Community perception hurts healers' thrill of the game

Community General Discussion
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Knowing that my team can reach their full potential because of my efforts, that they’re surviving something that shouldn’t be possible, lasting longer to enjoy themselves, makes me feel good while playing World of Warcraft.

The main reason I have been playing a healer role for 14 years now is coming from this feeling of wanting to be useful. I think a lot of healers’ mains have in some form or another this need fulfilled by the game - besides entertainment, this is what they get “out of it”. If they don’t feel useful in some form or another, they don’t see the point.

The sociability of the role is also a salient component, Healers utilizes its limited resources to empower the group’s ability to stay in the fight. By skillfully communicating and understanding the group dynamic, reading the fortunes of war, and distributing these life-saving cooldowns appropriately.

The best fun I had in the game in both PVE and PVP is knowing that my teammates were eager to see me log on the game so I could pocket heal them in battlegrounds or enable them to clear dungeons faster - their enjoyment makes me happy, it gives me something to look forward to when I log on.

I am currently a Mythic raider very close to CE, I also have KSM on almost every healer spec currently - I love all of the class’s designs. I think they all have their niches and interesting playstyles. I’m having a very hard time deciding which healer I prefer from a purely mechanical viewpoint.

To clearly state the point I’m raising - I feel that the current community perceptions of the different healer classes are minimizing the feeling of usefulness one might look forward to while playing. Therefore making the game less enjoyable for the aforementioned.

Over time I have come to realize that community perception and class balance are NOT two sides of the same coin - but both concepts affect the game in the same way.

Community perception is the fuel for the biased user feedback engine.

Don’t get me wrong, I love watching Limit Maximum talk about raid composition best practices - his arguments are absolutely on point and backed by an immense amount of experience. The problem is the fact that the community is listening without understanding that 99.99% of the player base doesn’t need this level of optimization when they are clearing the same content 3-4 months later with 30 to 40 iLvl higher overall.

Of course, you are going to have an easier time if you follow this meta, but you will be able to get through it anyways.

The race to world first and the current MDI format are the breeding grounds for the meta-defining playstyle. It then propagates to the content creators who make very biased tier lists and “choose your main” type of videos.

Why are these videos so popular? It speaks directly to the player’s fear of “am I going to be useful, am I going to be invited ?”. In the end, the community perception will dictate if they have a right to join pugging groups and actually have a chance to “play” the game and feel useful.

With the amount of time available on your hands, versus the effort it takes to change your main (if it happens that your class is not in the spotlight at the moment), you might as well throw in the towel now.

If (you, the reader) is still impervious to this idea, here’s a recent use case. Holy priest PVP at the beginning of 9.0. Start with the premise that this class virtually had no changes since the beginning of the season. If it so happened that you optimized your gear, your covenant, your soubinds for this spec - wanting to get some PVP done, I would have wished you good luck. It happened to me, even knowing full well that my spec was more than viable in PVP, the community (heck even my close friends) would not queue with me unless I would change everything around and play discipline.

Holy priests are now viewed as one of the best PVP healers in this season and are actively sought to be part of a team. I remind you that absolutely no changes have been made to the spec - only changes to other healers moved the meta around slightly.

I think community-wise, a lot of things are being done to address the problem. The Great Push and “Break the meta” are fantastic ideas to promote and broadcast players using different strategies and classes. Also, the fact that mythic rating will be an integral part of the game that takes tyrannical weeks into consideration is such an amazing improvement in that regard.

The community perception will probably be more open to trying out different strategies, but there will always be design issues that skew players’ willingness to invite anything other than one or two “good” classes.

In raids, good healer specs are always those with the most utility, in M+ you are looking for the healer that can contribute the most amount of damage. The problem right now is that two specs consistently have more utility, more damage, and more/equal healing throughput than the four others. It has been the same for the last 5 to 6 tiers almost.

The may 11th change to holy paladin is a welcome change - but honestly, 15%-ish percent damage nerf to a class that already does (effortlessly) 4 to 5 times more damage than the median of the other healers is not enough - unless the class design really do revolves around being a damage spec with limited healing throughput and utility - which it is not.

Pride will be gone next season, and the value of having high throughput healers like Restoration Druid, Mistweaver Monks, and Holy priest will go down the drain in favor of healers who bring the most amount of damage.

The community perception problem is a function of the loss of trust over the years for the class balance - we mostly go a whole tier without significant changes - where only a few numerical changes once every two weeks could help the tide reach the shore.

I play mostly all the healers to a respectable level of content, I love the design of every single class - they are all uniquely fun. By playing each of them, I experience first hand how easy it is to queue (and enjoy the game) as a Holy paladin - and how nearly impossible it is to queue over a +15 with a Mistweaver Monk or a Holy priest. During tyrannical weeks, you may as well not even try the decline simulator. Mind you, this is not a Raider IO issue, during the first weeks of Shadowlands, I was consistently in and out of the top 10 holy priests in the world - still would not get invited over shamans 400-500 IO under me.

There are very novel ways to do more damage on throughput healers, but at the expense of many many things - even if you can prove to your friends that you do comparable damage or healing, you still won’t get invited and feel useless/worthless.

I sincerely hope more changes are coming to level the playing field - I feel there are three areas of usefulness in the eyes of the community, these are the criteria that are used:

Best 4 points, great 3 points, okay 2 points, bad 1 point, worst 0 points.

Holy paladin (10pt):
Damage: Best, Throughput: Great, Utility: Great

Resto Shaman (10pt):
Damage: Great, Throughput: Great, Utility: Best

Discipline (8pt):
Damage: Okay, Throughput: Great (after ss nerf, was best before), Utility: Great

Restoration Druid (6pt):
Damage: Bad, Throughput: Best, Utility: Bad

Holy Priest (5pt):
Damage: Bad, Throughput: Okay, Utility: Okay (with 9.1 change + hymn, was worst before)

Mistweaver Monk (2pt):
Damage: Worst, Throughput: Okay, Utility: Worst

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Considering the class design/history this is what it could look like - If a class is the best at something, it should also be the worst at something.

Holy paladin (7pt):
Damage: Best, Throughput: Worst, Utility: Great

Discipline (7pt):
Damage: Okay, Throughput: Okay, Utility: Great

Resto Shaman (7pt):
Damage: Bad, Throughput: Okay, Utility: Best

Restoration Druid (7pt):
Damage: Bad, Throughput: Great, Utility: Great

Holy Priest (7pt):
Damage: Worst, Throughput: Best, Utility: Great

Mistweaver Monk (7pt):
Damage: Great, Throughput: Okay, Utility: Okay

If the encounters are designed in such a way that it requires a healing check, a damage check, or a utility check (ex: plaguefall last boss, you can power heal through, use revival to remove the dot, or simply do so much damage that the boss won’t even use her ability) it should be easy to mix and match your composition to make something that works in most cases.

Well, that’s it for my two cents, I tried to portray how it feels to play a healer right now, I hope it can be of some help as a form of feedback!

2 Likes
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Can we get a TLDR? It’s still pre-second-cup-of-coffee time.

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I ain’t readin that and im on my 2nd cup of coffee.

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I made it almost halfway through.

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TL:DR;

Healer’s are uniquely fun and capable of doing all levels of content, but class balance and the microscope of the MDI and Race to World First create a meta that the community can’t shake. If healers strengths and weaknesses were more clearly defined, it would create a bunch of mini-metas based on your group comp more than what’s the flat out “best”, and maybe alleviate the issue of “Holy Pally or Bust” in lfg.

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???

You start your post talking about community perception being a problem, and end with acknowledging that some healing classes are just bad.

It isn’t a perception problem; it is a balance problem. Nobody wants to choose to take a liability even if they can “get by” with said liability.

Mistweavers are a trash dumpster-fire and probably the only Class/Role combination in the entire game currently that I would consider bad enough to decline someone over. All tank specs are viable and every class has at least one DPS spec that is viable. Mistweavers are the only healer I consider to have no redeeming qualities worth bringing, and the gap is only going to get worse once Pride leaves and the mana-issues with the class become even more exaggerated due to lack of infinite MP windows.

TL:DR: Mistweaver bad, Blizzard fix, the community reaction to Mistweaver is completely natural to something so bad.

Depends what you mean by capable. If they’re bad enough that people don’t want to take them, that’s not a “community” issue, that’s a balance issue, and if you aren’t getting invited into content, you can’t do the content (barring playing with your friends - but balance isn’t relevant when you’re willing to play with people who overlook balance issues in the first place and are willing to overgear the content to help you get it done).

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I just meant capable of getting CE/KSM/Duelist. Maybe takes a little bit more effort, maybe not as easy or as early as the other specs.

To be clear: that does NOT absolve blizzard of addressing the glaring balance issues. It just means that community reaction to these balance changes is a bit on the extreme side, but if anything that makes addressing the balance issues even more important.

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The issue with this is, that the 3 “areas of usefulness” you listed are not all weighted the same. Throughput tends to matter the most followed by Utility/Damage and the priority of how much each matter also depends on the content whether it is raiding/M+ or PvP.

It’s tough to balance this throughout the 3 main forms of content and how well a healer does in each changes from patch to patch. My opinion would be that every single healer should be able to (through talents or legendaries) shift their build around so they can be great at either throughput, damage or utility.

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I even took my prescription focusing medication this morning and I can’t read it.