Hey!
Was thinking about optimization of the current healing builds. My goal is to propose smaller changes which can lead to a better player experience. For the ideas, I was reading through the forum and and discussing certain things with people maining a respective build. Many of these ideas are not mine but they are here collected in a bundle.
Personally I regard them as proposals for later class changes but there is of course a chance that an idea is flawed or that I/original poster made an oversight at any point. I'm welcoming constructive criticism. The goal is to improve player experience.
I wrote some blabla in italic for more details. The exact proposal is in the in short segment.
Resto druid
Most people want 3 things for them: out of combat rez, tree should have access to all heals, hots should stack. Discussed this with a tree player and he said that giving the tree all healing options would take away from the uniqueness the tree is playing.
However, letting hots stack (even to a lesser degree, like allowing stacking two of them) would help trees a lot. In leveling they can have a bigger emergency healing. In raids more trees would be welcome. Currently they kinda have a hard limit because of the hots not stacking.
Other thing is out of combat rez. Blizzard was apparently thinking that ooc rez and in combat rez is an either-or question. It's not. Ooc rez would be a huge quality of life improvement for druids (imagine the party taking 1234123x less corpsewalks while progressing a dungeon) while in-combat rez could stay alongside it as a unique druid utility.
In short: allow a minimal hot stack, add out of combat rez for druids
Resto shaman
I main this bad boy in the server, having experience with the build. I have to say that lategame restoration shaman works perfectly. Mana problems are mostly solved and resto shamans frequently top healing meters without any added effort because of the raid-healing role they usually have. Custom items and consumables like oranges, mana regen gear, ES trinket really pushed their power level (also some other, changed classes, like arcane mages if you find any in your raid group).
The problem is mana management while leveling. Without the late-game helps, shaman mana management is bad. There are reasons for it. Some talents help with mana management (+5% mana, somewhat cheaper totems and healing spells) but these pale in comparison to talents like +10% intellect, spell crit giving spell's mana back or giving 15% normal mana regen while casting talents. Mana talent's are weak for resto shammies but it's not the issue by itself. As a shaman you summon totems before the pull and keep up/change totems. In other words your full spirit mana regen is shorter than for others because you start spending mana before the pull + totems are kinda expensive if spammed. My suggestion is to reduce totem mana cost and/or increasing the mana you get back via totemic recall. This would overall help the shamans and would make leveling smoother. Honestly, totemic recall was a nice try from TWOW Team but it alone doesn't solve this problem.
In short: decreasing totems' mana cost.
Holy priest
I think they are mostly fine. Just onme thing. Holy champion is a very creative but badly designed talent. On paper it gives you a bunch of choices and you select one based on the situation. In practice, it gives the illusion of choice because people only use 1 of those options 95% of the time. It's basically a weird druid buff with a +healing received addition.
In short: rework holy champion options besides +healing received.
Disc priest
Core logic here: since this build is often used in PVP, change is only acceptable with regards to the class' PVP effectiveness. No PVE fun should break the PVP environment.
This one is a bit controversial. Many people say that disc is a PVP tree so PVE raid healing role is not a priority for them. My take is that (since people after a certain point of raid farming) are using disc priest in PVE, I count them in but the change proposal has to have extra focus on PVP balance.
I think that adding a shield buff to the bottom tree would help (not buffing the damage absorbed because of PVP reasons, focusing on mana and CD). Ideally it would create a build which is different from holy (currently the two do the same things, holy just does them better, except for PI). Like spamming cheap shields and inserting a greater heal for example while the next shield is on CD. I think it's okay for PVP since shield debuff stops the priest from reapplying those shields too fast. Only PVP advantage is having more mana after applying a shield.
Another option is to give a talent which gives you a certain number of resource (mana, combo point, rage) every time when being hit in a shield. I like this idea more but it could lead to toxic playstyles (tanks raging if not having a shield for a sec etc). Wanted to mention this option too though.
Personally I'd love to include them in this article because with smaller changes a new healer playstyle could be inserted into TWOW, spicing things up. The preventive damage + utility healer.
In short: adding a shield talent to the bottom of the tree.
Holy pala
Holy pala is in a very weird spot. They start of as a not very good healer and become the best spot healers at lategame because of two things: their quick heal is weak but cheap as hell + illumination talent with spell crit gear. This however shows problems for leveling. As long as palas don't have remarkable +healing and +spell crit, they need a bit of push. They are limited as healers anyway because they have the smallest healing toolkit (no hot, no wide heal).
My idea is a new holy talent which adds the holy pala a stackable buff after casting a flash of light spell. Buff stacks up until 5 and each stack makes the next holy light spell 0,2 sec faster.
This change would help holy palas during leveling because after 5 quick and cheap heal they could dish out a quick and big heal whenever it is needed. It would also add some kind of minimal rotation to holy pala raiding.
In short: adding them a talent which makes holy light 0,2 sec faster after each flash of light, stacking 5 times. Casting holy light removes the buff.