Mage Healing Changes in P8 Feedback

[Ofélia-sulfuras]

I’m happy folks so far here like the changes/feedback I proposed
I wanted to make an update since the tier pieces changed drastically.

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The new changes:

• 2 pieces: Your Arcane Blast has a 10% chance to cause Arcane Tunneling. Arcane Tunneling prevents your Arcane Blast effect from being consumed by the next other Arcane damage spell you cast. In addition, activating Arcane Power resets the cooldown on your Mass Regeneration.

• 4 pieces: Rewind Time also reduces all damage taken by your target by 20% for 8 sec.

• 6 pieces: Reduces the cooldown of your Arcane Power by 90 sec and increases its duration by 10 sec. While Arcane Power is active, your chance to gain Arcane Tunneling is increased by 10% and each cast of Arcane Blast reduces the remaining cooldown on Mass Regeneration by 1.0 sec.

• Mass regeneration CD is now 12seconds (used to be 6 and then 15s with the previous update)

Discussion
I’m happy the team has been hearing us out and are making changes. I do think that this is an improvement as the previous set did make it so we would barely move and have to rely on direct healing. But, this new set will make new problems that will affect mage healing severely. In broad strokes, this tier set will severely deplete mage healers’ mana. For naxx, mage healers that took the 6pc healer set did not have mana problems. Let me explain why these will cause these problems.

• 2pc: I do like the idea of arcane blast proccing something new. However, arcane blast’s effect past 2 already dumps a ton of mana.
• 4pc: I think this is okay While it doesn’t have the same mana problems, I do think it is quite underwhelming.
• 6pc: This is a huge problem. Arcane power already will make it impossible to keep our mana at a healthy level. Additionally, while its nice that it resets the CD of Mass regen, it will also bring the problem that outside of arcane power, heals will be super minimal.
• Lowering MR cd is better

Additionally, given the buff to priests in general, having a lag on being able to effectively raid heal given the CDs, mana problems, and competing against absorbs and that will now heal for a huge amount (from 20% → 60%! which has historically been 20%) and super low CD instant group heals (CoH and now PoH being instant), mage healers will likely end up super low tier/unwanted and best to switch to DPS or another class.

Feedback
Generally, I do think that the changes I proposed above will still work while providing balancing, I wanted to provide direct feedback on this tier set if its something that will for sure happen.

• 2pc. I think this can go in many ways, so here are some ideas:
  • And makes your next arcane spell instant and cost no mana. This should work with channeling spells including regen and mass regen.
  • And also resets the CD of MR
  • Lower the CD of presence of mind by 15seconds
  • Reduces the cost of any arcane spell to 0
  • Reduces the CD of arcane power by 10 seconds
• 4pc. I think this could be improved as follows: “Rewind Time also reduces all damage taken by your target by 20% for 8 sec. Additionally, it places an absorb shield equal to 20% of the damage healed.” This rune is a bit controversial as many healers do not take it. I don’t think this piece bonus will sell it, and may actually disincentivize mage healers to use it more often since they’d want to line it up just right. I think itd be okay if this rune was a spell book also. But, that could be a lot.
• 6pc. I think this can also go many ways, so here is a few ideas, which I think that paired with some of the changes to the 2pc above would remove the last bit of MR cd reduction:
  • And reduces the mana cost increase from 30% → 5%
  • And also resets the CD for presence of mind
  • And gives you 5% casting speed
• MR cd could be changed to 9 seconds or make it so that temporal beacon from MR lasts 21 seconds from the get-go. I think this would allow for mage healers to use different shoulder enchants and not rely on the one.

This does not mean that ALL of the ideas have to be implemented, but a set of ways to mix and match or select one or two from each to still make mage healing viable while balancing it out as having huge mana problems will make mage healers twiddle their wand while waiting for mana to regen. Or at the very least, I wanted to show the problems I see and open the door to brainstorm ideas that will help with these problems.

Moreover, I do think that the additional feedback I provided before should still be considered:

@Ofélia-sulfuras

• Temporal anomaly now works on the group of your target and scales with SP - Temporal anomaly is such a wasted potential. Being in a ranged group, you are often never going to have any use out of it. Having it spawn on your target would be super helpful. Moreover, having it be a flat healing reduction of about 1k is super low given the inflated health values in SoD. It doesn’t have to be a huge scale, but having it feel stronger as you get more gear would be rewarding.
• Merge Advanced warding with temporal anomaly rune - As a healer, you need to have magic dispel. So losing that for temporal anomaly feels bad. Having them together would fix this problem.
• Advanced warding reduces CD on fire/frost ward - It would be good to apply these wards more often since 30s CD makes it so you can only apply on 1 person (generally yourself or the tank). And, since it only absorbs so little, it does not feel good to waste a GCD since you cant even use it for so long after. If the CD is something like 10-15s, I believe it would encourage people to ward more often in those fights where F(F)R is needed.
• Mana shield returns some mana - Advanced warding could have something like rapture for disc priests in cata, where it has a chance to return % of the mana it absorbs once its fully depleted (the effect can only proc every X seconds). You barely use mana shield since it consumes a ton of mana. Also, advanced warding is only really used for magic dispel. I think this and the previous point can help get more out of the rune.

Anyways, let me know what yall think would love to keep discussing on how to make things a bit more balanced.