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

[Archibalde]

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

That's your perception. A full group with a tank, a healer and 3 DPS will be able to pull far more mobs and mow them down without ever dropping in health, making it far more efficient than a group of DPS trading aggro left and right.

[McTurbo]

With spirit and bonus armor gone there should be no reason that you cant click a button and switch to a DPS spec if thats what you need to level. While leveling as a healer is not an exciting affair it is at most simplistic simply because you dont have the utility of a dps.... well because you are a healer..

the vast majority of artifact points are held in your bag until you use them on the equipped artifact.. which means you can save em till you get some down time then switch back to your main spec and spend the points on the appropriate artifact.

Healers are quite fun to play, they just don't have the complexity of a dps when it comes to damage, while dps cant survive some of the things that a healer can...that's how it should be.

lets be blunt.. you are gonna spend 3-4 days leveling and 2 years at maximum level i am almost ready for them to remove the leveling experience entirely and just give us the additional 10 levels so they can spend those resources on things we want to do at max level.. 2 years for all this scripted leveling experience just to be done with it in 4 days (1 if you push it).. and then content droughts because well... not enough content at max level.. no one really cares about leveling content.. its irrelevant.. the same stories can be told at max level while providing a goal for you toon vs just another level to be ignored.

[Sencha]

Legion is going one step ahead in dumbed down gameplay. Tanks AM will be reduced, DPS have less utilities in raid. So there's not just a problem with healers.

[Flaks]

the sheer dullness of leveling as a healer.

You mean things they've done the exact opposite of in Legion compared to previous expansions?

I'll give you the utility thing though, all classes are losing utility they stupidly gained in MoP with the new talent system that made abilities that were spec exclusive available to all specs. Luckily they learned from that mistake.

[Delekii]

That's your perception. A full group with a tank, a healer and 3 DPS will be able to pull far more mobs and mow them down without ever dropping in health, making it far more efficient than a group of DPS trading aggro left and right.

A group of DPS can pull as many mobs as they can reach without chaining the first ones back to their spawns and not die, thus your argument is invalid.

[Archibalde]

A group of DPS can pull as many mobs as they can reach without chaining the first ones back to their spawns and not die, thus your argument is invalid.

It's not, but at this point you are arguing for the sake of arguing. You don't want to believe that healers will be fine to level up, so you won't listen to anyone telling you otherwise. You can go ahead and keep wallowing in the negativity, I guess, but nothing's going to change by doing that. The rest of us will just use the alternatives available and enjoy our way to 110 as healers without any issues.

[Boogums]

It's always easier to mock people for things they obviously aren't saying rather than respond to what they are. I'm talking about the loss of utility and the sheer dullness of leveling as a healer.

"Blizzard Seems Intent On Making Healing Classes No Fun To Play. Why?" Seems like you're saying what you're saying.

[Binko]

"Blizzard Seems Intent On Making Healing Classes No Fun To Play. Why?" Seems like you're saying what you're saying.

So, if you are in school and doing a book report you simply write about the title of the book and don't bother dealing with all that pesky content. Sure is easier to argue against a heading. Reading is hard.

As repeated ad nauseum healers are boring to level as healers because they have no utility. That's the actual subject.

[Deleted]

but they do

the difference between healer leveling and not healer leveling is that your rotation is 3 buttons, you deal a good 30% less damage and you're literally invincible

[Archibalde]

As repeated ad nauseum healers are boring to level as healers because they have no utility. That's the actual subject.

They do have utilities. My Holy Paladin comes with Consecration for AoE, Judgement and Holy Shock for ranged attacks, and Crusader Strike for melee. I can pick Light's Hammer in the first talent tier for another AoE ability. At level 75 I can get Holy Prism to add another damaging spell, or get Holy Avenger for a haste cooldown or Divine Purpose for a proc that will sometimes give me a free Holy Shock without a cooldown.

I can use Avenging Wrath to increase my crit rating, and if I talent into Sanctified Wrath I also get a shorter Holy Shock cooldown while it's active. More crits on more Holy Shocks is a DPS increase. I have Hammer of Justice to stun enemies once every minute, and at level 45 I can pick a talent to either reduce that cooldown to 30 seconds, or add another CC with Repentance or Blinding Light.

On top of that, every Artifact trait gives you 1% additional damage. Every healer artifact has that. Some talents even increase the damage of some of your offensive spells. You can get 24% more damage on Holy Shock pretty early on in the tree.

So with the right talent choices that's 6 spells, 1 cooldown, 2 CCs on top of all my healing spells and cooldowns to keep me alive if I bite off more than I can chew. That's more than enough to level up efficiently. I actually have more abilities as Holy than I have as Ret! Ret shines because it does more damage, not because it has more "utility". You're not going raiding or doing PvP, you're questing. You need a basic toolkit and Holy Paladins have you covered perfectly for that.

[Boogums]

So, if you are in school and doing a book report you simply write about the title of the book and don't bother dealing with all that pesky content. Sure is easier to argue against a heading. Reading is hard.

As repeated ad nauseum healers are boring to level as healers because they have no utility. That's the actual subject.

No, but I don't make baseless accusations when titling it either.

[Deleted]

I do agree that there's going to be a bad healer shortage in legion. They made dps/tanks much easier to play and much more desirable for casual players. Healers however are almost as hard as before and now that active migitation have been massively reduced from tanks, this makes the healers job even more stressful.

[Deleted]

I actually like the direction healers are going in with Legion. Having played around with all six specs for a while on the PTR (So not the beta, admittedly I can't comment on how artifacts come into play) I appreciate that each spec is more fleshed out. The trend of homogenization in recent expansions amongst healers had begun to make choosing your class more or less a question of "Which colour of magic do you want to use to heal"? Of course, that's a big exhaggeration, but there is some truth in what I just said. With Legion, it's clear cut and obvious which healer specializes in.

Holy Priests are the jack of all trades. Discipline Priests are for healing through damage. Restoration Druids are HoT masters. Mistweaver Monks are all about being more cautious of mana use in return for passive healing and HoTs - Fistweaving is also possible with a certain build. Restoration Shaman are the tried and true group healing masters, as always. Holy Paladins are single target healing masters (Admittedly, Light of Dawn being our only baseline AoE heal is a little worrying, but it still supports my point). Each healing specialization has an identity of being a master of a certain type of support, which I love. I also appreciate that our Talent choice in Legion helps us reinforce the areas of our healing character's class that they're lacking in. For example, you can talent into having more AoE healing as a Holy Paladin, which as I said earlier they barely have any of baseline.

Tl;dr I disagree, and think Legion is actually improving the healing playstyle. Although I won't mask my dislike for the new Mistweaver Monk, as I really enjoyed juggling mana and chi in WoD, I still think the healing experience is improving with the expansion overall.

[Nihilan]

I do agree that there's going to be a bad healer shortage in legion. They made dps/tanks much easier to play and much more desirable for casual players. Healers however are almost as hard as before and now that active migitation have been massively reduced from tanks, this makes the healers job even more stressful.

Theres already a healer shortage in beta. Its far more common to see groups looking for heals than it is to see groups looking for tanks. While levelling as heals IS better than it has been previously, its still dull. Due mostly to the absurdly simplistic rotations heals have to fall back on for dpsing. Mistwalker for example is literally three buttons. A fourth is availible on a 15s CD if you talent into it. Much excite!

Disc has the deepest dps rotation due to its ghetto healing style. The rest are super boring to level. Effective, but boring.

[Hexxidecimal]

Theres already a healer shortage in beta. Its far more common to see groups looking for heals than it is to see groups looking for tanks. While levelling as heals IS better than it has been previously, its still dull. Due mostly to the absurdly simplistic rotations heals have to fall back on for dpsing. Mistwalker for example is literally three buttons. A fourth is availible on a 15s CD if you talent into it. Much excite!

Disc has the deepest dps rotation due to its ghetto healing style. The rest are super boring to level. Effective, but boring.

3 Buttons eh, sounds a lot like DH DPSing without all the fancy numbers lol. Well we'll see how healing shakes out then for Legion. I like Healing, I like DPSing, don't like tanking that much but have done it simply because it was ALWAYS in demand. It'll be nice that a role I enjoy will be back in the highest demand, despite the leveling issues with questing. Though I play to go with a druid. They at least get aspects of the other specs soooo maybe it won't be as bad for me.

[Yoshimiko]

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).

I get you're talking about healers, but you mentioned tanks...Tanks are AMAZING for adventuring. 9 times out of 10 I'd prefer going into the unknown as a tank than a DPS. Accidently pull 20 mobs? Whelp, let's just AoE em down! Oh random rare elite with 50 million health started poking me? Time to solo it!

Meanwhile, my mage is like..OSHIT WHERE'S INVIS...oh wait I got 1shot.

OT: Healers have more QoL buffs in this patch than anyone else. They can fight, they can dps, they can efficiently level solo for the first time without playing a dps offspec. Shockadins are back and actually powerful - offensive Holy Paladins are going to be a menance in PVP even more than they are now.

Healing specs are a threat in pvp, capable of solo leveling efficiently, able to dps during downtime in raids(and it actually be meaningful) and they seem all around more enjoyable. I don't really see where the complaints are coming from.

[Tharkkun]

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


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?

The only slot that is static is the weapon and offhand. Otherwise gear is business as usual. But technically you leveled your weapon every expansion as well. Just in a different format. You had to continuously pray your weapon dropped in an instance and that you won it whether through /random or personal loot. You also had to do the same for offspec weapons (and even gear) which means you were at a disadvantage just like you will be today except for the artifact.

After you raid week is over you can still go out in the world and quest, kill, farm, etc. for items that boost your relic power and apply it to the spec of your choice. You're no longer completely handcuffed once the weekly lockout is finished or progression hit a roadblock.

Go read this as well. https://healiocentric.wordpress.com/...-wont-believe/

Doing more reading it's basically the consensus that you'll place 13 artifact points, then do your 2nd artifact since point 14 is more expensive than all 13 points of a second artifact. Also noted is that once you max your artifact outside of the passive .5% boosts, you could dump all your artifact power into a 2nd artifact to max it's traits. Your only loss would be 1.5% of passive damage to your primary artifact.

People are really getting more worried than is necessary.

- - - Updated - - -

I do agree that there's going to be a bad healer shortage in legion. They made dps/tanks much easier to play and much more desirable for casual players. Healers however are almost as hard as before and now that active migitation have been massively reduced from tanks, this makes the healers job even more stressful.

It happens every expansion. The first tier is rough as you get used to change and then it smooths out from there.

[Deleted]

You are defining "a lot better" as do more damage and grind out levels faster.

I actually want to enjoy the process when I play a game.

What part of the current leveling process as a healer is anywhere near enjoyable? And then I mean not leveling through dungeons, which at later levels really gets tedious because you don't get any dungeon quests.

[Bosen]

Fun is subjective.

[Saravat]

A lot of posters in this thread seem really determined to hang on to negative preconceptions regardless of any other input...so I'm not going to engage here much. I'll leave you to your doom and gloom.

I will say that from Alpha to now, I've leveled in healing specs, in dps specs, and as specs focused on "I am going to play dps but put my artifact points into my healing weapon". It was all just fine. Some of you are putting a very unrealistic emphasis on the relative power of putting points into the artifact weapon while leveling. You're forgetting that the real power doesn't start to manifest until after we hit 110.

Once Blizz made some adjustments to healer dps capacity, I've had a tremendous amount of fun leveling in each situation. No utility? Boring? Hardly. So far I don't think there's a healer in Legion that I'd hesitate to bring to a raid, and I'd be glad to double up on any healers of the same class.

The blog post Tharkkun linked above is an excellent analysis of healer leveling in Legion.

All I know is that Legion has re-awakened my enthusiasm for the game, which feels great after coming so close to canceling because WoD was so disappointing. And I've very much enjoyed and felt I made meaningful contributions on every healing class I've played, from simply leveling and questing, to healing dungeons, to raid testing.

But hey, don't let me interrupt a fine session of "the sky is falling". I somehow doubt anything I say here would change negative minds.