Blizzard considering removal of downgraded spells, later mage boosters

[gilley]

I just got the latest beta patch for WotLK. I logged in and noticed my rank1 arcane explosion was making me go OOM fast! It seems Blizzard has made all ranks cost the same % of mana. So my rank1 blizzard spell costs about 2100 mana and so does my rank8 blizzard. If this goes through this is a HUGE nerf to mages in PvP, and casters in general. I used my level70 mage to boost my other toons up to 70. I won't be able to round up those mobs very easy anymore. I thoroughly enjoy rounding up an entire low level instance and then AoE'ing the hell out of them. I regularly use R1 arcane explosion, blizzard, polymorph, frost armor, dampen magic, frostbolt, firebolt when doing PvP on my mage. I just see rogues tearing me up even more now that I can't pull them out of stealth/vanish without wasting huge amounts of mana.

If this change goes through, I'm probably going to be finished playing WoW. It dumbs the game down too much. I guess the beta is still on-going so I'm going to continue testing this stuff and voicing my concerns. Who knows, maybe they'll do some other drastic change that will offset this downranked spell change.

I'm not a very happy camper right now. :(

[kitss]

If that happens Im pretty much done playing clothys. That would just take away 3/4 of the strategies used for CC and etc.

[Otlecs]

Official announcement (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8974837994&pageNo=3&sid=1#44)

I don't understand why they feel the need to change this, but I don't see this as game-breaking at all.

Yes, I'll miss my rank 1 blizzard to act as a kind of flare when I'm waiting for a flag to cap, and I'll probably miss rank 1 arcane explosion and frost nova, but... well, it's all a bit /shrug really.

It definitely doesn't break my mage boosting style, which mainly consists of running through things to get their attention in any case.

It might have a more significant impact to healers, but I've never bothered down-ranking heals anyway.

Overall... I'm very much in the "so what" frame of mind on it.

[Drizzit]

This really sucks. Where they thinking before they did this? I have a healer and i down rank like 3 or 4 lvls. I have to do this so i don't oom so quick. Doing this i will only get like 20 heals in instead of 100 (don't know the number off the top of my head). I play a sham healer, solo, and there mana is not that great to begin with and now they are doing this. Guess like i will not be playing that sham anymore.

[Naysayer]

All player spells now cost a percentage of base mana rather than a fixed cost. I don't understand what they want to accomplish with that. Pretty lame. No more frostbolt rank 1 which is very important as a mage. WTF, so lame.


We anticipate there being some balance concerns due to this change, and our development staff will be ready to implement new spells, abilities, or talents to resolve those issues as the testing process continues. Holy crap batman... Prepare for 6 months of beta testing and unbalanced pvp...

[jtbndy]

Very short sighted of Blizzard. If they wanted to remove the effectiveness of lower ranked spells they should have just increased the resist rate.

As in use rank 1 frostbolt on a lvl 70, 95% chance to resist or something like that. Removing downranking removes a very important mana conservation aspect to casting in general.

Bad change in my opinion. Blizzard is just getting lazy ... instead of coming up with specific mana costs for each spell, they would rather just have to say x %.

[Drizzit]

I don't understand what they want to accomplish with that. Pretty lame. No more frostbolt rank 1 which is very important as a mage. WTF, so lame.

Same thing with scorch for mage and lock. This was import for the wizard of oz to keep strawman dazed. A lot of tactics will be messed up now. End game will not be that easy anymore. I know in gruuls the mage has to spam something too and they use lvl 1 to do that. I wonder why they are making all these stupid changes for.

[Drizzit]

Quoted

We anticipate there being some balance concerns due to this change, and our development staff will be ready to implement new spells, abilities, or talents to resolve those issues as the testing process continues.

Holy crap batman... Prepare for 6 months of beta testing and unbalanced pvp...

hopefully this goes away like the life tap on the lock (another stupid idea). I don't think that this will hurt dps as much as healers. I think healers will suffer more, they are going to be over healing a lot more which is a huge problem for saving mana. Healers will be more concerned with mana that they will probably only heal when the tank or someone is half life. Great now after every pull we will need to drink.

[HTeam]

I don't think it would hurt healers at all. If healers can't get the job done, then the raid can't get the job done. So obviously they'd balance around that.

Single pulls will a low agro rank 1 spell will now be expensive but that's just one cast.

The place it will hurt is typically where a rank 1 is spammed over and over. Paladins or mages gathering things up with AE. My priest will no longer be able to use rank 1 shadow word: pain against cleanse happy paladins.

But healers no longer being able to downrank spells will show up very obviously when it comes to balancing content, and that won't be a problem. Sure, you'll think, "if I could downrank I would have had mana through this fight." But the reality is that if you could downrank, then the fight could have been made correspondingly tougher.

[pegasus00000]

very bad idea, my healer will likely be OOM early in the fight, if it happens probably need to get a secondary healer in the party.

[Dominian]

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=5383588979&pageNo=3&sid=1#48

It goes both ways and the buffs to casting pushbak sure is nice...

Always felt it was unfair when druids filled me with trash debuffs at no cost in the arena (faeri fire,swarm,moonfire) and then rooted me... Why couldnt i get a rank 1 cleanse to cleanse rank 1 spells?

Removing the downranking is fine as it wasnt fair against certain classes..

[Drizzit]

very bad idea, my healer will likely be OOM early in the fight, if it happens probably need to get a secondary healer in the party.lol lfg would be like this "LF4M for normal instance need 2 healers 1 tank and 1 melee dps".

I think that melee dps will really out shine now.

[moji]

it's a horrible attempt at fixing the greased wheel. Anyone else have a round robin /stopcasting /cast rank 1 earth shock button? I do.

[Drizzit]

Anyone else have a round robin /stopcasting /cast rank 1 earth shock button? I do.shit i forgot about that. Those high lvl shocks cost a nice bit of mana. Well hopefully to solve this they make the % smaller.

[Mono]

I know a common practice amongst warlocks is to DOT up an enemy, and then use rank 1 of Drain Soul. Soul Shard farming is gonna be a bit slower now :(

[kwal]

Cool, so this basically means that the less mana you have, the better off you are.
1 % is 1%. So regardless if you have 1k mana or 10k mana, you can only cast a 1% spell 100 times.
But if you have way lower mana, MP5 will boost you so much faster.

[HTeam]

The % is based on base mana, before int adjustments.

So if your base is 5000 and full mana is 10,000, then a 10% spell can cast 20 times instead of 10.

[kwal]

Oh ok, did not read that. I guess disregard my last post

[Drizzit]

if they do this then i hope they have some really good mp5 gear out there

[-silencer-]

Removing ranks is ridiculous. Are they doing it to simplify the game for more newcomers?

If they're making this change to prevent people from adding massive +heal/spell damage to low-cost skills, but they're going about it the wrong way. They should just seriously nerf the effect & +heal/spell damage coefficient if you're not casting at max rank.

For example, we have 5 ranks of a skill that has a +spell damage coefficient of .50. Have rank 5 do the standard .50, rank 4 at .40, rank 3 at .30, rank 2 at .20, and rank 1 at .10.

Or make it relative to the mana cost..
If rank 5 is 1000 mana and rank 4 is 600 mana, make rank 4's coefficient and buff/debuff effect equal to 60% of rank 5's. What the hell are they thinking?

For downranking skills that interrupt/debuff (like earth shock or polymorph), just increase the enemy's resist rates for downranked skills, depending on enemy level.

[Drizzit]

Are they doing it to simplify the game for more newcomers?How would this simplify it for newcomers?


They should just seriously nerf the effect & +heal/spell damage coefficient if you're not casting at max rank.
They already do this. I believe that if the spell is 10 lvls before you there is a decrease in damage/healing. They already have this so why are they nerfing spells again?

I think that this is stupid. You have to train to get the next lvl spell but not this nerf. Think about it, i am in an instance i just dinged to 72 (yay i can get a new set of spells, lets say fireball 12, and you are currently using fireball 11), as soon as you dinged your party will not let you hearth back to town to get the next fireball, so you are stuck with lvl 11 and now it costs more mana for the same damage. I would really like to know what they where thinking.

[HTeam]

I imagine they're thinking that a rank 1 earth shock shouldn't shut down a rank 12 spell for 30 mana.

There are a multitude of spells being used for the effect and not for any scaled damage they do.

For instance, frost nova. The scaled damage is negligible, but to counter that effect a level 70 has to use a major cooldown. So, it costs the mage nearly nothing and the target a major cooldown (trinket, sprint, CoS, escape artist, whatever).

Likewise, now if someone wants to take a large number of things, they'll actually have to use a real amount of mana. If you want a non-trivial effect, you'll have to use a non-trivial amount of mana.

As for healing, instances don't get done without healing. So if it changes healing, instances will be tuned as such.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

if they do this then i hope they have some really good mp5 gear out thereAll that talk about spirit becoming an important stat in LK, maybe? :P

[Drizzit]

For instance, frost nova. The scaled damage is negligible, but to counter that effect a level 70 has to use a major cooldown. So, it costs the mage nearly nothing and the target a major cooldown (trinket, sprint, CoS, escape artist, whatever).
Really good point. I didn't think of that. But it is sad that blizz is focusing more and more on PvP side of stuff then PvE. Every change they do to make PvP better it is a huge hit to PvE. Only reason i play wow is for the pve, the more they take away the more that i don't want to do it. I wonder if the wow arena Tournament was a why to see how many people would just like a pvp wow.That would be great that people can just have lvl 70 or 80 and have there PvP skills and what not, that way blizz leaves use pve people alone.

As for healing, instances don't get done without healing. So if it changes healing, instances will be tuned as such.Maybe that is why all instance pulls seem to be 3 mobs. If they had more then 3 mobs then you would probably need 2 healers in the group lol

[TheBigBB]

I thought they already made downranked skilled seriously gimped.

Also, with the current regen model I don't see how you'd be going chronically OOM with your healer unless you're not stacking spirit gear. PVP gear is MEANT to make you go OOM; this is its big disadvantage over PVE.


The big problem with removing downranks is for mages in PVP...

[Drizzit]

Also, with the current regen model I don't see how you'd be going chronically OOM with your healer unless you're not stacking spirit gear.

what is the new regen model?

[HTeam]

Even in PvE, I guess Blizz is saying there should be a cost for getting an effect. Frost Nova should be downranked and used all the time. You have to have a cost associated with it.

Should a 30 mana spell really interrupt a level 72 caster about to rain sulphur down upon your party?

I understand there are other mechanics and solutions they could use to accomplish this (like a level 2 spell would be resisted as if cast by a level 2).

I'd also have to say that the argument that a level 70 paladin may want to gather 40 mobs using rank 1 consecration is really far enough outside the normal mode of gameplay as to not be considered. Maybe they're even discouraging this specific behavior, which is meant to bypass normal levelling.

I'm just guessing, though. My attitude here is that it will change, just roll with it. For PvP it will affect them as well as me. For PvE, the encounters will be balanced accordingly.

The only downranking I really do for PvE is some healing. For PvP I would use SW:P on the cleanse happy, I guess that will go away.

[Tonuss]

very bad idea, my healer will likely be OOM early in the fight, if it happens probably need to get a secondary healer in the party.I think it's pretty obvious that they will try to balance content around the changes. Whether they do a good job of that or not remains to be seen.

I can't help but think that this issue was one of those "pebble in your shoe" deals for the development team. They had designed an efficiency curve for all types of spells and abilities, which made spells and abilities less efficient (by design) as the character leveled up. And then they added pure spell damage and healing to gear. And I think that they didn't see it coming, when players realized that you could get a lot more efficiency from downranking. I can remember running ZG prior to tBC and how one of our priests would spam downranked heals and almost never run out of mana.

I think that they tried to 'fix' it several ways but none of those were enough, so they finally went with the blunt approach and will simply break it altogether.

[TheBigBB]

Also, with the current regen model I don't see how you'd be going chronically OOM with your healer unless you're not stacking spirit gear.

what is the new regen model?As of the last content patch, they greatly increased mana regen from spirit (at least on priests) and made intellect help your regen a little bit as well. I think this applies to all classes; someone correct me if I'm wrong. My priest, while raid buffed, has over 1000 MP5 while not casting and 470 MP5 while casting. This is raw stats, and doesn't take into account other mana regen abilities I have. It takes chain casting max rank heals for 10 minutes to guarantee I'm out of mana on her, and 5 seconds later I got another 1k mana up. Her gear is from BT/MH, so there's better stuff out there as well.

I strongly suggest raiding on your healing characters for anyone who wants unstoppable healing. Decent PVE gear will do you wonders!

[homerjunior]

Just a quick theorycraft not 100% accurate rank 4 chain heal 100 mana less than rank 5 I can pull off around 110 chain heals thats 11k mana I am losing...sigh blizzard

[TheBigBB]

Just a quick theorycraft not 100% accurate rank 4 chain heal 100 mana less than rank 5 I can pull off around 110 chain heals thats 11k mana I am losing...sigh blizzardOnce again, correct me if I'm wrong, but downranking is supposed to have been made inefficient for a while now, and you'd probably be better off casting max rank half as often than spamming downranked. I haven't done any theorycrafting on it, but that's how it works for my character right now anyway. Not a shaman expert or anything.

[TheBigBB]

The downrank nerf is very old, actually, and I don't have a sheet about the exact numbers right now, but look into it. Basically, the lower the rank you use, the less % of your bonus healing is applied to the spell. So technically it should be wasting mana to downrank, or Blizzard intends for it to be.

On 23-Oct-2006, Drysc posted this to the General forums:
"In the Burning Crusade, we’ve decided to make a fundamental change to the way spells calculate the bonus they receive from +healing and +spell damage effects and items. This is because we have seen a growing trend in using “downranking” and large amounts of +healing items, which we feel negatively impacts game balance. Downranking involves high-level players using lower level spell ranks and +healing gear to conserve mana, but maintain a high rate of healing done. Through this method, it has become possible in the live game for healing characters to heal large amounts of damage indefinitely without running out of mana. To maintain progression of use through spell ranks, we are changing how lower ranked spells relate to characters of higher level.
Spells will now receive a smaller bonus from +healing and +spell damage based on a comparison of the level at which the spell was learned and the caster’s current level. Take the Priest spell Heal 2 as an example:
The spell is learned at level 22, and the base points for healing on the spell keep increasing until level 27. So, level 27 is considered the spell’s max level in our calculation.
This system gives an additional 6 levels of slack before applying any penalty to casting Heal 2; so, players up to level 33 can cast it with no penalty.
In this example, we will use level 34 (one level past the cast level of the spell) as a starting point.
The bonus from +healing is multiplied by this ratio:
((spell level)+6) / (player level)

That means the level 34 player only gets 97% of the normal bonus from +healing items when casting Heal 2. A level 60 player would only get 55% of the bonus, while a level 70 would get 47%.
The exact same system will also apply to damage spells. However, as healing classes tend to use downranking more often than others, healers are likely to see more effect from this change than other classes. As a general rule, players will be able to use the top 2 or 3 ranks of each spell before receiving any penalty. All of the existing ratios for the +healing and +spell damage bonuses on spells are also still in effect; so spells with a short casting time will continue to receive a smaller bonus than spells with a longer casting time. Spells learned below level 20 will still receive substantially smaller bonuses."

[Mendicant]

This sucks. A lot.

It's a relative buff to rogues/warriors since it essentially nerfs all classes with mana pools.

I don't think blizzard understands what a big nerf it is to us.

On my druid:
no more rank 1 motw, thorns, and rejuv to cover innervate, or to act as dispel fodder on myself/ally.
no more rank 1 moonfire, faerie fire, insect swarm to act as dispel fodder on enemies.
no more rank 1 roots... now I have to spend 300 mana more for 50 more damage. Woo hoo!

For mages (I don't have one)
no more rank 1 AE to pull rogues out of stealth... nope now you've got to spend 100s more mana.
no more rank 1 FBs to slow enemies
no more rank 1 novas (who cares about 100 more damage for 100 mana?!)
no more rank 1 sheep

For healers (esp paladin/priest/shaman) no more downranking to prevent over heals.

the list goes on...

[Mudd]

This change saddens me and I feel that this really dumbs down the game. As a PvE holy priest, I found that downranking gave the class a lot of flexibility and can be used in most healing scenarios where other classes shine. They need that since there is not as much stacking benefits of having more than one holy priest in a raid than the other healing classes. Without down ranking its inefficient to spam a direct heal (bring a paladin instead), I can no longer keep 12 renews in flight without going oom (bring a druid instead). With CoH on cooldown in WoTLK, just use shammies for AOE. I'll buff you all with fort and sit outside the instance ;(

Blizzard is slowly removing ways to tweak your build, gear, and playstyle to gain an edge in PvE. Thats why I like PvE. Tweaking your toon to do better than another. I hope it doesn't just become a gear grind.

[-silencer-]

I never bother downraking (so many macros/skills already used), so I totally forgot they already did gimp the coefficients..

A simple solution seems to be.. if you have a higher ranked skill and you choose to downrank, it should have a relative % chance of failing the poly/snare/stun/whatever. If there are 5 ranks of earth shock, and rank 5 has 0% chance of failure to interrupt, rank 4 would have 20% of failure to interrupt, 3 would be 40%, etc. That would *encourage* players to use higher ranked skills to guarantee the effect, but allow them to downgrade if they choose to take the risk to save mana (or don't have enough mana left to cast a higher rank, but still allow them to make an attempt to get a downranked spell off).

If they really wanted to gimp the effect, it really could be a simple addition to the spellcast result table.. something along the lines of: chance for successful spellcast = (100% - resist chance) * (casting spell rank / spell ranks available at your level)
If there's a 10% chance for an enemy to resist a sheep, 4 total ranks of sheep available at 70, and you cast a rank 3 sheep, the chance of successful sheep would be 1.0-.1 * (3/4) = .9 * .75 = .675 = 67.5%

[TheBigBB]

This change saddens me and I feel that this really dumbs down the game. As a PvE holy priest, I found that downranking gave the class a lot of flexibility and can be used in most healing scenarios where other classes shine. They need that since there is not as much stacking benefits of having more than one holy priest in a raid than the other healing classes. Without down ranking its inefficient to spam a direct heal (bring a paladin instead), I can no longer keep 12 renews in flight without going oom (bring a druid instead). With CoH on cooldown in WoTLK, just use shammies for AOE. I'll buff you all with fort and sit outside the instance ;(

Blizzard is slowly removing ways to tweak your build, gear, and playstyle to gain an edge in PvE. Thats why I like PvE. Tweaking your toon to do better than another. I hope it doesn't just become a gear grind.Please explain how downranking helps a priest be more viable. I don't know what you've healed, but this isn't standard in any 25 man raids to downrank. Priests aren't meant to roll HOTs or single target, they are meant to do a bit of everything and be pretty good at anything. Rather than spamming low rank flash heals for 1k, how about get some greater heals for 5-8k every 2.5 seconds? No one else can do that.

I'm going to bet a billion dollars that you've never gone deep into 25 mans...


By the way, read the new priest talents in WOTLK before you talk about not enough options. Discipline and Holy both have great PVE talents. Your DS priest no longer has to be useless.

[Stabface]

I don't downrank spells. Period. I have cleared all heroics (except Mgt) on my own just fine, and I can hold my own in PvP.

So... whats all the crying about? Seriously?

It's about squeezing 110% out of your class.
I use Rank 1 Holy Shield almost exclusively on my Paladin, which is like having an extra ~78 mp5 while in combat. Yes, I could win all my fights without it, but it makes things go faster if I don't use max rank because I don't have to drink as often.
Rank 1 Earth Shock is just as good as Rank 8 if all you care about is interrupting, and costs 505 mana less. I once spent most of an Aran fight cycling through Rank 1 Earth Shock on 3 shaman, after a healer got double tapped early on and died. Interrupting most all of his casts really saved the day as it interrupted much of his DPS, allowing the 1 remaining healer to keep the raid up. We would not have won that fight if it cost me 535 mana every 2 seconds instead of 30, because I'd have ran out of mana for interrupts long before the fight was over.

How about casting Rank 1 Arcane Explosion to find a stealthed Rogue... just got a lot more expensive to do. Great for Rogues, bad for Mages.

Rank 1 Polymorph or Rank 1 Entangling Roots in PvP... why would you ever cast a higher rank for more mana and no better effect?

[Mudd]

Please explain how downranking helps a priest be more viable. I don't know what you've healed, but this isn't standard in any 25 man raids to downrank. Priests aren't meant to roll HOTs or single target, they are meant to do a bit of everything and be pretty good at anything. No one else can do that.

You probably just proved my point. Its not standard for a priest to heal this way, and most priests don't but you will find that lots of priests do. You are right that priests can do everything, but there is a difference between doing everything, and doing everything well. The latter requires little tweaks and tricks that the 'standard' person doesnt do. As a poster above me said, its about squeezing getting 110% out of your class.


Rather than spamming low rank flash heals for 1k, how about get some greater heals for 5-8k every 2.5 seconds?
I think my rank 5 or 6 does 5-8k that, and I like having the option to use it if only 5-8k needed. Sure some encounters have spike damage which could use a 7.5-10k gheal, and when you learn the encounter you know when that will happen. Not every heal needs to land at max rank, but of course some do.

I use max rank flash for emergencies, down ranked for touch ups (based on health deficit). I don't need a max rank heal for 90% of the raid healing. Once again the decision is based on your knowledge of the encounter. If someone has a 3k health deficit and you know that they will not get hit again and you can afford the cast time, use a rank 1 gheal instead of a max rank flash and you just saved 100 mana (or 200 back in the T5 era!).

No one other than a tank rarely needs a max rank renew. I use rank 10 renew on warlocks who are low on mana so they can lifetap, or on raiders who are low on health and not at risk of dying and don't justify a 2.5 second cast.

Downranking is for mana efficiency. I use lower ranks whenever I can without compromising healing, and when shit hits the fan I have a larger mana pool to do those sexy big max rank heals while the others are begging for innervates and out of cooldowns. My rough guess would be that I gain ~30-40% effective mana by aggresively downranking without sacrificing any effective healing.

I've raided in top server/faction guilds from MC -> SW without the aid of ez-mode nerfs, when your kara progression team had the best blue gear on the server, when T5 was all you had going into hyjal/bt, before the ridiculous 2.3 regen buff, and quite often without a shadow priest. I'm not interested in your money, but thanks.

[BobGnarly]

I don't downrank spells. Period. I have cleared all heroics (except Mgt) on my own just fine, and I can hold my own in PvP.

So... whats all the crying about? Seriously?Maybe it doesn't drastically affect your particular playstyle, but trust me, this is a HUGE hit to pvp mages, for one.

I can cast up to 10-15 polys per arena game atm, and the only way I can do that is because I downrank since the added time to the higher ranks is null-and-void in pvp anyway. If I have to start spending 500 mana/poly, it's going to be less polys before oom.

Mages currently use rank 1 AE and Blizzard to fish out stealthers. No way am I going to be able to do that if I have to pay 1400 mana, I don't care what the new mana regen model is.

It has been stated that these weren't intended usages designed into the class, and fine, I can see that. However, intended or not, they are a big part of mage pvp, and if you take them away, you are affecting the class. Frankly, that class doesn't need any pvp nerfs atm.

So if they are insistant on these changes, I hope they at least look at the classes most negatively impacted and figure out ways to help them compensate for the loss. Sadly, I suspect they'll just do their usual and blindly forge ahead.

[Razuya]

lHighly doubt this will last. If it does it will definately not be the same as it is now.

[robbotats]

But healers no longer being able to downrank spells will show up very obviously when it comes to balancing content, and that won't be a problem. Sure, you'll think, "if I could downrank I would have had mana through this fight." But the reality is that if you could downrank, then the fight could have been made correspondingly tougher.

This is not why priests downrank. A top geared priest's highest rank Gheal simply heals for too much. If you were to heal efficiently on your highest rank, you would need to let the tank drop a lot of HP, and then you risk spike dmg killing your tank.

[Malekyth]

It sounds like a lot of people are saying, "this is a stupid change because now I won't be able to do ____!", when Blizzard is saying, "we never actually wanted you to do ____, and we're fixing that now." It's by design, considered at length by the people who designed World of Warcraft and know better than anyone what the game "should" be. As that blue post reminds us, if there are legitimate balance problems that arise because of this, they'll fix them. I'm going to miss the rank 1 Arcane Explosion mob roundup, but am confident that whatever is changed will make the game better in the long run.

Most of us have devoted days and weeks of /played to Blizzard's game design. They're good enough at what they do that they're not going to ruin it for you!

[Tasty]

Mages use rank 1 scorch?

[heyaz]

Doesn't seem game breaking enough. And the thing about mass nerfs like this - they affect everyone at the same time, so it's not like you lose an advantage that everyone else will still have...

[Stabface]

Doesn't seem game breaking enough. And the thing about mass nerfs like this - they affect everyone at the same time, so it's not like you lose an advantage that everyone else will still have...

It's a nerf to casters, who had to use some of these rank 1 spells in PvP versus melee classes (Rogue). Melee didn't get nerfed...

[Kel]

For my mage it will be a bit of a pain (for a start I'll have to train the higher ranks of frost nova), but i'm sure I'll get used to it.

It will probably make the most difference to play style on my healers. I often have a mid-rank top healing spell for use to top off people when I know they won't take much more damage. On my priest I could use renew (and possibly have that person die to unforseen damage), flahs heal (spending a lot of mana for a hps benefit that I didn't need) or a max rank GH and end up overhealing that person for 2-3k. I liked the choice to be able to cast a lower rank normal heal, so I can top up the right amount of health, in a reasonable time period and for a decent mana cost. I don't raid much on my priest, but end-game raiding isn't the be all and end all of WoW.

With the changes to 5 normal mans (any spec of tank-able class will be able to tank them) I guess they will just dumb them down so the amount of healing needed is minimal, otherwise I don't see how it would be possible for a healer (using max mana spells) to heal a non-prot spec tank without going oom.

[shaeman]

Sounds like an exploit to me :) Unintended use of game mechanics. Ban the lot of them :)

[JonnyB]

Maybe now Blizzard can remove stamina from the game and normalize health for every level. Everyone at 80 has 15k hp, then make armor mitigation actually mean something. I was playing around with my Shaman on the test realm. I only have Kara level gear, but essentially now I just have my small fast heal(2k), larger slow heal (5k) and of course the group heal. Normally I would be figuring out what ranks to use based on the tank on most runs (wouldn't use the same for a tank with 17k HP vs one with 10-12k HP.

I just think Blizzard is opening up a whole can of worms with this. They already reduced the effectiveness of downranking with respect to heals when BC was released. They claim they didn't expect people to be stacking + heal and downranking in this fashion. I suppose its not like they've only had 9 years since development began, almost 4 years since launch, and a year and a half since BC to figure out this wasn't what they intended.

Anyway I've got my mage/priest/warrior/shaman at 70 now, hopefully with 1 of each class by the time Wotlk hits (thank you RAF + the free levels :) )

[Drizzit]

Mages use rank 1 scorch?

yup, i don't know where else they use it but locks and mages use rank 1 scorch for the strawman in the oz event of kara.

[Frosty]

The only time I ever downranked was when I solo'd my Enhancment Shaman.
And the only reason I downranked was to keep from drawing too much aggro.

That being said, I wonder how this will affect friendly people doing run-by-buffing on low level players?

[mlwhitt]

The thing I don't understand is if they do not want you to downrank then why don't they just completely remove old ranks as you level up?

[Drizzit]

The thing I don't understand is if they do not want you to downrank then why don't they just completely remove old ranks as you level up?

That is a really good point. They do it for melee.

[Xar]

I down ranked on my priest to keep the tank topped off so I wasn't overhealing too much. This change is right up there with the delay mana gain when drinking that they tried to push through a while back, IMO. SOE did major changes like this to SWG and I believe is what eventually killed the game for most, it did for me. I like the challenge of choosing which downrank or fullrank heals to use and whether it was intended or not, it is what the game has become and Blizzard should at least try to balance around that instead of make it so dumbed down that you can only really cast one rank of any spell. It sounds like in Wrath it will be mindless full rank spamming of any spell...so now we just mindlessly spam biggest spells, have infinite mana regen...where's the challenge?

[Drizzit]

where's the challenge?

To find a guild that will let a boxer raid. :P

[Xar]

where's the challenge?

To find a guild that will let a boxer raid. :PLOL, I definitely have to agree with that one! 8o

[Meeo]

i really dont see this affecting to much, seeing as i usually have never down ranked when healing in Sunwell or BT, especially since there is a enough mp5 gear out there to get 2K+ healing + still have 200mp5 unbuffed while casting. my t6 shaman i use when raiding has 2022+healing and has a 196 mp5 unbuffed, so while full buffed, pots/ointments/food/water shield i si nearly around mid 400s, which is plenty while casting.

Especiall for fights like RoS/Teron/Blood Boil im usually hovering around 50% mark for mana.

[neen]

Mages use rank 1 scorch?

yup, i don't know where else they use it but locks and mages use rank 1 scorch for the strawman in the oz event of kara.Not sure why you would use rank 1, you can easily just use max rank and kill strawman. Same with Maulgar, if you downrank dmg spells, your healers can just pull aggro off you.

Mostly I think this will be tough for healers other than paladin. Every healer class has 2 direct heals, a fast heal that's not mana efficient, and a big slow heal that's supposed to be mana efficient (paladin is the only backwards class on this). Problem is, healers have so much +heal these days the big heal is mostly useless at full strength. Raid healing was (I haven't raided in a year or so, but raided full through naxx and up until TK when that was still hard) always about trying to fit the biggest heal possible with as little overhealing as possible. It won't be impossible, but it will take a lot of readjustment for healers compared to other classes. You'll most likely see mana regen make a big comeback vs just straight +heal.

[Tasty]

I can understand saving the mana in PvE but scorch is my main weapon in PvP.

[Skuggomann]

rYou dont downgreaid spells wn you boost iwth mage.......

[moji]

rYou dont downgreaid spells wn you boost iwth mage.......you never ran around in a lower level area, spamming rank 1 arcane explosion to see how many things you can aggro at once?, main way I farm mats like cloth without taking a pally to an instance.