The discussion about spot healing reminds me of the Well of Existence from BFA. It was an ability that would store a % of overhealing then I could pop it on a single target and it'd heal them up to full depending on what was stored, on top of being instant cast on a 15s CD. That was SUCH a good ability for my healing kit back then and 4 some years later I still miss having it.
This game needs much attention right now, Ive never seen such positive feedback from content creators yet so little of my friends actually enjoying or even playing this expansion anymore, makes no sense.
Blizzard's balance team are trying to juggle 13 classes, 37 specs with 40+ talents each for:PVE: M+, 20man Mythic raids, 10-30 man HC raids.PVP: Arena 2v2, 3v3, solo shuffle, 10 man battlegrounds, 40 man battlegrounds with extra PVP talents and separate PVP spell modifiers to account for (who am I kidding, the whole of PVP balance is maybe 3v3, on their off days, if they feel like it, pvp is simply an afterthought or a thorn in their side at this point).When they make a blanket change across the game it ripples through every balance decision they've made up to it and then they have to start from scratch to retune each class, each spec, each talent, each spell, each encounter, each mechanic, each NPC ability.PFFFFFFFF nah they might do some changes here and there if there's a Tweet from a player who matters, with established rapport with the devs, about an outlier somewhere. Oh right, let's not forget the Community Council that really matters, trust.They didn't nerf spot healing, they didn't nerf healers, it's a ripple effect they didn't bother to account for. Either because they don't want too much of it in PVP, spot healing is still strong in PVP but too weak in M+ and raiding, task successfully failed, or they actually lied when they said they don't like spiky sudden death encounters and they actually want unavoidable deaths to satisfy their sadist desires when they rate how well an encounter is designed by how many groups disband before it's finished.
Healing has been the easiest role by a landslide in m+ for quite some time. Now it isn't anymore and people are complaining.I agree that spothealing is at an all time low and feels terribly bad. I'm playing disc and prevoker and neither has proper spothealing, so I get the statement, but let's be real, only because healers suddenly have to actually play the game, rather than press their 2 button dps rotation and occasionally press a single AoE heal to top the group again, doesn't mean that it's suddenly unplayable or impossible.It's much better than where a healer could be the worst player in the group by far and still get carried because interrupts, CCs and similar were on top. Now we need players of roughly equal skill level across all 5 players to succeed and push, rather than 4 good players and a healer of any skill level.The changes are good and they made healing in m+ a challenge equal to how m+ is a challenge for other roles. People who are complaining that it's too difficult or similar have simply been carried thus far and are now struggling because they suddenly have to carry their own weight.
Just another comment section about 20+ being super easy and possible for 1% of the community, while everyone else struggles with the very real fact that M+tuning and healing is in a bad spot. Staying power has been spotlighted way more this expansion with many classes just being flat out better in every way *coughs in paladin* than many others in that regard. Yea you can still gear fine without doing the higher end keys, but the game really shouldn’t deter those that want to try it. It’s a very 0-100 jump in terms of damage spikes. More often than not, I find myself focusing more on a defensive rotation than offensive as a dps player.
I was going to point that Healing Difficulty isn't hard, but I remember i'm at 443 ilvl and doing 20s. So, yea, prior to every nerf the dungeons needed to be actually playable on a non voice environment, it was way overtuned both in heal and dps checks for healing mechanics (like the vortex pinnacle last boss' nova).Other than that, I agree on the spot healing and dmg being too spiky. Even as a HPaladin, I need to use aoe cooldowns like Divine Toll to heal low hp single target when it is needed, but other than this, been running Avenging Crusader on M+ cause of the "kinda smart" healing it can provide. Lowering my dmg overall, but well, it covers the healing better at most imo.The toxicity is everywhere tho, not only on healers. I can range from a flame + group quit on a wipe to being added by 3 ppl cause my healing was awesome. It is too punishing to wipe in any case and some people just think everyone has to do every route and stuff optimally because they read in a post that it was the right way to do the dungeon instead of just doing it. Also, gearing wise, there is no point in doing m+ after you get to 440+, so, well, i'm just doing my 1 20 weekly and sometimes i feel the pain on said scenarios.TLDR: Dmg too spiky, st sucks, ppl too edgy, low incentive to play.
I've been healing as a Holy Priest throughout DF, mostly in a coordinated group but having to PuG weekly to fill out my vault. I'm not great but I'm not bad, and truthfully I've been pretty happy with the game design with the main reason for fearing PuGs being player mindset rather than any failure of game design.The reality of tanking and healing is that there's only one of you in a 5-man which means that you shoulder 3x the weight of a DPS in responsibility. Some people find this frustrating and exhausting. By comparison, after starting as a DPS in Classic I got into tanking and healing precisely because I was sick of feeling unimpactful as one of several DPS; while I've bounced around many roles throughout the years, I return to tanking and healing reliably. A good tank or healer can really make or break a run, while it takes at least two (if not all three) of your DPS being exceptional to carry a dungeon. Conversely, it means that DPS are more easily carried to a higher level than their skill level and they often do not know what they've done right (or wrong) to merit their rating; it is easy to confuse putting up big numbers in giant pulls as being good when everything dies before you have to make many meaningful choices in your play.This problem comes from how WoW punishes people for mistakes: death. Since the common perception is that health bars are the healer's realm, many players regard tank and DPS errors as healer errors. But that's a player mistake, not a game design flaw. Similarly, while there are some pulls/mechanics that can be frustrating (like the Pelters), there are low-skill ways of mitigating many of them. I know it's out of fashion to suggest this but most groups do have hard CC options; removing a single problematic mob from a pack may reduce DPS, but it's a time saver in the long run if it avoids 1-2 player deaths (incidentally, setting this up is typically the tank's responsibility; yet another reason why non-DPS roles are more impactful). That these options are not utilized is, again, a player issue, not a game design one. Finally, I would argue that many things people view as healing checks are not designed to be so. The third boss of HoI comes to mind; I can keep my party up (mostly), but I'll go OOM doing so after not too long, which means that beyond mana-efficient play on my part it is truly up to everybody else to ensure she dies in a timely fashion. It's why I suspect she wasn't nerfed.In sum, there have been a few things I've felt are unfair from a healing perspective in this expansion, but not much and they have mostly been addressed. They are also more prevalent in the older dungeons than the newer ones, which indicates to me Blizzard is on the right path. Healing may be more stressful than DPSing, but I think that inevitably comes with the territory and that the worst stresses come from other people and not the game design.
They made this game too complex, just to satisfy the ''elite'' gamers. Make it more simple with lets say, less buffs and debuffs in the game...Easier to tune and more understanding, especially for new players.Healing pve isnt fun anymore. Not even talking about pvp healing.
I like the healing challenge, since it seemed a bit easy previously, but the problem I feel--as a (m)DPS main--is that DPS players have such limited interaction with mechanics with healers. There's only so much we can use our personal defensives and sustain to overcome, but then you have mechanics that gravely impact healers, yet some specs (that are popular, even) can't even interact with them in a reasonable way.It sort of nerfs the cohesive teamwork, and makes pugging harder by lop-siding the mechanics onto fewer players. On the flipside, it does suck getting 4-man wiped and watching the tank have to solo a boss, where they're seemingly immortal.
Healing is too spikey