#0 - Nov. 7, 2008, 10:05 p.m.
I know there's been some discussion on this by Blizzard, but most of it has been of the "it's over the horizon, long-term planning" style so far.
There's no doubts that healing to many is a thankless task. You spend a large portion of your time staring close at raid frames, most of us cast the same few spells (or in some cases, same spell) over and over and over again. You're usually the first person blamed for a wipe.
Then, yesterday, Ghostcrawler commented that Circle of Healing with a cooldown wouldn't be completely out of left field for Blizzard, after all most DPS abilities have cooldowns. My first reaction was, "WHAT? Are you INSANE? Comparing DPS to healing is ludicrous, stupid even." I didn't post that. I like to think about things before I post. I thought about it for a while and wondered what healing would be like if it were like DPS, and I immediately thought of the class with the most interesting DPS mechanics: The Rogue.
We all know how rogues work, but I'll try to explain it as I see it: Rogues have combo moves and finishing moves and a "combo point bar" of 0-5 combo points. All these moves cost a set amount of energy. The combo moves are generally moderate DPS moves based on some combination of weapon damage, attack power and/or poisons. The finishing moves either give you some sort of buff, produce some sort of immediate DPS, give the target a debuff or some combination of the three. The combo moves produce 1 or 2 combo points, sometimes with a bonus combo point for a crit if you have a talent. The finishing moves get progressively better the more combo points you have built up. A quick example for a newbie rogue would be to hit sinister strike twice to get 2 combo points, each sinister strike doing instant weapon damage plus a small amount, and then eviscerate, "spending" those two combo points for a small amount of instant damage.
So what if healing were like that? Every class has their base healing spells that are simple: flash heal, rejuvenation, lesser healing wave, flash of light. Those are just the most ubiquitous examples, as you could certainly through holy light or renew or regrowth or pennance as well. What if those abilities gave you combo points like a rogue had? You wouldn't want them to be target-specific like a rogue, so you'd build up your own combo points. When you had 1 or more you could use a "finishing move" - these would be the big, spectacular, shiny spells. CoH, chain heal, wild growth and something new, powerful, AoE and unique for the paladin. For example, a druid puts a renew on a target and gets a combo point. He puts a second renew on another target and gets another combo point. He then has two combo points that he can use to cast Wild Growth, and suddenly the smart-healing WG is healing 5 targets with a moderate HoT. If he had built up more combo points his WG would be healing for more, or perhaps a longer time.
Careful balance considerations would have to be met, as a druid is going to get a lot more milage for a lot less mana spamming regrowth or lifebloom than a priest would with flash heal, or a shaman would with lesser healing wave. I haven't thought this out fully, but certain spells could give only 1 combo point and others could give 2. Also the finishing moves can be balanced around combo point totals this way.
As for the paladins finishing move, a direct heal that gives a damage reduction buff and also smartly heals people around the primary target for a lesser amount would be interesting. It could be 2 people for 25% of the primary heal. It could be 4 people with an HoT based on the primary heal. The imagination and the game engine are the only limits, I would think.
It's just an idea, and a drastic one at that. I have no doubts it would make healing more interesting, but it might be too complicated of an overhaul to jump to immediately. It's also clearly just in the imagination stage.
edit: 2nd part
