I’ve seen people talking about downranking healing alot, but I’m not really sure why exactly.
From what I understand, casting any level of spell, no matter how much MP it costs, stops your MP regeneration naturally.
I know much lower spells have shorter cast times, but they also heal significantly less, and your not really saving a ton of mana, due to needing to cast them more, and your MP still not regenerating as far as I know.
Is this specifically just a priest / paladin thing?
Nearly level 50, and haven’t needed to downrank any healing, and not really running into issues very often, so I’m just not sure when this is suppose to come into play.
I mean, I don’t run into a ton of overhealing issues as it is currently. If a DPS gets to 1/2 or 1/3rd of their hp before I pop off a heal, they will generally be okay unless they for some reason are tanking.
The short of it is that +healing improves the healing per mana efficiency of lower rank heals more than high rank ones.
If i have a heal that normally heals for 400 at a lower rank and 2000 at a higher rank, then I add enough plus healing to make them both increase by 400, ive literally doubled the mana efficiency of that low rank heal, but barely move that 2000 heal.
Careful, 90% of the people that tell you to downrank don’t understand the reason why you downrank. Almost every new rank of a spell is more efficient than the previous. The only reason you would downrank is when you find a sweet spot between +healing gear and a lower ranked spell that makes it more efficient per mana point spent.
A LOT of people will tell you to downrank because that is what they heard you should do in classic.
Another point to add to those above, depending on the class, downranking is generally more useful for spam healing while you can use prehealing and canceling with max rank spells for tanks.
part of the reason why I’m currently asking, I’ve heard people say downranking is better, but I’m a little confused as to why.
I know some healing classes get talents that let them regenerate mana even while casting, so you know, spamming low cost heals, with +healing is generally allowing you to spam healing forever.
But as a shaman, I don’t get a talent like that, and it seems like just knowing how much you heal, and getting a good gauge on how much damage someone can take before you need to heal again is a better option.
Having healed in vanilla as a paladin I used to downrank heals all the time. The reason for this was just mana efficiency and speed.
It really comes down to knowing what heals will heal what amounts and just keeping people topped off. I don’t need to shoot a 2000 amount heal to someone who needs 1000 - if I’m smart about downranking I know what heal will heal the person for 1000 instead and just use that.
I think of it as less waiting for the big dip for someone to drop to 2000 life needed for the big heal before I heal but being proactive on the smaller amounts so I don’t have to scramble later kind of thing. It also adds another layer to the wack-a-mole that is healing and only good people who know what they are healing can pull it off right.
Different classes will handle this differently as well.
Mana usage and healing efficiency. Your max ranked spells will oom you faster, obviously. If your max rank heal can heal for lets say 60% of a person health bar, healing at any point above that 60% is an overheal. Overheals = wasted mana, wasted heals.
The sweet spot is finding a spell you can spam almost to keep people reasonably alive. People don’t need to always been topped off. Think if someone is at 80%, so you won’t heal w/ a max rank, if they take a big hit they could die if its in the sweet spot. Using a downrank can get someone closer to 95% w/o any overhealing.
You’ll still use your max rank heal for Oh crap moments, or w/ a Natures Swiftness. But after you start getting that +healing gear, the numbers all point towards downranking for all of your spells.
Procs are another thing thats great about getting more cast off, the guide has 10x better information then I do too.
At many levels you wind up with your current ranked heal healing someone at your level for like 90% of their health, with the prior rank healing them for like 50% of their health. Using your current rank heal often means overhealing or waiting until someone is like one hit from death before healing them. Even like on my level 18 druid, she has 280 health and heals for 230ish, but I usually self-heal with the downranked version of the heal that heals for 110ish. Often times after a pull I’ve got about half my health and all of my mana. I could either not heal and go into the next pull at half health or heal with a downranked spell and go into the next pull with full health. Usually I just use the downranked heal to heal myself. Different classes utilize downranking differently, not sure how downranking plays out for shamans.
I didn’t play vanilla but I mained a resto shaman in BC. Rank 3 chainheal was life. It healed enough and was mana efficient enough to be nearly spammable. I was put in with the melee group just for that reason and my ability to keep them all up.
I agree. People say you should have macros and all this extra stuff to have multiple tier spells, 90% of the time it’s not worth the bother. What a lot of people also forget is the more time you spend casting, the less your mana can regen because of the 5 second rule. I’d rather cast 1 rank 4 heal than 2 rank 2 heals because I’m spending about half the time casting.
In some instances downranking is beneficial- when you know you’re going to be extremely short on mana, if you need to be healing non-stop (no 5 sec breaks), or when you’re prehealing. I suppose maybe it may be better to downrank in later phases as well (with more +healing stuff), not sure about that. Honestly though, the PvE in this game isn’t that challenging- you’ll do fine even if you never downrank. The only people that might complain are those min/max guilds that want to do MC with 14 people.
Shamans dont downrank as much as druids and priests. They are different beasts than any of the other healers. Chain heal is the only aoe “smart” heal in classic. And, Paladins downrank even less than Shamans.
Here’s a question: If you add +spell power or +healing gear, does the tooltip for spells reflect this change? Or does it only ever show the base values?