DPS vs. Healing pt. 3

I bring to you another reason why DPS is preferred over Healing.

It's Your Fault!
Ah... if it's one thing healers LOVE to hear it's "Why didn't you heal me?" or even better a flat out "It's the healer's fault we wiped on that boss." Healing is a thankless job most of the time, and all that does it create a depression for the healer in question. Everyone gets patted on the back when a boss is downed, like 'excellent tanking' or 'great job DPS' and very occasionally the healer will be tossed a bone. However, when a tank or somebody dies and a group wipes, who usually gets blamed first? Healers.

Of course it's not the feral druid trying to tank in cat gear (This actually happened to me in a Heroic Blood Furnace, and the tank more or less 'blamed' me/the paladin class and not his horrible selection of tanking gear.), and let's not blame the mage who keeps pulling aggro off the warrior because he didn't take any aggro reducing talents, pew pew pew! In general though, healers get pooped on every single second that you can blame somebody, and once again you can't gauge how good you heal on anything, if everybody lived it doesn't specifically mean that it was a result of your excellent healing, it could've just meant that you and INSANE DPS OMGZ!

Bleh... so the next time you're in a group with a healer, be sure to show some thanks and appreciation, unless you'd rather be short another healer in the future.

DPS vs. Healing pt. 2

In my last entry, I discussed what life was like upon entering Outland. This entry will get to the core issue, why are all the healers gone? Well, there are a multitude of reasons, but I'm going to discuss the three primary ones that come to mind.

Nerfs
No matter what class it is, somebody is always crying about nerfs. However, it seems like healers always get the hardest, and many classes are unhappy with their talent trees. Priests are a prime example of this, with every single patch something is getting debuffed while everyone else is getting buffed. Eventually, it all adds up, and you're left with a beaten down healer, unable to get a break for the past 4 or 5 patch notes. This essentially puts the healer down in the dumps, who wants to feel outclassed by an overpowered (until 2.1) Holy Paladin on a day to day basis? I certainly wouldn't want to be outpaced by a Hybrid class, especially if my class was considered the MAIN healing class.

Note: The Priest class is anything but gimped, they're still amazing healers and essential to any group, but it seems a lot of the talents downgrade in usefulness as you hit level 70.

DPS is Fun!
Many people DPS because it means they are actively doing something. They're either clicking mouse buttons or tapping hotkeys, and it feels good. You're watching giant numbers flying above monsters' heads and it makes you feel important/awesome/whatever. How often do you see somebody go "OMG! I just crit healed that guy for 6k?! YEA!" Not too often, because chances are, you ended up overhealing anyways, and it's just not big of a deal. However, it works in reverse for DPS, you're chucking frostbolts at the enemy mob, and he's only got 1k health left, you crit for 2k, does it feel any less of an accomplishment? No. The mob is dead, mission accomplished, the same can't be said about overhealing however, and that's where the differences can start being seen.

More often than not the healing class is sitting there, watching health bars, playing whack-a-mole with decursing, and generally just WAITING for somebody to take damage. You get a tanking specced tank, and it becomes even more boring, they're barely taking any damage, and y'know what happens then? Holy fires & smites start getting spammed on mobs, the Priest is jumping around like a loony because he's just that damn bored. It's DEFINITELY like this in the casual players 5-man dungeons and such. It DEFINITELY changes once you start running heroics, and that's where healing feels important, but then again, I think heroics make EVERY class feel like they're playing a vital role. In general however, people just don't want to look at health bars all day and click a single healing button.

Group specs suck for solo
Another reason healers and tanks are rare is because it simply flat out sucks to not get a group. The protection spec Warrior doesn't want to quest and pretend he's a low DPS paladin, he wants to get out there and slash some faces off with his two-handed axe when he's by himself. The Priests wants to melt brains and faces, his +1000 healing doesn't mean anything at all against a legion of demons. Simply put, if you're having issues getting groups, or just have a completely off schedule, you don't want to spec for group play. Since blizzard aims this game towards casuals, that's exactly what you end up with, a lot of DPS specced players because they don't want to log in during their only free time, and find out they can't get a group, or everyone in guild is running heroics/karazhan, and then they are simply left in the dust waiting for 4 other people to come along so they can do something. Either that or they head straight to the Trade Cha- I mean, the LFG Channel, and start spamming it for groups. If you played for a 8 - 12 hours a week would you want to depend on 4 complete strangers in order for you to accomplish something? I sure wouldn't.

So, that in a nutshell, is why don't we have healers anymore? Because their healing trees keep getting nerfed with every patch, it's boring as heck compared to killing things, and you can't do anything by yourself easily. Wow... now that I look at that, being a healer really DOES suck... I think I'm going to go spec Retribution now. Just kidding!

DPS vs. Healing pt. 1

There's an interesting dilemma cropping up throughout the various realms, and my guild is not excluded from this. We have a very hard time getting healing together for things as basic as Karazhan. But first...

A Personal History Lesson:

I rolled a Paladin specifically because our guild needed people to be full time paladins (It wasn't required or anything, I just wanted to help out), I went into the Holy tree assuming it would be like a Shaman, capable of main healing 5-man's with the right gear, instead, I got this freakishly overpowered beast of a healer, in plate, who could tank fairly well. Well, turns out I made a great decision because the guild needed healers in the end-game bad.

I looked at all the priests, druids, and shamans in our guild (many of whom have been around since I took a hiatus around the era of 2.0), and thought to myself "Aren't they healers?" WRONG! They were Shadow Priests, Feral Druids, and Enhancement Shaman. I was completely baffled, my world was turned upside down, before TBC things like this were down right frowned upon and were generally useless in the end-game. I hit outland, and do you know what I saw? Feral tanks, EVERYWHERE... where were all the warriors at? Dual-Wielding and using Two-Handers... nothing made sense anymore. Fast Forward to the present day, and the patches and future patches are trying to smooth things out. I see less Feral druids as of late, many have turned into celery druids. There also seems to be a lot of changes around the corner for shaman and priests as well.

So is Blizzard trying to fix the issue with their nerfs or are they just making the other specs less viable instead of buffing healers?