Where's mah mana management?

#0 - Oct. 2, 2010, 7:35 p.m.

First off, I'm not in Beta so maybe there's something I'm missing, but I thought I'd make a (hopefully) intelligent observation.

GC has said that they want to make mana "fun" for healers, and has also compared the medium "heal" spell with downranking. In BC downranking was a tool used to minimize overhealing so mana wouldn't be wasted. The problem is they've given healers a toolbox to minimize overhealing while putting them in an environment where heals are so weak compared to health pools that a healer effectively can't do any meaningful amount of overhealing (as long as he/she is not being a moron). With the way healers are currently designed, without overhealing there is no mana management. While you can technically put forth the spam your medium heal gameplay as "mana management," what are you managing? Or to to put it another way, what could you do differently with your mana from wipe to wipe to make it so you don't oom this time? From what I'm seeing the only thing you can do is hope your group members do a little bit better at avoiding damage. I don't want my only mana management tool to be telling Srstabsalot to stop playing in fires. That does not make for fun and interesting gameplay.

Ghostcrawler

#74 - Oct. 3, 2010, 7:28 p.m.

Q u o t e:
I can only assume you haven't watched any of the heroic videos, where tanks with over 100k health are getting stomped in two GCDs. And that's in a five-man. Believe me, Cata raids will have mechanics that kill players extremely quickly and will absolutely require use of inefficient flash heals.

If your tanks are taking 50K in a boss hit, then one of the following is most likely true:

1) You are ignoring some mechanic of the fight (like debuffing or interrupting).
2) You're talking about an isolated scary moment in the fight when you and the tank need to consider cooldowns.
3) The encounter is bugged or overtuned. If you suspect this is the case, then provide specific feedback (the name of the boss at the very least) in the dungeons and raids forums (ideally the beta version).

If you are a reasonably competent healer who uses a variety of heals and isn't spamming Divine Light on every trash pull, then you should be able to keep everyone alive. If your group isn't just ignoring encounter mechanics and trying to burn the boss down, then you shouldn't be running out of mana either.

Ghostcrawler

#76 - Oct. 3, 2010, 7:35 p.m.

Q u o t e:
But why does this all matter? To make the original point of my post: without overhealing there is no mana management. If we can choose any heal, which is always going to be the most efficient one that gets the job done (which I believe will be fairly easy to determine), then encounter mechanics completely determine what heal we use to a MUCH larger extent than ever before. What this boils down to is this: Making it so that my only mana management option is to tell the dps players to stop playing in fires is not fun and interesting gameplay.

I think the risk of overhealing will exist. If you're not doing so now, it's probably because you're in green or blue gear with relatively low crit rates. If the rogue takes 2K damage from a splash attack, and you use Divine Light, you'll probably overheal. If you're in a raid and both healers attempt to heal her, you'll almost certainly overheal.

I agree that the risk of overhealing is key to mana management. There is more to healing than mana management though. The cast times and cooldowns of heals have a big role too. If you start casting a slow heal for a very wounded ally, then they might die. If you squander your cooldown then it's not going to be there for you when you really need it. Healers are also somewhat notorious for keeping everyone else up but forgetting to keep themselves alive. You just slip into the selfless role I suppose. :)