If you haven’t been keeping up with the little beta changes and updates that have been going on, there’s something you should know.
Don’t worry, it isn’t as game breaking as Spirit Shell having it’s mechanics reworked or anything.
Our Purify (formerly known as Dispel) now has a a rather large 8 second cooldown attached to it. I get the need to cut down on Dispel’s usage. PvP needs to be made a little more exciting and what not.
The PvE ramifications are just as important.
In a party
Shado-pan Monastary is one of the new instances that opened up with a minimum requirement of level 87. Inside the instance, there was a fair number of mobs that had some sort of magic debuff that would afflict members of my party. On the boss encounters, I noticed any debuffs were applied one or two at a time. I dispelled one quickly and responded with steady, mana neutral Heal to maintain that player’s health. If the party started taking AoE damage, I targeted the debuff affected player and casted Prayer of Healing and would switch between single target and Prayer of Healing as necessary.
I could use Mass Dispel. Technically between Mass Dispel and Dispel, I can rely on them to remove debuffs if they’re applied one after the other. Doing that is going to be costly to your mana. Depending on the debuff duration, it might be better off to dispel one person and then heal the other until their debuffs expire.
Haven’t tried a raid environment yet. All I know is if current boss mechanics were coupled with Mists Dispel mechanics, we’re all in deep trouble. There’d be no way we could blanket remove negative magic in time without resorting to Mass Dispel.
Blizzard developers would need to scale back and be a little more critical when it comes to any debuff inducing bosses. Ultimately, we just need to play smart with our dispels. The option of not dispelling a player in favor of healing them may well be a necessary strategy to adopt depending on what new raid bosses are like.
Solutions
Let’s classify magic debuffs into two major categories. When responding against debuffs, you need to get a little creative and look at ways to bail out your players. Ideal solution? Simple dispel. But assuming your dispel is now on cooldown, what’s your next choice?
Impairment
This refers to any ability to hinders your character from doing anything. This means any slow, any stun, a freeze, or control loss.
With your allies stuck, they need to get out of a bad situation pronto. Let’s say Jeremy is frozen in place after a Frost Nova. They can’t move and they have no way of breaking themselves out. You, being the smart player that you are, dispelled yourself first. There happens to be a giant shadow underneath Jeremy which indicates a large meteor is about to squish him in half. Mentally, you know that meteor is going to crush him before your Dispel is available for use.
You can use Leap of Faith to extract him. If that’s not available, drop a Pain Suppression and pray that’s enough to ward that meteor.
Find a way to move the player, if possible.
If you can’t give them a movement boost, look for a way to ensure that they survive through it.
Damage
Any debuff that inflicts damage. This could be any DoT, a delayed nuke, etc.
Your allies are about to experience some large dents in their health pool. You can’t get that debuff off of them. Your only option is to brute force heal the players through it until the debuff expires on it’s own. If you don’t think your rate of healing can level off or offset the rate of damage, then resort to a cooldown. Guardian Spirit is a perfect insurance spell.
Speaking of bugs, I’m not sure if this is intended or not. The 8 second cooldown on Purify only triggers if a negative debuff is removed. I can spam Purify on myself without any debuffs without tripping the 8 second cooldown.
Or is that intended? I can’t remember.
I have to wonder how a change like this will affect doing older, dispel-heavy fights like Yogg Saron.
@lilitharien They would need to be retuned and nerfed. Think about the 5 mans when leveling too.
I believe the no cooldown if it didn’t remove a debuff is intended. You still waste the mana though, if I recall correctly.
Also, for Pally Healers and having dispel on cooldown, that’s where the Hands come in handy. Hand of Freedom if they’re impaired. Hand of Protection if they’re taking physical damage/bleed DoT. Hand of Sacrifice to cut down on damage on them and spread it out. I like the idea that we’ll get to rely on those spells a bit more.
@Talarian That’s what I like to see. Paladins with responses of their own to similar situations. Wonder how Monks, Shaman, and Druids would respond to similar situations.