36:42
prepare for it. That kind of preparation is not
36:45
going away in the midnight designs.
36:47
Plenty of specs are still going to ramp for incoming damage, so
36:51
you need to know what's coming up.
36:54
The second part is a good healer frame.
36:58
You need to see everyone's health, you need to see their
37:00
debuffs and you need to see which of your buffs you have on
37:03
them. Now currently Blizzard wants to
37:06
do both of these things themselves at midnight.
37:09
Like of course we already have in game frames, they are
37:13
terrible. And in midnight we will also
37:16
have in game boss timers. I haven't done like the demo
37:20
raid boss on alpha yet. Boss timers hypothetically
37:25
aren't very difficult to do well, so I do trust that
37:28
Blizzard will have a decent package for us come live.
37:34
You really just need the ability and the timer and at least
37:39
something like that is already in place.
37:41
It'd be nice to get some customization being able to
37:43
choose between the timeline that I think is in currently and some
37:46
kind of bar timers which are Bigwigs and DBM default to.
37:50
I think I use the timeline anyway, but yeah, I think that
37:55
you need some customization there.
37:57
The default RAID frames, though, need work, and currently on
38:03
Midnight Alpha, we do not have any changes to the helo frames.
38:06
They're the same as the wall within.
38:08
I believe there will be some stuff coming here soon based on
38:11
interviews I've read. I don't have any secret
38:13
information and there's a few things that they kind of must do
38:18
to make these usable. We need more than three buff
38:22
slots. Right now it only shows 3 buffs.
38:25
That is not enough. Almost every healer spec in the
38:29
game will use more than that. Some, like Resto Druid, are
38:31
particularly bad, and so if you cast more than three buffs on
38:35
someone, one will disappear from your frames.
38:38
And I don't even play resto druid that much, but I thought
38:41
the mastery was that you stack these?
38:44
It is. And they removed some so that
38:48
you have to show less on frames, but they certainly didn't get me
38:51
down to to three or fewer. They also mentioned that they're
38:56
not going to show one on frames, but they're keeping it in the
38:58
game. The weird thing is it's the
39:00
strongest hot in the kit, symbiotic blooms.
39:03
It does the most things. No idea what they're thinking
39:06
there. I will have that in my feedback
39:08
post. But OK, so I have the default
39:11
frames. I need to see that more than
39:12
three buffs. I need to be able to change
39:14
where I see them on my frames so that I can put rejuve in the
39:18
bottom left, echo in the bottom right, whatever debuffs in the
39:24
middle perhaps. I would love some customization
39:28
in terms of how it looks. Some of us like class colours,
39:31
some of us like dark frames that go red as people get injured.
39:37
That's not me, but respect to those people.
39:40
Currently the Blizzard options are class colours or the ugliest
39:43
green that you've ever seen, so we need that to change.
39:48
And then something healers have started doing a lot in the past
39:53
five or six years is to actually colour the frame differently if
39:56
they have a key buff on them, right?
39:59
So if my frames are black by default, maybe it goes yellow
40:03
when I have atonement on them, or echo or Rejuve.
40:06
It's extremely nice and makes playing a healer much nicer.
40:10
You can't do that on the default frames right now without weak
40:12
cores, which won't exist. So that would be very good.
40:17
And then the last thing I'd like to see, this is the only one
40:19
that's more optional but would be huge, is some kind of
40:24
highlighting when they have a particular debuff that you can
40:27
set, especially in Mythic Raid or high keys.
40:31
Right now, we will write in some debuffs that like glow the frame
40:36
with like a nice border that makes it really obvious when
40:39
someone is being targeted by something that's likely to kill
40:42
them. It's very nice since there's a
40:45
lot going on in raid and it's useful to know who needs
40:49
priority healing, and just showing a debuff in the middle
40:54
of the frame doesn't quite do the same job as that.
40:56
So I think those are the big things the default frames need.
41:00
Half of those I wouldn't really describe as optional, I think
41:03
they're pretty key, like only showing 3 buffs.
41:07
It's honestly amazing that we got to the year 2025 without
41:10
that changing. Players right now use different
41:14
weak cores or add-ons to get past that.
41:16
Like there's an add on called bigger debuffs that shows like 6
41:20
I think or something like that. And so I think most of these
41:26
should be easy wins that we should have by midnight, but I'd
41:31
definitely be very concerned if midnight starts and we haven't
41:35
seen these changes. Yeah, I'm, I'm actually
41:39
surprised that unit frames aren't being adjusted income in
41:44
conjunction with the cooldown manager.
41:46
The cooldown manager, as it is on the alpha right now, allows
41:50
you to have some things tracked as like essential, then major,
41:56
then just like blacklisted, and you can actually change the
42:01
order in which they appear. So the same thing, same sort of
42:04
functionality. Seems like an easy lift into
42:08
your rate frames or party frames you would think.
42:11
So. But here we are.
42:14
I'm also not sure what kind of customization add-ons will be
42:17
able to do the frames. Like I think some of them, and
42:21
I'm, I'm not speaking from expertise here, but I believe
42:23
some of them are already just reskinning the default frames
42:26
rather than creating their own, whereas others do just create
42:29
their own frames. The ones that reskin the
42:31
Blizzard frames, I don't see why that shouldn't still fit their
42:35
new philosophy. But yeah, I I have no idea where
42:39
that will end up by the end of alpha since I think a lot of add
42:42
on stuff is going to be in flux. Yeah, you're right.
42:45
It's oddly in flux. I we've seen obviously big thing
42:50
is weak or is saying that they're calling it quits.
42:53
We're seeing that DBM has already said that they're going
42:57
to release something that changes the timeline into bars
43:00
that people are used to. So different add on authors are
43:05
going in different directions. But again, that can change as
43:08
things get adjusted and what allowances are there in the API
43:13
once things go live. So it at this point, it is kind
43:17
of the Wild West. We're all going with speculation
43:20
and hopes, which is why I definitely think that the key
43:23
question is what do we need out of the UI if it comes straight
43:27
from Blizzard or is allowed through add-ons.
43:30
Either way, I know that players who are resourceful and
43:34
dedicated are going to get that. But if Blizzard doesn't put it
43:38
in the base UI, that creates the same skill gap that they're
43:42
really trying to remove with these these changes to add-ons.
43:48
Something I did notice when setting up the new quarter
43:50
manager, like a lot of the arguments against all this week
43:54
or stuff is that if you're a new player, it just like you have to
43:58
start the game for the first time, you have to learn what
44:01
add-ons are and import stuff. All of that stuff is probably
44:05
faster than setting up the quarter manager for me, I will
44:07
say. I think it's faster because when
44:11
you download Hikelly or you download a week or a pack for
44:16
your class, it's usually set up based on the tier and what you
44:21
should be doing in that tier. And with Blizzard now assuming
44:24
that responsibility because they're supplanting these
44:27
add-ons, they very much need to do the same thing.
44:30
The rotation highlight needs to update based on your talent
44:35
choices based on your current current rotation, which can
44:41
change if you're switching between tier pieces based on
44:45
your, again, the talent choices based on like whatever hotfix
44:49
came around that might completely shift things.
44:52
And so Blizzard has to take that responsibility on and it needs
44:55
to be front loaded. It should be that you hit level
45:02
80 or maybe even before then, but I would think that you hit
45:05
the level cap and it goes, congratulations on on hitting
45:09
80. Do you want to enable this?
45:11
And you could just opt out of all of them and but that is your
45:14
choice. I think that if they're going to
45:18
make it that you don't have to go outside the game.
45:21
It can't be that like yes, it's on, it's in the game, but you
45:25
need to go to an outside resource just to figure out how
45:28
to set it up, or even that it exists itself.
45:31
Yeah, I could see you in it because you can't export import
45:34
called our manager setups, right.
45:37
And so I could see it being similar to now where you just go
45:39
to Waggo and you download the the pack or whatever for your
45:42
called our manager instead, which is still an improvement in
45:45
terms of usability for newer players.
45:48
But it is funny that you kind of end up in the same place.
45:53
Yeah, I that is, that is true. Should do you believe that the
45:57
base UI should have import codes of what do I want to track and
46:02
what what do I want to ignore? Do you think that that would be
46:05
an improvement versus the current situation where you need
46:09
to go through all those buffs and debuffs and so forth
46:12
yourself? I do think export import is a
46:16
good idea because I think that the cool down manager shouldn't
46:19
try and guess what is relevant for me.
46:22
If my class can put up a buff, it should be on the cordon
46:26
tracker. Right now it's not that right?
46:30
Like I can't. I don't have one for abundance
46:32
as resto druid even though it's my most key buff.
46:35
And so I think Blizzard should actually be hands off with that
46:37
stuff. Offer everything.
46:39
Let me pick what I want to see instead of guessing what I want
46:43
to want to see and maybe being wrong.
46:45
Because if if they are wrong I have nowhere to track it right.
46:48
I can't track it with a weaker anymore and so my only option is
46:53
my massive list of buffs, which is currently the top right of my
46:56
screen and can't really be centralized since that isn't
46:59
very customizable and includes a bunch of stuff I don't want to
47:02
see like my raid buffs. And so I think they should just
47:06
offer everything. Let me pick what I want to see,
47:08
and if someone just wants to borrow my import, that's 100%
47:14
fine, They can still move it around, right?
47:17
Like, they're basically just looking to me for a list of
47:20
what's useful to track, which they're going to do it anyway.
47:23
Either they grab my import or they're going to ask in the
47:26
discord, hey, which of these do I need to see?
47:30
And so one just cuts out the middleman.
47:36
Fair enough, but how granular do you think it should be?
47:39
Because there are times where I am changing things per fight.
47:44
I go from one raid boss to next and then I'm changing my
47:48
talents. I am I have a week or that's
47:51
tracking a very particular debuff or give me a reminder of
47:55
a particular event. If Blizzard has like let's say
48:00
you're in Midnight and there is a dominar that is throwing
48:05
curses on people, that's very important to track in the base
48:10
UI. Should I be able to highlight
48:14
that particular, that particular thing separate from everything
48:19
else on my unit frames on the the of encountering encounter
48:26
warners, that sort of stuff? Or do you think that that is the
48:31
mental thought process that should be left to players where
48:35
it's like, no, no, I need to recognize that and act
48:38
accordingly and the UI shouldn't have additional help for me on
48:42
that? I think for the most part you
48:45
kind of have to offer it because it's always been part of the
48:49
game. And if it's a curse, it does a
48:51
lot of damage, then your healer has to know about it anyway,
48:56
right? So it has to be communicated
48:57
somewhere. I'm not looking out into the
48:59
world to see which characters have like an angry purple mask
49:04
above their head, right? Like I need some way to see who
49:07
has that debuff, and if it can show on my frames, then it has
49:11
to be accessible to all other parts of the UI too or it just
49:14
doesn't make sense. Otherwise everyone would just
49:16
have to get their rate frames out so they could see that.
49:19
The purple mask debuff however, I think it's rough for them to
49:27
be adding and removing this stuff every tier.
49:29
So I think it should just work like add-ons where you can just
49:32
input the spell name or the spell ID and then track it and
49:36
then you can remove it when you're done with it.
49:38
Yes it's a step towards needing to mess with your UI more, but
49:45
also this stuff can just show by default right?
49:48
So they're just giving you the opt in to not show stuff if
49:52
you're not interested in it. I'm going to make a suggestion
49:56
here fast dev of your listing. When people speak about spell
50:01
IDSI immediately think of third party sites.
50:03
Spell ID's are not something you see in the game normally The way
50:07
that I can. Only way I can think of
50:08
circumventing that is by when you are reading through stuff on
50:13
the encounter journal, the dungeon journal, raid raid
50:17
journal, being able to click or right click on a on a buff and
50:23
then say track as important or something And that changes what
50:27
your UI, how your UI handles it. I think that's the best way to
50:31
keep it in game because otherwise you're immediately
50:34
going to 3rd party sites. I think that when you talk about
50:41
making the game more accessible to newer players and then we
50:46
talk about like this very fine-tuned level of
50:49
customizability, I think both can exist, right?
50:52
So long as the newer players don't feel like they have to do
50:54
it. Like filtering out debuffs is
50:57
probably not something I need until Mythic raid high keys
51:01
where it's expected that those players will be using every
51:04
resource available to them anyway.
51:07
But I agree that you don't want people to have to interest spell
51:10
ID for something they need to see.
51:12
But I think if it shows it by default and you can just type in
51:15
a spell ID or a name to opt out of it, that's fine.
51:18
But I also like your idea about like adding right click and then
51:21
add to add to filter buttons and stuff like that.
51:25
I think you just need to let users customize stuff beyond
51:31
templated lists or you're just never going to be able to offer
51:35
everything that players want. And maybe that's the idea, but I
51:40
really think it's expected. And it's expected because it
51:44
ends up and improving your UI by a lot.
51:49
That is the 90% conversation that's been happening is like
51:54
what is that 10% that could be missing?
51:57
And I guess I'll pose that to you as the last question.
52:00
What are things that are currently available to healers
52:04
that you feel could the game could live without both that it
52:09
the game does not explore that territory anymore and that we no
52:13
longer have access to it as players?
52:16
So stuff that they're removing that I think would be a good
52:19
thing. Yeah, or things that you want
52:22
them to remove that you think would be a good thing.
52:24
I think the game in general definitely feels like it's just
52:27
clogged up with a bunch of different things right now.
52:29
Right? Like I, I play a raid boss, I've
52:32
downloaded a, a raid pack because we're expected to have
52:36
it. It does, it does a lot of
52:39
essential things that I need it for and then it does 100 other
52:44
things that I don't need it for. And players don't notice this
52:48
because they're really focused on their character in a fight.
52:52
But if you take a video or if you take a screenshot of
52:55
yourself mid fight and then look at the information on your
52:59
screen, I bet you'll find that you're not even using 70% of it.
53:05
And I think that's one of the big highlights of this change is
53:08
most of that crap is getting cleared out.
53:11
Even these we core packs that a lot of people use and they love
53:15
and that's good. Most of those packs are often
53:19
not even designed by someone playing the spec right?
53:22
And it's like a mix of essential information and stuff that's
53:27
just sitting there in the middle of your screen that you never
53:29
have to look at or care about. And maybe people will do that
53:34
with the Blizzard version as well.
53:36
But I think cleaning all of this stuff out and just giving you a
53:40
cleaner, simpler experience is good on its face.
53:47
Speaking of stuff that's 90% of the way there, by the way, most
53:50
healers use like a mouse over or click casting for a lot of their
53:53
heels. Blizzard has a version of this.
53:57
It's quite good, it's 90% of the way there.
54:01
It's clearly missing 10 and I'd love if they added the 10.
54:06
What's the 10 there? So it doesn't work that well
54:09
with a lot of mouse buttons, whereas add-ons like click do.
54:15
And also a lot of people use something called a help harm
54:17
macro. Or if they're massing over a
54:19
frame that might heal them. If they're not massing over a
54:22
frame it might cast your DPS button on the enemy.
54:25
You can't really do that well with the inbuilt mouse overs
54:30
because it'll just it's basically just one button, one
54:32
spell. And so I'd love for that kind of
54:34
functionality as well. Because when I was sitting up in
54:36
alpha I didn't want to make mess over macros since they are slow
54:43
to sit up, but I really didn't want to lose my help palm so I
54:46
ended up making the macros anyway.
54:49
The pruning or the consolidation of abilities will allow you to
54:56
be able to comfortably do either or even if you don't have help
55:01
harm, but I do. I did really enjoy Help Harm,
55:05
but it. Definitely helps.
55:06
It definitely helps us having less buttons, but also it's
55:10
about the quality of buttons, right?
55:11
Like you've got some key binds that are much better than
55:14
others. And so sure, it's true.
55:17
My shift 5 button might be free now, but I really like having my
55:21
best DPS spell and my best healing spell on the same button
55:25
because it's a really good key bind and also they're not taking
55:30
help harm away right? Like as far as we know, and I
55:33
know everything is in flux. As far as we know we can keep
55:35
macros and honestly even add-ons like click might still work
55:40
perfectly fine since I believe under the hood they are just
55:42
fancy macros. But it would be -1 add on for me
55:48
if I could do it using Blizzard's version instead.
55:51
Yeah, I believe click voodoo. Maybe not voodoo, Voodoo has
55:55
some extra things, but definitely click doesn't use
55:58
chat and doesn't and doesn't do read things in combat that isn't
56:05
just like your normal UI. Yeah, so I think it should be
56:08
safe. And of course how far macros are
56:11
easy to to set up. So even if they were slightly
56:15
adjusted to work in the new setup, they seem like not what
56:21
Blizzard is targeting. Yeah, they seem safe, but also
56:25
it's just like writing the macros is slow, right?
56:29
I, I don't download click because it has unique
56:31
functionality, although it has some of that too with the
56:33
ability to bind to mouse buttons, which in game doesn't
56:37
do very well. But I mostly download click just
56:40
to make the setup experience easier.
56:43
And so I don't see why that isn't something that the game
56:46
itself could offer baseline, since it seems right up the
56:48
alley right now. Is there any final things that
56:52
you would like to say before we wrap this up?
56:57
I think the healing through midnight alpha is going to be
57:01
this like rapidly evolving experience.
57:04
I don't think anyone has a good idea of how it'll look in the
57:08
end yet. And so if your class is missing
57:12
a key ability or you're worried about its play style, then I
57:18
would say strap in, write feedback posts, let them know
57:21
what you think, and we'll just see how it all looks over the
57:24
next few weeks as they give us some real content and as they
57:27
roll out the rest of the class changes.
57:29
Like I, I think no one assumes that this is the end state.
57:33
I think we still have a lot of stuff to come.
57:36
Yeah, there are many classes that do not have their Apex
57:40
talents, that have a lot of not yet implemented talent points in
57:46
their spec class or hero trees. So we are still looking at many
57:53
specs still needing to reach their completion.
57:56
At this point we've only got to 83, so even with what is there,
58:01
we don't have full access to everything yet.
58:03
And you know, Wow is all about the end game, so there's still a
58:08
lot to come. This was an amazing talk.
58:12
I would love to have you back, maybe when we get closer to
58:14
release and we can see how things evolved over the course
58:17
of the alpha and beta. But thank you so much for coming
58:22
up today. Where can people find you if
58:24
they want to hear more of your thoughts?
58:26
Yeah, I'm keen to catch up again closer to midnight.
58:28
We can discuss all of the healer frame changes that made between
58:31
now and then. If you're looking for me, you
58:35
can find me in most class discords.
58:37
I also have a X account that I very rarely use, but you can
58:42
find me on there and we'll also put a link to the question the
58:46
Epic Discord where I'm a lot more active in the in the
58:51
description. Well, thank you again and until
58:56
next time guys, may all your hits be good.