Fixing healing in BGs with daily quests
by Mike Schramm 
Jan 9th 2008 at 6:00PM
I think that certain people are healing in BGs than when I wrote that post back in October-- I've been in AB quite a bit lately, and I've seen more healing Paladins in there than ever. But I do think that Blizzard could still stand to offer some rewards to players for doing the right things (including healing) in the BGs, and I am convinced, as we've said on the podcast, that daily quests are the way to do it. Blizzard should offer daily quest bounties for doing x amount of healing, standing a few meters from an objective while it's captured (to encourage people to fight on the flags), and for doing all the other things that people really should do in BGs but don't do as much.
They shouldn't offer a quest for doing damage or making flag captures (because everyone already does that). But Blizzard should go out of their way to incentivize stuff that's less heralded like this-- the more reward they place on healing fellow players, the more people will step up to do it.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Quests, Buffs, Battlegrounds
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
biglou Jan 30th 2008 5:12PM
@12...I like your attitude. I love to heal BG's and also like annoying the hell out of the horde. A great AV run for me is when I get jumped and 4 hoardies who are thinking "This Freaking pally wont die...I HATE PALLIES", then I rez with a bullseye on my perverbial arse but still manage to top healing and HK's. That usually equals 3 marks, pissing off the horde, and healing everyone in sight!!! But help with them 4 hoardies in the beginning would have helped a little. Also, if you get small buffs in the beginning it may be that we are out of reagents or dont think youll last longer than 10 minutes anyway...dont b*tch...just say thank you..move out..and draw fire.
infection Jan 9th 2008 6:15PM
I'm pretty sure no one will agree with this but healers.
"Blizzard should offer daily quest bounties for doing x amount of healing."
"They shouldn't offer a quest for doing damage or making flag captures (because everyone already does that)."
Wait... I have a 70 pally that heals his ass off in AV's and I still don't agree with it.
All that would turn into is a QQ fest of how only people healing gets rewards. So now dps classes won't actually be trying to help me as I heal (yes, there are a few out there that will pull a npc off of me or try to kill another player trying to kill me)
Epiny Jan 9th 2008 6:18PM
Ya this is just stupid. The daily BG is fine. I don't heal in AB/EoTS/WSG because no one protects me.
Koden Jan 9th 2008 6:24PM
I heal...and I do a great job of it. I've done the rogue thing, the shadowpriest thing, but as a healer I really shift the battle in our favor.
There is a lot of satisfaction there. I sneak in a few kills also...SW:D FTW!
Argent Jan 9th 2008 6:34PM
"sure, most of that Paladin healing was probably on themselves"
riiiight.
y'know, i lead the healing in almost every BG i go into. sometimes less so in AB and EOTS because i will actually play defense, but in places like AV? paladins usually throttle all comers in the healing column.
and believe you me, healing myself is usually the least amount of time spent.
healing in some bg's (eots, AV) just makes all the difference in the world. but i still don't think it requires a special daily. everyone gets their BG daily and that's fine. i also doubt that special bounties will make more healers play or do anything. people either do or they don't and lets face it, playing a dedicated healbot for any length of time has a huge amount of burnout associated with it.
the reason you're perhaps seeing more healers in BGs atm is that people are still grinding up some of their S3 pvp pieces. check back in a month or two and you'll find your customary 3 hunters, 3 warlocks, 2 mages, 1 warr and 1 ret pally. ;)
Jaegan Jan 9th 2008 6:42PM
The operating assumption here seems to be that any healing capable class that isn't fully dedicated to healing is an abomination, and blizzard must go to lengths to fix it.
"I've seen more paladins healbotting than ever before! As it should be. Happy times!" (as if 85% of paladins being holy were insufficient.)
The only two acceptable solutions to the healer "problem" are to make healing more fun/engaging, and for those being healed to be more appreciative. When I save someone by healing them and I get a "thanks man," that person becomes a top priority heal target. When I say thanks to someone else, the heals I get tend to go up.
Healing in bgs often involves someone passing up on having fun of their own so the ingrates around them can get their jollies. Subsidizing healers with honor benefits won't fix that problem.
hpavc Jan 9th 2008 6:43PM
Those numbers in that screen shot are horrible especially for a AV battle, people likely heal more in an arena battle.
Sean Riley Jan 9th 2008 6:52PM
Well, I'll chip in some support for it. As a priest in Warsong, I've done good work in helping our side win battles -- But I'm still gaining honor at a snail's pace compared to my warrior, even though with him we're losing most of the battles. (Partly my fault, I'm sure -- I think I'm a better priest than warrior. Mostly because Alliance are way better at Battlegrounds than Horde in my battlegroup, and my priest is Alliance, my Warrior horde.)
A daily quest style system could help the healers gain honor at a decent rate. I'd make them two-tiered: Heal for X amount, and win. If you lose, the daily quest automatically fails, too.
brittwilson Jan 9th 2008 7:01PM
Heres my take on BG healing.
There are people who have many characters and none heal. They may have an alt that they tried but they are DPS or tank people, they don't either like healing or get healing, so they are very unlikely to make a BG healer.
Then you people like me. I have a hunter(who has been sidelined) and a holy priest at 70, and a 59 Ret paly. My priest is my main, and is decked out in good PvE gear. I heal everywhere we go, all I do is heal, so when I want to do BG, I get on my paly and just relax and have a good time, and do something I dont normally get to do: hit stuff in the face with an axe.
But yet I am constantly harassed about not being a healer. Of course I'm not a healer, when I spend 4 nights a week raiding as a healer, why would I want to do the same thing in my off time? Yet I get chided. "GTFO retnoob go reroll a belf or heal stop wasting space."
So that leaves us to depend on, for the most part, people who DPS, and like to heal BGs. From what Ive seen on my server, thats a small few.
We just, IMO, have a much smaller pool of PvP healers, and way more DPSers. Is that anyones fault? I dont think so.
I guess my real question is: Why is it ok for someone who rolled a class that cant heal(ie. warrior, rogue) to yell and cuss at me, because I chose to do the same job as them, but I theoretically could heal? How does that make me worse and worthy of mean tells than a person who cant heal at all?
Sean Riley Jan 9th 2008 7:10PM
The line gets blurry with some of the classes -- I'd not criticise a paladin for getting in on the front lines. If you ask me, that's their job. (If you can spot someone falling low and health and nail them with a quick healing spell, that's a bonus -- Not your job.) Shamans and druids also could end up in this grey zone. Priests... a little less so, but then, what about Shadow priests?
Really, I dislike any whining in battlegrounds. The only thing I've yelled at anyone for was whining, or not covering the flag carrier in Warsong. Especially if that flag carrier was me! :)
brittwilson Jan 9th 2008 7:22PM
I agree, it just seems in my battlegroup, that pallies get the brunt of the anger. For some reason I never see people yell at Shadow priests, don't know why. Druids can get crap too, but the nice part about druids, at least feral ones, is they pop out, heal, and pop back in form, with no hit to their effectiveness. The mana they used is not needed to fight. I on the other hand, will, if I think it will make a difference, will through a heal, or a cleanse to get DoTs off, but heals especially, it hurts me bad, as it takes 25% of my mana to do a holy light. Most of the time I'm better off stunning the guy and using way less mana to kill the guy before he kills my teammate.
Its tough for healers in BG, I know, I tried. But I dont know what Blizz could do to make it more enjoyable, to coax people to be healers.
It doesn't help though that as far as I can tell, there is no smart queuing. The game knows what spec we are, it would be nice if it didn't put all the healers into one AV, and none in another. It would be bad if it waited for exactly the right raid makeup, but if there were no healers in the raid, it had 6 slots open, and 4 queued were healers, the rest DPS, it would be nice if it gave the healers priority. or whatever type the raid as short.
kenney Jan 9th 2008 7:03PM
I play a holydin in 5v5, battlegrounds, and non-progression content where we need a healer- so obviously I am not above healing. I will say that blizzard has managed to make it the least fun part of the game right now though- it is the least glorious role in pve or pvp.
Dailies are not the solution to this. Blizzard needs to revisit how much fun it is to play a healer, and find some way to make it more rewarding.
I WILL say that healing my arena team is plenty fun. Running battlegrounds in a group with my arena team is fun - but somehow when I get divorced from that team feeling, and just find myself heading to important spots and healing everyone around, it gets a lot less entertaining.
Sarah Jan 9th 2008 10:17PM
I'd like bonus honor to go to people who defend bases. I always end up denfending the flag/graveyard/tower in BG's while everyone else goes and gets themselves a thousadn honor kills in the thick of the battle.
I think defending should be rewarded.
Killu Jan 9th 2008 9:02PM
oh well, I'm speced enhance atm and I heal when I see it's necessary or it might help the other healers to keep someone form dieing.
I sometimes even switch into my healing gear if I see that my teammates are worth healing and are willing to protect me.
But most of the time people dont even say thanks or even flame you after they walked out of your range and died...
Well adding daily quests for healing might not be the way to go, since it makes it more like a "job" you have to do.
I too think that the best way to get healers to actually heal more is protecting them and thanking them for heals.
thebvp Jan 9th 2008 7:20PM
I really don’t understand why people don’t like healing in bgs. It’s only of my favorite things. How you cannot enjoy seeing someone being 3v1’d at 10% health, running in, healing them to full, and then watching that person proceed to destroy those three opponents is beyond me. It feels like the ultimate cockblocker role in bgs.
I suppose the difference is that most people come to BGs to rape, pillage, destroy, and blow things up. I come there to torture. Well, let me take that back. My warlock is for blowing things up. My priest is for torture. I might not be able to outright destroy, but I can render you useless, heal my teammates, and be nearly indestructible… in a dress.
In short, it’s my job to be the most annoying SOB the alliance has ever seen. And is that fun? Especially when you realize why everyone one is there (honor grind aside), yes, it is INCREDIBLY fun. PvP healing is a blast.
Still, you gotta chuckle at the games where the warlock is second in healing and a warrior isn’t far behind.
theRaptor Jan 9th 2008 8:33PM
Read #8, if you spend all your time healing raids you are probably not going to feel like healing in BG's. Especially when doing so marks you out as target number one, and your team mates don't protect you.
My raider is a mage, so I do heal on my holy pally because it is a nice chance of pace. But I can understand how healing raiders might want to mix things up occasionally.
someguy Jan 9th 2008 7:29PM
Don't be ridiculous, you can't give healers a daily quest without giving DPSers and even AFKers their own daily.
Seriously though. Who cares if there's healing or not in BG. The side that doesn't heal is going to lose most of the time.
I've been in a WSG where I did 200+K of damage but our entire team only had 7 kills after 10 minutes (we lost 3-0 in 12 minutes) becuase the the other side outhealed our damage.
I play both a 70 rogue and a 70 Disc/Holy priest. I stopped playing the priest becuase no one protects me in BG. As a rogue the first thing I do is CC or harass the other healers. If my teammates aren't going to bother to protect their healer I am not going to heal. My playtime is too precious to waste letting others get their 'jollies'.
/agree with #2, #5, #8
nav Jan 9th 2008 7:30PM
thebvp nails it. You either help one man win against overwhelming odds, or you get nuked first - which can only be a compliment.
Anyway, the idea of a daily that says you must do x amount of healing is thoroughly broken. Too gear dependent, too situation dependent. It might actually be impossible in a battleground where you make mincemeat of the opposition (and if not, it'd be too easy in other battlegrounds).
Saying "win $x battleground" is far more effective, and if honour needs adjusting then extend the time you share the honour with a target you've healed recently or something, don't introduce extra dailies to try to fix the issue.
Propane Jan 10th 2008 2:00AM
I play a 70 mage, so while i may not heal its awesome when there is some form of healer backing me up and us two alone can defend a node in AB, its encoraged me to roll a pvp-healing druid which im lvling up currently.
Dan Jan 9th 2008 7:34PM
I'm a mostly PvE/Raid holy pally that recently farmed some honor in the BGs to fill in some gaps in my equipment. Most every time I go into a BG I top the charts for healing on both sides, but now that I have the equipment I need I doubt I'll be doing much more of it. Why? Because of all of the crap you end up taking as a healer-- getting whispered about how you should be healing someone when you were getting ganked by a bunch of horde is pretty annoying, especially when your team mates didn't bother to try and keep them off you. Healing the BGs is, for the most part, a thankless task, so is it any wonder that people don't particularly care to do it?