Healer Numbers in Mythic Raiding

[Better]

But, doesn't that just feel boring and contrived, when every single fight has to have a recycled mechanic in it like a saber lash mechanic, or a stacking debuff that requires tank switches, or an add that has to be offtanked away from the boss? Is it not blatantly obvious that the only reason those mechanics exist is because they don't want to have 1 tank fights? I think they could either give the same treatment to healers, or just lock a minimum healer and tank comp in and be done with it. Then, they wouldn't have to add in a bunch of contrived mechanics.

It feels more natural to me as a tank. It helps there's a few ways they accomplish the minimum tank requirement. I know why the mechanics exist, but it doesn't feel like they went out of their way to do it in most cases... If we had no tank swaps, or add positioning mechanics there would actually be very little that distinguished the role from melee DPS.

[Krazzorx]

The difference with tanks is its been 2 tanks in a raid fight as the standard for a very long time no matter the raid size. (10 and 25 man raids both always used 2 tanks for instance.) Healers though have a variable amount and also always have.

Again, it may not be fair but, it's just what's expected so they can get away with the occasional boring taunt on 3 stack rotation forced 2 tank fights.

[Meiffert]

Say you run a 25 man roster with 2 tanks, 5 healers and 18 DPS

Saying you need/should have 5 main healers in your guild because of that one fight is the same as saying you should have 3 main tanks for that one fight.
Then you come to Star Augur and you need to sit 66 % of your tanks!

Realistically, you mostly want 4 healers on the majority of fights, occasionally 3.
There is one fight in Nighthold where you just used an offspec 5th healer, just like you use a 3rd offspec tank every now and then.

Let's be real here, if you are in a guild that actually 2-healed progression, you wouldn't care about this issue. Might as well have one of your mandatory 5 geared up alts be a mainspec dps.

Having 4 main healers in a guild (with 1-2 decent offspec healers to fill in) is fine and it's really not that much worse than sitting as dps (sometimes you want to sit ~4 of your ~9 melee, then on Gul'dan you sit 4 of your 9 ranged).


There is a line and obviously a fight that required 8 tanks with tier set (that takes months to farm) to hit-cap taunts was not ok. It was doubly not fine when monks, DKs and DHs didn't exist, guardian spec didn't exist and paladins were alliance only and not really viable tanks anyway.

Current situation is decent enough. You can do heroic with 2 tanks and 1 healer per 5 players (say 4 healers and 14 dps).

For cutting edge mythic progression, there will always be some optimizations possible.
I don't think that these fights were designed with solo tanking or 3tanking in mind, it was the players that were thinking outside the boss and came out with offtanking drakes on the side on Cenarius or having a dps taunt Star Augur to reset debuff while the maintank is tanking the boss and handling the Gravitational Pull at the same time for the majority of the fight.
Just the same, 2 healing is never the intent in my opinion and when guilds found ways to utilize it (2 heal Star Augur to push last phase without killing an add), it was even hotfixed to discourage this practice.

[Keashaa]

Having 4 main healers in a guild (with 1-2 decent offspec healers to fill in) is fine and it's really not that much worse than sitting as dps (sometimes you want to sit ~4 of your ~9 melee, then on Gul'dan you sit 4 of your 9 ranged).

So your opinion is: five healers is fine so you can rotate here and there but running a roster with six healers is like cracking a walnut with a sledgehammer?

[Tiberria]

Saying you need/should have 5 main healers in your guild because of that one fight is the same as saying you should have 3 main tanks for that one fight.
Then you come to Star Augur and you need to sit 66 % of your tanks!

Realistically, you mostly want 4 healers on the majority of fights, occasionally 3.
There is one fight in Nighthold where you just used an offspec 5th healer, just like you use a 3rd offspec tank every now and then.

Let's be real here, if you are in a guild that actually 2-healed progression, you wouldn't care about this issue. Might as well have one of your mandatory 5 geared up alts be a mainspec dps.

Having 4 main healers in a guild (with 1-2 decent offspec healers to fill in) is fine and it's really not that much worse than sitting as dps (sometimes you want to sit ~4 of your ~9 melee, then on Gul'dan you sit 4 of your 9 ranged).


There is a line and obviously a fight that required 8 tanks with tier set (that takes months to farm) to hit-cap taunts was not ok. It was doubly not fine when monks, DKs and DHs didn't exist, guardian spec didn't exist and paladins were alliance only and not really viable tanks anyway.

Current situation is decent enough. You can do heroic with 2 tanks and 1 healer per 5 players (say 4 healers and 14 dps).

For cutting edge mythic progression, there will always be some optimizations possible.
I don't think that these fights were designed with solo tanking or 3tanking in mind, it was the players that were thinking outside the boss and came out with offtanking drakes on the side on Cenarius or having a dps taunt Star Augur to reset debuff while the maintank is tanking the boss and handling the Gravitational Pull at the same time for the majority of the fight.
Just the same, 2 healing is never the intent in my opinion and when guilds found ways to utilize it (2 heal Star Augur to push last phase without killing an add), it was even hotfixed to discourage this practice.

No, I'm saying that most guilds will carry at least 5 main spec healers, both to cover 5 healer fights and to cover the fact that you can't reasonably expect all 4 of your healers to have 100% attendance (or at least most guilds will not require that). Therefore, you end up benching 40% of your healing roster on 3 heal fights. It's a lot worse than for DPS, because you never reach the point where you have to sit 40%+ of your DPS, and if there ever was a fight like that, or there was ever a fight that pure DPS classes were at a disadvantage for raid spots on, the entitled mages and rogues would throw a hissy fit for days.

You never HAD to solo tank Star Augar. Even before the nerfs to it, many guilds just 2 tanked. In fact, I think you weren't even able to solo tank it unless you had a Guardian or Brewmaster (at least pre-nerf).

The whole situation also ignores the point that on multiple occasions when Ion has been asked about intended healer comp in Mythic, he has continued to say that 5 healers is the target healer number, and that while the occasional fight requiring 4 or 6 healers would be fine, anything more or less than that is unacceptable. Therefore, straight from the game director's mouth (granted he has an extreme tendency to talk out of both sides of it) 3 healer fights are NOT fine. Why not hold them accountable for what they have promised?

[Meiffert]

No, I'm saying that most guilds will carry at least 5 main spec healers, both to cover 5 healer fights and to cover the fact that you can't reasonably expect all 4 of your healers to have 100% attendance (or at least most guilds will not require that). Therefore, you end up benching 40% of your healing roster on 3 heal fights.

No, you don't. This is a completely unrelated issue.
If you have an extra healer because of attendance, you are not benching them. They are just not there, you can't bench someone who didn't show up. There is nothing wrong with that at all (unless you are a hardcore guild), but not what we are talking about.
If you have an extra healer in case one of them can't make the raid and they are all there 90+ % of the time, it's time for one of them to reroll dps.

You never HAD to solo tank Star Augar. Even before the nerfs to it, many guilds just 2 tanked. In fact, I think you weren't even able to solo tank it unless you had a Guardian or Brewmaster (at least pre-nerf).

I don't think you HAD to under/overheal either. All fights are doable with 4 healers. Some are just easier with 3 or 5, just like some fights are easier with 1 or 3 tanks.

Also, there have been fights where other specific classes are benched.
On Gul'dan, the ranged get benched unless you are a hunter or the 1 mage on spellsteal duty.
If you are not-fotm melee, you will get benched a lot on various fights as well. You think that since there are ~ 18 dps players for ~ 14 spots, you only sit 22 % of the time, but there is no "fair" rotation. The stronger classes or stronger players get the spot more often and if you play feral for example, you will get benched on majority of the bosses.


TLDR:
4 main healers are enough. If you need 5 because they don't show up, that's fine, but they don't get to complain.
Not all dps are equal. Some have it good, some even worse than healers.

The whole situation also ignores the point that on multiple occasions when Ion has been asked about intended healer comp in Mythic, he has continued to say that 5 healers is the target healer number [...] Why not hold them accountable for what they have promised?

That's fair enough. If he said that, you can call him out on that if you wish.

Since at least Cataclysm, the rule of thumb has been 1 healer per 5man group, with the very early kills (especially on gear-check "patchwerk" fights) a bit under-healed with perfect execution from the raid and maybe 1 more for the more healing intensive encounters or weaker raid groups.

[Lartok]

No, I'm saying that most guilds will carry at least 5 main spec healers, both to cover 5 healer fights and to cover the fact that you can't reasonably expect all 4 of your healers to have 100% attendance (or at least most guilds will not require that). Therefore, you end up benching 40% of your healing roster on 3 heal fights. It's a lot worse than for DPS, because you never reach the point where you have to sit 40%+ of your DPS, and if there ever was a fight like that, or there was ever a fight that pure DPS classes were at a disadvantage for raid spots on, the entitled mages and rogues would throw a hissy fit for days.

You never HAD to solo tank Star Augar. Even before the nerfs to it, many guilds just 2 tanked. In fact, I think you weren't even able to solo tank it unless you had a Guardian or Brewmaster (at least pre-nerf).

The whole situation also ignores the point that on multiple occasions when Ion has been asked about intended healer comp in Mythic, he has continued to say that 5 healers is the target healer number, and that while the occasional fight requiring 4 or 6 healers would be fine, anything more or less than that is unacceptable. Therefore, straight from the game director's mouth (granted he has an extreme tendency to talk out of both sides of it) 3 healer fights are NOT fine. Why not hold them accountable for what they have promised?

You're lumping all DPS together but if you separate them in to ranged and melee then there are fights where you sit ~40% of them.
I agree that currently 5 main spec healers is pretty standard because of attendance but practically the only real 5 heal fight in Nighthold could definitely be done with 4 main specs and 1 offspec, what I'm saying is it was really a 4.5 heal fight.

I feel like healing is becoming more like tanking though, since I started raiding in WotLK my guilds have always had 2 main spec tanks and then off specs for a 3 tank fight or for absences. In Legion even though off specs are far less viable it's still the same, 2 main spec tanks and then off specs and just deal with them being worse. Raids will probably end up with a 4 heal roster as standard with increased pressure on high attendance, like tanks, using off specs when necessary and dealing with it being worse.

[Tiberria]

No, you don't. This is a completely unrelated issue.
If you have an extra healer because of attendance, you are not benching them. They are just not there, you can't bench someone who didn't show up. There is nothing wrong with that at all (unless you are a hardcore guild), but not what we are talking about.
If you have an extra healer in case one of them can't make the raid and they are all there 90+ % of the time, it's time for one of them to reroll dps.




I don't think you HAD to under/overheal either. All fights are doable with 4 healers. Some are just easier with 3 or 5, just like some fights are easier with 1 or 3 tanks.

Also, there have been fights where other specific classes are benched.
On Gul'dan, the ranged get benched unless you are a hunter or the 1 mage on spellsteal duty.
If you are not-fotm melee, you will get benched a lot on various fights as well. You think that since there are ~ 18 dps players for ~ 14 spots, you only sit 22 % of the time, but there is no "fair" rotation. The stronger classes or stronger players get the spot more often and if you play feral for example, you will get benched on majority of the bosses.


TLDR:
4 main healers are enough. If you need 5 because they don't show up, that's fine, but they don't get to complain.
Not all dps are equal. Some have it good, some even worse than healers.




That's fair enough. If he said that, you can call him out on that if you wish.

Since at least Cataclysm, the rule of thumb has been 1 healer per 5man group, with the very early kills (especially on gear-check "patchwerk" fights) a bit under-healed with perfect execution from the raid and maybe 1 more for the more healing intensive encounters or weaker raid groups.

If you have 5 main spec healers on your roster and you have a 3 heal fight and 5 healers show up, you are full bloody benching 40% of your healing roster. You carry that 5th healer, not because you expect to have 20% absenteeism, or 1 healer out for every raid. You carry them because you still need to be able to raid and down farm content and work on progression when one of them is out. And, yes you have a right to complain, because it's something that affects your entire healing team, not just the healers that have to miss the occasional raid. You can have 100% attendance and still be screwed over by it, because optimal healing comps can be very class specific. If you aren't playing one of the "mandatory healing specs", it doesn't make any difference in the world that you aren't the one missing raids causing you to need to have a 5th healer, you will still put in the god damned Holy Paladin that has 70% attendance over a Mistweaver with 100% attendance if you want to down the boss.

And, I don't agree that ranged and melee should really be split up. On a 25 man roster, you probably only have 18-19 main spec DPS (and 4-5 healers and 2 tanks). You need 14-15 of those DPS in for the fight, so outside of sitting classes that are just in a bad spot in general or bad for that fight, you can't really "bench all the ranged". We have been running like 7 ranged DPS for our Gul'dan progression, because there really isn't an option to have fewer than that in (given that a couple are missing for a typical raid). Healers are also affected by the "my class is shit right now" even moreso than DPS are, because there are only 3-4 healing spots, and 6 healing specs. As soon as you have 2-3 "mandatory" healing specs to have in (which has been the case the last 3 expansions), that only leaves 1-2 available spots for the non-required specs to compete for. If you're playing a healing spec that is trash like Holy Priests in WoD and Mistweavers in Legion (and arguably in WoD), you're in a far worse spot for raid viability than a DPS spec that isn't doing very well.

[Kanika]

My mentality on this is that DPS usually play with the full acceptance that they will have to work as part of a rotation - that's part of having a 20+ mythic raiding roster. As a healer myself, I choose to heal, and for me - that shouldnt guarentee a spot for me every raid. It has always been the case that either you take more healers for progression and drop 1 or 2 later down the line. It's just now more that the opposite is also applicable. It's part of being a team and it is in everyone's best interest to have a pool of players to pick from if it means that you have the best chance of never having to skip a raid night due to no-shows.

The only thing i think is important is that all healers get a chance to be there for a kill at some stage. I know not everyone shares my opinion, but the guild progression should be paramount. If you arent there for the first kill, it shouldn't really matter all that much.

[Fayenoor]

I don't raid hardcore anymore. But raid composition has always been unique per encounter for heroic (now mythic) level of content always. At the highest end of raiding, guilds will always bring the best composition that the encounter demands and which the guild can provide.

In Sunwell days, for example, the healing rec for all 6 bosses were insanely different on a per boss basis.

You cant design every encounter on a 2/5/13 setup. This is the nature of mythic raiding. When you sign up for it, you have to live with it.

What has been unique to Legion is the reliance on legendaries to be relevant. Unless you have the best legos for your MS, you will rarely switch loot-spec to OS to get OS legos - which means as a healer, your OS DPS legos will always lag behind even if your weapon is up to date with traits and relics. This has made switching to OS DPS for a healer or tank extremely hard. At that point it is better to replace the OS DPS with a MS DPS with better legos. Hardly favorable to the healer who had to sit out. But that's the nature of Legion Mythic raiding.


I think despite all the crap that WoD has to deal with, i.e. the millions screaming --"WOD was the worst expac"; from purely a raiding POV, WoD was a better expac than Legion. For flexibility in switching specs between fights, WoD was far superior to Legion.

[Rotted]

One reason we need more hybrid support classes like the disc mechanics tbh

[Fayenoor]

One reason we need more hybrid support classes like the disc mechanics tbh

Unless they enforce it deliberately -- i.e. "you must bring 1 support class to enter the instance", there's literally no room for support classes in current Wow raid design. People would rather bring a full healer or a full DPS instead of an half-and-half.

[Kennyloggins]

There have been plenty of end bosses or generally difficult bosses that weren't underhealed on the initial kill. It's just a matter of whether or not Blizzard fails at tuning. They just dropped the ball really hard in Nighthold.

[Tiberria]

You cant design every encounter on a 2/5/13 setup. This is the nature of mythic raiding. When you sign up for it, you have to live with it.

Sure you can. You just need to design and tune the fights in a way that is considerate of what it does to raid comps instead of just lazily doing whatever they want. I don't know why people want to give them a pass on this. There are plenty of ways they can prevent the tank or healer role from being shit all over without restricting the creativity or fun of fight design.

Just because they have done a piss poor job at it in the past is no excuse to accept incompetent and lazy game design in the future.

- - - Updated - - -

Unless they enforce it deliberately -- i.e. "you must bring 1 support class to enter the instance", there's literally no room for support classes in current Wow raid design. People would rather bring a full healer or a full DPS instead of an half-and-half.

And, looking at Mythic spec representation, I think the Legion Disc redesign is pretty much a total failure. They have essentially turned Disc into a dead spec that only people able to play at a 99th percentile skill level can play it at a level that is worth a raid spot.

I don't think Wow needs support classes. One of the things they could use to help alleviate the variances in healers (and tanks) required is to give more unique utility and unique raid buffs to healing and tanking specs. Those could include more stuff like the Shaman Ankh totem, or auras that give raid wide DPS gains, or special jobs that only those specs could do. That would mean that you would have to think more closely about dropping a healer or a tank, because of the other things you would give up by doing so, which is a lot better than saying "we don't need the HPS so GTFO".

[Deleted]

My guild uses 3 healers on all fights except when we'll be going for Gul'dan, we had 4 healers on CA and Spellblade as we progressed but switched to 3 as soon as they were on farm.

[Meiffert]

If you have 5 main spec healers on your roster and you have a 3 heal fight and 5 healers show up, you are full bloody benching 40% of your healing roster. You carry that 5th healer, not because you expect to have 20% absenteeism, or 1 healer out for every raid. You carry them because you still need to be able to raid and down farm content and work on progression when one of them is out.

By that same logic you need 3 tanks. If you only had 2, how would you progress or even farm when one of them missed a raid?
Now you have to sit 33 % of your tanks on every fight when they all show up and 66 % on the 1 tank fights.
Can you see that it is the exact same argument?

Our guild has 2 tanks and 4 healers. When they can't make it or when we need more (~1 fight per tier), we have offspecs.

And, I don't agree that ranged and melee should really be split up. On a 25 man roster, you probably only have 18-19 main spec DPS (and 4-5 healers and 2 tanks). You need 14-15 of those DPS in for the fight, so outside of sitting classes that are just in a bad spot in general or bad for that fight, you can't really "bench all the ranged".

"Bench all the ranged"? What are you talking about?
Are you benching all the healers or something?

You don't bench all, you bench some.
For healers, you go from standard number of 4 down to 3 (25 % benched).
In the case of ranged, you go from standard amount of 7-8 to 5-6 (about 25 % benched).
And for melee there are sometimes worse fights than that (on Blackhand we went down to 3 melee, admittedly that was a while back).

On top of that (a completely separate issue) you can (and probably should) have extra players.
We usually have about 2 extra melee and 2 extra range than what is needed on average, which is another 25 % extra.
(You also have an extra healer for 25 % extra, which is fine.)
This brings us to the typical raid roster of ~25 players.

The ratio of benched players is the same for healers and dps. It is about 20 % just from having more (25 players for 20 man instance) on most fights.
Another 20 - 25 % on the 1 or 2 fights that are under-healed or strongly preferred melee/range.

Healers are also affected by the "my class is shit right now" even moreso than DPS are, because there are only 3-4 healing spots, and 6 healing specs. As soon as you have 2-3 "mandatory" healing specs to have in (which has been the case the last 3 expansions), that only leaves 1-2 available spots for the non-required specs to compete for. If you're playing a healing spec that is trash like Holy Priests in WoD and Mistweavers in Legion (and arguably in WoD), you're in a far worse spot for raid viability than a DPS spec that isn't doing very well.

If you play a weak spec, like holy priest, you won't have a spot in a high-end mythic progression. One of our officers started Legion as a holy priest, had to swap to paladin.
It is unfortunate, but not healer specific. Our tanks started as DK + DH, but even EN mythic was already done with warrior instead and we finished Nighthold with druid + monk.
Many dps players "had to" swap specs (arms -> fury, fire -> frost, etc.), while applications of specs like feral druid are sadly not even considered.

As has been said in the past, "bring the player, not the class" does not apply for high-end mythic progression, which Blizzard is ok with because it only affects a relatively small amount of players and those players are the ones best prepared with offspecs and geared alts.