EDIT TO TITLE: To more accurately describe where the conversation has lead.
EDIT: This isn’t about having to deal damage. Its about the meta of healers dealing damage seeping into our classes spec design and functionality. Potentially losing depth in the “healing” gameplay loop we tried opting for. I AM NOT AGAINST HEALERS DEALING DAMAGE WHEN THEY ARE CAPABLE OF IT
Could the decline in the amount of healers in this game be due to Blizzard pushing to make all healers a psuedo dps?
Why tune there damage so they do a reasonable amount during their downtime instead of just tuning the content to minimize their downtime?
I miss feeling like a healer. . . If you want to deal damage go play a dps?
This degenerate healer dps meta is fed by the fact that M+ are timed. Take the time away and replace it with a death count or something. Might make dungeons feel more like dungeons and not AoE Zug fests?
I dunno, I don’t hate M+ by any means. Maybe I’m just old school and think healers should do very very little damage, and a tank does 10% overall with the dps actually being the ones doing the damage in the group.
I may be alone with these sentiments though. No flame for anyone who enjoys the way the game currently is.
That doesn’t change the fact that I am forced to deal damage in order to heal effectively. I personally enjoyed the old school health bar mini game while dodging mechanics. Felt engaging enough to me.
The overall design and play style of healers just isn’t fun to most people, or they would play healers. I would hate to be a healer in this expack, forced to do dps and contend with insane aoe dmg in most instances.
personally i never liked the whack a mole healing in WoW, its why i quit doing it years ago. i get a lot more enjoyment out of maximizing the damage i can do while also keeping everyone alive. that’s more interesting to me and more difficult
even if you dont think healers should dps, i really dont see why so many people are vehemently against healers casting damage spells occasionally when they have a few seconds. ABC, always be casting
laughs in 80k RSKs, 50k meatballs, 130k lightning bolts, 100k-150k disc burst windows, whatever the heck nonsense machine gun holy fire for hpriest is, evokers living flame and disintegrates overtuned damage, 50k moonfire and 30k starsurges for rdruid
Err… in DF they did exactly what you ask, made healing requirements much higher and gutted Healer DPS potential.
In high end keys that design is actually showing its cracks atm as damage scales so high that healers can’t reasonably heal it anyway and we can’t significantly contribute to DPS either.
If anything it’s the lack of damage. And the forced FoTM choices of Druid or Evoker. Two of the most “subjectively” enjoyable classes. Everyone else gets subpar healing. So not only are you doing meh heals (Compared to the tank), you’re also pumping out meh DPS and providing meh survivability. It’s kind of a joke really.
Your job is to handle all standard throughput damage taken, then attempt to recover an almost wipe. Kind of hard when everything is a one-shot in higher keys.
If you’re going to give healers crap heals, you might as well give them better DPS to compensate. Higher than the tank at least. Or give healers good heals again. It makes no sense to half punish “healer-only” players by giving them terrible heals. Go all the way and force them to play DPS.
So I’m seeing healers being treated like crap now because their “healing numbers” are low. It doesn’t seem to matter that I helped keep the raid alive and kill the boss, I was actually told I was garbage. In lfr. Can you all just get off my richard! ~starts crying
I dont have an issue with dealing damage from time to time to actually fill any gaps in my healing. My issue is that this meta has seeped its way into the functionality and design of classes. Thus starting a healer arms race for “dps” provided instead of “healing” provided due to the way M+ are timed. Just feels odd to have so much of a healers kit being pushed towards a role I never wanted to spec into. And seemingly causes issues with spec balancing and overall fluidity.
Healers like to learn their class role. Relax and have a drink maybe a smoke. Mythic+ dungeons are like if you put everyone with ADHD and gave them ten times their normal sugar and caffeine. Healing is not fun and not chill anymore. To make it the worse you are yelled at more than any other role. So only for friends now no one else.
Nah. On the pvp side of things, healer balance is in a sorry state, and rss is hell.
On the PVE side of things, you have bad healers thst coasted by on doing the bare minimum getting mad that they actually have to work now, and coping with the fact aren’t as good as they thought they were.
Having to dps when nobody needs to be healed is standard practice that people that aren’t garbage can handle just fine.
Yeah but they still keep flooding healer talent trees and design with damage oriented playstyles. So now we have less tools to deal with the increased damage.
Healing is stressful. I dont think it has much to do with having to do DPS.
Matter of fact, my worst keys are ones I cant even DPS in, because I’m spamming 300+ APM using every global to keep people alive. Those are the kinds of keys that make people quit healing. The keys you can actually do real damage in, are relaxing and nice.
In both FF14 and WoW, healers are arguably the hardest role to play. Not because it’s “hard” per say, but because your expectation to recover a failure is absurd. You’re the bottom line for everything.
Sad part is in WoW, you can’t even do that in higher level content. You’re essentially a wasted slot pushing out subpar heals and extremely subpar damage. Yet you’re needed because that healing does make a difference. Just an annoyingly small difference.
Its not about dealing damage in your downtime. Its about the arms race that started with healers damage and not their healing. So we get less and less of an interesting supportive kit due to half the talents pushing more damage instead of more support. causing the healing gameplay to become more milk toast.
