The future of healing in the Arena
by Michael Gray 
Jan 5th 2009 at 6:00PM
If you've been in the Arena during Season 5, you probably have noticed a particular change to the way gladiators fight. It can be summarized in a single word: "Damage." In the bygone days of Season 4, drain teams and Mortal Strike debuffs were all but an entry requirement to high ranked play. Without a strategy to reduce or nullify your enemy's healing, you were unlikely to produce sufficient burst DPS to actually kill anyone. A few double-DPS teams managed to thrive, but for the most part, a gladiator's number one priority was shutting down the healer.
That dynamic is all but dead in Season 5. Players output such a high level of damage compared to other players' health that healing is almost a non-factor in most matches. My friends, Ghostcrawler is aware of this dynamic, and is looking into it. (It turns out, Ghostcrawler mostly plays a healer in the Arena.) As stated by the crab himself, the Arena should not simply be about burst damage. (Nor, however, should it be solely about healing or solely about crowd control.)
Of course, Ghostcrawler does admit he has difficulty saying what the long terms plans are going to be. The design team hasn't had enough whiteboard time to say anything with complete honesty. But he also hopes that as more Resilience gear enters the PvP system, the damage might scale down to be more reasonable. (To quote, "It's mostly just math.") Still, there's hope that future teams will include more than just seeing which team can burst down the other first.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, PvP, Forums, Battlegrounds, Arena
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
darren Jan 5th 2009 6:14PM
Healers shouldn't be able to heal through a constant dps Zerg, but they should have the longevity to survive through some zerging at the beginning until their teammates can breakcc/ peel off them (maybe like 10 secs). Can't go back to the insane survivability of Resto Druid days.
armi0022 Jan 5th 2009 6:12PM
I used to fear healers in arena. Now, not so much.
jerzz80 Jan 6th 2009 2:06PM
This really boils all down to Plate wearers with healing and tank like abilities.
These tanks deal out DPS like a Rogue or Mage but take a third of the damage and restore it/bubble/shield/stance when they need to.
you cant have classes with all 3 major abilities in the arena.
DK/Pally/Warriors are flat out out of control. They cant be feared, they block or immune to alot of CC and they have HUGE crits! Nearly invinceable if they are compitant.
Dont get me started on BUBBLE or the DK Ghoul Rez. Those are TANK instruments being abused in the arena. How a Ret Pally is able to bubble in PVP is beyond me. you just gotta change how abilities work in the arena.
The PVE moes will stop QQ if the buffs and nerfs for balance occur in the Arena ONLY.
Say it with me, "Down with Plate wearing, self healing, self shielding, burst DPS classes!"
Shulkman Jan 5th 2009 6:13PM
I haven't even bothered with arena's this season... since I'm playing a lock, and our only role in arena season five seems to be as a speed bump.
jbodar Jan 5th 2009 10:44PM
More like a traffic cone. You actually have to slow down for speed bumps or your axle's hosed.
Beelzebud Jan 5th 2009 6:21PM
I just really wish they'd stop balancing this game around PVP...
carthorian Jan 5th 2009 6:34PM
random PvP-player says: "I know PvE is the main focus of the game, but there should be spend some more time to PvP aswell".
I doubt GC's team will ever be able to deliver a 100% balanced patch where every class will be happy. Warlocks dominated the early seasons, Druids the later seasons, ... Some will be happy about current situations, others won't.
Personally I would love to see resto Shammies kick ass in PvP (don't think any Shaman ever dominated tbh), but tbh I'm still enjoying the PvP game (even with dps>heal)
havitech Jan 5th 2009 7:04PM
It's really a shame that in a game with such a huge and expansive world, there is so much focus paid to what really should be nothing more than a mini-game/sandbox with vanity rewards.
I for one, can't wait until Blizzard figures out how to rate battlegrounds. Large Horde-Alliance battles has far more relevance to the game than silly little duels.
Mishane Jan 5th 2009 6:41PM
I'm a healer with 700ish res approching the 1700s rating in 2s and 3s. The burst dmg going out from any combo of rogue/mage/ret is insane at a level where this is not even a game anymore.
I agree that burst should be able to take a healer down, but I survive about 3 secondes when a rogue open on me with a mage around (2s or 3s). It s now at a ridiculous level where if there is a rogue we can't win the match. Wound poison change is actually a huge buff to them.
I hope they look into the pvp mechanism to give a chance to a healer to survive the burst for more than a few seconds.
PvPer Jan 5th 2009 6:42PM
Hmm...so how much resilience will be needed to create this burst damping effect?
Someone with Savage gear (my class anyways) hateful ring/boots/waist/wrist/back has 441 resil approx (i could have stuffed the maths).
With the gear avail in game atm I consider that a pretty decent set, is GC suggesting S6 rewards before the resil will balance damage. Is 500+ the resilience aim?
I want my resto-drood arena partner to feel the love again =)
matrix_dragon Jan 5th 2009 7:00PM
Right now I am sitting at 550 res at this point, as a Hunter I seems to survive more than expected. LOL
Michou30 Jan 5th 2009 7:02PM
If I remember correctly, at 685 res, I get 18.38% critical strike dmg reduction and 8.36% crit reduction.
A former post on wowinsider place the soft cap at 1200ish resilience. with up to 33% reduction...
I want to see the math tho.
Charn Jan 5th 2009 7:08PM
I did it damn it. I went and got sucked into a PVP topic on wow insider. I tell myself every week to just leave it alone because, frankly, no one is going to give a damn. Anyway... stop balancing our game around PVP, please. WoW was built as PVE and pvp came much later (old timers will remember the first BGs). There are plenty of games out there that do PVP a hell of a lot better than WoW. If you want to pvp in wow fine great go have a ball. If you think the PVP systems is broken yet you still want to play it... then stop crying about it. Shut up and get out. People want PVPm people want more casual content, and people want more challenging raids. Can't have all three, my friends. Can the PVPers either shut up and leave or just deal with it.
Ender Jan 5th 2009 8:46PM
You are wrong actually, WoW was always going to be about PvE and PvP. My guild as well as many others were invited to beta specifically to help test out the PvP. They wanted to get the PvE base done first and then they would work on the PvP system. Problem is before they even finished the PvE they were told to release, that is why MC and Onyxia were in such a sad state at release as well.
WoW has always and always will be about PvE and PvP equally. They know that a PvE only game would never thrive the way the combo does. PvE is content driven and takes a lot more time and effort to create, PvP is player driven and requires more effort to balance. That is why so many changes are PvP related yet most of the new content is about PvE.
Damntheman Jan 6th 2009 4:54PM
@ charn, thanks for your useless care-bear $0.02 You should have gone with your instincts and kept your immature and irrelevant comment to yourself.
Markainion Jan 5th 2009 7:32PM
I don’t know too much about arenas, because I don’t usually play regularly enough to play with friends and guides PVP that often. But with regards to BG, and even Winter Grasp, and I speaking about a verity of classes and with many wearing good resilience gear, that the ease of dying has become to great. You should be able to survive for a while with out dying in BG, and I am not talking about just tank classes or bubbling classes with healing like paladins and priest. I mean all class needs a chance to inflect damage on their opponents and the case anymore.
Blizzards need to start to rethink how they balance classes, not simple try to balance them by slight adjustment hear and there. One thing they can do is recognize arena as a game with in a game and have a goblin machine change the universe a bit to make the game more fun. Instead of changing PVE and other PVP aspect of the game that isn’t well measured in arenas like One on One PVP. After all Arenas aren’t supposed to be true warfare, but an entertainment game.
Another hint: allow player more option with regard to being feared and stunned or similar losing control of you characters abilities. Such as making smart classes (most clothies) immune to fears, and Plate wearers immune to stuns. Or allow more passive not aggressive abilities to be used while stunned or feared. Like my Martial Art teachers, use to say make the unnatural natural. I don’t understand why an 80 level suppose war-master; only option is a trinket when in those situations.
hold up Jan 5th 2009 7:33PM
I'm not a serious PVP player but now that my guild has all the heroic raids on farm for a few weeks now I figured I'd throw down 80g and see what the big deal about arena was. Being a resto druid, I was supposed to be the best of the best when it came to arena healing... or at least thats what I was told. I was also told that anybody in the Arena that is Heroic geared should be well above everyone else.
After going 2-8 in the first ten, let me describe what most of my games looked like.
1. Partner gets sapped
2. 2 Rogues pick me apart like a Thanksgiving day turkey, stunning me, blinding me, gouging me, kicking me until I have to beg for it to end. That's assuming that they just want to mess with me. Most of the time they can burn me down in under 4 seconds
I hate PVP
Trieclipse Jan 5th 2009 8:38PM
You aren't a serious PvPer and yet you expect to walk into Arena and do well against those who may actually be serious PvPers?
I hate little twerps like you who think that if you can play a little game of Simon Says in PvE, then you can immediately excel in PvP.
Welcome to the hard part of the game. PvE only gets hard near the end of an expansion, PvP is competitive from the get-go. Step up your game.
jerzz80 Jan 6th 2009 11:28AM
LOL
Even though I am a harcore PVPer I can understand what the PVE guys must think about the Arena. But let me say the following.....
1. For a lot of people (10-20%), PVP/Arena is the main reason they play WOW.
2. Arena is fcked up. Blizzard fcked up the whole thing, Season 5 or 6 will probably be my last.
3. No raiding PVE player can jsut walk in the Arena no matter how good your gear is and have a chance. Sorry, arena is way more demanding than raiding and takes way more time to perfect.
4. I still dont get why PVE guys hate PVP so much, they can completely ignor it if they choose. I hate to raid, but I HAVE to.
5. Getting a 1750 rating is about 10 times harder than playing your role in ANY raid in the game. To say PVP guys dont deserve good gear is simply retarded.
6. I feel like most of the problems with the arena can be solved with better gear with more Stamina and more Resilience.
7. Beware of warlocks in the arena. You heard it here first.
8. Healers in general dotn exist. Good healers are more rare and good PVP healers are the rarest.
9. Ret Pally buffs started the downfall arena.
10. The arena/PVP will never be balanced when you have plate wearing, self healing, burst dps dealing classes with a BUBBLE!
Thank you.
And if you have problem with anything I said....duel me.
hold up Jan 6th 2009 1:09PM
@trieclipse
Ok then hot shot, you explain how to overcome a combined 5000 dps on your character for 4 seconds or more when your toon below 20k hp while your partner is immobilized. And just to prove a point, I took my less geared ret pally out for a spin in the arena and guess what, 1770 rating. PvP isnt hard, its situational.
I hate little twerps like you that get a swelling in their pants over the fact that they can afk bot BGs and be better geared for a tiny portion of what WoW has to offer and then cry when they get kicked out of a raid because their DPS is awful while trying to cc a raid boss and then die because they are standing in the fire.
And as far as "Simon Says" being less difficult than arena, wrong. I'd love to see a little twerp like you and your little twerp arena buddies down Sartharion with 3 drakes up. Arena isn't about skill, its about the class your playing. And if I'm wrong why did almost all the top arena teams consist of eerily similar team structures... hmmmm.
The point of my post was to show that burst damage is king right now. And until we are all sitting on 40k hp and/or 1600 resil classes with high burst damage and multiple cc options will always win.
Twerp.