We have cataclysm talent tree previews for some classes near and dear to my heart: Druid, Priest, and Shaman. It looks like Druid healing hasn’t changed much, besides that hideous new sometimes-tree-of-glacial-speed.
However, both Disc Priest and Resto Shaman talent trees contain healing bonuses for sprinkling in a little pew pew. Let’s take a looky.
Discipline Priest
Atonement (Tier 3): When you deal damage with Smite, you instantly heal a nearby low-health friendly target within 40 yards equal to 15/30/45% of the damage dealt.
Evangelism (Tier 4): When you cast Smite you gain Evangelism, increasing the damage done by your Smite, Holy Fire, Holy Nova and Penance spells by 2/4% and reducing the mana cost of those spells by 3/6% for 15 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times. (Will that increase the healing done by Penance or just the damage?)
Archangel (Tier 5): Consumes your Evangelism effects, instantly restoring 3% of your total mana and increasing your healing done by 3% for each stack. Also allows you to channel Penance while moving. Lasts 18 seconds. (OMG HAWT! Penance while moving? 18 seconds is 2 penances!)
There’s no doubt that these talents intend for you to be casting pew pew and get some serious healing benefits from it. Are these going to be useful in PvP only? Worth it math-wise in terms of mana cost for pew versus healing power gained? Are priests suddenly going to have the time available to pew in-between the heals without someone croaking?
Resto Shaman
Focused Insight (Tier 4): After casting any shock spell, your next heal’s mana cost is reduced by 15/30/45/60/75% of the cost of the shock spell, and its healing effectiveness is increased by 5/10/15/20/25%.
Hrm! Will it be worth spending 5 points in this? Will the healing bonus be worth the time/mana costs? This seems less “DPS-y” than the disc priest preview, since it’s just an insta-shock and not a stacking-smite-thing.
Heal, heal, pew? There’s an app for that. I mean macro.
Many of you are like me and say “WTF! I’m healing. I’m busy. The last thing I need is to have to focus on which add to pew in between the heals, re-acquire targets… This is gonna seriously throw off my healing mojo.”
Fear not, help is on the way in the form of a no-thinking-required macro.
(1) Target your friendly neighborhood DPSer who is usually on the right target and seldom dies (don’t pick someone on “special” duty like kiting). Type /focus. That person is now your focus!
(2) Write your handy macro to pew the target of your focus:
/cast [@focustarget] spellname
(3) Profit!
Seriously, that’s all you have to do. Whatever your focus (in this case, the DPSer you’ve just selected) is currently pewing, you’ll pew that target too. You won’t have to manually change your target or do anything silly like “pay attention” to which Sparkleprince is currently active.
The “Feelings” Part
Dammit I
Whine. I don’t wanna DPS. That’s not my job. That’s the DPS’s job. I don’t want to think about both my job and their job. They’re certainly not going to have to think about my job while doing their job.
Healers, what do you think?