World of Warcraft has too strong healers – at least that’s what Blizzard thinks. Therefore, there is a nerf of 25% on all to fix the problem.
The next patch of World of Warcraft is not far away. But in the latest PTR version of Patch 10.1 Embers of Neltharion, Blizzard has snuck in a “small” detail that tanks and healers might raise their eyebrows at.
Because Blizzard believes that tanks and healers have become too strong. To prevent this from getting out of hand, there is a buff that turns out to be a major nerf.
What is Blizzard changing? With Patch 10.1, the health points of all players will be increased by 25%. At the same time, however, the damage dealt by all monsters will be significantly increased by 25%. What may seem like a zero-sum game at first glance has significant implications in reality, especially for healers.
A very similar change was already made by Blizzard at the launch of Dragonflight.
A new cinematic for Patch 10.1 has already been released:
What does Blizzard intend with this? The developers’ intention is quite clear. They want to make healing more relevant and enemies more threatening. Because especially towards the end of the season, it has been shown that tanks are often nearly invincible, and when mistakes do happen, healers can fully recover them within 2-3 seconds.
Blizzard states the following:
If damage reduction and healing abilities are too strong compared to the health of characters, then the only way to threaten them is to increase damage and equip it with spikes. If healers can quickly fully heal their teammates and mana is not a limiting factor, then the opponents must be balanced to have the ability to deal so much burst damage that players are killed before the healer can react.
This is not fulfilling gameplay. By increasing the health points of players and the damage of enemies, players have more time to react to incoming damage, and it makes the decisions about cooldowns and mana management more meaningful.
What about non-healers? All non-healers who are now worried about their support abilities can breathe a sigh of relief. The healing from various survival abilities of DPS classes will also be increased by 25%, so the actual benefit to the group or solo play remains identical. However, since these heals from DPS characters are usually severely limited and consume a lot of mana, they have little impact in group play anyway.
What do you think about this change? A good thing to keep group play exciting? Or a totally unjustified nerf for healers and tanks?
