So, from vanilla classic to early wotlk, I mained a healer. Specifcally a holy priest, though I dabbled a bit with resto sham. Around the time the general view of the community became “lol holy priest, go disc or you suck” I gave up on healing and swapped mains. Initially tank, but now a dps when my guild had more tanks than we needed and were short on dps.
Lately, with some ppl whispering that holy priest might be viable again, the itch to de-mothball my priest and give it a whirl again has been growing. However, I have some worries.
From the perspective of a DPS (who still has healbot installed and can see raid health all the time), it sure seems like several things appear to be true:
Bliz hates healers.
Bliz thinks “constant unavoidable heavy AOE damage” somehow equates to challenge.
Bliz appears to be operating under the misconception that healers can rock throughput while being forced to constantly move (and/or) watch the environment for instant death mechanics (like the orbs on vizier or tornado alley).
Bliz thinks that dropping huge dots randomly on players whose only hope is that the healers A) notice and B) care enough to not let them die is somehow good game design.
M+ timers have trained almost every pug tank to constantly rush in 5-mans. (healer’s out of mana? who cares, onward! and if anyone dies it’s obviously the healer’s fault)
Healers appear to be the only class (other than the occasional arcane mage) that have to worry about mana management.
Healers seem to get yelled at / blamed for almost anything that goes wrong.
For the longest time, I’ve preferred holy priest and been a non-fan of disc priest. Naturally, around the time i finally resigned myself to the idea that “bliz clearly hates holy priest and wants all priest healers to be disc” they decide to drop a huge nerf hammer on disc.
So… my question for the forum masses is this… is my perception of what’s going on as a dps overstating things? Does healing LOOK from the outside to be way more punishing/stressful than it really is? (mostly talking about raids here). Does one actually have to possess masochistic tendencies to play a healer and not quit after a week?
Debating if i want to consider playing my priest again but my worry is that it will end up feeling like that “knife scene” in Aliens where Hudson is just screaming the whole time Bishop does the pirate’s poker thing.
Classic is full of meta sheeps who have no critical thinking skills and simply follow whatever BiS lists tell them to do.
I say this because many people saw Holy at the bottom of tier lists and concluded they did bad healing. Holy does amazing healing. Its simply that Disc was overpowered and Holy lacked the powerful cooldowns other classes had.
Now that Disc isn’t overpowered at the moment people have warmed up to Holy.
I wouldn’t call it difficult but different. When I play a DPS character I can reasonable say almost every time I pull this boss it will be the same. Outside of do I get this annoying mechanic or not. As a healer pretty much every pull is different in a way. Does everyone or no one handle this mechanic correctly. Does this person run way to far away or not. Does the tank decide to use their DRs or not. Do you get the annoying mechanic or not.
The community is certainly trash to healers. First to blame. Last to reward. In general treated like garbo… which is probably why not a lot of people really like to play them. I have been apart of pulls where zero things were interrupted (even fights where its general considered no interrupt is a near wipe), no one used DRs, people even admitted to standing in the fire to get another GCD in… and we wipe… and the first thing they do is pull up the healing charts and point fingers.
Mind you… in all other situations in the entire game… yes… the entire game… that HPS means NOTHING… but a wipe… suddenly its the most critical stat that can be used.
Healing is both the hardest role and the easiest role, depending on your group and boss.
The biggest hurdle with healing is understanding when and how the damage is coming in, if you know when the damage is coming then its easy to prepare, but throw in unexpected damage and things can get scary fast. Heroic empress is a good example, its a ton of damage but its very predictable and with proper CD management isn’t that hard. But in phase 2, bad add kiting can make a tank go from taking not that much damage to dead in a global, its the kiters fault but a good tank CD can save them there if you’re paying attention.
Only bad groups will blame their healers when something goes wrong, a good group will know what actually happened.
If we are talking about classic, healing is by far the easiest role. There are barely any mechanics healers have to contend with. Its even easier if you are a mistweaver or holy paladin, where you can even skip “ranged” mechanics, and never run out of mana.
The healing profile of all of the bosses in MoP can be summed up as “get ready to hit your CD for the 1 big damage ability every 2 min”…there only 3 fights that have considerable damage going out throughout the fight, heroic garalon and heroic empress…tsulong has a healer specific phase, but its essentially “stand in the thing and press your 1 button over and over”…the rest of the fights are a snooze fest inbeen the “big damage ability the boss does”.
Imagine being a DPS where you only have to perform your rotation 2-3 times per fight, thats what healing is like in MoP Classsic.
It also has one kind of annoying thing in which your eyes really have to be drawn away from the play field a lot to the raid frames. Placement and info displayed can certainly assist with it being minimal but its always there. Really no way around it. I again wouldn’t call it difficult but it certainly is a skill you have to master as you dart your eyes between the field, the frames, and the abilities. A lot of really good players cannot execute it very well, and its not because they are bad. They just aren’t practiced in it and the time you use to develop this kind of not very hard skill is brutal because everyone is going to be dumping on you as you do. You play the UI a lot more than most is a good way to put it and since a lot of people just kinda copy another players UI because its said to be “the way” or looks good but in essence a good healer always is going to move this around a bit to line it up with their brains way to work it out which again flies in the face of a lot of normal behavior.
The upside to healer though is as the tier goes on it gets easier. Everyone gets more stamina so its more forgiving. Bosses die faster so you deal with fewer and fewer mechanics. The meta then shifts more to how much damage can you push in during it and certain classes for sure have it easier there.
Of course if you are super meta in your raids you may have to spec to DPS eventually. Or get benched. This probably isn’t a majority problem but its there. So the better the guild you are in the need to master 2 roles or face the bench increases. This can be annoying at the same time rewarding depending on the individual perspective on this issue. Its a lot worse in guilds that believe they are “kings of the game” yet really aren’t so they cannot provide splits and such which allow healers to continue playing and gearing for the next tier as effectively.
Yeah… Bliz has a habit of designing things to be far too busy. Watching crazy mechanics that kill you in half a second if you put one toe half an inch in the wrong direction, boss facing, adds, range to other players, complicated rotations, and healers on top of all that have to watch green bars while simultaneously trying to stay aware of the environment. It’s overwhelming.
At least in retail they seem to have finally gotten the message that the classes were too complicated. I mean when the 1 button rotation (that nerfs your damage) turned out to be a dps INCREASE for 75% of the players, that, to me, says that their systems are too complicated for the average wow player to keep up with.
Well, that is what happens when the company wants to turn every boss fight into touhou with the amount of stupid crap you need to avoid, while also adding unavoidable stuff for maximum pain.
Now add the extra layer of pain that comes with being a healer and you have a role only masochists enjoy playing.