Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Where Are The Healers?

A comment had mentioned this might be an interesting topic and I agree.  For a while now I was thinking of writing a post about it but I never did because I feel the answer to the question is rather easy and not really something that needs much thought or discussion.

There are no healers because healing is currently the hardest part of the game.  Everything is on the healers, always is at the beginning of the expansion.  Previously it was the mana issues while gearing up, getting to the point where you were capable of keeping up with the incoming damage of the raids without going OOM 1 minute into a 6 minute fight.

Now with the standardized mana pool you would think that would be a non issue but you would be wrong, dead wrong.  Mana is still the number one concern.  Because now everything scales on the power of your heals and being they are less when gearing up you have to spam the expensive heals more often and are once again OOM.  So instead of stacking to get more mana (old style) and making the gearing up process hell you are stacking to get more power (new style) so you do not need to spam your expensive heals to play catch up which makes your life hell.

I've been teaching someone how to heal with their shaman.  Someone that has very little healing experience and as such the LFR was a great place to do some teaching.  A few months back we started our journey and I explained how things work and what he should do.  He was doing fairly well but just not quite there yet.  He would do his fair share in the LFR, top 3 all the time, but his healing was still not as good as it could be.

In time he started to get a little more comfortable with it and I gave him that one last tip, the one that tipped the scales from doing quite well, by LFR standards, to being ready to move up.  Healing wave.  A small, simple, cost neutral spell.  One he and hundreds, perhaps thousands of want to be healers out there over looked because it is a small heal.

How does that make you a better healer he asked?  I said, it helps you conserve mana and not everyone needs a big heal all the time or a fast heal all the time.  Many times you will find that a smaller heal is all that is needed so why waste mana on a more expensive one or mana on a faster one when there is no immediate danger of death.  Learn to use healing wave, make it your favorite spell.  It is even my left click on my healbot being I use it so damn often.

Within two weeks running that way, paying attention to health and using healing wave whenever it would be a better choice, he went from doing 40K-50K HPS to 70K-80K HPS.  One simple change.  This comes down to something I have always said here, and much better healers then myself disagree with me and being they are better I will defer to them, but I still will believe it, that overhealing is the single most telling stat in the game that shows the difference between a good healer and a bad one. 

If you are over healing a lot, you are wasting mana or you are over geared for the content and can get away with it.  Once he started looking at what was needed and casting the smaller heal, a nearly cost neutral heal, his total healing nearly doubled because he had more mana for longer and it was then when he needed it for the big healing moments when all the other healers were OOM that his numbers went through the roof.  I told him that healing when it was needed can really boost his numbers and told him one day I would run with him on one of my healers and show him what I mean.

So for fun one weekend later I went into the LFR with him on my priest and showed him that when you heal is the most important thing when you look at it from a numbers perspective only.  I know it was wrong of me to do what I did but I wanted to stress a point. 

I did not heal like crazy, I figured there were five other healers there to do that.  I healed only when I knew it would be needed most.  Nothing more.  I cheesed the healing meters so to speak.  I ended the first fight with number one healing done and 160K HPS. 

He said that was impossible, how did I manage that.  I said, no it is not impossible, it was because 90% of the healers in the game do not know how to manage their mana.  I only healed for the big moments early on, to get some huge boosts, and I went hog wild at the end with all my cooldowns when I knew everyone else would be out of mana and I could get the maximum effect out of my heals.  It basically comes down to I only healed people when they needed to be healed.  And at the end of the fight when everyone else had no mana, they would all need to be healed, a lot, and that is exactly what I did.  I cheesed it completely, just to prove a point.  I do not support meter cheesing.

See, it was not that I am a good healer, if anything I was doing the worst thing a healer could ever do there, I was being a bad healer, I waited until the last moment just to get numbers.  I think that makes me a horrible healer.  But the point was, to only heal people when they need to be healed.  It saved mana, and it gives you more bang for your buck.  160K HPS and ending the fight top healing done and best per second numbers I have ever seen in an LFR while still over 50% mana is proof that healing only when healing is needed will surely get you more bang for your buck.

It all comes down to mana and by abusing the broken system I got those numbers.  The people in there were the better players, for lack of another more accurate word, and they still were doing badly all thanks to mana issues.  So badly that someone like myself could abuse that to make myself look better than I really am.

He has me to teach him, I had others to teach me, so we know some of the things that matter, like mana management.  I might not be a great healer but I know there is a lot more to healing then just healing the person that needs heals because I learned and now I teach that.  Most people don't learn and never will have someone to teach them and the LF* system will assure they never will have someone to teach them.  They will just jump in and sink or swim.  Some will find their own way by learning and reading and practice, others will have someone help teach them and most will just give up and quit and put us in the situation we are in, a world with no healers for the looking for raid.

If those people were the better players and having so many issues, you have to think that is exactly why there are no healers in the LFR and we wait forever.  If the better healers are having all types of issues with it how do the average joe healers have a prayer of doing anything in them?  They would be OOM even faster, they would feel useless even quicker, they would get blamed even more brutally.

Want to have more healers, fix mana.  Make mana a non-issue.  Make it not matter, or a least matter a lot less.  Make mana management like threat management.  It used to be a huge issue for tanks but it is now a minor issue.  Sometimes you will still run into situations where you have threat problems but they will be few and far between.  Make mana more like that, sometimes you might have mana issue but they would be few and far between.

Let healers cast all they want to cast as often as they want to cast it.  You would see an influx of healers joining the game if it were not for the fact that everyone falls into the OOM trap so quickly, more so when they are at the start of a new stage gearing.  Let them spam their expensive fast heal all day long.  Just design the heals so that the more cost effective longer heal has an added bonus that the good players will take advantage of but the lesser players could still heal just spaming flash heal all day long and feeling as if they are contributing in a substantial and meaningful way.

In the end, the truly good players would shine because they would get more bang for their buck and you would see it through the over heals more so than you do now but the average player, which is truly a horrible player, can and will still be able to contribute.

When you wonder where the healers are I don't.  I know where they are because they are where I am on my healers lately.  I am not in the LFR because I got sick and tired of doing all the work and being the only person there that actually made sure I had enough mana for the entire fight.  Make mana a non issue, so I have help for the whole fight and don't feel the pressure of the entire raid is on my shoulders in the closing seconds of the fight when everyone is dreadfully low because everyone is OOM.  Let these people be able to cast for the entire fight instead of only the first third of it.  Give up on the managing mana concept, the masses just will never get it.  Make mana a non issue and the healers will return in droves.

Do you see why I said there was nothing to talk about?  It, in my opinion, was a quick answer, mana.  Healing in and of itself is not hard if you have a decent group.  It is actually very easy if you have a good group.  As long as you knew how to manage your mana.  But most groups are not good and most players can not figure out how to manage their mana.  The bad groups standing in things blizzard can not fix, that is a player problem, but they can remove the mana issue and they should.  And we would see a lot more healers around if they did.

Do you agree that the reason we see so few healers is the mana issue or is there some other reason you think there is a lack of healers out there?  Would love to hear another perspective on why there are so few healers out there willing to queue for the LFR.

28 comments:

  1. /waves hand

    hi GE - as a very non-non-non healer, why would a healer being doing HPS? whats HPS? heals per second? and if so, why does it matter if they do larger numbers? Is that the same chart or whatever it is, called a damage meter? Is that a healers version or is that how they show up on damage meters?

    And you are right, I didn't read the entire post - sorry, but I really got confused there. and if I see something that doesn't make sense, then it blows the entire read. I try to re-read, but until I have a small grasp of what it is.... :(

    Now there are lots of questions in the above comment. :)

    -roo (confused a lot of the time)

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    1. PS - but isn't controlling mana the same as controlling energy or rage or whatever hunters use(I forgot, sorry)? I mean we only have a limited supply of it and learning how to control it is part of figuring how to get the most out of your class.

      thanks.

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    2. Recount uses Heals per Second as a very rough guide to a Healers throughput. The only real metric for Healers is Did everyone Survive and if not did we get the Boss down.

      Grumpy is just showing that the stat minded people that it is possible to look good by putting the Raid in difficulty. The lower everybody's health is the less that gets wasted. A lot of heals go to the same player at the same and a certain amount of overhealing is expected. If you have all the over healers out of mana, and you are chucking out AoE healing then all those numbers belong to you, no shared overheals.

      The old school method was to top off the hit points and the Cataclym method was stop people hitting the bottom.

      During WotLK nobody ever ran out of Mana, and healers could just spam big heals all day. Now healers have to manage mana as their number one priority.

      I hate the mechanic of throwing out damage to regain mana.

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    3. HPS is not, repeat NOT, a good way to judge how you are as a healer like DPS is for a damage dealer.

      With that said, I did it to see what my potential output would be and how long I would be able to sustain it. I also did it to show the huge difference in healing when it is needed would be to just healing because you could.

      As for is controlling mana the same as controling rage or focus, no, it is not. Mana is a limited resource, rage and focus are basically endless, or at least focus is.

      @Bob

      And remember in wrath is when many people that never healed started to try healing, because it became fun. I always healed, but never raid healed until ICC. Before that I PvP healed only.

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  2. I agree that mana is an issue, and it was bloody awful in early Cataclysm. Every wipe was the healers fault and Blizzard had actually engineered it to be very difficult.

    One of the other reasons for a lack of Healers is that most people have a Dps'er for a main, and a tank and or healer as an Alt. The difficulty gearing one character is more than doubled when trying to gear an alt requiring two sets of gear, one to do the dailies and one to do the healing.

    The problem is always going to come down to Spirit and Hit being opposing stats. (Not even sure why we need Hit). Why do DPS casters not run out of mana?

    Raids dictate that the most important role in the Holy Trinity is the Tank then Healers and way down the evolutionary scale is the DPS'er.

    The only reward for being a healer is the reduced waiting times for LFR.

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    1. It was a nightmare at the beginning of cataclysm. Caused all out raid healers from wrath to quit. Not figuratively, actually. Two quit outright, neither has ever come back. One pops on from time to time but does not play. The third did some spot healing here and there but is pure DPS now. Cata healing destroyed many guilds at the start. It was the worst healing design ever.

      Healers are just too important on new content to be putting that much pressure on them. Dungeons can be done with everyone doing 25K DPS, but I am in there doing 100K basically making it easier on everyone. Dungeons are made for the tank to take a hit at a minimum gear level, but now they are over geared and doing 50K DPS themselves so not taking as much damage and ending the fight faster. Both these things make it easier on healers but really there is nothing the healer can do to make their life easier, unless they DPS too. Which gets to what you said.

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  3. I think it may help somewhat but since the new healers probably never experienced the unlimited mana style of healing prevalent at the end of WotLK, it may not have as big effect as you're expecting.

    I think a better solution would be to allow healers and tanks to train their skills. DPS can train their skills in a safe environment - either soloing or training dummies, so they only have to deal with encounter mechanics being new. Tanks have to deal with more and healers, going from dungeons to LFR or raids, have to deal with the fact encounters last 5 times as much, so saving mana becomes much more important. (I don't think it's the difficulty of saving mana being an issue, rather the fact we have to learn it while our lack of knowledge affects other players.)

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    1. I see what you mean. Basically everything you do is a DPS test. Tanking is the same, I see how many mobs and I can pull and how long I can survive when I am out in the world. Hence the reason I absolutely love leveling a tank. It makes me practice tanking and active mitigation that way. But as you said, there is not practice for healing.

      When I first started learning how to heal I had a leg up for two reasons. One, I had healed PvP a lot, and two, I had a very helpful guild. But many people have neither of those things and getting into healing can be quite overwhelming.

      All the pressure is on the healer. There is no learning phase for them. It is put on some gear and heal. That is how you learn and it is really scary for new players.

      See the example I used, where I taught that person how to heal, then taught him how to conserve mana. That works, but that is the problem. Where are the people teaching the new players that? In the LFR, I know, not a perfect world, but it still shows a fair representative of the non heroic raiders, you will see 4 of the 6 healers are usually OOM half way into the fight. They spend the rest of the fight feeling helpless and useless and end the fight feeling it is their fault if there is a wipe because they did not have mana.

      The game does not teach people to conserve mana, so it should not be a part of the game mechanics as I see it. Not everyone that wants to try healing will have someone like me to teach them how important that is.

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    2. On one hand, I would like to say the game doesn't teach people how to heal either and you're only trying to cure symptoms rather than the problem.

      On the other, I am afraid the cause is a combination of holy trinity distribution of roles and existence of soloing (with no or weak companions). Removal of either is probably too revolutionary for WoW, considering its age.

      In the end, I believe your solution may help somewhat but there would still be DPS queues.

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    3. There will always be DPS queues only because that is the glory role. You get to see those big numbers on recount and that attracts a great deal of people.

      Healers, or people that actively like to heal more precisely, are a different type of people. People that just go after numbers are bad healers, like I said I was in the example I used. And that is partly why the role of DPS is more appealing.

      Easing up the mana issue might help a few of those people that want to heal but just can't get a hang of it a chance to learn instead of feeling useless or going OOM so quick they never really have a chance to learn.

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  4. I also think that everyone else in LFR is to blame for the lack of healers in LFR. I ran the new Throne LFR today and I was appalled. I mean I would expect that sort of behaviour after a week or so but not day 1. People were just doing whatever they wanted and depending on the healers to pick up the slack. They can't blame ignorance for it because I took the lead of the group, and explained everything. Some people moaned and were like "go go pull now" but it was day 1, I wanted to at least try and do it the right way.

    I know it's just trash but those spirits with the healing debuff hurt. In normal if you pull more than one then you wipe, you might as well suicide as there's no chance, in LFR if you pull three then you might survive if people single target them but even though I marked them people just aoe'd. We killed 1 and had the other 2 quite low when we wiped. I'd said repeatedly in /ra and I'd /rw it to stay on the stairs, but half the group ran ahead and pulled the whole bridge. For the trash after the 2nd boss a hunter thought I was going too slowly and went and pulled another 2 packs. As I'd not done that trash before ever I was possibly being too cautious, but given the trash between boss 1 and boss 2 has mechanics I was positively being rash already with how much I was pulling. Despite me begging several times, another hunter kept taunt on the entire lfr, which I don't think should affect bosses but I can tell you it did.

    First boss is quite simple on normal and so on "nerfed to hell nothing hurts" lfr it was laughable. Second boss with all the adds was a nightmare. What do you do when you have threat? Well running to the tank might be a plan but no people were running away from me. My taunt has an 8 second cd. I stressed several times before the raid what needed to be interrupted and only me, and the guildmates I was in there with, interrupted anything. Thankfully the venom dot doesn't hurt on lfr as I was the only one that cleansed it away too. The less said about the 3rd boss the better.

    Now I've been wiping on the 2nd boss with my guild, getting to about the 3rd door. We just need practice on the various mechanics and I hoped that if a few of us jumped in LFR we could do that. However, already it's turning into a "stand in any kind of shit, aoe-fest, nuke whatever" deal.

    I think that's why healers are scarce because they are having to pick up the slack for everyone not doing what they are supposed too. I followed my tactics for normal as much as I was able, so did my co-tank, and the 3 other guildies with us. I'm not saying the other 20 people in the group were crap, some were screaming the same things I was about what people should be doing, but on the whole it was not a good omen for the first day. If LFR is like this now, it's only going to get worse. If I didn't need gear and rep I wouldn't queue for it, and the second I don't they are going to lose a tank in the queue. My friends who are healers say the same thing though we wish to campaign to change the name of it. It can't be Looking for Raid because that is not raiding, it's a mockery of it. How about Looking for Morons instead? Now that's unfair as not everyone in there is an idiot but man, I actually said today "poor healers" and it's only going to get worse.

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    1. Just read my post back and I thought I'd said about the 2nd bosses adds but I didn't. Now I sometimes have threat issues with them in normal as they come from lots of different directions, in waves, and there's a fair few of them. However, LFR is much much worse. I explained the kill order beforehand, I marked those adds when they spawned in case people forgot, and those adds I swear were the last to die, but only just as it was aoe aoe aoe. If people did pick an add to target it wasn't a marked one either, and then they're surprised when they get threat? If you unload on something the tank isn't hitting well what do you expect? Also giving the tank a second to hit something, especially ranged attacking adds at a distance. The add is running to me as I've taunted it and hit it with my judgement/avengers shield if that was off cd, a ranged unloads onto it, it stops running to me and goes to attack them instead. I'm running around like an idiot doing my best, but it's just not enough.

      As I said I have trouble with all the adds in normal, but in normal people are helping. Our hunter misdirects, people attack the marked adds, people kite adds to me if they have threat. So while I need practice on the adds LFR isn't exactly somewhere I can get it, as it's just an exercise in frustration instead. I dare any tank to be able to corrall and keep all the adds under those LFR conditions.

      With a ton of dps being attacked by adds, that isn't exactly nice for the healers either. Honestly I seriously wish blizz would make their mind up about LFR. Either it's storymode, or it's a raid difficulty tier. If it's storymode then make it's gear drops the same as the previous tier, and don't allow rep from it, or make it so you're locked on rep from one or the other. If it's a difficulty level then make a 10 man option. That way my guild can run it together, get the gear and the practice on mechanics. Having it as both is just evil. I know, I know I can't say I'm 'forced' to run it, but if I want to be the best I can be for my guild, if we want to progress on normal then we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot to pass up the gear upgrades in LFR. We cleared T14 normal this week. I don't need anymore normal gear. However, LFR gear is higher than all normal mode T14 drops, so essentially every slot we can upgrade in LFR. Only heroic raiders don't need LFR but they have to run it as well for the reputation boost for the valor items. It's unfair really, and the only reason why blizz makes us do it is because they'd have to nerf LFR even more if no real raiders went in it.

      That was a rant, I'd apologise but I've a feeling you feel the same way. I just had such high hopes for day 1.

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    2. The trash in the LFR was brutal, harder than any of the bosses. My, mostly guild, group went in there and spanked the three no problem but we almost wiped on the bridge. It was quite embarrassing to do so well on the bosses and screw up so badly on the trash. I felt bad for the healers because it was hard for them to keep up, but the point is this, you are right, blame the people in the LFR.

      There was this asshole shaman who I would love to name and shame but I do not do that with his pull pull pull attitude and a mage that liked to chain pull and kept finding more mobs I did not even know exist. These are the people that make me not want to heal the LFR. I would prefer to let them die like they should but being smart heals would heal them and they do not deserve it, I don't heal anyone there by not doing them at all.

      I think the second boss issue you mentioned was because it was a mixed group. My mostly guild group had no problem because both tanks were our tanks and we had three hunters there all MDing to the appropriate person. it didn't hurt that none of the adds lived for more than 10 seconds either. But with too many people all attacking different targets, even if I am the tank, I have a let them die attitude. When I tank I have a rule. If I did not hit the target yet, you don't. If you hit a target before I do, you tank it. Same goes for LFR.

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  5. ok, thanks GE, Bob and Tait. As a non-non-non healer, I would not have known. As far as ever receiving heals, I pretty much took care of myself (and pet) in what little raiding or instances I have done. I always figured the healer had their hands full keeping the tank alive who kept the baddy off of me.

    But GE - why is mana, ohhh, it is because it is generated by potion or spirit and spirit can't be used while in combat! Is that right?
    (let me know if I am right)

    That doesn't make sense why mana can't self generate like rage, focus or energy!

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    1. while in combat.

      You need to have more posts like this, so others (like me) can see what the other cloth classes go thru. Thanks, GE!

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    2. Disclaimer: non-non-healer as well, so forgive me if I explain things wrong.

      Mana regen is very slow during combat. As a result, mana users have a much larger mana pool than rage/focus/energy users. Mana-based dps usually has something to regenerate mana during combat as well but at the cost of reduced dps/mobility, etc. Healers don't really have that mechanic, or it's much more limited. This is by design though.

      DPS requires constant maximum throughput. You can't manage your mana and still maximize DPS; you are more limited by CDs and GCDs. However, healers aren't supposed to maximize HPS; they're supposed to keep people alive. Blizz doesn't want it to be where healers just spam big heals all day long and everyone lives. They want a balance where dps must be good enough to kill the boss before the boss outperforms the healers and kills the raid, so Blizz designs things such that the healers should be out of mana by the end of the fight (if people don't stand in shit and the healer uses their mana effectively). This makes healing very difficult at the beginning of the tier when everyone is learning the fights and haven't upgraded their gear yet; as a result, people take a lot more damage and healers have a lot less healing capacity.

      Barring a major overhaul of the game, how to get more healers? I agree that several things need to be addressed in the game.

      For example:
      -Teach healers how to heal. Add healing training dummies that randomly take damage over time and see how long you can keep them alive. Add dungeon boss fights that require healing, kind of like Valithria in ICC. Add healer scenarios where 1 or 3 healers keep a group of NPCs alive during a fight. (likewise, the same kinds of things could be applied for tanks)

      -Have the same gear for dps and healing. Also, try to reduce the need to totally reforge/re-gem/re-enchant when switching specs; if DPS spec stacks crit, healing spec shouldn't stack mastery. It doesn't need to be for all specs but they could definitely pair up with a dps spec: resto=balance, resto=elemental, and shadow=holy/disc. holy=ret would be a bit funky but they could figure something out.

      -Punish players for not avoiding avoidable damage. Stand in fire and it hurts like hell and gives you a debuff for 30 seconds so that if you do it again, you DIE! Healers can't heal stupid so don't make them. People make mistakes but they shouldn't make them repeatedly. Once "burned", twice shy...

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    3. Jaeger's got it right but healing spells are also (in general) more expensive mana-wise than damage except for heal (HL, HW etc.) and some cooldowns.

      I also agree with his suggestions. :)

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    4. Some good ideas there Jaeger. I like the idea of punishing the people that take avoidable damage. Being DPS are all about the numbers, give them a 20% damage reduction for getting hit by something avoidable. That would keep them from getting hit.

      But would it?

      In randoms people do not care, they will just do 20% less damage thus making the fight 20% longer and the healer 20% more stressed and 20% more likely to run out of mana.

      I do think that would be an excellent heroic mechanic however.

      Same gear for DPS and healing should be how it is. Remove spirit, remove hit, remove expertise, remove parry, remove dodge. Gear is now just gear. No more healer gear or tank gear crap. Just cloth, leather, mail and plate.

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    5. alright, I knew someone would explain it to me at the level I need it these days. Thank you Jaeger, Imak and GE.

      I can understand why Bliz did it this way, but it seems silly.

      As Thomas Edison said thousands of times "oh well, back to the drawing board"

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  6. Hi Mr Grumpy. I like your blog even though I don't play WOW anymore (RL time issues & too many clowns in-game). My first toon I tried to be a healer (without a guild), but the grief just in 5-mans, while trying to learn what to do, was brutal. So I gave up.

    Perhaps something for you to consider...I used to really enjoy healing in Team Fortress 2.
    1. You heal the injured at a rate that increases as they get weaker.
    2. You can overheal a bit to give a temporary buff to health.
    3. If you stay alive long enough you can give a temporary shield or dps buff.

    You still had to work hard to stay alive and to help the team, so it was not boring.

    I don't know if that would translate to WOW...

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    1. Sounds like it would be a version of disc priest healing. But instead of automatically putting on a bubble it would only bubble on over heals. Effectively removing over heals from the game for the most part.

      I really like that idea but could see people over gearing content making it that much easier with super bubbles on everyone. Perhaps a combo of mana management with that and a limit to something like the shield can not exceed 25% of the total life would work. Nice idea. I wonder if they could do something like that. Doesn't seem like it would be too hard.

      Glad you like it. Hope you have found something else interesting to pass your time.

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  7. I always thought the whole game of managing mana as a healer was boring (I healed raids before and am still doing that from time to time). If it was up to me, I would have reworked the healing role so that you'd heal for maybe one-third of the entire time and spend the rest of the time dispelling players and debuffing / positioning / otherwise controlling bosses and trash (imagine a death grip-like spell with an automatic 5-second banish at the end for controlling trash, things like that).

    On another topic, news from the other side of the game: burst in arenas is just... LOL. Everything dies in a stun except for blood DKs. :-)

    More seriously, I am deeply worried about PVE items. Forget heroic trinkets and weapons, regular thunderforged items are better (by about 5-8%, a significant amount) than top PVP gear. Unless they change something, this season will have the most serious comeback of PVE items into PVP I have ever seen. Like we didn't have enough problems already. But hey, I am adopting, at least 2v2 as double DPS is fun. You burst, they drop, done. :-)

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    1. I noticed that everything dies within a stun thing doing some PvP the other day.

      I think the best way to fix PvP would be to completely remove all healing, all CC, all stuns, interrupts, slows, etc.

      Just do a blanket 90% damage reduction and let the teams fight it out using their skills and abilities.

      I had gotten to the point where when I got hit, I just took my hands off the keyboard and waited for death. That is just not a fun play style and I can't see how it ever made it to this stage. All I can guess that that the people that design WoW PvP make the people that design WoW PvE look smart because this is worse.

      The reason double DPS is fun is because there are no healers. ;) Remove healing for PvP and PvP would be better. MY opinion only of course.

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  8. I actually asked my raid leader at one point (holy paladin) if he finds holy light useful. He gave me a looong speech as to why it's important and all that so I can understand what you're saying about healing wave.

    I don't LFR much and I don't raid heal either, but I think maybe some healers have the same reasoning I do when joining LFR. Which is - as tank or healer you actually have to do your job, you can't afk like 60% of the dpses do. Also, your performance impacts the outcome and it's also expected to cover for lack of dps (you wrote something about this once). So healing in LFR is probably not as fun as dpsing and has some pressure on it. Most people still have no idea they have personal cooldowns they can use to help the healers and other people are oblivious to moving from bad, so a healer's life, in general, is harder I suppose.

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    1. I can't tell you the number of bosses I have 2 healed and 3 healed in the LFR. But I can tell you the number I have 6 healed, NONE. Not once, on any healer, have I ever went into an LFR where someone wasn't doing DPS as a healer or just occasionally spamming an AoE heal.

      I personally think anyone that does that should get a 6 month ban from using the LFR, second offense a 1 year ban from using it, 3rd offense, lifetime ban for all your characters.

      / end rant

      Just hate people that go in and do nothing. Just because a group can do it without them doesn't mean they should have to.

      You are right about the players. A rogue use feint? Never. A hunter use FD when a mob is on him? Never. A mage use iceblock? Never. A shadow priest with dispersion? Never.

      It is amazing how when heavy damage comes in the thought in everyones mind is "how much DPS can I get in before I die" instead of "how can I stay alive so I can do even more DPS".

      So bad healers making healers lives harder and making more work for them. Bad damage dealers not helping when they are 100% capable of doing so by decreasing the damage they are taking. And tanks, do not get me started on tanks that have no clue what active mitigation is. Maybe 90% of them have no clue which means they are hard to heal. Yes, life is harder on a healer. And in my opinion, unlimited mana can help, a little bit. There is no amount of mana that can save you, but at least that is one less thing they need to stress about.

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    2. only one thing for ya GE

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9aYB2Waa8o

      if this doesn't make you smile, then I recommend chocolate.

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    3. That is a nice little ditty. Can't rightfully recall if I had ever heard it before but I liked it.

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  9. with apologies to Pete Seeger

    Where have all the healers gone, long time passing?
    Where have all the healers gone, long time ago?
    Where have all the healers gone?
    Young tanks have taken them everyone.
    Oh, when will they ever learn?
    Oh, when will they ever learn?

    Where have all the young tanks gone, long time passing?
    Where have all the young tanks gone, long time ago?
    Where have all the young tanks gone?
    Gone for dps’ers everyone.
    Oh, when will they ever learn?
    Oh, when will they ever learn?

    Where have all the dps’ers gone, long time passing?
    Where have all the dps’ers gone, long time ago?
    Where have all the dps’ers gone?
    Gone for graveyards everyone
    Oh, when will they ever learn?
    Oh, when will they ever learn?

    Where have all the graveyards gone, long time passing?
    Where have all the graveyards gone, long time ago?
    Where have all the graveyards gone?
    Gone to healers, everyone.
    Oh, when will they ever learn?
    Oh, when will they ever learn?

    Where have all the healers gone, long time passing?
    Where have all the healers gone, long time ago?
    Where have all the healers gone?
    Young tanks have taken them everyone.
    Oh, when will they ever learn?
    Oh, when will they ever learn?

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