Incoming Healing Changes

Blizzard has found an issue with both circle of healing (CoH) and wild growth since the release of the last patch. Basically they have both become "THE" healing spell for those two classes to use. This was never their intent and it is being changed shortly. Here is what Blizzard is thinking of so far...

We've tried to keep up with all of the several threads that spawned as a result of my last comments. People have made some really good points.

Based on feedback from this forum, elsewhere and our own brainstorming, what we are thinking about right now is something like a 6 sec cooldown for Circle of Healing and Wild Growth.

We're less concerned about Chain Heal, in part because it's not instant, prevents movement, falls off with multiple targets, and is the spell that shamans are supposed to be hitting, while priests and druids have many other spells.

At 6 seconds, you would still want to use CoH/WG in the right situations (though hopefully not *every* time they are up), but you'd also want to use other spells during the cooldown. To be fair, a lot of priests and druids are asking to push other buttons. :)

This sounds like a potentially scary change because it has a lot of ramifications -- one of the reasons we are mentioning it so early is to get feedback. We don't want Resto shammies to push other healers out of raids. We would change some of the encounters knowing that CoH spam was no longer possible.