I recently had the oportunity to play a cleric character at one of our PoTactics raids (since I wasnt flagged).

Btw clerics are uber !! :P Gotta love the click stick.

Anyways.
There are alot of AEs in PoP on raids, and I SHIVERED at the concept to trying to keep my group alive with druid heals.
Basically I have 2 options ...10 sec ICH or 3.2 sec Infusion.

It would take 2400 mana and ONE MINUTE+ to ICH My whole group, or 3000 mana and still 18-30 seconds to NI my whole group not to mention the UBER agro I would create.

And in all this time, I wouldnt have the ability to heal anyone else.

When druids gripe for new abilities, I always think ,"Hmm.. that would be nice, but they can't give that to us or we'd be too powerful".

Basically giving us a spell without making us godly xp groupers or even godlier soloers is almost impossible.

But I think a Group Heal request is completely reasonable caus you would never use it in xp groups, and never while soloing.

So it would be a 95% raid spell.
Hell, make it really really expensive, but sometimes I just gotta have it.
SoW is nice, but 22 minute recast is , ya whatever...
They cant make the recast shorter, or its too much power for free. Hell even at a 2 minute recast, it wouldnt satisfy what im looking for.

600pt group heal, 5 sec, 900 mana
800pt group heal, 6 seconds, 1200 mana.
1000pt group heal, 7 seconds, 1500 mana

Something like that. Either to just "top off" or to wave off those AE DoTs and keep my group alive while still keepin clerics alive. Hell even if it was 750 pts for 1750 mana, I might even use it.

What do you think? Or is this asking for too much? I always thought we had enough tools. But never in my mind did I anticipate the mob DPS in PoP....
-Naas

Yeah I long thought we should get a group heal, we should at least be better backup healers than a melee (paladins). But then they went and gave us mana free group torpor (spirit of the wood, which would be amazing even if the recast time was doubled) so I doubt they will now give us a regular spell type of group heal too.

Secondary ability designates should have the capability of at least .6 or more the ability of the parent. Otherwise being secondary in that ability becomes completely unviable, especially on a raid.

I agree that a group heal would be neat(spirit of wood, should have been a spell imo), but so far i havent seen an encounter that required it, or an encounter where it was just a little bit hard to keep my group alive due to AE's, using karana/tunares renewal, and the casually casted spirit of wood.

Maybe the elemental planes will change that, but anything below it hasnt offered any AE's worth mentioning.


-Tetrian

I absolutely think druids should not get a group heal.
It would just overbalance them too much.

I'm one of the few people who think clerics are still fantastic I guess; I don't think they were nerfed with druids and paladins having more healling power, but I think a group heal for druids would be one step over the limit.

I can't see much of a reason for having one except a desire to be in XP AOE groups. Maybe that should be one of the places we don't fit as well as other classes? There should be at least one.

A melee, paladin, is only a "better" backup healer in those rare situations such as an AOE group or something. Its really nice because it fills two duties, melee and group heal (in a pinch) Its certainly NOT a better healer than the druid otherwise. Its not going to have the mana pool, large single heals, and its going to be mainly fighting.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>It would just overbalance them too much. [/quote]

yeah, we wouldn't want druids to become balanced or anything! :evil:

I've been hoping for a Druid group heal myself, but nothing quite as good as prexus. I could see druids getting a group heal along the strength of a "group chloroblast".

That would work for me.

I really think as a priest class, it woul dbe nice to have some flexibility in healing to cover the possible errors and/or adds that can happen in regular old groups. Right now, my only decent options are NT and TR at 61. Chloroblast doesn't heal enough to be effective. NT has a rather long cast time. If I have 2 group members taking significant damage, I may not be able to heal both. SotW reuse timer is long, and not every druid from 58-63 will have that skill. I don't mind being the primary healer in a group and using my manabar for that purpose rather than blasting. But it would be nice to even out the progression of the heals with an eye toward cast times and real usage situations. If NT were more of a chloro upgrade (read lower cast time) than I can see no "need" for a group heal. I would like to see the progression of druid heals a little more thought out now that we have established what the individual spells can and cannot do.

You have a spot heal at 63 that casts quickly heals a good amount and is tuned for PoP encounters with high AE amounts.

Nature's Infusion : Level 63, 3.75 cast time (affected by spell haste and focus spell haste), heals 1750HPs.

GCH generates a LOT of agro. Im talking a LOT of agro, if you arent using visages its a sure death sentence.

Right now there are 3 group healers

Clerics : with the widest array of choices, grp HoT, grp direct heals and grp CH.
Druids : with only an AA choice
Paladins : with several fast effective group heals


Thing about the entire argument regarding AEs is that in most encounters a Druid will not be given a group makeup that will require them to do grp healing. They will get casters that will be able to duck out of AE to a "heal station" or avoid AE altogether by being out of range of it. Typical grp setup with a Druid will include a paladin in the group to aid in group healing during AE raids IF the group is one that will take constant AE damage over the course of the fight.


Belkam Marrwolf

Yeah, I am fine with NI, provided I can get it in my spellbook, but it doesn't alleviate the fact that from about 58-62 we almost need a paladin in that group for the group heal. Almost. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I enjoy it. But I don't see how adding something comparable or reducing the reuse time of SotW. From about 58-60, NR can be a good way to keep up with healing on an extra group member who is having trouble iwth agro control. I dunno, there are good points to both sides of the argument. I really don't need to use up another spell gem spot so I'd be in favor or allowing the reuse time in SotW to drop with levels, even if that means adding an AA skill to purchase in order to maek that happen. 22 minutes is a long time.

Well I dont want to be any more of a healer than I currently am I specialised in evocation and will not change to Alteration...I never made a druid to sit there and heal all day although I love to be able to heal so we can fill gaps when neded..soo no I dont want group heals.

I want to keep druids flawed in healing in this way so we cannot replace clerics totaly on raids. Pallys have nice group heals they fill the gap we cannot do..but 2 people needed vs 1 cleric means a cleric is still prefered for healing which is how it should always be.

Atm theres very few things I can complain about being a druid theres lots of other classess who could be looked at before us now and yes I am serious and not kidding. Yes we have some problems with some of our spells....but dont all classess and this isnt really "balance" this is just fixing what we already have so it works right which should be a different area in VI.

Tils

Spirit of Wood fills the need just fine imo. . .hell its better then a group heal. . .it's true powah lies in MGB

You will have clerics on raids. They should have MGB. They should have Ethereal Elixir. Tell them to do their job already.

6 clerics x 1800 reinforced MGBed EE = 10,400 raidwide heal over 3 minutes
2 druids x 1500 reinforced MGBed SotW = 3,000 raidwide heal over 1 minute

Spirit of Wood is 5 Ticks, at its top level with SCRM would be 250 a tick for 7 ticks

so at Mastery Reinforcement levels. . .

6 clerics 1800 = 10.8 k per person over 36 ticks or 3 minutes 6 seconds

6 druids 1750 = 12,250 per person over 42 ticks, or 3 minutes 12 seconds

they are very close, except MGB wood is 0 mana, more importantly, they stack. . .+550 a tick raidwide? =)

<strong>K</strong>hardan <strong>Moo</strong>nshadow
Storm Warden

/agree Tils

I am very happy with the healing I can do now, especially with Spirit of the Wood maxed out. One careful activation of that skill and my group is full health again.

Its called Spirit of the Wood. I use it all the time to heal my group when that annoying disparity of red bars occurs. The only problem is the 22 min refresh time. I agree it would be nice to have something that cost mana that would be slightly faster. Group heals I concur are more in the cleric departments as they are masters of all kinds of fun ways to make that red bar go up. We as druids are the quasi-masters of regeneration (/rude shamans). The group regen is a natural progression of our priestly abilities.

Mastery only works on buffs with a casting time and not SoTW. i.e. Replenishment, Nature's Recovery (which without mastery is inferior mana/heal than Nature's Infusion fyi).