Blue Tracker
World of Warcraft Blue Posts
Diablo II: Resurrected Blue Posts
Diablo III Blue Posts
Hearthstone Blue Posts
Overwatch Blue Posts
Heroes of the Storm Blue Posts
Diablo IV Blue Posts
BlizzCon Blue Posts
Warcraft Rumble Blue Posts

Blizzards viewpoints on healers

Forum Avatar
Shivant
#0 - June 1, 2009, 3:38 p.m.
Blizzard Post
I play and enjoy to play my shaman on a regular basis. I look at healing meters just as a baseline. The important thing for me though is that everyone stays alive. I do have a few questions on what roles the various healing classes are supposed to have. Especially when you compare hybrids vs pure classes.

When you see comparisons between the healing classes it seems a bit lopsided. From an ability to do multiple roles the more versatile of classes are Paladins and Druids. They can tank, heal and dps, with the druids having the added capability to do two types of dps (caster / melee). The other hybrid to be considered is shaman. They can heal and dps (caster/melee). Lastly there is the pure class of priest which can dps and heal. Should not the priest as the pure class be the most effective of healers. Then as secondary healers which provide utility be shaman in effectiveness then lastly the jack of all trades but master of none druids and paladins.

Perhaps I am looking at this wrong but when you have a class that has the choices to do all things from tanking to healing and dpsing they should not be the best in aspects of those categories. Without providing bloodlust/heroism would a raid really want to bring a shaman when you have a druid that does better raid heals because of the limitations of CH on forced spread fights, or a paladin when you have unmatched single target heals.

From talking with my brother who has an 80 priest. He said with the two healing specs of priest they can provide decent healing from holy raid healing to good single target healing with disciplines mitigation.

I am sure there are many people that will say but but but shaman provide amazing buffs. This is quite true. Unfortunately/fortunately these all are also provided by other classes with the exception of the unique bloodlust, and usually without the totem limitations.

To finish with this wall of crit. What are the roles? Why are not priests outshining all other healer types since they are the pure class. How is that druids and paladins get their cake and eat pie too. Lol. I don't think they should nerf either one of those classes. Nerfing usually just annoys the player base of the nerfed class. Perhaps a balancing should occur to priests and shamans accordingly?

edit.. Formatted for readability. I would love to have the ability to add in html formatting.
Forum Avatar
Ghostcrawler
#11 - June 1, 2009, 6:21 p.m.
Blizzard Post
At a grossly simplistic level, the two buckets we use are classes with single role ("pures") versus multiple roles ("hybrids"). We don't make much of a distinction beyond that of how many healing specs a class can have or how many healing roles they can fill on a fight. The question is "Can you reroll to fill a different role?" For all healers, the answer is yes.

You might see slightly more priests just because they can fulfill two different healing roles, but to be honest we are seeing a pretty big diversity in who is brought into Ulduar to heal (even for hardmodes) that has a lot to do with guild style, tradition, player skill and synergy.