Healer population all time low?

[Deja Thoris]

What class are you? If your avatar is an indication Id guess priest? In which case Disc is by far the most efficient, shadow is bollocks for leveling in comparison.

Actually holy is more efficient, it has a non targeted aoe that heals you and damages them. Carry on spreading wrong info though!

[Dsc]

Look at where you are in the xpack. Most healers have their gear for legion, and will level DPS, pouring AP into their artifacts, healing later when the tanks and DPS get thier stuff together and "we" the healers gear up a little.

Right now in game you have a HUGE population of freshly minted DH's with only 2 of their talents and zero artifact talents, crap for gear, all looking to "gear up" to level Legion.

No one in their Right mind wants to heal that shit, unless a guild or close friend group. I for one am on "strike" until a few months into legion, sans the guild/friend thing.

[Leih]

It says something when I queue for a random heroic as Tank/Healer and get in as a Healer instead of Tank.

- - - Updated - - -

I think the Demon Hunter influx is probably to blame for the lack of healers vs. tanks at the moment.

[Deleted]

Healers have finally gotten a buff to their damage to where it always should have been, but the rotations for every single healer is boring as hell (barring Disc, but that's the obvious exception) which needs to be adressed to increase people who want to have a healer spec as their main spec.

I think that is the point I was going to raise just less knowing what i aim for.
Healing raids sucks since you are preemptively spamming heals. Hardly any thinking involved.
What i like about healing is the triage, you have to decide who to heal and how in splitseconds. That doesn't apply to raids.

Then there is also the persisting issue of beeing a better healer doesn't get you anywhere outside of group content.

[guardian_titan]

Blizzard killed my holy paladin in WotLK. I'm still pissed ret got a HoT while holy didn't. A warrior tank saying I sucked as a healer on my disc priest ... in HoF with poisons and curses I couldn't remove killed my priest at the end of WotLK. Blizzard finally killed my shaman with Legion. I don't like that I'm losing earth shield to PvP. Is it a petty reason to stop healing? Need I remind you why Blizzard killed my holy paladin in WotLK? I don't like cone heals, either. I also don't like that ascendance is now a talent and not base line like it was. What's next? Heroism/bloodlust becomes an ele/enh talent? Oh wait, they'll make it PvP only instead so they can balance PvE better without it.

I MIGHT heal if I need to but I'm not focusing on my resto artifact. Considering my ele artifact in beta was around 802 and my resto one was 750 (base, with no relics or AP spent) shortly after I hit 110, I doubt many are going to be lining up for me to heal with a crappy resto artifact.

What's funny is I intend to level my demon hunter and druid as tanks but I ain't tanking. Only doing that because I know the mobs hit like trucks. From complaints I read on beta, feral druids are squishy and DPS demon hunters are, too. So I'd rather level as a tank and save my AP tokens for their DPS spec. Only toon I also intend to level as a healer is my disc priest because I like the disc staff more than the other two, but she's not healing, either. That ship sailed when the dick in WotLK insulted me.

[woopytywoop]

Since many are playing new characters etc in pugs, they don't know them well and that's why the healer has to pick up the slack.

Very few people like to pick up the slack hence very few healers pugging.

[b0928]

In terms of LFD and LFR queue times, I think in WoD healers were in slightly higher demand than tanks. Then they went and added DH with tank/dps specs and made the gap even larger.

[Deleted]

Hi,
Coming back from Hiatus one of the things i noticed was that healers seem to be in super high demand. As someone who mained a healer for a long time I'm familiar with how hard it is to find one normally. However I'm not sure it it's legion artifart system or what and wanted to know what you guys think. I'm highly tempted to go back to my old main but I want to try to focus on PvP this expansion and pvp healing sucks balls to do. My thread doesn't just pertain to PvP as I was slightly more curious about the PvE aspect.

Healers are a lot more in demand simply because over the years people playing this game have gotten, if possible, more stupid. And no-one wants to heal people who eat debuffs and fire and cleave and who knows what and die, and then without saying a word, kick the healer from the group because clearly it was his/her fault. I am not saying that people weren't this stupid before, I am just saying that years ago, the guy you remembered was the funny idiot who screamed "WTF HEAL" when he died. Nowadays, the screamers are the common players you meet and the decent people who either don't stand in stuff or realize it was their fault, they are the exceptional ones.

In short, if you can take it, make a healer. You can always get into groups and pugs. But I wouldn't recommend healing for anyone with sanity. Like, personally, I can spec healer on some of my characters if friends need me to do it but pugs, they don't deserve it and thus, I will never do it.

[Thrif]

Demon hunters are probably to blame for all that, including some pretty provokative changes to some healing specs that might have turned old players off them. The new Disciple priest for example is a huge overhaul from the old one with a completely new playstyle that definitely not everyone is going to enjoy.

All good for me though, since I only main healers.

[Xandrigity]

Im gonna lvl boomkin but after healing the invasions I have a taste for resto again so Im gonna pick up my 2nd artifact and step up to the plate and heal for instances.

[Hermitxd]

Blizzard killed my holy paladin in WotLK. I'm still pissed ret got a HoT while holy didn't. A warrior tank saying I sucked as a healer on my disc priest ... in HoF with poisons and curses I couldn't remove killed my priest at the end of WotLK. Blizzard finally killed my shaman with Legion. I don't like that I'm losing earth shield to PvP. Is it a petty reason to stop healing? Need I remind you why Blizzard killed my holy paladin in WotLK? I don't like cone heals, either. I also don't like that ascendance is now a talent and not base line like it was. What's next? Heroism/bloodlust becomes an ele/enh talent? Oh wait, they'll make it PvP only instead so they can balance PvE better without it.

I MIGHT heal if I need to but I'm not focusing on my resto artifact. Considering my ele artifact in beta was around 802 and my resto one was 750 (base, with no relics or AP spent) shortly after I hit 110, I doubt many are going to be lining up for me to heal with a crappy resto artifact.

What's funny is I intend to level my demon hunter and druid as tanks but I ain't tanking. Only doing that because I know the mobs hit like trucks. From complaints I read on beta, feral druids are squishy and DPS demon hunters are, too. So I'd rather level as a tank and save my AP tokens for their DPS spec. Only toon I also intend to level as a healer is my disc priest because I like the disc staff more than the other two, but she's not healing, either. That ship sailed when the dick in WotLK insulted me.

Whoa! You change class so easily haha. I understand changing class if you don't like a change, like you did for shaman/paladin. I didn't like that they removed earth shield either, that felt thematically correct for shaman. However I don't mind the Cone heal, I like the idea of a healer who is encouraged to stay close range. It's different without being stupid.

I'd try to encourage you not to take to heart what douche bags say, especially when he's complaining about something you have no power over.

[Brewhan]

don't worry I will heal you plebs on the field of battle

[Fuel]

Thought the AP went into the currently equipped weapon, not depending on spec? Might be wrong though...

[Keiyra]

Thought the AP went into the currently equipped weapon, not depending on spec? Might be wrong though...

The AP is a consumable item. SO yes, when you use it, it goes to the equipped artifact. But you can earn it in one sec, then change spec/arti later and then consume it to go into the artifact you want.

[Keiyra]

Is that true for all the sources or will we have Quests, etc, that immediately give Artifact Power on completion?

99.9% of the time that is true, I think in beta there was 1 quest that granted immediate AP, and not a consumable item (We are talking months ago so I don't even know if that is the case now)

[TheFreeman]

I can never play something that isn't a healer anymore... It's like whenever I want a break from healing to hop on my DK or warrior nobody else steps up to the plate in my absence..

This is the case for me as well. Guild leader simply will not let me play anything else except a healer at least for our main progression run (been healing since WotLK btw and been in the same guild for seven years now).

In said guild everyone else has a dps main and the rest of their account filled with dps alts. None of them will touch tanking or healing. I've voiced this concern on a few occasions and all I get is crickets chirping.

True story: A combat rogue got brave and actually gave healing a try. After his experience of having the lives of four other people in his hands he wrote in guild chat: " I WANT NOTHING TO DO WITH HEALING EVER AGAIN!" I laughed so hard I just about passed out. Same thing with another guildie who usually brings her pally tank to raid and also tried healing in a raid. She was like "OMG how to you handle the stress? I can't believe you do this! I'm so sorry "

[healzforu]

I don't know whether it's an "all time low", but healers have been in high demand all the time. I think the main reason is that noone will level as a healer, since dungeon xp can't compete with questing. The population will "normalize" after the initial weeks of leveling, but healers will still be sought after.

I was gonna level as Resto Druid, since that's my main, but since then, had a guild meeting and it seems, quite a few people are gonna be on at launch and leveling to 110, so we're grouping up and power leveling that way, so now, it won't be so tedious at least, although i double main, so hopefully i find a group for my holy pally

[Leih]

99.9% of the time that is true, I think in beta there was 1 quest that granted immediate AP, and not a consumable item (We are talking months ago so I don't even know if that is the case now)

Yes, I've found one quest that granted immediate AP instead of a token... but you could simply switch specs at the point where you accept the reward and that still works. So you can pretty much level all the way to 110 as DPS without ever spending any AP on your DPS artifact, should you wish to.

It's not really necessary though to do that... in the long run the vast vast vast vast vast majority of your AP will be from repeatable sources at max level, so even if you spend all your levelling AP on DPS after a short while at 110 it's not going to make any noticeable difference.

[Gaexion Ramza Beoulve]

Healing is not fun and hasn't been since Cata/MoP.

You used to be able to have fun time lazy heals.

Now it it is only serious business heals, no thanks.

[Aggrophobic]

Is that true for all the sources or will we have Quests, etc, that immediately give Artifact Power on completion?

There are these random events that happen where some dude wants to look at your weapon and gives you some AP for that weapon but I'm guessing these just "proc" when you're in that very spec so that might not matter. What others say is true though: 99% of all the AP you get is in the form of an item you use on whatever weapon you want.