Healing Throughput and Mana Generation in Guardians of the Dream

In Development Guardians of the Dream PTR
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Healers have a lot of decisions and resources to manage that change depending on the type of content you are doing. At its core, we want healers to have interesting abilities and choices to make while healing, and we want you to have to manage your mana pool. We’re hoping our changes reduce the amount of overhealing and make mana matter slightly more, which should make healing across the game a more enjoyable experience.

Single target healing spells currently don’t feel like they move the health bar enough. We want these heals to be impactful and have a purpose, and hope this makes healing a Mythic+ dungeon less stressful for healers.

Group healing spells have seen a lot of modifications and increases to their total throughput over the course of Dragonflight. These spells often feel like they are rapidly increasing a raid from a damaged state to a full health state. We plan on adjusting the effectiveness of many of these spells.

Raid survivability cooldowns feel like they have all entered the territory of making your raid feel nearly invulnerable when being used. While it’s a great moment for everyone to stack in a Power Word: Barrier and reduce damage taken and stack a few healing cooldowns, we think the combined power of these has escalated to a point where they make the raid slightly too sturdy.

Mana generation is a problem that’s related to all of the above. We want mana to feel like a finite resource and for the few ways you can still generate mana to be relevant, but want your spell choices during a raid fight to matter. We’re reducing the effectiveness of many mana restoration class abilities and specific items.

Please test healing in the Guardians of the Dream PTR and use this thread for any general feedback you have about it.

Thank you!

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For raids, you can do all the stingy mana restrictions you want. A raid fight is a marathon and all about resource management, that’s fair game.

However, mythic+ should be the opposite - you should allow mana to regenerate almost instantly between pulls. Or at the very least, leave mana regeneration for non-raid content as it is right now.

Shadowlands and its seasonal affixes (Prideful, Encrypted) allowed healers to restore their mana after a dozen or so enemy groups. This kept the momentum going. Meanwhile, during the seasons with no such recharging affix, classes like shamans struggled with mana quite a bit until they got decent gear (and even then it was a bit rough). It’s not fun waiting for a healer to eat some mana buns.

Things like interrupts, cleanses, strong AoE heals or utility spells already are on a cooldown. Other spells have a long cast time, so even if mana were infinite you can’t heal fast enough to save the entire group without any extra defensives.

These things already provide some decisionmaking during a fight. Mana management should not be a concern in a race against time. Especially with the current enemy damage output, it is not reasonable to ask mythic+ healers to be conservative with their healing.
The only exception are boss fights with constant damage output like Melidrussa/Khajin/Talixae. These fights don’t have much else going on, so focusing exclusively on efficient healing is fair game. But not anywhere else.

I hope that the dev team can acknowledge that mythic+ is a different beast compared to raiding and any changes to mana regen should be balanced separately.
They already buffed healing cooldowns for mythic+ separately back in 10.0.5/10.0.7 (spells like Healing Tide Totem or Rewind are stronger in non-raid groups), so it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary to do the same here.

The healing changes at the start of 10.1 (increased health and damage but same healing) worked fine for raids but made mythic+ healing more stressful. This is an example of what happens if changes are being made for all of PvE. Please don’t make the same mistake again.

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The conclusions taken away in this seem to me like something an encounter designer would write, who has looked at healers and is salty they are able to deal with a mechanic and completely out of touch with actual healer players.

You say you want “spells to matter” when being pressed, while most of the later bosses in the tier (save sarkareth mythic p2) require a tone of healing and actually quite nicely result in healers and the mana curve being exhausted towards the end of the fight (even with trinkets like rashok which you implemented that make mana less of a resource to worry about). So does that mean we are supposed to sit on our spells and enjoy the fun dps gameplay of pressing one or two dmg buttons? Being forced to not press something during an encounter and idle around is some of the worst design possible. Mythic Sark is the best example for this, you force healers to basically spend all their resources in P1 with massive raid wide damage and then every healer falls asleep in P2. This is not a healing issue, this is an encounter design issue. P2 is not enjoyable simply because we are not able to press our healing buttons and provide value. Forcing us to not so so during damage events would be even worse.

“healing cooldowns counteract our big damage mechanics” is such a weird take. That’s what they are supposed to do. You simultaneously want healers to NOT have to press their spells and conserve mana, but you ALSO want to take away the tools they have to deal with the damage events that the encounters provide.

The point I agree on is singletarget healing being to weak, but there is really no reason to nerf aoe healing in favor of ST healing. Both fulfill entirely different purposes and preferably an encounter is designed in a way, which requires both. Which they, spoiler, haven’t really been in a long time.

Having mana matter is an alright concept, but it should matter in a way that doesn’t punish actually playing the game. There is a bit difference between managing, and forcibly conserving, where you seem to be pushing for the later. No healer I know off enjoys mana as a resource, when it means holding off from doing what they are ment to, which is heal.

In conclusion, stop trying to punish players for using the tools you provide and instead create encounters that don’t rely on stacking set tools to outlive them and make the damage patterns more diverse.

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we want healers to have interesting abilities and choices to make while healing, and we want you to have to manage your mana pool.

Hm… cause while healing you haven’t to deal with important choices. Idk what u think what the enjoyable part of mana management is. Does ever someone enjoyed to get punished for pumping in a emergency situation to keep your raid alive? Healers need to manage there cooldowns, do mechanics, deal dmg, healing spikedmg just to feel the next 20 seconds useless as a healer. And I nearly forget that Paladins and Evoker need to manage an extra ressource as well.

atm healers generate an insane amount of mana and a big part of it is the Rashok trinket. This will be gone in 10.2… and the cool part is in the most fights u don’t need to look at your mana but you will be short of mana at the end of the encounter.

I tried so hard to find the point behind this:

We’re hoping our changes reduce the amount of overhealing and make mana matter slightly more, which should make healing across the game a more enjoyable experience.

I really don’t get how someone can think the 50-70% overhealing results from mana generation. that’s so bizarre. but this idea comes from the same company that thinks to fire a manager will solve a mobbing problem.

Group healing spells […] often feel like they are rapidly increasing a raid from a damaged state to a full health state. We plan on adjusting the effectiveness of many of these spells.

Raid survivability cooldowns feel like they have all entered the territory of making your raid feel nearly invulnerable […] we think the combined power of these has escalated to a point where they make the raid slightly too sturdy.

Good. But don’t really matter if u don’t start to create friendly and enjoyable content for healers.

Why do we have 50-70% overhealing?Burstdmg and then nothing
Why do we Stack Cds?
Burstdmg and then nothing
Why are group healing spells got into this position?
Burstdmg and then nothing

Mana generation is a problem that’s related to all of the above.

Do you know what? The only problem that’s related to all of this is writing in blue letters above.

Since Season 1 we told u the insane amount of burst damage is a problem. We told you the lack of spot healing is a problem. Your solution was to buff player health and buff the burstdmg …

And now? Your solution is this? Nerfing Healers? Bring back mana management like u brought back aggro managment? Yea that was also something that got enjoyed a lot.

Stop using the easy escape and start to make varied encounters and dungeons.
There are so many more dmg patterns than burst dmg:

  • How about more ticking dmg to reduce the overheal?
  • More dispell mechanics just dots or other stuff that we need to dispell in early content and outheal on a later state?
  • More spikes on 3 to 5 dps not the whole raid?

Please test healing in the Guardians of the Dream PTR and use this thread for any general feedback you have about it.

No need to test. We tested a lot over the last year. It feels like we are paying for a beta test and no one is interested in our feedback. u guys got feedback from us. u haven’t listen. just open your eyes and ears mr blizzard.

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100% True - for nearly every raid encounter in Dragonflight so far.

as a quick recap:

Season 1:

  • Eranogg (good)

Fun Encounter with a dot, ae dmg, more dot, voids, splashdmg

  • Council (issue)

Weird fight, nearly no dmg

  • Dathea (issue)

Dmg spikes on heavy movement phase, nearly no dmg for the first ~60% of the fight. (Please don’t Stack healing cooldowns)

  • Terros (issue)

Smash - wait - explosiobs - wait - smash - wait

  • Sennarth (issue)

Everything on this boss is not fun as a healer. We all know - healer loves stairs. Ah and burst dmg!

  • Kurogg (fun)

This Boss sparks hope. Smacks the tanks, dot ticks, bigger dots to spotheal.

  • Diurna (issue)

Burst dmg, burst dmg, burst dmg - Oh P2 even more burst dmg.

  • Raszageth (issue)

This boss is the mother of design issue in Dragonflight. Burst dmg into even harder burst dmg just to start idle because 25 seconds nothing happens. P2 - shield and idle. P3 - burst dmg and idle.

Season 2:

  • Kazzara (Ok)

The level of Idle depands on your team

  • Chamber (Ok)

Burst dmg! And an dot to lower our hp to start earlier with overthealing

  • experiment (issue)

Everything is just an burst ae. If the 2. dude dies healers just moving an orb…

  • Assault (No)

We don’t speak about that one

  • Rashok (issue)

the dmg spikes in this fight were insane. Healabsorb, soak, destacking and waiting for the next round… intermission hits were around 25-30% of your HP! DONT STACK COOLDOWNS!

  • Zskarn (good)

This boss is an issue but not on a healing perspective. Tanks got smashed, Aoe dmg, dots, ticking dmg.

  • Magmorax (issue)

Ok we have an ticking dot and at the end of the fight the boss is fun for healing. But first 3 minutes are juste burst heal and near death expierence for dps player

  • Echo (issue)

P1 + P2 is just burst dmg and idle. And P3 got this ticking dmg thing that isn’t healable.

  • Sarkareth (issue)

Nothing more to said.

13 from 17 bosses had design issues from a healing perspective but we should watch our mana. This encounter must be awesome with mana management. We should fated this stuff!

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Dear Blizzard, you never fail to disappoint us nowadays :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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I’m more concerned that Evoker has the smallest healing radius in the game (30m) and at the same time they cut him a sphere that at least somehow compensated for it. When will they increase the radius?

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Community: We feel M+ healing isn’t fun and too stressful
Blue Post: Guys we heard your concerns, so we are gonna make you run out of mana faster and make your big cooldowns heal less. Now you have time to relax between pulls because you will need to eat every 2 mins, and you don’t have to worry about your big cooldowns because they won’t do much anyway.

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Holy Paladin is still flooded with Holy Power and the spenders received zero changes. The point of having a resource to manage, is to have high points which is spending the resource and low points which is building up the resource.

The HPal rework gave the spec too many outs for every situation. Personally (and I’m shocked I’m saying this!) I enjoyed more the previous expansion’s careful, calculating HPal with less cooldowns.

Now the spec is GCD-capped, which leaves no room for cool talents like Veneration. It also makes for a confusing design, where it feels like you’re constantly juggling plates and managing multiple resources (HP, short cooldowns like Holy Prism, IoL procs, HS stacks, Glimmer targets) and some with very little pay-off - you spend HP mostly to capitalize on Awakening procs, otherwise your spenders don’t make for much decision-making on the moment: heal with WoG or deal damage with Shield of the Righteous. It feels like I’m playing Legion, BfA and SL HPal all at the same time and all the iterations are fighting against one another.

Maybe try to incentivize more differentiation between melee HPal and caster HPal because everyone is speccing into everything right now - Tyr’s Deliverance is taken mostly as a “free, passive heal” with no afterthought to it, just to be used in combination with Hand of Divinity every 1.5mins.

Blessed Focus was interesting, pushing even further into HPal as a spot healer, but there’s very little to spec into such a playstyle otherwise and it seems to conflict very much with the rest of the spec.

Daybreak also seems very confused. It’s a talent to min-max Glimmer throughput into either damage or healing. It doesn’t feel like its primary focus is to be a tool to manage your mana pool and maybe it shouldn’t be. It also doesn’t help that Glimmer now has so so many rules around it. It does add a whole lot more depth but its also confusing and I can see it becoming a huge barrier to entry for new healers.

All in all, while I’m enjoying using the new toys I got, it doesn’t feel like the spec makes for a coherent design loop. Its relationship with how it builds and spends Holy Power should really be looked at, along with further cooldown nerfs to possibly slow down the spec even more.

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Good, thank you!

I mean, the encounter design forced healer changes because 10.0 launch only had 2 healers that could handle M+ healing checks at expected gear/key levels. (Side note; I haven’t forgiven that. It hit me hard and nearly had me quit the game. Moving on.)

The choice was made to increase healing rather than reduce damage taken. It worked out for a while, but now you want to reduce group healing? just remember that M+ will fall apart if you don’t also adjust the actual damage received by players. Most of us had to be buffed several weeks into the season so we could scrape through the standard, basic expected tasks, because someone changed the healing profile brutally with 2 weeks to launch and didn’t wait for community feedback.

You guys need to actually personally test things rather than just tweak numbers and assume it’s good.

Edit: but… if it’s a case of “does 100% more healing when not in a raid” - that is the right way to handle this. Go ahead. Do more of that if you like. Just test it yourselves and don’t leave healers to have another awful 4 weeks at the start of 10.2 before you realise you made a mistake.

Ok I’ll main Augmentation next season too then and probably have no alts. Thanks for making it clear to me that DF is at war with my preferred role. At least I know and can plan ahead :dracthyr_shrug:

Because I’m sorry, but healers have enough ship to handle in M+. We do all the same dungeon mechanics as dps, we have our own spell priorities just like dps, and we’re watching and reacting to other players - above and beyond dps. Giving us yet another constraint on what we can do and another thing to monitor? Well now we have two complicating factors above dps.

…why would you do this, in a time when pugs cannot bribe a healer to join them?

This isn’t how you fill the healer shortage. We aren’t bored, we’re having actual mental breakdowns and either quitting the game or swapping to dps because we can’t deal with the bullpap we’re expected to handle.

i’m genuinely left SMH and wondering if any healer concerns have been heard the last few months. You need ~20% of players to be healers. Quite clearly there are less than 20% of players willing to heal this season. Do you really want to make our lives harder? Is that honestly healthy for your game?

Edit: obviously “you” is not aimed at Kaivax. He’s just one guy who happens to be a front for the greater entity that is the Blizzard dev team. He may or may not agree with the message he was told to deliver. I am angry at the wider entity, not Kaivax. Just to clarify. I’m not shooting the messenger :dracthyr_comfy_blue:

(Also forgive me, but zero likes on a blue post. Tells me something.)

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Good to touch upon the first three points (ST heal boost, group heal/raid cooldown nerf) but please have another look at mana.

If you’re going to take away Rashok’s, nerf mana regen utility, and not give healers a mana mini-game (like Mana Tea or Daybreak), they’re going to struggle hard. And realistically there isn’t enough time to develop a mana talent for 4 healer specs. Please consider nerfing mana costs across the board or un-doing the mana regen spell nerfs.

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As Disc, I feel terrified with these mana changes.
I am already borderline oom after nearly every raidboss (prime example is mythic first boss where I clench my mana-deprived-butt everytime at the end). That is already with current Rashok trinket and if theres a kind evoker, source of magic, pots, etc.

Sure I have shadowfiend but uhm, yeah.

Rest I am okay with though I guess

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They don’t even need to test it.

They can just look at the m+ bosses and think back to when you were doing them in old times and compare healers to now and then look at the number they’re thinking of making the boss do and then based on early season 1 & 2 cut those numbers in almost half on bosses with heavy aoe damage and you’d probably be closer to them being fine but would still have people struggling on specs with no aoe healing.

I’m gonna give waycrest one shot at closer to 20+ and if it’s an absurd amount of aoe damage on the goliath, just like hyrja early season 1 or bromach now in season 2, I’m just gonna stop playing holy priest until they give us tools to deal with heavy aoe damage in m+, because triaging with single-target heals is not it. I’m done with single-target triaging instead of having tools to handle party-wide damage.

2.5% hp healing on a dps/healer per cast of coh at current gear levels, which has a 14 sec cd. What a joke. Might as well cast flash heal instead if you don’t have anything else to cast.

2% healing on a dps/healer per cast of prayer of healing at current gear levels, which has a 1.7 sec cast, 11k mana cost. You’re better off casting flash heals than casting that. To heal what 4 casts of flash heal does, you need to cast 5 prayer of healings, which is 8.5 seconds of casting poh vs 4.8 seconds of casting flash heal. Mana cost for 5 poh? 55k. Mana cost for 4 flash heals? 36k.

1 shot at WM and if that goliath is as dumb as in BFA as far as aoe damage goes when clearing stacks, I’m just gonna reroll to either retri paladin, guardian druid, DPS druid or blood DK.

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Looks like switching to ENH spec was worth it for my future sanity.

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Time to start learning Balance…

Can we just ditch mana as a slowly regening resource…?

Like hunters, etc aren’t planning how much focus they will have 2 minutes in the future.
Only healers have to have the foresight to not smash all there mana in the first 30 seconds of a fight.

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I like the direction this is going in.

M+ vs Raid:
I think that you shouldn’t be afraid to add more “does more healing in group content” modifiers. You are already doing it for discipline → atonement and I think its important since m+ is the biggest problem at the moment.

Moving power from cooldowns to rotational abilities:
I also think that it can never be reiterated enough that one of the big reasons paladins are so popular and powerful is that more or less everything they do is impactful. I say this because a lot of other healers have several abilities that dont really do anything, but you have to press them to enable something else. For example renewing mist in mistweavers toolkit. Does nothing except enable other abilities. This generally feels like having to invite someone to a party because your mom says so not because you actually want to. I think moving more power into these rotational tools would bring a greater sense of satisfaction into the rotations of many healers. It would also make things less hectic because power would be spread thoughout the toolkit and allow healers to approach situations in a more flexible way.
So I like that we are moving power from cooldowns but I think more can be done for certain classes.

Mana:
Regarding mana regen I actually like having mana as a resource constraint in raid. It makes healers have to coordinate cooldowns and mana splurge sessions.
In m+ I’m not so sure though. It’s a lot more fast paced and I agree that it will be a bit lame for everyone else to have to wait for the healer every now and then.

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So after yesterday’s raid testing and general overview of damage patterns mentioned in the Raid Journal I am even more than before of the opinion that encounter design has not been adjusted for this change whatsoever. While there are obviously still tuning changes happening this is the healing breakdown of bosses one and two:

First Boss (Burned tree boy):

Burst aoe every few seconds with spawning adds, added to burst aoe with follow up DoT from the boss until intermission. No Single Target healing focus on anything. Mostly rot damage with burst aoe sprinkled in.

Intermission: Pulsing aoe damage with SOME spot healing on people with the soak, realistically you probably want to either have
a) a tone of people soak to get out of the phase faster which basically becomes an aoe healing mechanic again.
b) Stay in intermission to line up 3min and Lust for the 100% damage increase in which case it becomes an aoe rot healing intermission.
In both cases, the aoe is vastly more prerelevant than the ST damage.

After intermission: You guessed it, pulsing aoe for 20sec.

So boss one is already a write off in terms of what you want healers to focus on according to this design philosophy, this fight feels awful to heal without aoe healing.

Now let’s go to Igira the cruel:

There is potential there, a lot of mechanics that target only a few players where not dealing with it properly will result in raid damage, however, the ST component on this is still overshadowed by the aoe components coming in, making it more of a 2 healer deal with ST the other two deal with AOE scenario. Not necessarily bad, but also a far shot from allowing all healers to conserve their mana spot healing, since aoe that is mandatory to heal, still trucks the raid.

So currently I would give the encounter design for the changes you are bringing a 0/10 and a 6/10. Which has me really worried reading the rest of the raid journal which looks like most major abilities will once again be a) Raidwide aoe, b) Raidwide soak split aoe.

I truly hope I am wrong and this is going to be a tuning issue, unfortunately right now it seems the encounter design team has not been made aware of the changes you plan to bring to healers.

All Cynicism aside, I would really welcome a change in healing profiles where I am allowed to single target heal, so please look at these encounters while there is still time to possibly implement changes towards the way you plan on moving forward for healers.

Oh and mana “management” is still not fun, having to press some rather meaningless damage abilities while not being allowed to use my heals because I would run oom is not enjoyable gameplay.

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I can live with mana being a constraint in M+, but only if it is an equal constraint for all healers.

If it’s a constraint for some but not others - I will be playing exclusively the healers who don’t worry about it. As will a lot of people. It is not a fun mechanic in M+, and I wouldn’t put up with being 1 of 4 healers who have to give a toss if there are other healers who don’t.

…I realise what I’ve just said is “if you’re going to make me unhappy, it’s only ok as long as you make everyone else equally unhappy”.

Frankly I’d rather just not have mana issues in M+ at all, but Blizzard seem unlikely to row back on it.

I can just about see it as a “role mechanic” in raids… but again, it has to be equal. If your healers are in equal gear and pulling equal hps for 3 minutes, but then 3 of them are oom and the others are still at 75% mana, then all that this change achieves is pushing players towards the healers without mana concerns.

Nobody enjoys playing around their mana bar and we won’t do it if you don’t force us to.

To which the correct response is not force us to. But if you’re determined to push this bad idea through, then at least do it to everyone.

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I was trying to do a VP +22 the other day as holy priest - I actually ran oom on 2nd boss even with rashok’s trinket, potting, shadowfiend and using symbol of hope. I ended at 154k hps after 3:30 minutes, for the last 20 seconds or so of that I was running on fumes. We were an inch from wiping to me going oom, lol.

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