The Healer Problem in PVP

[Mantrus]

There are a lot of opinions out there about the recent PVP patch notes, but this isn't one of them. This is about an indisputable problem and fact that the patch notes did not address.

Healers occupy a majority of Top 10 spots in every data center, most of the time with incomparably high win rates compared to other roles.

This isn't an opinion; this is an observation, and in itself it is a problem for the PVP system. If a single role is consistently getting high win percentages in every data center, it is not a good thing.

The main problem is that the patch notes did nothing to address this problem. Healers actually got the most minor touches compared to every other role, and if anything, healers are more prominent since damage was lowered.

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If you dislike reading then you can stop here as that's the biggest point I wanted to make. The next part will be my own opinion as to why this healer problem exists. These contributions to the problem, if true, further describe why this problem is very severe to the health of PVP.

Top healers have high win rates because of two intertwined problem factors:

1.) The skill ceiling of healers is much higher than the ceiling of every other role, both because healing is difficult and because the other roles were simplified.

2.) Healers have the most influence over a match by far, like if you have a bad healer you have no chance of winning the match outside of cheesing kills at the end. This problem actually has a lot of smaller problems that cause it.

The current healer win rate problem wouldn't exist with just one of these contributing factors. Even if healers have high influence, if both healers are basically the same then the match comes down to the other roles; and no matter how skilled a healer can be it doesn't mean anything if the role doesn't have the influence on the match.

A healer's influence is probably the bigger problem of the two. A single good healer requires more than just a single good DPS or tank to take down, which conflicts with how the current matchmaking tries to match ranks regardless of role. Overpowering good healers requires teamwork, but getting good teamwork requires more effort and effectiveness on the DPS' part than the healer simply being good.

I'd say this problem isn't in the highest level of play (premades) because at a certain threshold of coordination, burst damage will be uncounterable. But you won't get that level of coordination in solo queuing, let alone English servers. Balancing around a rarely if never achieved ideal level and ignoring this insane symptom plaguing the most active PVPers is ignorant. This is a problem, and that is a fact.


I'll be straightforward and say I have no idea how to solve this problem. Healers even in PVE are the most fundamental role to success. But I want SE to recognize that this is a problem, that they are aware of it, and that they are looking for a solution. If they truly do care about PVP and its most committed community, they must address this issue.