Right now, this spell is garbage. Druids have an old version of this spell, that is 500 times better than this spell, and still they rarely use (IMO, a mistake, but that's my opinion). Hand of Sincere Infusion Rk. III Level: 114Cast time: 3 seconds (base)Recast: 2 minutesCounters: 8HP healed per counter: 3,956TGBable: yesMana Cost: 6,468Ethereal Ways Rk. IIILevel: 108Cast Time: 3 seconds (base)Recast: 6 secondsCounters: 48HP healed per counter: 5,464TGBable: yesMana cost: 2,098This spell needs to be at least as good as Druid's Ethereal Ways line please.
It's a terribly designed spell with a good concept but poor implementation. Not every spell has to be equally useful, but there have to be some situations (outside of the extreme "everyone is silenced so this provides healing when nothing else can" situation) where the spell can be useful. The following are thoughts I posted during the last beta period about it that should address most of the problems with it. Note that the the post refers to the version from last expansion (Hand of Merciful Infusion) but everything written should apply to the current version of the spell since it received no meaningful upgrade: "Though I realize that changes to existing spells are not likely to be considered, I am going to try and make a case for changes to a line that I feel is in serious need of some changes. I could just forget the line exists as some clerics have or consider it a failed concept/implementation and move on but seeing as it is being continued for this expansion and that its removal or replacement is not going to happen, I figure that tossing out ideas on how to improve it (or at least encourage some clerics to consider memorizing it to mess around with) is better than just ignoring it for yet another expansion. The line in question is the "Infusion" line of spells, which consist of two spells (a single-target and group version) that for this expansion are called "Infusion of the Merciful" and "Hand of Merciful Infusion". I vaguely remember that when the line was introduced the designer said it was to give clerics a break and let the group help with heals (or something to that effect). So what do the spells in this line actually do? Here are the descriptions for the current versions: Infusion of the Merciful Rk. III Duration: 1m Level: 106 Skill: Abjuration Mana: 2155 Cast: 0.5 Timer: 9 Target: Single Spell Effect: Adds Merciful Infusion III as a melee proc to your weapons, which will heal your target's target for up to 3263 hit points. This effect will fade after it is triggered 8 times. Hand of Merciful Infusion Rk. III Duration: 1m Level: 109 Skill: Abjuration Mana: 5390 Cast: 3.0 sec (1.5 sec) Timer: 9 Target: Group Spell Effect: Infuses your group's weapons with the chance to trigger Merciful Infusion III, which will heal their target's target for 3263 hit points. This effect will fade after 8 successful heals or 0:01:00. These spells provide a single target or group a buff visible only in the song window that will give them a chance to proc 8 heals (of 3263 hit points) off melee swings, with the heals landing on their target's target (or whoever is the target of the mob being damaged by the person proc'ing). So 8 procs of 3263 hit points and 6 members to a group meleeing (throwing the priest into that number and assuming no casters in the group to be generous) means that the group version of the spell provides a potential 26104 points of healing from each group member (and 26104 x 6 or 156624 for the entire group) before crits are considered. How long does it take for those 6 group members to proc that healing, you ask? I have not done extensive testing of the spell (for reasons I will get into shortly) but in isolated, informal tests with different melee classes, I have found that it can take up to a minute to exhaust all 8 procs. So, the proc rate is not all that great, meaning that whoever receives the heals will likely receive it in several small doses that won't make much of a difference in terms of countering meaningful damage. This is actually very important to understand because that number (156624) might seem big, but it will not ever be received all at once, not by a single group at least. But you might say "If that healing is passive and it doesn't require additional effort beyond the initial cast and stacks with other forms of healing, isn't any additional source of healing useful?" You'd be right, of course, and while many clerics dismiss additional sources of healing like elixirs and delayed promised heals, the fact is that stacking heals on to a target (provided they are cast at the right time and do not interfere with necessary direct healing) is a good way to improve the target's survival. Think of it this way... if the tank hasn't begun tanking and you're waiting for him to grab the mob, you could just wait for him to grab the mob and begin tanking to do anything. You could start heals to get a head start and land the first heal on him, also. Neither of those actions, though, are going to restore any health because he hasn't taken any damage yet. So the healing potential of those actions is exactly zero. If you toss an elixir, promised heal, or infusion on the tank, though, you've provided more future healing to the tank becuase any of those spells over its duration is going to heal for more than zero (or have a chance to, at least, unlike a direct heal with a target at full HP) and have greater healing potential at the time they are cast than anything else you could have cast at that time. The infusion line has problems, though, compared to those other spells which cause it not to be cast. I'll go over them from most to least detrimental (though some will probably not agree with the order): 1. The Shared Timer with Ward of Assurance (the "Ward" line) Yes, for some reason that I can still not figure out (aside from the fact that both spells have a 2 min. recast timer and an 8-hit limit on their effect), the infusion line shares a timer with our ward line. Here is what the ward line does for those who don't know, using the newest version of the spell as an example: Ward of Assurance Rk. III Duration: 48s Level: 107 Skill: Abjuration Mana: 4809 Cast: 0.5 Timer: 9 Target: Single Spell Effect: Covers your target in a ward that will absorb up to 32066 damage of the next 8 hits that contact them. This ward will cast a 36178 point heal on the bearer when it wears off. It's an incredibly useful spell that is useful in a variety of situations and on various targets besides a tank and while I would like a greater hit-limit (who wouldn't?) blocking a potential 240,000+ damage is nothing to sneeze at. Given the poor healing the infusion line offers (even if it is an additional source of healing that stacks with others), can you really see a situation where a cleric would give up casting this spell (ward) to cast infusion? I can't, either. I mean, even in a group where your tank needed every ounce of healing you could offer, you'd still be better off shielding him (or a vulnerable member of the group) from a good chunk of melee damage instead. 2. The 2-minute Recast Timer The long (and in the cleric world, anything over 30 sec is long) recast timer is used to balance abilities that have considerable power to prevent them from being used too often. As mentioned, the healing potential of this spell even under ideal conditions is not that great. Elixir of Wulthan, our new group elixir/heal over time spell, heals for about 10,000 per tick, meaning that for its base 24 sec duration (which is extended further with gear and such), it will heal for about 40,000 hit points on each group member (not just the target target's of melee players in the group). That's a potential 240,000 hit points healed to the group over the spell's base duration compared to the 156,624 hit points of healing provided by infusion to a single target (provided every person in the group is meleeing the same mob and that the tank is the target of that mob -- it also assumes that priests like druids and shaman who don't melee much will be doing it too, along with casters who almost never melee). Elixir of Wulthan also has NO recast timer beyond the global recast for all spells. There is simply no reason that the infusion line needs a 2 minute timer for the healing potential it provides. Assuming every melee player in the raid had the spell cast on them, you'd be looking at 26104 x 34 (guessing at how many melee are in a raid) = 887,536 points of healing. That sounds like a lot of healing, right? The thing is that a single tank will probably never see all of that healing. For one thing, it assumes that every melee player in the raid will have the buff. That isn't a given considering that many clerics won't even cast elixirs or promised heals because they find them "worthless." So that drops some of that healing potential because some melee players won't get the buff (or if they do, won't receive it consistently after the pre-event cast fades). Then there is the fact that every melee player who has the buff must be targeting the same mob. That happens frequently when there is only a single boss mob, but once you put adds into the mix, you lose some (or all, depending on the event) of the melee off the boss and the healing from infusion procs will go to the add tank(s) instead. Then even in a perfect situation where all melee are on the boss, there is the fact that proc healing is very unpredictable. It won't land exactly when the tank needs it and is very likely to be lost to overhealing when the tank is at full HP. The long recast timer also discourages clerics from memorizing it because any spell with a long recast timer takes up permanent residence in our spell bar (because un-memorizing it means having to endure a long delay in memorizing it again if it is swapped out for another spell). I have no problem giving ward a permanent spot due to its usefulness, but this? It just isn't good enough to devote a permanent slot to. If I could swap it out easily without suffering the long memorization timer, it would at least be something to consider swapping in. Though the recast timer could be reduced to something like 30 seconds, which is more reasonable, I would just remove it entirely. The 8-hit counter already ensures that a cleric who wants to maintain the buff on a group will need to spend a considerable amount of their time recasting it, something that many clerics will honestly not be willing to do. Even if they are, ask yourself if healing would be unbalanced if a cleric could provide melee players in the group (with some considerable effort due to all the recasting that would be required) a 3,263 melee proc heal indefinitely? Assuming our 34 melee players all managed to proc a heal on the tank at the same time (no small feat considering this spell's low proc rate), that would only amount to 3,263 X 34 = 110,942 hit points before crits or roughly a crit of a single heal from a cleric... So it takes the combined effort of nearly every melee player in the raid to accomplish what a cleric can in a single cast. Then there is the fact that all of that healing can only go to the target of the mob and while keeping the tank alive is the primary goal of the heal team in general, in reality it is probably the easiest because everyone is focused on keeping that person alive. It is keeping the other 53 people in the raid, many of which do not have the eyes of many clerics on them, alive that is the challenge and this spell line does absolutely nothing to assist with that. 3. The 8-hit Counter I can understand counters on a spell like ward that blocks a huge chunk of damage from each hit but I cannot understand them on a spell like this. I assume the counters are to cap the healing potential of the spell, but I feel that adjusting the spell through its duration is a much better way to go about it. You already know what the proc rate is and the amount of heals that the spell could generate over a given amount of time. Why not reduce the duration (taking into account that it can be extended through gear and such) so it provides the healing you feel it should have in a single cast? Or, to put it another way, if you know that the spell is likely to proc about 10 times in 60 seconds or something, why not just give it a 30 second duration or so (to account for the extension it will receive through gear focuses) and let the RNG dictate how much healing it can provide? Using counters rather than a duration to balance the healing on minor heal procs like this just makes the spell feel "weaker" than it actually is. Or, to use the example of a more successful spell that has heal procs and doesn't use counters, take Vicarum's Retort: [50045/4647] Vicarum's Retort Rk. III Classes: CLR/105 Skill: Abjuration Mana: 786 Target: Single Range: 200' Resist: Beneficial, Blockable: Yes Focusable: Yes Casting: 1.5s, Recast: 30s, Rest: 1.5s Duration: 60s+ (10 ticks), Dispelable: Yes 1: Cast: Vicarum's Channeled Mark III 7: Add Melee Proc: Vicarum's Retort Effect III with 400% Rate Mod Text: You feel the channeling retort of the Vicarum. Adds a chance for your target to be healed when striking enemies, and places a mark on your target's target that will deal damage to it when it strikes another creature and heal your allies when they strike it. [50051/4647] Vicarum's Retort Effect III Target: Self Resist: Beneficial, Blockable: Yes Focusable: Yes Casting: 0s 1: Increase Current HP by 4111 Text: You are infused with the Vicarum's power. Heals yourself for up to @1 hit points. I'm not a fan of that 30 sec recast timer. Honestly, if this had no recast timer and a cleric wants to cast it 34 times to cover all the melee, I feel he should be able to do it without it taking 17 minutes. Even if that cleric wanted to do it at the beginning of the event it is very, very unlikely he will be willing to do it every minute that it expires But the fact that this has no counters already makes it more valuable than the infusion line, even if it only heals the person with the buff and not the tank. In fact, I would say it makes it more useful, as keeping melee alive is often more challenging than keeping up a single MT who has the attention of all the healers on him. To conclude, I feel that at the very least, the infusion line should be freed from the shared timer with ward. If you decide to do nothing else, please at least do that. If that is not done, it will simply never be cast because ward will always be the superior option and you will have introduced 2 spells that will languish in the back of most cleric spellbooks. Beyond that, I would like to see the recast timer significantly reduced (or eliminated entirely) and the 8-hit counter increased (or eliminated entirely and replaced with a shorter duration). I just don't feel that a spell that can only provide sporadic healing to a single target (who is likely to be overhealed already) which only becomes significant under certain ideal, impractical, and unlikely conditions deserves all the restrictions this spell has been saddled with. You've simply buried a spell that could have had some potential (especially this expansion with the extra spell slot we received) with too many limitations for (presumably) fear of it becoming too powerful when such fears, as I have explained, are unwarranted given the way healing actually works."
Too much reading, I didn't even read all of it, and I'd guess I'm a whole lot more interested than any developer, but I'm sure I have a whole lot more time. (and also understood from first paragraph exactly what's wrong with the spell, so didn't seem any further reading necessary) The short and sweet of it is that it's a terrible spell, and it would only take 1 simple thing to fix it. Copy and paste the druid version of their 'Ways' line (Mysterious/Ethereal etc), and unlink it with cleric Ward line. Delete the single target version of it, there's no need to spend time on further spells that are not needed/used.
