(10-27-2013, 05:02 PM)Naunet Wrote: It's not. For 266 mana, you can place a shield on a target that absorbs damage equal to 18% of the target's HP. If your tank is a PLD and let's say, for the sake of discussion, that they're in full Darklight, then they probably have ~5.5k HP. That's a whopping 990 damage abosrbed. My Cure I can crit for well over 1k HP and regularly heals for 800. My Cure II heals for ~1.3k and can crit for nearly 2k. Cure II has the same cost as Stoneskin. Cure II's cast time is also significantly less than Stoneskin's. This makes Stoneskin horribly inefficient in a mana:heal ratio unless your tank happens to be a WAR (which, if the tank has 8k HP, would mean your Stoneskin is absorbing 1440 damage). Stoneskin is a spell you cast at the start of a fight or when you have nothing else to heal and feel like buffering your tank's HP a bit (and then it's only really worthwhile if your tank happens to be a WAR).
But it's effective health. Â :-\
Quote:I'd appreciate if you didn't talk down to me as though I were dim-witted, though, and have no understanding of what effective health is. I participated in progression raiding for years as a discipline priest; I know well the value of absorbs in healing. Stoneskin is just not that awesome a spell.
I'm not talking down to you. Â I'm sorry that you feel that I am, but I'm truly not. Â But you keep completely dismissing a spell that offers scaling Effective Health that will get more and more powerful as people gear up, and saying it's just not worth it because it doesn't "heal" for as much as Cure II. Â Yet it's completely immune to overheal (which is it's secondary advantage) and effectively increases the health of your target over what they could otherwise reach of themselves. Â That's huge. Â Sure, it doesn't stand out particularly much (barring certain situations and the mana savings it provides, as well as the ability to "sit on your hands" to allow the tank to establish threat) in 4 mans. Â But it's not really designed to reach its full potential in a 4 man. Â And if you are as experienced as a Disc Priest as you say you are, you should know this.
Quote:Indeed. And healing threat is pretty much a non-issue as long as your tank is paying attention even the slightest bit. The only times I've ever pulled aggro as a healer have been moments where the tank ran in with Regen still ticking (which is not something they should be doing). It's simply not something to be concerned by.
Okay, well, all the other WHMs that I talk to that constantly bitch and moan about threat and pulling it must just be hallucinating.
Quote:I maintain that Cure III's range is far too short to be truly effective. 4y is nothing; it doesn't even cover melee range around the boss fully. I do like it as a spell; I just think the aoe range should be tweaked.
I'd like the aoe range to be increased, too. Â I simply take issue with the spell being called useless and ineffective when it's not.
Quote:You love a single target DoT that is nothing more than a single target DoT and find that single target DoT "awesome"? Even though it's just something you toss out casually between healing? xD Opinions are opinions and all, but really. There's nothing awesome about Aero II. It has zero synergy with your healing, and if you didn't have Aero II, you wouldn't miss it as it adds nothing to your toolkit.
Not everything in our toolkit has to be awesome in every situation, or even in most situations. Â Plus, what I consider awesome isn't necessary what you consider awesome, and that's okay. Â We can disagree.
Quote:Ah, if this turns out to be the case, it would be wonderful news. Cause right now it does barely more than diddly squat. xD That said, I haven't seen anything from devs regarding this, so I won't get my hopes up.
Right now it's just flat doubling your Spell Speed, but the tooltip itself doesn't give an indication of how much it SHOULD be increasing. Â So either it's another one of the spells intended to really only be useful after gear scales quite a bit, or there's something missing, as it doesn't make an appreciable difference for the length of the CD. A 5 minute CD for a 10 second boost to our Spell Speed that doesn't really reduce cast times (my Cure cast time goes from 1.91s to 1.56s) by an appreciable amount seems overkill.
Quote:Swiftcast happens to have an animation as well, which must follow through before a spell can be cast to use the buff. This means that for whatever you're using Swiftcast for, you must factor in the length of the Swiftcast animation as well as the animation for the chosen spell. Pop in-game and do it with Holy - you'll notice the exploding purply animation that initiates the damage happens about a second after you activate the Holy ability even with Swiftcast.
It's still way, way faster than casting Holy without it.
Quote:Not sure what you mean about tuning a spell around fates, as I said nothing of the sort.
You mentioned it was more effective for you to spam Aero in Fates.
Quote:If you'd read my previous posts, you would've seen me espousing the benefits of mouseover macros to the OP.
That doesn't mean you were using them when this occurred, which is why I asked.
Quote:So yes. I'm very much aware of what they are and how they benefit healers. I also know that spells in ARR all have animations that must complete before the action actually goes off. This is how the game functions, not lag. You can try it for anything - Cure, Regen, Shroud of Saints, Benediction, PoM, whatever you want. All have animation times. They're usually masked by the cast time, but for instant spells, it means they are not truly instant. This is a verifiable phenomenon in how the game works.
The Benediction cast goes off as the animation occurs. Â The heal actually occurs midway during a very fast animation (I've tested this several times to confirm it's the case), not at the end. Â I've never had it not go off at the right time when I was using it, except when it was coming up off CD and I was trying to mash it too soon.
Quote:It's not bad. You misunderstand me again, as I never said damage spells must in some way contribute to healing. However, you cannot pretend that dpsing in between heals actually lends some kind of flavor to the class when the damage spells don't synergize with your healing. They're just damage spells, nothing more. Casting them or not casting them changes nothing about how you as a WHM heal. They don't take away flavor and they don't add it. That is what I'm saying.
Do they need to add flavor? Â The last thing I want is an Atonement in this game. Â Like, seriously.
Quote:Telling a WHM to just dps in between heals to keep things interesting is as useful as telling a tank to heal between taunts and defensive CDs and generating aggro to keep things interesting.
Some people find DPSing interesting. Â For them, it's entertaining. Â Some others would instead say, "Hey tank, pull more stuff!" and they would find that absolutely interesting. Â Still others would find spamming Holy mindlessly entertaining as hell.
Quote:[edit] Random aside: I run AK with a BRD tank for lols to try and "keep things interesting". That doesn't mean that WHM is intrinsically an interesting class design.
I get that you don't find it interesting. Â I simply disagree with you. Â I find WHM a very interesting class, and I enjoy it.
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