For healers, World of Warcraft is set to change drastically. But clever fans quickly realize: This is exactly what the developers want every time.
With Midnight, World of Warcraft aims to bring significant changes to the gameplay experience of almost all classes. Especially healers are expected to play quite differently than they have until now. However, what Blizzard announces sounds good on paper – but it only brings a tired smile to the faces of veterans. Because these exact changes are what the developers plan at the start of every expansion.
What has been announced? In the official WoW forum, a lot of “Blueposts”, or news from Blizzard, have been published. In them, the developers shared their intentions behind the changes that will appear with the Alpha of Midnight. Above all, healers are meant to have a different gameplay experience, as the following changes are summarized:
- Healers should rotate less between major cooldowns, instead choosing the right ability at the right time, rather than preparing a long rotation of major cooldowns beforehand.
- Healing should be more reactive and not so predictive. Health bars will be replenished more slowly.
- Basic healing spells should have fewer temporary modifiers, so the base spells remain consistently strong and are not dependent on procs.
Blizzard describes it this way:
In Midnight, we have made some changes with the aim of reducing the speed at which you can heal your group or raid from a severely wounded state. We want healing to require less preparation to know which spell to use at which moment. We want less preparation time for complex ability sequences to achieve effective performance for your healing spells.
Community recognizes a pattern, already knows how it will unfold
However, even though it sounds like Blizzard wants to radically change healing, the announcement brings only a tired smile to most healers. Because Blizzard has repeatedly announced plans exactly like this in the past and has never been able to sustain them for long. Accordingly, the reactions are also reflected, such as in the WoW subreddit:
- “I think this is just some evergreen post that they update with the name of the latest expansion and then post it at the start of each alpha.” – _murga
Another player recognizes a more drastic pattern that has been repeating for over 15 years:
- “- High burst damage, high burst healing
– Blizzard says they want to slow down healing
– They nerf healing and promise to nerf burst damage as well
– The high burst damage never goes away, so healers struggle in Season 1
– The healer population drastically decreases due to frustration, remaining annoying for new players
– Blizzard buffs healing massively so more people will play healers
– High burst damage, high burst healing
A never-ending cycle since Wrath of the Lich King.”
- “Just like the tank changes at the start of The War Within, these are absolutely excellent design goals, but I have zero trust that they will correctly adjust incoming damage and that in the end it will just turn out terrible.” – _CrypticG
The trust in the developers that this time it will be “completely different” and that Blizzard actually knows how to eliminate the problem in the long term remains low for now. However, the developers have also proven in recent years that they can break and rework many traditions. We will see a lot of that in the upcoming expansion Midnight.
