Question about healer philosophy.

#0 - May 11, 2009, 8:37 p.m.

I have been checking out threads, some blue, some not, about how healers are hard to tune difficulty, and how having infinite mana is bad for a healer, and the only was to ramp up difficulty for healers was rampant raid damage etc. (Before I get any further, I want to say I don't think that's true, I could think of a lot of ways to make things interesting/different for healers, some involving making some significant changes to the idea of tanks/dps).

Anyway, if this is true, why is the difficulty constantly put into the hands of the healers. Raid lives or dies on whether the healer has mana problems or not etc. Dps just pushes thier individual konami code and(if we are all lucky) gets out of the colored stuff. Tanks grab/hold aggro, and occaisionally drag bad guys. Anyway, the only way to make mana management actually difficult is to tune bosses so we don't really quite, or just barely have enough anyway, but that only lasts until X gear threshold is hit, then it's moot again,

So, why is it, when fights are too easy to heal/mana isn't struggled over enough, healer mana/spells/efficiency is the first line of thought as the issue. Why should resources be the key to the difficulty of every or even any fight? Resource management would make for an interesting boss if it wasn't constantly bandied about that that's what the game should be about.

Anyhoo, how about instead of feeling the need to change a resource model in the name of making a healer fight more interesting, makes fights that are interesting to fight, not just heal. There's plenty of ways to mix up a fight that makes it hing on dps.

ie: X things have to be hit in a particular order, dps can then resume. X attack requires and intterupt as not even shield walling can save you. Make the amusing trick or ping ponging with taunts neccessary in a fight. Makes it so you have to kite a boss along a maze shaped platform. there are a million ways to make a boss fight interesting. And it wouldn't hurt to make a fight or two hing on the dps doing something right besides MOAR DOTS!

~2 Zenny.

TL:DR ~ I wasn't talking to you.

Ghostcrawler

#6 - May 12, 2009, 12:50 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Anyway, if this is true, why is the difficulty constantly put into the hands of the healers. Raid lives or dies on whether the healer has mana problems or not etc. Dps just pushes thier individual konami code and(if we are all lucky) gets out of the colored stuff. Tanks grab/hold aggro, and occaisionally drag bad guys. Anyway, the only way to make mana management actually difficult is to tune bosses so we don't really quite, or just barely have enough anyway, but that only lasts until X gear threshold is hit, then it's moot again,

On the one hand, when a raid wipes it may always feel like it's your fault because people ultimately died and you're the ones supposed to stop people from dying. I'm not saying we make healing on raid content trivial. We don't. We want it to be a challenge. We want you to have to work at it and feel good when you finally get a new boss down. We want you to feel like the gear that drops is rewarding because you notice the difference.

But I also think you're being a little unfair to dps to tanking. There are berserk timers on many bosses and it's the job of the dps to hit those timers. You can't necessarily solve that through healing expect by virtue of keeping them up and stabbing. On some fights all they are doing is damage, but on others they have to kill the right targets, or maximize their damage at the right moment (say XT's heart). They need to avoid AE damage. Mimiron's rockets do what 5 million damage?! If someone dies in that and asks "WHY U NOT HELZ ME?" you have my permission to reach through Vent and clock them on the skull. Tanking isn't easy either. If your tank fails to pick up adds and they run around one-shotting folks, that is not your responsibility to keep them standing. If they die with Last Stand or Icebound Fortitude not on cooldown, then they might need a tiny nibble of L2P.

I've played all three roles quite a bit, and I don't find one to be hands down harder than another. I think tanking and healing are probably more stressful. You have to be ready from the pull -- you can't take a few seconds before you jump into things.

Healing isn't for everyone. It takes a certain mindset. You aren't always going to be celebrated the way the rogue on top of the damage meters is. But every good guild knows it rests on the ability of its healers.