Tanks "healing" more than Healers is bad game design

Have you tried playing different healing classes? I’ve read most of this and seeing what you commented about in the first place and then looking you up to see what you play I only see 2 a Druid and your hpal, hpal healing may not be for you if it bothers you that much try different builds or different content, I’ve seen you pvp a little and do raids though all of your content is recent in comparison to a lot of people try an Evoker or MW, both of those will give you a decent amount of damage if you’re ever just “sitting around” so to speak, the same goes for disc priest as well, you getting outhealed by a gdruid or bdk is normal for anyone who knows the class/rotation, also another thing if you don’t like being outhealed by them on meters, then don’t take those tanks, take something like a BM that requires a lot more healing, or even a prot warrior, they do have good self heals but they’ll almost never top you in hps unless you’re messing up or they are, point being if you don’t like that number so much try a different class or build, and if you still aren’t happy with it, take less geared tanks or tanks with less self healing. I’ve played every type of healer and tank and personally I prefer gdruid, bdk and vdh purely for the fact if I mess up they won’t get 1 shot like most other tanks, or if they mess up, we are all human and mistakes are bound to happen which is why I prefer those tanks. I’ve done all content roughly not this season so I can’t speak for it much but I will say healing is definitely the more fun, I started out with hpal and hated it bc I started it in BfA where if you weren’t running it glimmer you weren’t healing, hpal is a lot of damage and healing like disc is, and it’s definitely not the easiest to learn for most people, so I suggest trying a different healer class. Also keep in mind not all tanks are gonna outheal you because not all of them will know the rotation, there are gonna be some times you’re stressing and spamming to keep one alive because they don’t use any defensive period, people will go on alt specs, get a high level key, know they can’t do it in their normal spec and swap so they make sure they get people who can carry them in it, so maybe don’t be hasty to judge healing itself, just try something different. And last thing, if you don’t like that, maybe try some PvP arenas require a lot of healing and focus on different aspects more than just “oh he’s low I gotta heal him” so maybe that’s more your style and you just haven’t found a good partner to play with, healers are a lot of focus in arenas so there’s a lot more to do and you have to time everything just right or you can lose your match. 3s are my favorite because they require more focus and are a little higher, but as I said try different specs/classes/end game and see, you may like healing and just not like mythics but instead you like raiding and arenas or rbgs.

Makes a forum post, it’s wildly unpopular, so just acts passive aggressive in most of the comments. Wild.

Imagine how few tanks would exist if we had to 100% rely on the healer or we would fall. That even if we’re avoiding mechanics and using our CDs, we still had to get babysat. I’d retire my tanks, that wouldn’t be enjoyable at all. Then there would be even less healers since I’m sure most don’t want to have to be spam healing constantly the entire key.

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You are so wrong OPer. The tank having a high hps throughout feels great for the healer because that means one less point of potential failure, one less thing to worry about and be blamed for. Let’s the healer concentrate on keeping the DPS alive.

No, the things that feel awful on a healer at present are:

  1. multiple back to back high damage AoE spikes
  2. the rest of the group flying through the dungeon at mach 20 following a narrow path between mob groups that if you don’t know about and can’t keep up the same pace results in you being left behind and then the group wiping and blaming you

Also, do we even want a healing role? Do we really want to be in a position where we are made artificially dependent on another person to keep our character alive because mobs deal constant unfair high DPS we aren’t given the tools to do anything about? Do people really want to play incomplete characters?

Only in comedy movies do the heroes win fights by constantly healing the wounds of another character as they get beat up during the fight. In every action movie the doctors do their job AFTER the fight, not DURING the fight.

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It’s a healers job to fix minor screw ups. Not spam flash heal for 30 minutes.

Just because they can heal doesn’t mean they should be healing 100% of the time.

Not to mention tanks are only outhealing healers on themselves. Tanks largely aren’t healing anyone other than themselves. (Outside of a few passive off heals every now and again.)

You have 4 other people to worry about and spam your flash heal on.

Besides, do you want a squishy tank? Because that’s how we go back to single pack pulls. As other people have said, tanks take a lot of damage. If they’re not able to mitigate and heal that then you’d literally be spending your time mashing 1 button over and over to try to heal them and keep them topped up. And in turn the dps would suffer for it.

If it’s a gameplay thing where you feel you want to heal the tank more or find healing boring, than maybe you need to be doing harder content. If it’s purely a numbers thing then you need to check your ego because nobody has time for that.

Did the run go smoothly? Yes? Did anyone die? No? Then what’s it matter?

This is what happens when you focus too much on meters and “being the best” instead of just playing the game.

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Healers : We do garbage DPS
Blizzard : Ok here have some DPS
Healers : Healing is to hard, its not enjoyable
Blizzard: Ok, we’ve made tanks be able to carry them selves in a lot more content, with you only having to worry about damage spikes
Healers : OMG TANKS OUT HEAL MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

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Every expansion has some form of this.

BFA tanks had a bazillion health and twilight dev procs could easily put them up top DPS wise.

BFA my Havoc DH was so tanky, I would taunt the S4 affix tank buster mob and eat the hit for my tanks even on 18/19 keys.

Shadowlands hpals were some of the highest DPS in the game when they had CDs up.

Shadowlands my prot paladin did more DPS and healing than a lot of DPS/Healers, people still cry about prot paly, but almost no one runs the talent that makes them effective at off healing anymore.

I main ret paladin, I’ve lost a tank mid heroic raid boss, and I’ll do the taunt swap because with our DR / shield of veng I can literally eat boss melees as a DPS for a bit because ret is disgustingly tanky.

Limited time here, on some down time between work clients so I apologize for short thoughts here…

In response to OP I would agree it doesn’t feel great as a healer when tanks out heal you.

In response to some others… It depends on the tank but druids and DKs in particular do quite a lot of healing and can easily out heal you in a range of situations

My personal opinion is it would feel a lot better in general (speaking as someone who plays all 3 roles) if tanks didn’t heal as much but instead avoided damage altogether. Instead of healing 100k damage just avoid that in the first place by Dodge/block/parry.

Not saying we regress back to tbc/cata days but the healing situation currently doesn’t feel great currently in that department

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There’s a lot of damage that’s just unavoidable now. And that’s probably related to tanks not needing that much healing.

The game has changed from how good everyone is at doing their roles to how good everyone is at whack a mole mechanics and dance dance. And the issue at hand is part of what has made that change.

Now reasonable people can disagree on this, but I don’t find the new game paradigm that enjoyable.

No, I main feral. And I do 16’s and 17’s for the rewards. Two and three chested most of the dungeons at that level while pugging. I’m sure I could go higher, but I don’t enjoy the game play the way it is now. And that’s what I’m talking about.

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People that validate their measure of worth behind numbers confuse me. Stop that. (Or keep doing it, live your life I guess)

Tanks having control of their own HP is a big part of what draws people to tanks in the first place. It’s the fantasy.

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wth, I’m never out healed by a tank…

I don’t see how making healers have a stroke because of how much healing they have to pop onto the group is somehow better. This is very superficial. It has to do with the appearance and numbers, not the actual gameplay.

It’s a good thing that tanks can stand their ground without being constantly at risk of dying if the healer misses a couple heals. It kinda sabotages the point of having a tank and dumps too much responsibility onto the healer.

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This is why ppl say details is bad for the game. Because ppl who don’t know how to read statistics care too much about it.

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Yep, at the end of the day everybody just wants to be higher on the meter.

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First reason I believe this argument is terrible, is because we would need to “accept” that healing all the way up till +20s would be a chore, just so when we finaly reach +20s and beyond for it start to be fun. But… The rewards stops at +20s so? No thanks… I will just stop healing.

Now, people keep coming to this thread saying that “I need to do this” and “I need to do that”, etc. Here, I don’t need to because I’m not playing badly. I’m doing great. I’m not failing my runs that is not what I’m even talking about… So no I don’t need to do X or Y or be better.

Healing is not FUN for me, and I believe that one of the reasons is that healers don’t shine when the group is good. It is not a “stop looking at details” issue, it is a game design problem, that makes healers feel like they’re nothing but a 4th crap DPS that are there just to fix mistakes and emergency situations.

Meanwhile, DPSs are doing crazy stuff, their metrics are huge and they KNOW they’re doing great because mobs are vanishing. That is perhaps the reason for groups with 3 DPS slots and 1 Healer slot to be strugling finding ONE healer and instantly finding 3 DPSs.

If you’re having fun as a healer, just keep healing. My point is that the ENTIRE GAME DESIGN needs to be BUILT toward healing being a bit more fun, and letting healers SHINE and EXCEED at their role, that is healing.

Or we can pretend that there is no issue at all, everything is fine, “stop looking at details” and the fun will come, etc… LOL

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I agree. Regardless of it being normal I wasn’t/am not a fan. Kind of like double dk doing more healing in arenas (way back when). It’s also an excuse for them to gripe about healers not dpsing. Not saying I don’t dps as heals, but also not a fan, haha. I like being the healer or caretaker as the heals, not a hybrid. That’s not what I signed up for, but what were forced to be. If it were geared tanks only, then it would make more sense, but tanks with even so-so gear need few heals. It’s just the state of the game these days. Just my opinion.

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I love me a self-reliant tank for this exact reason. They are literally one less person to worry about in a run so I don’t have to worry about them faceplanting when I leave them for the roles without self-sustain.

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I have felt like this all of DF, so I switched to ret and am having much more fun. You are def not the only one who doesn’t like it. Sure it works, but that isn’t the point. Point is, is it satisfying? Does it make you feel accomplished and rewarded for your own effort or like a tag along being mostly carried that is occasionally helpful?

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But that ruins the enjoyment of every other tank. If they wanted to play shieldy-mcblockface they would.

Idk how this solved your issue. The tank goes from taking 50 dmg and healing 50 to taking 5 dmg and healing what? 1?

If these are percentages and the tank is down 5% you might give him a hot/barrier/shock and go about your day, meaning there’s nothing to really heal and less reason to bring a healer so I’m confused how this helps your game play.

Is it really just about how addons are essentially “misrepresenting data” in a way that makes the tanks bar on the graph bigger than your bar?

Hasn’t the highest source of HPS always been raid wide dmg, and wasn’t this expansion ramping up the aoe dmg in m+ because some healers were complaining about nothing to heal/having to dps in previous years?

I mean, go ahead and swap to dps if you’re not enjoying healing it just seems like a crazy idea to burn down an entire role (tank) just because the archaic way we track numbers means the graph looks off, like how a politician might lie to garner votes with a doctored graph

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Most tanks and I expect most healers would definitely not want an rng roller-coaster experience of “did the tank evade and take 0 dmg or did he roll poorly and get chunked”

We also already have these types of tank playstyles (excluding current balance changes)

Warrior/druid are generally the flat mitigation types.

Dk/dh are generally the self healers

Monk is the evade/spread dmg over time tank

Paladin bounces between flat mitigation and self healing depending on the era and has a billion cds.

I don’t think buffing the passive mitigation of tanks to being 80-90% of the work and then having the spec/class flavour only effect the last 10-20% would be well received by most endgame tanks.

The difficult healing is generally dealing with huge aoe bursts or deadly targeted hits and the complaints I see here are not even “it feels bad to heal” but rather “it feels bad that tank mitigation shows as hps instead of absorbs as this makes my bar look smaller”

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