Incoming!
Since my last post on COH and Cooldowns, it is now even further expanded upon.
AoE Healing Nerf
I feel the need to post here in the hopes of alleviating player confusion. The first FAQ was a link to my quotes attempting to explain our concerns about Circle of Healing and Wild Growth. This FAQ by contrast is written from a player POV that this is a shaman issue. It isn’t in our minds.We looked at the three main AE heals and found that CoH and WG were being used too much in too many different situations and making AE healing too easy. CH is supposed to be used in more situations, because the shaman arsenal is smaller. It isn’t as easy to use as CoH and WG. Shamans are still casting other spells.
Of course we realize not every Holy priest is spamming CoH. That’s good — you all will notice less of a difference after the change.
Some encounters will likely be more difficult with this nerf. Malygos phase 1 comes to mind. We are prepared to make encounter changes if necessary.
We explored several options to nerf CoH and WG and eventually settled on a cooldown. You can use those AEs when needed and then switch to single-target heals to top everyone off.
I’m not going to keep responding to this thread, because we have plenty on the topic already, but I wanted to offer a clarification.
Before everyone screams. GC has a point – COH shouldn’t be 70% of your healing done for a given encounter. That being said, we have a lot more heals in our arsenal that are available to us to use.
Prayer of Healing, well timed for Loatheb following by blowing your COH cooldown can be just as good as a few quick COH snaps.
Prayer of Mending, during Malygos’s Vortex is quite nice. Especially if you can couple it with a T7 bonus. Be sure you have it up on yourself prior to Vortex being cast, so your CD is up. Watch a Prayer of Mending tracker, and recast it after all 5 (or 6) charges are used. (which should only be 6 seconds). While you wait for the CD, you can PW:Shield and use 2 COH’s during Vortex – One at the start and a second at the end.
To expand on Vortex, Blizzard has already stated that they would be watching and possibly nerf Vortex.
With the cooldown on COH and WG we will probably nerf the Vortex. I say probably because players are farming the encounter already so I’m not 100% that things will go from farm to impossible with this change, but we’ll be sure to test it out a lot and watch for your feedback.
Yes, a 6 second cooldown is a long time— especially considering we’ve been used to having it spammable. It will require some additional thinking- which from some of the priests I’ve seen could be an uphill battle. When to cast it? Do I spec Holy Reach? Etc… I think after they introduce the cooldown, it won’t be the end to this story.