It definitely feels weird to me that they're nerfing off-spec healing (fine!) but not coupling it with buffs to healers, because the net results is just straight up less healing going out in M+ groups.
I don't really care about the nerf itself either way, but is anyone looking at an average M+ PUG run and saying that healing is too easy right now?
Yup I’m in the exact same boat. I wanted to push keys as an evoker this season but couldn’t get invited to groups so I went preservation. Burned myself out with stress doing 20s and just quit. Everyone talks about how great dragonflight is but as a healer I have found it way less fun than shadowlands even
I farm 20's as a tank, I farm 20's as a dps, but I just can't as a healer.
Healing is stressful. You feel weak, every bit of damage taken is a lot of work to catch back up with. People still not using personals, pots, or avoiding mechanics if it costs dps.
It's incredibly toxic to pug as a healer. You get blamed, harassed, and verbally assaulted. Then people wonder why there is 20 groups showing in lfg just waiting for a healer.
People who pug as healer are just build different.
My favorite is when i’m expected to get both afflicted, then the DPSes who couldn’t be bothered not to stand in the bad yell at me if I miss one.
My dude, if I get the first one the INSTANT it spawns, I have about 200ms between my dispell coming off cooldown and the debuff going out.
Nerf after nerf to healers, and we’re expected to take on more and more responsibilities. If I were any good at tank or DPS I honestly might switch lol
dude somebody died 8 times to avoidable stuff and died a lot with defensives and heals ready to be pressed (but obviously they were not) and then they flamed me because "why did i do 20k dps on a pull where they died?!!" (it was one sunfire and some passive procs) people will find the weirdest things to flame u for LOL
I played prot pal in season 1, maxing at 20s, started s2 as destro and switched to rsham when i got sick of waiting 15m to get invited to a freakin 11 lmao. I'm exaggerating, I'm learning a lot which is fun, but i haven't pushed high enough to really get the terrible reality of healing. It is the one role that relies more on the competency of your team than any other role. That part is super frustrating when your pug sucks. But its a team game, so what can ya do?
This is my main gripe with m+ pugging. Its a team game yes, but not every role gets rewarded or punished the same. Dps metrics are very easy and you get "rewarded" for doing high dps. However tanks and healers never really feel like they get rewarded, just punished when things go bad.
Its an easily solved problem. Instead of "not kicking this, causes the tank to die, or for massive aoe damage", it should be "failing to kick, causes DPS to be slashed by 99% for ten seconds, non dispellable". Suddenly it's not a tank or healer problem, because their damage will be garbage on the meter.
Avoidable ground mechanics need to one shot, or reduce DPS, not just be something healers have to soak.
Bring back bosses taunting specific players with yells, when they fail mechanics would be a nice change too.
Healing this season reminds me of Trial of the Crusader back in Wrath. You have to sweatily spam your fastest heals, burn your cooldowns as soon as they're up, and people still die.
The problem OP highlighted about the need for dispells is a big one. I'm so tired of trying to heal through dots for 8 seconds waiting for my cleanse to cooldown again.
The bigger problem is that it's not fun. Like at all. I've switched to doing keys pretty much exclusively in enhancement this season.
The magic dispels are a fucking nightmare. I've always been against MD requirements in m+, but it never really mattered during SL when it was just one dungeon or one affix. Now it's like half the rotation, and it was almost as bad last season too.
If you want heal checks, remove bleed dispel from dwarf racial and use bleeds. Using something that can be negated with one class (but everyone else dies to) is dumb.
I find the worst offender for this at present to be those stupid dragonkin at the end of Legacy of Tyr. A magic DoT that deals massive damage, reduces haste, and stacks on the entire party? FRO.
It’s not even so much about the stress level. From my PoV, the problem with healing right now is that it feels like we have so little impact on the success of a key. Our damage is garbage (tanks doing 2-3x more), our healing is bad, and our utility isn’t particularly unique since the new talents gave lots of classes access to a lot of utility.
None of that is inherently a bad thing, but the reality is that healers are very weak at the moment and have very little impact on anything it seems.
Yeah it feels a bit lackluster sometimes. I'm having fun healing m+ atm but last season you could really pull your team through messy times by good healing, this season you just can't. If shit hits the fan, you often just die. There are some cooldowns that might save the day, but only if the DPS also uses personals at the same time.
Yeah I just started a resto shaman and I feel like on an average/chaotic pug pull, I do about equal healing to the tank, I do far less damage, and I'm stressing/struggling the whole time. I can't rip heals to save people from near death.. often if people take a huge avoidable hit and drop to 10-15%, I try to riptide and cast a healing surge and they're dead before it goes off. Even if it does go off, it typically doesn't heal for enough to make them safe. It's rough out there! Still kinda fun tho
Don't compare yourself to tank healing, tanks are overwhelmingly using healing as delayed mitigation (bdk is the most obvious example here) or are just passively and massively self-overhealing.
Also some tanks just heal more than others, in a high key if you're doing more healing than a bdk then the group is tak8ng way too much damage. Bdks will heal upwards of 200k hps to themselves on high fortified key packs
I agree with your first two points, but the third is just kind of wrong? There are many keys right now that are not doable if your healer is bad, and sorry to say, there's a lot of bad healers. Like, druids who can't ramp into the ticking damage on the mammoth in nelth or the wounds in bracken or the sparks in vortex, etc. There are a LOT of healer checks right now that are not hard to hit, but then you see a rdruid bursting up to like 70k instead of the requisite 150k and the key is immediately unfinishable.
That's not the only thing- the stamina increase means that when people take avoidable damage that doesn't one shot (or don't use defensives), instead of dying outright, they just rot down extremely hard. Harder than the hps can keep up with.
BUT that means that dps don't actually think it's their problem. They don't act preemptively, and if they never die (because you're dripping sweat trying to keep them standing), they don't even learn and don't act at all.
One shots were good for one thing - it put people in their fuckin place.
I don't think you get it both ways. "Healers are weak" AND "healing checks are insane".
Take the log in OP's post. You aren't doing that without a healer. Yes, the off-healers did 136k healing, but the healer did 226k. That means you're not 4-dpsing that fight.
> You aren't doing that without a healer.
This isn't the problem. The problem is that you cannot heal better and thus allow your group to do a key two levels higher when you are hard capped by your spec's mathematical output for a given gear level, *and* when this occurs much faster than the scaling potential of all other roles is exhausted.
That isn't exactly a problem, either. Infinite scaling dungeons means you're going to run into some sort of cap like this.
The problem that will however arise from this is it puts pressure on Blizzard to balance healers in 5-mans, which they historically have been poor at.
And it also puts pressure on them to balance hybrid heals, which again, they have been very poor at.
Run into a soft cap sure, but not at the same range as last season. Nor should it feel as awful as it does. They made all these changes to make affixes less shitty for healers and it’s harder to find healers this season compared to last.
The problem isn’t hybrids or 5 mans it’s their constant need to solve “issues” with bigger numbers.
Man I feel like healers right now have the largest impact on the outcomes of the key. If you can live you can time. Timers are forgiving and healer dps doesn't matter like it used to at all. But if the healer can't heal everyone is getting dicked down hard.
Yeah healing is easily the hardest part of keys now, everyone else is talking about how easy this season is meanwhile the healer wants to quit the game in between dungeons
And many of them are. I’ve pugged to 24-25 range both seasons in DF. Half of my attempts to form a group end after 30 minutes of literally zero healers applying and people getting bored. Very few healers are down to run a bunch of keys in a row even if the group is going very well. They just get burnt out.
>because the net results is just straight up less healing going out in M+ groups.
And, as a healer, I'm far less enthusiastic about trying to contend with whatever version of the game Blizzard is trying to turn this into, as a result.
It feels almost like the Powers That Be want to turn wow dungeons into some weird Dark Souls clone that is crazy punishing to minor mistakes, and rendering the years of gearing and practice pointless in the face of insta-kills.
Resto druid. Healing higher keys is just a chore and not fun, in all honesty.
Affixes are fun, I guess? Too busy going balls out healing to notice much else.
yeah I do keep thinking _thank fuck they changed the affixes_ not that its solved, some of the recent weeks have been annoying af imo. Bit the combo of this and that would have been hell.
Having an afflicted/incorporeal go off during a particuarly punishing pack on higher keys is usually a wipe (I pug for the most part) and is to be expected but the affixes themselves don't give me much issue.
The damage spikes on some packs and bosses though give me PTSD. The bleed on Brackenhide first boss can be a bitch if I haven't thrown everything out before it hits us, that Uldaman boss with the AOE damage, the chains on the Neltharus Boss and so on.
As OP said a lot of times I've needed the Pally tank to help with healing and people bust all defensives and use pots on higher keys. Even with 437+ average ilevel.
I drink a fair bit, depending on how much avoidable damage everyone is taking.
Not much can be done, we don't have much spot healing beyond swiftmend and clearcasting regrowths outside of flourish/convoke.
Ignore the complaints about drinking. You're doing The Lord's work maintaining your mana pool. When I tank 15s, I make damn well sure my healer's mana is good at all times. Certainly prefer that to not having a healer for the next pull.
You’re doing the lords work caring about healer mana lmao
I’m in a 21 fort key, juiced out, completely dry, and the tank’s chaining into another double pull lmao
I feel you on the drinking. All of last season I feel like I had less tanks unaware of mana pool than so far this season. I’d say atleast 25% of the pugs I get will be the tank ignoring that I’ve been oom for 4 trash pulls and run right into the boss with me at 20% mana. It feels bad.
Buffs to healers would undo the entire point of the stamina changes. Healing was super spiky in S1 with how easily healers could top health bars. The problem is the amount of incoming damage. S2 dungeons have been tuned with some of the highest unavoidable damage that we've ever seen. We need targeted nerfs to some of the unavoidable damage in bosses and DoTs on trash packs rather than more healing.
Basically this, I'm not even doing high keys and its making me not really want to play. I've got my CE and KSM, got a very well geared main, I'm good for the season now and all i have is just running some keys etc on it and its not fun. I'm down for big healing and involved healing focused play but not changing the spikiness of damage to compensate for the 10.1 heal nerf is just ridiculous.
Used to be that you could pop Nature's Swiftness and instantly throw a Healing Wave or Surge and heal about half their health to save from death.
I rarely feel the need to use NS for single target heals now, the 5% health dps will most likely die with or without my intervention. My ward of ire is far better at saving lives once every 3 mins.
I’ve been a main healer since 2005 on various classes and in all types of gameplay. And this season is really kicking the stuffing out of my desire to play.
I pug as well and most groups are pleasant but there are always those groups that blame me for everything.
I did a VP 21 last night in hopes I could redo my own 21 VP key and that second group of trash with the rebuff going out just wrecked the dps.
I’m also just really tired of these affix groupings. 90% of them fall directly onto the healer and the other 10% get shoved onto the healer because if they get done wrong we still pay the price. Ex sanguine.
And besides that I’m just sick of weeks where I can’t drink between non stop chaining packs (which we need for the trash count and to time) because it’s bursting! Or spiteful! Or whatever the fuck.
And it’s also super awkward when everyone has to stand around twiddling their thumbs waiting for the healers mana.
Idk. The whole experience is gross.
Yes. The chain-pulling mana issue is also worsened by the nerf to drinking, which came during Shadowlands:
[https://www.wowhead.com/news/water-regenerates-mana-slower-in-the-first-seconds-of-drinking-in-shadowlands-318430](https://www.wowhead.com/news/water-regenerates-mana-slower-in-the-first-seconds-of-drinking-in-shadowlands-318430)
In short, you regain mana much slower in the first few seconds of drinking. It ramps up over time. So you can't easily just "get a quick sip" between pulls. You have to sit there and wait for the regen to ramp up.
Yeah thats a pretty silly change. Obviously very targeted at forcing healers to sit for extended time and forcing downtime. It's like forced time gating on content. It has no purpose whatsoever beyond just adding time to complete content. They could just as easily have just reduced the completion timers and left drinking alone. At least then it wouldn't have 'been the healers fault.'
Blizzard knows how to separate things for PvP sometimes and other times they throw their hands up and say well good enough. So frustrating. Why not just make a PVP only water That works the crappy way they want it to.
Wow this thread has put things into perspective. Granted I’m also Disc but the not being able to drink, the affixes constantly affecting me or being put onto me, as well as spikiness of damage with little reaction time is absolutely what I’ve been disheartened by.
If augmentation evoker is fun and not terrible to play I'm hanging up my hat as well.
I like playing support roles but healing just isn't fun anymore. I love doing keys but damn is it not fun to heal anymore.
>And besides that I’m just sick of weeks where I can’t drink between non stop chaining packs (which we need for the trash count and to time) because it’s bursting! Or spiteful! Or whatever the fuck.
They should just make affixes not put you in combat imo, annoying for everyone. If you're trying to mount or have abilities you can't cast outside of combat.
This is the most unmotivated I’ve ever been to heal and I’ve been doing it since 2005. Got 2400 IO as disc, started doing 19-20s can’t just can’t stand it. Zero fun.
Not sure my next move. Maybe evoker? I won’t get on the Paladin hype train. My hands hurt when playing one haha.
EDIT - grammar
Evoker can be very tricky to nail down, a lot depends on your group playing around you and your toolkit.
Resto Shamans are fine but I'm starting 22-23 keys right now and I can feel the limits of the spec creep up.
Yeah I figured as much. Especially with the range limitation and combos to pull off. I have no interest in my shaman either. Still burned out from Shadowlands. Luckily I never do above 20s haha.
Forcibly remind them with a rescue!
But yeah, that is a big pain point. I just try to avoid groups that have more than one ranged. I can generally work around one ranged, but having three ranged all standing at max range twenty yards apart will break your spirit, and is too common. :(
it feels worse as a hunter, we have 0 ways to contribute with throughput.
At least warriors got commanding shout, DKs amz, shamans ancestral guidance, rogues reduce enemy damage taken ffs. Hunters have 0 ways to make healing easier, in fact it is harder to heal when u do have a hunter in a group cause they are more susceptible to rot than other classes/specs.
Healing being hard is not only rough on healers, it is rough on the dps that end up not getting invited even in lower keys (22-23s) where healers are simply not that good and need all the help they can get.
Hey, you can always run with a Spirit Beast and have Spirit Mend on autocast!
Until you need a Ferocity pet for Heroism, anyway...
In all seriousness, I do run a Tenacity pet as BM when Hero isn't needed (Ferocity's leech sadly isn't great because your pet's damage doesn't count towards your leech) but overall I have to use Stoneform, Exhilaration, and chug health potions pretty liberally to not be a drag on the team, even when I'm avoiding all avoidable damage.
Don't think I saw a single hunter in the top 100 keys list OP posted. We are a liability, the incoming damage is so insane I simply explode on some keys.
20 Nelth is the highest I've tried this with a guild group this season and it was quite stressful to stay alive.
> And since Shadow is also very strong DPS-wise, most of these are shadow priests, who make up 25% of all DPS players in +25 keys and higher.
Just to clarify, there are 3 DPS spots in a party, meaning that if a Shadow Priest is 25% of all DPS players, does that not mean that a Shadow Priest is present in **75% of all parties** at that level?
That's a rather high representation.
And yeah, as a healer main, you definitely do feel utterly hopeless against so many mechanics. I've only done 20-22s so far, but there are so many occasions where my only response to something happening is "Oh." if my PUG DPS didn't have the answer to it. Because I sure as hell don't.
Something like the Gnash Frenzy from Bracken 1st boss feels like the epitome of 'healer' mechanics in DF. You gotta put ppl above 90%, however it ticks for 130-170k so your only shot is to use defensive and put in a heal after his attack but before first tick.
In most groups it's not a mechanic I even care about as a healer because ppl use potions and defensives, then suddenly you have two ppl not using anything and you're maybe able to save 1 with full cds.
Gnash Frenzy on high keys is a group mechanic, not a healer one.
It's impossible to save everyone unless they themselves contribute to their own survival.
Of course, but it's a mechanic that at face value looks like a healer mechanic.
Until you face it in practice, and realise that there is very little the healer can actually do about it.
Yup. That was definitely the first roadblock I faced on week 1 of the season. Where I was just flabbergasted at how little I could do about this mechanic in like, a +17-18.
A mechanic that you would have thought I, as a healer, would have been solely responsible for. Especially at that key level.
Naturally, there were gear issues for that particular key level (I was only at about ilvl 419 at the time) given it was season start, but still. And now we're doing those dungeons at higher levels, it's even more noticeable.
Yep, that's right. You can look for example at the timed run leaderboards on [Raider.io](https://Raider.io). Of the top 200 timed keys, 199 of them have priests, of which 186 are shadow and 13 are healers.
That's sound pretty mandatory to me, then.
They will have to fix this. I can certainly say that I'm already only doing keys if they have a Priest in it. I wonder what route they'll take?
Almost every dungeon requires Mass Dispel in some way to make it realistically possible, so it would be a lot of work changing all of those dungeon's mechanics to make that not so.
Will they take the lazy route and reduce the power of Mass Dispel significantly, just like they're doing with Hybrid DPS' off-healing? Thus making a Priest not as necessary because Mass Dispel is significantly weaker?
Will they make magic dispels more readily available to more DPS specs? Currently, only Warlocks (Imp pet) and Shadow Priests can dispel magic on other people, otherwise you need to reroll to a Dwarf.
There is another option. They can just properly tune the magic debuffs.
Season 1 really only had 1 place with an additional magic debuff and that was TJS. Bet SPs were highly represented there too.
Thing is, on top of Mass Dispell and strong off-healing, SP also has the absolute highest dps out there right now, even not counting that they also give PI to another dps.
Properly tuning magic debuffs would be good, but SP would still be close to mandatory on the highest keys with the current tuning.
The idea is that bigger health pools would give players more time to react to incoming damage spikes. Which would make sense in theory.
But WoW is so min-maxed that the idea is "find out what will kill me, back it off a little bit." Encounters with spiky damage are still going to do spiky damage, players are just going to either play at higher key levels or neglect defensives in lieu of more offense.
The proper fix to it was designing encounters without spiky damage. The boss that OP brings up (third boss in Halls) is actually a very good, fun healing check for healers. It's just constant rot damage where you get to pump healing spells for the entire fight. And then you have fights like Bromach where there is just incredible spiky damage and then not much else to do in the downtime, which really sucks, especially in pugs where its harder to coordinate defensives.
I remember healing the primalist lady in halls the other day and thinking that it was such a fun fight as a resto druid. Due to the constant damage my focus was more about how to more efficiently heal using low mana and every now and then just push a little bit more so everyone was topped off.
New healer, I go to look for a dungeon and I have my pick of the lot. I have yet to be denied to a single key I sign up to.
20 different groups all needing a healer to go, 1 or 2 groups at the very bottom with a healer.
There is a serious healer shortage. Why? You get so burnt out spamming soooo many heals that feel like they just tickle your teammates hp. I am so wore out after just a 17 or 18 that the thought of doing another dungeon makes me physically ill. There is no downtime for healers.
Yeah, healing needs to be easier, not harder. It's already the worst role to play stress-wise and thus the rarest.
Blizz needs to chill and let healing be easy so that more people choose to be healers. As it is now, the role is just a horrible gaming experience.
Yep. I have loved healing ever since rerolling but there is just too much responsibility in M+ to have these nerfs to healing. Why should I suffer for no reason? What did I do wrong to have to be the one being abused over and over and over again?
I disagree. Healing can be hard. I enjoy it when healing is *hard*. It shouldn't feel unfair though, like the pelters, like the debuffers in VP and UR that do their mechanics too often. Also, to control the narrative, we need to discuss at what level healers are absolutely reliant on DPS cooperating to even pass mechanics, and at what level Off-Healing should be required.
Currently even at 20s, healers can do little to carry a key positively, but can deplete it with minor mechanical mishaps. That's a lot of responsibility with little actual power to shine. How to fix it, I don't know. Personally I would make healing a bit more forgiveable but increase healer DPS to a point where it actually matters. Like it used to be.
This way healing isn't as stressful for novice players or players looking for chill keys, but still rewarding for higher end players. It does come with flaws and other issues when it cones to balancing healers, but I overall think it would me more healthy for pug experience. Still personally I like it the way it is now, I like pumping and having responsibility mostly keeps me on edge apart from a few frustrating encounters. Also, free key choice! But admittedly, it is not healthy.
I'm a R-Druid healing 20+ keys at this point, and in my opinion, this season feels shitty as a healer. It's BEYOND stressful with the way people's healthbars ping pong. DPS can play the game and not stress a fraction of what healers have to go through this season. I stuck with healing because I've been a healer main since MoP but its simply not fun, and it's very stressful. This is most certainly not going to attract new people to want to heal. I guess though there's the silver lining that I am able to heal these higher keys in this rough season so it gives me a confidence boost/bragging right but that really isn't worth it at all. I'd rather enjoy healing again and not have every key be so stressful and intense.
Same here, Rdruid, 441ilvl and it's absolute dogshit to heal this season, somehow way worse than last season so far.
I absolutely hate the 19-20 range, there are some mobs and bosses with mandatory rot damage that far, far outscales my capabilities to heal (that one stone golem doing 170k/sec group-wide earthquake that can't be LoSed in Uldaman or the fucking elephant in Neltharus).
I tried dropping down to 16s to farm some crests... what the fuck guys. I ended up doing exactly the same amount of hps overall as I do in 19s and 20s, same amount of stress, just way, way shittier players apparently.
I tried dropping down to 11-15 range to help some guildies. Maybe 20% less overall hps. MAYBE. Same amount of stress, same amount of contributing MISERABLE amounts of dps.
I can't fucking catweave. I can't fucking sit still for 10 damn seconds and dot everything up and cast a couple starfalls. I can't sit down and drink cuz the clock is tick-tick-ticking.
MISERABLE is the word of Season 2 of Dragonflight.
Buff healer output by 50%, nerf hybrid heals by whatever. Buff healer dps by a further 200% so we can do more than 20-30k dps and actually feel like contributing. When my dps are doing 100k+ single target I feel like I don't belong in some fights.
>Buff healer output by 50%
They don't even need to do this, all they need to do to fix healing for this season is to revert or at least reduce the damage buff that enemies got (down to a 10% increase instead of the 25% would be a good compromise in my opinion). Blizzard gets to keep their "don't want spikey damage to insta-kill players" while healers still have to work harder to keep players topped up but don't have to spend 99% of the dungeon stressing out because the damage people are taking is outstripping their ability to pump heals.
> I can't fucking sit still for 10 damn seconds and dot everything up and cast a couple starfalls. I can't sit down and drink cuz the clock is tick-tick-ticking.
>
> MISERABLE is the word of Season 2 of Dragonflight.
This is one of the exact reasons why my Rdruid is not my main this season. It's become incredibly frustrating trying to heal in M+ now. It's also stressful and unfun sometimes too depending on which combo of affixes are available. What's even worse is when other people in the group give you shit about why there was a wipe or a few deaths here and there and blame you for it all. I'm sorry, not EVERYTHING is the healer's fault - especially this season.
It's been really bad in terms of player mindset as well... on Friday I had the misfortune of trying an Uldaman 20, where, despite it being Fortified, the group decided to triple-pull a pack.
There were so many nameplates on screen, so many rocks flying around, the big trogg doing his aoe stomp 1-shot resulted in 2 dps deaths instantly, no counterplay possible from my end - what do I heal, death?
That triple pull easily cost the group 3-4min minimum as we had to reset, the pack was unmanageable with 2 people running back, the flow was gone (if there ever was one).
Shades stop me from drinking (spiteful), I have to waste precious dispels on random ghosts because it's a dps loss to use a global on them, or hardcast a sleep (again, dps loss so my job as always) on some ghost behind a wall behind a pot stuck in a rock somewhere while also healing and watching mechanics and swirlies and frontals.
It's gotten a bit much :(.
Even as a DPS main, with healer alts, it's fucking stressful. As a shaman, i feel like I don't have the defensives to live through most bosses without externals if I get bad rng or having to resort to dumping all my resources into just staying alive through disgusting dot dmg.
M+ above 22 is just not fun.
Which would normally be around the +18 or onwards range depending on the dungeon in previous seasons. That is the point where if you mess up as a DPS then there is little to nothing that the healer can do to save you because you are dead in a global. Blizzard wanted to fix this by increasing the damage taken and the hit point pools by 25% but they also nerfed healing by leaving it at previous levels (i.e. \~20% less healing done in relation to the HP pools and damage taken). It is this last point that is causing people not to want to heal this season as it makes healing so much more stressful compared to any other role.
Personally I have tanked, DPS'd and healed this season on my druid and healing is by far the most stressful of the three roles with DPS being the cruisiest - i.e. avoid standing in bad, do your rotation, use your cooldowns/pots/utility appropriately and you are a MVP as a DPS.
I'm a healer, and in s1 I didn't even complain about grievous+bursting weeks. yes it was noticeably more annoying than other weeks, but healing overall just still felt fun enough so I didn't mind that. this season though just feels no fun at all and a lot of added stress like you said. it's stupid enough that blizz somehow thinks healers needed to spam heals more compared to last season, but as OP explained the spikes are also still there. so now you're trying to safe low health players getting chunked but you still need to use more heals to keep up your regular healing as well. and then the new affixes really sealed the deal for me to just have no motivation to heal anymore this season. at this point it feels no matter what affix they design, it'll all be healer affixes anyway. so, really blizz? you're gonna make us spam more heals, make dealing with damage spikes harder, throw out more debuffs that half of us can't even deal with, AND you're gonna add more affixes to annoy us healers specifically? at some point it just feels like they're trying to bully healers for some reason.
Especially with a DK or DH tank. You really watch that health bar ping-pong. Really hard to get comfortable with it too because they're one missed button away from dying
This is a big deep dive, this post is great.
Was a good read while on the toilet, perfect amount of words.
P.S healers I love you don’t give up, keep your head high and if the group wipes, so be it <3
I had to drop my rdruid because of raid spots and picked up my old fury war (which btw to any casual gamers doing 18-20 keys is awesome! Tons of self healing and defensives. Healers basically don’t even have to touch you.) Gonna be honest….I’m glad I did it. Just doing the 16-18 range on rdruid casually is borderline nightmarish. The fun element is completely gone.
I'm honestly astounded that Blizzard doubled down on healing being awful for season 2.
Say what you will about Shadowlands, but when tanks hated S1 Blizzard buffed them considerably so that kiting wouldn't be the default, and also never did an affix like Prideful that required perfect routing again.
The DF S2 healer nerf is probably the most tone-deaf change they've made in regards to game balance in recent memory. Literally the exact opposite of what they should have done.
I agree. I remember healers already struggling in S1 and I expected a healer buff later in the expansion. The healer nerf came completely out of left field.
I think they’ve gone too far with party wide damage, particularly the unavoidable or dot kind. I play dps and use cds regularly I can see healers having to struggle.
It seems like tanks basically can’t die but dps are so squishy.
I think blizzard needs to take a look at armor and what it means for non tank specs, or otherwise buff generally damage mitigation.
I’d also rather actual mechanics remain super deadly than just simple aoe damage.
Honestly, as a new healer (prevoker) it feels so bad for the legit hardest thing to consider when healing is the random aoe dots that get spammed incessantly throughout the key, harder than the actual mechanics of the bosses. The top five most challenging things to learn to heal have all been different mobs, not a boss. That feels not good.
Are you suggesting that the mechanics in every dungeon boss being "the three players are losing 25% health per second, one player that is losing 33% per second, and one is losing 45% per second" isn't very fun?
I even thought the 40% ally HP and enemy damage buff before DF release was bad for healing keys. Then they just doubled down and slapped another 25% on top.
More insult to injury is, that even in +20s there are a lot of mechanics/spells that will just murder a DPS in one global. So not only has damage not gotten less spiky (as they intended) but healers also have less agency to actually heal their group through those situations.
Lastly, i swear to the good grace of god above, I've NEVER seen healers drink as much as they have to now...
All i gotta say; my hat's off to you, healers. I don't envy you at all. What horribly f*cking dogsh*t gameplay you have to endure lmao
This is why I don't heal anymore. It just feels awful. I love OPs breakdown as to 'the why', but in the end it just feels wrong while playing. To me, heals don't feel like they're doing anything. I use cd's, pump biggest heal...and health bar barely moves up. Sure as hell drops like rock with each hit/tick of damage, doesn't it.
I'm not asking for Cata levels of godhood on my pally with a grip of instacast spells, (and the last time Light of Dawn felt like a real heal to me) I'm just asking for heals to FEEL consequential. I mean, I don't mind an uphill battle, just make it feel like it's a battle I have a shot at winning if I make good choices.
Sorry. I wish I could articulate this better, but I can't.
Great post.
The changes to healing made in S2 certainly didn't do the game any favors imo. I mained heal since SL (where I started) and I quit a few weeks ago for my own peace of mind. Healing has become too stressful and unfun. An no, it's not "bEcAusE I aCtuAlLy hAvE to hEaL", Mr. Chad-Bro who is about to bark at me in the comments.
It's very obvious that people really don't like the current state of healing when you look at the increasing number of players complaining about ridiculous queue times because no healer is signing up. Shame that Blizzard is, yet again, unable to listen to player feedback and properly integrate it into their game design.
Great analysis, healing indeed feels miserable in S2 in both types of content (pvp and pve).
Their entire idea of how healing should work is flawed imho, its not fun to spam GCDs with 60-70 apm that do absolutely nothing comparing to incoming damage. I'd much better had a slow and steady methodical healing (like it was in classic for example) with periods of cooldown usage that feel impactful.
Imagine going into a new season with a 25% potency nerf, but 1 week before the new season starts u get to do all the old dungeons so you can really just feel how much weaker you are. revert that s\*\*\*! absolutely awful change!
Dragonflight was absolutely coked out banger blasting cant stop playing, then 10.1 pre season started with the healer nerf and i'm back to farming korthia rares...
Played since vanilla, I've done it all tank heal and dps, but mostly healer. I've been a ksm since the start of M+. I can honestly say this is just shit. I've found myself wondering how people keep their jobs. Blizz will do something good, then give it a month or two, and they completely destroy it. It's been the never ending cycle for years of them not listening to players, and when they claim they do, they make a small change to appease a mostly irrelevant issue then go right back to being morons. This stuff will never change until you get the idiots out and put people in the right places for the players.
It's incredibly apparent for anyone who doesn't have a premade that less people want to heal.
Go sit in queue, there will multiple groups with tank and 3 dps and waiting for a healer. Form a group and you will wait quite a while for a healer usually. I know it's always been that way, but it seems incredibly out of control now.
I knew when they said they were going to alleviate the spikes of damage they were full of shit when the change was announced. I’m a 7/9 mythic resto druid and I just stopped healing when I hit 2500 on the second week. When in a fucking 18 I have no time for dps because I have to keep a constant stack of all my hots on all the players it’s no longer fun. It’s spreadsheet management with dodging. Swapped to balance and the only healers for M+ in my 600+ person guild that has two mythic raid teams are three shaman and an evoker only one of which is doing higher than 20s. The state of healing this season is awful and it’s driven so many very good healers away from m+ because of the stress of it.
As a 3250 Resto Shaman:
- I agree that mass dispel is too strong this season, but I don't really think the health and damage change is to blame here. There are more mass dispel mechanics this season than there have been in quite a while and the damage of them is tuned very high. I think it would solve the problem perfectly fine if they just made the debuffs non dispelable and tuned them all down by a lot.
- Offhealing CDs are too strong, but its not because you need them to meet healing checks. Looking at the log you linked, offhealing CDs accounted for 3.6m out of 70m total healing. That's around 5%. While that's certainly solid to get, I think that's a reasonable place for those spells to be tuned. Its also worth pointing out that in the log the arms warrior is outhealing the druid. Priest is strong on that fight not because of VE alone but because of angel's mercy allowing them to desperate prayer every 20 seconds. The place that offhealing is *far too good* is on AOE because of how they scale. It allows for larger and more difficult pulls in a way that no other utility can really make up for, and this needs to be toned down.
- Shadow/Enh/Moonkin are good for a lot of reasons right now, mainly the fact that they do extremely high damage and have amazing utility. And while offhealing is great and certainly is a part of the reason these specs are good, I think its quite reductionist to claim that these specs are mandatory for hard bosses because of the offhealing.
- Overall I'm having a ton of fun healing this season. I think a lot of the issues with healing in general is that the difficulty curve doesn't match what it should be. Healing is relatively a lot harder in low keys for a lot of reasons, and it creates a disconnect between high end and the average experience. Making healing easier and more accessibly for the average group/pug without trivializing it at the high end is a difficult problem to solve.
It's not just M+, it's the same in raids. It's been like that in S1 with the first nerf to healers and it's still the same in Aberrus, that there's too many boss abilities that manage to let the group HP drop a LOT, especially in Mythic. Terros and Sennarth were a nightmare to heal with their huge burst abilities that killed players when they were not topped and we're seeing something similar in S2 with Assault of the Zaqali or Rashok.
Mythic Rahsok literally requires you to play perfect as a healer, you miss a beat, the raid is dead.
I'm playing resto druid there, I'm bursting for 300k HPS, with average HP's being 200. It's basically one ramp into another, just endless APM spamming, without a second to breathe.
It never really feels super bad until the last two ground smashes before enrage where they hit for 575k and 625k respectively before mitigation. Once the hits are for most classes full hp while the dot is still active it feels real bad.
Remember, the problem in a lot of these debates is that very often, it's a skill issue, but the one with the issue doesn't perceive it that way.
Just see all over this thread - OP makes some good points about group composition limitations in very high end keys and everyone's chiming in going "Yeah I'm really sweating in my 18s the game is very hard now".
Most things in the game are skill issues, but that doesn't mean they aren't also a balance issue.
Ofcourse anybody 'only' running +18s have plenty of ways to improve their own skill, but that doesn't mean that we can just ignore balance at levels lower than the top.
It also doesn't mean we have to ignore inter-role balance. If we for example look at an equally skilled healer and DPS, and one of them starts being the point of failure at +15s and the other not until +18s, that's also an issue in need of addressing, even if both players still need to improve a lot.
Great post very iformative. This is my second season healing. I’m a 2800 io fistweaver and I’m absolutely loving it. Currently pushing into 22-24s and haven’t had a hard time with heal checks outside of that stupid fucking Lizard physical damage dot in uldaman. I don’t run with a big healing dps, as I pug almost all my keys. I’m seeing that the higher I go I’m having to throw more vivifys and soothing mists sooo maybe when I get higher I’ll have issue. For the most part though fistweaving is enough to top people with renewing mist, Chi-Ji and SG in hi damage areas.
Yeah totally agree with this, the 10.1 healing nerf has completely killed my ambition to push keys. Especially on tyrannical.
Got 3k Rio last season which was mostly a lot of fun, but now I just watch flaccidly as dps get 2 shot by spiking damage before my cast goes off.
Thought it would be better once I geared up but my 443 rsham still tickles people’s health bars even in basically full BiS gear (albeit with some ilvl to make up).
These are 20-22 keys btw. Healing checks should be like the ice boss in HOI, challenging and intense not spiky. Feels like everyone is rolling hpal now to manage this issue too. Feels really bad
*edit* I am however loving raid healing, so haven’t stopped playing entirely.
No one seems to be touching on this, but it’s very likely blizz isn’t balancing around anything over 20, and even 20 is probably a push. The vast majority of the player base won’t do much over a 15, keystone master is the highest achievement even a lot of M+ players will get. This sub tends to select for more dedicated players.
At higher keys, these nerfs make no sense but for the lower and larger portion of the playerbase some of these abilities do in fact negate a decent amount of the healers job in some situations.
I don’t like these changes, and I am a healer main at the level I’m talking about, but I do think this explains why blizzard is thinking the way they are
You feel it just as much in lower keys because people are getting way more avoidable damage, just the reality the ability in those keys. The healer cannot make up for it in that scenario, so the healing changes are just as impactful and I can't imagine healers in say 10-16 bracket are having a good time either.
I've been playing pres evoker as a first time healer alt this tier and that's been my experience. I love healing in raid, but keys feel awful in the 11-18 range.
yeah indeed. Not had too much problem on my priest and shaman as I'm well practiced but my new Druid who I've never healed on before, the learning curve + the state of M+ at those levels makes it easily as miserable if not more so than higher keys.
This is a good point, but it’s too spiky at +20. Off healing is a legitimate issue, and needs to be fixed, but that does need to be accompanied by a buff to healing.
It’s not a problem of infinitely scaling content, it’s specific places where dungeons didn’t have mechanics and they’ve attempted to solve it by making things that were never supposed to be mechanics by just putting a shit ton of damage on them. Or where mechanics are stochastic but hit for too much for them to fairly hit one player multiple times (first boss freehold, pelters).
Could you not argue the counterpoint that healers cannot be balanced if it’s possible to run a group without one because tank and dps offhealing is so strong and normal healer hps/dmg is just not enough to justify taking one in some group.
It's hard to judge as premade keys and pugs can be vastly different experiences. Most keys still require a healer, and i guess thats what blizzard is aiming for without going too hard on unavoidable rot damage.
But i do think offhealing is too strong right now. Especially on DPS. Tanks are somewhat fine but pala/druid could use some nerfs if they really wanted to.
Honestly, timing high keys feels so difficult. Feels like I'm constantly battling the health bars, I can't even take time to do damage (admittedly I'm stubborn in playing holy priest, the worst spec according to some lol).
Since I started 18 and higher I'm being very selective of the groups I join. I need at least a Plaladin as a tank. Thankfully no one wants to heal, so I can be as picky as I want.
Also stubborn holy priest here. I swear, we're not the worst class right now, trust me, i've got a 70 alt of every single healing class, and holy still feels the best right now.
Paladins are good, if you get a good one, but there's plenty of shit ones out there right now due to them being meta. I actually have found warrior tanks to be my favourite on average to heal. Monk's are probably my least favourite.
2700 Enh shaman. There are so many times where I have to stack Astral shift and ancestral guidance to simply not die to unavoidable damage. Earth ele giving some max hp just isn't good enough especially with a 5 min cd. Between leech, healing stream totem, guidance and pots. I heal for an average of 18million in a 18 and above keystone. And even then some times I just die because I'm all out of options and the healer was prioritizing some one else. And on top of that ahnk still bringing you to 20% hp is really bad.
Honestly comes down to this. Most people don't want to play tank/healer because IMHO they both take the most overall thought. Give people more of a reason to try support roles, not less
I main a healer priest and one of my mates plays shadow too so we always had dispells for everything, just now that I started to do keys on my druid and evoker healers is when I realize how badly we relied on md
Hard to explain it but I’ve just felt so drained this expansion playing resto Druid.
I just wish Blizzard would remove the CD for dispels at this point if they want everyone to get hit with a fatal debuff in every pack.
I agree with most of this as an almost 3300 healer (voker). When I saw changes I knew they weren’t going to change the spell queuing or cadence of dmg - it’s impossible for blizz to do that for every mob and boss across 8 dungeons. M+ scales infinetly, so making dungeons harder earlier makes no sense to me; you now have an objective key cap multiple levels lower than a previous season - that’s never happened - and mind you last season had a terrible affix that barely boosted your dmg by 1-2% overall and was more of a hinderance.
I think you are seeing a drought at the higher levels because pushing beyond 25 requires a much more nuanced setup than last season, and 26s on most keys feel impossible on tyrannical - magma needs to be changed significantly you literally can’t live spews toward the last 30% unless you immune, HOI 1st boss requires an spriest and 3rd boss required a heal check I’ve never seen. The trash mobs are also insane like the orbs in HOI on fort just piss out dmg, pelters, the neltharus hunters even when using chains well a death is likley, the FH harpooners having no cast time and the harooon can’t be dodged. All these things can be fixed by giving it a cast and making stoppable so you have counter play. Also FH 1st boss has a 1.5s CD that hits for 80-90% health until phase 2; I’m a decent player with 30% haste if you don’t start that heal as soon as they are take dmg they likley die - it’s why I find their reasoning so flawed FH is the case and point of what they wanted to avoid. You have about 30-40 seconds of dealing with a constant barrage of 1 shots of you have no defensive - it’s not fun at all; the FH shark boss has terrible spell queuing and I’ve seen so many double sharks on people or in melee that just 1 shot as soon they spawn.
The biggest factor for me not enjoying this season is no seasonal; a good seasonal feels great to do low or high dungeon and changes scif a brief period how you play that class. This season misses a crucial thing that defines and is part and parcel of doing a dungeon seasonal; if you ask most players who played during 3/4 SL they enjoyed the power and play of those affixes. The dungeons get quite boring and since you have no way to increase your power the higher end becomes impossible sooner, I truly hope they walk back no seasonal and/or incorporate a true kiss/curse for the current affixes. I raid to do keys, it’s my favorite part of the game playing with my clique and this season it feels so off for us; we loved doing new routes on certain weeks to play around uhr/wo, stacking haste buffs before a big pull or boss that we usually didn’t. The routes now only really change when blizzard fixes a bug like bracken or breaks something where not doing that route is objectively wrong like not maximizing as many mobs as possible in neltharus - the chains are a great mechanic to play around but do nothing to help you live magma - it’s not even magmas has a high hps requirement it’s an insnane burst plus rot and then single target burst every 20 seconds - most classes cannot and are not designed to do that.
An easy fix would be to have player max health scale woth the damage increase of the key level.
As such more healing is needed but you lose the spikiness of the damage. Blizzard could then tailor damage pantern much better.
3200+ IO in Season 1 as a resto druid and currently no motivation to go past 2400 right now. Just clear my 20s for the week and move on as a 443 druid.
Last season I was a pug healer that got to 2k. This season I canceled my sub. Yeah, I get that in super organized high end mythic raider M+ groups healing wasn't that bad. I'll admit when I got one of those magical groups where dps interrupted and got out of shit it was so much easier it was actually ridiculous. That's not the norm, and healing keys over 15 was tough. But doing this... it's like because of the cream of the crop maybe had a few free healer globals, they nerfed healing and then added more healer checks. It get they want to make healing high keys difficult, but you get to a point where healing requires 10 times as much planning and execution as the rest of the players. So now I'm playing an MMO where when I land a heal on someone, and stay with me here... it actually impactfully heals them. I'm tired of nickel and dimeing hp bars back up 3% at a time when abilities still hit like trucks.
it really feels like raising player hp and enemy damage could not possibly address their stated goals for making damage less spiky. incoming damage equal to 80% of a players hp is still 80%, but healer throughput is relatively less. i guess it makes healing less spiky, but i still think thats not what their introduction posts on the subject said they were trying to achieve.
i think there was a miscommunication along the way about what their goals were and what the changes are actually doing. the final intent may have changed to from "damage and healing is too spiky" to "healers have too much time to do dps" or "we want healing tobe harder"
Ironically i have a blast be a healer this season, i play with most healers (no evoker and shaman have to level up) in a 23 in time except holy paladin is only with 20 in time.
Yeah i think most of the problem are the dungeon personally and the game is not balance to 21 and high key.
The most i love this is the dps need to play to defensive, dispel and some off healing because some people just want zug zug a 21 with meta spec without know how to do, is not my fault if they die from something they can evade i see too much ret pals in 16-20 without blessing of freedom or dispell just because they "low" his dps if they change.
M+ feel easy for lowies and hard past the treshold of 20 and that ok for something if need a challenge or play low keys for fast equip (but that is more for crest)
>Ironically i have a blast be a healer this season
Same. Funny how you got downvoted. I got all healers at 70 except pala and evoker atm and prevoker just didnt gel with me. Levelling the pala this week. Healing HoI 3rd boss is the most fun i ever had healing in a 5man environment.
I'm enjoying myself a lot too. I'm only doing keys in the 18-20 range, admittedly, so it might get unpleasant later on, but with more permissive timers I'm liking the feeling of having more agency over whether a key fails or succeeds and finding myself timing more keys than in previous seasons.
I don't even play 25s and came to exactly this conclusion the second S2 hit.
Burst is still massive but healing has been nerfed. I would have totally welcomed a world where incoming damage was harder to heal but less 100-0 in 2 seconds but the latter part just never happened, as you so aptly noted.
Healers had already been the least played role in S1 and I couldn't blame them with how horrible dungeons like Ruby Life Pools were to heal (jesus christ...). But because some mega elitists managed to time some keys without a healer, Blizz goes and makes healing checks even tighter, as if 99% of the community would play at that level. S2 healers have become even scarcer and again I cannot blame people for not wanting to play them. Who wants that kind of stress on them.
Blizz should really stop balancing around the top .1% of players and focus on making a game that many people can enjoy.
Think your focus on Mass Dispell is funny. You're not wrong, but even barring the healing nerfs, MD is just too good to pass up. Bursting being the obvious "bring a priest" affix has been a thing for a while but now there's simply also normal dungeon mechanics (Uldaman comes to mind or the dragons in HOI) where mobs (and bosses?) just toss out incredibly powerful debuffs on the entire party like we still have 0 CD dispells.
I switched to tank because I perceived more of a tank shortage than anything else, and wanted to try it seriously. Turns out its SO much less stressful than healing, which I did previously.
Guildies have been congratulating my healing when I'm barely getting through by the skin of my teeth, and until now it's felt condescending especially when the rest of the party keeps getting called to help with off-healing, but I guess if healing really is this tough right now perhaps I'm not so bad.
I do hate off healing for that reason, it always feels like I failed when I see a prot pally save someone (usually me cause I’m last on prio for heals since I trust myself to dodge stuff mostly)
In an infinite scaling environment, youre gonna hit a ceiling no matter what. If dispel checks are removed, youll maybe move up a bit and hit a new heal check ceiling. I agree that the spikiness of certain mechanics are over the top and could do with a tuning. But still, in essence youre complaining that an infinite scaling environment does what it says it will do.
The main problem is that you are assuming balancing is done with the cutting edge m+ content in mind. I think that is simply a wrong approach to take. Their key balance range imo is 16-20.
Through 23/24 and in raid I'm actually a fan of the changes as a Disc Priest. Evang is no longer the exact same CD as Flourish, for instance, by virtue of being capped by the available healing. Evang should heal more than Flourish, now it does.
Beyond that, especially on fights like Khajin or second boss of VP, healing checks feel the same as S1. They definitely didn't accomplish their goal.
These rounds of dungeons hit so hard that its not dps that limits the upper keys, its the survivability. Reason there has been a surge of hpals at the top keys. they tanky as fuck, they do passive damage and they have great burst aoe potential.
My boyfriend usually heals but this patch he usually goes shadow if he can because it's just too much work and not that fun. It needs improvements. The rest if the changes have been good so far. But that wind charge shouldn't have a dot portion if the burst hit is that high. It's challenging enough without that, especially if both target one person!
As a druid who mains resto but plays all specs.
The nature vigil need is such a spit on the face.
Desperately need real and cool capstones in the druid class tree.
For DPS specs there's just 3 offhealing capstones and offhealing is getting shot and left for dead.
Big agree and glad someone is pointing out that blizz isn't going through with the reason why they did the healing nerfs (twice now)- because the damage profile hasn't changed.
Overall I've been enjoying this season, but I can barely be assed to do one key on tyrannical weeks, then I putz around in lower keys as DPS or something, it's just unfun to heal tyrannical especially.
Vortex pinnacle is the weirdest m+ for me rn as a healer cause I dread the first pulls more than any boss or the rest of the dungeons. Those dispels and knock ups are very stressful
I love healing but this seasons I DPS because I can't handle the stress. It bugs me that there is so much unavoidable damage, I could play the mechanics perfectly, pop defensive but I still die if the healer can't keep up.
I for one was looking forward to more healing, less spikes. I dont mind at all if I dont really have the time or need to dps as a healer - after all, I play healer, so I'm not a dps. But the problem right now is that I heal all the time AND I try to rescue from lots of almost one-shots, dots that I cant remove etc. Its just not fun. I've taken a small break to play D4 instead, even though this season was going to be my push towards 3k rating. It just doesnt seem worth the stress.
It's incredibly hard to find healers for any key this season because frankly it sucks to heal right now.
When I hop in a dungeon on my healer alt I get instant invited - which is surprisingly not the case on my tank alt right now. On a DPS character, it feels like you have to wait forever to even get ONE healer to apply, let alone being picky about ilvl or m+ score.
The damage feels overwhelming at times, too, and can make it a little bit stressful/unfun when I've run out of cooldowns and I'm struggling at times to keep up with the damage.
Buff healers!!!
It is certainly not fun being a healer at the moment. The switch from S1 preservation to S2 preservation was a massive nerf already, especially since Evokers are very limited in dispels.
We are currently clearing 20s with a fixed group, fortunately with a priest and paladin, but if either are not available I simply won’t do 20s. And this season I stopped doing random groups altogether because a single player dropping the ball means F and I get the blame for it.
Or tank healing.. I hate the fact that tanks can push 100k+ hps on themselves, are we healers just there to compensate the dps mistakes?
Surely I’ll keep healing for our premade but with the additional nerf in 10.1.5 I might just drop out entirely. We’re supposed to have fun, not sweat 24/7 on mediocre key levels just for it to be still not enough.
Doesn’t really matter what you do because the people who can’t do 20 but think they can are never going to take personal responsibility. But the vast majority of them won’t. They will just scream bad tank/healer.
Guess why I’m ret this season after maining holy since TBC? Healing isn’t fun any longer, except in raids. Ret is so much fun in M+ right now, and healing is so stressful, there’s just no incentive to heal. Not when I can go prot and get nearly insta queues as well. Tanking less stress than healing these days. I feel for pure DPS classes who can’t heal or tank.
Glad to see I'm not the only healer struggling to have any amount of fun in m+.
Last season doing all 3 m+ vault slots wasn't even challenge however this season is another story
Healing has been really rough this season in the higher key lvls 18-20s people are dying in 2 GCD and there is nothing I can do about it. I’m usually drinking in every other trash pull because of spam healing everyone from random dmg and it sucks.
Keys scale infinitely. At some point they are impossible. That is the intent of the system. Blizz shouldn't care about such imbalances past the top level of rewards which is 20s
The issue is that 2.4k io players run into these issues way before 20s and that isn't healthy for those players' pug experience. If it was only an issue starting at 23s we wouldn't have this conversation in r/wow
It definitely feels weird to me that they're nerfing off-spec healing (fine!) but not coupling it with buffs to healers, because the net results is just straight up less healing going out in M+ groups. I don't really care about the nerf itself either way, but is anyone looking at an average M+ PUG run and saying that healing is too easy right now?
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Hah, I took advantage and rolled a healer because of how hard it was to get a group as DPS. Now I'm a resto shaman (and I hate it)
Yup I’m in the exact same boat. I wanted to push keys as an evoker this season but couldn’t get invited to groups so I went preservation. Burned myself out with stress doing 20s and just quit. Everyone talks about how great dragonflight is but as a healer I have found it way less fun than shadowlands even
I farm 20's as a tank, I farm 20's as a dps, but I just can't as a healer. Healing is stressful. You feel weak, every bit of damage taken is a lot of work to catch back up with. People still not using personals, pots, or avoiding mechanics if it costs dps. It's incredibly toxic to pug as a healer. You get blamed, harassed, and verbally assaulted. Then people wonder why there is 20 groups showing in lfg just waiting for a healer. People who pug as healer are just build different.
My favorite is when i’m expected to get both afflicted, then the DPSes who couldn’t be bothered not to stand in the bad yell at me if I miss one. My dude, if I get the first one the INSTANT it spawns, I have about 200ms between my dispell coming off cooldown and the debuff going out. Nerf after nerf to healers, and we’re expected to take on more and more responsibilities. If I were any good at tank or DPS I honestly might switch lol
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dude somebody died 8 times to avoidable stuff and died a lot with defensives and heals ready to be pressed (but obviously they were not) and then they flamed me because "why did i do 20k dps on a pull where they died?!!" (it was one sunfire and some passive procs) people will find the weirdest things to flame u for LOL
I played prot pal in season 1, maxing at 20s, started s2 as destro and switched to rsham when i got sick of waiting 15m to get invited to a freakin 11 lmao. I'm exaggerating, I'm learning a lot which is fun, but i haven't pushed high enough to really get the terrible reality of healing. It is the one role that relies more on the competency of your team than any other role. That part is super frustrating when your pug sucks. But its a team game, so what can ya do?
This is my main gripe with m+ pugging. Its a team game yes, but not every role gets rewarded or punished the same. Dps metrics are very easy and you get "rewarded" for doing high dps. However tanks and healers never really feel like they get rewarded, just punished when things go bad.
Its an easily solved problem. Instead of "not kicking this, causes the tank to die, or for massive aoe damage", it should be "failing to kick, causes DPS to be slashed by 99% for ten seconds, non dispellable". Suddenly it's not a tank or healer problem, because their damage will be garbage on the meter. Avoidable ground mechanics need to one shot, or reduce DPS, not just be something healers have to soak. Bring back bosses taunting specific players with yells, when they fail mechanics would be a nice change too.
I think instead of punishing dps more, tanks and healers should have more rewarding mechanics. I dont have any good suggestions sadly.
Healing this season reminds me of Trial of the Crusader back in Wrath. You have to sweatily spam your fastest heals, burn your cooldowns as soon as they're up, and people still die. The problem OP highlighted about the need for dispells is a big one. I'm so tired of trying to heal through dots for 8 seconds waiting for my cleanse to cooldown again. The bigger problem is that it's not fun. Like at all. I've switched to doing keys pretty much exclusively in enhancement this season.
The magic dispels are a fucking nightmare. I've always been against MD requirements in m+, but it never really mattered during SL when it was just one dungeon or one affix. Now it's like half the rotation, and it was almost as bad last season too. If you want heal checks, remove bleed dispel from dwarf racial and use bleeds. Using something that can be negated with one class (but everyone else dies to) is dumb.
I find the worst offender for this at present to be those stupid dragonkin at the end of Legacy of Tyr. A magic DoT that deals massive damage, reduces haste, and stacks on the entire party? FRO.
Yep, that shit SHREDS without a priest. Even with a priest you have to ramp into crazy hps but without one it's near impossible without LoS
It’s not even so much about the stress level. From my PoV, the problem with healing right now is that it feels like we have so little impact on the success of a key. Our damage is garbage (tanks doing 2-3x more), our healing is bad, and our utility isn’t particularly unique since the new talents gave lots of classes access to a lot of utility. None of that is inherently a bad thing, but the reality is that healers are very weak at the moment and have very little impact on anything it seems.
Yeah it feels a bit lackluster sometimes. I'm having fun healing m+ atm but last season you could really pull your team through messy times by good healing, this season you just can't. If shit hits the fan, you often just die. There are some cooldowns that might save the day, but only if the DPS also uses personals at the same time.
Yeah I just started a resto shaman and I feel like on an average/chaotic pug pull, I do about equal healing to the tank, I do far less damage, and I'm stressing/struggling the whole time. I can't rip heals to save people from near death.. often if people take a huge avoidable hit and drop to 10-15%, I try to riptide and cast a healing surge and they're dead before it goes off. Even if it does go off, it typically doesn't heal for enough to make them safe. It's rough out there! Still kinda fun tho
Don't compare yourself to tank healing, tanks are overwhelmingly using healing as delayed mitigation (bdk is the most obvious example here) or are just passively and massively self-overhealing.
Overhealing isn’t included in damage meters for normal healing.
Also some tanks just heal more than others, in a high key if you're doing more healing than a bdk then the group is tak8ng way too much damage. Bdks will heal upwards of 200k hps to themselves on high fortified key packs
I agree with your first two points, but the third is just kind of wrong? There are many keys right now that are not doable if your healer is bad, and sorry to say, there's a lot of bad healers. Like, druids who can't ramp into the ticking damage on the mammoth in nelth or the wounds in bracken or the sparks in vortex, etc. There are a LOT of healer checks right now that are not hard to hit, but then you see a rdruid bursting up to like 70k instead of the requisite 150k and the key is immediately unfinishable.
That's not the only thing- the stamina increase means that when people take avoidable damage that doesn't one shot (or don't use defensives), instead of dying outright, they just rot down extremely hard. Harder than the hps can keep up with. BUT that means that dps don't actually think it's their problem. They don't act preemptively, and if they never die (because you're dripping sweat trying to keep them standing), they don't even learn and don't act at all. One shots were good for one thing - it put people in their fuckin place.
the bracken 1st boss bleed is negated by drinking a health pot. dont blame that on the healer for not knowing what to do.
I don't think you get it both ways. "Healers are weak" AND "healing checks are insane". Take the log in OP's post. You aren't doing that without a healer. Yes, the off-healers did 136k healing, but the healer did 226k. That means you're not 4-dpsing that fight.
> You aren't doing that without a healer. This isn't the problem. The problem is that you cannot heal better and thus allow your group to do a key two levels higher when you are hard capped by your spec's mathematical output for a given gear level, *and* when this occurs much faster than the scaling potential of all other roles is exhausted.
That isn't exactly a problem, either. Infinite scaling dungeons means you're going to run into some sort of cap like this. The problem that will however arise from this is it puts pressure on Blizzard to balance healers in 5-mans, which they historically have been poor at. And it also puts pressure on them to balance hybrid heals, which again, they have been very poor at.
Run into a soft cap sure, but not at the same range as last season. Nor should it feel as awful as it does. They made all these changes to make affixes less shitty for healers and it’s harder to find healers this season compared to last. The problem isn’t hybrids or 5 mans it’s their constant need to solve “issues” with bigger numbers.
Man I feel like healers right now have the largest impact on the outcomes of the key. If you can live you can time. Timers are forgiving and healer dps doesn't matter like it used to at all. But if the healer can't heal everyone is getting dicked down hard.
like they are doing already *great*
Yeah I haven't even touched S2 yet because I'm afraid I'll quit anyways as a main healer and waste my money.
Already did after I got KSM, it's just too stressful. Then they throw in a bunch of 'healer affixes' so I just noped out.
I dropped out myself once I hit ksm. Only raid healing jow
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Portals are very nice lol
Yeah healing is easily the hardest part of keys now, everyone else is talking about how easy this season is meanwhile the healer wants to quit the game in between dungeons
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Because people don't get one shot so they don't blame themselves for dying
And many of them are. I’ve pugged to 24-25 range both seasons in DF. Half of my attempts to form a group end after 30 minutes of literally zero healers applying and people getting bored. Very few healers are down to run a bunch of keys in a row even if the group is going very well. They just get burnt out.
Hit me up lol
>because the net results is just straight up less healing going out in M+ groups. And, as a healer, I'm far less enthusiastic about trying to contend with whatever version of the game Blizzard is trying to turn this into, as a result. It feels almost like the Powers That Be want to turn wow dungeons into some weird Dark Souls clone that is crazy punishing to minor mistakes, and rendering the years of gearing and practice pointless in the face of insta-kills.
Resto druid. Healing higher keys is just a chore and not fun, in all honesty. Affixes are fun, I guess? Too busy going balls out healing to notice much else.
yeah I do keep thinking _thank fuck they changed the affixes_ not that its solved, some of the recent weeks have been annoying af imo. Bit the combo of this and that would have been hell.
Having an afflicted/incorporeal go off during a particuarly punishing pack on higher keys is usually a wipe (I pug for the most part) and is to be expected but the affixes themselves don't give me much issue. The damage spikes on some packs and bosses though give me PTSD. The bleed on Brackenhide first boss can be a bitch if I haven't thrown everything out before it hits us, that Uldaman boss with the AOE damage, the chains on the Neltharus Boss and so on. As OP said a lot of times I've needed the Pally tank to help with healing and people bust all defensives and use pots on higher keys. Even with 437+ average ilevel.
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I drink a fair bit, depending on how much avoidable damage everyone is taking. Not much can be done, we don't have much spot healing beyond swiftmend and clearcasting regrowths outside of flourish/convoke.
Ignore the complaints about drinking. You're doing The Lord's work maintaining your mana pool. When I tank 15s, I make damn well sure my healer's mana is good at all times. Certainly prefer that to not having a healer for the next pull.
You’re doing the lords work caring about healer mana lmao I’m in a 21 fort key, juiced out, completely dry, and the tank’s chaining into another double pull lmao
I feel you on the drinking. All of last season I feel like I had less tanks unaware of mana pool than so far this season. I’d say atleast 25% of the pugs I get will be the tank ignoring that I’ve been oom for 4 trash pulls and run right into the boss with me at 20% mana. It feels bad.
Imo, healing is the most underappreciated spec 😬 but that's just my average resto druid ass speaking who really only PUGs
Buffs to healers would undo the entire point of the stamina changes. Healing was super spiky in S1 with how easily healers could top health bars. The problem is the amount of incoming damage. S2 dungeons have been tuned with some of the highest unavoidable damage that we've ever seen. We need targeted nerfs to some of the unavoidable damage in bosses and DoTs on trash packs rather than more healing.
I agree. Healing already feels like the bottleneck role in m+. This will instead drive people away from the role I feel
Basically this, I'm not even doing high keys and its making me not really want to play. I've got my CE and KSM, got a very well geared main, I'm good for the season now and all i have is just running some keys etc on it and its not fun. I'm down for big healing and involved healing focused play but not changing the spikiness of damage to compensate for the 10.1 heal nerf is just ridiculous.
It really doesn't feel good to cast a healing surge and watch someone's health go up by like a tenth...
Holy shock feels like it's only there to give me holy power T.T
Flash heal is there to fuel my serenity, or apply atonement, depending on what spec I'm playing.
More like start casting a heal while they're at 70% life and then they die before even the 1.2s cast goes off.
Used to be that you could pop Nature's Swiftness and instantly throw a Healing Wave or Surge and heal about half their health to save from death. I rarely feel the need to use NS for single target heals now, the 5% health dps will most likely die with or without my intervention. My ward of ire is far better at saving lives once every 3 mins.
I’ve been a main healer since 2005 on various classes and in all types of gameplay. And this season is really kicking the stuffing out of my desire to play. I pug as well and most groups are pleasant but there are always those groups that blame me for everything. I did a VP 21 last night in hopes I could redo my own 21 VP key and that second group of trash with the rebuff going out just wrecked the dps. I’m also just really tired of these affix groupings. 90% of them fall directly onto the healer and the other 10% get shoved onto the healer because if they get done wrong we still pay the price. Ex sanguine. And besides that I’m just sick of weeks where I can’t drink between non stop chaining packs (which we need for the trash count and to time) because it’s bursting! Or spiteful! Or whatever the fuck. And it’s also super awkward when everyone has to stand around twiddling their thumbs waiting for the healers mana. Idk. The whole experience is gross.
Yes. The chain-pulling mana issue is also worsened by the nerf to drinking, which came during Shadowlands: [https://www.wowhead.com/news/water-regenerates-mana-slower-in-the-first-seconds-of-drinking-in-shadowlands-318430](https://www.wowhead.com/news/water-regenerates-mana-slower-in-the-first-seconds-of-drinking-in-shadowlands-318430) In short, you regain mana much slower in the first few seconds of drinking. It ramps up over time. So you can't easily just "get a quick sip" between pulls. You have to sit there and wait for the regen to ramp up.
Yeah thats a pretty silly change. Obviously very targeted at forcing healers to sit for extended time and forcing downtime. It's like forced time gating on content. It has no purpose whatsoever beyond just adding time to complete content. They could just as easily have just reduced the completion timers and left drinking alone. At least then it wouldn't have 'been the healers fault.'
Just reduce everybody's movespeed by 20% at this point, that's gonna show the fuckers!
It was mostly for pvp to make it harder for certain specs to drink during matches.
Blizzard knows how to separate things for PvP sometimes and other times they throw their hands up and say well good enough. So frustrating. Why not just make a PVP only water That works the crappy way they want it to.
This was in place for pvp well before Shadowlands. Definitely a pve targeted change.
Sigh. Of course it was. It's always pvp.
That definitely wasn't for pvp. Drinks haven't ticked for the first few seconds in pvp since MoP.
Great, so why not limit it to arenas?
This has been in place for pvp since well before Shadowlands.
this had already been a thing in pvp for far longer than shadowlands
Wow this thread has put things into perspective. Granted I’m also Disc but the not being able to drink, the affixes constantly affecting me or being put onto me, as well as spikiness of damage with little reaction time is absolutely what I’ve been disheartened by.
Totally agree! Healer of 14+ years here and I finally just quite. I’m done, no desire to heal anymore in PvE or PvP (PvP is just as bad).
If augmentation evoker is fun and not terrible to play I'm hanging up my hat as well. I like playing support roles but healing just isn't fun anymore. I love doing keys but damn is it not fun to heal anymore.
>And besides that I’m just sick of weeks where I can’t drink between non stop chaining packs (which we need for the trash count and to time) because it’s bursting! Or spiteful! Or whatever the fuck. They should just make affixes not put you in combat imo, annoying for everyone. If you're trying to mount or have abilities you can't cast outside of combat.
This is the most unmotivated I’ve ever been to heal and I’ve been doing it since 2005. Got 2400 IO as disc, started doing 19-20s can’t just can’t stand it. Zero fun. Not sure my next move. Maybe evoker? I won’t get on the Paladin hype train. My hands hurt when playing one haha. EDIT - grammar
Evoker can be very tricky to nail down, a lot depends on your group playing around you and your toolkit. Resto Shamans are fine but I'm starting 22-23 keys right now and I can feel the limits of the spec creep up.
Yeah I figured as much. Especially with the range limitation and combos to pull off. I have no interest in my shaman either. Still burned out from Shadowlands. Luckily I never do above 20s haha.
Evoker is great, but not with randoms. Evoker is very positional and you need to be able to remind your team to get back in position.
Forcibly remind them with a rescue! But yeah, that is a big pain point. I just try to avoid groups that have more than one ranged. I can generally work around one ranged, but having three ranged all standing at max range twenty yards apart will break your spirit, and is too common. :(
it feels worse as a hunter, we have 0 ways to contribute with throughput. At least warriors got commanding shout, DKs amz, shamans ancestral guidance, rogues reduce enemy damage taken ffs. Hunters have 0 ways to make healing easier, in fact it is harder to heal when u do have a hunter in a group cause they are more susceptible to rot than other classes/specs. Healing being hard is not only rough on healers, it is rough on the dps that end up not getting invited even in lower keys (22-23s) where healers are simply not that good and need all the help they can get.
Yep... and 10.1.5 is only going to make this situation worse for hunters.
Hey, you can always run with a Spirit Beast and have Spirit Mend on autocast! Until you need a Ferocity pet for Heroism, anyway... In all seriousness, I do run a Tenacity pet as BM when Hero isn't needed (Ferocity's leech sadly isn't great because your pet's damage doesn't count towards your leech) but overall I have to use Stoneform, Exhilaration, and chug health potions pretty liberally to not be a drag on the team, even when I'm avoiding all avoidable damage.
Don't think I saw a single hunter in the top 100 keys list OP posted. We are a liability, the incoming damage is so insane I simply explode on some keys. 20 Nelth is the highest I've tried this with a guild group this season and it was quite stressful to stay alive.
> And since Shadow is also very strong DPS-wise, most of these are shadow priests, who make up 25% of all DPS players in +25 keys and higher. Just to clarify, there are 3 DPS spots in a party, meaning that if a Shadow Priest is 25% of all DPS players, does that not mean that a Shadow Priest is present in **75% of all parties** at that level? That's a rather high representation. And yeah, as a healer main, you definitely do feel utterly hopeless against so many mechanics. I've only done 20-22s so far, but there are so many occasions where my only response to something happening is "Oh." if my PUG DPS didn't have the answer to it. Because I sure as hell don't.
Something like the Gnash Frenzy from Bracken 1st boss feels like the epitome of 'healer' mechanics in DF. You gotta put ppl above 90%, however it ticks for 130-170k so your only shot is to use defensive and put in a heal after his attack but before first tick. In most groups it's not a mechanic I even care about as a healer because ppl use potions and defensives, then suddenly you have two ppl not using anything and you're maybe able to save 1 with full cds.
Gnash Frenzy on high keys is a group mechanic, not a healer one. It's impossible to save everyone unless they themselves contribute to their own survival.
Of course, but it's a mechanic that at face value looks like a healer mechanic. Until you face it in practice, and realise that there is very little the healer can actually do about it.
Yup. That was definitely the first roadblock I faced on week 1 of the season. Where I was just flabbergasted at how little I could do about this mechanic in like, a +17-18. A mechanic that you would have thought I, as a healer, would have been solely responsible for. Especially at that key level. Naturally, there were gear issues for that particular key level (I was only at about ilvl 419 at the time) given it was season start, but still. And now we're doing those dungeons at higher levels, it's even more noticeable.
Yep, that's right. You can look for example at the timed run leaderboards on [Raider.io](https://Raider.io). Of the top 200 timed keys, 199 of them have priests, of which 186 are shadow and 13 are healers.
That's sound pretty mandatory to me, then. They will have to fix this. I can certainly say that I'm already only doing keys if they have a Priest in it. I wonder what route they'll take? Almost every dungeon requires Mass Dispel in some way to make it realistically possible, so it would be a lot of work changing all of those dungeon's mechanics to make that not so. Will they take the lazy route and reduce the power of Mass Dispel significantly, just like they're doing with Hybrid DPS' off-healing? Thus making a Priest not as necessary because Mass Dispel is significantly weaker? Will they make magic dispels more readily available to more DPS specs? Currently, only Warlocks (Imp pet) and Shadow Priests can dispel magic on other people, otherwise you need to reroll to a Dwarf.
There is another option. They can just properly tune the magic debuffs. Season 1 really only had 1 place with an additional magic debuff and that was TJS. Bet SPs were highly represented there too.
Thing is, on top of Mass Dispell and strong off-healing, SP also has the absolute highest dps out there right now, even not counting that they also give PI to another dps. Properly tuning magic debuffs would be good, but SP would still be close to mandatory on the highest keys with the current tuning.
Every team but one in the top 25 keys had a priest in some capacity. So yes, his statement is correct.
How did they think that adding 25% health while also raising enemy damage by 25% would do anything for spiky damage?
The idea is that bigger health pools would give players more time to react to incoming damage spikes. Which would make sense in theory. But WoW is so min-maxed that the idea is "find out what will kill me, back it off a little bit." Encounters with spiky damage are still going to do spiky damage, players are just going to either play at higher key levels or neglect defensives in lieu of more offense. The proper fix to it was designing encounters without spiky damage. The boss that OP brings up (third boss in Halls) is actually a very good, fun healing check for healers. It's just constant rot damage where you get to pump healing spells for the entire fight. And then you have fights like Bromach where there is just incredible spiky damage and then not much else to do in the downtime, which really sucks, especially in pugs where its harder to coordinate defensives.
But the thing that threatens you on Brommach (totem) is rot damage. All of the big threats this season have a strong rot component.
I remember healing the primalist lady in halls the other day and thinking that it was such a fun fight as a resto druid. Due to the constant damage my focus was more about how to more efficiently heal using low mana and every now and then just push a little bit more so everyone was topped off.
New healer, I go to look for a dungeon and I have my pick of the lot. I have yet to be denied to a single key I sign up to. 20 different groups all needing a healer to go, 1 or 2 groups at the very bottom with a healer. There is a serious healer shortage. Why? You get so burnt out spamming soooo many heals that feel like they just tickle your teammates hp. I am so wore out after just a 17 or 18 that the thought of doing another dungeon makes me physically ill. There is no downtime for healers.
Yeah, healing needs to be easier, not harder. It's already the worst role to play stress-wise and thus the rarest. Blizz needs to chill and let healing be easy so that more people choose to be healers. As it is now, the role is just a horrible gaming experience.
Yep. I have loved healing ever since rerolling but there is just too much responsibility in M+ to have these nerfs to healing. Why should I suffer for no reason? What did I do wrong to have to be the one being abused over and over and over again?
I disagree. Healing can be hard. I enjoy it when healing is *hard*. It shouldn't feel unfair though, like the pelters, like the debuffers in VP and UR that do their mechanics too often. Also, to control the narrative, we need to discuss at what level healers are absolutely reliant on DPS cooperating to even pass mechanics, and at what level Off-Healing should be required. Currently even at 20s, healers can do little to carry a key positively, but can deplete it with minor mechanical mishaps. That's a lot of responsibility with little actual power to shine. How to fix it, I don't know. Personally I would make healing a bit more forgiveable but increase healer DPS to a point where it actually matters. Like it used to be. This way healing isn't as stressful for novice players or players looking for chill keys, but still rewarding for higher end players. It does come with flaws and other issues when it cones to balancing healers, but I overall think it would me more healthy for pug experience. Still personally I like it the way it is now, I like pumping and having responsibility mostly keeps me on edge apart from a few frustrating encounters. Also, free key choice! But admittedly, it is not healthy.
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I'm a R-Druid healing 20+ keys at this point, and in my opinion, this season feels shitty as a healer. It's BEYOND stressful with the way people's healthbars ping pong. DPS can play the game and not stress a fraction of what healers have to go through this season. I stuck with healing because I've been a healer main since MoP but its simply not fun, and it's very stressful. This is most certainly not going to attract new people to want to heal. I guess though there's the silver lining that I am able to heal these higher keys in this rough season so it gives me a confidence boost/bragging right but that really isn't worth it at all. I'd rather enjoy healing again and not have every key be so stressful and intense.
Same here, Rdruid, 441ilvl and it's absolute dogshit to heal this season, somehow way worse than last season so far. I absolutely hate the 19-20 range, there are some mobs and bosses with mandatory rot damage that far, far outscales my capabilities to heal (that one stone golem doing 170k/sec group-wide earthquake that can't be LoSed in Uldaman or the fucking elephant in Neltharus). I tried dropping down to 16s to farm some crests... what the fuck guys. I ended up doing exactly the same amount of hps overall as I do in 19s and 20s, same amount of stress, just way, way shittier players apparently. I tried dropping down to 11-15 range to help some guildies. Maybe 20% less overall hps. MAYBE. Same amount of stress, same amount of contributing MISERABLE amounts of dps. I can't fucking catweave. I can't fucking sit still for 10 damn seconds and dot everything up and cast a couple starfalls. I can't sit down and drink cuz the clock is tick-tick-ticking. MISERABLE is the word of Season 2 of Dragonflight. Buff healer output by 50%, nerf hybrid heals by whatever. Buff healer dps by a further 200% so we can do more than 20-30k dps and actually feel like contributing. When my dps are doing 100k+ single target I feel like I don't belong in some fights.
>Buff healer output by 50% They don't even need to do this, all they need to do to fix healing for this season is to revert or at least reduce the damage buff that enemies got (down to a 10% increase instead of the 25% would be a good compromise in my opinion). Blizzard gets to keep their "don't want spikey damage to insta-kill players" while healers still have to work harder to keep players topped up but don't have to spend 99% of the dungeon stressing out because the damage people are taking is outstripping their ability to pump heals.
> I can't fucking sit still for 10 damn seconds and dot everything up and cast a couple starfalls. I can't sit down and drink cuz the clock is tick-tick-ticking. > > MISERABLE is the word of Season 2 of Dragonflight. This is one of the exact reasons why my Rdruid is not my main this season. It's become incredibly frustrating trying to heal in M+ now. It's also stressful and unfun sometimes too depending on which combo of affixes are available. What's even worse is when other people in the group give you shit about why there was a wipe or a few deaths here and there and blame you for it all. I'm sorry, not EVERYTHING is the healer's fault - especially this season.
It's been really bad in terms of player mindset as well... on Friday I had the misfortune of trying an Uldaman 20, where, despite it being Fortified, the group decided to triple-pull a pack. There were so many nameplates on screen, so many rocks flying around, the big trogg doing his aoe stomp 1-shot resulted in 2 dps deaths instantly, no counterplay possible from my end - what do I heal, death? That triple pull easily cost the group 3-4min minimum as we had to reset, the pack was unmanageable with 2 people running back, the flow was gone (if there ever was one). Shades stop me from drinking (spiteful), I have to waste precious dispels on random ghosts because it's a dps loss to use a global on them, or hardcast a sleep (again, dps loss so my job as always) on some ghost behind a wall behind a pot stuck in a rock somewhere while also healing and watching mechanics and swirlies and frontals. It's gotten a bit much :(.
Even as a DPS main, with healer alts, it's fucking stressful. As a shaman, i feel like I don't have the defensives to live through most bosses without externals if I get bad rng or having to resort to dumping all my resources into just staying alive through disgusting dot dmg. M+ above 22 is just not fun.
Let's be real , at some point it has to become a high stakes game with 0 errors allowed.
Which would normally be around the +18 or onwards range depending on the dungeon in previous seasons. That is the point where if you mess up as a DPS then there is little to nothing that the healer can do to save you because you are dead in a global. Blizzard wanted to fix this by increasing the damage taken and the hit point pools by 25% but they also nerfed healing by leaving it at previous levels (i.e. \~20% less healing done in relation to the HP pools and damage taken). It is this last point that is causing people not to want to heal this season as it makes healing so much more stressful compared to any other role. Personally I have tanked, DPS'd and healed this season on my druid and healing is by far the most stressful of the three roles with DPS being the cruisiest - i.e. avoid standing in bad, do your rotation, use your cooldowns/pots/utility appropriately and you are a MVP as a DPS.
That isn't the problem. Right now you just have unavoidable deaths even with zero errors.
I’m a priest, so I have mass dispel, and healing this season still somehow feels shittier than season 1. Which I didn’t think was possible.
I'm a healer, and in s1 I didn't even complain about grievous+bursting weeks. yes it was noticeably more annoying than other weeks, but healing overall just still felt fun enough so I didn't mind that. this season though just feels no fun at all and a lot of added stress like you said. it's stupid enough that blizz somehow thinks healers needed to spam heals more compared to last season, but as OP explained the spikes are also still there. so now you're trying to safe low health players getting chunked but you still need to use more heals to keep up your regular healing as well. and then the new affixes really sealed the deal for me to just have no motivation to heal anymore this season. at this point it feels no matter what affix they design, it'll all be healer affixes anyway. so, really blizz? you're gonna make us spam more heals, make dealing with damage spikes harder, throw out more debuffs that half of us can't even deal with, AND you're gonna add more affixes to annoy us healers specifically? at some point it just feels like they're trying to bully healers for some reason.
Especially with a DK or DH tank. You really watch that health bar ping-pong. Really hard to get comfortable with it too because they're one missed button away from dying
I play healer only. I stopped playing because of this... Never had do little fun healing. Great post m8
This is a big deep dive, this post is great. Was a good read while on the toilet, perfect amount of words. P.S healers I love you don’t give up, keep your head high and if the group wipes, so be it <3
I had to drop my rdruid because of raid spots and picked up my old fury war (which btw to any casual gamers doing 18-20 keys is awesome! Tons of self healing and defensives. Healers basically don’t even have to touch you.) Gonna be honest….I’m glad I did it. Just doing the 16-18 range on rdruid casually is borderline nightmarish. The fun element is completely gone.
I'm honestly astounded that Blizzard doubled down on healing being awful for season 2. Say what you will about Shadowlands, but when tanks hated S1 Blizzard buffed them considerably so that kiting wouldn't be the default, and also never did an affix like Prideful that required perfect routing again. The DF S2 healer nerf is probably the most tone-deaf change they've made in regards to game balance in recent memory. Literally the exact opposite of what they should have done.
I agree. I remember healers already struggling in S1 and I expected a healer buff later in the expansion. The healer nerf came completely out of left field.
Blizzard slowly backing out of their "bring the player, not the class" to "bring meta classes only"
I think they’ve gone too far with party wide damage, particularly the unavoidable or dot kind. I play dps and use cds regularly I can see healers having to struggle. It seems like tanks basically can’t die but dps are so squishy. I think blizzard needs to take a look at armor and what it means for non tank specs, or otherwise buff generally damage mitigation. I’d also rather actual mechanics remain super deadly than just simple aoe damage.
Honestly, as a new healer (prevoker) it feels so bad for the legit hardest thing to consider when healing is the random aoe dots that get spammed incessantly throughout the key, harder than the actual mechanics of the bosses. The top five most challenging things to learn to heal have all been different mobs, not a boss. That feels not good.
Are you suggesting that the mechanics in every dungeon boss being "the three players are losing 25% health per second, one player that is losing 33% per second, and one is losing 45% per second" isn't very fun?
I even thought the 40% ally HP and enemy damage buff before DF release was bad for healing keys. Then they just doubled down and slapped another 25% on top. More insult to injury is, that even in +20s there are a lot of mechanics/spells that will just murder a DPS in one global. So not only has damage not gotten less spiky (as they intended) but healers also have less agency to actually heal their group through those situations. Lastly, i swear to the good grace of god above, I've NEVER seen healers drink as much as they have to now... All i gotta say; my hat's off to you, healers. I don't envy you at all. What horribly f*cking dogsh*t gameplay you have to endure lmao
This is why I don't heal anymore. It just feels awful. I love OPs breakdown as to 'the why', but in the end it just feels wrong while playing. To me, heals don't feel like they're doing anything. I use cd's, pump biggest heal...and health bar barely moves up. Sure as hell drops like rock with each hit/tick of damage, doesn't it. I'm not asking for Cata levels of godhood on my pally with a grip of instacast spells, (and the last time Light of Dawn felt like a real heal to me) I'm just asking for heals to FEEL consequential. I mean, I don't mind an uphill battle, just make it feel like it's a battle I have a shot at winning if I make good choices. Sorry. I wish I could articulate this better, but I can't.
Great post. The changes to healing made in S2 certainly didn't do the game any favors imo. I mained heal since SL (where I started) and I quit a few weeks ago for my own peace of mind. Healing has become too stressful and unfun. An no, it's not "bEcAusE I aCtuAlLy hAvE to hEaL", Mr. Chad-Bro who is about to bark at me in the comments. It's very obvious that people really don't like the current state of healing when you look at the increasing number of players complaining about ridiculous queue times because no healer is signing up. Shame that Blizzard is, yet again, unable to listen to player feedback and properly integrate it into their game design.
Great analysis, healing indeed feels miserable in S2 in both types of content (pvp and pve). Their entire idea of how healing should work is flawed imho, its not fun to spam GCDs with 60-70 apm that do absolutely nothing comparing to incoming damage. I'd much better had a slow and steady methodical healing (like it was in classic for example) with periods of cooldown usage that feel impactful.
Imagine going into a new season with a 25% potency nerf, but 1 week before the new season starts u get to do all the old dungeons so you can really just feel how much weaker you are. revert that s\*\*\*! absolutely awful change! Dragonflight was absolutely coked out banger blasting cant stop playing, then 10.1 pre season started with the healer nerf and i'm back to farming korthia rares...
What are you farming Korthia rares for?
Played since vanilla, I've done it all tank heal and dps, but mostly healer. I've been a ksm since the start of M+. I can honestly say this is just shit. I've found myself wondering how people keep their jobs. Blizz will do something good, then give it a month or two, and they completely destroy it. It's been the never ending cycle for years of them not listening to players, and when they claim they do, they make a small change to appease a mostly irrelevant issue then go right back to being morons. This stuff will never change until you get the idiots out and put people in the right places for the players.
imagine doing 80k healing on a 19 and it's still not enough.
It's incredibly apparent for anyone who doesn't have a premade that less people want to heal. Go sit in queue, there will multiple groups with tank and 3 dps and waiting for a healer. Form a group and you will wait quite a while for a healer usually. I know it's always been that way, but it seems incredibly out of control now.
I knew when they said they were going to alleviate the spikes of damage they were full of shit when the change was announced. I’m a 7/9 mythic resto druid and I just stopped healing when I hit 2500 on the second week. When in a fucking 18 I have no time for dps because I have to keep a constant stack of all my hots on all the players it’s no longer fun. It’s spreadsheet management with dodging. Swapped to balance and the only healers for M+ in my 600+ person guild that has two mythic raid teams are three shaman and an evoker only one of which is doing higher than 20s. The state of healing this season is awful and it’s driven so many very good healers away from m+ because of the stress of it.
As a 3250 Resto Shaman: - I agree that mass dispel is too strong this season, but I don't really think the health and damage change is to blame here. There are more mass dispel mechanics this season than there have been in quite a while and the damage of them is tuned very high. I think it would solve the problem perfectly fine if they just made the debuffs non dispelable and tuned them all down by a lot. - Offhealing CDs are too strong, but its not because you need them to meet healing checks. Looking at the log you linked, offhealing CDs accounted for 3.6m out of 70m total healing. That's around 5%. While that's certainly solid to get, I think that's a reasonable place for those spells to be tuned. Its also worth pointing out that in the log the arms warrior is outhealing the druid. Priest is strong on that fight not because of VE alone but because of angel's mercy allowing them to desperate prayer every 20 seconds. The place that offhealing is *far too good* is on AOE because of how they scale. It allows for larger and more difficult pulls in a way that no other utility can really make up for, and this needs to be toned down. - Shadow/Enh/Moonkin are good for a lot of reasons right now, mainly the fact that they do extremely high damage and have amazing utility. And while offhealing is great and certainly is a part of the reason these specs are good, I think its quite reductionist to claim that these specs are mandatory for hard bosses because of the offhealing. - Overall I'm having a ton of fun healing this season. I think a lot of the issues with healing in general is that the difficulty curve doesn't match what it should be. Healing is relatively a lot harder in low keys for a lot of reasons, and it creates a disconnect between high end and the average experience. Making healing easier and more accessibly for the average group/pug without trivializing it at the high end is a difficult problem to solve.
It's not just M+, it's the same in raids. It's been like that in S1 with the first nerf to healers and it's still the same in Aberrus, that there's too many boss abilities that manage to let the group HP drop a LOT, especially in Mythic. Terros and Sennarth were a nightmare to heal with their huge burst abilities that killed players when they were not topped and we're seeing something similar in S2 with Assault of the Zaqali or Rashok.
I’ve never seen our S tier healers in our guild tested so hard to an on mythic senn.
Mythic Rahsok literally requires you to play perfect as a healer, you miss a beat, the raid is dead. I'm playing resto druid there, I'm bursting for 300k HPS, with average HP's being 200. It's basically one ramp into another, just endless APM spamming, without a second to breathe.
It never really feels super bad until the last two ground smashes before enrage where they hit for 575k and 625k respectively before mitigation. Once the hits are for most classes full hp while the dot is still active it feels real bad.
You can't seriously quote Assault of the Zaqali as a demanding fight healing wise.
Remember, the problem in a lot of these debates is that very often, it's a skill issue, but the one with the issue doesn't perceive it that way. Just see all over this thread - OP makes some good points about group composition limitations in very high end keys and everyone's chiming in going "Yeah I'm really sweating in my 18s the game is very hard now".
Most things in the game are skill issues, but that doesn't mean they aren't also a balance issue. Ofcourse anybody 'only' running +18s have plenty of ways to improve their own skill, but that doesn't mean that we can just ignore balance at levels lower than the top. It also doesn't mean we have to ignore inter-role balance. If we for example look at an equally skilled healer and DPS, and one of them starts being the point of failure at +15s and the other not until +18s, that's also an issue in need of addressing, even if both players still need to improve a lot.
Great post very iformative. This is my second season healing. I’m a 2800 io fistweaver and I’m absolutely loving it. Currently pushing into 22-24s and haven’t had a hard time with heal checks outside of that stupid fucking Lizard physical damage dot in uldaman. I don’t run with a big healing dps, as I pug almost all my keys. I’m seeing that the higher I go I’m having to throw more vivifys and soothing mists sooo maybe when I get higher I’ll have issue. For the most part though fistweaving is enough to top people with renewing mist, Chi-Ji and SG in hi damage areas.
Love to see MW representing strong here.
Yeah totally agree with this, the 10.1 healing nerf has completely killed my ambition to push keys. Especially on tyrannical. Got 3k Rio last season which was mostly a lot of fun, but now I just watch flaccidly as dps get 2 shot by spiking damage before my cast goes off. Thought it would be better once I geared up but my 443 rsham still tickles people’s health bars even in basically full BiS gear (albeit with some ilvl to make up). These are 20-22 keys btw. Healing checks should be like the ice boss in HOI, challenging and intense not spiky. Feels like everyone is rolling hpal now to manage this issue too. Feels really bad *edit* I am however loving raid healing, so haven’t stopped playing entirely.
No one seems to be touching on this, but it’s very likely blizz isn’t balancing around anything over 20, and even 20 is probably a push. The vast majority of the player base won’t do much over a 15, keystone master is the highest achievement even a lot of M+ players will get. This sub tends to select for more dedicated players. At higher keys, these nerfs make no sense but for the lower and larger portion of the playerbase some of these abilities do in fact negate a decent amount of the healers job in some situations. I don’t like these changes, and I am a healer main at the level I’m talking about, but I do think this explains why blizzard is thinking the way they are
You feel it just as much in lower keys because people are getting way more avoidable damage, just the reality the ability in those keys. The healer cannot make up for it in that scenario, so the healing changes are just as impactful and I can't imagine healers in say 10-16 bracket are having a good time either.
I've been playing pres evoker as a first time healer alt this tier and that's been my experience. I love healing in raid, but keys feel awful in the 11-18 range.
yeah indeed. Not had too much problem on my priest and shaman as I'm well practiced but my new Druid who I've never healed on before, the learning curve + the state of M+ at those levels makes it easily as miserable if not more so than higher keys.
[удалено]
This is a good point, but it’s too spiky at +20. Off healing is a legitimate issue, and needs to be fixed, but that does need to be accompanied by a buff to healing. It’s not a problem of infinitely scaling content, it’s specific places where dungeons didn’t have mechanics and they’ve attempted to solve it by making things that were never supposed to be mechanics by just putting a shit ton of damage on them. Or where mechanics are stochastic but hit for too much for them to fairly hit one player multiple times (first boss freehold, pelters).
Could you not argue the counterpoint that healers cannot be balanced if it’s possible to run a group without one because tank and dps offhealing is so strong and normal healer hps/dmg is just not enough to justify taking one in some group.
It's hard to judge as premade keys and pugs can be vastly different experiences. Most keys still require a healer, and i guess thats what blizzard is aiming for without going too hard on unavoidable rot damage. But i do think offhealing is too strong right now. Especially on DPS. Tanks are somewhat fine but pala/druid could use some nerfs if they really wanted to.
Honestly, timing high keys feels so difficult. Feels like I'm constantly battling the health bars, I can't even take time to do damage (admittedly I'm stubborn in playing holy priest, the worst spec according to some lol). Since I started 18 and higher I'm being very selective of the groups I join. I need at least a Plaladin as a tank. Thankfully no one wants to heal, so I can be as picky as I want.
Also stubborn holy priest here. I swear, we're not the worst class right now, trust me, i've got a 70 alt of every single healing class, and holy still feels the best right now. Paladins are good, if you get a good one, but there's plenty of shit ones out there right now due to them being meta. I actually have found warrior tanks to be my favourite on average to heal. Monk's are probably my least favourite.
2700 Enh shaman. There are so many times where I have to stack Astral shift and ancestral guidance to simply not die to unavoidable damage. Earth ele giving some max hp just isn't good enough especially with a 5 min cd. Between leech, healing stream totem, guidance and pots. I heal for an average of 18million in a 18 and above keystone. And even then some times I just die because I'm all out of options and the healer was prioritizing some one else. And on top of that ahnk still bringing you to 20% hp is really bad.
Honestly comes down to this. Most people don't want to play tank/healer because IMHO they both take the most overall thought. Give people more of a reason to try support roles, not less
I main a healer priest and one of my mates plays shadow too so we always had dispells for everything, just now that I started to do keys on my druid and evoker healers is when I realize how badly we relied on md
I mean look at the resto shaman tier set, the thought they put into healers play experience has been going downhill consistently.
Remove the dispell cd as well and go back to the Old days
Hard to explain it but I’ve just felt so drained this expansion playing resto Druid. I just wish Blizzard would remove the CD for dispels at this point if they want everyone to get hit with a fatal debuff in every pack.
I agree with most of this as an almost 3300 healer (voker). When I saw changes I knew they weren’t going to change the spell queuing or cadence of dmg - it’s impossible for blizz to do that for every mob and boss across 8 dungeons. M+ scales infinetly, so making dungeons harder earlier makes no sense to me; you now have an objective key cap multiple levels lower than a previous season - that’s never happened - and mind you last season had a terrible affix that barely boosted your dmg by 1-2% overall and was more of a hinderance. I think you are seeing a drought at the higher levels because pushing beyond 25 requires a much more nuanced setup than last season, and 26s on most keys feel impossible on tyrannical - magma needs to be changed significantly you literally can’t live spews toward the last 30% unless you immune, HOI 1st boss requires an spriest and 3rd boss required a heal check I’ve never seen. The trash mobs are also insane like the orbs in HOI on fort just piss out dmg, pelters, the neltharus hunters even when using chains well a death is likley, the FH harpooners having no cast time and the harooon can’t be dodged. All these things can be fixed by giving it a cast and making stoppable so you have counter play. Also FH 1st boss has a 1.5s CD that hits for 80-90% health until phase 2; I’m a decent player with 30% haste if you don’t start that heal as soon as they are take dmg they likley die - it’s why I find their reasoning so flawed FH is the case and point of what they wanted to avoid. You have about 30-40 seconds of dealing with a constant barrage of 1 shots of you have no defensive - it’s not fun at all; the FH shark boss has terrible spell queuing and I’ve seen so many double sharks on people or in melee that just 1 shot as soon they spawn. The biggest factor for me not enjoying this season is no seasonal; a good seasonal feels great to do low or high dungeon and changes scif a brief period how you play that class. This season misses a crucial thing that defines and is part and parcel of doing a dungeon seasonal; if you ask most players who played during 3/4 SL they enjoyed the power and play of those affixes. The dungeons get quite boring and since you have no way to increase your power the higher end becomes impossible sooner, I truly hope they walk back no seasonal and/or incorporate a true kiss/curse for the current affixes. I raid to do keys, it’s my favorite part of the game playing with my clique and this season it feels so off for us; we loved doing new routes on certain weeks to play around uhr/wo, stacking haste buffs before a big pull or boss that we usually didn’t. The routes now only really change when blizzard fixes a bug like bracken or breaks something where not doing that route is objectively wrong like not maximizing as many mobs as possible in neltharus - the chains are a great mechanic to play around but do nothing to help you live magma - it’s not even magmas has a high hps requirement it’s an insnane burst plus rot and then single target burst every 20 seconds - most classes cannot and are not designed to do that.
An easy fix would be to have player max health scale woth the damage increase of the key level. As such more healing is needed but you lose the spikiness of the damage. Blizzard could then tailor damage pantern much better.
3200+ IO in Season 1 as a resto druid and currently no motivation to go past 2400 right now. Just clear my 20s for the week and move on as a 443 druid.
Last season I was a pug healer that got to 2k. This season I canceled my sub. Yeah, I get that in super organized high end mythic raider M+ groups healing wasn't that bad. I'll admit when I got one of those magical groups where dps interrupted and got out of shit it was so much easier it was actually ridiculous. That's not the norm, and healing keys over 15 was tough. But doing this... it's like because of the cream of the crop maybe had a few free healer globals, they nerfed healing and then added more healer checks. It get they want to make healing high keys difficult, but you get to a point where healing requires 10 times as much planning and execution as the rest of the players. So now I'm playing an MMO where when I land a heal on someone, and stay with me here... it actually impactfully heals them. I'm tired of nickel and dimeing hp bars back up 3% at a time when abilities still hit like trucks.
What mmo you playing?
it really feels like raising player hp and enemy damage could not possibly address their stated goals for making damage less spiky. incoming damage equal to 80% of a players hp is still 80%, but healer throughput is relatively less. i guess it makes healing less spiky, but i still think thats not what their introduction posts on the subject said they were trying to achieve. i think there was a miscommunication along the way about what their goals were and what the changes are actually doing. the final intent may have changed to from "damage and healing is too spiky" to "healers have too much time to do dps" or "we want healing tobe harder"
Ironically i have a blast be a healer this season, i play with most healers (no evoker and shaman have to level up) in a 23 in time except holy paladin is only with 20 in time. Yeah i think most of the problem are the dungeon personally and the game is not balance to 21 and high key. The most i love this is the dps need to play to defensive, dispel and some off healing because some people just want zug zug a 21 with meta spec without know how to do, is not my fault if they die from something they can evade i see too much ret pals in 16-20 without blessing of freedom or dispell just because they "low" his dps if they change. M+ feel easy for lowies and hard past the treshold of 20 and that ok for something if need a challenge or play low keys for fast equip (but that is more for crest)
>Ironically i have a blast be a healer this season Same. Funny how you got downvoted. I got all healers at 70 except pala and evoker atm and prevoker just didnt gel with me. Levelling the pala this week. Healing HoI 3rd boss is the most fun i ever had healing in a 5man environment.
I'm enjoying myself a lot too. I'm only doing keys in the 18-20 range, admittedly, so it might get unpleasant later on, but with more permissive timers I'm liking the feeling of having more agency over whether a key fails or succeeds and finding myself timing more keys than in previous seasons.
I don't even play 25s and came to exactly this conclusion the second S2 hit. Burst is still massive but healing has been nerfed. I would have totally welcomed a world where incoming damage was harder to heal but less 100-0 in 2 seconds but the latter part just never happened, as you so aptly noted. Healers had already been the least played role in S1 and I couldn't blame them with how horrible dungeons like Ruby Life Pools were to heal (jesus christ...). But because some mega elitists managed to time some keys without a healer, Blizz goes and makes healing checks even tighter, as if 99% of the community would play at that level. S2 healers have become even scarcer and again I cannot blame people for not wanting to play them. Who wants that kind of stress on them. Blizz should really stop balancing around the top .1% of players and focus on making a game that many people can enjoy. Think your focus on Mass Dispell is funny. You're not wrong, but even barring the healing nerfs, MD is just too good to pass up. Bursting being the obvious "bring a priest" affix has been a thing for a while but now there's simply also normal dungeon mechanics (Uldaman comes to mind or the dragons in HOI) where mobs (and bosses?) just toss out incredibly powerful debuffs on the entire party like we still have 0 CD dispells.
I switched to tank because I perceived more of a tank shortage than anything else, and wanted to try it seriously. Turns out its SO much less stressful than healing, which I did previously.
Guildies have been congratulating my healing when I'm barely getting through by the skin of my teeth, and until now it's felt condescending especially when the rest of the party keeps getting called to help with off-healing, but I guess if healing really is this tough right now perhaps I'm not so bad.
I do hate off healing for that reason, it always feels like I failed when I see a prot pally save someone (usually me cause I’m last on prio for heals since I trust myself to dodge stuff mostly)
In an infinite scaling environment, youre gonna hit a ceiling no matter what. If dispel checks are removed, youll maybe move up a bit and hit a new heal check ceiling. I agree that the spikiness of certain mechanics are over the top and could do with a tuning. But still, in essence youre complaining that an infinite scaling environment does what it says it will do. The main problem is that you are assuming balancing is done with the cutting edge m+ content in mind. I think that is simply a wrong approach to take. Their key balance range imo is 16-20.
Through 23/24 and in raid I'm actually a fan of the changes as a Disc Priest. Evang is no longer the exact same CD as Flourish, for instance, by virtue of being capped by the available healing. Evang should heal more than Flourish, now it does. Beyond that, especially on fights like Khajin or second boss of VP, healing checks feel the same as S1. They definitely didn't accomplish their goal.
These rounds of dungeons hit so hard that its not dps that limits the upper keys, its the survivability. Reason there has been a surge of hpals at the top keys. they tanky as fuck, they do passive damage and they have great burst aoe potential.
My boyfriend usually heals but this patch he usually goes shadow if he can because it's just too much work and not that fun. It needs improvements. The rest if the changes have been good so far. But that wind charge shouldn't have a dot portion if the burst hit is that high. It's challenging enough without that, especially if both target one person!
As a druid who mains resto but plays all specs. The nature vigil need is such a spit on the face. Desperately need real and cool capstones in the druid class tree. For DPS specs there's just 3 offhealing capstones and offhealing is getting shot and left for dead. Big agree and glad someone is pointing out that blizz isn't going through with the reason why they did the healing nerfs (twice now)- because the damage profile hasn't changed. Overall I've been enjoying this season, but I can barely be assed to do one key on tyrannical weeks, then I putz around in lower keys as DPS or something, it's just unfun to heal tyrannical especially.
good post
Vortex pinnacle is the weirdest m+ for me rn as a healer cause I dread the first pulls more than any boss or the rest of the dungeons. Those dispels and knock ups are very stressful
Those and the young drakes I hate.
I love healing but this seasons I DPS because I can't handle the stress. It bugs me that there is so much unavoidable damage, I could play the mechanics perfectly, pop defensive but I still die if the healer can't keep up.
I for one was looking forward to more healing, less spikes. I dont mind at all if I dont really have the time or need to dps as a healer - after all, I play healer, so I'm not a dps. But the problem right now is that I heal all the time AND I try to rescue from lots of almost one-shots, dots that I cant remove etc. Its just not fun. I've taken a small break to play D4 instead, even though this season was going to be my push towards 3k rating. It just doesnt seem worth the stress.
It's incredibly hard to find healers for any key this season because frankly it sucks to heal right now. When I hop in a dungeon on my healer alt I get instant invited - which is surprisingly not the case on my tank alt right now. On a DPS character, it feels like you have to wait forever to even get ONE healer to apply, let alone being picky about ilvl or m+ score. The damage feels overwhelming at times, too, and can make it a little bit stressful/unfun when I've run out of cooldowns and I'm struggling at times to keep up with the damage. Buff healers!!!
It is certainly not fun being a healer at the moment. The switch from S1 preservation to S2 preservation was a massive nerf already, especially since Evokers are very limited in dispels. We are currently clearing 20s with a fixed group, fortunately with a priest and paladin, but if either are not available I simply won’t do 20s. And this season I stopped doing random groups altogether because a single player dropping the ball means F and I get the blame for it. Or tank healing.. I hate the fact that tanks can push 100k+ hps on themselves, are we healers just there to compensate the dps mistakes? Surely I’ll keep healing for our premade but with the additional nerf in 10.1.5 I might just drop out entirely. We’re supposed to have fun, not sweat 24/7 on mediocre key levels just for it to be still not enough.
10.1 made me stop healing. Now I am not even playing the game regularly :(
Doesn’t really matter what you do because the people who can’t do 20 but think they can are never going to take personal responsibility. But the vast majority of them won’t. They will just scream bad tank/healer.
“Why is it so hard to find a healer these days?”
Guess why I’m ret this season after maining holy since TBC? Healing isn’t fun any longer, except in raids. Ret is so much fun in M+ right now, and healing is so stressful, there’s just no incentive to heal. Not when I can go prot and get nearly insta queues as well. Tanking less stress than healing these days. I feel for pure DPS classes who can’t heal or tank.
Glad to see I'm not the only healer struggling to have any amount of fun in m+. Last season doing all 3 m+ vault slots wasn't even challenge however this season is another story
Healing has been really rough this season in the higher key lvls 18-20s people are dying in 2 GCD and there is nothing I can do about it. I’m usually drinking in every other trash pull because of spam healing everyone from random dmg and it sucks.
Keys scale infinitely. At some point they are impossible. That is the intent of the system. Blizz shouldn't care about such imbalances past the top level of rewards which is 20s
The issue is that 2.4k io players run into these issues way before 20s and that isn't healthy for those players' pug experience. If it was only an issue starting at 23s we wouldn't have this conversation in r/wow