Let me restate/clarify since I may have been being a bit stubborn/hard-headed before. I do not think a reduction in cast times would be a bad thing, I just don't see it making a significant change in capability (without something additional besides just a cast time reduction). However, I will add that my own viewpoint may be skewed as I spend my time on my Mystic either solo healing heroics (which I do not find enjoyable) or solo healing the mage group on raids.
They should make a fight where you just spam 4 tank abilities to the exclusion of the 20 some other abilities you have. I imagine it would be as fun as rotating heals endlessly. I don't like Maer's suggestion because it doesn't make our class any more viable. We just get the opportunity to cast 1 more debuff, DoT, or DD. That isn't going to close the disparity gap we're seeing here.
I agree it won't close the disparity gap, IF the crit bonus nerf is always applied after the end result. But casting speed does actually add a lot to heal potential. For example: 100% casting speed increases the amount of warding potential over a 56 sec fight about equal to what the nerf takes away at the base crit. Say the main single target ward is 3000 with 2 sec cast time ... with crit bonus nerf of -.5 = 3450 You cast it 7 times in 8 sec intervals = 24150 total over 56 sec You get 100% casting speed lets you cast it 8 times in 56 sec for a total of 27600 Without the ward nerf and back to normal cast speed you get a total of 27300 But on top of the increase in warding over the 56 sec ... you still gain 7 sec to cast what ever you want. Although that's just with the casting speed increase that is already present ... I think another .5 sec gained after one of 1 sec is going to give diminishing returns just because you can really only hit buttons so fast plus server lag.
Well Maergoth's suggestion also included utility tacked onto the wards, as I pointed out in thread #143. However, I would also point out, for defilers, if you put prestige points in Empowered Barrier, that extra spell can make a huge difference. If you get a decent amount of spells cast between single target wards, Empowered Barrier (an additional single target ward) can land for almost as much as my group ward. In another thread, he suggested damage reduction as the utility, this would slow things down so you don't have to spam heals as much. I personally think it is a brilliant idea. I like Niel's idea better (thread #3), but I can see how that would take a serious overhaul of the way wards work.
I wonder if reactive debuffs on the wards would work? Mob hits warded person, mob gets a short term debuff. Debuffs would be taken care of by the wards so the need for more 'breathing room' to debuff would be lessened or removed. It would 'naturally' reduce damage thus reducing strain on the healers. Plus this has the benefit of working better with the whole 'debuffs are big deal' concept. Mob gets debuffed, damage is reduced (both having raid wide benefit), less strain on healing and all 'extra' time could be used for DPS. That's like 4 birds with one stone. Only problem I see is that you might want to shift their current 'manual' debuffs to the wards so they aren't potentially double dipping.
I think residual tackons to wards is just a problem waiting to happen. It pigeon holes the player and takes away personal preference choice. UNLESS ... they want to make Warding customizable. So keep the normal ward , then have a reflective ward that would debuff or damage , Then your awesome Idea of the squishy ward that lets some of the damage seep through But the key is the player can choose ... no pigeon holeing
That could be a problem. They could make them just not stack with their standard debuffs instead of shifting them, then the choice is there with no double dipping. The regular debuffs would still need to be retuned to be competitive choice though. The whole thing might be overly complicated. Increasing wards to the point where problems start getting solved would require pre-ToV levels people are trying to avoid. Bleedthru is just what other games successfully used for wards, that or make them huge but with casting/reuse attributes akin to emergencies which doesn't seem practical here. If not wards than pretty much everything else would have to be retuned. Some debuffs and damage abilities consolidated and probably base casting/reuse times reduced across the board. Seems to me to maintain 'quality of life' shamans are used to either wards would need to be changed to last as long as they did before ToV OR everything outside of wards would need to be sped up in proportion to how fast wards are dropping. If wards are dropping x% faster (w/e is) then everything else shamans regularly do or are expected to do need to be executable that much faster. Unfortunately it's very possible the devs meant to fundamentally change the way shamans play, and if so they did an EXTREMELY bad job of introducing it to the player base because people are COMPLETELY blindsided. If this is the case a statement along the lines of 'this is more or less how shamans will play for the foreseeable future' would be appreciated.
