Friday, November 16, 2012

Off-Spec Healing, good or bad?

On MMO-Champion I was reading some blue responses about off-spec healing. Curious to the rest of the conversation I went to the forums, and read the rest as well.

Since I need an authenticator to log in to the forums, and am at work now without one, I figured I would share my opinions here.

Off-spec healing will be nerfed.


I personally quite like the fact that my dps can also be held responsible for their own health. I also like that they can throw an emergency heal every now and then.

I also believe that these emergency heals need to be big enough to make a difference.

I do not believe that they should be able to replace the healers.

What is wrong with the current model then?

I think what is wrong is not so much the off-heals being too strong. I think comparably the healers are just not strong enough. 

As a healer I want to be the saviour. When I specced healer I chose to be the saviour. I gave up being able to do damage to be the saviour. I am not the hero at the front, I am sitting quietly in the back running my rotation until it is time to shine and save someone from something incoming.

But Blizzard has completely taken out that second part 'save someone from something incoming'.

Healers are rotational now, not saviours. They do not get to shine anymore by making spectacular saves.

In fact, Blizz gave the save the raid's ass part to the dps. 

How the ratio heals/off-spec heals should be. 
I believe that this is the biggest problem for healers nowadays. Not that off-spec healers are taking their place, no, they simply have no glory moments of their own. In their aim to make the healing less of a whack-a-mole game Blizzard has also taken the glorious saves from the healer out.

Sure, you can throw in a guardian angel, a revival, or a pallie bubble at the right time. However, fights are build such that the right time for these abilities is pre-programmed nowadays.

Yaknow, that big ability that the boss does and everybody needs to press their cooldown button at that specific moment? Yes, that, not a 'nice save', pre-programmed.

Lets face it, healing is hard, healing is thankless, and healing takes a specific type of person. There is always a shortage of healers nowadays.

I sacrificed things to be the saviour, and Blizzard gives it away for free to the dps. 

What should they do to fix this then? Well, I do have some ideas, but this would be another monster post if I put them in here, so those will be for tomorrow.

3 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  2. Even our elemental shaman freely admits its OP while hoping blizzard don't nerf it. 20k hps this week from a dps.

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  3. Unfortunately for your shaman, Blizzard has already said that they will nerf it. Not sure how much, not sure in which way, but it will be nerfed.

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