#0 - Feb. 2, 2009, 2:14 a.m.
Unlike tanking in TBC, where all tanks were NOT viable in all situations and there just weren't enough specs up to any given task.. the healing shortage is not due to a lack of options.
The reason people don't heal is because people don't want to heal. Adding a new healing class would only make existing healers want to reroll, and we'd be exactly where we're at now.
Except.. we'd have six or seven types of healers (Disc Priest, Holy Priest, Resto Druid, Resto Shaman, Holy Pally, hero class with at least one healing spec) when we only have 3 healing niches and limited spots to begin with. There would be no room for them in raids unless they had some sort of mandatory buff, and that's contrary to Blizzard's design.
Besides that, all of the different suggestions that have been tossed out there aren't actually viable.
1. Damage to Heal
Why not just let tanks do Fury DPS while we're at it? We're talking about consolidating TWO players into one, and essentially removing every existing healer from the game. Why would anyone ever bring a regular healer if you can have an effective healer AND damage dealer in one?
Either the damage would have to be a joke (I'm talking 5-10% of Smite spam) in exchange for 90% of the healing of the other specs, or 90% of the damage of other DPS specs in exchange for 5-10% of the healing ability of other healers (and end up with something like what a Shadow Priest is now).
2. Energy, Combo Points, Rage, Runic Power, Runes, etc..
Healers have to respond to a variety of situations. Encounters are designed to challenge healers by throwing a lot of different things at them. Spike damage, steady damage over time, debuffs, etc.. So all primary, core healing spells would have to be available at all times and would have to be able to provide enough healing all on their own to compare to the other healing specs. Otherwise the hero healer would be gimped in far too many situations.
Energy is just out immediately. A healer that can cast forever (literally, forever) = not going to happen. If you can't see why this is overpowered or why it would trivialize all encounters, you're probably the same person who rolls need on Red Sword of Courage while playing a Hunter.
Rage, Combo Points, etc.. Since the core healing spells are available at all times, these would have to be very mediocre. If you give someone a CP "finisher" that boosts their healing by a certain amt for a certain period of time.. would you balance around their healing during the finisher or without? Why not just avoid the clunky CP bit and make their heals that powerful to begin with?
Also.. if a person needs a big heal, they need a big heal. They don't need it 5 combo points or 20 rage/RP from now. If you give the healer a big heal that compares to other classes AND an even more powerful big heal available off of a Rage/CP system.. that's just overpowered. Finding a balance between "not worth the GCD" and "overpowers the class" on CP/Rage/Runic/etc. abilities would be very difficult and would make for a very "clumsy" class to play.
I know things like this exist in specific encounters (go go dragons), but those fights and those heals are finely tuned for those specific encounters. A hero healer would have to be viabie in all aspects of the game.
Besides, all we're talking about is cooldowns that wouldn't be called cooldowns.
All healers need to have resource-based spells, and that resource needs to be one that can both be depleted and altered through gear (or else you have scaling issues). All primary heals need to be available at all times.
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The devs know that they need to take a look at existing healers and make them more appealing/fun to play, not create new classes. The combo point idea has already been implemented through trinkets available to everyone (that last word being the key one). If Blizzard gives damage->heal (or other "fun") abilities, they'll give them to all healers when they do the big healing revamp over the next year or two.
Please stop making threads on hero healing classes.
