Suggestions to make healing/tanking role more attractive

Community General Discussion
21

I don’t think there is much that can be done to make tanking or healing a more attractive role for players not already doing it.

WoW is a mature game at this stage in its lifecycle, and there are well-established cultural norms regarding how players are expected to play and conduct themselves in group content. Those are, generally speaking:

  • Knowing your role and your spec - group content is not considered an appropriate place to learn the core of your spec
  • Knowing routes and key mechanics in dungeons - particularly if you are the tank
  • Knowing how much is appropriate to pull to complete the content at an optimal cadence without causing wipes - nobody wants to go slow

While these norms of group play in WoW are sometimes bemoaned by, or on behalf of, newer players trying to get into the game, it is understandable where they have come from. A lot of the player base have been playing the game for a long time, some playing it almost exclusively, and thus have an exceptional level of knowledge about the game - including what an acceptable level of play looks like for each role.

These norms represent the largest barrier for someone to get into tanking or healing. DPS rotations can be practiced until they are muscle memory on a training dummy. While there is more to learn, having your rotation nailed gets you a lot of the way there in taking part in endgame group content without being a burden. Tanking and Healing are, by comparison, a more reactive type of play that cannot really be learned outside of actually engaging in that content.

So learning to heal and tank really requires that players throw themselves into it and learn by doing, which can be an unpleasant experience for both the player learning and the group that just want another clear.

The best case scenario is to make a group with friends or guildies who will be patient with mistakes, as opposed to PUGs who will be much more minded towards clearing the content in good timing.

One thing that might help with that is to have some sort of instanced area that the player can go to, which would allow them to spawn in mobs and bosses from the Dungeons for that season, in order to get a sense of their damage output at different key levels. Having a sense of that might go someway to helping newer tanks get an accurate picture of how many mobs they can grab at once, perhaps.

A last point to consider is that no matter what incentives Blizzard creates for Tanking and Healing, it might only be a small minority to genuinely find playing those roles to be fun. I know that I personally do not find either role fun, and no incentive would have me play them. As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, Tanks and Healers already have the incentive of being in high demand, and being able to pick and choose their own groups, compared to DPS where the supply outstrips demand.

22

You speak of an entirely different era though when pugging wasn’t even a thing. Custom groups weren’t active back then. You only had lfg for cross realm. I speak of the community post custom groups cross realm. When was that? At WoD or Legion? Under the same circumstances, healers feel less and less with each expansion.

23

Evidently that doesn’t seem to be enough. The community is problematic, but the game design reinforces it. M+ is especially toxic due to the punishment of failing a timer. Perhaps to fight toxicity we must alleviate the stakes of losing.

24

I’m not sure why you ask

And then completely dismiss a response and then try to ram your round peg in the square hole I described by saying “healers feel less and less”

Despite it being “different eras” the fact is the community has changed. It’s vitally important to why people choose not to take on roles with “responsibility”

The community that hasn’t changed? Make up your mind.

25

We can’t speak of a span of 20 years. We can’t look back to vanilla and say it changed. So I speak for when pugging became a major thing and that’s after m+ was implemented. And yes, I see no change in the community from legion to today, but I see a drop in the number of healers.

So no. It’s not the community. It’s the game design that reinforces toxicity. Have you tried doing the Researchers Under Fire meta achievements? That’s a perfect example of flawed design that reinforces toxicity because you needed people to advance stages but then needed no people in the later stages to advance the achievements. What happened? People were being kicked as they reached later stages. Yes. The people who did that were problematic and they were many and you can’t just ban them, but the flawed design brought this behavior to the surface.

So no, the community hasn’t changed, they just have reasons now to put their nasty behavior to the surface.

Also why I want to know why they don’t play these roles? Because the solution requires to know the cause of it.

Finally I don’t understand your attitude. The comment wasn’t a reply to you, but generally on people.

26

Who said anything about vanilla?

You’re just making stuff up.

27

tanking and healing would be far more attractive if they did not have to babysit 3 braindead dps. 3 dps wich dump all responsibility onto healers and tanks and never take the lead, explain tactics or even follow tactics themselves. keeping aggro, keeping people alive, knowing the tactics and making sure others know them, knowing the route, dispelling, interupting and more are all dumped onto healers and tanks. meanwhile the dps are standing in fire somewhere while drooling

The reason i dont tank or heal any serious content is because i dont want to be a nanny for people wich refuse to use their 2 remaining braincells to function in a group

28

That’s called “exacerbating to prove a point”. I am sorry you didn’t speak of 8 expansions ago, only 6.

29

I feel like a broken record for pointing this out repeatedly, but this isn’t my experience as a healer. I geared this shaman largely by spamming low and mid keys, over 50 of them in the course of two weeks, and I had only one case of “toxicity”. I also leveled from 10-60 exclusively through random dungeons, and there was zero toxicity.

I am not saying that it doesn’t exist, but I feel the frequency is greatly exaggerated in forum posts, at least in lower to mid keys, where presumably players would learn how to heal or tank - not in push keys. I haven’t fully pugged 20s as a healer, because I prefer doing that with friends.

There really isn’t any need to fully PUG M+ anyway. Even if someone doesn’t currently have friends in the game, there are quality Discord communities where you can find nice people to do M+ with, like No Pressure and Chill Streak.

If you fully PUG content, and all the time, you’re deliberately choosing the worst option.

30

There’s no struggle in this margin and people barely communicate. Also healing and tanking are barely needed there as you can party with a level 10 arcane mage who can solo the entire dungeon with arcane explosion.

Perhaps you are lucky enough not to pug much. But I’ve been witness to many forms of toxicity, loud and silent (simply leaving because of a wipe with still plenty of time to finish the key).

31

I pugged over 50 low and mid range M+ keys in the span of the past two weeks, as a healer, and only observed one case of toxicity.

I am less likely to pug 18-20s currently, but that is because I am still learning the ins and outs of resto shaman healing, so I prefer doing this with friends who I can easily talk to (like telling them in VC that I can’t hex an affix right now). It’s more social and it also helps my friends with vault slots and portals.

Pugging or not pugging M+ has nothing to do with luck, though. You’re not unlucky because you pug M+ through the tool, you’re just choosing the option that requires the least amount of social effort.

The only reason I have friends and acquaintances in the game is because I made the effort to befriend people over the years. That includes reaching out, staying in touch, and also sometimes doing things with people that benefit them more than they do me. Some friendships go back to vanilla, but I also befriended two new people while gearing this character, invited them to our Discord, and built a group with these two new friends for the following weekend when we did 18-22s.

But still, even if someone doesn’t have friends in the game to do M+ with or befriending people isn’t easy (social anxiety, for example), there are the communities I mentioned. No Pressure and Chill Streak, as well as others, give you access to people and keys without it requiring much social effort.

The main requirement there is to be friendly. It only requires minimally more effort than opening the LFG tool and clicking on a group. These communities were started especially for players who may be shy, deal with social anxiety, or who don’t want to risk unpleasant encounters.

Give these a try.

2 Likes
32

I -Want- to play tank, but I don’t dare not at all in pugs.

I have always healed. It’s my comfort spot and the one where I know somewhat what I am doing, regardless of class. It’s where I follow my tank and keep people alive to my best effort. I do however find that it is more unfun to heal this expansion than previously.
However I am scared to go out of my comfortzone, and I would start from absolute zero having to learn everything people would expect of a tank to know, as well as dungeon routes depending on affix etc etc.
I would really love to try tanking though.

33

My take for tanks: are actually fine atm, but make raid tanking less boring… counting stacks & swapping as soon as the addon dings is 95% of all mechanics a raid tank has to do… oh yeah, and dragging the boss around a little. Dungeon tanking is far more interesting at least (and you aren’t useless 50% of the time… just “waiting” for your go again), so that’s what I usually do.

for healers: increase CDs on heals, but make them actually heal something; let healers dmg abilities actually do dmg; doing full rotations for a fraction of the dps the same rotation would do while in dmg spec is frustrating; dps have their dmg cds to handle in addition while healers would have their heals, still keeps the specs separated but makes healers actually feel impactful.

1 Like
34

i main healer, play tanks as alts and also play dps.
i play dps the least because i dont like to wait and i cannot carry bad people.

just to grab a point you mentioned regarding macros or addons for healers:
since blizz improved their ui, I do not have any healer or frame addon.
things like big debuffs etc is also more or less necessary for dps and tank roles.

most people click on frame and heal, this is good enough for even the highest content.
macros for spells or more keybinds are as necessary on dps and tanks as they are on healing.

well the most frustrating thing about healing is that you have to cover every fail from others. if you have bad players in the group healing gets annoying and causes even anger after the fourth group of garbage dps players

35

I think the issue is that there is no “universal” tank/healer playstyle everyone can play, have fun with and not break the game alongside it.

Like, the existing classes/specs can already do the roles good enough. It’s just, for instance, that I as a Melee player hate tanking on Warrior but love it on Paladin.

Gladly Holy exists AND it will be together with Retribution available for Herald of the Sun Herotalents. So I will definitely be the Healer in the future most of the time.

People will play what they enjoy. Not what is needed in roles.

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