by Normy » Sat Jul 11, 2009 3:05 am
I don't agree with you. Kyntul put it about as well as it can be. Aurora should not be ignored, its a powerful spell in our healing arsenal. When talking about total capacity to heal, we can't forget that spell.
However when talking about targetted heals, its simply not that. At all. Thats the same as calling a mana regen aura a single target buff, as long as there is only one class in the group with mana. Its still not a single target buff, because it cannot be targetted. It has a mind of its own. You can use distance and a few other tricks to make it hit only one person, true (although in the case of auras there is no point), but an enchanter cannot throw their fantastic mana regen aura on a tank group so their clerics get the benefits, they have to be in group and enjoy the benefits.
Now, it is true that in most group situations, aurora can be essentially tricked into acting like a single target heal. But stretching it to fit the description of a single-target heal and then declaring it needs to be balanced along with those other spells is a mistake. AoD is its own very unique class of spell, that is not like anything else we have really. Its not a group heal because it doesn't always heal the whole group for a set amount. its not a single-target heal because it cannot be targetted. Its not a self-only heal because it does not work solo.
So when i'm sitting back and noticing that my 1.0 second heal line doesn't scratch a warriors HP even on a crit, I don't want people to sit there and tell me "well, why didn't you just use AoD since thats your best single-target heal?" because it would be a lie. I can think of a dozen reasons why I might use a single-target heal over AoD. The first few are easily the most obvious: 1) I'm not in the same group. Even if I am in a tank group on a raid, most raids have several tank groups. 2) Maybe it was more important to keep that one person alive than it was to keep the rest of the group alive. Sometimes sacrafices have to be made, and if I have 1 chanter on the raid keeping a major mob locked and then 3 other DPS in my group, sometimes it makes more sense in a hurry to try to save the one person that is required. 3) I can't afford to be casting for several seconds. Some of my tasks require me to be moving most of the time, pausing to throw out a .3 or a 1.0 second heal might be possible, not always with a longer cast time. 4) I might not be on top of the group members that need a heal. The short range of AoD sometimes requires me to try something else, like target heals. 5-12) more situational stuff, but you get the idea.
Normy Truhart
"Wield your sword with full knowledge of the consequences."