Could we please chill out on mages healing in SoD?

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
1

I’ve been hearing a ton of guff about this—even from some prominent bald people—and this is a public notice to chill the hell out. You don’t want to play a mage with healing spells? Fine, to each body type 1 their own. But you object to healing mages existing in the first place? On what grounds, bigot?

Objection 1: Mages with Heals would be OP

I mean, this might as well already be called Season of Overpowered as Blizzard alluded to themselves, but… have you actually checked out the updated Wowhead Classic Talent Calculator? It lets you see what a mage that can heal has to give up in order to do so. I’m just a wall of text, so I’ll be here when you get back. Go ahead:

That’s right. The single-target heal costs you 15% spell crit or Fingers of Frost. The AoE heal costs you some gimmick or frigg’n Icy Veins. And the tank external doesn’t work unless you’ve already made one of the two aforementioned sacrifices. So, you can heal and be a decent last season pumper (maybe), or you can get the runes to join the ranks of the other elite mages. Or roll a traditional healer to be a SoD OP healer if healing is what you want to focus on.

TL;DR: You can be a Classic mage that heals at the expense of, in damage aspects, being a Classic mage amidst a bunch of OP SoD classes. And a Classic Arcane mage at that. Just the worst.

Objection 2: Healing with the Arcane is Unprecedented

Mages can conjure food, and like Bobbie Dooley defending her nacho recipe, food creates life. Deep Phil Hendrie cuts aside, yeah, no… Arcane magic can heal. For example, see:

And if your counterargument to that is that Cauterize is Fire, not Arcane, then you’re just ignorant of the lore and unfortunately missed out on Barny’s Scarab Lord adventure:

I could also bring up the whole thing with Preservation Evokers, but I doubt you Classic Andy’s would admit Retail evidence in this court, so I’ll just rest my point on Cauterize. And also Ice Block and Ice Barrier for resembling Divine Shield and Power Word: Shield, respectively, both of which are from healing classes.

Objection 3: A Healing Mage is Antithetical to Common Fantasy Tropes

But, is it, though?

The school of healing magic in the Elder Scrolls series, Restoration, is open to basically everyone in that world, and those who use it are regularly referred to as mages. I mean, they may need an anti-bullying campaign at the College of Winterhold given how stigmatized Colette Marence and her chosen school of magic seem to be. But enemies in the games with “Mage” in their name frequently cast Restoration spells, including heals.

Stepping outside of video games… the Wizarding World relies heavily on herbology and potions for healing, but there is healing magic, and the use of those spells doesn’t disqualify a witch or wizard from being thought of as precisely that. Severus Snape may be the best duelist of his day (yeah, Filius Flitwick fans, I said it), but he still used Vulnera Sanentur to heal Draco after his scuffle with some speccy get in the men’s room.

Feel free to reply with any objections not covered by the above and I’ll happily eviscerate them, too. It may not “feel right” to you, but that kind of emotional response should be reserved to informing your own decisions about how you play. If you disagree… if you think you should be able to overwhelm someone else’s potential enjoyment of something new because of how awkward you feel about it, then click Reply. Fight me.

13 Likes
2

I object to it for basically the same I do most of the proposed SoD changes, they are unnecessary.

The classes are the best part of vanilla. Keeping classes static - leads to an increasingly better game, year over year.

There is no need for us to discuss balance issues that will be created - SoD will show them on it’s own.

But if you believe that the 16 years of retail failing to fix the issues that were initially created by TBC (and also pushed into SoD), aren’t enough data to show that certain setups shouldn’t be made, SoD is exactly for you.

PS: Mage healers are far from the worst proposed change in SoD

7 Likes
3

Maybe not for you, but Classic Era doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. I think they even stressed that at the time given how people would (correctly) assume this is a massive Classic+ experiment.

Yes, it will. And they said they expect to see them and iterate, which is something that’s a lot harder to justify in the base game or an expansion because of the pseudo stare decisis expectations of the player base outside of seasonal realms.

This is a bit different, though, isn’t it? This will be the first time they’re able to make big changes to the vehicle while it’s in transit. They’ve never had that opportunity before. I’m hopeful, at least.

Out of curiosity, what do you think is?

2 Likes
4

I haven’t looked too much in detail but from what I’ve seen so far the paladin and druid changes.

Competitive paladins tanks / dps are the antithesis of a good world of warcraft. They create near infinite balance issues that basically never get resolved. Also it attracts players that want to play like a ‘selfish warriors’ ruining the paladin as a powerful support class.

The druid crit / dmg reduce rune will alone make every pve encounter totally obsolete unless they dramatically buff the content.

Hybrid classes are super powerful and fun in era because their base spells let them do so much, when you start to add runes and specializations that let them focus competitively in one area, you end up simultaneously destroying the actual hybrid part of them.

Edit: But the biggest issue by far is not keeping the classes static. They are good and don’t need changes - when you change them, especially often, you take away the ability for players to master multiple classes and just reduce the quality of gameplay overall.

They could have done small tuning, or added items that fix certain weaknesses, but instead they went for an expansion style overhaul.

8 Likes
5

I understand the faction balance concerns regarding these, but I think the Classic Team has heard the community on this and they’re already pivoting.

As a paladin main, I find this to be cringe.

Such as?

This made me spit the coke I was sipping onto my monitor. With all the DPS warriors who roll on hit leather and refuse to tank already, you’re concerned that they’re going to just now become self-absorbed? Really?

^ This is a genuine concern. I remember quite clearly one of my lil durids explaining this concept to me during original TBC. He once felt like he could do everything in a basic way, but ever since the talent trees got extended he felt he had to specialize, lessening his ability to adapt to a given random situation.

This feels to me like it’s almost beyond what an expansion would do. This is throwing the whole kitchen sink at the wall, to mix metaphors. But that doesn’t lead me to think they’ve lost their way. It just reaffirms the belief I had when this was first announced, to wit: the Classic+ we end up with will feature much milder versions and fewer of these changes—they just want to know what directions for changes are good.

3 Likes
6

I plan on playing mage. I hope it’s true that you can swap runes anytime so anytime you go to reset with sheep you can swap out runes to heal then swap right back to frost.

7

It’s actually kind of funny to think about, because if you watch the makgora tournament getting out of combat to reset and drink/eat is a huge part of mage pvp. So if you can switch runes at any time, they will be able to poly → lose combat → change runes during the middle of duels and pvp encounters. Ditto druids, rogues, and other classes that rely on resets. No reason rogues can’t vanish → runeswap, or hunters fd → runeswap (even in PVE), unless it’s city-locked or something.

8

Can’t tell if trolling.

9

Who cares, let them heal. It’s SOD, in fact let the Priests Smite, hell let me 2 hand Tank as Ret.

GIVE WARRIORS A REZ, lets open up Pandora’s Box on all the things >:D

Imagine people getting mad about a Mage being able to heal, toppest of keks

4 Likes
10

They are mad, bro. Make no mistake. Watching Asmon’s face whenever healing mages comes up is like watching the face of Red from That 70’s Show observing two men making out.

3 Likes
11

Cataclysm Classic is the game for you!

12

Haha this made me kek

I mean more so that vanilla is good because nearly everything requires a trade off.

For example, you want to play a warrior and beat up people in pvp - well you will also basically die to 4 dots and there’s nothing you can do about it if you are stuck in combat.

In contrast you want to heal other as a paladin, well no matter what spec you are (unless rekoning and someone constantly crit you) there is almost no chance you will do big damage.

Both had to make a huge tradeoff, but by working together they become way more powerful than either alone - the warrior is getting heals, cleanses, freedoms, and doing big damage.

But now you give paladins some yellow attacks and all the bad warriors start playing the paladin because you get all the zug of a warrior without the tradeoff of having so little self sustain.

That’s what I meant by the ‘selfish warrior’ the players that want to be able to god mode through the world without making tradeoffs and don’t like that they can’t do that in era - everything that a class is good at also has multiple negatives that make up for it.

3 Likes
13

Just a little. I’m guessing they’ll put a 30 second CD when switching.

14
1 Like
15

Yes. Yes I do :expressionless:

16

this :expressionless: i want full clown world :clown_face:
you don’t get to just go half way :circus_tent:
you wanna go :peanuts: ? lets get nuts :clown_face:

2 Likes
17

Can warriors get a res and a heal too?

18

I dont mind healing mage. But people are mostly concerned regarding pvp i would say.

Healing with mage control will definitely be disgusting in pvp

19

-honks in Heal Mage-

1 Like
20

Good, this pleases me >:D