Blizzard Seems Intent On Making Healing Classes No Fun To Play. Why?

[Deleted]

You are missing the point. In WoD you never had to level in your healing spec. You could just kick over to your DPS spec instantly.

But Legion has created a new structure that revolves around the artifact weapon. This new system encourages you to level in the spec that you most want to play. So consider Holy. You are leveling in Holy because you want to do group content as a Holy Priest. But while leveling your toolkit is minute. You have no silence, no stun, no root, no slow. Oh yeah, you can still shackle undeads and that's about it.

Basically you are going to spend ten levels using your 3 damage spells on a bunch of mobs while keeping yourself alive with your massive healing toolkit. I don't know how anybody can deny that this is boring game play.

Blizzard has created a new gameplay model where the player is likely to level as his main spec. But they have not provided much in the way of utility or interesting abilities while doing so. Instead they have pruned away a lot of useful stuff. My resto shaman has lost a ton of useful and interesting totems and gained nothing in return.

You can still level as Dps and just save up all your artifact power upgrades you get for holy. You can already get your second and third artifact at lvl 102. There is only 1 quest so far that gives you artifact power automatically (and u could just change spec as far as i remember), everything else is from items. So maybe you should have done some research before you assumed

Holy also has a stun, wich can also be used to silence and if you choose the talent you can make it into a stun that doesnt break or choose the knockback wich also slows. Disc has fear + knockback talent. Its really not that bad. And i myself almost never need it cause i can easily keep myself alive having 3 mobs on me without ccing.

Blizzard made healer leveling more friendy, but in no way are you forced to level as healer.

[WowIsDead64]

I ask myself this question since Cata. Since Cata's nerf healing became very irresponsive -> healers became much less fun to play. Responsive healing - is when you visually see effect of your spells. Irresponsive healing - most healing spells are "passive" and their effect is long term and seen in Recount only. Since that moment healing has been becoming only worse and worse. For example I hoped, that Monk would be interesting healer. But mist healing mechanic appeared to be extremely boring and clunky. And in Legion after another pruning... I don't know. Why do we need such boring healers? May be Blizzard should delete them from game all together? May it's their goal?

[Delekii]

You can still level as Dps and just save up all your artifact power upgrades you get for holy. You can already get your second and third artifact at lvl 102. There is only 1 quest so far that gives you artifact power automatically (and u could just change spec as far as i remember), everything else is from items. So maybe you should have done some research before you assumed

Holy also has a stun, wich can also be used to silence and if you choose the talent you can make it into a stun that doesnt break or choose the knockback wich also slows. Disc has fear + knockback talent. Its really not that bad. And i myself almost never need it cause i can easily keep myself alive having 3 mobs on me without ccing.

Blizzard made healer leveling more friendy, but in no way are you forced to level as healer.

Holy fire on cooldown
Holy word on cooldown
Smite


That's it.

Healers might be less painful to level with than before, but we also never needed to heal to level before. You say you can level as dps and save artifact power, but that is no better; you won't have the dps artifact upgrades either (whereas before you would be no different to anyone else leveling as dps).

[Moxal]

Once I got to about ilvl 700 (from the 680 templates) leveling as Mistweaver wasn't bad, just boring as hell. And questing is one of my favorite things to do in RPGs.

[EternalBany]

I'm a casual player but I've always prefered to play as a healer. I just don't enjoy playing DPS in groups.

Of course I've always maintained a DPS for leveling and questing. Get a good staff, max it out and use it for both Healing and DPS. This worked great in the past.

In Legion I was looking forward to healing in the various leveling dungeons and getting a leg up on my healing artifact. But judging from the PTR the healing specs look fairly miserable to play. So much utility has been removed. Blizzard's new idea seems to be that, if you are a healer, you are really just a healer and you don't need any fun or interesting abilities outside of healing.

Is anybody looking forward to leveling their healing spec? Is there a good reason why healers need to be so dull and boring outside of healing?

I know there are various ways around this like leveling as a DPS, saving your AP items and putting them in your healing artifact. But that seems amazingly clunky and sounds like it will just give you two unenjoyable specs to play.

I think Blizzard is setting things up for a major healer shortage. When players like me who really prefer to play as a healer find themselves thinking "screw it, maybe I'll just level as a DPS" it may mean healers are hard to find.

In fact, they are fairly hard to find for PUGs already. I recently leveled a new disc priest from 1 to 60 and got ista-queues the whole way like tanks always did in the past. Healing random idiots is so miserable that hardly anybody wants to do it anymore. DPS and tanks mostly just run wild and expect the healer to provide cover for all their bad play. It's often like 4 pre-schoolers in a playground, running around out of control, with mommy healer hovering over them to make sure they don't get hurt. In Legion even mommy may decide to give up the healing fight.

i dont understand where you are coming from at all
I just installed the ptr, i currently as a holy paladin i have 3 instant heals, a dispel and 2 heals, an aura, saving cooldowns and 2 buffs; when i get my artifact ill have access to 1 or 2 more spells and 1 abilitie ... its TOO fucking much

I am considering playing monk mistweaver cause of that, my mouse is all binded up to heal competitively..its just too much, i fear i might get fucking tendinities or something

[worcester]

You are silly if you play a healing spec with the intent of adventuring. Healing specs (and somewhat tank specs) are designed to do dungeons and raids. No one really "enjoys" solo questing as a healer, its simply something that has to be overcome to do the aforementioned things. In fact, historically, healers have never been good at solo content and Legion is probably the best it has ever been. Also, tanks are known to be the bottleneck and not healers due to the raid to dungeons tank:healer disparity.

Healing also is all about that control factor. Maybe you aren't cut out for healing if you think its a chore to cover for others mistakes (which is part of the responsibilities of a healer, especially for pug content).

[Firen]

I've tried out healing with my holy priest on the PTR and I liked it a lot. Love that the chakras are gone and the serendipity mechanic is cool. Now just looking forward to some additional things with the artifact :-)

Can't talk about other healers though.

[secondratetech]

Holy fire on cooldown
Holy word on cooldown
Smite

Not to discredit what you are saying. I think it is only fair to point out:
Holy really has 5 damage abilities:
You can't exclude holy nova anymore. It is an effective aoe spell that you will absolutely use while leveling.
At level 90 you will also add divine star talent. No reason not to use this talent while leveling. Its double hit does more damage than your smite, is on a short cooldown, deals aoe damage, & provides minor sustain.


You can also talent into an aoe knockback w/ a strong snare (in PVE it is as effective as a short root) while keeping the disorient/nuke -OR- have a 5 second stun/nuke.

There is a fun cooldown interaction with the apotheosis talent that can grant you a 5 second stun every 12 seconds.

The artifact proc acts like a fun little trinket, boosting your damage about every minute and a half.

[Tharkkun]

Holy fire on cooldown
Holy word on cooldown
Smite


That's it.

Healers might be less painful to level with than before, but we also never needed to heal to level before. You say you can level as dps and save artifact power, but that is no better; you won't have the dps artifact upgrades either (whereas before you would be no different to anyone else leveling as dps).

How is that any different than the past? You always were at odds with what gear you chose during leveling. Take the spirit weapon or non-spirit weapon. The difference now is you don't get stuck with a weapon praying for RNG to upgrade it. You have total control over how you progress each weapon by the things you do in the world.

If you don't want to do questing then just queue and wait. That's not changing at all.

[Delekii]

How is that any different than the past? You always were at odds with what gear you chose during leveling. Take the spirit weapon or non-spirit weapon. The difference now is you don't get stuck with a weapon praying for RNG to upgrade it. You have total control over how you progress each weapon by the things you do in the world.

If you don't want to do questing then just queue and wait. That's not changing at all.

Both the spirit and the non-spirit weapons you choose have zero relevance once you outlevel them. Taking shadow gear from levels 1 to 99 makes no difference once you hit 100 and start getting holy gear. The artifact power that you spend (or don't) will last until the end of the expansion. This is the first time in the game's history that you have to choose where to spend resources you gather from the first second the character starts leveling that will affect its progression for the rest of the expansion. Thus; the effort that has been put into making leveling as a healer or tank functional.

Not to discredit what you are saying. I think it is only fair to point out:
Holy really has 5 damage abilities:
You can't exclude holy nova anymore. It is an effective aoe spell that you will absolutely use while leveling.
At level 90 you will also add divine star talent. No reason not to use this talent while leveling. Its double hit does more damage than your smite, is on a short cooldown, deals aoe damage, & provides minor sustain.


You can also talent into an aoe knockback w/ a strong snare (in PVE it is as effective as a short root) while keeping the disorient/nuke -OR- have a 5 second stun/nuke.

There is a fun cooldown interaction with the apotheosis talent that can grant you a 5 second stun every 12 seconds.

The artifact proc acts like a fun little trinket, boosting your damage about every minute and a half.

Divine star doesn't proc serendipity and thus is a dps loss on single target. Divine star does 130% spellpower damage over both hits, smite does 92% and reduces the cooldown of chastise by 8 seconds with the talent that you will use while leveling (thus, you can attribute about ~1/6 to 1/7 of chastise damage to each smite, making smite's relative damage per gcd to around 150-170%) .

You're right, holy nova is good.. if you are pulling multiple enemies at once. Then your rotation becomes "holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova holy nova"... you get the point.

[Deleted]

Yeah, they're making it unfun on purpose. Sound plausible. It's a conspiracy. They're only doing it to hurt your feelings. Every Blizzard designer collects a bonus whenever they are able to piss off a player.

This post really makes me wish we could +1 in this forum.

+1 !!

As to the topic itself, I don't have access to the beta, but watched many hours of Disc Priest and Resto Shamy Gameplay - and while the rotation may seem a tad bit simplistic (something I actually like for leveling, hehe), it is quite effective in dishing out damage, while at the same time, you can easily defend yourself against quite a few mobs and not die - something a pure DPS toon could not do. I am actually looking forward to level my Shamy as a Resto.

[Alroxas]

I know there are various ways around this like leveling as a DPS, saving your AP items and putting them in your healing artifact. But that seems amazingly clunky and sounds like it will just give you two unenjoyable specs to play.

How so? It gives you the player the pick on how you want to build your character. You could enjoy the faster solo leveling experience as a DPS than as a Healer but you're not gimped completely (as in unable to progress at all) as a healer trying to solo the leveling experience.

Additionally, you're missing out on other artifact mechanics that the devs revealed. First, Artifact Knowledge (aka time gating) limits/boosts the gains in AP you can have during the life of the expansion thus rendering AP grind faster/slower depending on how invested you are in an artifact. Second, the proportionate increasing cost of leveling the same artifact means that at some point, you'll want to level your offspec artifacts because waiting to grind X thousand AP with the (limited) artifact knowledge level will seem too tedious.

Furthermore, neglecting your Offspecs is pretty bad anyways. You won't always need X spec or Y spec might be better in a particular instance (PvP, Raids, World Bosses, Dunegons, etc.) as a result, most players will probably dabble in the OS with the truly dedicated minority who will aim to max out at least 2 (if not 3/4) of their artifacts.

[Archibalde]

Holy fire on cooldown
Holy word on cooldown
Smite


That's it.

Healers might be less painful to level with than before, but we also never needed to heal to level before. You say you can level as dps and save artifact power, but that is no better; you won't have the dps artifact upgrades either (whereas before you would be no different to anyone else leveling as dps).

So why not group up? Find a tank and a few DPS in the Looking for Group tool, and level up as a healer by actually healing. It won't be hard to find groups, especially not at the start of the expansion, and it will be faster and easier for everyone involved. Same thing with world quests. Having to do some multiplayer stuff in a massive multiplayer role playing game isn't the end of the world.

[Deleted]

Yeah, they're making it unfun on purpose. Sound plausible. It's a conspiracy. They're only doing it to hurt your feelings. Every Blizzard designer collects a bonus whenever they are able to piss off a player.

Can we spam this in every thread that start and/or contain the word "Blizzard...."?

[Deleted]

Yeah, they're making it unfun on purpose. Sound plausible. It's a conspiracy. They're only doing it to hurt your feelings. Every Blizzard designer collects a bonus whenever they are able to piss off a player.

They must be very rich post WoD then...

[Tharkkun]

Both the spirit and the non-spirit weapons you choose have zero relevance once you outlevel them. Taking shadow gear from levels 1 to 99 makes no difference once you hit 100 and start getting holy gear. The artifact power that you spend (or don't) will last until the end of the expansion. This is the first time in the game's history that you have to choose where to spend resources you gather from the first second the character starts leveling that will affect its progression for the rest of the expansion. Thus; the effort that has been put into making leveling as a healer or tank functional.

We're talking 100-110. No one cares about the leveling experience sub 100 and that changes the goalposts on this post anyways. As pointed out you can save your artifact items and choose which spec to use them on. Once you hit 110 the artifact gain bumps up as well. Again you don't rely on the RNG of getting a new weapon now. You can progress each of your specs's weapons as you see fit.

[Raugnaut]

healer arent the only one who lost utility yknow

every dps spec lost some utility, tank's cds are nerfed to the ground, iirc the cd that gives bonus hp and reduced dmg for the brewmaster monk is 7min cd from 3min, to give you an idea

In practice its slightly under a 3 minute CD. With the right artifact relics, it can be close to a 90 second CD.

[Wootmonkey]

I've been a DPS for every expansion so far and I'm legion I'm seriously considering swapping to a healer because I think that they look fun (looking at shaman and holy priest).

[Delekii]

So why not group up? Find a tank and a few DPS in the Looking for Group tool, and level up as a healer by actually healing. It won't be hard to find groups, especially not at the start of the expansion, and it will be faster and easier for everyone involved. Same thing with world quests. Having to do some multiplayer stuff in a massive multiplayer role playing game isn't the end of the world.

DPS don't need healers to level, and level faster with another DPS who does more damage. Not a hard concept.

We're talking 100-110. No one cares about the leveling experience sub 100 and that changes the goalposts on this post anyways. As pointed out you can save your artifact items and choose which spec to use them on. Once you hit 110 the artifact gain bumps up as well. Again you don't rely on the RNG of getting a new weapon now. You can progress each of your specs's weapons as you see fit.

Grats on your incredible lateral thinking capability, but I was talking about 1-99 as a counterpoint to what will exist post legion. In every other instance of leveling up that has existed thus far in WoW, gear that you acquire while leveling becomes obsolete once that process is completed. Legion is the first time where this is not the case. You didn't ever rely on rng to get the items you needed (after vanilla anyway) since questing produces a repeatable and purposefully paced set of quest rewards. 100% of the time you know when you will get a given upgrade from a given quest, practically the same today as it was when BC released. And, again; the items that you chose to acquire while leveling in any other previous expansion had no bearing on the items you were after when you finished that process.

In WoD, you level up as shadow, and acquire shadow gear throughout the process. Nothing you acquire and use while leveling up has any bearing on what you do when you hit level 100. When you hit level 100, you switch to acquiring healing items instead, and start at the same point as everyone else in the game who leveled up as either their chosen spec or a faster dps spec in their given situation. No gear that anyone got at levels 90 to 99 has any bearing on what they do when they hit 100 (with the exception of the first handful of dungeons in cases where gear is not transferrable at all).

In Legion, you gain artifact power as you level. You can choose to put it into your healing weapon and slow down your leveling as a result (since your DPS spec does not garner benefits from the artifact upgrades), or you can put it into your dps weapon to speed up your leveling, but you will start with a weaker healing weapon once you hit 110 as a result.

Put at its most simple form: It has never been the case before that you start gathering resources for gearing at max level from the moment you start the expansion, and thus garner consequences for having to choose from the beginning.

Yay for spec identity, right?

[Jademist]

I am actually enjoying the new Mistweaving spec as well as Resto Shaman. Mistweaving is much better than the ReM-spam+Uplift combo. I like the new kit a lot more. I was not a fan of the passive Soothing Mists but I kind of like it because instead of having to Soothing Mists first to set up healing I can heal first then Soothing Mists if the damage taken is not too great. I also am enjoying Resto Shaman because it feels less Chain Heal spam now, from my experience at least. Not a fan of the new Holy Paladin though. Haven't really played the new Priest specs or Resto Druid.