Where are all the healers?

[Alisi]

Going to disagree with you. Not only was our mana bar reduced and fixed to a small amount, Blizzard also slashed the potency of all our healing spells draconically. The days of spamming heal like in WotLK were over.

Yeah, this was basically what I said. LOL. The real issue was the fixed MP bars and they never changed that so there wasn't any unnerfing to healers that went on during Cata. They didn't slash the potency of our healing spells either. Not really. What they did was change them around. I was a holy priest at the time so we had heal, greater heal, and flash heal. They upped the MP cost of FH and lowered the potency while they upped the potency and lowered the costs of heal and greater heal. So, basically, I spammed greater heal, never touched or used FH, and used heal only to renew the chakra system when you had to cast a heal every 5 seconds or so to keep that up.


The thing that just really sticks out is the shinanigans of the tanks, since I healed 95% of the time. There'd be *those* dungeons where you just knew they'd refuse to do like Grim Batol. And I'd feel so terrible for DPS because it was like a 2 hr wait for them. The tank would just be awful and camp or they'd intentionally kill the group -- anything so that they wouldn't get a debuff and could requeue again. Then Blizz was like 'we gotta protect those getting kicked!' so they started punishing those who kicked and those who got kicked. My time limit before I could kick was an hr and I solely kicked tanks who went off line. You get tanks that would also get an hr before they could be kicked. It was just hell.

I remember this one time I got the dungeon in the sky (I forgot the name of it), an easy one, but the tank camped before the first pull. I decided to wait with these poor DPS for a new tank. We got one an hr later. He comes in, sees we haven't started and says 'oh, a fail group. well, I'm going now' and camped before we could even say that the other tank hadn't started the dungeon. That was basically my experience with Cata healing. If you could find a group that would go the distance then great. But generally you'd get a jerk tank who'd ruin it all for everyone. Cata killed all my tank related empathy. LOL

[ToasterMan]

Dropped healing for Samurai. Don't regret it one bit

[Tridus]

The pace of the combat is like you have to be on crack. I frankly cannot enjoy playing DPS at this point anymore since I'm staring at my bar more then looking at the game. Might as well call this Final Bars XIV since that's what you're looking at about 90% of the time during combat. I've just tried healing and I'm having lots of fun doing it just like how I have fun playing a tank. I just wish they would slow down the combat and just make the attacks hit harder so that we can enjoy the game.

If you ever want to see "World of Bars", find a screenshot of a healer in Molten Core. That had *40* people and was before the advent of compact healer UIs like Grid. It was a running joke that no healer could lead a raid in there because they'd never actually seen anything except the floor directly in front of themselves.

[Kacho_Nacho]

The thing that just really sticks out is the shenanigans of the tanks, since I healed 95% of the time. There'd be *those* dungeons where you just knew they'd refuse to do like Grim Batol. And I'd feel so terrible for DPS because it was like a 2 hr wait for them. The tank would just be awful and camp or they'd intentionally kill the group -- anything so that they wouldn't get a debuff and could requeue again. Then Blizz was like 'we gotta protect those getting kicked!' so they started punishing those who kicked and those who got kicked. My time limit before I could kick was an hr and I solely kicked tanks who went off line. You get tanks that would also get an hr before they could be kicked. It was just hell. Cata killed all my tank related empathy. LOL

Oh neat! I was a holy priest too!

It's been so long since Cata that I can't remember my healing style. I think I went with the Chakra which turned you into a Renew healer* while using Sanctuary(?) and Circle of Healing as my AoE.

Hahaha! So true! I forgot about that until you mentioned it. A whole lot of tanks hated Grim Batol. They'd go in all Rambo-like pulling everything and get turned into a crushed can of tomato paste in 3.5 seconds.

However, I enjoyed that dungeon because it was the perfect training ground for new players. I'd mentor them along from the vantage point of their healer. It was so rewarding when you saw the light bulb go off and everything click into place.

*no longer in the game

[paoweeotter]

everyone wants healers to dps so they rolled dps instead lol

[Kacho_Nacho]

everyone wants healers to dps so they rolled dps instead lol

There is truth in what you say. The pressure to maintain good dps while keeping the party alive contributed to making the healing role too stressful and unfun for a lot of players. Players want to play what's fun.

The developer's focus on red mage & samurai resulted in two remarkable jobs. However, white mage & scholar seem to have been afterthoughts. Players can feel the inattention and go elsewhere. In this case, to red mage & samurai.

[Taika]

The pressure to maintain good dps while keeping the party alive contributed to making the healing role too stressful and unfun for a lot of players.

Really though? From my experience, it's much more demanding to maintain good DPS as a DD than maintaining at least "good enough" DPS on healer while keeping everyone alive, and it seems to be much more common to require certain DPS numbers from DDs than it is from healers (or tanks). Of course it varies a bit what different people consider difficult or stressful, but I at least personally feel maintaining good DPS in a long fight is much more demanding (and also requires a lot more planning).

[Ghishlain]

Really though? From my experience, it's much more demanding to maintain good DPS as a DD than maintaining at least "good enough" DPS on healer while keeping everyone alive, and it seems to be much more common to require certain DPS numbers from DDs than it is from healers (or tanks). Of course it varies a bit what different people consider difficult or stressful, but I at least personally feel maintaining good DPS in a long fight is much more demanding (and also requires a lot more planning).

For DPS and healers, I feel the content the players are participating in certainly affects the perception of Stress.

If you think of DPS in any 4-man content, it's pretty stress-free. You can maintain uptime fairly easily and it's not like you have to be on the absolute bleeding edge to clear the content in a decent time. You can generally pop CDs without worry about wasting them and derping a mechanic will generally not result in death thus allowing DPS to basically play on cruise control if desired. This is unlike healer where you have to contend with a large variety of unknowns such as "will the other players derp" or "is the tank going to pull wall-to-wall and will they use cooldowns?" which can lead to stressful situations.

This is unlike Savage raid content where you have to consider all the mechanics and plan your rotations and CDs around the mechanics to optimize for the fight. Your uptime will suffer due to mechanics and invulnerability phases and mechanical failures will result in a major dip in personal DPS. This can lead to some pretty high stress levels for DPS to perform well. In contrast, healers are still fixing derps like they would in 4-man content, except now they'll be using a Raise more often than naught instead of a Cure or HoT and while there is stress regarding cooldowns or not, the healer should understand fights well enough to know when they'll be needing to use their bigger heals. A lot of the variables for Savage raiding is known and it's just a matter of playing around those variables with the smaller number of unknowns leading to less stress and more "I can definitely fix this" moments.

As for personal preference and comfort, I definitely also feel much more comfortable and less stressed on healer than I do on DPS. I played MCH for the entire Creator-tier and effectively performed average at the role and it stressed me out because I coudln't play at the calibur of skill I'm used to playing on a healer. I'm currently WHMing through the entire Deltascape-tier and reflecting on my performance, I feel I'm playing exceptionally well and have very little stress. I stress about performance but not in the same way I did while playing MCH. I imagine there are players that are the exact opposite of me - they feel stressed playing a healer but not so stressed playing a DPS due to comfort.

I can definitely see where Kacho is coming from with their comment too. The large amount of unknowns that can occur at running 4-man and 24-man can lead to some particularly high tension healing scenarios which some players will revel in (*raises hand high*) and others will scream bloody murder at. Likewise for your comment, being able to perform well in a Savage raid environment can also lead to stresses that, in turn, some players will revel in and others will scream bloody murder at. I definitely do feel its important to discuss the context of type of content when talking about these stresses since each have differing levels of skill and commitment required for success.

[Tridus]

The main thing is that healers get to deal with everyone else's derp, as mentioned. That got hammered home last night in the ugliest O4N I've ever seen. The other healer and the RDM each died 3 times. Half the group was getting hit by Pyretic somehow, the SAM never got out of Void Thunder, people falling off... it was a time. Can you say healer LB3? Because I can.

I was exhausted afterward. Forget about doing DPS. That was simply a matter of picking people up and dragging them through the fight. That's not a thing DPS players ever have to contend with.

[Taika]

I was exhausted afterward. Forget about doing DPS. That was simply a matter of picking people up and dragging them through the fight. That's not a thing DPS players ever have to contend with.

To be fair, that's not a thing a healer player should have to deal with either. It's not a healer's job to babysit and carry other players through stuff they obviously aren't prepared to handle. And if they always get carried they'll never learn.