I don’t think I’ve ever seen one healer dominate M+ this badly before, maybe the last time was holy priests in Shadowlands?
Evokers were really good at the start of Dragonflight but I feel like people still played other healers and took other healers to keys, it wasn’t perfectly balanced but I don’t expect it to be, but it was definitely better than this. Resto shamans are so ridiculously good at dealing with some of the affixes and mechanics right now that people will literally reject other healers and wait for a resto shaman instead. The data about what percentage of mid level and high keys are being done with resto shamans is nearing like 50%, that is ridiculous.
No hate to resto shamans, enjoy your day in the sun, you certainly deserve it. But can we maybe get a little more balance here? Maybe adjust some of the other healing specs to be more in line with resto, give priests an interrupt finally maybe, and maybe give other healers better kits to deal with the dungeon mechanics and affixes you put in this expansion? It feels like this season Blizzard gave resto shaman a whole hospital and every other healer just got a box of bandaids lol.
16 Likes
With how many dispels there are in keys (leaning more towards posion and curses then diseases this season) id like to see full dispels made baseline for healers again and their node replaced by another cleanse related node; so shamans could have their curse dispel default and then PCT would take its place in the tree and evoker would have naturalize with posion baseline with cauterizing flame moved to its spot.
Other healers could have different flavours of upgrades in their current full cleanse spot; 2 charges, reduces cooldown on success, another dispel type so theyre still unique by class but everyone has options in the dispel heavy dungeons.
7 Likes
It is less about the healer and more about the mechanics of the content.
Majority of gamers don’t have critical thinking skills, and possess absurd levels of selfishness. They can’t get past the flawed logic of, “I want content to be hard because x,y,z.” What they really want is the content to be hard enough that they can do it, and not a smidge more…so they can crap on those that are “beneath” them. They build their worth around this crap.
Anyway - as a result, we now have hard content that is so hard that people will wait for the perfect, and easiest comp to run out of fear of failure otherwise. If content was easier, people would care less about the comp.
If retail continues as it is…the fate will be lost ark. 30k players from a massive peak. You can’t do any queued content - they are dead, and if you aren’t the top percentage, you have to pay with a credit card to see content.
20 Likes
I honestly think that making it so that all healers have a blanket dispel ability would solve a large amount of the healer balance problems. I main HPriest and have a Rsham alt that I play, and the difference is night and day. I have to try twice as hard to do the same keys on my priest due to the astronomical difference in utility.
9 Likes
They’re already working on the expansion post world soul saga. Too little too late. Just buy a boost a level up a shaman like it’s intended
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I agree, I also think it does suck that “everything is a healer mechanic” and it sucks when DPS don’t wanna use the abilities they have to deal with affixes and mechanics, too.
But I also recognize that finger wagging at DPS to do better isn’t going to make it better for me or anyone else. It’s a lot more realistic to ask for Blizzard to give other healing specs better kits to deal with mechanics to be on par with resto shamans.
1 Like
A lot of people are severely underestimating how powerful a 10-20% max hp increase is (ancestral vigor and downpour).
That coupled with a healing profile that is about quick group wide heals and you’ve got an S tier healer in a season where the entire group is getting nuked by damage constantly.
11 Likes
But even if dps does everything correctly, why would you want a healer without the extra tools vs one with (while having enough healing output) when the content is this ridic that the layering of the utility doesn’t have diminishing returns? That’s where I’m coming from.
And due to the infinite scaling, there will always be someone at the top but issue this season is that content is getting too hard too soon that it impacts standard gear progression keys. The meta gatekeeping was only felt before if you wanted in the top of the leaderboards (at least that was my experience in puggin keys on alts).
and yes, you can get to 11 without meta but players will always choose the path of least resistance. Why work harder, when you can work smarter.
2 Likes
I agree, thus how we got such a saturation of resto shamans this season.
I disagree, I think that even though there were healing specs at the top in other seasons, it was a lot more balanced in terms of bringing healers to keys. The affixes and mechanics were easier to deal with for a wider range of healing specs rather than just the one.
1 Like
It’s kind of like how Vengeance Demon Hunters dominated Dragonflight Season 3 and 4 for tanking. For people who wanted to heal seriously in mythic+, we saw the writing on the wall coming out of TWW Beta that shaman would be strong with the mixture of poison and curse debuffs in this season’s dungeon pool so we planned accordingly. Having a ranged interrupt and AOE stun is also incredibly useful when it seems like every mob pack needs to be interrupted and CC’d or else they 1 shot the group. If Blizzard had actually made mythic+ less bursty, I’m sure we’d see a larger variety of healers.
I’ve healed on other classes in other seasons and Resto Shaman doesn’t have overpowered healing, it’s just that their utility lines up really well with what’s happening in mythic+ this season. I don’t know that there’s much of a fix that can happen without making all healing classes have the same utility.
So the prevalence of resto shaman is because of the value of their utility and its perfect fit with the current dungeon pool, and the fact that many players who wanted to heal in mythic+ chose to level a shaman first because they knew it would be strong.
6 Likes
yeah, true - I reworded that slightly to say that I felt the meta gatekeeping less in prior seasons, and really didn’t feel it until hitting 23 and up keys. Even then, I’d still get invited. Now, not sure as not healing this season ha.
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It’s mostly because Blizzard so overloaded the dungeons with dispels and kicks that the healers who are best at that utility are extremely good in uncoordinated groups that need as much utility as they can get.
3 Likes
I mean technically there’s 2 viable healers, the other being Pres.
But no one wants to bring Pres in an Aug group, and despite a mountain of nerfs Aug is still incredibly meta.
Fwiw I’ve done +10s with every type of healer and never really notice the difference. The exceptions being no one really likes Pres because it requires the group to position around them, and 95% of people who choose disc are not good enough to handle the complications of the spec.
The only healer I really decline is Disc.
2 Likes
That was why I leveled a shaman this xpack actually. I knew it would be kinda OP and wanted to get in on it. However, just because it works well for the content this season doesnt mean it feels good for people to be under the impression that shaman is the only relevant healer right now.
I think every healer needs to be equally viable for all levels of content, and while you can make an argument that they are, the community perception disagrees.
2 Likes
And the thing is, Disc is out there timing 13s right now. Disc Priests are actually very good! You just can’t rely on them to dispel every curse, cleanse every poison, etc. You’re more limited in your group comps if you pick a Priest.
1 Like
i noticed they have more issues keeping bars full and they hate healing out of combat.
thought maybe it was a skill issue but maybe it’s just the spec after all.
It’s week 3-4, they should be scrambling to fix the vast healer problems in mythic plus. My favorite player to group with is leveling a shaman, but he hates the class.
I’m researching other mmos to play, because unless something changes, all the promises in the world can’t fix mythic plus right now.
They said “bring the player not the class”. That is clearly clearly untrue.
6 Likes
This isn’t necessarily the case, its just harder for disc priests to heal out of combat than in it. A lot of their healing comes from atonement, which they need to do damage for.
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I feel blizzards initial goal was maybe to make the affixes in design to be on all the players to handle it.
I know on hunter i can for the most part dispel myself for affix via talents.
evokers mage and almost all ( not all but most) classes have a way to get a debuff off them.
But it does seem to fall on healer anytime there’s a mechanic added that not a combat mechanic.
It’s just harder to play successfully and doesn’t come with a warning. Inviting a disc is like inviting a pre-rework arcane mage.
The spec was technically good, but it was hard enough that you knew most of the time the player was going to fail at it.
A good disc (if you can find one) should be mostly fine, the heal absorb boss in Threads might kick their butt, but that’s the only one I can think of.
1 Like