You’re revealing you haven’t did much shuffle. What you’re describing about mana management is actually in the game right now. It’s in shuffle mode and it’s very unpopular.
If I’ve been gatekept due to healer damage, then I’d consider it a good thing because those would be bad groups trying to copy Rank 1 groups and don’t understand why. I’m okay with not grouping with them.
Mate, you’re a healer. You can pick and choose who you group more than anyone else in the game. (tanks can’t choose PvP groups and have a harder time with raids since you only need two). You’re highly in demand because it’s a tough role. It doesn’t actually matter if you’re a meta spec or not because often people will be curious about you if you’re not… and they don’t like waiting in LFG.
In a gameplay format in which heals deal with randoms running out of their range, pulling them away from pillars, perpetual CC, dampening, allies not popping defensives vs offensive CDs, get tons of verbal abuse from said players and most rounds end with healers above 50% mana you are going to go with mana management as the reason healers hate it. That is certainty a way I look at it I suppose.
As for picking your groups, sure healers do have better ability to be selective with how they play with, but doesn’t change the fact they are trying to select the needle in a haystack and finding it tends to be a miserable experience that causes many to say “to hell with it” and go do something else.
It’s not just current class designs, it’s against the entirety of gear progression since all the way back in cata, maybe.
We don’t progress in gear at the same rate as TBC anymore. Progressing a raid means healers quickly get to a point where they can cover an encounter’s healing needs using less spells and less effort over time. A design that pulls back damage spell casts to ‘wanding’ just means you’d be wanding the majority of the fight, eventually.
If you want healing like this, play Classic/SoD. They exist to capture that audience.
“Fixing” what you want to fix here is just antithetical to how modern WoW works. It’s like saying that DPS rotations all need to be pared back to 5 abilities each. Cool, it’s a vision, but it’s not necessarily correct and it sure wouldn’t go over well with people who are playing modern WoW for modern WoW.
The ironic thing is, if you where actually correct in this “Modern WoW” wouldn’t exist. Time and again Blizzard have changed foundational things, like the 5sr, adding/removing replenishment, etc etc. They do it constantly and constantly we always hear “they are setting it back” “modern audience won’t accept it” “it will kill the game” etc etc.
At the end of the day it’s all nonsense. If Blizzard devs actually sat down and came up with an engaging, and fun playstyle that they felt was better than what we have now do you really think they wouldn’t change it, providing higher ups didn’t can the idea?
Also note I didn’t say I wanted healing to be back to TBC/Classic/SoD styles, I actually criticized them if you read my posts. I want them to make mana management an actually engaging part of the game. Not something that happens passively, not something that is tied to hitting a CD everytime it’s up, but a legitimate playstyle that requires input, situation assessment, and thought from the player as oppose to frankly anything any expansion has given us so far.
What I really want is something new that doesn’t treat the literal cornerstone of healing(resource management) as an after thought in favor of something that frankly should be an after thought(DPS).
Well, it’s definitely true there’s many reasons not to like shuffle
If your teammates are not actively avoiding your heals, you very often end up with low or zero mana. If your healer class has more mana problems than the enemy healer, it can feel like you’re on the clock (i.e. any long game you’ll likely lose). Scrounging under the couch cushions for mana, or just facing a healer who isn’t balanced in the mana department, just isn’t much fun to me.
But these are the exact scenarios you want and can do in the game right now, if you can put up with your allies.
Also I’m biased because I tried to play spriest in WoW Classic and went oom at every pack of a dungeon. Not healer related, I know, but I’m still scarred.
This was legitimately one of the bad things about classic was that many DPS just simply didn’t have the tools to do their jobs, and unless you where a rogue/war/mage/warlock you would struggle with mana in ways that was simply unfun.
The converse was true honestly as a healer. While it absolutely needed adjustments, updates, and more interaction you at least played like a healer managing mana, triaging people and thinking ahead.
I’ve had long as hell arena games but they where not in shuffle. I’ve played priest/prez/pally primarily this expac but unless it’s in actual coordinated groups matches just don’t last long, and honestly it’s become rather boring. Rated arena can still be some good fun with good people and against opponents of equal skill, but RSS has just never provided anything close to that.
As for facing healers who are not balanced in mana I’ve been there and done that. Playing priest into druid during Wraith was one of the most miserable experiences ever unless you managed to get the lucky 5% dispel on their innervate you simply where not going to out last them, especially once mana burn got removed. It was one of the most infuriating things ever before mana burn was removed to actually watch bad druids just sit in caster form eating burns, just to innervate back to full mana while you spammed dispels and removed nothing with that freaking 95% dispel protection. Even worse was trying to play into the prot paladin with undispellable Divine Plea. They could heal forever meaning any long game was out of the question.
While that is infuriating in specific match-ups it also is completely reasonable. Some comps are suppose to be highly proactive and get kills early, like pretty much every comp priests heal for. If the other team is able to drag the game out into the mana battle then you got out played because you never set up your win condition, and instead let them play into theirs.
The concept of balance changes, however, if healers with incredible mana sustain are given great offensive pressure to go with it. Being able to both set up and play the early game to an oppressive degree while being able to out last opponents who are just desperately trying to keep up with your pressure isn’t remotely balanced, but disc was actually doing that decently well in the last season, prior to hpaladins becoming insane.
You’re not wrong. I feel that when I am done in a EBG since all I heal in is PvP. I feel I should be a pretty darn good healer on top. 833m is as high as I have managed to heal as holy. I have analyzed every holy priest that I have seen hit 1 billion .
Check my self to them I see we have everything the same hmmmm I’m in the wrong place in that game if I am low.
Looking at my battle log most of my healing is over heals…. Not everything is counted when I have one spell that can heal a warrior to full heal especially when they are not healing themselves for what ever reason.
I am also a pounding stone in any BG’s , but again let the pally wear plate while I am in my pajamas.
I heal well, I even have two holy specs one for Ebg and one for BG and rated stuff.
I am bored with disc I like playing pve by myself on shadow.
Most of the time the higher damage results in low over all needed HPS. If a mob will do 1million damage over 10 seconds, and the group takes 10 seconds to kill it then it will be doing 100k DPS and require 100k HPS to get through it, however if that mob dies in 7 seconds due to the damage the healer brought suddenly you don’t need 100k HPS anymore you need 70k HPS.
This is one of the key reasons healer damage has come to matter so much, it isn’t just about getting through the dungeon faster, dead mobs do no damage which lowers the over all healing required.
