babe wake up new theun heal rant dropped

Fun fact; I’ve been a healer main 90% of the time since Vanilla and even I’ve been getting quite frustrated with the pile-on that Blizzard has been doing with healers for a few years now. We’re expected to basically do it all and we’re overwhelmingly punished if the DPS don’t pop even the most basic defensives or interrupts or stuns with near perfect execution. Anyway we recently swapped me to Ret Pally because I have the leggo and I can pump, and I have near perfect execution as noted above. We swapped one of our DPS that wasn’t a pumper and didn’t have near perfect execution to a healer because they wanted to. What we’ve found is they get super frustrated after only 3-4 keys and want to swap back to DPS and have me heal again… for the rest of that evening at least until he’s ready to heal again the next time we form up. Imagine having nearly 20 years of experience healing all manner of higher-end content and the DEVs have riddled it with so many issues and throughput gaps and CD reliance to survive incredibly short burst damage periods and you’re just done. You’re just so done that playing as DPS feels like a literal vacation. I am so relaxed when I’m just pumping Ret and interrupting whatever I need to and stomping this, or defensive popping that. IT’S SO NICE. I feel like I can breathe again. And to that point, I even mained Mistweaver in S4 and it still just gets so exhausting. I can top the party constantly through most of the mediocre damage checks in 10s or higher, but it’s still SO. FREAKING. EXHAUSTING especially on Afflicted and Incorporeal weeks which they’re thankfully removing in War Within.

@Craftee6

28 күн бұрын

The problem in my opinion, as a dps main for 16 years now is not the ammount of defensives or stops required. Its the spikyness of dmg. There was a ton of interrupts to be had in shadowlands as well. We also had too many defensive abilities. But healing wasnt so bad, in fact it became a contest of which healer can do most dps. Which isnt great either, but middle ground can be achieved. They need heals to heal less, so you need to cast more heals, and have less spare dps globals, and healers should be overwhelmed by healing over a period of time, instead of playing whackamole. It's so weird to feel threatened whenever your group is at 80% hp. It's wrong. And its because hp can be topped in 1 or 2 gcd's. So its the only way to make it a threat. Fights where your group would slowly but constantly die like ice boss in halls of infusion, or 2nd boss in temple of jade serpent have been actually pretty nice to heal. Where you keep grp up with maintenance heals, and slowly become overwhelmed, and then use cds to top them again, and start maintenance again untill next cds. It was a nice cycle, nobody was getting 100-0'd in 2 seconds. I feel much more of bosses unavoidable dmg should be done in a form of damage over time or aura dmg.

Really great seeing Healer PoV on stuff because as a DPS man i simply do not have the same mindset on things. Thanks mr theun

I feel like they fear pruning stuff after the WoD and to a smaller extent BfA fallout, mages loosing alter time again for example. Which is why it might be a good idea to just put most defensives into choice nodes with others where it's needed and slightly rebalance them, this way the ability is still in your toolkit but you have to choose one instead of just having both and thus have less on your bars, probably feels a lot better than straight up removing them out of the game.

@sidaekao

28 күн бұрын

This issue with doing this, and Theun already leaned into this a bit talking about mages, is that in low end/newer player content, players just don't want to manage more keybinds, so they don't take the extra defensives. In high keys (and early Mythic Raiding, for example), it becomes a requisite to take all the defensive abilities, which is what we're seeing now. Putting defensives on choice nodes just reinforces this across even more classes. In content where it's "defensive or die", you're still going to have players, by necessity, taking 5, 6, 7, however many, defensives available to them, so they have something to press every/every other pack.

@Craftee6

28 күн бұрын

@@sidaekao He means choice nodes against other defensives. Like for example monk for years used to have to choose between dampen harm or diffuse magic. Now they get both, and their choice nodes are those powerful defensives vs other mostly useless passives. Passives given so low skill players will also have some defensive benefit but are intended to be worse choice. Like getting stacking up to 100% dodge chance (untill dodge) vs dampen. Ofc dampen is much better. But if you made dampen vs diffuse choice, then you dont lose either ability, but you get to choose which one would be better for said situation/encounter/arena/key.

@k9tirion927

28 күн бұрын

@@sidaekao I mean putting as many defensives into choice nodes as possible thus reducing the total amount you can have at any given time but still having them exist in the game. Some examples for mages I could think of is alter time + greater invis. in a choice node (both are anti burst in their own way) and your standard barrier + mirror images (anti consistent/rot dmg). This would require some tuning so they are competitive against each other but it would overall still reduce buttons and defensive capabilities.

You need to make more videos like this because I want to hear your opinion on healing more than any other player. Big support

What makes me so mad is seeing so many DPS players saying they don't want to rely on healers to stay alive. They say they want to have all these defensives. Which makes no sense, because that design just makes the encounter designers hit you harder requiring the defensives... so are you really not relying on a healer to stay alive currently??? Also TWW expansion is entirely doomed with none of these changes happening....

@popojaga7312

29 күн бұрын

Well its just a meme, there happens to be couple fun keys people do without healer with guys as zmok, general population by that i mean 99,99% people cant leave Valdrakken and not die to avoidable damage

@kel1770

29 күн бұрын

Its because planning and pressing defensives is engaging and gives you control. Also, there are a lot of defensives that are so strong that even if your healer is dead, you will live the mechanic. The idea that defensives are just the norm and you still have to be healed makes no sense given that you can stack them to reallocate to a set where your healer is dry.

@Gordonfreems

29 күн бұрын

The dumbest thing is that this forces the healers to depend on the DPS to press their CDs lol

@kylebb96

29 күн бұрын

@@Gordonfreems Yup. How about if your dumbass doesn't press a defensive you don't get healed since you don't want to depend on healers right? Hahahaha

@kel1770

28 күн бұрын

@@Gordonfreems youre already depending on that for their offensive cds. the fact that your teammates can troll is just a permanent reality in a team game, not much to do about that one

I would be inclined to agree they wouldn't do it mix xpack but then I saw them release augmentation and the pally rework mid xpack and it completely broke pvp and M+ for like two seasons. If they are willing to introduce an entirely new spec that completely broke the game and call it "successful" I would not put it passed them to release a season 2/3 nuke to defensives if they actually go through with it.

ive mained resto shaman since cata but im already prepping my mage to be my main cause I was hoping things would change in the TWW.

@Gordonfreems

29 күн бұрын

I'm the exactly same, started my shammie on cata, pugging +16s this patch, and leveling up a lock for war within.

Correct, many new players are opting put of extra buttons.

I used to play with 3-4 people who mained healer. 2 of them have perma swapped DPS because healing is just way to stressful, one of them has quit, because its stressful and they'd don't want to dps or tank and another suffers through it and complains constantly. We rotate the duty of healing for vault keys around to share the burden, but we really only have a couple players who are capable and willing to heal higher keys. My main characters are 3100 MM hunter and 2800 Frost Mage... I generally carry the group on damage, interupts, dispels and defensive usage (have to on a hunter in high keys x.x)... So there def is not a skill problem... I swap healer and I get burned out of healing almost instantly. Its so stressful and un enjoyable that it really makes you wonder why ANYONE would do it. They 100% need to make some type of change.

I LOVE this video and am glad I came across it. As a raid healer during WotLK (priest: holy and disc) who returned to the game in Dragonflight, I find that healing is not recognizable anymore. I hate it now. It used to be that I had, loosely speaking, one spell per scenario: big slow cheap heal; fast expensive midstrength heal; HoT; group heal, etc. My only CDs were super-short on PoM and CoH, or the 5minute panic-button variety. Now with today's "holy words" it's like, I need to have prejudged already what to cast -- and not only which category of effect, but also whether to pull out stops and use the cooldown version. And apparently all healers have tools for all situations now? (You mentioned paladins having AOE healing, and I got disoriented. Weren't they previously the class who could heal just a target or two, but could heal them super strongly?) My experience of healing since I returned -- both in mythic+ and LFR -- is that either I have nothing to do, or everyone's dying so quickly I just don't have enough GCDs to save them. And then instead of talking about what went wrong, everyone turns toxic and blames each other. So I've just opted out and gone melee; let someone else deal with it.

@dant7677

20 күн бұрын

I hate the mythic+ system for other reasons too, related to the fact that it has negligible levels of in-game explanation. But that's another topic for another day.

bout to swap from resto shammie to lock fuck this

I know I'm pretty alone with that and I was just kinda forced into healing that tier, but I adored Flash Concentration and a pure triage playstyle. I love farm, because it's chill and you do the hard stuff, FC was that during progress. I don't wanna do this CD juggling, CD(R)-management this, CD(R)-management that. Same goes for my 4 active defensives as dps.

@theunwow

29 күн бұрын

Yeah it’d be nice if it was a viable alternative

There are some boss fights in M+ where it feels I am more in my bear form then I am not with my heal druid. It is incredible how often I see some DPS get oneshot or nearly one shot because they didn't use a deff CD or didn't have any left. Here lies the second problem I see with the current deff CD debate. Some classes have way more deff options then others but the fights are designed around these classes that have the most deff options

1. I think every one agrees with that. (As per point #3). There is a lot of ways of tackling the problem ie) using more rot damage/heal absorbs, nerfing passive healing, nerfing healers. They just need to pick something and go with it. Looking back over the years clear till Legion, I don't think the situation is any worse than it used to be. I just think I'd like to see it change going forward regardless of how it has been. 2. I don't really think this is needed but if they wanted to I don't really think it would hurt much. We have pretty much all the same healing CD's that existed back in BFA to this day. There's a couple different I think, but not many. I at least recognize all the ones on your spreadsheet as having existed for multiple expansions. I think the only recent addition was Disc priest's Uppies, but no one even really takes that anyway. 3. As previously stated, I'm down with making a lot of the fights less bursty in general. If healing CD's need to be less bursty as a result I don't really care. I think it's a good idea to give people more time to react and process information. -- But Legion through now you've always been able to bring a raid back from the brink of death with a healing CD. I think that is sort of their point in existing. When they aren't strong people complain they're too weak and you can't feel them, and when they're strong people complain then too. Legion was VASTLY worse the current day with that sort of thing and if you were complaining about it then, cool, I didn't know about you. But I personally didn't hear people really complaining then so. Not sure why this is considered what makes healing garbage at the moment. I don't mind if it changes, I think that'd be good probably. But it hasn't changed in the last like 8 years so I don't really think it's the core problem as much as you might think it is. 4. Not sure Holy Shock is the best example for this. It's still a very punchy heal and it already has a buff coming in TWW beyond that. It hits like a wet noodle on high HP targets but hits quite hard on anyone low HP... Which like by definition is a triage heal. I think there's some specs that aren't as fleshed out as others in that regards I guess... But I see those as just differences in the way healers heal and deal with situations which is what makes them fun and feel unique. I'm not sure they need to be homogenous. Just like Disc used to be the king of burst I don't think the healers need to be created equal in that regards. I guess I'd just need to see what a revamp would look like. Not really opposed to change. 5. I agree with removing all of this from gear and I think all of it's a problem as well, agreed. Being on your main with like +1000 Leech in Avoidance is a massive power gap compared to an Alt and it's pure RNG. I think keeping it in the game as enchants or in talent trees is fine. Those are deterministic, capped, and you can balance around its existence. But the random procs on gear is annoying, unfun, and creates massive power gaps. Seeing a healer in a high key with +20% avoidance, or in a raid with +15% leech and you're sitting there with +5%, you realize your character is basically unplayable and there is literally no path forward that isn't just luck. As for Viserio's healing CDs. These sort of things have been around since the dawn of healing. It's once again not a new change. Saying BFA or Legion was better is kind of a moot point. These all existed in some incarnation back then as well whether or not you were personally using them. Using them still to this day is not some indicator that the game is bad. And even if they change healing completely 180 degrees in the direction you want them to take it they would still exist then too. By definition in raids the incoming damage is planned to exceed healer's capabilities or the fights would not be challenging. And healing is a Zero-Sum Game. You would always plan ahead when someone is pushing a button to make sure you aren't stepping on each other's toes and refactor combinations of cooldowns to ensure you're neither over or under-healing the situation. This will never change regardless of what healing is like in any given expansion unless damage is so low that healers are literally not needed in which case people would be complaining then too.

I liked it before I even heard a word.

why dp fights have to be "bursty"? why can't we have a middle ground? strong dot mechanics that stress test healers instead of dying in 1-2 globals.

@shirrenthewanderer414

24 күн бұрын

maybe should stop "stress tests" entirely

@UziiTube

24 күн бұрын

@@shirrenthewanderer414 that's what makes healing fun and challenging. Healing unique consistent damage patterns

@shirrenthewanderer414

23 күн бұрын

@@UziiTube "stress" is not fun. sorry I want to have agency is a fight to feel like i'm in constant damage control mode the whole time.

theun ur so right king

It is a problem when Blizz makes group content that uses healers and are now trying to make more serious solo content that doesn’t need a healer. Maybe the player abilities should vary in each of these with certain defensives offered as special abilities only in delves.

I'm swapping from heals (Rsham) to DPS in TWW. Already decided on my DK. There won't be any more "oh I'm gonna play a healer so I can get faster queues" because there will be Delves, the whole pug scene is about to be turned upside down if not destroyed. The only people left healing will be people who really really enjoy it.

Yeah I hope they make good on their disarmament words but history has taught me to not hold my breath. The fact that they don't see a problem worth addressing with defensives prior to launch is worrisome and makes me feel like this is a season 3 angle for any kinda movement. It feels as though we'll spend all of season 1 correcting big glaring issues, season 2 will be fine tuning and then season 3 will be the trigger pull.

I am hearing that more and more. What started off as a hype expansion seems to have a LOT of people now saying “This really looks like it kind of sucks and I am not looking forward to it.” I really think that while the intention was good, Blizzard’s implementation of these changes and these systems is absolutely killed the excitement for this expansion. Who is excited to go back into Seige, Mists, and Wake- especially with affixes the way they are and many specs barely having one viable hero talent tree?

Broodkeeper ring is such a bad example to bring up. Having unique items with powerful cantrip effects is cool, they're only relevant for one tier as well so it's completely fine. Powerful items aren't the issue. Lower ranked guilds planning a healing CD sheet isn't something unique to Dragonflight either. I was in a WR 500 guild in BFA & beginning of SL and we still had to prepare a healing sheet. The guilds around us had to do the same.

the spreadsheet thing has been around for a while and i don't think removing big CDS will alleviate the issue, mythic guilds will still min/max the healing cds even with less of them. I mean, during shadowlands s1/s2 raid healing was really fun (at least for me) and everyone was using it. removing cds will only make it easier to organize it but i don't think it's directly related to the "healing being shit" problem. 100% agree with everything else tho. Make Holy Shock great again

@theunwow

28 күн бұрын

Yeah well aware the healing sheet has been around for awhile (I’ve been using it or one like it since BfA) but the difference is we’ve gained a few new CDs + many of the CDs that used to be 3min are now 2min (or less). When you do this to nearly every healer, you end up with a ton of things in your healing sheet Was a lot simpler when you were only planning ~2 different CDs for each healer in your raid group

I feel like I disagree with some of this, like the spreadsheets and assigning CD timings and stuff that's just going to be how it is in the competitive scene no matter what they do, it's the same way in FF even without addons assisting, you're just gonna have to get over it or play a different kind of game if you dont like it. And personally I enjoy that whole process during prog to minmax a fight. I DO agree with defensive bloat. The effects of it are so obvious when you do a fight like, say, the first boss of AV or RLP. Those fights are literally unavoidable damage checks of "either have something ever 15 seconds or die". Like each slam in av is doing over 2 million damage unmitigated so as the healer (Hpriest) I'm doing flash heal/fade for 20% DR, then either desperate prayer, rageheart or choker of shielding as my personal, and then if I didn't RH I'm putting ward trinket shield on a DPS as an external and if anyone else doesn't press their personal they're just dead 100-0 and that can be cool! Maybe 2 or 3 times in a fight, but when you're fighting a boss for several minutes and it's happening non stop it does not feel rewarding to heal lol. I actually think third boss halls is fun for the heal check but if every fight is just non stop rot damage then they're all going to feel the same and that sucks too. I def don't envy blizzard, finding a way to make healing challenging and rewarding but not samey/boring for high end players, while also not overwhelming the low end is a nearly impossible task.

I enjoyed healing in classic, tbc and wotlk, but healing in retail feels so meaningless

@k9tirion927

28 күн бұрын

Well that's a hot take. I remember wotlk healing being "press your 1 button on gcd or the tank dies" (or alternatively everyone marked on saurfang) for most of ulduar and icc.

Fun fact, people use MRT / KAZE for Cata Classic lmfao

@theunwow

29 күн бұрын

Yeah I hate it, but thankfully there isn’t really much to make use of there

@doublezug7193

28 күн бұрын

Yeah but you absolutely don't NEED to use it to clear the hardest content. Cata would also be improved, though, if they removed barrier/am/amz etc.

i....i.... i dont think i wanna try mythic dungeons anymore

god I FUCKING LOVE BFA

@Telados

14 күн бұрын

This but unironicly

So good you inspired me to make a clickbait healer rant on my channel. TYFYS sir.

Well seems Ian lsitened to this video :P

I used to main MW up until Dragonflight for 5+ xpacs, i absolutly love the spec and monk is just such a perfect class for me. I mained brew this expansion because reasons so i didnt get to experience healing properly this expansion. Recently i resubbed and tried MW in some M+ 2-5s ~485ILVL and holy fuck how does anyone properly enjoy healing. If damage is coming out its just doing such a high % of peoples HP its absurd, you feel so squishy without a CD running and i had no idea it was this bad because i was playing a tank all expansion. I cant believe blizzard doesnt see this as a Priority #0 that will greatly ruin players experience going into the next expansion. They really need to remove ALL passive damage reduction and leave that just to CDs. get rid of all the bullshit "Use X ability every Y seconds to not get one shot" It really is as bad as all the content creators say it is.

@Naeinsengimnida

29 күн бұрын

Of course that even a +5 keys will be hard with that 485ilvl for most healers exception maybe Rdruids

Understand the criticism about spreadsheet etc but at the same time im kinda fine with wow being the game that is the hardest out there and requires stuff like this. Not for everyone but why cant wow be that game?

I don't see defensives as the big culprit. It's all about MaxHp related to the damage/healing taken. If a spell does 80% of max HP or just 30%, it would affect how powerful defensives are and how much burst is needed. So defensives are not the cause, it's just a symptom of the bigger problem. So in short, Max HP vs HPS is the primary reason healing has problem now.

HEALING WILL NOT BE GOOD

@theunwow

21 күн бұрын

Sups kitten we knew this 4 months ago

Bring back spirit shell please.

I don't know, unless you're pushing high keys, no worries. I've been easily clearing portals on my Resto Shaman since S1 DF. It's whatever. Never given up on it!

@k9tirion927

28 күн бұрын

You already get oneshot without def. cds. in 15-16s, it's a problem well before getting into bleeding edge 19-20s.

@Duck4Evers

27 күн бұрын

Like I said, higher keys. Agreed

i wont be playing healer in tww... i hated dragonflight healing and wont be doubling down on blizzard healing model. who ready for healers to not exist in TWW

Would it be that bad, if they let us use every raid CD only once per fight, during raid fights? :)

Also as far as stats go, removing any stats at this point in WoW is just a terrible idea. Gearing is already so boring and uninteresting because its so homogenous, 4 secondary stats that you can kinda pick between and some tertiary stats that you can luck into is UNBELIEVIBLY boring. They need to double or triple the amount of stats in the game and bring back reforging or w/e its called from Cata. Also i really dont think 1-10% leech is that problematic, its usually unnoticeable, but maybe thats because of how healing is ATM I dont think theres too many healing CDs atm, they just have too short of a CD and theres too much CD reduction in the game that lowers every CDs actual CD by a min. DPS CDs shouldn't be as powerful as a healers.

@keithb6344

28 күн бұрын

Add more stats and add an ability to remove them!

Imagine if your raid leader could change the level of a "heat" buff for the raid. The buff could give the raid +x% dmg but did x% current hp per 1 sec. Just give us a slider if u can't balance the game.

the theunabomber is back with another rant that'll ruin healing

I mean... couldn't they also just add more rot damage while also keeping large hits requiring defensive usage? I guess I'm not really seeing how it would be different with less defensives. Seems like the problem is fight damage design and tuning and not so much defensive volume. If everyone has 4 defensives then they will make the appropriate amount of damage events for that amount. If everyone has 1 defensive then they will make the appropriate amount of damage events for that amount. Planning CDs has always been apart of raiding. I think the real desire here is just less quick chunky damage and healing and more triage and rot... but this is kind of irregardless of the amount of defensives people have tbh

@codyrompalo9661

29 күн бұрын

i remember a time when blizzard said they wanted to move away from chunk damage (inserts pepperidge farm meme)

@tombenedikt3111

29 күн бұрын

well firstly, "If everyone has 4 defensives" is not the state of the game at all. Some classes have 6 of them, some have 1. So making sure every single class has 4 equally strong defensives, so you can tune around that, is not really realistic, unless they homogenize all classes, which is a horrible design as well. If you watch healing in raids like Castle Nathria, it's pretty clear, that making a fun healing environment, the healing especially the cooldowns can't top the whole raid in two seconds. The cooldowns were the same as are now (hymn, tranq, revival etc.), but if you popped your hymn at sludgefist, you could see everyone's health slowly going up, while other healers pumped using just their usual (noncooldown) spells. Everybody was half health but noone was at risk of dying in 2s from a random damage event. It's all about slowing the healing down and making the damage intake appropriate to that. If a major boss ability only does 50% of your health, then the fact, that someone has an additional 20% dmg reduction cd to use is not that relevant, while if the boss does 90% of your health while ticking additional 10% every 2s, then the additional defensive is all that can save you.

@kel1770

29 күн бұрын

​@@tombenedikt3111so you agree with him that you just need less throughput and slower damage events to slow down the pacing. And also no class has 1 defensive either. The lowest is like 3 for hunter (assuming you dont count exhil)

@Mediiiicc

29 күн бұрын

@@kel1770 Requiring less healing throughput just means the healers will be expected to dps more.

@tombenedikt3111

28 күн бұрын

@@kel1770 we certainly need to slow down the healing. I agree with that. But it's important to adjust the damage intake accordingly. Boss ability shouldn't do 80% of ones hp bar. If it does only 40%, then the additional defensive someone might have over the other class is a boon but not a requirement. In that enviroment, it would take longer for healers to top up the raid from half hp, but people wouldn't be in danger of dying, so it would be more enganging for the healers without the additional stress for everyone. Btw. shaman has only 1 proper defensive. You can maybe count Earth elemental, but that's quite weak and you can't always pick it.

Is it just me? everyone hyped healing in cata Classic. i just have to realize how incredibly boring healing is. have 11/13 in 25 hc down. i think the last bosses won't change my mind. I'll quit classic again^^ (And i playing rsham)

@theunwow

29 күн бұрын

Think this just has more to do with pacing of encounters, the fights are just a lot slower + ask a lot less of you than they do in Dragonflight - but the style of healing imo is quite a bit healthier, think there’s a happy middle ground somewhere in between

@juliandude9284

29 күн бұрын

@@theunwow agree

@bidu2331324

29 күн бұрын

Rsham is the most boring healer plus your guild probably isn't dropping healers aggressively enough.

@Mediiiicc

29 күн бұрын

You just don't like healing in general

It's not only Leech that needs to be removed, Ion is gaslighting us hard there. They need to remove every "reduce X damage taken" talents for every class tree (shaman has a lot of this and they are not tanks, it's pointless). Reduce the defensive just to 1 per class (delete all immunities or put a big tax to use it. Ice block should reduce your damage done in 50% after it's pop, same with darkness and etc), so if you ned to use the big cd, you are punished. The only ones who should have reduce damage taken talents are tank talent trees (specialization, not in general). Dps should be cc, damge and resource managment for themselves. Healers mana managment, a little of support and healing (aoe, single, hot, burst, etc). And they need to introduce affix whre the dps needs to do their job. Not reducing haste or healing, but dmg output and you will see how every dps will do their mechanic. Now they just blame the healer meanwhile they tunnel.

They really gotta buff mw

I came back to healing after not maining it for like 3 expansions. These in game WAs that literally countdown and read out your CDs are insane. The game is basically played for you at that point. I think the changes you mentioned would make some dents, but I think the biggest issue with raiding in general is the tools. I think they should just rip the band-aide off and see what a raid tier without any external/3rd party addons feels like. Kill addons the second you enter an instance, none, zero, zilche.

Go outside dude, holy moly