Healing homogenization. DO. NOT. WANT.

[ardoRic]

Am I the only one worried about the trend they seem to be making regarding to healing?

Shamans: you get Lesser Healing Wave, Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave. You usually want to use Healing Wave, use Lesser on quick heals and use Greater on big heals.

Priests: you get Flash Heal, Heal and Greater Heal. You usually want to use Heal, use Flash Heal on quick heals and use Greater on big heals.

what's next?

Paladins: Flash of Light, Light and Holy Light ...

DO NOT WANT.

Yes, I'm sure they'll go to great lengths to make healing a bit different for each class/spec, and hopefully they do a good job at it. I'm just concerned that healing classes feel much like the same in most situations.

[Zanadar]

It's no different from today, where the favored priest direct-heal is Flash Heal, and the shaman version is Lesser Healing Wave. It's just more spells, and general spell-cleanup.

Looking at the shaman changes i don't think they are in any way trying to make the four healing classes more alike, just make it easier to understand the differences between spells. (anybody who leveled a priest will have wondered about the differences between heal, greater heal and flash heal, and why some of them is a bad version of another most of the time).

[Thetruth1400]

I agree with the OP. It's a bad trend that is making the choice between what healer to take almost a moot point.

They're taking the "bring the player not the class" a little too far and making the game dumbed down to be basically 4 class types. Healer, Tank, Caster DPS, Melee DPS. (And hunters)

It's a disturbing trend and I don't like it one bit. I personally play a priest, and I can't see my 10 other healing spells (healing spell bloat much?) (besides Heal, Greater Heal, Flash Heal) differentiating me enough to justify bringing me along. Buff variance might die completely because taking 4 Shaman is just as effective as 4 Priests because they all do the same basic thing with equal ability.

[nalle]

It's no different from today, where the favored priest direct-heal is Flash Heal, and the shaman version is Lesser Healing Wave. It's just more spells, and general spell-cleanup.

Looking at the shaman changes i don't think they are in any way trying to make the four healing classes more alike, just make it easier to understand the differences between spells. (anybody who leveled a priest will have wondered about the differences between heal, greater heal and flash heal, and why some of them is a bad version of another most of the time).

This^^

It wont really be any different then it is right now, both shamans and priests are getting basicly the same spell but talents are being reworked for both classes so the way you heal in cataclysm will probably be alot different still.

[Doylez]

uhm where is the homogenization again?
right now:

priest: flash heal, greater heal
paladin: flash of light, holy light

etc... all they do is add an extra medium heal for every class

[russykh]

Its not that different now though is it? Except that each class has fast heal/slow heal. And no one uses the slow heal. Yes, I know priests have a middle heal already, but that never gets used either.

Druids will still probably use hots more than anything. With the greater health pools we should see less overhealing making them more valuable. There will likely be more use of blooming lifebloom too. Direct heals will just back these up in an emergency.

Shamans will be great group healers from the sounds of it. Chain heal and healing rain sound great for keeping melee alive.

It sounds like priests will still have options, but disc will have better tank healing capabilities, holy putting hots on after each heal sounds interesting and "chakra" sounds very interesting.

Paladins I am interested to see what they are going to do with.

To an extent, each healing class needs to have some similarities so that they can balance 5 mans and not be screwed if you havent bought the "right" one.

If you are worried you are not different enough to justify bringing you along, then surely the other 3 classes are in the same boat? And then it becomes more about "well, we'll bring him along because we know he's good". Which is a good thing.

[Memory]

uhm where is the homogenization again?
right now:

priest: flash heal, greater heal
paladin: flash of light, holy light

etc... all they do is add an extra medium heal for every class

Yeah, flash heal and greater heal are currently the most used healing spells by all-world priests... ???

[Revitalize]

Tells me you weren't around in vanilla or TBC when raids were cancelled because you couldn't stack the raid with a certain class.

That and incessive QQ about "Whah wahhh whaaa..class x can do that job better than class y, I lost my raidspot" is the reason for the changes we see.

This.

Also, Blizzard does not want to bring the class, but the player.
However just because we have similar direct healing spells doesnt mean we wont have our own unique abilities.
OP is confused and overeacting.

There is no homogenization coming to our classes.
We will still have our unique tools.

Stop freaking out over nothing.

If anything, this will weed out the players who can heal and who can't.

[Herecius]

They've only shown off the disc priest, holy priest and resto shaman changes... and to be perfectly honest, outside of all of them having a 'big heal' and a 'smaller heal', they all look like they play completely differently to me. Hell, disc priest doesn't really have the same sort of small heal/big heal - it looks like they'll give disc priests a super-powered tank shield and a small raid-damage shield. A healer of any sort not having direct healing spells would be weird, all healing classes being capable of... well.. healing, doesn't really sound like a problem to me.

[Memory]

Tells me you weren't around in vanilla or TBC when raids were cancelled because you couldn't stack the raid with a certain class.

In the BC, I don't remember cancelling raids because we couldn't stack the raid with a certain class except cancelling some Felmyst for the lack of priests (which isn't very different from cancelling Anub 25 HM for the lack of paladins). Having many warlocks was good (it was also during T7 if you wanted stuff to die quick) and we always tried to recruit many warlocks, but can't remember we ever cancelled a raid because 'oh shit, not enough warlocks, we won't meet the DPS requirements'. Another fight where stacking (resto shamans) was good was Twin Eredars, but I don't remember we ever cancelled the raid for the lack of shamans, and altho having four resto shamans was the ideal setup, you could also replace some with other healing classes. Ofc there were fights that required one specific key class/spec but stacking was rarely required up to the point you would cancel a raid without.

[Ormula]

Homogeneity? Alright, give my druid Power Word: Barrier plz.

[Hiroxified]

Homogeneity? Alright, give my druid Power Word: Barrier plz.

In addition, could we also get an instant interruption without any shared Global Cooldown?

[Toas]

You probably don't lead very many raids. You have no idea how annoying it is to be leading a raid and healing niches making it annoyingly hard to find the last healer(s). For example, you're trying to lead an icc10. You have 2 druids so far, and need a third healer for tank healing. You spend forever spamming for one, only to have 5 more resto druids whisper you, but you can't bring them, because (unless specifically spec'd) druids are poor tank healers. Works the other way with pallies, too.

I'm not saying make all healers exactly the same, just make it so that druids can be viable tank healers or pallies can be viable raid healers. I'm not saying that druids should be as good at tank healing as pallies or visa-versa. I just think that a druid should be able to be a tank healer without either severly overgearing the place or specifically spec'ing into Living Seed / Empowered Touch. And before someone tries to argue that they are - They're really not. Try bring 3 druids in 232 gear to heal a tank in 232 gear to icc10. Not gonna work. (Well ok it actually might because of the shear amount of innervates available, lol.)

[Jenerena]

Oh come on. Priests are obviously not the same as shammys. Healers have to be homogenised to fulfil their role. They need similar kind of healing spells, to keep tanks up. What makes them different is of course other things such as totems for shammys, guardian spirit for priests etc. This is a very narrow minded view and one to be thought about logically.