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  1. #1

    Are healers declining in numbers?

    On my realm, I have noticed a decline in the number of healers. My guilds been raiding all expansion. The only problem is we keep losing healers. We lost two to RL stuff, two shamans went dps, one resto druid went PvP, one left because they thought we should listen to their strats on a brand new heroic boss, and finally one left because we couldn't raid because of the second of the two shamans we have had this expansion just leaving to dps in another guild. All in all, our luck with healers have sucked. Big time. Whats worse is we have never really had a stable set of three healers. We have always had at least one of our people going OS heals. Now, this alone wouldn't make me belive that the number of healers are dropping. Its also the fact that almost every raiding guild I see recruiting is also in need of healers. Some more progressed then our mere 7/12 Normal.

    So I am here. Is anyone else seeing what seems to be a decline in the healer population on their realm? I am on the Arthas realm horde side. It is fairly populated with many people.

  2. #2
    Have you not found a general population decline on your realm, just healers?

    My realm's alliance population has been steadily declining, particularly raiders. So we have fewer healers on the realm, but it's because we have fewer raiders overall.

  3. #3
    Deleted
    I play a healer and I cancelled my sub, i'm not a hater, but healing in this expansion isn't fun for me, and that's the only role I enjoy playing in this game.

  4. #4
    High Overlord Heratix's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Aquarela View Post
    I play a healer and I cancelled my sub, i'm not a hater, but healing in this expansion isn't fun for me, and that's the only role I enjoy playing in this game.
    Exactly this, healing isn't as fun anymore as it used to be. Although I'm still playing and have a healing mainspec on my priest after all these years, i'm starting to lean more towards my shadow spec, as its currently way more fun to play.

    I somewhat also stopped playing my other healing alts.

  5. #5
    I was a healer while i played but i quit also.

    My biggest gripe was LFR leading people to believe they knew/could do fights then getting into guilds, going to raid and 3/4 of the raid group dying to mechanics that didn't kill them in LFR because they didn't expect normal to be any different.

    Too much effort/time/energy wasted trying to find a decent and stable group of people to raid with so why bother paying?

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Ampere View Post
    Have you not found a general population decline on your realm, just healers?

    My realm's alliance population has been steadily declining, particularly raiders. So we have fewer healers on the realm, but it's because we have fewer raiders overall.
    My realms population doesn't seem to be going down. Just healers.

  7. #7
    Deleted
    Healing in PvE is unfun, in some cases healers aren't even needed or detrimential such as Scenarios. Blizzard trying to put more and more pressure onto the healers instead of the DPS because those shouldn't be bothered to actually be forced to think isn't helping.

    Healing in PvE is as it weakest since TBC excluding the start of MoP where a hell of a lot of buffs followed and yet (bad) dps are still crying and flaming because they can't down a healer in full 493 PvP gear wearing quest greens.

  8. #8
    I don't know if the healer population on my realm is going down, but it does seem like healing is the least attractive role in the game now (since tanks got major attention).

    If you think about it, being a dps you get to constantly compete for more damage, on farm, etc; and when you gear its obvious how it helps you improve.

    When you tank now, you get to do high dps (more than dps classes if you know how to play), you get to control where the boss goes and how he goes, and you take charge of the group for trash, etc. Probably the most interesting role to play now overall (unless you hate being a meat-shield).

    Healers on the other hand heal the raid up, their jobs get easier on farm (and therefore less interesting), gear helps but isn't obviously contributing since healing is the raid dies or the raid doesn't die; the boss won't die 50% faster because the healers gained 5 ilvls. As farm goes on healer burnout occurs far faster than it does for dps and tanks.
    -------------------------------------

    The end result from what I can tell is that most healers get burnt out and want to quit the game before a DPS or a tank will get burnt out, to top it off there are already far fewer healers healing in a raid because of the extra responsibility (its pretty obvious when a healer screws up). The raid group that I raid lead is currently World 259 9/13H and we've recruited 1 healer in the last 2 tiers, we removed one healer for being bad and had our tank switch to heals. We have been looking for a healer to take our resto shamans spot for months now and haven't been able to find a suitable healer. So I'm definitely feeling the difficulty in finding quality healers to raid with. Its almost at the point that I'm about to reroll from my Warlock to a healer simply because we need a better healer (since resto shamans are pretty much garbage this tier).

    It also is really damaging to lose a healer during progression, just like a tank.

  9. #9
    Resto Druids and probably Resto Shamans are definitely thinning PvE wise. Why bother? Everyone else does everything better with less concern for mana. R Druids even have to compete against Mistweavers for gear and nobody with more than 3 braincells is going to gear a Resto Druid before a Mistweaver.

    I would also add...

    The only aspect of this game that is rewarding as a Healer is raiding (I'm just excluding the terrible PvP in this game entirely). 5 mans are a boring joke. You can't sanely perform the day to day things as a Healer (well, Mistweavers and Priests can... others not so much). So... you have raiding. Something you do a few nights a week, if that. A generally thankless job that is always in jeopardy anyway as people love nothing more than to drop healers/force them DPS for either progression or farm. On top of all that... far fewer people are raiding now than have in the past (actual, non-lfr raiding) and those that do raid are finding the raids quite difficult. There's just less and less space for a Healer to actually do anything these days.
    Last edited by ThePlanckEnergy; 2013-05-08 at 11:59 PM.

  10. #10
    The imbalance in healing specs I think has contributed to the decreasing number of healers that don't play those specs. It's very demoralizing as a resto shaman to see blizzard think we're in a fine place come 5.3, while the adjustments to disc priests and holy paladins is marginal at most. Instead of re-rolling to a fotm healer I think most people try something new or quit altogether. Gearing up a healer alt is a miserable experience due to the necessity of LFR, any skilled player is gonna be bored to death healing LFR so it's much more appealing to just go dps.

  11. #11
    We have 4 healers in our raid team. One of them has had to switch to dps permanently.

    I don't find there to be any lack of healers.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Harekrsna View Post
    I don't know if the healer population on my realm is going down, but it does seem like healing is the least attractive role in the game now (since tanks got major attention).

    If you think about it, being a dps you get to constantly compete for more damage, on farm, etc; and when you gear its obvious how it helps you improve.

    When you tank now, you get to do high dps (more than dps classes if you know how to play), you get to control where the boss goes and how he goes, and you take charge of the group for trash, etc. Probably the most interesting role to play now overall (unless you hate being a meat-shield).

    Healers on the other hand heal the raid up, their jobs get easier on farm (and therefore less interesting), gear helps but isn't obviously contributing since healing is the raid dies or the raid doesn't die; the boss won't die 50% faster because the healers gained 5 ilvls. As farm goes on healer burnout occurs far faster than it does for dps and tanks.
    -------------------------------------

    The end result from what I can tell is that most healers get burnt out and want to quit the game before a DPS or a tank will get burnt out, to top it off there are already far fewer healers healing in a raid because of the extra responsibility (its pretty obvious when a healer screws up). The raid group that I raid lead is currently World 259 9/13H and we've recruited 1 healer in the last 2 tiers, we removed one healer for being bad and had our tank switch to heals. We have been looking for a healer to take our resto shamans spot for months now and haven't been able to find a suitable healer. So I'm definitely feeling the difficulty in finding quality healers to raid with. Its almost at the point that I'm about to reroll from my Warlock to a healer simply because we need a better healer (since resto shamans are pretty much garbage this tier).

    It also is really damaging to lose a healer during progression, just like a tank.

    Solid points. Speaking as a healer, I enjoy 2 healing in 10 mans, b/c if you mess up, then there are consequences. Whenever we have to go to 3 healers, for progression, or b/c dps is standing in the fire and insist on 3 healing to make up for their stupidity, I tune out. I know healing isn't like dps in that it's not "a race" but I play a holy paladin, and I co heal with a skilled disc priest, and it is way more fun and engaging 2 healing and "competing" for the top healing spot.

    Long story short, I think the "bring 3 healers for farm" makes healing boring and ultimately costs you healers, since 3 healing takes zero skill. Yes, you might have more cds for fuckups, but your healers will be bored, and they won't be testing their full hps potential, or even close. If more guilds dropped healers and forced their dps and tanks to play better, then maybe we wouldn't be seeing this massive shortage of skilled players. But then again, maybe we would.

  13. #13
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    Only thing I don't like much about being a healing paladin is the fact that outside of raid's, there's not much I can do except to go ret and make do with my shabby OS gear while all the DPS/tanks and other healers (priests/shamans/druids atleast) can re-spec and they are good to go

    Having said that I raid ToT on 3 healing char's, but mainly because that's the role I'm 100% familiar with so it just feels "right" and I do enjoy the healing aspect of raiding as, for me atleast, it is the single most important role in the raid.

  14. #14
    My 25m guild has had a lot of trouble keeping healers and recruiting them the last few weeks. Enough so that myself and another DPS are having to play our offspecs more regularly these days. -.- My hope is that we find some healers quick, otherwise I may burn out, because I don't enjoy healing all that much, particularly on progression, but I maintain my offspec so that we are able to keep raids going, rather than having to cancel them.

  15. #15
    As others have said I think the shear dominance of two healers has put a lot of people off the others. I for one am getting bored with my resto druid of now 12 raiding tiers purely due to this. On farm fights now for the most part I sit there rolling hots on the odd person with the disc priest blanketing the raid. We 2 heal all fights as well and it's just pathetic how often i'm sitting there with nothing to do.

  16. #16
    Elemental Lord clevin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by jetersky View Post
    My 25m guild has had a lot of trouble keeping healers and recruiting them the last few weeks. Enough so that myself and another DPS are having to play our offspecs more regularly these days. -.- My hope is that we find some healers quick, otherwise I may burn out, because I don't enjoy healing all that much, particularly on progression, but I maintain my offspec so that we are able to keep raids going, rather than having to cancel them.
    But, are you picky about classes you'll accept? I see a lot of this but then t hey'll say "Oh no, no resto druids..."

  17. #17
    Deleted
    I have been playing holy paladin since TBC and I must admit that healing back in TBC and wotlk was more fun than it is now. I cant really put my finger on what's wrong but as I said it was more fun back then.
    One thing that was better back then was that every healing class was more "unique" than they are right now all healers got more or the same 4 "basic" healing spells.

    But anyway what the problem might be is that people are burnt out from firelands and dragon soul in cata and the people who stops playing just happends to be healers.
    I myslef quit playing in DS because I couldent stand another small raid with a extremely dissapointing end boss.

  18. #18
    A lot of healers got off on the power fantasy of spamming the most powerful heals non-stop through all of WotLK and were very soured when Cataclysm made mana more important again. However, mid-way through Firelands, Int mana scaling made mana once again a non-issue and everyone got back to their ridiculous spamming. Now that the final nail is in the coffin to make mana a permanent part of healing consideration, a lot of players don't find it as fun anymore because it requires a lot more effort to do the same job.

    I still do because I was always in it for the puzzle and the strategy of it anyways, but healing just takes a fundamentally different kind of interest than DPS, and the overlap has been shrinking more and more over the years.

  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dzur View Post
    If more guilds dropped healers and forced their dps and tanks to play better, then maybe we wouldn't be seeing this massive shortage of skilled players. But then again, maybe we would.
    This is a good point! One thing about tanking in ToT is that 90% of the bosses there's a taunt based on a debuff on the tanks, this means that there isnt very interesting to heal the tanks, you dont really have to give them much attention as a healer. This makes it boring for us healers aswell as the tanks.

  20. #20
    Based on the information we received today, it seems that every class is declining in numbers.

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