It appears that the heal from kolto shell counts as the healer healing the target and not the target healing himself. This leads to a problem where if a tank has kolto shell on him and he pulls a group, as soon as one of the mobs hit the tank every mob that has yet to be hit will go for the healer.

 

While healing a heroic today I quickly learned that I needed to be very careful about when to use kolto shell. Used at the wrong time and it can quickly lead to a wipe.

 

Please reconsider this feature.

Welcome to group mechanics.

 

Your tank can take a few hits before you need to throw off a heal. Let him build some threat.

At lvl 30 you will get Chaff Flare witch will hopefully help you not get threat.

Welcome to group mechanics.

 

Your tank can take a few hits before you need to throw off a heal. Let him build some threat.

 

That's the point. With kolto shell on the tank (that could even be residual from last pull) you cannot decide when to heal. As soon as he gets hit you will heal him.

It would be nice if it counted as a self heal... but it is probably working as intended and will not get changed.

Thats why we also have stuns/roots/knockbacks. Just hit em and back away while the tank regains agro.

 

We can take a decent beating anyway, I don't mind much one mob beating on me some.

Kolto Shell is effectively a very slow HoT. I'm surprised that it's generating enough threat to make enemies even blink, let alone drawing them off the main tank. I'm assuming you have the threat reduction talent, which should further reduce the incentive for enemies to hit you when Shell is on.

 

I haven't unlocked it yet, but the appeal of Kolto Shell (like Earth Shield before it) is that it's an efficient, low-threat maintenance heal with almost no potential for overheal. If it's pulling aggro off of a good tank, then it's significantly less valuable than I'd hoped.

 

Obviously the first place I'd look is at the threat generation of the tank, then at your threat generation, but if this is replicable it's probably bad.

Keep in mind that Kolto Shell can only be deployed on one target at a time. If you are having issues with your tank not getting aggro on all of the mobs in a pull before they aggro you from the heal, drop it on yourself before the pull and then just place it back on the tank shortly after when he has had a chance to establish threat. Edited December 21, 2011 by Temig

That's the point. With kolto shell on the tank (that could even be residual from last pull) you cannot decide when to heal. As soon as he gets hit you will heal him.

 

I think you missed his point. It counts as healing. Don't apply it until after the tank establishes aggro. He won't die/need the heal 8in the first few seconds of a fight.

 

There was a period in WoW where HoTs and such did the same thing. I learned as a druid not to pre-HoT the tank or I'd die.

 

Same applies here. Put it on your self or someone else then switch it to the tank.

Kolto Shell is effectively a very slow HoT. I'm surprised that it's generating enough threat to make enemies even blink, let alone drawing them off the main tank. I'm assuming you have the threat reduction talent, which should further reduce the incentive for enemies to hit you when Shell is on.

 

I haven't unlocked it yet, but the appeal of Kolto Shell (like Earth Shield before it) is that it's an efficient, low-threat maintenance heal with almost no potential for overheal. If it's pulling aggro off of a good tank, then it's significantly less valuable than I'd hoped.

 

Obviously the first place I'd look is at the threat generation of the tank, then at your threat generation, but if this is replicable it's probably bad.

 

The problem is that the shield basically procs as soon as combat starts due to the magnitude of ranged mobs in the game and any mob that the tank hasn't touched at that point will turn to you and fire since you're the only one that has generated threat, even if it's just a tiny bit of threat. There are many pulls in the flashpoints I've seen where it's very hard for the tank to grab everything within a second and if there are several elite mobs one of them will probably start firing on you. You can ofc circumvent this by CCing, but the pulls rarely actually need that so you would end up in a silly situation where you're having to over-complicate things because you're using a poorly implemented skill.

 

Keep in mind that Kolto Shell can only be deployed on one target at a time. If you are having issues with your tank not getting aggro on all of the mobs in a pull before they aggro you from the heal, drop it on yourself before the pull and then just place it back on the tank shortly after when he has had a chance to establish threat.

 

ofc there's ways to work around it, but that doesn't mean it's not a bad implementation. Having to make sure Kolto Shell is off the tank between every pull isn't exactly awesome

 

All I'm saying is that the current implementation of Kolto Shell makes it over-complicated to use and many will probably find it easier to just ignore it.