So i haven’t healed most seasons prior to S2 of DF. A big reason is one of my best friends in game only heals (across all classes) so there was no need to really get good at healing keys. I usually tanked or DPS. I’ve enjoyed healing this season but with how hard it is to find good healers we need to make some changes.
HPal is a good example of how a healer should be designed. Strong spot heals, good group heals, tons of short CDs and an engaging play style. Redesigning the healers to follow suit would go a long way to help make healing fun again. Discipline priest is a spell and some tweaks away from being solid. MWer needs some tweaks and buffs. But the rest probably needs quite a bit of overhauling.
Also, some healers need more passive damage. Think more like how acid rain works or some of the damage spells do some healing as well. Maybe add some cooldowns to make things like vigil or AG make doing damage do strong healing. I’m seeing more and more healers refuse to do any damage in keys. Which isn’t an issue until you’re pushing above 20. It’s frustrating to miss a timer in a 22 uld when you’re holy priest did 875 DPS. When I know that when I occasionally play holy, I’m doing 40k+.
Most of the healers need anywhere from a tiny update/buff to a full rework. But if we leave healing in it’s current state, M+ will die a slow and painful death.
I think they just need to nerf damage and healing for these dungeons. The unavoidable damage is just too high, healer HPS relative to health bars is too high. That combination makes the only metric that matters burst healing. Rather than redesign all healers to be burst healers, I think it would be better if they redesigned dungeons to allow health to linger longer between 100 and 0.
I’m going to make some sweeping generalizations here, forgive me.
Healers mains, by and large, are not the stimulant fueled twitch-reaction gamers that are drawn to dps, nor are they they the tripod-energy mavericks that are usually more tank aligned. These are the designated drivers, the mom of the group. They don’t player healer to show off how awesome they are. They play healer to help other people be awesome.
These mechanical shifts for dragon flight have been so unpopular because it’s pressuring healers too much for that personality type. Go watch any high key or raid video from like shadowlands. Look at the damage taken graph. Then compare it to today. That’s the problem.
TL;DR: Don’t make everyone a Holy Pally, make every toolkit matter.
This is exactly what they tried to do going into S2, where everyone unanimously decided Healing sucks.
Granted, they did it with blanket % buffs and nerfs so that probably wasn’t ideal.
I think healing this season has been fun. I don’t feel like my heals are weak and I don’t feel like I need an “overhaul.”
I think the monk class tree needs a rework to remove bloat and garbage filler, we don’t need 3-4 talents for expel harm. I think chi wave/burst need to be massively buffed and the capstone’s need to be hugely improved or replaced (put the statues further up). I also think both the class tree and the spec trees need more connections and less filler. We have the most left over talents than any other healer.
Other than that and a slight damage increase I feel like MW is actually in a good spot.
So I also have a 444 Resto Shaman plus this Disc healer I just started gearing up this weekend.
Keeping in mind I have healed on my Resto Shaman in past expansions as well as my Disc Priest.
From Spot Healing perspective. Both Disc and Resto Shaman are weak. I feel Resto Shaman is the weaker of the two simply because of the long cast times like 2 seconds on Healing Wave for example. Disc can be more forgiving as Flash Heal is way faster. Though both dont do much more then AoE heals on a per target basis.
That said. AoE healing on both are sound and dont need adjusting.
The problem is Blizzard created mechanics that did way to heavy spike dmg. But instead of going into each dungeon and fixing their mistake. They increased player health. This did give healers more time to react, but spot healing isnt enough for Resto and Disc to pull the player out of a low health slum in any reasonable amount of time. Often if there is a DoT on the player or player gets hit with back to back mechanics (avoidable or not) they are essentially screwed. Just isnt anything Disc or Resto Shaman can do about it.
I have been told Paladin and Holy Priest are better at spot healing, but I do not play those so I can not confirm nor deny that claim.
But what I can say it is feels bad when a player has 550k health and to cast a spot heal on them and at best see it crit for about 200k, 100 or less with no crit. Then when dmg is ticking away at 125k a dot… Thats just bad design.
So do I think healers need an overhaul. No… I think blizz has two choices to address the issue. First is to fix the dungeons dmg profiles and revert the health increase changes. The former will likely not happen because it would take more time and the latter would see extreme player outrage. So that option is out the window. The only good outcome would be to buff spot healing and worry about health pool and dungeon dmg issues come 11.0.
So you’re playing resto shaman for this long, and haven’t discovered something called healing surge?
They increased player health. This did give healers more time to react, but spot healing isnt enough for Resto and Disc to pull the player out of a low health slum in any reasonable amount of time.
And yet Resto Shaman are capable of doing 27s where players take nearly double…
It does less healing genius. Sure its a 1.2 cast, but its also double the mana for less heal. Its an emergency heal you cast before casting Healing Wave.
Almost like, cast time is something to consider for HPS… and you’re comparing it with disc priest flash heal, a spec that’s supposed to heal with atonement…
Double hp, and nerf healing, else it’s just nerfing dungeons. Players are already capable of doing keys way above 20.
Many player’s ambitions don’t go above +20. There’s no need to nerf content, thus the goal is for difficulty to remain the same, yet grant people more reaction time. That said, I don’t think there’s any spot where it’s too demanding in keys people care about.
Yea ratio wise compared to DPS, healing has in fact increased. It is very strong compared to before. But we are not playing the same dungeons and mechanics.
Before it was more about mana management, with smooth incoming dmg and few minor spikes here and there. But now its almost no dmg for a few moments and then a lot of big dmg.
So nerfing healing here isnt going to fix the problems we have now. It would only make it worse. Though this is something they need to fix for 11.0.
There’s no one magic bullet, it needs to be rebalanced entirely. Shadowlands, for all its faults, did it right.
Healer HPS needs to be equal to or greater than incoming damage, and incoming damage needs to be 5-10% of player health per second. That means it would take 10-20s to die with no heals.
Oh I agree with you Kae… Its just to late in the expansion for them to re-balance every game dmg mechanic and healing to match. That would take to many resources. But it does need to happen by 11.0.