Now, this is a forum post that I think merits a little more attention. We all know that developers weren't happy with the
spamfest that healing often was in
Wrath of the Lich King and that they looked to make it a far more cerebral activity in
Cataclysm. Now that we're approaching the end of the expansion, Practical, one of the Blizzard forum MVPs, recently started a thread examining
how healing turned out and what can be improved. Most of the people in the thread generally agree that healing started out pretty fun in tier 11 but declined afterwards. Reasons given range from boring boss mechanics to
fights with random elements that made healers feel useless when they couldn't control or prevent player deaths.
Practical observes that a lot of the later problems with healing in
Cataclysm might actually be the result of a surfeit of raid fights that required constant stacking, and the inevitable effect they had on certain healing spells' being too powerful. Having recently looked at
healer numbers in Dragon Soul, I'd also venture that AoE healing spells that aren't
numbers-restricted (for example,
Circle of Healing versus
Holy Radiance) on top of that raid stacking are making healer balance look worse than it actually is.
So what are your thoughts, healers? How did healing work out for you this expansion, and are you looking forward to
the Cataclysm changes? And are the problems we're seeing really the result of healer mechanics or raid design?
Tags: cataclysm-healing, druid-healing, druid-healing-in-cataclysm, heal, healer, healer-balance, healers, healing, healing-balance, paladin-healing, paladin-healing-in-cataclysm, priest-healing, priest-healing-in-cataclysm, shaman-healing, shaman-healing-in-cataclysm
Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Analysis / Opinion
Jan 31st 2012 at 8:00PM 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Ashlar Jan 31st 2012 8:09PM
Cataclysm made me quit healing.
Putting The Elephant In The Cage Jan 31st 2012 8:15PM
Patch 4.3. made me quit Holy Pally healing. While the writer of this article may disagree, you just spam Holy Radiance and lols.
Sqtsquish Jan 31st 2012 8:24PM
Cataclysm made me start healing on my priest and shaman and I stopped on my pally. Not because I disliked pally healing in particular, I just didn't enjoy the class feel anymore (old style or the new one).
RedMosquito Jan 31st 2012 11:09PM
I came back to the game in patch 4.3, after a five months break... and ironically, my Holy Pally has sort of become my main (is my currently most geared character, at least). It's the first time I've ever tackled brand new content on a healer instead of a DPS.
Honestly, I'm having much more fun on my Holy Pally now than on any time during Wrath.
zackwbrandon Jan 31st 2012 11:10PM
I had healed through all of Lich King and got really frustrated (to the point of taking a three month break from the game) because of how annoying healing became. I agree that it was mindless in Lich King, but making it so mana management and burst dependent only served to make it a job instead of a fun thing to do in the off time. When I returned I went for tanking roles and am infinitely more pleased.
Personally I think the whole Tank/DPS/Healer trichotomy is getting to be a tad 'over' now that you get down to it. There has to be a more engaging way divide up the responsibilities of a fight beyond cooldown and resource management among tanks and healers, and 'proper' rotation among dps.
Finnicks Feb 1st 2012 12:54AM
@Putting the Elephant in a Cage
"you just spam Holy Radiance and lolsOOM"
Fixed.
Holy Radiance spam only works when groups are stacked up, and even then it will OOM you so fast your head will spin. It is NOT a sustainable healing strategy. Paladin healing remains engaging and challenging (Except on Ultraxion with Blue crystal, wherein you actually DO HoR/LoD spam with impunity).
End rant.
As for healing in general this expansion, I am disappointed with how quickly mana stopped mattering. Not discounting the possibility that I just got used to "healing smart", I distinctly remember while killing Cho'gall and Nefarian that my mana bar was a constant consideration and it's status throughout the fight was an indicator of how well the fight was going overall. I remember having to take care of my mana bar while keeping the raid alive and it was challenging.
While it's not quite back to where it was in Wrath, here in Tier 13 I once again feel as if healing is about how fast you can spam as opposed to how smart you can heal. I don't go OOM anymore unless I deliberately waste mana. I just find myself struggling to keep everyone alive.
Not sure how Blizzard could have fixed it, and I'm still enjoying healing in Cataclysm, but I wish it could be the way it was in Tier 11.
JiBJUB Feb 1st 2012 1:30AM
@zackwbrandon
Check out Guild Wars 2 ... they are doing away with the Holy Trinity ... I am pretty interested to see how it turns out!
Jestin Jan 31st 2012 8:20PM
Honestly, I ended up being really disappointed. It seemed to be a key design decision in this expansion to create encounters where there was massive raid-wide AOE damage that just had to be healed through, and the "challenge" came from some sort of limit or restriction on the healers.
Lightning Storm, Modulation, Decimate, Crackle, Furious Roar, Blackout, all of Alysrazor, Concussive Stomp, Domo's cat form, Zon'ozz, Yor'sahj, Fading Light, Hour of Twilight, etc, etc etc.
I feel like they could have though of *something* else; towards the end, I've started to feel like I'm being punished for choosing to heal. I don't even think Dragon Soul heroics are fun, they're just painfully difficult.
Homeschool Jan 31st 2012 11:05PM
I think you pretty much nailed it. I've played both Holy and Discipline Priest styles in Cataclysm, and it seemed that nearly every fight was nothing but AoE. Before the Holy boosts, Holy was at a serious disadvantage simply because its AoE cooldowns were weaker. Disc was nothing but Shield spam even with all the changes, because other classes were more effective at AoE healing, while Shields had the proactive element. As much as you might try to justify other playstyles, there simply wasn't enough power to match the encounters.
Sadly enough, I found myself missing Wrath - not for its free spam aspect, but because choices mattered. Cataclysm is like bailing water out of a boat, while Wrath was like racquetball.
Jem Feb 1st 2012 2:33AM
I agree, so many times it was just "the raid takes a crap ton of damage and your healers have to fix it fast or you wipe". I remember looking at logs and wondering how the hell I was supposed to manage that much tank damage combined with that much raid damage. And how many times I asked the RL if the raid could do something to help the healing and the answer was always no, it just had to be dealt with.
It is frustrating to still be at the point where if I am 1s behind the curve the tank dies. I can't say as disc I shield spam any where near as much as wrath, but I dont have a problem with using a lot of shields, That's the entire point of them. If I'm not supposed to be shielding a whole lot of people, give me bigger heals. Give me a better aoe heal that works against random damage targets instead healing only the ppl in one group.
I've had too many times where I felt I just didn't have the healing to do the job, it's demoralising. It also seems to me that fights are still designed on the assumption you'll have a holy paladin in your 10man, which we rarely do. It's frustrating to be int he position that your healer composition is working against you for no reason than encounter design suiting a specific class far more than it should.
jeansteffano Jan 31st 2012 8:21PM
Well, I think Resto Shamans are the ones being most depricated here.
We all kind of hate this new "stack up" healing model, but Shamans have been built upon that, there's nothing we can actually do if we're not spamming Chain Heal and Healing Rain (I'm not counting oddities or cooldowns here).
I personally feel really bored while on LFR as an example, and on all the other fights where I need to single-target heal as well. Single target healing is not efficient enough, we have Riptide but it doesn't have a "far reach", you can only keep the HoT up on 3 players at once and nothing more. However, I do enjoy the Tidal Waves Buff as much as I have always did.
I know I'm getting this much into the "Shaman way", but I feel that we need some better options than a range limited heal such as Chain Heal, an area limited (and EXPENSIVE) heal such as Healing Rain or a CD limited HoT or healing burst such as Riptide and Unleash Elements.
That's my opinion though, I do enjoy Shaman Healing and I definitely enjoy powerful CD's such as Spirit Link in our build. But I really feel diminished when opposed to healers like Paladins with all their protective cooldowns and powerful raid healing.
jeansteffano Jan 31st 2012 8:32PM
deprecated* WTB edit button
Calaana Jan 31st 2012 8:43PM
I don't know about raiding, but the 5-man stuff has been more fun. Stopped on the priest and went back to shaman, though - not that priest isn't fun, it's just that shaman is more, for me, and I have years with her. Seems like a case of "System is decent, but the fights don't work with it well" from what I've heard, though.
libfeathers Jan 31st 2012 9:07PM
Ditto on the stopped healing thing. I couldn't get it right on the first try, and I've had enough of being yelled at and /kicked by the leets.
pavl_dude Jan 31st 2012 9:09PM
"... that made healers feel useless when they couldn't control or prevent player deaths".
I am a dedicated resto-druid and this is how I feel in this expansion.
One huge problem I had was the fight I had with the bosses in Fireland heroic. I re-setuped my UI addons (vuhdo + Power Aura) a hundred times to make sure I could see the "health" boxes and the fight at the same times. I wished so hard to be a "chameleon" at that time.
Finally, one thing I have in mind since I chose "healing" as a profession:
Why "healing" in WoW requires to watch health boxes? In my opinion, healing could be more fun if they design it so we can enjoy the fight as DPS and Tanks do.
jeansteffano Jan 31st 2012 9:20PM
I feel exactly the same.
Pyromelter Jan 31st 2012 10:13PM
Tank healing traditionally resembled a dps priority rotation. Outside of just making everyone heal only tanks how would you make healing more like dpsing?
Homeschool Jan 31st 2012 11:28PM
Monk healing is going to take a stab at it. It'll be using some form of stances and marking to direct DPS to specific groups.
The major difference in handling between tanks/DPS and healers is that the former can learn the keys and focus on the screen, while healers ALSO have to juggle their raid frames. Tanks and DPS (with minor exceptions such as intervention and rescues) only have to watch the boss.
I think there's a lot of opportunity to improve the game by taking out the whack-a-mole (slash untargeted spray). Consider if Disc Priests played by building up various barriers to protect positions and reduce damage taken. Holy Paladins could soak damage into themselves (and focus on healing that away), while Restoration Druids could grow gardens of localized healing. None of these would take raid frames, and (with the exception of the tank healer) healing responsibility would be split between smart placement of effects by healers and DPS taking proper advantage of them.
Personally, if they made everyone identical at tank healing, and then gave us such differentiated approaches, I'd be perfectly happy to be rotated in/out of tank healing vs. area effects based on what's strongest on the particular fight.
murmaiderxx Feb 1st 2012 4:19PM
@Homeschool
I think that the addition of Monk is going to throw off the healing model. The only difference between dps and healing at this point in time is instead of looking at the boss while you dps, you heal and pay attention to the life of raid members. If you don't want to raid and heal with the meters in front of you, you don't have to use any of the UI available and can go back to healing like it was in Vanilla. But somehow I think that you won't like that either.
The game is going to have a huge balance that will need to be overcorrected and then adjusted continuously for this new 'style' of healing. All I can say is that I don't think it is going to be a good change, there will be more bickering of balance for other classes. This expansion looks like its going to cater to the new class, the balance will be based on this class and nothing else.
Brian! Feb 2nd 2012 1:48PM
As a druid healer, I don't love the huge nerf in our main AoE heal either. It seems almost all the raid mechanics are AoE based requiring lots of AoE healing too.
Not that it is that huge. My team has been 8/8 on Dragonsoul for a while and we are working through heroic modes now. Since the nerf, I definitely feel like the weakest healer on the team. I suppose as long as we are progressing, it's ok.
I suppose at some point we will be boosted back to the top of the healing charts. It does seem like Druids go from underpowered to overpowered and back down all through an expansion. Feral/Cat even more over-to-under as we gear up. The problem with the ever-balacing stat race.