HEROIC LEAP!

[Kjerag]

BOING!!!

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=24038612592&sid=1

Need I say more?

Well actually, I do. The sunder armor change worries me in regards to devastate, but the other changes look interesting, especially vengeance.

But Heroic Leap...Whibs is going fury for a DPS spec in Cat if they do that. =)

-Whibley

[The Dude Abides]

BANZAI!!!

[Voltrond]

BACON!!!!

Wouldn't festergut have been ez mode with life-grip

[Ror1023]

yea lets just hope ppl don't say.. "WHAT?, it's not my fault the Priest didn't lifegrip me out."

but yea it looks sweet! lets hope that Heroic Leap is a drop zone like most aoe's

[The Dude Abides]

WARNING: Incoming Wall 'o Text!

I'm thinking that Leap of Faith (LoF) might not make it out of beta-testing. The ability to interfere and make a friendly player lose control of his character whilst in combat is unprecedented. I can already hear the QQ from Battleground regulars when a priest snags a melee combatant to help them because they're getting ganked, then said snaggee gets pwned as well in the confusion. Could be a hilarious prank for priests to play though. Having a priest misclick and yank a tank away from the boss causing a wipe will be lulz, the first time it happens at least. :-P

What I'm really concerned about is the change coming to healing, specifically raid-healing. Having boss encounters depend on the healers mana-management rather than an artificial enrage timer seems at first to be a more natural return to vanilla WoW raiding. Some healers may even find this challenge to be a refreshing change. These healers are also masochists, and I'll explain why.

With an enrage time, there exists pressure on the raid dps to kill the sucker before he goes postal, right? That pressure is spread across usually 16 to 19 of the raid members, whose SOLE RESPONSIBILITY is to mash buttons until the thing dies. Oh, and occasionally to move out of the fire. Now, healers are not only going to have to keep everyone alive as best they can, while making sure they do so efficiently as to not go OOM and wipe the raid. Oh, and now they have to pull retards out of the fire with their Go-Go-Gadget Grip (Patent Pending on that term, don't even think about it!). This is all on top of keeping themselves alive (staying out of said fire/goo), and also having a much more difficult job of healing once another healer dies, much more than dps suffers when 1 or 2 of them go down.

If you look at the general demeanor of most raid healers, they are some of the most meek, self-effacing players. They place enough blame upon themselves for things going wrong in raids that generally isn't their fault to begin with (I'm looking at you Mrs Begtoheal! , they don't need this adding to the burden.

When Cataclysm drops, if Velo, BigD, Beg, Lorb and all you other healers decide to switch to dps or tanking, I won't blame you one iota. I'd do it, it's only sensible...

[Velodrome]

@Des...

I would agree that the Cataclysm changes with the removal of enrage timers (which currently if the raid fails to meet, the blame is on the dps) to mana-management (where the blame is going to be put on the healers). Healers will be subjected to a lot more blame in Cataclysm and will probably switch to tanking or dps to get everyone off their back. It will take the stoutest of heart to be able to handle the pressure and stress of healing in Cataclysm. I'm more than confident that our healing crew can handle that type of stress because we already do it now. We've shown that on fights like Festergut and Rotface where we have had to push ourselves to the Nth degree just to give the raid enough time to have a shot at the fight. Very few people recognize what we do on those fights and we do it so well now that everyone takes it for granted at this point.

If you want a good analysis that is right along with what you noted, please check out Gevlin's take on the changes here.

[Voltrond]

I'm just glad we have the amazing healers we do. I'm not patient enough to be a full-time healer.

Oh and apologies for derailing the warrior thread whibs =] or was it Des's fault..?

Yay for yet another charge/intercept gap closer for warriors! And I was going to level a rogue for cata.

[The Dude Abides]

Looking at our core group of raiders, I don't have any concern about healers getting blame shifted their way come Cataclysm, at least not from those of us who know the challenges that the healers face. Having now dps'ed and tanked a fair deal in raid environments, I can only believe that you have the toughest, and sometimes most thankless job, especially in 25man content. Rest assured, if I'm ever in a raid post-expac and a dps or tank tries to give the healing squad some unjustified lip about how they're doing their job, I'll do my best to "correct their outlook".

Btw, Gevlon's piece was great, hadn't read his blog in awhile. Great (devious) minds think alike?

Finally, I'd like to quote the great statesman, Benjamin Franklin, in reference to team comraderie and appreciation:

"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."