Healing must die for WoW to step into the future and survive

Community General Discussion
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Hello, this is a longer read. If you’re happy with WoW as it is now, just move on. You’ll be happier reading something else.

I’m sad to announce that one of my best friends in wow, holy priest since the beginnings (we started together our journey in wow … myself as a holy paladin and her as a holy priest) just left wow … I hope not for good, but she (at least for now) is saying so.

I also took a break from wow about a month ago, because I was very unhappy with my holy paladin. Then the patch came with some important changes to holy paladins and at least now it’s playable. I’m paying full year in advance, so it’s not about the money. It’s only about the game.

Anyway, my friend left wow because we’re not really young and she couldn’t adapt to the new M+ system. It is too difficult for her (being 50+ years old) to avoid all the mechanics, keep the group alive, do also some damage (not required but she feels like she has to, coming from the past M+ seasons). There are moments when in M+ 6 and above she cannot even keep herself alive … not to say that she must keep everyone alive. Yeah, we’re not MDI material and we’re not able to interrupt everything, avoid everything, etc.

Being a healer in WoW is actually very hard for me too and only a few of my friends still find joy in healing. Everyone else switched to DPS.

I was healing my entire WoW “existence”, both pvp and pve, only as a holy paladin. I tried most classes - resto shaman is also fun but I can only identify myself as a paladin, so this is my wow flavor (if this could better explain, I’m a doctor MD in real life with a paladin point of view on humanity … sounds wierd, right?! but I really love helping people without needing anything in return).

When Blizzard killed holy pally months ago, after that glorious S1 in DF, I switched to Retribution and oh boy :smiley: what a joy ! I was actually having time to admire the dungeon’s design, graphics, , bosses, spells … things I never observed when healing. When healing I felt threaten by everything … even some box on the floor was dangerous if I was stuck in it, unable to avoid some mechanic and … “dies cutely” :)))

The game as a DPS is many times just better than being a healer. Many noticed this. As a consequence, the queue is quite long now in both PVE and PVP, while waiting not only for a tank, but also for a healer too now.

So. I do not like to post a problem without offering a solution :smiley:

**Problem: less players are playing healer… because … damn … it’s way too hard :stuck_out_tongue: **
Solution: remove healing for the game :scream_cat:
Actually replace it with a support class, like the Augmentation .

Simple, right ? Basically every DPS class will receive a self healing spell on a short CD (something like 3 to 6 seconds) and an “oh S=!T” button to escape from an impossible situation, like a short immunity/full heal.

Every 5 man group will consist in a tank and 4 dps - I’ve already seen in MDI some comps like this last year.
The tanks have already decent sustain and don’t need much attention while the DPS will take care of themselves and eventually use their healing spell on the tank if really needed if the tank is fresh or is failing to avoid some mechanic.

This way nobody will wait for a healer anymore. Whoever was playing healer before could roll an Augmentation Evoker or an Augmentation Paladin, Priest etc … ye … there should be a new support spec for all the current healing classes (instead of a healing spec, there should be a support spec).

If the group wants to complete in time a high level M+ dungeons, there will be 100% the need for a support class.

For lower keys a support class won’t be necessary - just a tank and 4 dps. Wanna play in the MDI ? Bring a support class. Or not … ?! :slight_smile:

Many healers now are also tanks. This will force the current healers to play only tank / support in the future and will half the need of a healer in the smaller M+ keys while bringing more dedicated tanks to the community.

The groups will be forming faster. A healer will no longer be almost required in rated arena and battlegrounds. The game will be a LOT faster in PvP without some pesky immortal healer in 1v1 and more strategic in PVE. No need for dampening in arena PvP also.

The game is difficult to balance in both pvp and pve. Without healers the game will be far easier to balance - more time for the devs to work on other issues or even develop faster new areas and gameplay types, etc. Blizzard will also $$ profit from this.

The queue will be much faster since 50%+ of the waiting time now is because of the lack of healers. So … if nobody wants to heal, just remove it from the game.

Are you really playing as a healer in delves ? I don’t think so. Only my friend, the priest, was holy inside the delves and her experience was lame. She played some joining few random groups and then abandoned delves completely.

In the end, from my personal point of view, playing Ret was fun and relaxing while playing holy was giving me headaches, higher blood pressure because of the stress and also some wrist pain in the past weeks, while playing only M+ up to 7-8. I don’t even want to think how’s above that, but my low ilvl isn’t allowing me to reach that high for now.

I know this is very arguably but I’d rather play dps than healer and healing in wow is VERY difficult now. There are some bosses that I’m actually avoiding, not putting step in some dungeons - yes Stonevault, I’m looking at you :slight_smile:

Sorry for my bad English, I’m Italian. Thank you for reading.
Removing healers from the game is a win-win situation for everyone.
Now let’s burn the house down with the comments :stuck_out_tongue:

3 Likes
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Since I stand in bad, I would prefer someone dedicated to keeping me alive.

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Ive played games without healers and wows complexity really doesn’t support it. It doesn’t really support ,support classes either but now blizzard is trapped in that nightmare.

There isn’t anything wrong with no healer mmos but they need to be designed from the engine up to work.

2 Likes
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While I don’t necessarily agree with this solution.
I think you make some excellent points when highlighting the problem you see.

I think this bit would need to change to make your solution workable.

I think the tanks would just need to be fully self sustained in this proposed model.

DPS players won’t want to sacrifice personal DPS to heal the tank.

Other than that, I think this could work. But idk if I would play it or not personally.

Thanks for sharing an interesting idea.

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I play Warcraft’s gameplay because healer is my main thing. Removing the role of healer will just remove me from playing the game.

Guild Wars 2 when it tried to do no trinity PvE content was for the most part extremely boring to me.

I’d rather speak in contrast.

No it isn’t, DPS is boring to play to me.

A lot of the rest of this feels like just bait, it’s just a terrible sales pitch.

Yes, I do. For someone who said they played Holy Paladin forever you seem to just not like playing a healer. It’s okay if you don’t, it’s whatever but your preference isn’t everyone’s, and if we ran mob rule DPS would always drown out voices of tank+healer combined making it moot.

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Opinion is not fact.

There is no problem except you dislike healing now.

Your solution: DPS.

No.

Yes.

And you have that choice already. Leave the rest to make their choice.

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tldr
no and go play gw2

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Ah yes the armchair dev, completely wanting to change a game because it doesnt suit them.

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I think they should just do away with auto attacking. You can have random henchmen mobs do it, but I think it mostly needs to be deleted.

Stop being lazy, design telegraph attacks for the mobs in the dungeons, simple.

The bosses would just be like Lost Ark or Souls or whatever, they don’t default to auto attack, ever, they just cycle through telegraphs.

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People leave the game all the time. I left after Ulduar in Wrath, skipped Cata, barely touched Pandaland, played the entirely of WOD but then went on and off during Legion, skiped the last patch of BFA, then only played seasons 1 and 4 of Shadowlands.

We dont need the removal of healing, we need to improve the defensives of DPS classes. Thats it. I also play as healer.

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Please no.

There would be way too much overlap because they would have to literally change the entire way the classes worked.

If they want to create new specs to do this kind of thing, sure. But deleting actual healing specs/spells from the game? Absolutely not.

Stop trying to SV hunter everything. Those of you that played the old survival understand what I mean by this.

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Another thing deleting auto attacking accomplishes is it removes the burst from tanks on pulls and allows to see when every source of damage is going to come out.

It would be so good for both healers and tanks.

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There are a ton of games without the trinity people can go play.

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keep healing get rid of tanks instead :wink:

bunch of backpedalers lol

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“I dont heal anymore, so therefor no one else should either”

Interesting take.

You could always just…play a dps instead.

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Yeah no i like healing. Thanks though.

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every time a game tries to ditch the holy trinity, it never really works and they end up just making it anyways but through a more convoluted means.

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Riiiiight.

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Someday we are going to go a week without a “remove tanks and/or healers from the game” thread…

There are plenty of games out there without trinity, go play one of them.

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Not sure they will just toss out 20 years of mechanics cause folks stand in the bad.