they are completely killing the downgraded spells, they will actually be quite effective still - just not as effective as in the past. Test them out come the patch, I think you'll find the mana saving / amount of healing will still make them worth considering.
 

lol - of course I meant to say they aren't in the first line

i r n00b
 

Good thing my healing style has been using the highest rank spell always. Ive been in naxx for a while now, and i seldom run OOM anyway. learn2play, ppl.

Intellect and most of all Spirit/MP5 will become more important methinks
 

I don't know how *not* using all of your options could possibly be considered superior gameplay. :)
 

We druids also suffer from this nerf; and a lot more than priests. The reason is, our Healing Touch (Rank 4) has a cast time of 2.5 seconds, while ranks 5 and above have 3 seconds cast time. I tend to spam Rank 4 a lot; it is a decent and fast healing spell (heals 820 and 1250 if crits). But with this nerf, my +483 healing which is already cut down because of less than 3 seconds cast time penalty will turn into about +80...
 

go tree form and regrowth away!
 

Maybe if they sorted out the co-efficients properly we would be more inclined to use our higher rank spells.

+heal should be +heal, not +heal divided by this then multiplied by that but only if x = y whilst n = s or whatever it is.. And completely different for another spell.

Sigh, Guess its back to Int heavy gear.
 

I am only sure about 1 thing in this case. The developers are clearly "out of touch" with their customers. It happens in every MMORGP which is why expansion pacts and major "tweaks" usually kill the game sooner or later (My prediction is a slow decline in the subscriber base through 2007).

In TBC, causal players who do not raid will be able to obtain nearly the same level of gear that raiders do. I expect raiding to become trivial and PvP to "gain much ground" since it is a huge grind with no requirement on the developers to add new content.

Expect to see a lot more warlocks and shadow pvp priests in TBC since they are very powerful for pvp vs other classes.
 

I've played a raiding priest for about a year. While this patch is going to pose challenges, I don't think it's the apocalypse. Everyone was outraged when Blizzard broke mana conserve, remember? We were in MC at the time, and I couldn't fathom how we were expected to survive Domo. Surprisingly, we learned to actually heal instead of just spamming flash over and over. It put some strategy and thought back into the game for me. I see the same thing happening here.

That's not to say Chromaggus is going to be a piece of cake this week. We're going to have to learn parts of that fight all over again, and it's going to be tougher in the short term.

In the long term, both sides are gaining a decursing class. Poison cleansing totems don't care whether decursive is broken or not. And pallies can remove even more types, effectively overlapping with other classes. Yes, the wack-a-mole aspect is going to increase, but isn't that already a game you enjoy by being a healer in the first place?

It also depends on your perspective a lot. I raid. I don't PvP, nor do I have any reason to solo. For me, 5 healing spells pretty much cover everything: max renew, max heal, and rank 1, 3, and 5 of greater heal. I'm also pretty balanced between +heal and mp5.

And honestly, the farther in you go, the less choices you have to do anything different. I don't have a choice of not using gr heal with my 8/8 trans. The benefit (+200/tick) is too much not to.

Plus the overall design of priest spells in a raid setting pegs us as the big healers, with druids hitting the HoT's, and shaman filling in with "smalls". Our mt won't stay up if I'm spamming regular heals, not with large spike damage like shadow flame.

Also, don't forget the positives of the patch. HoT's that stack are HUGE. Right now I can generate about 625 healing/tick by myself. Toss in a druid's +400/tick, multiply by raid attendance, carry the one, and you've got over 5k/tick of healing potential in a 40-man. PER TICK! Use a quick ratio, and that's over 3k/tick in a 25-man. /cheer


In TBC, causal players who do not raid will be able to obtain nearly the same level of gear that raiders do. I expect raiding to become trivial and PvP to "gain much ground" since it is a huge grind with no requirement on the developers to add new content.

I see this sort of attitude everywhere and it makes me wonder who started this rumor. Why would level 70 be any different than level 60? People seem to really believe that any 25-man pug will be able to plow through the new high-end instances. Level 70 raiding will be SO much easier and ALL of your guild's management problems will be solved! Praise Blizzard and pass the epics!!

Next they'll say the expansion is designed to let everyone beat the game. Too funny...

In actuality, the level playing field will end the moment these new guilds start repeatedly wiping in the first level 70 instances. Their quests are done and flow of new/better equipment has dried up. Less people won't make the whining any quieter, nor the guild easier to manage when this happens.

Plus, everyone and their brother will have a guild "running end game content", so green grass fever will spread like wildfire. There will be new guilds that pull ahead in the progression race. But it won't be everyone.

(Sorry I wrote so much >.< )
 

One more reason to just say no to BC. I'm so sick of Blizzard nerfing classes. Priests have a hard enough job as it is, so why make it that much harder to find someone who is willing to play the most thankless class in WOW. Oh how I long for the new MMO's for 07.
 

Sorry I wrote so much

I'd be the last one to complain about that one. ;)

Why would level 70 be any different than level 60?

As so often the reality will be in the grey area between the two extremes described. Level 70 will certainly not become "trivial". But neither will it be the same as level 60 raiding. The reason for that is that getting 40 people together is too hard for many guilds, but a good part of them will be able to staff a 25-man raid. Agreed that it won't be everyone, but I'd expect the percentage of players who can raid to go up significantly.

Priests have a hard enough job as it is, so why make it that much harder to find someone who is willing to play the most thankless class in WOW. Oh how I long for the new MMO's for 07.

Newsflash: Healer is the most thankless class in *any* MMORPG. Call me a pessimist, but I'd say that any hope that the MMO's of 07 will make healer a popular class and easy to find for a group are misplaced.
 

I have trouble understanding how putting 25 people together is so much easier than putting 40 people together for the raid... IMO, guilds will run in the troubles they have already. One of the reasons is, as a previous poster said, everyone and their brother will try to lead a raiding guild, there will be so much choice than filling a guild to have the proper balance for 25-man will be a pain as there will be so much guild-hopping. Another fact is that history shows us that it's not the case... If putting 25-man together was so easy and 40-man is so hard, you'd see tons of guilds with ZG and AQ20 on farm but not able to get people together for MC... But, on my server at least, theese does not exist... Most guild either don't raid at all, not even 20-mans (or have 1-2 bosses down in ZG), or are in 40-mans. The fact that the ZG loot is "not worth it" is not a reason either. For these guilds, it is worth is, and I always found 20-mans in WoW to give very nice loot with a higher chance for each person to get a piece... People saying the opposite most of the time didn't check the loot tables...

So, in short, I don't think that BC raiding will be any more accessible. The only people for whom it will be easier are the current raiding guilds, as guilds who fills 40-mans 3-nights right now, with sometime a few empty spots in the raid will be able to fill 25-mans 4 or 5 times a week (which will be better for everyone, the people who want to raid less and will come 1-2 nights and hte people who wants to raid more who'll be there 4-5 nights) and will be able to cut in he fat (you know, that player everyone hates in the guild but you keep around as you need someone to fill spots... I know all guilds have one).
 

First rule of software development: The developers are out of touch.

That's why any software company of any standing at all has a layer (or layers) of support / test and ops / project management people who, with developers, review the game design and playability and make decisions together. Hopefully Blizz has these checks-and-balances in place...

I'll reserve my final judgment on the compatibility patch until I play it a while. But the fact is that more big changes are only six weeks away (by the release schedule, at least), so the current changes can't really be fully judged until BC is given a shake-down cruise. Then I'd expect that a patch (or patches) will follow to fix, correct, and tweak.

And I do not understand why in the current manifestation of WoW the best gear is locked deep in raiding dungeons, inaccessible to solo players, 5-mans, and PvP-ers.

If Blizz can come up with near-impossible 40-mans that lead to the best gear, why can they not come up with near-impossible 5-mans or near-impossible solo runs or near-impossible PvP challenges that reward similar gear?

IMO, catering to only one segment of the player base is poor / lazy game design. So if solo quests (I would welcome a solo instance, for example - particularly if they extended class-specific themes that usually dry up around level 20) or 5-mans or PvP will lead to equivalent great gear, then I get one thing that I value greatly in my gaming experience: *Choice*.
 

Newsflash: Healer is the most thankless class in *any* MMORPG. Call me a pessimist, but I'd say that any hope that the MMO's of 07 will make healer a popular class and easy to find for a group are misplaced

Playing a Monk in Guildwars is both challenging and fun because there are so many different skills to mix and match. WoW healers are the equivalent of healbots with personalities because every priest uses the same spells with 1 or 2 differences based on their talent tree. No offense priests but it's the truth and it's not your fault.

Why am I optimistic for the future? Because I'm hoping that more developers realize that raiding with 5 identical spec'd priests isn't what an MMORPG should be.
 

My guild currently runs ZG and AQ20, clearing both almost everytime they reset (except maybe Jindo and the Hunter), but we don't really have enough to do MC with just our guild. So, we run MC two nights a week with another guild. I know, when BC comes out we'll have enough people to do 25 man runs without problem, and we'll be up to the challenge. I don't know, maybe my guild is the exception.
 

My coalition can't even get 20 casual players together. I have to raid with another coalition of guilds that play a little more. But since i'm a priest they let me even though I'm not in one of their member guilds. (I'm careful with my reset timers). 25 is still a lot, and it will still be difficult I think.

It's going to be a whole new ballgame starting next week.

I've read the lowered +heal starts at 6 levels below, if true that means even rank 2 gheal will not get the full +heal benefit.

The stacking HoTs might be good. Right now I don't bother with Renew since people top off the tank and the HoT gets wasted. Now.. maybe we'll rely more on HoTs and big gheals... though I can't imagine that ... I'm only up to Domo in MC so there's no need for me to use my max rank gheal almost ever right now.

I guess that's part of why the new talents to increase the effect of +heal are there, so we can wear less and wear more mp5 and spirit.

I am more worried that I've heard the emergency monitor won't work since it uses the same functions that decursive used. If that's true it will really be annoying. I at least have been practicing decursing manually lately.

We must also not forget +stamina is going to be calculated differently, so maybe that will give us a little breathing room.
 

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
 

I'm a what most experienced players call a noob priest (only 60 for 2 months) and I never really downranked or saw the purpose due to my lack of +healing gear while leveling. I simply waited until a larger heal would be effective, or tossed a renew. I am currently in a guild that raids 20 man content, and am usually 1 or 2 on the healing meter, regardless of when it is reset.

Considering my perspective here is what I have learned about playing a healer:

My job is to keep people alive, not necessarily at full health.

Resource Management: (the most important thing, and also the hardest part for me) It's easy to time and spam flash heal on the Main Tank until I run out of mana and be #1 healer in every fight or pull that lasts less than 2 minutes. I found that I felt like a wasted raid spot when I was OOM. I learned that flash heal sucked for everything but AOE. Max rank Greater Heal and use of the 5 second rule became my new best friends.

Timing: Getting timing down so that my heals landed just after mob hit hard keeps the tank near full health and the other healers outside of the 5 second rule. The best way to do this is knowing the encounter ;)

Additionally, I'm Shadow Spec, rarely have to pot, overheal an average of 12% and have never recieved an innervate...
 

My guild also regularly fields a group for ZG and AQ 20, but must seek out an alliance with other guilds for the 40-man instances (which actually results in *fewer* of us being able to go). So chalk us up as another data point for a guild that looking forward to reduced raid numbers.

I also just want to comment on the "most thankless class" comments. I think that healers have a bit of an inferiority complex thing going. "Thankless" in terms of being un(der)appreciated by your peers? Certainly not! How many times do healers get thanked per run/raid? Comparatively speaking...lots. If you think you aren't appreciated, think back to all those raids you've been on where the leader says "Great job DPS! You really saved our bacon there!" You want thankless, look for compliments for getting a timely Mortal Strike down, or efficient crowd control, or effective Rogue stunlocks. Raw damage output? All you get is yelled at. "Idiot! Your threat is getting too close to the MT!"

The MT may be the 'glamor' spot, but anyone who has played for ANY length of time knows that tanking success depends on tank AND healers. DPSers are just the interchangeable cogs that grind it out. In all our raids, healers get tons of love!

Now by "thankless", you might mean that you get less visceral 'return' during a raid encounter. Well, that's sort of a play style choice, isn't it? If you feel like you're getting nothing from healing, no emotional or 'fun' sense of reward from healing... why do it? Yeah it's great to get all those group invites. Lots and lots of opportunity to something which apparently isn't any fun. But it is fun -- you just need to remember why you do it!

Consider this: how many times *per minute* of a boss fight does a healer make the difference between success and a wipe?

I would also remind any depressed healer needing a boost of this: feeling like you don't do anything 'flashy'? You can freakin' RAISE THE DEAD! How cool is that? How many classes have such a useful and showy way of saying "Yeah, you got yourself croaked, fool. But I'm here to put you back together."?

If you have a group that doesn't appreciate what you can do and how you contribute, that's not a problem with the class -- it's a problem with the group!

And lest you think it's thankless because you only end up spamming 3 or 4 spells, and have so little variation during the big raid encounters -- it's not much (or any) better for most of the other classes. These things get scripted out -- and most decent players have figured out their most efficient techniques -- to the point that there's almost no decision-making for ANY class. At least you have something to consider in watching your raid's health. Contemplate the Mage's role in most MC boss fights, and be thankful.

The grass is usually just about as green.

- Brock
 

Whenever I'm in combat and I see my health going down, down, down, then bam, I'm back up to full health again, I make it a point to always thank the healer after that fight. If that happens several times on a Run, I thank the Healer every freaking time.

Of course I might be the exception, not the norm.

I tried playing a Priest. I couldn't do it. It didn't help that our Tank on my one Deadmines Run was lvl 15, that we had a Warlock who kept insisting his Felhunter could solo everyone (& he possibly could) or that we had a Rogue in his 20s who ripped Aggro off the Tank faster than you can say WIPE! But when I got blamed for the group wiping several times, I gave up on my Priest.

I know a guy who got a Paladin to 60, and was our Main Healer on quite a few Runs. He then leveled a Priest to 60 and hates his Paladin. He's the best Healer I know, possibly the best Healer on our server.

Priests and Healers, you guys get more love from me than you could possibly want. Now, who's up for a bit of Dwarf Love? It's just like regular love, only hairier ;)
 

I tried downranking and found it more difficult than using the big heal, flash heal, and renew. Perhaps this is because I am shadow spec'ed (as a raid healer yet!), and besides healing I'm also dott'ing, debuffing (+shadow damage for the locks and tossing the troll debuff for giggles). I've survived many a fight that the pure holy priests have died on. Trinkets, potions, talents, and skill to your benefit can outheal and outlast a cookie cutter approach.

While I understand the reasons behind the decursive nerf (for botting purposes), they should have rolled out an enhancement to the system to help the decursers as a carrot. The interface is really not friendly to debuffing as-is, and requiring people to download a third party add on to play your game is silly, no?
 

Decursive nerf is only a temporary problem i hope. With mass dispells available and smaller raids, decursing will still be a stupid raid element but less tedious than curing 40 raid without the addon.

Downranking nerf - 2 reasons imo.

1. With one eye on the upcoming itemisation with healers reaching i guess about +2000 healing in BCs endgame, downranking becomes too superior and hard to consider for pve design. As of right now, my paladin can spam low flash heals for about 10 to 15 minutes, depending on crit heals. Take some more paladins and let them single spam one target. That would result in some heal streams, wich would only be counterable with serious damage spikes.

PvE wise downranking created too diversive healing, something blizzard probably hated just like decursive. When Noth in Naxx is Blizzard's decursive bane, Patchwerk is the bane for downrank-healing. So for PvE this nerf opens up some room for the content designers.

2. Downranking only is an option for healing and not for dps i guess? I think itemwise we would come to a point were downranked healing would not be counterable in PvP, cause it does fubares the mana effiency of classes.

As for the flat spell bonuses in general, i don't like them. Downraking wouldn't even exist, if spell bonuses would be percentage/rating based. Even i as a paladin wich get the best heal-mana efficient spells in the game, this game mechanic is just wrong or as Blizzard would call it "unintended". Spell ranks alone should control heal-mana effiency, itemisation should not. This mechanic creates an even wider gap between casual and raid healer. Not only does the raider has more mana and more regen, he can even use lower ranks to achive a higher effiency than a casual. We've come to a point were you even need addons to show how much of your bonus spell-x gets. Working as intended?!

Yes, the wack-a-mole aspect is going to increase, but isn't that already a game you enjoy by being a healer in the first place?

I tried to find the sarcasm here, but i did not find it.

You seriously comparing class roles to interface mechanics? That`s BS. No one roles a support class to stare at bar graphics. I play one to fix other peoples faults, to react and to manage ressources. Problem is that after the patch all of this comes down to watch green bars shrinking and growing.

I do not pay monthly fee for that now, and i won't after the patch.
 

It was an attempt at humor, not sarcasm. :D I need an addon that turns my raid member's portraits into mole pictures...

I'm not sure what you consider BS, though. "Wack-a-mole" is an analogy of the selection/reaction you have to do as a healer. This isn't optional, but it's also not the only thing you have to do. Even reacting (mole selection), and managing resources (how hard to whack them) means you're playing that game. Plus, your role is limited by the interface mechanics. Otherwise no one would use addons to be a better player.

:)
 

As a tank, I try *always* to thank the healer(s).
As an avid PvP-er in AV, healers are the best! Nothing is quite so fun as running point for the Horde across the bridge and pushing back the defense, sometimes all the way back to the AS flag with healer support.
No healer support = death, usually quickly.
But once I see that first heal, I can push and disrupt and force the squishies and hunters into a chaotic retreat with stunning attacks, Execute, and a timely Intimidating Shout.

Funny thing, too - in a recent AV another tank was calling me off the Marshals, saying he had better gear & prot spec. Then when we were on Vann (and I wanted the win, not the drama) I told him to go for it. He pulled Vann - and the healers were still OOM from the Marshal pulls, so of course he quickly died.

On the other hand, in spite of my not-quite-Tier-0 mishmash of gear, I've tanked Vann from the pull to his going down more than once while holding his aggro - in concert with a good healer / healers.
Teamwork is key.
No healer(s)? The warriors fall like dominoes.
No tank? Vann bounces around killing dps squishies, with slowed melee classes giving pathetic chase.

As a tank, I'm part of a team: Healer + Tank.
 

Hi all, I'm also a noob 60 healer (druid), and prior to today I've found my most effective role in many raid encounters is to stand in range of everyone and spam my decursive button (which casts Remove Curse and Abolish Poison on a priority system). The "skill" involved is staying alive, far enough from the bosses but close enough to decursive most of the party. And healing/bandaging myself occasionally, and dropping HoT's as needed.

Now that decursive is broken, does anyone have any suggestions on how to manually decurse people? With CT_Raid's 40 icons on the screen, I see health bars and mana bars, but no poison or curse indicators. Well, the frames do turn a hard-to-see translucent green for the poisoned people, but that is moot since CT_Raid is broken too. =P Any suggestions or links?
 

Actually we don't play whack a mole. I'm usually on a tank, I stay on him and maybe look at the emergency monitor. The EM is not at all what I consider whackamole, since it puts the people who need healing in one spot on your screen, you don't have to stare at all the lifebars looking for changes.

With the EM broken, it's back to staring at a bunch of lifebars looking for changes in their size and looking for debuffs. It will truly be whackamole. At least if they change color that will help.

I downrank because in MC (and even AQ20 heh) the mobs hit so hard you can't wait for the tank to lose health before dropping a big heal. So I use a lesser heal and cast it earlier. Yes that means I'm in the 5sr more often, but the mana efficiency overcomes this. I've also learned to love flash heal, which I never used in 5-10 man, and only in certain fights in ZG.
 

@changedx:

there is an option in CTRaid (at least in the old version) to show the Buffs/Debuffs within the Bars of your 40 people.
You can even select which debuffs you wanna see (logically you choose the ones you can remove)

But let's see what CTRaid for WoW 2.0 will look like ;)

@tobold: I used also often the Lower Flash-Heals for long-mana critic fights (such as Razorgore). However , it normally didn't really matter if it healed for +400 or +300, because most of the time , part was over-heal anyway.

So considering this, it's still useful to use a lower rank heal if mana is an issue and chance of "dying" is not high.

Also don't forget ,that 2.0 will bring new Talents as well. So I don't think Blizzard nerfed Priests or Paladins (which i play in Raid)
Also there won't be that many MC/BWL Raids anyway, as BC is approaching fast, the new Encounters may better be fitted and feel more "active" for healers.

As Paladin especially ,you were a decursive-slave (Pala-decurse is alot more mana efficent then Priest-decurse, normally Priests don't decurse magic,poison, sickness in our Raid)

Now it brings back some more interactivity, as before. Hammering one key was confident, but also boring.

I'm looking forward!
 

Now it brings back some more interactivity, as before. Hammering one key was confident, but also boring.

What forced you to hammer one key?
 

@anon:

well mostly the lazy-me, and of course you didn't want to be "Slow" in decursing. While sometimes it really doubtable if a decurse a few seconds later would have really mattered. But it's kind of a paladin-pride to keep the raid debuff free at all time.
 

No comments about Decursive, but the downranking nerf was necessary.

There *must* be a link between cost and effect. If you pay half the cost, you should get half the effect.

The problem with downranking is that you could get most of the effect for a fraction of the cost. This was most noticeable with paladins spamming Flash of Light. You could get something like 90% of the effect for 10% of the cost. But it applied to pretty much all spell casting classes.

Yes, this sucks for us healers, as it removes one weapon in our arsenal. But it is an absolutely necessary change for the health of the game.

Cost must be linked with effect, for there to be any semblance of balance.

Here's some more I wrote about this topic back in May:

Is the Spell System Breaking Down?
 

There *must* be a link between cost and effect. If you pay half the cost, you should get half the effect.

That is misleading, because you only consider mana to be a cost. Time is a cost too. Before the nerf I had the choice between a fast heal and a slow heal, both healing the same amount of health. As time is a cost, the slow heal should be more mana efficient than the fast heal.

If Blizzard makes the lower rank heal uninteresting, they should have added a new spell, slow heal, with better mana efficiency.
 

Well, I'm only comparing different ranks of the same spell, with the same cast time. How individual spells relate to each other is a different matter, and part of game design. Slow heals do not necessarily have to be mana efficient, just so long as there are situations where using spell A is more optimal than using spell B. But I thought the priest Greater Heal was mana efficient compared to Flash.

For example, for Paladins, our slow heal is high power, low efficiency, medium cast time. Our fast heal is low power, high efficiency, low cast time.
 

@ markus: thanks for the advice; I'll check out how things look in 2.0, and whether the same alert options exist.

@ tobold and gsh: yes, there are three separate aspects of a healing spell:
Power (healing per second)
Efficiency (healing per mana)
Cast Speed

I like to think of it in terms of Cast Speed because it maintains a consistent convention of "higher numbers = better", in comparing with the other two metrics.

For druids, we have:
Rejuvenation: low power, medium efficiency, high cast speed
Regrowth: medium power, low efficiency, medium-low cast speed
Healing touch: high power, high efficiency, low cast speed
 

Pardon me for I may hit a nerve. I do say that I am sorry you healers have a tougher job. That said.

I am floored by the "healers arrogance" in here.

Thankless job? Give me a break. The most desired needed class for any party and life saver...

To the arrogant ones who think I am the most important piece of a party. Go die.

Teamwork is not all about you guys.(the ones who see themselves as the most important part of a party)

Do you not forget..you need the tank to keep that agro off you....the mages to dps and cc...warlocks to dps,curse, and SS your asses. And dont forget the boss wont die without dps'ers like your hunters and rogues out there.

To see someones say the most "thankless" is bullshit. People beg to find good healers for raids...always needing you guys for the parties or elite quests. You are by far Not in the "Most thankless" job section.

All classes suffer a form of party abuse with the assholes we have in game.

I think the most thankless job is rogue..last on the heal list yet they are key to shutting down spells on bosses or dpsing.

The only class I have seen someone charge to be in party is Priests...the audacity of these players makes me puke. Im sooo damn important kinda players..

I speak for most non healers. We love our healers. We would die to save you in a party. People cheer more often than not when a healer is added to the groups...I dont see anyone cheering for the hunter or rogues.

Healers are nowhere near "Most thankless job" better look at the warriors.

To the rest of you good players and healers...This rant isn't at you but only the Arrogant I'm so important ones. You forget there is no I in team you fools, and your not special...you aren't crap without the tank and dps on your team.
 

The underlying problem, at least for me - is that many healers forego the ability to do pretty much anything solo if they want to.

The one thing we can do is raid heal and they continue to try and make it a pita.

I hear druids are becoming the new main raid healer in 2.0 So maybe I can finally leave this phase of my WoW life behind.
 

[i]... there are three separate aspects of a healing spell:
Power (healing per second)
Efficiency (healing per mana)
Cast Speed[/i]

Let's not forget a critical fourth aspect:
Spell level

It appears that what is desired is to *fully* apply high-end equipment to lower-level spells.
That's broken game design; it leads to the same dichotomy that causes people to wonder why a level 19 can have fiery on a weapon, but not equip a rugged leather kit in his armor.
 

Umm im not quite sure what all the fuss is about with decursive. the only addons i use is the ct raid assist and boss mod because without those in a raid your kinda buggered. after this patch was brought out i was amazed by how many people on our server stopped raiding because all their addons had gone and they said they were "unable" to play. my guild carried on just fine because most of us play old school. nothing but reflexes and lengthy attention spans keep us alive.i can kinda see the point with the downgrading heals but since i have +int instead of healing it never mattered to me. its not the end of the world because all the addons and stuff are gone. try using some skill to play and youl find it harder but 10 times more enjoyable.
 

Speaking as a endgame mage, I never understood why healers were allowed to get full benefit of +heal to downranked heals. Simply because +magic/heal does not and never has applied in full to down ranked DPS spells. If it did I would be casting rank 1 frostbolt with a 1 second cast time and hitting for about 500 damage non crit and could probably re-gear myself down to about 100 int.

As it is my +442 frost damage on rank 1 frostbolt hits for about 45-50 damage, up from the base 22-25 or whatever it is.