wow Patch 8.1 Build 28151: Chain Heal Changes

[Stan 4,725]

Blizzard buffed Chain Heal and redesigned High Tide in this week's 8.1 Build 28151.

UPDATE

Blizzard (Source)

Quick update: the buff will have a longer duration in the next build. It is intended to be less of a "press button when it lights up" proc, and more something you can plan to use. This also should take stress off of knowing exactly when it will trigger (which is not something we want the talent to be about micromanaging).

Chain Heal

• Received a healing increase, baking in most of the value of the previous High Tide that has been redesigned.

High Tide

• OLD: Chain Heal bounces to 1 additional target, and its falloff with each bounce is reduced by half.
• NEW: Every 150 mana you spend brings a High Tide, making your next 2 Chain Heals heal for an additional 20% and not reduce with each jump.

Check out our Tides of Vengeance hub for the latest Patch 8.1 information!

Blizzard (Source)

Just to avoid any confusion that may be occurring due to tooltips on PTR:

• Chain Heal's base functionality is unchanged, other than receiving a large healing increase (roughly speaking, baking in most of the value of the previous High Tide).
• High Tide is redesigned, but is still a passive--the mana cost in the tooltip header is an error.

Brief context: as a passive buff to every Chain Heal, High Tide was putting it in an awkward position where the base skill wasn't very prominent in the toolkit if you used other talents. The goal here is to both put Chain Heal back on the map while using Ascendance or Wellspring in any type of content, and also provide a talent option which allows for strong moments centered around very large Chain Heals.

Usual PTR disclaimers: still under iteration, open to feedback, not necessarily tuned.

[Swagdragon 0]

Quote

NEW: Every 150 mana you spend

It's 30k mana on ptr

Is it still worth it?

[Seksi 203]

The biggest thing here is that baseline chain heal still hits 4 targets, but for a total amount similar to High Tide chain heal, making it way more usable in all situations.

The new talent is a first, untuned version. The reward seems good (+20% heal and no dropoff on the next two chain heals) but the activation mechanic (spending 30k mana) and duration (15 seconds) seem off and will hopefully be fine tuned. It would require a special Weak Aura to track the Mana spending and control of your Mana spending so that you actually want to cast two buffed chain heals in the 15 duration...seems way too complicated to take advantage of for the passive option on that talent row!

[swzog 0]

I will believe it when I see it, blizzard has a long history of saying a lot and doing nothing ie... the elemental changes they  they talked about 2 months ago when they finally admitted the class was broken. Yet still nothing done, this as become a blizzard staple for the last few expansions  all talk no action.