Acessibility.

Post by 295194

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Post by skribs

Tanks are actually pretty plentiful on my server, but healers are sparse. Often times there's even more tanks than DPS in queue for instances, and it takes over an hour to find a healer - because most of the healers only heal in guild runs or with friends, not with PuGs.

The problem Blizz has is they made almost everything else fun for the general population, while healing is still about watching the unit frames. Tanks have it easy mode, just watch to make sure nothing runs after the healer and hope you don't get 1-shot if you're a DK. DPS are still easy, and most bring more utility than they used to (or more damage and somewhat similar utility), but healers are a lot harder. Someone listed a lot of the problems with healing, I'll list a few:

Competition - since overheal doesn't help, people will try to get quick heals off to beat other healers to it, thus topping the meter. In comparison, a DPS is just trying to do the most he can to top the meter, which results in dropping bosses quicker, whereas healers may be losing out on efficiency or just fighting each other for that spot.
UnitFrames - unless you're really good at paying attention to health bars while watching the fight (which isn't so much skill as it is experience or just how you are as a person), healing is going to prevent you from watching the fight, and thus result in just watching health bars. For some healers, that is the game, but others feel like they're missing out on the rest of the game.
Lack of Respect - for the most part, it's hard to tell when good heals have done something to help. When a tank holds aggro on 2 groups at once, he's a good tank. When mobs drop faster than usual, that's good DPS. When something goes wrong but the healer still keeps everyone up, nobody notices.
Fatigue - A DPS can go AFK for several fights without an issue, unless it's a progression fight you're barely geared for. A tank can take a few seconds to look at the TV or answer someone who's talking to them IRL without losing aggro. However, healers have to react within a few seconds, meaning they have to constantly be paying attention through the entire run.

There were more, but those are 4 of the big ones. As you can see, Blizzard still has a ways to go to make healing more appealing to the general population, however they don't want to change it from what it is because some people enjoy it now. Some people don't have issues with fatigue because they are paying attention 100% of the time anyway, they don't really care about competition as long as everyone lives, and to them the game is in the UnitFrames. I personally enjoyed healing in TBC, except on some fights it was hard to pay attention to other things I needed to do (e.g. running away from the group on Astromancer).

Of course, I think being the off-tank on Grobulus is probably harder than any healing I've ever done. Dont stand in front of him - he'll spawn extra adds. Don't stand in the poison. Pay attention to when I am the poison and still be ready to grab the add(s) that spawn. Don't tank the add near the boss or near the ranged. All the while managing the most complex resource system in the game...

Post by 102319

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Post by skribs

True, but it's a lot easier to notice if the tank is keeping threat or if the mobs drop fast.

Post by 102319

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Post by Astygia

Healers are pretty scarce nowadays, but they'll come up eventually I think. A lot of this is simply just a new expansion, a new level limit, and a new class all coinciding. So your oldschool DPSers are getting their toons up and/or rolling the new class, the DK. I'd like to think that it'll eventually even out.

I started out on blackhand, transferred to fizzcrank when that service because available to avoid queues, and also being a brand spankin new server we see that problem a lot.

Healing is often a thankless job. Everybody needs a healer but not many have the stomach/patience to raise one, and those that do are faced with bad groups and so on.

So in a way, all this stuff at once did sorta gimp out the healer population, but I'm confident it will 'balance' out eventually.

Acessibility.

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