Blizzard considering removal of downgraded spells, later mage boosters

[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 blizzard

Once 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.