Lightwell: Are you kidding me?? - Page 4

**Valalvax** · #61 08-24-2009, 11:04 AM

Why the hell did they make Lightwell a unit anyway? Used to you'd just click it, and wouldn't lose target whatsoever

Peitho · #62 08-27-2009, 01:34 PM

Source: Valalvax
Why the hell did they make Lightwell a unit anyway? Used to you'd just click it, and wouldn't lose target whatsoever

I believe they felt it needed to be killable in player combat for balance reasons.

--Peitho Pon'dera

Lightener · #63 10-03-2009, 09:02 AM

Yeah I've recently taken up the extra talent of my holy tree to test out Lightwell.. So far the dps have only fully used a lightwell up once out of about 30 times. But the healers have gotten into the habbit of using it. Allowing them to save their Healthstones for the important parts of the fight.

But for the Twin'Valk fight on 25m the healers of my guild are loving Lightwell allowing them to keep themselves topped up with a single mouseclick and being able to continue healing the raid.

Goomba · #64 10-05-2009, 06:36 AM

what's the break-even point of lightwell....by that I mean how many people have to use it for it to be mana-efficient

I'm very curious about this because if its up, and only 3 people use it, but its already efficient (and easier cuz, as someone pointed out, having the heals constantly topped off is a great thing), then it starts to sound like a good talent again....dps might not be trainable, but most healers I run raids with are....

Zyffyr · #65 10-05-2009, 05:16 PM

If you put it up before the fight, and recover mana before it starts mana efficiency on it becomes irrelevant.

**Risky** · #66 10-05-2009, 05:18 PM

Does it matter how many people use it? What if just the tank uses it? It's still just as effective. It's an extra, huge hot, usable whenever, via one right click. I use lightwells pretty often while maintanking.

**Insahnity** · #67 10-05-2009, 06:34 PM

Source: morelore
Maybe you're not playing the same game I am, because mana regen and raid damage are actually much higher than they ever have been and in fact we can and do expect healers to heal heavily through entire fights. Have you actually ever raided in content where mana regen *was* a serious issue? Where you took 5 druids just so you could innervate the real healers? If you were pushing 3k heals and the DPS still died you're either a bad healer (yes, you can be a bad healer and still push out any arbitrarily large HPS number you want) or lightwell wouldn't have saved you.

Mana regen is just one issue (I've been to several fights were even paladins pre-nerf went OOM). There is also the issue of actually getting to people in time, for example Koralon does his breath flame and several of the DPS continue to stand in the cinder flames. You can save some of them, but not all, a lightwell is an extra independant heal. Lightwell is as useful or more than a potion or a healthstone. I'm sure most people can get by without using them but you don't see threads claiming HS or pots are useless. That's what the issue here is, we seem to have crossed some magical threshold where Healthstones are OK but lightwells aren't.

Good DPS will use lightwell in fights that warrant it. I've never said anything different. There are not many fights that warrant it, and saying they *should* use it when it's not warranted just so you can feel better about your 31 point talent is wrong.

It's not simply a matter of spatial awareness (competent DPS need excellent spatial awareness), but it is a matter of time. If GC wants DPS to use lightwell in its current form, then we need encounters that have the damage and activity patterns to support it.

I've never said that I would never heal somebody if they didn't use the Lightwell every single fight. It's greatest usage is with warlocks who have predictable, steady health losses but can't afford to be a drain on healers. It could stand some improvements, but even as is it's a great tool, the issue is that you dismiss its value for the very reasons I have already posted straight from GC. You feel that taking the time to click it is bad for DPS, something I have given you a direct quote from the lead developer to indicate it is the wrong way to go about it.

Incidentally, they don't need to do anything, they have indicated that WE need to conform to the design intent, because we are playing the game in a manner that is not consistent with the intent. We have just gotten clever enough that we have managed without it.

Er, yes, actually, it *is* your job as a healer to save my skin. Thats why we brought you, and had you spec holy, and said "you heal the raid". And yes, as a DPS, my *sole* responsibility is to do DPS. That does not mean my sole responsibility is to sit in one spot and press my attack buttons. Fulfilling my obligation of doing DPS can mean that I do many things. It might even include using a lightwell.

If you feel it is the sole responsibility of the healers (raid or otherwise), and take no responsiblity of your own, then you are refusing to accept GCs words. I cannot say anything more to disuade you.

However, if you are willing to do something other than sit in one spot and press something other than attack buttons, then you acknoweldge lightwell's utility. It just sounds like you would rather not, which is at the heart of GCs words.

Go back and read what I said about damage on DPS. Expecting healers to heal through avoidable raid damage is normal, reasonable and in fact designed into encounters. You take the damage so you can do the DPS and kill the boss. Sometimes you can't heal it, so you avoid it instead. It depends on the encounter.

Sure, in the early days many people threw on frost resist gear for saph until we learned better ways. But you also have to realize that some encounters were designed to test either healers directly (Loatheb), or to test DPS's spatial awareness (any sort of "don't stand in the <insert hazard>", jormungar/valks in ToC, etc.). Clearly, either they move to put an end to a hazardous situation, or you strain the healers to strain themselves beyond all expectation (and some stellar healers manage to still save the raid, it doesn't make the raid behavior correct).

Can you maybe try not to make this some sort of personal issue? I'm a raid leader and a tank and a healer and a dps. I've raided since classic, when it was common for DPS to literally not get heals. I've let DPS die because I didn't have the spare time to save everyone. Quit with the "people like you" crap.

Well, admitedly I went a bit far, but it is quite frustrating when you are patently ignoring GCs words. You use words like "I may do something like use a lightwell" as if it is an optional item, when GC was quite clear survival is not solely the responsibility of the healer. Either you accept it is a mandatory part of your responsibility or you don't, there is no "maybe". Healers can and should heal through damage, provided DPS also respect their healers and utlize all the tools they are given (Healthstones, lightwells, potions, self heals, etc.). Not utilizing all the tools available to survive something is quite silly.

Yeah, you know what? You're making this a personal issue where you try to stereotype me, instead of talking about the design of the game and talent. I know what lightwell is, where it is in the tree, and how it works.

Let me recap this discussion for you:

You: I don't have lightwell because my DPS are retards and won't use it, even though it's a great spell

Me: Lightwell is not really that great, and just because they don't use it does not make your DPS retards. Your DPS may be retards for other reasons, I don't know.

It makes the DPS retards because GC said so. Retard=those who don't save their own skin. There's no mystery there.

You: It's the DPS job to heal themselves.

Me: No, it's a healers job to heal them. That's why they're called "healers".

A healer heals yes, but not to the point where they cover DPS stupidity. Just as a tank is not expected to save a DPS who pulls aggro over and over, or a healer who runs away from a tank, or any number of other stupid things people do.

You: I can't stand people like you always blaming the healers!

But clearly, you do blame healers if a DPS dies, because you appear to believe it is the healer's sole responsibilty to save DPS. And that is where you differ from GC/Satorri/myself/etc., it's a shared responsiblity.

I know what lightwell is and how it works. You have all the tools you need to raid heal without lightwell, as you post yourself. Lightwell is not a make or break ability. It's a situational, marginally useful spell. And that is fine - it doesn't have to be good.

People can also two man FL, people can finish ulduar in all blues, but that wasn't the design intent. Why make things harder than they have to, resulting in healers tearing their hair out?

It's a great spell, useable in a lot of encounters. One can argue that Prayer of Healing is situational, or Desperate Prayer, or any number of other spells one can come up with. We just disagree as to its usefullness, and I happen to agree with GC that it's a highly undervalued spell, even as is.

Source: Satorri
So to re-emphasize the point of my initial post, so that it is clear:

Lightwell, the talent, the spell, is not broken or a bad investment. It is a particular survival skill that the majority of the players in the game do not know how to use, and that is the single largest detracting element to its value.

Can it be improved on? Yes. Does it require a massive redesign to be useful? Not at all. Will it make or break your raid to take it? Not even slightly.

I only want to combat the ignorant parrots who proclaim its uselessness without actually discovering how to use it well. GC, thankfully, understands this.

Source: Clyde
*sigh*

Yes, Lightwell is quite powerful when used.

Yes, a good DPSer won't lose much DPS if he uses it.

<snip>

Lightwell isn't useless mechanically. It's useless socially. Which is sad, 'cause it's an interesting mechanic, quite different, and we need more of those. But I think that unless it is changed to be less interesting and different, it will continue to be under utilized.

chilly444 · #68 10-09-2009, 12:35 PM

I personally find that lightwell is an extreme advantage in this game. (this is comming from a druid with a priest friend that i heal with BTW) it only slightly adds to fight complexity and is INSANE when it comes to how much it heals. some instances where it shined the most; Iron council, with his fusion punch. the priest told the tank to click it every time he got the debuff, just in case the debuff was slow. hodir hard mode with frozen blows, we cut a healer for DPS, it helped a ton with MT heals. and Anub'arak phase 3, we warned DPS to click the portal if you feel you get too low

Nicki · #69 10-09-2009, 04:44 PM

Source: chilly444
I personally find that lightwell is an extreme advantage in this game. (this is comming from a druid with a priest friend that i heal with BTW) it only slightly adds to fight complexity and is INSANE when it comes to how much it heals. some instances where it shined the most; Iron council, with his fusion punch. the priest told the tank to click it every time he got the debuff, just in case the debuff was slow. hodir hard mode with frozen blows, we cut a healer for DPS, it helped a ton with MT heals. and Anub'arak phase 3, we warned DPS to click the portal if you feel you get too low

Lightwell would heal far too much in heroic mode to be of any use in the anub'arak fight.

Been meaning to post it but people do realise that if your dps can do 7k having 10 of them click a lightwell for 2 seconds~ does lose you 140k damage which may verywell make or break your 1% wipes while raid damage is perfectly healable without it.

As ive said before its a tool for priests an unneeded tool on a class that is already not using some of the tools it does have because they are lackluster, Greater heal for holy and Renew for disc.

Hades · #70 10-11-2009, 06:43 AM

My personal experience with lightwells was back in TBC content, and occasionally in LK. In just about every boss fight in TBC stuff, I was still pretty green, and the priest would put down a lightwell. Fire goes up, I yell HOLY SHNIKES over vent, she reminded me of the lightwell, and I stayed alive. In LK, it's been useful on a couple runs when I was a fresh 80 tank and feeling squishy. AND, I believe it would be ridiculously useful on Gluth in Naxx. Decimate Flesh drains the crap out of some mana pools, having to top everyone off in like 2.3 seconds. If everyone had the presence of mind to click a lightwell, think of all the help that would be. Maybe I'm living in a fantasy world, or need to quit my job in favor of progression, but overall, Lightwell is a HUGE boon to holy priests.. when people are thinking clearly enough to use it. I might not be a healer myself, but as a tank whos worked both bosses and adds, I understand the value of that blue bar.

Liliyah · #71 10-11-2009, 08:40 PM

I personally find it to be junk. I can't think of a single situation where I think "man, if only there was someone here with a lolwell." However, I can say the same about other healing spells. "Man, chain heal would rock here." "I miss penance." "Need moar druid HoTs."

The issues lie in the need to target it and its immobility. If one, or both, issues were resolved, it'd probably see more use.

Garrek · #72 10-11-2009, 10:39 PM

Source: Nicki
Been meaning to post it but people do realise that if your dps can do 7k having 10 of them click a lightwell for 2 seconds~ does lose you 140k damage which may verywell make or break your 1% wipes while raid damage is perfectly healable without it.

Ultimately this is what it comes down to. On the one hand, being able to train the dps/tanks to utilize it *can* help situationally if there's natural downtime and decent placement. On the other, we are being thrown encounters (particularly in "highly tuned" hard modes) that require very fast and dedicated dps burns in order to avoid some catastrophe (boss enrages, add attrition, etc.). This is particularly the case when you're working on your guild's bleeding edge progression when it's entirely possible that folks are slightly under-geared and the only thing keeping the raid moving forward is a combination of sheer skill and blind luck. Doubly so in hardmodes where there is little to no room for anybody to fall slack.

This leads to the mentality that dps (and to some degree tanks) should not try to avoid damage or otherwise even thinking about survivability unless death is imminent or if doing so is trivial (like side-stepping a Pound/Void Zone). To do otherwise wastes precious time, and robs healers of the responsibilities they were brought to fulfill. Yes a dead dps is worthless, but so is a dps that isn't doing dps while he's alive (a blatant generalization, but the sentiment is truth).

To create an environment where Lightwell is a staple ability would require creating fights where survival is more important than blind dps and/or event coordination trumps blind dps. Consider the merging of Archimonde-style survival "incentives", Vashj-style item-based coordination mechanics, and Ignis adds' positioning/world-effect mechanics and you start to envision a scenario where a dps only has to focus on doing dps in small bursts in between trying to survive and participating on other "gimmicks" of the fight. Say what you like about encounter "gimmicks", but it's rarely held in a good light.

Lightwell, particularly due to it's stationary nature, is just another artificially created "gimmick" of any encounter. It *might* just save the day, but it exists merely as a convenience. Encounters are already designed in such a way that the Lightwell isn't required (since priests, let alone Holy priests can't be guaranteed in raids... esp. 10s), and so if Holy priests were re-designed to make Lightwell some kind of signature ability at the detriment of other abilities Holy priests would be relegated to the same treatment as the ability.

Either encounter design philosophy has to significantly change which is incredibly doubtful, the functionality of the ability be made passive like a combination of renew/PoM/CoH so that, say, every 10 seconds a PoM-like charge (thematic) to the lowest health party/raid member in range of the well (15 meters?, smart like CoH) that either heals (instantly/over time) or simply increases healing done to the target (I'm grasping for straws at this point), the ability needs to be taken out of the talent tree and simply trained at a base level to remove angst of spending a talent point on it, or they just need to can the ability altogether.

**orcstar** · #73 10-12-2009, 08:27 PM

Source: Garrek
This leads to the mentality that dps (and to some degree tanks) should not try to avoid damage or otherwise even thinking about survivability unless death is imminent or if doing so is trivial (like side-stepping a Pound/Void Zone). To do otherwise wastes precious time, and robs healers of the responsibilities they were brought to fulfill. Yes a dead dps is worthless, but so is a dps that isn't doing dps while he's alive (a blatant generalization, but the sentiment is truth).

I don't agree with this.
Melee has to be very aware if you''re progressing on hard fights where you just barely make the dps mark.
Why? If you can take an extra dps-er because you don't need to take that extra healer (healing avoidable damage) with your raid will kill that new boss weeks sooner.

Good dps is very aware of damage. One legendary rogue told me once Feint - Spell - World of Warcraft is on of the most important abilities for my alt rogue. And I didn't understand. Until I found out he wasn't talking about the threat reduction.

Light well however............switching targets never makes your dps happy.
Maybe we could come up with some creative ways to use it?

**Skaggi** · #74 10-13-2009, 04:34 AM

Anyone yet mentioned that lightwell is still usable when you are CC'ed in any way? Saved my ass quite some time when Maexxna wasn't outgeared in Naxx.

There are still many awesome things a lightwell can do. Faction champions free heal during healer CCs. Carry a tank through 4 horsemen alone when running light on healers. Keep smart people alive.

In general lightwell can do some pretty awesome things IF it is used. If there's nobody clicking then nothing's happening. Sounds like almost any skill to me...

Cheers!
skaggi

Goomba · #75 10-13-2009, 07:22 AM

skaggi's notes on some particular uses for lightwell intrigue me....faction champs especially....even if it was the first thing cast before the encounter began and everyone clicked it right away...lol

I am still intrigued as to why we are asking dps or tanks to use it....most of the debate here is centered on that....I would think a couple of hte dps or tanks I run with could find a spot in rotation for it, or using it while feared, etc (that's a great tip....can we confirm that it works?)....but I'm still wondering if it might be worth it even if healers were the only ones using it...I could totally find time to click on it every now and then...

Goomba · #76 10-13-2009, 07:46 AM

if this is clickable while CC'd, is it clickable while casting? if that's the case, then casting dps could click it while channeling? etc?

afrobotics · #77 10-17-2009, 02:01 AM

The perfect fix (imho) to lightwell has already been designed in the game. The priestesses in Heroic Trial of the Champion cast a spell that appears amazingly similar to lightwell:

Fountain of Light - Spell - World of Warcraft

Basically a lightwell that auto-heals (and damages, but we will ignore that) nearby targets. If they just upped the scaling of this spell and gave it to holy priests I would be ecstatic. It would act like a plantable CoH that would be a godsend in fights like Koralon where melee can't be bothered to strafe a bit.

**orcstar** · #78 10-17-2009, 06:27 PM

Source: afrobotics
melee can't be bothered to strafe a bit.

As a tank I literally had to drag Koralon around to get some of the melee out of the fire. Well, I changed my mind, if they choose to die they die. If you have the sanity to click a lightwell when needed, you also have the sanity to get out of the fire, making the lightwell not needed.

Verbalicious · #79 10-27-2009, 07:04 AM

They should just make Lightwell use the same mechanic as the one those mobs before the 2nd boss in ToC5 drop.. It just "shoots out" a heal periodically and just balance it from that point.. It would make it more attractive and complement the strong raidhealing niche Holy is all about.

Edit: Someone already beat me to it :<

**Satorri** · #80 10-27-2009, 07:20 AM

I love that my thread is still getting the occasional attention, even if people have forgotten the original point.

Lightwell is not broken or deficient (which isn't to say its functionality couldn't be cleaned up a smidge). It is simply under-used and largely misunderstood by the raiding culture, and most unfortunately by many in the priest community.

I've been loving Lightwell in ToC, with all the fights where I spend a lot of time in one place or coming back to the same position. Even Faction Champs, to be able to grab a hot on the way by even as healers are getting stunned, spell-locked, etc? Delightful. The only problem with it's functionality, is that if I don't position bosses right, the well can be in front of them and it won't let me click it because they're occluding it.