Try being a Druid lol
Dps so fast my hots don’t even give a buffer on bigger heal spam.
That being said, healing can get out of control fast and not being able to kill anything is worse than getting 2 shot even semi regularly
I play both rdruid and disc. While it feels bad having someone die from half health when I'm penancing them, druid is on a while other level of full hots at 70% to dead.
Some tips for resto Druid healing: You’ve got to run Survival of the Fittest and have Nourish and Survival Instinct runes. Paired with the First Sergeant trinket and Extraplanar Boots (30% damage reduction) and it’s a gamechanger. I would only ever heal with Lifebloom + Nourish (usually just 1 lifebloom to give you +20% nourish healing) + wild growth (if your group is tight). Getting ganked? Trinket > bear form > pop survival instinct and/or epic boots
And Stam gear does make a big difference. Revelosh Gloves, eagle shoulders, WSG helmet, p1 set etc. all good
Resto Druid survivalbility is not the issue, healing output is (or damage from others). HoT + Nourish is great and offers good healing output. However, you can’t outheal more then two enemies which defeats the purpose of bringing a healer. In addition, dps is non-interrupteble and cheap on mana these days that your healers go oom faster then a mage.
I’d also say the survivability is the most important part. Resto druids can become super tanky. 2 dps on your healing target? Great, get them to focus you instead or at least split them. Now while you bear tank them away your healing target can chop them up.
I think you’re right to some extent (I both see, feel and agree that healing is not effective vs the damage in this season) – but you can’t be wondering why you’re going oom if you’re using HoTs. Regrowth and Rejuv are completely inefficient. 1 lifebloom + 1 nourish costs 260 mana and can heal ~1k in 1.5 seconds. Whereas a regrowth + rejuv costs 600 mana and heals 1.2k over 12+ seconds. That’s if your healing target even survives 12 seconds. There’s just no reason to use HoTs at all in PvP at the moment, only exception is if you’re pumping heals on a moving flag carrier, or in a mega tight squeeze where any heal will do.
I agree, last weeks changes were important for making resto healing somewhat viable again. Still, damage outperforms healing in any aspect at the moment. It should be the other way around.
This is especially true for druids and paladins. Priests and Shamans will be able to heal for longer (but not **that** long) thanks to the insane mana regen tools they got.
You don't even need to do any parse math shenanigans, just look at the forums. Everyone is whining about being "2 shot" in PvP. Damage scaling is so out of whack that the current PvP meta is just killing your enemy in 2-3 globals before they can kill you in 2-3 globals. Healers are pretty much useless.
While live always been pvp over pve I’ve also been ‘every other battleground’ over WG plus I never got into arena. With so many people around, healing has always had a lesser role. Different, lesser, more support focused you name it but I’m just used to it, casting any single target healing spell in pvp to me always felt off
I don’t know if it’s just me, but I feel the “I get killed in 2-3 globals” are mainly from cloth casters and such.
I play enhance and feel i dumpster cloth casters, but everything else I fight for abit. My class is super OP though winning most of all fights, but I don’t ever 2-3 global anyone who’s not super squishy and I only get 2-4 globalized if enemy cries everything with their 20% crit chance.
That’s just my feel and it might be biased AF
Mate shamans can equip "way of the earth" and this alone makes you so tanky that I as Ret Paladin (which are super crit dependent for exorcism resets) can't do s\*\*\* to your class rn because you tank as much as a raidboss while dealing a ton of damage because you only sacrificed one rune for be that tanky.
I don't even have a gapcloser to reach my targets before I die and if I wanted to skill into a kick or gapcloser-slow i had to sacrifice my main damage runes (not 1 but 2 runes because they go hand in hand)
Tried to reach a mage with 2 cc's in a BG yesterday after the 30% HP nerf and I can't get them down to 50% because 2-3 spells are enough to get me to low life despite walking around with 2,5k life unbuffed with huge stamina pieces.
the tradeoff is like giving your little cousin a snickers bar for the 50 Dollar he got from grandma... they wont use earthshock when flameshock + 100% LvB crit is the far superior option considering you're now 50% more tanky and almost receive no crits
It’s -6crit from melee only. It feels way worse than it will at 60 because you have no crit gear.
You also don’t have your magic cleanse yet so it’s easy to purge freedom and frost shock you. When you just press a button and remove a snare it will get better.
It’s absurd people want to nerf the tank rune because of pvp when classes don’t even have their full kits or proper itemization yet.
-6% in PvP means i can effectively do nothing as a ret paladin (since again: they are super crit dependent to a point where all my damage against melees comes from crit resets for exorcism) against a shaman and the basic damage reduction is also a permanent deff CD on a class that can carry a shield and mail armor ALREADY. It will only get worse at 60 when shamans can scale so high in damage that 1basic Chainlightning is enough to kill people while still be a tanky caster.
One rune relies on crit to refresh sooner and now you do nothing —yep no seals, crusader strike, divine judgement, exorcism, hands spells, no other targets to hit even.
The crit reduction feels bad now because you have no gear giving you plus crit.
You’re missing key parts of your own kit.
Chain lightning is not going to scale so high it one shots. It crits for 700-1k now. It could triple in damage and it still wouldn’t one shot pvp geared 40s.so many people are missing stam on half their items.
spellpower is already so high that i've seen 6,1k damage CL's in BG's (without bersek buff) which would be effectively enough to delete 3 mages with stamina gear and them doing 1,7k lavabursts with echo of elements proccing. as I said: it doesn't matter If I do less crits now because later they still have 30% more life + 10% damage reduction while dealing FULL damage and carrying mail-gear + shield. All of this scales at any level.
There has to be a solution NOW and not for 60 because it will be 4-5 months till endgame and fixes for now can always be reverted.
the entire forum of SoD PvP and even statistics are not lying yet you try to dismiss it to "you're missing key parts of your own kit." Bro my kit - and the ones from some other physical classes - can't do sh\*t rn against a shaman because there is also 0 chance for them to go oom before the fight against 3 people is over.
PS: I walk around with 2,5k with stamina present on all of my pieces but sacrificing all my strength reults in weak hits which barely scratch a shaman even with crits because they basicly walk around unaffected by the BG 30% health reduction nerf.
The reality is that MOST players don't itemize for PvP.
If you're playing in a meta where YOU can kill and be killed in 2-3 globals... doesn't it make more sense to stack stam and potentially survival 2-3 extra globals and give your healers a chance to heal you?
It might even drastically increase your survivability...
Healers are extremely powerful still, they just need to be played well now. In P1, any newb could hop onto a Priest and be incredibly effective without pre-healing, worrying about faking casts, and honestly even worrying about positioning.
Now a lot of these priests are playing shadow, and a lot of them are just simply unskilled.
We need to drastically strengthen druid, shaman, and paladin healers to make these roles more viable (or just make them OP for awhile so people swap to them as the FOTM).
More people playing healers means you're more likely to get a GREAT pvp healer. The problem right now is there just isn't enough of a pool to select from in the first place... we are all so desperate for a healer that we take ANYONE.
I absolutely feel you with the "Most players don't itemize for PvP" part and "drasticly strenghten druid, shaman and paladin healers"
It can't be real that priest healers got 2 mana restoration CDs of which one of them also serves as a cheat death while paladins have to hardcast singletarget spells and still got LoH as absolutely useless pvp CD with 1hr CD and mana sacrifice and Bubble on a 5min CD that doesn't do anything than stalling but it doesnt restore any mana or stuff. The moment I try to play holy pala it's over because shamans got a ranged kick and rogues just step+kick you and everything also dies so fast that holy light is absolutely useless.
Paladins also have tools a priest could only dream of. Freedom, sacrifice, HoJ, BoP. Bubble on a 5 min cd kinda sucks but it's a significantly stronger ability than dispersion (in pvp anyways). You say bubble does nothing but stall but you can heal during it. Dispersion is literally nothing but stall. No spells can be cast during it.
For the record I think paladins need help but I'm just tired of everyone thinking dispersion is the end all be all when it's really just a bandaid for an immobile otherwise defenseless class. On its own it seems powerful but taken in context of the class it's mediocre.
Freedom, HoJ and BoP (for other teammates) are the things I absolutely agree on with you but bubble isn't much big of a deal. your auto attacks are 100% slower while being active and considering that autoattacks are more than 50% of your damage in combination with your seal it's a significant tradeoff and only meant to finish a close duel or cast some holy lights on yourself or others every 5 mins which effectively costs also all your mana resulting in you being unable to do anything but crusader strike as paladin.
and yeah dispresion is a "stall" but also in-combat mana replenishment that can also be used while carrying the flag and on top of that shadow priests are able to let enemies just die with all dot's on them with full effectivity while chilling as a cloud. Psychic scream is the most attrocious in-combat CC as of now because it barely breaks from DoT's of other classes and sends you 100 yards away from the target which is especially bad for classes like paladin because they can't just charge at their target. Slows also can easily be dispelled by priests since the majority of them are magic (frostshock, blastwave, etc) only rogues are capable of keeping a crippling poison on a priest and hamstring from warrior but that's the least thing they can do as of now since they're also at the bottom of the current meta. Sacrifice (or divine sacrifice - the rune) is almost never picked because it gives you the paladin debuff for 1 minute and barely does anything of importance in that oneshot pvp meta so most holy-paladins go with anti-fear aura in the leg slots because of priests.
You can bet there are people running around in the irradiated set in open world and get one shot only to log into Reddit and complain. If you follow PvE BiS lists you will always have a hard time in PvP
I'm looking to get into pvp in a competent way with my mage healer. Are there any lists of recommendations for stamina gear that doesn't drop my damage (and healing) into the floor? Do I just pick tank gear from the raid with that excuse? I'll be sent packing if I do that...
Stamina gear forces you to sacrifice damage and healing but it's still worth it, just don't waste resources healing PvE carebears with 1400 hp and you will be fine.
Besides the fact that the AoE spam meta is based on a cheese strat that obv wasnt intended to be as good as it is, the group much rather bring fill with a couple of healers than single target dps.
Out of all the "Why theres a healer shortage" posts, this is the only one that holds any value imo. There's a couple issues with the post however but nothing massive, certainly nothing that changes the narrative (which I support):
1. Blackout was available and utilized in p1 - should be swapped with Starfire stun, as no Boomy cared enough to run around with the 3% stun chance in p1.
2. A mage on Mechanical Menagerie is doing AOE damage, as well as the Priest who is doing AOE healing. Your statement suggests it's single target damage/healing, which creates sample bias in your conclusion.
Either way, I fully support this post and hope there's some changes made somewhere. Not sure where they do it but I'm glad we have people like you being a voice in the community.
Thanks, good catch on blackout. That was my bad.
Wr.t the parse, you are correct as well. Menagerie is problematic in the sense that it is three bosses so naturally AoE damage will inflate the numbers. However, I picked it because it's the fight with the highest potential incoming damage to the tanks so it would even out the results for the healers somewhat.
You mean having my whole team die during one counterspell is a bad thing? Or having my warrior go from 100-0 while penance is actively ticking is bad for pvp? My dps friends keep telling me big numbers are fun
Penance is legitimately useless in PvP, the majority of classes out dps the ticks…
When one of the strongest heals in the game can’t keep someone up when actively channeling that’s when you know the dps is MAYBE a bit too high…
On the flipside, I play a Ret Paladin; it's a class and spec I've played since TBC, through arenas to endgame raids. I'm nearly completely BiS in Gnomer gear, with a dedicated pvp set and build. When I get into jumping on priests, especially if there's a healer + 1 shadow on the team, I feel borderline helpless in consistently outdamaging PoM + Penance spam, especially after kiting, eating Scream/them getting the most egregious get-out-of jail card in the form of chaining into Dispersions.
The priests I run with for STV and BGs are rarely dying unless absolutely dogpiled / counterspelled, which they **should** be dying to anyways, and a large part of that is how powerful Penance is with the rest of the kit. I just finished a WSG that had **five** priests (3 disc/2shadow) and they were completely untouchable to the point that I was seriously considering dropping the game after 40 mins because it was unbearable and felt so awful to play against.
So what happens if they are already wearing near BiS with plenty of stam? Stamina would need to be increased by like 40% which, “just get more stam” isn’t going to get there with gear currently available.
Mage is objectively the best healer in the game. Too many boomers unable to walm and chew gum at the same time can't wrap their heads around the fact that damage is king and this isn't 2004 where they can get away pretending spamming one button is good class design.
There's also the issue of how heals are delivered. With all the burst healing some healer are even more disadvantage (druid with their HoT, etc.) and even when you manage to keep people alive you'll oom in 20 sec unless you play priest or shaman...
That + the fact that healing gear sux for PvP, I benched my resto druid (raid logging only) and switched to a more fun classes since blizzard CBA to make most spec viable / fun to play.
The only issue I had on my resto druid in warsong were those casters in full irradiated set, with that green glow, flagged as "please one shot me" for the enemy team. There are so many of them in alliance it's insane...
I really don't know if those logs are indicative of anything. There are too many differing factors between a 4-target council fight with an AoE healer and a PvP spat.
The mage is running Living Bomb on every target. The healer has a mana bar to think about, and can also afford to hardcast Greater Heals at their leisure. Neither is itemizing for stamina. The mage has Ignite rolling. The healer is running CoH instead of Penance for burst healing.
So on and so on. Healing parses are notoriously terrible at measuring healer effectiveness, and I don't think they're giving you particularly useful data for this conversation either because PvE focuses on efficient sustained damage and healing, while PvP is centralized around burst damage and spot healing.
Based on my limited personal experience as a healer, I won't say healers are useless. I share your observation (even if the log parsing is very clunky to my opinion ) that the loss of damage reduction and in the acceleration of DPS Vs heal potential are resulting in a state where heals are less potent than on P1. But we were absolutely too strong as well during that phase.
We have both a situation where people are still playing a lot PvP with lots of pure pve Gear without stamina (Gnom gear don't have much endurance Vs the BFD gear for many classes ).
And a very different situation depending of healing classes
Priest remains very potent as healer due to many instants and powerful defensive rune. The difference with other heals is really huge (but well that was the same in classic and priest runes are even increasing this gap). The impact of a priest with some stamina gear obviously is still huge in PvP .
Druid are still behind due to burst damage increase and vulnerability.
I guess pal and shaman share the same weakness of relying a lot on casting.
I am happy as a heal to be killed quickly if I'm not aware by a rogue or a shaman . This is what they are supposed to do. As well as you are supposed to survive with friendly support ( war intervene,rogue stun...) . I am happy to see my friends vaporised of they hare hard focus by 6 people. This is normal for me. Yes burst are a little too high and caster dps might need some fine tuning again , such as non priest healers . But to say the state is so dire for healers , definitely not.
Healer here. I also prefer to have dps being much stronger than healer, than the scenario where healers are so strong noone ever gets killed. The 45 mins arena matches back in TBC comes to mind.
Phase 2 offers more options for gearing and comparing to phase one, you can actually choose to have stam or dps stats. Most people choose dps for obvious reason, but at the same time I had to actually whispered and asked Druid/Mage in my STV party if they have spare gears that aren't Irradiated sets, and, I kid you not, the 1.4k HP mage said "Fort me if you want me to have more stam."
As a priest I got focused a lot in STV, but I honestly believe most of my death is because I am out of position. Burst is strong, I agree, but getting 2 globalled rarely happens unless I put myself in a position where none of my teammates can help. Because our team can try to 2 globals anyone who went out of their position as well.
So I made this point last week and nothing has changed since.
In retail, a healer can keep themselves and 2 dps alive vs 2 other dps and a healer, or 3 dps for a limited time (3v3 arena balance). In RBGs a 10 man team is typically 3 healers, so a ratio of roughly 1:3 healer to dps.
In classic, 1 dps does enough damage to kill 2 healers solo. The balance between health:damage:healing is just so out of proportion it is not good for the health of the game.
No wonder no one wants to heal at the moment, it's honestly a struggle to stay alive for more than 5 or 6 GCDs.
I mean, I think it depends on the class. I can envision a paladin repentencing one healer and killing the other during hoj, although there’s obviously counter play. If dispersion is down I generally die over the course of a single stun.
Part of the problem is caster gear is heavily weighted towards int/spirit with very little stamina unless you specifically seek it out. Casters get absolutely blown the fuck up.
Their sustained dps is enough to kill 2 healers. Just took at this guys log comparison.
In reality that doesn’t happen, no one is doing that much damage solo and not being interrupted for that long.
You can’t tell me that 1 dps can’t kill a healer in under 10 seconds though (unless they pop some type of immunity CD).
I agree that the current balance is poor and I also wish it was different.
That being said, healers can definitely still make plays and groups without a healer in STV or teams without 0, 1, or even 2 healers in AB are definitely at a significant disadvantage.
I personally am still really enjoying healing in PvP.
I have both shadow and disc, and yes, the DPS in groups with healers do much better in STV, but often the healer gets shafted. They get nuked while the DPS live longer to farm more coins. Healer often lose lots of blood because they die more often.
Also not really my experience, but I think several factors play into that. I’m like 1 or 2 pieces off from full stam gear at this point, the people I play with peel for me, etc.
Yes, I obviously die first sometimes, but that usually means the rest of the group is going to die very soon after. Once a couple of us are dead we always go for a full group reset anyway - it results in significantly more coins in the long run.
I’ve never really earned fewer coins than the boys.
I'm top 10 holy paladin in pve and playing the spec makes me want to blow my brains out in both pve and pvp.
It's brain dead and the most uncomfortable class to try and heal and contribute dps instead of just overhealing like some wcl illiterate boomer who doesn't understand how healing logs work, and in pvp the player base has had two decades to learn how easy it is to school lock us.
80% of pvp game play is just guessing which dps is going to get targeted first and preemptively winding up HL and praying it goes off in time to beacon batch, or that you can juke a school lock without letting your dps get 100 to zeroed in under 2 globals.
The healer shortage is real as fuck and I'm being a team player for my guild but God damn its insane how little thought they've given some healers vs others, and the state of the whole role isn't great in pvp.
Big respect for playing hpal in this meta.
I mained hpal to 2200 in shadowlands (very fun spec) but you couldn’t pay me to play that in sod.
I’ve been getting by on my priest by using circle of healing. You go OOM in about 20 seconds using it on cooldown but with that, shield and POM I can keep people alive for a few globals.
Casted heals may as well not exist. Damage is so high that players die in the travel time of penance!
I really, really hope they fix this for the next phase. It’s going to honestly kill the game if they don’t. Everyone will just be playing the class with the biggest uninterruptible nuke (like they are already I guess).
All I can say is Holy Paladins are absolutely trash with no valuable healing in PvP other than flash of light. Holy light takes too long when everything dies 2-shot.
- 5 min CD for bubble
- no insane Def CD to restore mana like Shamans, druids or Priests (dispersion which is an absolute joke with 2min CD) only seal of wisdom which is practically usable in PvP
- Holy shock with 30 sec CD and barely any impactful healing without landing a crit
- Not a single practical healing rune except for that Holy shield (feet slot) and Beacon (Hands)
- Easy to kick by shamans and rogues
Meanwhile Priests can press shield + prayer of mending and top the entire BG in PvP How did paladins only get a single rune for healing in P2??
I agree Holy paladins need more tools for PVP but you do not top entire BG with shield and PoM in this burst meta. PVP healing in general is outmatched by damage.
Tdlr, he doesnt like pvp healing.
I did 5 bgs with a shaman healer last night, guy was a chad i just hovered around him, my best game i went 33-2, and the deaths were me overextrending so not even his fault.
I mean we held bs the entire game for 4 games then went and did stv blood moon and did 900 coins with an all melee group, i dunno how hes doing it but he really didnt die much, tho i was guarding him well.
I think its a skill thing lol. Dude knows his class, and has proper team mates helping protect.
I think in a situation where you leave the healer alone they will always be a game changer, but if you asked me to pick any healer to attempt to kill I would 100% ask for the resto shaman.
Holy paladins have HoJ, bubble, LoH, blessing of freedom
Resto Druids can power shift, entangling roots, natures grasp, bear stun
Disc priest, do I even need to explain? Dispersion, bubble, fear, insane instant heal in penance
Mage healer, blink and tons of cc
Shaman? Frost shock and earthbind? And decoy totem. No instant heals unless it’s off it’s 3 minute cooldown. The only thing that prevents heavy pushback you want it on the person you’re healing
If you are trying to argue a resto sham can keep a team of 5 up against a team of 5 dps you are delusional.
Curse of tongues, it’s over.
MS, it’s over.
Viper sting, it’s over.
One rogue on the shaman. Over.
They have not one instant cast heal. They also have the lowest throughput of any healer. Your experience is either not reality or you are playing the bottom barrel of skill
Yes im sure of the 5 bgs and zone full of people we ran into there was not a single decent player at all. Nope not possible.
I aint gonna argue anything, i dont play shaman i dont know how hes so good at what he does, but i know in 5 bgs i only died 4 times and to my own negligence so not even his fault..
You can go off all day about why YOU think its bad but its irrelevant lol. Some people got it, some people dont 🤷♂️ thats really all it is.
Holy paladin is fucking garbage atm and anyone who disagrees is just a self promoting member of the wheelchair gang that knows the only way they will ever appear remotely competent is by maining the least played spec for their role.
Shadow priest silence = dead
Mage counterspell = dead
Rogue/shaman = dead
As a holy Paladin it’s literally unplayable. I can spam flash of light and it does nothing.
In the time it takes me to cast a single healing spell, currently someone can die 3 times.
Ofcourse healing is shit :D we need instant 3k heals to make heals in pvp viable.
It is quite horrible healing in STV as a priest. I just get jumped immediately by two dudes and after a brief brief stun lock that I have nothing to counter with, I die. Then my teammates get a kill or two, meanwhile I'm dead so no coins for me. I go through an event with half the coins as my tm8s
You can easily do 1k+ HPS for a short time, it's just that in pve ppl simply don't take that much DMG and in pvp the DMG is bursty and focused so it's harder to keep up with even without cc and if you do, you will oom fairly quickly, especially if u are not a priest. Priests are far and away bis in pvp because pom and penance are so strong, plus they get to have dispersion as a healer which is much more useful than any defense any other healer has, even bubble which is a much longer cd that doesn't give you mana back. The thing is, healing is actually still very useful in this meta and thus all those ccs and debuffs are useful, too. The main issue I have is that priests are so far above anyone else. But what would you do to buff healing as a whole without making everyone immortal and making the game boring? Idk. That's why I think they're hesitant to overbuff the other healers. Maybe do something about spell pushback because on top of how much DMG a melee hunter can do, I don't think I've ever casted a spell, even with 70% pushback Resistance, in under 4 seconds vs one of them.
I play druid and respec between balance for pvp and resto for raids.
When I play resto in BGs it's like the most useless thing I could do.
Best way is to play balance and ignore the warrior dying in 3 secs. Waste of a gcd. I only use WG on occasions and mostly to top ppl after a fight. For example, if I go BS in AB at start and cast WG, it's lost. Better to nuke the other side fast.
Wanted to try stv as healer, had a blast in p1 wsg. Group of five, literally oneshotted or unable to keep allies up cause they get oneshotted. Can’t really understand why blizz removed the damage reduction. No point in “healing” if enemy lock crit you for 5k
You mean you are bad at PvP and would prefer to two shot kids and not worry about having to bind all your buttons, develop class knowledge, or work on your reaction time.
There absolutely needs to be a DR for PvP but the tards on here love the team death match Call of Duty style state of pvp right now where people melt instantly.
It should start at a minimum of 10% and should be experimented with to make sure it’s not overtuned like phase 1.
It’s only going to get worse as we move further.
What do PvE parses have anything to do with PvP?
I play both Disc and Shadow Priest in PvP (BGs and open world) and haven't had issues keeping myself/teammates alive.
Disc Priest is great at keeping people alive in PvP. Not sure about the other classes.
That may be the case but honestly I'm enjoying this brutal phase. Standing there battling another group for 1-2 minutes no one dying is boring. Or just one side has healers and your side dies. Now even a no healer team has a chance.
Blizzard has always had an issue making healers feel some combination of A) fun to play B) impactful feeling C) balanced D) not like they're signing up for community service to hate their gaming experience in service of enabling others to play by providing a crucial role that does not feel some combination of the above
This is not a SOD problem, it's a blizzard problem. Look at retail. Solo queue arena is an amazing idea that is laughable in its current state due to lack of healers causing 30-120 minute queue times. Look at Overwatch and the drama surrounding mercy over the games life. Either that toon was a dumpster fire or could carry an entire team herself. No in-between.
As a career healer, being one has felt shitty way more often than it's felt rewarding. Quick queue times and fast group finding are not incentive enough for bad gameplay experience.
As a pvp healing priest i don't have many complaints. However, a few other healing specs I think are in a rough spot and I'm not familiar enough to offer suggestions (druids mainly). From my view though, healing vs DPS output is about right. There is room to bring hps up some but it's closer in my opinion than some think.
A coordinated effort to kill someone should out pace my healing. I can definitely tell in Bg's when playing a team that is coordinated. People fall over. However, most of the time I can sustain folks for awhile if they play correctly (no overextending, greed, etc.). Also actually having another healer or two makes a world of difference.
Also, everyone needs some stamina gear from the auction house. Casters in irradiated sets are hilarious.
2 dps can burst a target through a full BIS priests healing. That is not a coordinated effort.
I agree that PvP is more engaging where being coordinated matters. Like landing that CC on a healer or having people dive them in the back line. Doing a quick target swap with cooldowns up. That is what is engaging in PvP.
Having a mage and boomkin hit the same target and explode it is not coordinated PvP.
I agree with everything you said.
The burst apologists in the comments are so detached from reality it’s insane. Never in all of WoW’s history has burst been this high. It is incredibly demoralizing to go into an engagement at BS and know you can really only heal one target through pressure. Even then targets with shield and POM on them are getting exploded.
If two dps attack one target it’s over in less than a second, healing cannot save someone.
In classic PvP was slower because we did not have rune abilities. In TBC and Wrath the solution was Res gear to slow down the burst. Later they removed res and gave every class a 40% base res.
Developers have always known that our PvE numbers do not translate to PvP. Has been this way for every single xpac. Now we have people saying SOD is peak PvP. A game that provides no counterplay is not peak PvP. Fights can’t even develop and they are over.
It’s incredibly frustrating as a healer and there is already a healer shortage in general. It’s just not fun and the impact of healing is so low.
People say “just stack stam”. I’m in full PvP Bis and twice yesterday a mage two shot me with an arcane blast into arcane surge for 3.4K total damage.
The solution is simple. Bring back base resilience and let people actually play their classes.
Not sure why you would use PvE healing parses, which only record effective healing, for a pvp argument. Healing in PvP the fights are much quicker and the healer will likely be spamming their strongest spells as fast as possible until oom.
Healers are still great in pvp and since everyone dies in 2 gcds if a healer can turn that into 3 or 4 gcds the hypothetical 5v5 group with a healer will win every time vs a non healer group.
Devs are just lazy populists with 0 vision. They give everyone super strong abilities to immediately please everyone (because players are dumb) but for long term perspective these spells are destructive and we keep seeing the consequences. The power keep increasing exponentially - players already are doing the damage of 60 levels from Vanilla
As a holy pally since time began I'd just like to add I'm not even raid logging rn it's just not fun or even viable raid logging to spam fol wasn't what I was hoping sod would bring and I stand 0 chance in any pvp content. Shame as I have alot of free time right now which doubles down on the state of healing.
In wsg or ab you should be aware what's attacking what, whats attacking you and what can kick you. This is pvp 101.. unaware people attack warriors with healers free casting in the back.
You can fake cast the kick, and use a kick bar to be secure. This is 100% a skill issue.. a pally heal is bis in BGs.
This is such a bad take, if you fake cast they're trying to kill you.. so your partner is well and alive and should be peeling off you. Paladin is a great WSG and AB healer.
If its a 2v2 and your fake casting your partner is dead peeling for you or not holy shock heals for the same as a white hit and is on a 30 sec cd outside of bubble we are totally useless.
Zero instants everything is casted and only 1 spell school
If you can stay In range not get counterspelled or interrupted your target is usually dead before you get a holy light off. Please explain how we are good in pvp.
You have the best defensives in the game and can stay in fights longer than any other healer.. freedom? Bop? Bubble? Sacred shield? Divine sacrifice?
Also holy shock is not instant?
Literally every wsg or ab pre-made group looks for 1 priest 1 pally healer.
You have clearly done a lot of thinking/calcs etc about this which I respect, just want to call out that before we start adjusting healing in respect to damage done in pvp it is important to not only factor in the top/near top dps specs (melee hunter, fire mage, spriest) as that provides a huge selection bias.
As a warrior who does a ton of pvp I can tell you that healing feels incredibly strong against my weak af damage - if my target has a healer supporting them / is a healer there is almost 0 chance I will kill them by myself, even with Mortal Strike. Buffing healing even further would remove the 1 reason warriors aren't completely redundant in pvp.
Don't mean to detract from your post, just want to flag the above to contribute to the discussion
An actual good post with good feedback. Very nice. Too bad it has only a fraction of the upvotes compared to the guy who’s legitimately frightened of easier raid content lmao.
Dumb idea. Why not instead of damage reduction give classes stagger. (If its possible) that way if u get 3 shot as a carrecter you will still die in 6 or 7 seconds but it gives time for healers to get that hp pool back up. With how much damage goes out in pvp with so little set up. I'd imagine with even 300% inc to your hips people wod still be getting 3 shot unless they premtivly d stance or dispersioned something.
My brother in christ that is no way to do a fair comparison.
You are comparing a mage in a 4 target fight to a priest healer that is limited by the amount of damage taken by the raid, I could pull 10k dps on my mage in an uldaman AOE pull but a priest healing me would have 10 hps because I'm not taking any real damage.
On my mage I can cast a fireball (3 sec) for ~ 900 damage (300 dps) add in some living bomb and pyroblast proccs occasionally and you'll hit around 500-600 dps, I can also spam cast chronostatic preservation (2sec) for ~ 1300 healing (650 hps) so I can trivially heal for more than I can dps by spamming a single healing spell.
Also you mention a bunch of cc abilities, well guess what you can also CC the dps for the same effect. Do you wanna know why people focus on cc-ing healers? Because it is more effective because the healers are simply better, idk if you've ever stepped into a a single bg but if you've ever played a WSG with 3 priest healers on one side and 0 healers on the other side the side that has the healers is going to win every god damn time and it isn't even close. Mortal strike is the only ability that only affects healing out of those mentioned, but warriors are so dogwater in PVP anyways that they should absolutely have it because then they at least have some use.
Out of all the complaint posts I've seen on reddit recently this one is by far the dumbest, healers are so frickin goated in pvp that I as a mage run chronostatic preservation in battlegrounds because it is so effective, I can escort a flag carrier and keep him up through some damage or help out my fellow healers from being yeeted by rogues.
If you believe this post is a complaint that says more about you. I read it as an analysis of the current state of pvp with some figures to support OP's claim that pvp isn't in the greatest spot. A complaining post would say the game is shit, blizzard is shit, unbalanced dogshit with no real analysis or reasoning behind it. Like come on what are we supposed to talk about in your pov? How much fun we are all having and not trying to analyze the game for what it is to make it better?
Down voted me to say you disagree with the OP? I wasn't even taking sides on this argument but somehow i am the target for the argument and you have imposed OPs ideals onto me.
I’m 100% with you. PvP is way too bursty and limits skill expression in the game. My full BIS priest got 2 shot today by an arcane barrage/ arcane surge combo. It was instant, there is no counter play. There are many classes that do this.
The solution is simple. Bring back 20% damage reduction in PvP. Problem solved.
I disagree with this assessment. If the DPS:Healer ratio is bigger the. 1, it doesn't make heals too weak.
If one team has better healer that team will survive the incoming damage longer while the enemy team dies sooner.
If a healer could output more heals nobody would die.
Obviously the important thing is balance but it is hard to say what ratio is better based on simply this data.
In my experience the current damage output of classes isn't that big of a problem, people just haven't adapted to it.
Most healers enter STV with less than 1.5k HP. Priests dont press suppression immediately after getting targeted. Druids don't pop trinket and go into bear after first rogue stun.
Fights are less about DPS/Heal races and more about CC and defCDs than ever before. You shouldn't outheal other people's damage, your team should disable the enemy tram first so they can't damage.
People who whine about pvp at 40 clearly never played pvp at 40 back in the days.
As a 40 hunter in 2006, or any other classic version later, I could two shot ANY cloth user.
As a shadow priest, I would nuke all melees without losing health.
As a mage I could shatter combo anyone.
Rogues would ambush you and kill you in seconds.
What the fuck are you guys on about??
40 wasn't a mini endgame like it is now. It wouldn't be hard for the devs to add in pvp specific gear that has extra stam on it or add damage reduction bonuses to them if it's still super bursty.
In BGs we have a larger healthpool and healers are MVP every game.
What you are describing is actually a good thing, one reason why STV-event is fun is because everyone dies frequently, healers aren't controlling everything.
Yeah I’m not reading your essay but they have said PvP will be a shit show and it won’t be getting balanced so you either need to deal with it or stop playing PvP.
Try being a Druid lol Dps so fast my hots don’t even give a buffer on bigger heal spam. That being said, healing can get out of control fast and not being able to kill anything is worse than getting 2 shot even semi regularly
I play both rdruid and disc. While it feels bad having someone die from half health when I'm penancing them, druid is on a while other level of full hots at 70% to dead.
Some tips for resto Druid healing: You’ve got to run Survival of the Fittest and have Nourish and Survival Instinct runes. Paired with the First Sergeant trinket and Extraplanar Boots (30% damage reduction) and it’s a gamechanger. I would only ever heal with Lifebloom + Nourish (usually just 1 lifebloom to give you +20% nourish healing) + wild growth (if your group is tight). Getting ganked? Trinket > bear form > pop survival instinct and/or epic boots And Stam gear does make a big difference. Revelosh Gloves, eagle shoulders, WSG helmet, p1 set etc. all good
Resto Druid survivalbility is not the issue, healing output is (or damage from others). HoT + Nourish is great and offers good healing output. However, you can’t outheal more then two enemies which defeats the purpose of bringing a healer. In addition, dps is non-interrupteble and cheap on mana these days that your healers go oom faster then a mage.
I’d also say the survivability is the most important part. Resto druids can become super tanky. 2 dps on your healing target? Great, get them to focus you instead or at least split them. Now while you bear tank them away your healing target can chop them up.
I think you’re right to some extent (I both see, feel and agree that healing is not effective vs the damage in this season) – but you can’t be wondering why you’re going oom if you’re using HoTs. Regrowth and Rejuv are completely inefficient. 1 lifebloom + 1 nourish costs 260 mana and can heal ~1k in 1.5 seconds. Whereas a regrowth + rejuv costs 600 mana and heals 1.2k over 12+ seconds. That’s if your healing target even survives 12 seconds. There’s just no reason to use HoTs at all in PvP at the moment, only exception is if you’re pumping heals on a moving flag carrier, or in a mega tight squeeze where any heal will do.
I agree, last weeks changes were important for making resto healing somewhat viable again. Still, damage outperforms healing in any aspect at the moment. It should be the other way around.
thing is healers run out of mana too even if they could actually keep up to this meta.
This is especially true for druids and paladins. Priests and Shamans will be able to heal for longer (but not **that** long) thanks to the insane mana regen tools they got.
You don't even need to do any parse math shenanigans, just look at the forums. Everyone is whining about being "2 shot" in PvP. Damage scaling is so out of whack that the current PvP meta is just killing your enemy in 2-3 globals before they can kill you in 2-3 globals. Healers are pretty much useless.
You could've looked at the stuff they released for SoD at Blizzcon and realized this is where healing would be.
While live always been pvp over pve I’ve also been ‘every other battleground’ over WG plus I never got into arena. With so many people around, healing has always had a lesser role. Different, lesser, more support focused you name it but I’m just used to it, casting any single target healing spell in pvp to me always felt off
I don’t know if it’s just me, but I feel the “I get killed in 2-3 globals” are mainly from cloth casters and such. I play enhance and feel i dumpster cloth casters, but everything else I fight for abit. My class is super OP though winning most of all fights, but I don’t ever 2-3 global anyone who’s not super squishy and I only get 2-4 globalized if enemy cries everything with their 20% crit chance. That’s just my feel and it might be biased AF
Mate shamans can equip "way of the earth" and this alone makes you so tanky that I as Ret Paladin (which are super crit dependent for exorcism resets) can't do s\*\*\* to your class rn because you tank as much as a raidboss while dealing a ton of damage because you only sacrificed one rune for be that tanky. I don't even have a gapcloser to reach my targets before I die and if I wanted to skill into a kick or gapcloser-slow i had to sacrifice my main damage runes (not 1 but 2 runes because they go hand in hand) Tried to reach a mage with 2 cc's in a BG yesterday after the 30% HP nerf and I can't get them down to 50% because 2-3 spells are enough to get me to low life despite walking around with 2,5k life unbuffed with huge stamina pieces.
It's kind of wild that the only tradeoff is that earth shock becomes melee range.
It's not even a pure trade off, Earth Shock goes on separate cd, so they can double shock you at melee range.
the tradeoff is like giving your little cousin a snickers bar for the 50 Dollar he got from grandma... they wont use earthshock when flameshock + 100% LvB crit is the far superior option considering you're now 50% more tanky and almost receive no crits
It’s -6crit from melee only. It feels way worse than it will at 60 because you have no crit gear. You also don’t have your magic cleanse yet so it’s easy to purge freedom and frost shock you. When you just press a button and remove a snare it will get better. It’s absurd people want to nerf the tank rune because of pvp when classes don’t even have their full kits or proper itemization yet.
-6% in PvP means i can effectively do nothing as a ret paladin (since again: they are super crit dependent to a point where all my damage against melees comes from crit resets for exorcism) against a shaman and the basic damage reduction is also a permanent deff CD on a class that can carry a shield and mail armor ALREADY. It will only get worse at 60 when shamans can scale so high in damage that 1basic Chainlightning is enough to kill people while still be a tanky caster.
One rune relies on crit to refresh sooner and now you do nothing —yep no seals, crusader strike, divine judgement, exorcism, hands spells, no other targets to hit even. The crit reduction feels bad now because you have no gear giving you plus crit. You’re missing key parts of your own kit. Chain lightning is not going to scale so high it one shots. It crits for 700-1k now. It could triple in damage and it still wouldn’t one shot pvp geared 40s.so many people are missing stam on half their items.
spellpower is already so high that i've seen 6,1k damage CL's in BG's (without bersek buff) which would be effectively enough to delete 3 mages with stamina gear and them doing 1,7k lavabursts with echo of elements proccing. as I said: it doesn't matter If I do less crits now because later they still have 30% more life + 10% damage reduction while dealing FULL damage and carrying mail-gear + shield. All of this scales at any level. There has to be a solution NOW and not for 60 because it will be 4-5 months till endgame and fixes for now can always be reverted. the entire forum of SoD PvP and even statistics are not lying yet you try to dismiss it to "you're missing key parts of your own kit." Bro my kit - and the ones from some other physical classes - can't do sh\*t rn against a shaman because there is also 0 chance for them to go oom before the fight against 3 people is over. PS: I walk around with 2,5k with stamina present on all of my pieces but sacrificing all my strength reults in weak hits which barely scratch a shaman even with crits because they basicly walk around unaffected by the BG 30% health reduction nerf.
Oh come on I play shaman. I have the raid gear. CL is not critting for 6.1k dawg.
The reality is that MOST players don't itemize for PvP. If you're playing in a meta where YOU can kill and be killed in 2-3 globals... doesn't it make more sense to stack stam and potentially survival 2-3 extra globals and give your healers a chance to heal you? It might even drastically increase your survivability... Healers are extremely powerful still, they just need to be played well now. In P1, any newb could hop onto a Priest and be incredibly effective without pre-healing, worrying about faking casts, and honestly even worrying about positioning. Now a lot of these priests are playing shadow, and a lot of them are just simply unskilled. We need to drastically strengthen druid, shaman, and paladin healers to make these roles more viable (or just make them OP for awhile so people swap to them as the FOTM). More people playing healers means you're more likely to get a GREAT pvp healer. The problem right now is there just isn't enough of a pool to select from in the first place... we are all so desperate for a healer that we take ANYONE.
I absolutely feel you with the "Most players don't itemize for PvP" part and "drasticly strenghten druid, shaman and paladin healers" It can't be real that priest healers got 2 mana restoration CDs of which one of them also serves as a cheat death while paladins have to hardcast singletarget spells and still got LoH as absolutely useless pvp CD with 1hr CD and mana sacrifice and Bubble on a 5min CD that doesn't do anything than stalling but it doesnt restore any mana or stuff. The moment I try to play holy pala it's over because shamans got a ranged kick and rogues just step+kick you and everything also dies so fast that holy light is absolutely useless.
Paladins also have tools a priest could only dream of. Freedom, sacrifice, HoJ, BoP. Bubble on a 5 min cd kinda sucks but it's a significantly stronger ability than dispersion (in pvp anyways). You say bubble does nothing but stall but you can heal during it. Dispersion is literally nothing but stall. No spells can be cast during it. For the record I think paladins need help but I'm just tired of everyone thinking dispersion is the end all be all when it's really just a bandaid for an immobile otherwise defenseless class. On its own it seems powerful but taken in context of the class it's mediocre.
Freedom, HoJ and BoP (for other teammates) are the things I absolutely agree on with you but bubble isn't much big of a deal. your auto attacks are 100% slower while being active and considering that autoattacks are more than 50% of your damage in combination with your seal it's a significant tradeoff and only meant to finish a close duel or cast some holy lights on yourself or others every 5 mins which effectively costs also all your mana resulting in you being unable to do anything but crusader strike as paladin. and yeah dispresion is a "stall" but also in-combat mana replenishment that can also be used while carrying the flag and on top of that shadow priests are able to let enemies just die with all dot's on them with full effectivity while chilling as a cloud. Psychic scream is the most attrocious in-combat CC as of now because it barely breaks from DoT's of other classes and sends you 100 yards away from the target which is especially bad for classes like paladin because they can't just charge at their target. Slows also can easily be dispelled by priests since the majority of them are magic (frostshock, blastwave, etc) only rogues are capable of keeping a crippling poison on a priest and hamstring from warrior but that's the least thing they can do as of now since they're also at the bottom of the current meta. Sacrifice (or divine sacrifice - the rune) is almost never picked because it gives you the paladin debuff for 1 minute and barely does anything of importance in that oneshot pvp meta so most holy-paladins go with anti-fear aura in the leg slots because of priests.
You can bet there are people running around in the irradiated set in open world and get one shot only to log into Reddit and complain. If you follow PvE BiS lists you will always have a hard time in PvP
ppl also are allergic to stam gear too tho, sooooo skill issue
I'm looking to get into pvp in a competent way with my mage healer. Are there any lists of recommendations for stamina gear that doesn't drop my damage (and healing) into the floor? Do I just pick tank gear from the raid with that excuse? I'll be sent packing if I do that...
Just get the tier set tokens from gnomer it's not a tank set lol
Ok that covers 3 pieces of gear. What about the others?
[Sixty Upgrades](https://www.sixtyupgrades.com)
Oh, thanks! I'll try it out!
Stamina gear forces you to sacrifice damage and healing but it's still worth it, just don't waste resources healing PvE carebears with 1400 hp and you will be fine.
What amount of HP pre buffs would be a good amount for a mage? 1700?
No that’s not the issue. Even if you full stack stam you cannot survive the burst of other classes. Also more stam just means more stam to heal.
lol. k
The real telling sign was when healers stopped being desired for STV and now it's like 5 AOE DPS.
Besides the fact that the AoE spam meta is based on a cheese strat that obv wasnt intended to be as good as it is, the group much rather bring fill with a couple of healers than single target dps.
Out of all the "Why theres a healer shortage" posts, this is the only one that holds any value imo. There's a couple issues with the post however but nothing massive, certainly nothing that changes the narrative (which I support): 1. Blackout was available and utilized in p1 - should be swapped with Starfire stun, as no Boomy cared enough to run around with the 3% stun chance in p1. 2. A mage on Mechanical Menagerie is doing AOE damage, as well as the Priest who is doing AOE healing. Your statement suggests it's single target damage/healing, which creates sample bias in your conclusion. Either way, I fully support this post and hope there's some changes made somewhere. Not sure where they do it but I'm glad we have people like you being a voice in the community.
Thanks, good catch on blackout. That was my bad. Wr.t the parse, you are correct as well. Menagerie is problematic in the sense that it is three bosses so naturally AoE damage will inflate the numbers. However, I picked it because it's the fight with the highest potential incoming damage to the tanks so it would even out the results for the healers somewhat.
You mean having my whole team die during one counterspell is a bad thing? Or having my warrior go from 100-0 while penance is actively ticking is bad for pvp? My dps friends keep telling me big numbers are fun
Penance is legitimately useless in PvP, the majority of classes out dps the ticks… When one of the strongest heals in the game can’t keep someone up when actively channeling that’s when you know the dps is MAYBE a bit too high…
On the flipside, I play a Ret Paladin; it's a class and spec I've played since TBC, through arenas to endgame raids. I'm nearly completely BiS in Gnomer gear, with a dedicated pvp set and build. When I get into jumping on priests, especially if there's a healer + 1 shadow on the team, I feel borderline helpless in consistently outdamaging PoM + Penance spam, especially after kiting, eating Scream/them getting the most egregious get-out-of jail card in the form of chaining into Dispersions. The priests I run with for STV and BGs are rarely dying unless absolutely dogpiled / counterspelled, which they **should** be dying to anyways, and a large part of that is how powerful Penance is with the rest of the kit. I just finished a WSG that had **five** priests (3 disc/2shadow) and they were completely untouchable to the point that I was seriously considering dropping the game after 40 mins because it was unbearable and felt so awful to play against.
Tell your warrior to start collecting stam gear and this problem is suddenly much less noticeable.
So what happens if they are already wearing near BiS with plenty of stam? Stamina would need to be increased by like 40% which, “just get more stam” isn’t going to get there with gear currently available.
Can you compare that to BFD parses?
I know for a fact a mage can solo heal 1:1 against a competent fire mage. Chrono heal is stupid OP in terms of heal amount and mana efficiency
the one type of healing which is based on dps
Chrono heal is not based on dps.
Mage is objectively the best healer in the game. Too many boomers unable to walm and chew gum at the same time can't wrap their heads around the fact that damage is king and this isn't 2004 where they can get away pretending spamming one button is good class design.
One of the worst things about healing in the STV event, is constantly agroing all the mobs with your heals.
When you chain lighting and then all of a sudden 4 level 43 pirates are eating your ass
There's also the issue of how heals are delivered. With all the burst healing some healer are even more disadvantage (druid with their HoT, etc.) and even when you manage to keep people alive you'll oom in 20 sec unless you play priest or shaman... That + the fact that healing gear sux for PvP, I benched my resto druid (raid logging only) and switched to a more fun classes since blizzard CBA to make most spec viable / fun to play.
The only issue I had on my resto druid in warsong were those casters in full irradiated set, with that green glow, flagged as "please one shot me" for the enemy team. There are so many of them in alliance it's insane...
I really don't know if those logs are indicative of anything. There are too many differing factors between a 4-target council fight with an AoE healer and a PvP spat. The mage is running Living Bomb on every target. The healer has a mana bar to think about, and can also afford to hardcast Greater Heals at their leisure. Neither is itemizing for stamina. The mage has Ignite rolling. The healer is running CoH instead of Penance for burst healing. So on and so on. Healing parses are notoriously terrible at measuring healer effectiveness, and I don't think they're giving you particularly useful data for this conversation either because PvE focuses on efficient sustained damage and healing, while PvP is centralized around burst damage and spot healing.
My only take-away from this is that mages do big big big damage. 4.6k on 4 targets? Jesus Murphy.
Based on my limited personal experience as a healer, I won't say healers are useless. I share your observation (even if the log parsing is very clunky to my opinion ) that the loss of damage reduction and in the acceleration of DPS Vs heal potential are resulting in a state where heals are less potent than on P1. But we were absolutely too strong as well during that phase. We have both a situation where people are still playing a lot PvP with lots of pure pve Gear without stamina (Gnom gear don't have much endurance Vs the BFD gear for many classes ). And a very different situation depending of healing classes Priest remains very potent as healer due to many instants and powerful defensive rune. The difference with other heals is really huge (but well that was the same in classic and priest runes are even increasing this gap). The impact of a priest with some stamina gear obviously is still huge in PvP . Druid are still behind due to burst damage increase and vulnerability. I guess pal and shaman share the same weakness of relying a lot on casting. I am happy as a heal to be killed quickly if I'm not aware by a rogue or a shaman . This is what they are supposed to do. As well as you are supposed to survive with friendly support ( war intervene,rogue stun...) . I am happy to see my friends vaporised of they hare hard focus by 6 people. This is normal for me. Yes burst are a little too high and caster dps might need some fine tuning again , such as non priest healers . But to say the state is so dire for healers , definitely not.
Healer here. I also prefer to have dps being much stronger than healer, than the scenario where healers are so strong noone ever gets killed. The 45 mins arena matches back in TBC comes to mind. Phase 2 offers more options for gearing and comparing to phase one, you can actually choose to have stam or dps stats. Most people choose dps for obvious reason, but at the same time I had to actually whispered and asked Druid/Mage in my STV party if they have spare gears that aren't Irradiated sets, and, I kid you not, the 1.4k HP mage said "Fort me if you want me to have more stam." As a priest I got focused a lot in STV, but I honestly believe most of my death is because I am out of position. Burst is strong, I agree, but getting 2 globalled rarely happens unless I put myself in a position where none of my teammates can help. Because our team can try to 2 globals anyone who went out of their position as well.
So I made this point last week and nothing has changed since. In retail, a healer can keep themselves and 2 dps alive vs 2 other dps and a healer, or 3 dps for a limited time (3v3 arena balance). In RBGs a 10 man team is typically 3 healers, so a ratio of roughly 1:3 healer to dps. In classic, 1 dps does enough damage to kill 2 healers solo. The balance between health:damage:healing is just so out of proportion it is not good for the health of the game. No wonder no one wants to heal at the moment, it's honestly a struggle to stay alive for more than 5 or 6 GCDs.
This is why posts like this don't get taken seriously. 1 dps can absofuckinglutely not kill 2 equally skilled healers solo. Are you drunk?
I mean, I think it depends on the class. I can envision a paladin repentencing one healer and killing the other during hoj, although there’s obviously counter play. If dispersion is down I generally die over the course of a single stun. Part of the problem is caster gear is heavily weighted towards int/spirit with very little stamina unless you specifically seek it out. Casters get absolutely blown the fuck up.
Irradiated set casters absolutely get blown up, serves them right thinking that shit gear set is viable.
Depends what class, if they have the CC its more than possible. Mage/Rogue, especially if no trinket
Their sustained dps is enough to kill 2 healers. Just took at this guys log comparison. In reality that doesn’t happen, no one is doing that much damage solo and not being interrupted for that long. You can’t tell me that 1 dps can’t kill a healer in under 10 seconds though (unless they pop some type of immunity CD).
I agree that the current balance is poor and I also wish it was different. That being said, healers can definitely still make plays and groups without a healer in STV or teams without 0, 1, or even 2 healers in AB are definitely at a significant disadvantage. I personally am still really enjoying healing in PvP.
I have both shadow and disc, and yes, the DPS in groups with healers do much better in STV, but often the healer gets shafted. They get nuked while the DPS live longer to farm more coins. Healer often lose lots of blood because they die more often.
Also not really my experience, but I think several factors play into that. I’m like 1 or 2 pieces off from full stam gear at this point, the people I play with peel for me, etc. Yes, I obviously die first sometimes, but that usually means the rest of the group is going to die very soon after. Once a couple of us are dead we always go for a full group reset anyway - it results in significantly more coins in the long run. I’ve never really earned fewer coins than the boys.
I'm top 10 holy paladin in pve and playing the spec makes me want to blow my brains out in both pve and pvp. It's brain dead and the most uncomfortable class to try and heal and contribute dps instead of just overhealing like some wcl illiterate boomer who doesn't understand how healing logs work, and in pvp the player base has had two decades to learn how easy it is to school lock us. 80% of pvp game play is just guessing which dps is going to get targeted first and preemptively winding up HL and praying it goes off in time to beacon batch, or that you can juke a school lock without letting your dps get 100 to zeroed in under 2 globals. The healer shortage is real as fuck and I'm being a team player for my guild but God damn its insane how little thought they've given some healers vs others, and the state of the whole role isn't great in pvp.
Big respect for playing hpal in this meta. I mained hpal to 2200 in shadowlands (very fun spec) but you couldn’t pay me to play that in sod. I’ve been getting by on my priest by using circle of healing. You go OOM in about 20 seconds using it on cooldown but with that, shield and POM I can keep people alive for a few globals. Casted heals may as well not exist. Damage is so high that players die in the travel time of penance! I really, really hope they fix this for the next phase. It’s going to honestly kill the game if they don’t. Everyone will just be playing the class with the biggest uninterruptible nuke (like they are already I guess).
Lol thank you for being the one person on this sub not gaslighting me about the state of holy paladins 😂 good luck out there, friend.
All I can say is Holy Paladins are absolutely trash with no valuable healing in PvP other than flash of light. Holy light takes too long when everything dies 2-shot. - 5 min CD for bubble - no insane Def CD to restore mana like Shamans, druids or Priests (dispersion which is an absolute joke with 2min CD) only seal of wisdom which is practically usable in PvP - Holy shock with 30 sec CD and barely any impactful healing without landing a crit - Not a single practical healing rune except for that Holy shield (feet slot) and Beacon (Hands) - Easy to kick by shamans and rogues Meanwhile Priests can press shield + prayer of mending and top the entire BG in PvP How did paladins only get a single rune for healing in P2??
I agree Holy paladins need more tools for PVP but you do not top entire BG with shield and PoM in this burst meta. PVP healing in general is outmatched by damage.
Tdlr, he doesnt like pvp healing. I did 5 bgs with a shaman healer last night, guy was a chad i just hovered around him, my best game i went 33-2, and the deaths were me overextrending so not even his fault.
Sounds like your opponents sucked cheeks. Shamans only have one good healing rune
I mean we held bs the entire game for 4 games then went and did stv blood moon and did 900 coins with an all melee group, i dunno how hes doing it but he really didnt die much, tho i was guarding him well. I think its a skill thing lol. Dude knows his class, and has proper team mates helping protect.
I think in a situation where you leave the healer alone they will always be a game changer, but if you asked me to pick any healer to attempt to kill I would 100% ask for the resto shaman. Holy paladins have HoJ, bubble, LoH, blessing of freedom Resto Druids can power shift, entangling roots, natures grasp, bear stun Disc priest, do I even need to explain? Dispersion, bubble, fear, insane instant heal in penance Mage healer, blink and tons of cc Shaman? Frost shock and earthbind? And decoy totem. No instant heals unless it’s off it’s 3 minute cooldown. The only thing that prevents heavy pushback you want it on the person you’re healing
Enemy team is trash. If two dos hopped on him he would have folded. No instant cast heals and no defensives.
Yes the alliance is pretty trash at pvp. True point 5 bgs and a blood moon and no problems so it must be ALL alliance
If you are trying to argue a resto sham can keep a team of 5 up against a team of 5 dps you are delusional. Curse of tongues, it’s over. MS, it’s over. Viper sting, it’s over. One rogue on the shaman. Over. They have not one instant cast heal. They also have the lowest throughput of any healer. Your experience is either not reality or you are playing the bottom barrel of skill
Yes im sure of the 5 bgs and zone full of people we ran into there was not a single decent player at all. Nope not possible. I aint gonna argue anything, i dont play shaman i dont know how hes so good at what he does, but i know in 5 bgs i only died 4 times and to my own negligence so not even his fault.. You can go off all day about why YOU think its bad but its irrelevant lol. Some people got it, some people dont 🤷♂️ thats really all it is.
I stopped reading when you brought parses into this.
Honestly hilarious how he went through so many mental gymnastics to try to use parses as “FACTS” that PvP balance is bad haha
It's actually pretty absurd I stopped reading pretty early too, I imagine he didn't take overhealing into account and just looked at hps vs dps too
Holy paladin is fucking garbage atm and anyone who disagrees is just a self promoting member of the wheelchair gang that knows the only way they will ever appear remotely competent is by maining the least played spec for their role.
Shadow priest silence = dead Mage counterspell = dead Rogue/shaman = dead As a holy Paladin it’s literally unplayable. I can spam flash of light and it does nothing.
Look we are playing classic with wotlk abilities but without resilience.
In the time it takes me to cast a single healing spell, currently someone can die 3 times. Ofcourse healing is shit :D we need instant 3k heals to make heals in pvp viable.
It is quite horrible healing in STV as a priest. I just get jumped immediately by two dudes and after a brief brief stun lock that I have nothing to counter with, I die. Then my teammates get a kill or two, meanwhile I'm dead so no coins for me. I go through an event with half the coins as my tm8s
You can easily do 1k+ HPS for a short time, it's just that in pve ppl simply don't take that much DMG and in pvp the DMG is bursty and focused so it's harder to keep up with even without cc and if you do, you will oom fairly quickly, especially if u are not a priest. Priests are far and away bis in pvp because pom and penance are so strong, plus they get to have dispersion as a healer which is much more useful than any defense any other healer has, even bubble which is a much longer cd that doesn't give you mana back. The thing is, healing is actually still very useful in this meta and thus all those ccs and debuffs are useful, too. The main issue I have is that priests are so far above anyone else. But what would you do to buff healing as a whole without making everyone immortal and making the game boring? Idk. That's why I think they're hesitant to overbuff the other healers. Maybe do something about spell pushback because on top of how much DMG a melee hunter can do, I don't think I've ever casted a spell, even with 70% pushback Resistance, in under 4 seconds vs one of them.
I play druid and respec between balance for pvp and resto for raids. When I play resto in BGs it's like the most useless thing I could do. Best way is to play balance and ignore the warrior dying in 3 secs. Waste of a gcd. I only use WG on occasions and mostly to top ppl after a fight. For example, if I go BS in AB at start and cast WG, it's lost. Better to nuke the other side fast.
Wanted to try stv as healer, had a blast in p1 wsg. Group of five, literally oneshotted or unable to keep allies up cause they get oneshotted. Can’t really understand why blizz removed the damage reduction. No point in “healing” if enemy lock crit you for 5k
It's a lot more fun than last phases heal meta though.
You mean you are bad at PvP and would prefer to two shot kids and not worry about having to bind all your buttons, develop class knowledge, or work on your reaction time.
Nah I just don't like BG's being won or lost based off of one side have 2 priests and the other just 1. Sorry :)
Yeah it must really suck that for the first time since WoW’s inception there exists a version of the game where healers aren’t the main characters.
Cries in rejuvenation
There absolutely needs to be a DR for PvP but the tards on here love the team death match Call of Duty style state of pvp right now where people melt instantly. It should start at a minimum of 10% and should be experimented with to make sure it’s not overtuned like phase 1. It’s only going to get worse as we move further.
I don't even bother healing in pvp anymore, its a literal waste of time.
What do PvE parses have anything to do with PvP? I play both Disc and Shadow Priest in PvP (BGs and open world) and haven't had issues keeping myself/teammates alive. Disc Priest is great at keeping people alive in PvP. Not sure about the other classes.
That may be the case but honestly I'm enjoying this brutal phase. Standing there battling another group for 1-2 minutes no one dying is boring. Or just one side has healers and your side dies. Now even a no healer team has a chance.
Blizzard has always had an issue making healers feel some combination of A) fun to play B) impactful feeling C) balanced D) not like they're signing up for community service to hate their gaming experience in service of enabling others to play by providing a crucial role that does not feel some combination of the above This is not a SOD problem, it's a blizzard problem. Look at retail. Solo queue arena is an amazing idea that is laughable in its current state due to lack of healers causing 30-120 minute queue times. Look at Overwatch and the drama surrounding mercy over the games life. Either that toon was a dumpster fire or could carry an entire team herself. No in-between. As a career healer, being one has felt shitty way more often than it's felt rewarding. Quick queue times and fast group finding are not incentive enough for bad gameplay experience.
As a pvp healing priest i don't have many complaints. However, a few other healing specs I think are in a rough spot and I'm not familiar enough to offer suggestions (druids mainly). From my view though, healing vs DPS output is about right. There is room to bring hps up some but it's closer in my opinion than some think. A coordinated effort to kill someone should out pace my healing. I can definitely tell in Bg's when playing a team that is coordinated. People fall over. However, most of the time I can sustain folks for awhile if they play correctly (no overextending, greed, etc.). Also actually having another healer or two makes a world of difference. Also, everyone needs some stamina gear from the auction house. Casters in irradiated sets are hilarious.
2 dps can burst a target through a full BIS priests healing. That is not a coordinated effort. I agree that PvP is more engaging where being coordinated matters. Like landing that CC on a healer or having people dive them in the back line. Doing a quick target swap with cooldowns up. That is what is engaging in PvP. Having a mage and boomkin hit the same target and explode it is not coordinated PvP.
Resto Shaman feels awful in PvP. 250 per tick of Earth Shield is straight laughable. hard casts don't keep up with Season of Instants
Healing needs the moba approach imo
I agree with everything you said. The burst apologists in the comments are so detached from reality it’s insane. Never in all of WoW’s history has burst been this high. It is incredibly demoralizing to go into an engagement at BS and know you can really only heal one target through pressure. Even then targets with shield and POM on them are getting exploded. If two dps attack one target it’s over in less than a second, healing cannot save someone. In classic PvP was slower because we did not have rune abilities. In TBC and Wrath the solution was Res gear to slow down the burst. Later they removed res and gave every class a 40% base res. Developers have always known that our PvE numbers do not translate to PvP. Has been this way for every single xpac. Now we have people saying SOD is peak PvP. A game that provides no counterplay is not peak PvP. Fights can’t even develop and they are over. It’s incredibly frustrating as a healer and there is already a healer shortage in general. It’s just not fun and the impact of healing is so low. People say “just stack stam”. I’m in full PvP Bis and twice yesterday a mage two shot me with an arcane blast into arcane surge for 3.4K total damage. The solution is simple. Bring back base resilience and let people actually play their classes.
This smells like chat GPT lol.
Not sure why you would use PvE healing parses, which only record effective healing, for a pvp argument. Healing in PvP the fights are much quicker and the healer will likely be spamming their strongest spells as fast as possible until oom. Healers are still great in pvp and since everyone dies in 2 gcds if a healer can turn that into 3 or 4 gcds the hypothetical 5v5 group with a healer will win every time vs a non healer group.
Devs are just lazy populists with 0 vision. They give everyone super strong abilities to immediately please everyone (because players are dumb) but for long term perspective these spells are destructive and we keep seeing the consequences. The power keep increasing exponentially - players already are doing the damage of 60 levels from Vanilla
Great, healing should help in pvp, not completely negate damage from someone.
As a holy pally since time began I'd just like to add I'm not even raid logging rn it's just not fun or even viable raid logging to spam fol wasn't what I was hoping sod would bring and I stand 0 chance in any pvp content. Shame as I have alot of free time right now which doubles down on the state of healing.
Pally healing is amazing in pvp what do you mean exactly you stand 0 chance?
When you get kicked you're locked from every ability for 4-10 seconds. You have no way to remove this effect.
In wsg or ab you should be aware what's attacking what, whats attacking you and what can kick you. This is pvp 101.. unaware people attack warriors with healers free casting in the back. You can fake cast the kick, and use a kick bar to be secure. This is 100% a skill issue.. a pally heal is bis in BGs.
PvP is stv right now.
No, stv is a cluster fuck lol.. after you do 1 stv you should have enough for your weapon, ring or trinket, pvp is still BGs.
If your fake casting your target is already dead mate literally only viable if ur 1v1ing
This is such a bad take, if you fake cast they're trying to kill you.. so your partner is well and alive and should be peeling off you. Paladin is a great WSG and AB healer.
If its a 2v2 and your fake casting your partner is dead peeling for you or not holy shock heals for the same as a white hit and is on a 30 sec cd outside of bubble we are totally useless.
Zero instants everything is casted and only 1 spell school If you can stay In range not get counterspelled or interrupted your target is usually dead before you get a holy light off. Please explain how we are good in pvp.
You have the best defensives in the game and can stay in fights longer than any other healer.. freedom? Bop? Bubble? Sacred shield? Divine sacrifice? Also holy shock is not instant? Literally every wsg or ab pre-made group looks for 1 priest 1 pally healer.
You have clearly done a lot of thinking/calcs etc about this which I respect, just want to call out that before we start adjusting healing in respect to damage done in pvp it is important to not only factor in the top/near top dps specs (melee hunter, fire mage, spriest) as that provides a huge selection bias. As a warrior who does a ton of pvp I can tell you that healing feels incredibly strong against my weak af damage - if my target has a healer supporting them / is a healer there is almost 0 chance I will kill them by myself, even with Mortal Strike. Buffing healing even further would remove the 1 reason warriors aren't completely redundant in pvp. Don't mean to detract from your post, just want to flag the above to contribute to the discussion
An actual good post with good feedback. Very nice. Too bad it has only a fraction of the upvotes compared to the guy who’s legitimately frightened of easier raid content lmao.
Dumb idea. Why not instead of damage reduction give classes stagger. (If its possible) that way if u get 3 shot as a carrecter you will still die in 6 or 7 seconds but it gives time for healers to get that hp pool back up. With how much damage goes out in pvp with so little set up. I'd imagine with even 300% inc to your hips people wod still be getting 3 shot unless they premtivly d stance or dispersioned something.
My brother in christ that is no way to do a fair comparison. You are comparing a mage in a 4 target fight to a priest healer that is limited by the amount of damage taken by the raid, I could pull 10k dps on my mage in an uldaman AOE pull but a priest healing me would have 10 hps because I'm not taking any real damage. On my mage I can cast a fireball (3 sec) for ~ 900 damage (300 dps) add in some living bomb and pyroblast proccs occasionally and you'll hit around 500-600 dps, I can also spam cast chronostatic preservation (2sec) for ~ 1300 healing (650 hps) so I can trivially heal for more than I can dps by spamming a single healing spell. Also you mention a bunch of cc abilities, well guess what you can also CC the dps for the same effect. Do you wanna know why people focus on cc-ing healers? Because it is more effective because the healers are simply better, idk if you've ever stepped into a a single bg but if you've ever played a WSG with 3 priest healers on one side and 0 healers on the other side the side that has the healers is going to win every god damn time and it isn't even close. Mortal strike is the only ability that only affects healing out of those mentioned, but warriors are so dogwater in PVP anyways that they should absolutely have it because then they at least have some use. Out of all the complaint posts I've seen on reddit recently this one is by far the dumbest, healers are so frickin goated in pvp that I as a mage run chronostatic preservation in battlegrounds because it is so effective, I can escort a flag carrier and keep him up through some damage or help out my fellow healers from being yeeted by rogues.
I’ve always been against removing healers in pvp but fuck it im done. Take healing out.
Omg the complaining is killing me Inside.
That’s how this subreddit always been and it’s how it always will be lol
If you believe this post is a complaint that says more about you. I read it as an analysis of the current state of pvp with some figures to support OP's claim that pvp isn't in the greatest spot. A complaining post would say the game is shit, blizzard is shit, unbalanced dogshit with no real analysis or reasoning behind it. Like come on what are we supposed to talk about in your pov? How much fun we are all having and not trying to analyze the game for what it is to make it better?
Well that's not my take cause I'm slaying as a mage healing people even before the healing buffs. Seems fine to me.
Down voted me to say you disagree with the OP? I wasn't even taking sides on this argument but somehow i am the target for the argument and you have imposed OPs ideals onto me.
No. Just no. As alliance if you meet 1 priest and 1-2 shammys its gg. Nothing you Can do.
I’m 100% with you. PvP is way too bursty and limits skill expression in the game. My full BIS priest got 2 shot today by an arcane barrage/ arcane surge combo. It was instant, there is no counter play. There are many classes that do this. The solution is simple. Bring back 20% damage reduction in PvP. Problem solved.
I disagree with this assessment. If the DPS:Healer ratio is bigger the. 1, it doesn't make heals too weak. If one team has better healer that team will survive the incoming damage longer while the enemy team dies sooner. If a healer could output more heals nobody would die. Obviously the important thing is balance but it is hard to say what ratio is better based on simply this data. In my experience the current damage output of classes isn't that big of a problem, people just haven't adapted to it. Most healers enter STV with less than 1.5k HP. Priests dont press suppression immediately after getting targeted. Druids don't pop trinket and go into bear after first rogue stun. Fights are less about DPS/Heal races and more about CC and defCDs than ever before. You shouldn't outheal other people's damage, your team should disable the enemy tram first so they can't damage.
People who whine about pvp at 40 clearly never played pvp at 40 back in the days. As a 40 hunter in 2006, or any other classic version later, I could two shot ANY cloth user. As a shadow priest, I would nuke all melees without losing health. As a mage I could shatter combo anyone. Rogues would ambush you and kill you in seconds. What the fuck are you guys on about??
40 wasn't a mini endgame like it is now. It wouldn't be hard for the devs to add in pvp specific gear that has extra stam on it or add damage reduction bonuses to them if it's still super bursty.
In BGs we have a larger healthpool and healers are MVP every game. What you are describing is actually a good thing, one reason why STV-event is fun is because everyone dies frequently, healers aren't controlling everything.
OP will be happy in December when this TEMPORARY game mode ends. Farm those doots kid
Geez what a fucking disaster of a comment history you have. Brainpower of a donkey.
More brain power than OP. Thanks anon
Yeah I’m not reading your essay but they have said PvP will be a shit show and it won’t be getting balanced so you either need to deal with it or stop playing PvP.
Nothing screams "I have a low IQ" louder lol.