On the fifty-ninth episode of the Molsan Method podcast, I contemplate what’s left for healers and offer my suggestions on how to change healing in World of Warcraft. (7:54)
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Age of Conan has a healing mechanic similar to what you were talking about in the beginning of this podcast. All the healers in that game are hybrid dps/healers and dps actually helps the power of heals. For example, the Bear Shaman class in AoC must get 10 melee hits off before casting their main heal to full effectiveness. And the main burst heal for the priest class is also an important heavy hitting dps spell. In Age of Conan none of the gear affects healing power so healer gear is just about getting more dps.
having played both games I have to say that WoW has far far more “content” and complexity but AoC has done many “gameplay” mechanics right
Depending on the class of your healer, they could quite easily be healing while running around.
And violet hold has been something I’ve dpsed through most of (while also healing) since the beginning.
Composition is the reason that blizzard will never again let dps heal a significant amount (or reverse) because it would imbalance the game. If a shadow priest did 30% of the healing while dpsing, then everyone would want to bring 2 shadow priests to the tough fights that need a ton of dps so they could drop one of their healers…. conversely if a class could do a bunch of dps as they healed that class would instantly become more valuable. I’ve seen it in other mmos that were less pve balance driven, but it would never work in wow.
Personally, I don’t find healing a boring old instance any worse than dpsing it, in either case its a matter of keeping an eye on my other monitor while I go into cruise control.
And yes, people who heal enjoy both aspects. 1) the “how we do is up to me” control aspect that you can help make up for lesser players when they mess up 2) playing the miniature bar game is much more dynamic and creative than figuring the optimal dps strategy for your character and then doing it hundreds of times. Healing onyxia is always slightly different (as a raid healer anyway), dpsing it is always the same.
Healing isn’t broken, at least not in the way you describe. Feeling forced to run through content that you massively outgear is broken.
I think people don’t realise just how overgeared we are for classic heroics like Violet Hold. Back in the day, doing 1500dps meant you’d graduated heroic 5-mans and were considered ready for Naxxramas. So one 4k dpser in your VH group is doing the work of all three DPS that the instance was designed for.
I love healing! I like the challenge of doing it in raids. When I run heroics I generally DPS when not healing. I know its not much but it is a little. I think blizzard has underestimated what the LFD tool would do to gear and heroics. With the new tool it is far easier to get gear and thus outgearing the heroic as others have stated. Healing is definitely not brokjen. The only thing I would like to see changed about it is if holy pally’s got some small group heal. Glyphing stuff out doesn’t help in this regard all that much, but on a battle like Hodir where lots of people take damage all at once it makes it tough to keep up with that as a holy pally