Has VI been listening at all? Druids have been asking for healing upgrades, heck, even clerics admit druids need healing upgrades. VI admits we are backup healers. So, put all this together and to me that means upgrading our patch heals, give us a boost to NT or some form of group heal or HoT. NOT just this pos 10s casting time gimp heal. This heal will help us get groups - that's great. But it does nothing to make us effective back up healers in a group or on a raid. Clerics and paly's with their new heal line ups now take that role as well. VI should be working to make clerics and druids more stackable...this doesn't cut it. I'm completely disgusted with the way they handled this whole situation. We are still going to have the same annoying frustrations on raids, not being able to keep anyone alive with our crappy patch heals. This changes nothing and I'm so disgusted that they feel this is "Priest balancing"

There, I feel better now.

/hug

She is not only a card carrying member of the BDC she also plays a monk!

the lower healing amount should be compensated with a lower cast time.. since it's a 75% heal it should take 75% the amount of time to cast.. they should've made it take 7.5 seconds to cast instead of making it just as long as CH.. that would be more fair IMO.. but I am very happy we are getting this spell :)

This spell is awesome, hopefully healing adept/gift will affect it like NT which would make our healing even more efficient.

I'm happy with it.

k, but at least it's an upgrade.. and druids on test were very happy with it.

pulse heal might have been nicer, but oh well.

The way I see it, we can how heal three times more the HP's than we could before. It' won't be an emergency heal, but, I never used NT for that either. And in the time it took us to heal 2K with NT we can now heal 3K.

It's a small upgrade, best used in xp groups where it still doesnt make up for our lack of other real contributions.

/shrug. Not what I'd hoped for. Not what druids needed. And still nothing for the sub-58 crowd.

Tia

How can a 200% increase in healing efficiency be called a "minor" upgrade?

/agree Tiane

Exactly how I feel about the spell.

Raey

It's not a small upgrade. If you think a 3k heal is a small upgrade, then you're probably not one of those rare druids who has devoted themselves to grouping and knows what being a healer in an xp group is all about. (The ones who deserve the heal.)

3k is a lot of hp. Most tanks do NOT have 6k+ hp, and nobody waits until the tank is at 50hp to heal anyway. The main tank in the last group I was in was a ranger with under 4k hp (under 3k without buffs). This would have healed him very nicely. I would say the average tank hp ranges around 5k. Yes, there are some uber warrior tanks with 7-8k hp, but you don't NEED to wait until they're down to one or two bubbles of hp to heal them. The only reason clerics do it is to save as much mana as possible. Even if you heal them earlier you're still saving mana. Plus, if you have focus items you can cast the heal in only 8.5 seconds, which is faster than the 10 second cast of cleric CH. (Focus items don't work on cleric CH, but they do work on the druid/shaman versions.) That fast 8.5 second casting time is VERY nice.

To say something like this is a "small upgrade" is very insulting.

As of yesterdays patch no focus items work with the heal. So it is 10s and staying that way.

It's still a great upgrade. For most tanks, a 3k heal is all you need to keep an xp group going. If you have one of those 6-7k tanks, just heal them at half. Tanks actually like early heals like that. It makes them feel more "safe".

(BTW, did they change the spell price?)

The new heal is very nice for druids, it may cause a little extra competition on the Exping group level, but I doubt its going to mean the end of Clerics being the main healer a group wants to have. A good Druid who knows how to play thier class well should beable to find a group if they try hard enough, same as any Cleric. Theres more then just healing that either class can add to a group, a good player will know this.
Just a word of warning though to all the Druids who suddenly think that they are a healing machine from god now...
Theres a reason Clerics are a Plate wearing class with high AC and HP, the DA+DB they get arn't just for fun to jump off cliffs with, heh.
Healing a lot gets you plenty of agro, im curious to know how many Druids are going to try to be a groups main healer and then after they get agro, end up Evacing the group or ending up in a CR with no group rezzer.
I know Druids can and have healed groups NP plenty of times before and shall again. Im just wondering now if any will get overconfident of thier new heaing abilities and get a BIG wakeup shock.

Why not just give Druid's all Clerical abilities, and make all Clerics become Druids? Jeez you really should look at the whole picture here. This game is meant to have diversity and challenge. Most challenge has diminished, and most diversity is closing in. Now I'm not saying Druid class shouldn't be improved, but making them equal to Clerics in healing abilities is just sick. One of the few advantages they have over Druids of note is their ability to rez. This is matched by 60 pallys with their 90% rez. So uh WTF?

the point jordangw is that druids should have been able to fill in for a cleric when the cleric was not there. They couldn't. Get over it. they are a healer class to deny them healing power is greedy. The game needed more healers to allow more raids.

The druid heal was needed for that problem. What verant tried to do with the hammer, and which they failed at when they nerfed it, was to give the cleric additions to the party besides healing. The pre nerf hammer would have balanced out our versatility and equalled things out in groups. both heal sufficiently--druids offer nuke/utility we offer melee damage. Nerf broke that.

The problem now is that clerics are only a healing class in a game of inflated ac and damage mitigation where onlly so much healing is needed. They need to bring something more to the table. hammer only equals our sit and nuke method. Neither of these bring as much to a group as druid/shaman abilities. They need to add an aura effect to us and solo abilities.

Breaking the druid healing again is not the solution. fixing the broken clerics additional unique abilities is. The problem is our healing is too much. It is like going 60 mph in a ferarri. We need to bring something to the group besides healing.

Get used to it cause when POP comes out druids are going to need another boost to their healing. Henceforth clerics will hopefully be getting another boost to their group utility and solo ability (on top of what they already need)

Healers are needed--the difference in healers is going to be what besides healing they bring to the table for both grouping and soloing.

Just as druids/shaman will always be a little better at soloing than us, we should always be a little more preferred for groups. That is the balance verant must maintain.

before TR druids could not even fill in for us in a group. That was wrong. currently we cant even begin to solo efficiently and offer nothing else to group that does not need our total healing(well nothing that a druid/shaman can not do better. That is wrong.

Dont blame druids. Verant is the one who nerfed our hammer and wont give us any solo or utility power. I get upset at some of the druids who are trying to fight against us getting any utility or solo ability, but those are in the minority here. Please dont attack their whole class. Attack those individuals.

The funny thing about this heal is not only has it improved my value to a group but i can now solo so much better then before.

Let me give you a little background. Quading and root/doting bore the heck out of me. Because of this the only soloing i do is charm kiting. TOday i decided to test out ym new heal in my favorite soloing grounds, ME. I could a ravenouse beast and took him to the DS zone. Not normally i kill toilers because the pet can rip through them much more efficantly then gorangas. Well lets get on with the story. Now this is on a Sunday mind you...ME is packed with people all over the place. At first it looked like it was going to go rather slowly with the lack of pulls. Then it began. "Tain to DS" I see a train of about 4 things. I decide...ok lets test out this new heal. AS the guy ran past me i rooted one of the worms and stuck my pet on it. I then continued to root about 4 more mobs and toss my epic on them. During this entire time my pet is jumping form mob to mob killing everythign from 4arms to Xi Xoui(forget how to spell it) to gorangas. I was killing mobs faster and more consistantly then groups, quading wizards, and necros. It was beautyfull. TR heals a ravenouse beast for 20% of its life and with PoTG/mask i was easily able to keep enough mana only stoping to re charm my pet. This was some of the msot fun i have had in EQ. Things i never would have tried before TR.

Oh and another thing. WE had 2 groups killing Taskmasters in Ssra basement today as well. We pulled the TM thats flurrys and is unslowable and the cleric went down like a 1 dollar hooker. TR to the rescue. Started casting it on teh tank when he was at 75% and was able to easily survive the encounter. Before TR we most likely would have gotten destroyed. Pally rezz to the rescue and TR turned a CR into a 1 person rezz.

Was a good day for me :)

grats Keggie.


And that folks is how it should work.