Is healing in World of Warcraft becoming too uncomfortable? Blizzard is making healing harder – at least that’s what some players think.
For many years, there was an old saying in World of Warcraft: hardly anyone wants to play Tank. Tank is often the role with the greatest responsibility, especially in time-sensitive “M+” dungeons. However, this responsibility is increasingly being shifted to the healers. At least that’s what some believe who have played multiple roles for years.
This is claimed: In the WoW subreddit, Kaoshosh explains that he generally plays all three roles. In the past, he found tanking uncomfortable, but now it seems to him that he can “take a break” while doing it. The real unrest arises when he switches to healing:
The saying that every mechanic is a healer mechanic is not just a meme. When tanks were nerfed, I had no worries about my tank specialization, but rather about the additional healing that would be necessary. And DPS are only seen as a light role because all their mistakes are compensated by the healer (or the healer is blamed for them).
Making healing harder from expansion to expansion has not been a glorious act in my opinion. Healing is now by far the most stressful role. Only a small niche of players enjoys that. I don’t know what Blizz wants from us. Why is this role becoming harder while all the others remain roughly the same?
This apparently resonates with many healers, as the post received over 2,000 upvotes within hours. However, some also have explanations for why healing feels so hard right now and that this will likely diminish over time.
Healing is the hardest to balance
An explanation comes from the comment with the most upvotes in the post. The healer “audioshaman” explains exactly why balancing healing is so difficult and why it weighs so heavily at the beginning of a new expansion (or season).
The harder the content becomes, the easier healing gets. Because at higher levels, healers are no longer able to compensate for the mistakes of other characters. Anyone standing in a wrong area is just dead instantly:
Ironically, healing usually becomes easier the harder the content gets, especially in M+. Better players make your job easier. Mistakes that you could heal through back then now just one-shot people.
It’s hard to balance. The truth is, healing is not just the job of the healer – but of everyone. The new talent system has given DPS characters more defensive and useful abilities than ever before. Therefore, the content has been designed around these abilities and their use, otherwise, healing would be trivial. If a DPS character dies from a hard hit and doesn’t use their defensive ability, it’s simply not the healer’s fault.
However, many also note that in The War Within there are significantly more sources of unavoidable damage. A multitude of bosses have new abilities that deal damage to all characters and cannot be avoided. This situation, combined with the significantly larger HP pools, would simply lead to healers sweating more, as it takes longer to heal all characters up.
How do you perceive healing in World of Warcraft: The War Within? Do you still enjoy the role? And if not: what needs to change to make healing more attractive again? One problem could also be that while everyone wants hard content, hardly anyone is making an effort anymore.
