Pros:
- In a perfect world, you can spam aoe healing constantly and forever while doing your full dps rotation in both ST and AOE situations.
- You can heal with pure instant casts which means you can never be kicked my mobs (can still be blanket silenced, obviously).
Cons:
- You're a melee healer. There are SO MANY major disadvantages to this.
- Most/all other heals are 40 yds. Dark Surgeon heals are essentially melee range because you cannot heal for more than a few seconds without being in melee range and attacking to generate and spend combo points to heal.
- Being in melee constantly as a healer introduces an insane amount of annoyances that not a single other healer build in the game has to deal with. Mobs will gouge, stun, disarm, knockback, root etc. It feels like it happens constantly and there is always some stupid unavoidable mechanic preventing you from playing the game and healing. I did only 1 normal and 2 heroic runs and it was an absolute nightmare.
- I wanted to make a special note about disarm. When disarmed we basically cannot heal because we cannot generate combo points without a weapon.
- In addition to the melee CC that gets spammed on you throughout a dungeon, being in melee range means you cannot ever avoid things like certain fears and silences that have a limited range. Normal healers can take advantage of their 30-40yd heals to avoid many mechanics.
- Even if everything else above wasn't something you had to deal with, the next major issue is that your heals can essentially miss. You can't heal without generating and spending combo points. This means you have to also stack a ton of hit and expertise or you're going to have a bad time.
- Another major issue is that combo points are a pain in the ass to use in this version of WoW. The two big issues are that combo points don't transfer between mobs and they can't be used after a mob has died like in more modern versions of WoW. Just in my three runs it was constantly a struggle to find a mob with high hp I can attack just so I can do my damn job and heal. If another player kills a mob you were about to spend 5 combo points on it can start a chain reaction that you cannot recover from because spending combo points not only heals the entire party but it replenishes a large amount of energy (via talents/res) which allows you to get a jump start on building more combo points to heal again.
- You have the lowest mana pool and passive mana regen out of any healer. One major problem with this is that it's typically the healers job to cleanse and dispel the group of the insane amounts of poisons, diseases, curses, and magic effects that are spammed on everyone throughout dungeons. You just don't have the mana pool to do this properly. If the mobs die too fast, in addition to all the other problems listed above, you just simply cannot generate mana in order to heal your group both during and between pulls.
- Agility / Strength primary attribute means that you have a 6 second dispel/cleanse instead of 3 second like every other healer has.
I really, really want to like this build. On paper it's such a cool and interesting healer. A full dps gear rogue healer that can simultaneously take advantage of all 3 resources ascension gives us: mana, rage, and energy. There are just WAY too many issues with the build that make it miserable to play however. This legendary RE needs many and major buffs. I propose you make it similar to mana forged barrier and give it some powerful PVE buffs and make it not work in PVP. Or just make two separate versions for PVE and PVP.
The combo point issue probably cannot be fixed because of the version of WoW that ascension is built on. However the other things can be fixed. I propose that you make the RE be changed to do the following:
- Provide a large amount of hit and expertise. Perhaps even just give you enough so you are capped and yellow attacks cannot fail to land for any reason. If this would make the build OP in terms of dps then just slap a damage done debuff on the RE like mana tanks get via the spell/aspect of the viper.
- Provide Immunity to all/most of the unavoidable CC that prevents you from doing your job. At the very least we need immunity to root and disarm. Ideally also gouge and knockback. All the mechanics that all the other healers don't ever have to deal with. Being in melee range already means you can't avoid the numerous short range silences, fears, and stuns. Having to deal with all the extra cc just makes this build truly miserable to play.
- Provide 3 second cleanse/dispels while using AGI/STR primary and also drastically reduce the mana cost of all the cleanse/dispel type abilities.
I haven't tried this RE in a raid but I suspect it would be much, much less miserable. I still wouldn't ever consider it viable because of all the issues above however.