Blizzard considering removal of downgraded spells, later mage boosters

[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 there

All 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