Overall impression of healing throughput versus damage in 7.3 so far

[Deleted]

I actually love how I can solo a healer now. Nothing gets me more exited.

[Sforza]

Healers being non god-like allows a healthy gameplay. It rewards players more (and punishes) for setting (getting) swaps, peels, cross CCs, etc.
It also makes the game less dependant on dampening and mortal strike effects. However, blizzard might have to take a look on those things in order to keep healers still relevant.

[ilik2345]

Yup, healers have had way too much healing power in PVP for a while now. They should not be able to easily out heal even one DPS's damage in a 1v1 scenario as long as they are both fairly evenly skilled, let alone keeping their team alive for ages against several people.

I just picked this one quote as its well expressed and seems to be a common sentiment,

My own view is that a healer needs to be able to outheal at least 1 dps by a small margin, barring being outplayed seriously or mechanics like dampening or running out of mana. If it can not do this, then suddenly its pointless bringing any healers to pvp, you'd be always better off taking another dps. There should be a cutoff of course and thats what mana and dampening is for.

Having said this i do think healers should be killed by groups of dps, after all the point of multiplayer game is to play with others, the classic example is 2 dps vs 1 healer without assistance - the healer should definitely be dead, how quickly this happens is debatable but i feel it should be minutes not seconds, but I'm biased as i mostly heal.

[Deleted]

They clearly stated that the netherlight crucible won't work in PvP. So why are you talking about it? :S

[Eliessa]

Yup, healers have had way too much healing power in PVP for a while now. They should not be able to easily out heal even one DPS's damage in a 1v1 scenario as long as they are both fairly evenly skilled, let alone keeping their team alive for ages against several people.

in that case no one will play healer. the moment every random dps can just roll over me as long not a whole team to peel and protect me I will roll dps and so will every other healer. be careful what you are wishing for.

[KOREAN DAVE]

Like everyone is stating here, a healer shouldn't be able to outheal a single DPS assuming equal skill and no CDs popped. Healers should be about prolonging life, not preventing their target from dying. Legion feels like Wrath PvP but not as good, which is still a god thing considering Wrath has the best PvP expac so far

[warlockiii]

Like everyone is stating here, a healer shouldn't be able to outheal a single DPS assuming equal skill and no CDs popped. Healers should be about prolonging life, not preventing their target from dying. Legion feels like Wrath PvP but not as good, which is still a god thing considering Wrath has the best PvP expac so far

No. 1 DPS should not be able to kill a healer (without cooldowns), but 1 dps should be able to shut a healer down (and stop healing output) via interrupts/cc or making the healer flee/re-position. If a healer's output isn't enough to keep up themselves or an ally who is taking damage from 1 enemy, then they are pointless and will be ignored. Healers should be a threat and a priority target, or they are pointless.

[Lorianus]

Well i guess i should say have fun and wish everyone luck against double melee backed up by a ret for even more melee and offheals/blessings because when 1 dps can kill/shut down a healer why even bring one.

Also how are you guys proposing RBG should work in that case, because now people die when 3-4 dps connect on a target in under 1-2 seconds.

[ItachiZaku]

I love having a couple killing blows in a BG as a healer. It makes me feel all shiny.

[KOREAN DAVE]

No. 1 DPS should not be able to kill a healer (without cooldowns), but 1 dps should be able to shut a healer down (and stop healing output) via interrupts/cc or making the healer flee/re-position. If a healer's output isn't enough to keep up themselves or an ally who is taking damage from 1 enemy, then they are pointless and will be ignored. Healers should be a threat and a priority target, or they are pointless.

Yeah, no thanks, that's how we get dampening fests. Healers are part of the reason why PvP is usually broken as fuck, and it's because Blizzard has always tried to keep healing output > damage output. If the average lifespan of someone getting attacked by a DPS is 15-20 seconds, a healer should increase that lifespan to 40-50 seconds, but that person should die if they are being non-stop attacked by someone else. It's up to the other teammates to CC the healer / DPS to keep their ally alive or secure a kill. This is all excluding cooldowns, CDs should be powerful enough to force a kill or stop a kill attempt and then reset the situation. This ensures that getting attacked constantly is a threat and not just pressure on the healers mana like it's been on previous expansions.

[Pheros]

If arena games started lasting 2-3 mins instead of 10+ min long dampening snooze-fests, then I might actually start pvp'ing again.

It'll never happen, but I agree with all the sentiment that healers should be an augment, not a god, to their team and 100% require peels/cc to survive against 1 dps. If all the heals reroll to dps, then fine by me. Chasing a single someone around for minutes on end while they kite me and live forever is exactly why I don't pvp anymore.

[Deleted]

You're all totally missing the point of how healing in this game actually works. I can only assume that you're either playing way way too casually or have just come around recently and have no idea whatsoever what PvP used to be like in previous expansions.

All those comparisons with MOBAs, let alone FPS and Hero Shooters are absolutely ridiculous. WoW is an MMORPG, not an FPS. Of course healing will be much different. Overwatch is a super fast paced FPS at that too and has 0 RPG elements. If you can compare WoW's healing to any FPS at all it would be to Paladins and still it would be a pretty loose one.

WoW HAS to have high healing and it ALWAYS has had it! It's just that there used to be a lot more mechanics to play around it. People used to either have way more CC or some other mechanics to counter it. In MoP healers indeed output as much HPS as they do now but you could sit in a 25 second CC chain too And that balanced out by classes having way more tools to deal with damage so that they can have the opportunity to outplay their opponents while their healer sit in yet another CC chain. In WotLK healers did a shit-ton of healing as well but interrupts and silences were WAY more powerful. Some classes like feral druids could CC chain the healer on their own (even their teammates preventing them from getting any heals), others like Priests and Warlocks had a way to drain mana, others like Ret Paladins relied on heavy burst in short CC windows (similarly to how the whole of WoD played through for everyone), others like UH DKs had massive half a minute long consistent high DPS windows where they could tunnel a healer by their own, Hunters were the jack of all trades that could drain mana, apply antiheal and burst at the same time but had other interesting mechanics to balance themselves out... and Arms Warriors could apply a 75% healing reduction when Overpowering during a cast + Mortal Strike.

After WotLK classes got a bit homogenized and everyone played like a WotLK ret paladin relying on short-window burst cds lacking any other tools to deal with healing so 1v1ing a healer became impossible. But healers were kept in check in arena via other tools - i.e. CC. So it was still okay and enjoyable.

The problem is that healing this expansion has to stay low because the game is broken. Hell, it should even get lower than this (or rather damage getting buffed which it will so everything is good), IMHO. And this is not because that's the right thing to do. This is because they pruned all the defensives, all the cool tools, most of the CC, and if healing goes up noone would ever die and all games would reach 90% dampening which isn't really fun.

PvP has turned into a PvE damage fest and that's why healing has to be low - because the only counter to healing nowadays is pure raw damage. And we wouldn't want 30-minute long stale games, right?

[jontunnel130]

It's not just 7.3, healing has been the weakest it has ever been in relation to damage and health pools for all of legion.

The other day the realization hit me that I was literally doing the same hps on my holy priest as I was doing in mop, two fucking expansions ago.

You said for all of legion. but comparatively. healers have been able to outheal single target damage for awhile now. going back to cata. It's at one of its worst states for insane heal throughput and you combine that with all of the escapability/def cds every class spec has. It's insane. 2 dps should be able to roast a dps/healer team before the single dps can put a kb down

[Arenis]

Like everyone is stating here, a healer shouldn't be able to outheal a single DPS assuming equal skill and no CDs popped. Healers should be about prolonging life, not preventing their target from dying. Legion feels like Wrath PvP but not as good, which is still a god thing considering Wrath has the best PvP expac so far

Like Wrath? Have you played Wrath my friend? I don't recall Wrath being a mongol-melee heavy expansion with press-cd-to-win classes and very low healing throughput. The game felt a lot more fluid and a bit more volatile due to high general DPS, high healing and unlimited cleanses (both offensive and defensive). Since ±WoD a significant portion of the PvPers migrated to a wotlk arena realm. For a long time that stuff got a lot more views than retail WoW, and I'm not sure if this is any different now. That's not a good thing.

Healers being non god-like allows a healthy gameplay. It rewards players more (and punishes) for setting (getting) swaps, peels, cross CCs, etc.
It also makes the game less dependant on dampening and mortal strike effects. However, blizzard might have to take a look on those things in order to keep healers still relevant.

Healthy as in, stack the easiest burst class (couple DH's, few warriors, and you're set) and get kills without earning them. It's more becoming a pve DPS race than a skillful mix between healers and dpsers. Right now a colossus smash into a mortal strike (crit) does a lot of damage and the player didn't do shit for it. Meanwhile the healer has to expose himself from cover, use very weak heals and also prepare for a truckload of incoming CC, for little reward (especially if the absolutely ridiculous idea that a dpsers should be able to solo a healer would come to fruition). This widens the skillgap between healers and DPSers too much.


PvP is not in a good state, at all. Participation numbers are dropping, PvP sites are dying, a lot of top players are quitting for a fucking private server.