It’s Resto, have to work twice as hard for the same level of heals!
Ill be happy to run a few and see where i can spot some of your own personal play that may be hindering you. It is easy for everyone to blame x, y, or z when there is always something to improve within our own play. Paladin#12123 is my tag
I find that healing as resto at times can be very difficult. It requires knowledge of every fight and every pull because you need to anticipate incoming damage so you have hots in place to maximize healing. Once I had that knowledge then I found dungeons to get considerably easier.
There will be times you have to overcompensate for bad dps decisions but in higher keys that happens less. Ive cleared all keys on at least 10 and while I can clear 11s and 12s I dont see any value in it but I can say the groups are much more competant.
One thing I would also advise is that for me at least is I prefer certain tanks to heal with. I avoid DKs and Demon Hunters like the plague. Their health bars are far too inconsistent. Warriors, Pallys and Monks vibe really well with resto since they take damage in smaller values than DKs and DHs do.
You’re not bad but the difficulty curve has shifted forward.
As a Prot pal tank, S1 and its kite/guerrilla warfare hit n run game for tanks was annoying for me. I did like the seasonal affixes though!
Been watching my healer fall off this season as well.
Think it’s a combination of things.
They keep moving the goal posts for BiS gear. In BfA you needed a handful of +10’s for BiS chance at the vault. BfA +10 is like a current +1 with extra affixes.
They keep piling on the cognitive overload and for healers that also need to be staring at health bars they seem to get wasted by a lot of targeted mechanics, poorly telegraphed mechanics, and mechanics that don’t give enough escape time to switch from healing awareness to situational awareness and still escape.
There was a big shift this expansion to make sure healers heal instead of dpsing and sometimes throwing a heal on a dps.
This has resulted in healers that used to be along for the ride now wiping groups because they are not tracking debuffs, using externals or dispelling.
Healing keys is still fun but I feel like my dps is no longer a concern which is kinda lame.
I think the hard truth is that tanks have been super op at self sustain for a long time and the healer role had, for a long time, been relegated to a back seat to tanks self sustaining and dps taking responsibility for mitigating one shot unhealable mechanics.
Now, all of the sudden, there’s a lot more rot damage and non critical casts that you kind of have to selectively let through and heal through because of the aoe stop changes. The result is that the healer has probably the MOST critical role of any party member this season and many players who were used to taking a back seat, complaining about being assigned seasonal affixes, and mostly just being a bad 4th dps with healing utility aren’t prepared to step up and own the healer role again.
So are you just bad? Probably… but so are the vast majority of the players that have migrated to the healer role over the years. It’s just a hard season for healers, more-so than other roles, especially if your tank is used to being invincible and doesnt really research where to use defensives and what to pull.
Surprisingly I dont mind fussing with affixes, i just incap roar then typhoon the interupt balls, I use convoke for the dispel/absorb crap, and “catch the balls” is easy too.
The biggest area of improvement for me would be interrupting, but im too nervous to shift into cat run into melee and skull bash. I cant heal in cat form and I feel like if im not on constant guard in pugs, someone will get gibbed. I really wish i had something like windshear.
Nothing stays the same, people or the environment around them
Holy pally here and I’ve found it very difficult this season. I was pushing+23 in legion and +12-13 in bfa season 1 before I quit. I find that dungeons now are terrible to heal. Probably doesn’t help that I am pugging every key, but I swear I am oom nearly every pull and everyone stands in everything.
12-13 is not even KSM.
So for adequate comparison, your skill range is 2-3s.
That’s correct, I didn’t play the expansion long enough to get it in BFA. You completely glossed over my +23s in Legion though. I can’t imagine 4k R. io score in legion os comparable to +2-3 in TWW.
And if it is, then imo it shouldn’t be.
I think there wasn’t much of an effort to tune content back then. I recall struggling with Tyrannical Xavius around 16s though.
(On a resto druid.) Maybe you were better back then because it’s been so long?
Ya that’s probably true. I had played for 5 years straight at that point, it’s only been a few months now.
With that being said, I don’t remember aoe healing being this much of a struggle before. I distinctly remember healing through an insane amount of sanguine stacks in legion on my holy paladin main. I can’t remember the precise number, but it was enough that my group talked about it for a few weeks after , because they were certain we should have died lol. That is my main gripe since coming back, the aoe healing that seems to be a main focus on every boss and ever trash pull.
I’ve mained Rsham for 4 years. I got it to around KSM IO, said screw it and just started DPSing on this toon instead. I’m sure I could do portal keys as Rsham if I really wanted to knuckle down and force myself to have bad experiences over and again for the in between groups that are better than others, but it’s more stress than fun for me.
So now I DPS and someone else can heal. 