#1 - Jan. 19, 2011, 5:11 p.m.
•Circle of Healing now has a 10 yards radius, down from 18 yards.
While I understand why you guys want to nerf this, (so that its not a spell you simply push every CD, but something you use situationally instead) I think that this is too much of a nerf. Here's why:
Most encounters in Cata require the raid to be spread out for many of the mechanics. Usually about 10 yards or so from eachother. In this scenario, CoH will not only be an extremely inefficient heal, but also extremely ineffective. With near perfect positioning, and perfect target selection by the priest, you could possibly heal 5 targets with it. However, getting 6 would be nearly impossible and thus making the glyph for CoH useless. The problem I see with this is that in order for CoH to be an effective heal, it adds an additional level of complexity to raid positioning that no one other than a healer is going to pay that much attention to. In reality, and how most raids spread out for boss mechanics, you're looking at 3-4 people max being healed by it.
Now I do understand that CoH is being buffed by ~30%, but I was under the impression that was to counter the PoH nerf. And while this nerf wont effect phases in encounters when the raid is grouped up, healing during these phases is never an issue anyways with half way competent healers.
My main concern here is that with all these nerfs to holy at the same time as buffs to disc, (and buffing both druid and shaman raid heals) you're going to force priests into playing disc and giving up raid healing to other classes. I've been on the PTR and there is a very noticable difference in holy priests ability to raid heal. The nerf to PoH brought us in line with the other classes, but now I feel like this CoH nerf is making us one of the weaker. If this is what your intentions are, then so be it, I doubt I'm going to convince you to change your mind. But just now that myself, and many other priests, enjoy playing the raid healing role in raids where they are able to focus on healing more than just one target. If we're forced to play disc in order to maximize our class potential we can kiss these days goodbye.
