There has been a lot of discussion about Chakra, and not all of it has been positive. I personally thought that it was a cool idea, and I was really looking forward to seeing it be the reason that Holy is fun to play. By my use of past tense you can tell that I am disappointed in the current state of Chakra.
In case you don't know, Chakra is a spell on a one minute cooldown, where after you click it the next heal (and by heal I mean Heal, Prayer of Healing, Renew, and Smite) that you use will put you in a specific Chakra state for 30 seconds. Each Chakra state improves the spell that you used, and (provided that you spent the necessary talent points) casting that spell will extend the time that you are in the Chakra state. Sounds great right?
It's not as great as you might think. First of all it is a lot to keep track of. When I tried to describe it to my girlfriend she threw her hands up and said "that is too complicated." While I don't disagree with her, I think that main problem is that Chakra itself has a cooldown (of one minute), and it has the feeling of locking you in to a certain spell.
This problem of locking you in, can cause a lot of opportunities to make a mistake. If you use Heal, for example, after hitting Chakra, but you are transitioning into a phase of the fight when you need Prayer of Healing or Renew, you can't change Chakra states until that phase is (most likely) over.
On the surface Chakra looks like it adds some nice potency, but in practice it has only added constraints and has mostly been useless. For instance, if I am in Vault of Archavon, and one of the bosses does their AoE, I might go into Chakra State: Prayer of Healing. Allowing me to raid heal effectively and all is well. But, that period of AoE only comes in bursts, I'm not spamming Prayer of Healing and Chakra goes away until I can use it again. It's good for one or two casts (in this case).
I am sure that there are a lot of situations where this spell comes in handy, and instances in Cataclysm might prove to make it's one minute cooldown more understandable. Currently, thought, it lacks fluidity, and there doesn't seem to be a seamless transition between Chakra states. My suggestion would be to make the spell not have a cooldown, or become some sort of passive ability. This definitely could make Holy overpowered, but given the current state of Holy's viability making Chakra more powerful might turn out to balance things out nicely.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
The New Raid Frames
With patch 4.0 new default raid frames were introduced. As someone who does not use any addons, except for Recount, Decursive, and Deadly Boss Mods. So, these new raid frames were a nice addition for someone like me.
If you haven't noticed the new feature, or you don't care because you use Grid or Xperl or whatever, I find these new raid frames to be a pretty nice addition, and they have some nice features that could allow you to not use on of your addons (saving up some needed memory).
After using this for the past couple of weeks doing heroics, there are some very nice features. Starting with the least important, I like that I can see class color. Adds some pazazz! Next thing I like is that I can move the raid frames a lot easier now than I used to. This goes along with another feature that I like, which is that my bar is included in the raid frames. That allows me to not have to look at my own health bar, and instead I can see it included with all of the other health bars, very handy. I like that I can see the buffs and debuffs that people have on them with more detail than before, but sometimes they take up too much of the bars. And lastly the most important feature with the new Raid Frames, that I have found to be really super totally awesome, is show incoming heal and show health lost.
Now I know that these features come with most UI addons, but since I don't have these, I find this to be especially awesome. Being able to see exactly how much health a person has lost, allows me to more accurately choose the right heal for the job (reducing overhealing), and being able to see how much my Renew and Mastery heals will heal for lets me know if I really need to cast a Heal, or if those HoTs will do the job for me.
These two features will be very useful in a raid becuase I'll be able to tell whether I need to heal someone or not. Overall this will help healers become more efficient, and accurate when keeping a raid alive.
Forgive me if you use an addon that already allows you to use these features, but to those who don't I hope that you think that they are as awesome as I do.
If you haven't noticed the new feature, or you don't care because you use Grid or Xperl or whatever, I find these new raid frames to be a pretty nice addition, and they have some nice features that could allow you to not use on of your addons (saving up some needed memory).
After using this for the past couple of weeks doing heroics, there are some very nice features. Starting with the least important, I like that I can see class color. Adds some pazazz! Next thing I like is that I can move the raid frames a lot easier now than I used to. This goes along with another feature that I like, which is that my bar is included in the raid frames. That allows me to not have to look at my own health bar, and instead I can see it included with all of the other health bars, very handy. I like that I can see the buffs and debuffs that people have on them with more detail than before, but sometimes they take up too much of the bars. And lastly the most important feature with the new Raid Frames, that I have found to be really super totally awesome, is show incoming heal and show health lost.
Now I know that these features come with most UI addons, but since I don't have these, I find this to be especially awesome. Being able to see exactly how much health a person has lost, allows me to more accurately choose the right heal for the job (reducing overhealing), and being able to see how much my Renew and Mastery heals will heal for lets me know if I really need to cast a Heal, or if those HoTs will do the job for me.
These two features will be very useful in a raid becuase I'll be able to tell whether I need to heal someone or not. Overall this will help healers become more efficient, and accurate when keeping a raid alive.
Forgive me if you use an addon that already allows you to use these features, but to those who don't I hope that you think that they are as awesome as I do.
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