Posts with tag whack-a-mole

Last week, I began my weekly column by annoying you all with information about my GearScore. This week I will be repeating this needlessly pretentious practice by telling you my other GearScore. My other GearScore, you ask? Why yes, dear readers, surely you know that elite players such as myself have multiple gear sets for all of our PvE whims. So without further ado:

I have a 3390 GearScore.


CUT TO: INT. BEDROOM - DAY

Dawn is seen pecking away a laptop keyboard. An over-the-shoulder shot shows her computer screen just as she finishes highlighting the text "My other GearScore ..." We then see the cursor mouse over to a font styles menu where the following options are listed: Bold, Italic and Sarcasm. Dawn selects the last option.

Film school flashbacks aside, this week we are going to talk about triage. If you didn't already know, triage is the act of making a priority list for who to help first in a situation where several individuals require medical attention. Triage was referenced earlier this month in a forum post where Ghostcrawler answered some scrutiny to Blizzard's suggested healing philosophy for Cataclysm. Let's look at that post and talk about what it will mean for priests. I will also explain where I was going in my GearScore sequel from above.

The Tank Shortage is a topic that's come up a few times before, though thankfully, since the release of Wrath, Death Knights have more or less solved the situation. But the issue facing us now is just as dire: a Healer Shortage. Ghostcrawler acknowledges that there may be such a shortage on the forums, and he gives two reasons: first, lots of people are still working their way up to level 80, and the majority of healers may still be leveling through Northrend. And second, they've beefed up and changed a lot of DPS builds lately, so many pre-Wrath healers may have respecced DPS to try it or to level a bit, and haven't gone back yet.

Later, he backpedals a bit -- not everyone is experiencing a healer shortage, and while he's already told us Blizzard is working on ways to make healing more "fun," he also points out that some people enjoy the whack-a-mole game. Still, just because a problem isn't affecting everyone doesn't mean it's a problem: it's true that lots of groups are having trouble finding healers, and lots of healers would rather not watch health bars all day.

We're very curious to see what changes Blizzard might have in mind for healing -- we discussed quite a few on the healer podcast a while back, including making healing spells a little less attention-intensive, and giving healers some UI ways to keep their eyes on the fight rather than their party members. And of course, if the rumors are true, we'll hopefully have a new healer Hero class to come and fill in the blanks. GC says this isn't a matter of tweaking things in one patch, so we are definitely a few patches away, but there is hope for healers on the horizon.

Ghostcrawler just popped up on the beta forums with some good news for healers: while tanking has gotten the focus lately in terms of mechanics and tweaking, healing is apparently next on the docket.

It's nothing to hold your breath over (you'll pass out way before we see any changes on the realms), but Ghostcrawler says that healing is due for a revamp in terms of "fun," and while he says it'll be "a more challenging fix because what people think is fun about healing varies and some people are pretty happy with it already," he also hints that it'll be a pretty big change. Right now, healing is basically whack-a-mole -- when someone gets hurt, you cast a heal on them -- but Blizzard may be rethinking that mechanic completely. We'll have to wait (probably quite a while) and see.

It's also interesting to note that Death Knights are a tanking class, and tanking got the revamp in Wrath of the Lich King. While some healers probably won't want to wait all the way until the next expansion, could this be a hint that we're looking at an Emerald Dream expansion, with an Arch Druid healing Hero Class, and an accompanying revamp of healing mechanics? Obviously, that's a stretch, but it makes sense, doesn't it?