CHANGES [Author: Buur]
— We’ve redressed the amount of hate generated by heal spells. Previously, and *partly* due to a bug, the high level heal spells such as superior heal or complete heal would generate no more hate than greater heal. In fact, so little hate was generated by these spells that it made controlling NPC aggression trivial. Heal spells will now generate an amount of hate more in line with the number of hitpoints actually healed. Due to our desire to leave the lower level game more or less untouched, two separate caps have been placed for targets level 50 or below, and 51 or above. Heal spells will generate significantly less hate for targets below level 51 than those at or above that level.
This particular change has clerics everwhere up in arms. What Verant did was make Complete Heal pretty much a death sentence for clerics everywhere. As soon as a cleric complete heals a tank, MOBs will instantly aggro the cleric. This wouldn’t that big of a deal if it were possible to actually taunt the MOB off of the cleric, but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case. This is a pretty significant change for everyone involved and changes the way high level groups have to operate. No longer can you count on your cleric to CH when you are low on HP’s. Doing so will pretty much take your cleric out of the group, the hard way.
In addition to that particular change druids and shamans were both given bumps upward in the healing department. This change has clerics wondering if they have a role anymore. Why would you take a cleric in your group if it’s one main advantage, Complete Heal, causes uncontrollable aggression from a MOB. Shamans and druids have the advantage of better offensive spells to go along with very good healing.
This looks like a change that wasn’t very well throught through by Verant. By changing hate they have effectively changed the way all high level players have played the game for roughly two years. But more deaths = more time played = more money.
On the plus side there are some nice ranger changes…