What is the design philosophy behind healing M+

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
1

Blizzard said the 40% HP increase was because healers felt too strong.
They wanted to get to a place where healers didn’t constantly top everyone up to 100%.

Yet even on 7’s, AoE’s are chonking players for 70-80% of their HP.
If we don’t keep everyone topped up, they will simply die to the next ability they get hit by.

On anything above 10 atm, a lot of abilities just 1 shot most people. Which is fine, gearing is partly an issue here.

But this week kind of highlights how frantic healing is on higher keys with affixs such as quaking + thundering. Spread apart, move together, also move out of AoE’s, get sucked together by mechanics and also please try and find time to cast heals during all this, also remember to get in some DPS.

It’s doable but it’s not particular fun, there is no playing smart to conserve mana, every pull is just a clusterf*** of sparkly ground effects, health bars bouncing up and down.

How do you increase difficulty past this point, just have everything one shot you? Then please at least make the mechanics a lot more visible, not grey swirlies on grey floors, or blue puddles on blue floors.

I’ve been left wondering after doing higher keys, (10+), is this what the gameplay is suppose to feel like.

Genuine question, are there people out there who enjoy specifically the healing in m+ as it currently stands, do you find it an engaging and enjoyable experience and if so, what is it you like about it?

9 Likes
2

M+ where great for me until I hit 10+ keys with all affixs.
I had to stop playing because one single dungeon would drain me of all my energy.

Good and bad groups alike, it didn’t matter, it was exausting.

I don’t drink coffee nor do I want to drug myself on speed to be able to keep up with that amount of stress, and as an ex-programmer, I don’t see the point in playing with tons of addons and weak auras. If a game is unplayable without them, I might as well just script my character pixel perfect and let an AI play it for me.

Healing is dead for me as it stands currently, or I’m just not part of the targetted audience that actually enjoy it.

1 Like
3

Well, people are timing +21’s already so there are definitely capable healers.

4

The philosophy of high M+ is that you’re supposed to use your character to it’s full potential. That means dodge everything, use defensives, interrupt, CC, stun, los etc. Every tool in your arsenal.

As for healing, I prefer this over SL. DF has high, but predictable unavoidable damage, and fails will get you oneshot. In SL a good group didn’t even need a healer while bad ones hanged every failed run around the neck of the heals.

As for fun, that’s relative. If you only do M+ to farm gear for raiding, ofc you’ll see it as a nuisance

5

I agree, a +30 Tyrannical Plaguefall key felt like a 2 week Maldives vacation compared to a +10 Ruby Life Pool at the moment. Get away, move together, spread, dodge 10 things at the same time while you have to kick 6 mobs with 4 kicks which of 3 are unkickable while quaking is happening and 6 layers of aoe are on the ground below you, this isn’t an increase of difficulty, this is just torture.

6 Likes
6

This is very accurate.

7

Wait intil you see Offensive trash. 1st pack in that dungeon has a total of 77 different mechanics :smiley:

8

I enjoy to have something to do as healer but I think the skill cap is way too high for 10+.

Shadowmoon dungeon is the best of all. Lot of damage, reasonable amount of unpredictable damage and bosses are just fun and look wonderful.

On the other hand I need to have keybinds on my feet and another set of arms to heal the tree boss in academy. It’s just exhausting and not fun beyond +10.

Also I don’t want it to be super easy. But why gatekeep less hardcore players from getting the highest vault items next week without having a heart attack.

9

If dungeon trash got locked out from their spell schools when kicked, as they should, it would be much less onerous.

10

My issue isn’t with the difficulty, I enjoy a challenge.

But time and time again Blizzard create such convoluted encounters that you are almost required to lean on a host of different add-ons.

If there own game design can’t clearly get across the information the player needs to know, then there is a fundamental issue there.

I can’t have my eyes looking at five, six, seven mechanics at once.

I need to be aware of party health bars
I need to be aware of my positioning, the multiple AoE’s that will one shot me
I need to know where people are to clear thundering affix
I need to know the health values of enemies to soothe or to know when they are going to enrage for tank damage
I need to be aware of my parties kick CD’s to know when a big cast in going to get through
I need to be aware of everyone’s personal CD’s so I know when party wide damage is not going to be mitigated.
I need to be aware of boss mechanic timers
I need to be aware of what mobs cast what, and kick important mechanics

Where do my eyes go during all this, I need to look at party HP bars, but I also need to look where my feet are, but I also need to look at nameplates to see cast bars, but I also need to be aware of my CD’s.

The only solution is a truck load of add-ons. So the gameplay ends up as this psychedelic experience of a dozen different churps, horns and sound effects that give me information through sound, so I can focus on one aspect visually whilst being fed the rest of the info I need audally.

This is exactly how every group pushing high keys plays, there isn’t one of them playing without all these extra tools.

Blizzard designs around these add-ons and so without them, if someone doesn’t have a particular add-on installed, they are going to have a much harder time keeping track of everything going on.

At the very least, if this is what Blizzard are happy with, they should come out and officially endorse a number of the mandatory add-ons, or implement them as standard into the game.

3 Likes
11

But that is not a healer problem
you supposed to press some deffensives when some trash/boss AOE happening
Some classes can even heal themselfs to help healers out
It happend to me multiple times in Nokhund m+ that people during elemental boss fight were screaming for heals but for some uknown reason couldn’t press their CDs.
And i’m only doing between 7-9 dungeons right now and it’s disaster when it comes to personal fails from people.

Blizzard clearly wants from people to be personaly responsible for their play
so for example when you play paladin you should be FINE till your deff toolkit is not on CD
and for evoker is the same thing
not once i saw evokers struggling to stay alive but when i check their CDs not one was pressed
they can’t even press BL…
Season 1 is always horrible because people are clueless :smiley:

12

What’s your point? The discussion was not about the persons skill. It’s about the design philosophy of dungeons, and despite not playing a healer I agree with a lot of the points being made. Just adding more lethal aoe with vague visuals does not make the game more fun to me and many others. Since I am tanking I don’t have to deal with oneshots all the time, but still doesn’t make the gameplay enjoyable when every pull is just a hot mess of different aoe effects.

1 Like
13

Had the same, and I’m no pro at this spec yet I admit that. What I also noticed with the one Thundering I did, people spread like crazy, with this spec I was like wt. I need to do, was a biut overwhelmed there, next to Ruby Pools being highly over tuned.

I’m also levelling my holy priest on the side, they are a bit fragile, but their healing is amazing!

14

Do agree to some extend with the sentiment of things getting overly complicated.

It’s about striking a fine balance between complexity and what’s actually enjoyable to play, and currently I think it’s leaning towards complexity.

If complexity comes at the detriment of enjoyable content something needs to change.

15

Glad to hear this is not just me. I can’t for the life of me complete this dungeon, I’m healing my butt of and the bosses just won’t die. Meanwhile, everybody is teetering on the brink of death all the time because of the high AoE damage and grievous paired.

16

well, i’m a MW monk and i’m not having fun in M+ (to be in melee, and all the things i’ve read on this topic ^^). But i don’t have to wait when i’m LFG. In SL, i was refused so often… but was instantly taken with other classes (even low geared toons). But now, it’s like a lot of healers are gone and played a dps spec instead…
So, i’m glad i’m taken, but healing is really stressful… (especially as a melee healer XD). So, i think i’m gonna play a dps too

2 Likes
17

My experience so far is that even lower dungeons have a high skill cap. It’s probably also the affixes the expansion started with.

I don’t really feel like levelling another healer and doing all the work. I can’t put my finger on it yet, but I didn’t have this much issues with healing in SL, even at the start. I seem to rely a lot of going through pugs, this is what kind of stopped me from playing parts of SL, in S4, I just got the key achievement on resto shaman, and stopped playing.

It’s just very demotivating, not sure what exactly changed, but something critical has changed.

18

Right now its just, execute everything almost perfectly else one mistake will be rewarded with death. Playing like its a 20 key on a 13. Its way too much.

19

I have finally fun healing m+ @16-18. DDs want to ignore mechs cause they are trying to be first to have their big d moment? To bad that avoidable damage one shot you. Not my problem. People not kicking? To bad that you got one shot and deal 0 damage. Not using defs cause they dont do damage? To bad you are dead and again deal no damage.
I finally can be what healer are supposed to be. A healer for unavoidable damage and not a healer for stupidity. I heal the mechs that are supposed to be healed and else I do damage. Sometimes I have to pump my 80-110k hps on some bossfight because of mechanics that are not avoidable or need to know the bossfight to prepare & precast for incoming mechanics. Most fun ever. I changed main but my disc heart is in paradise

1 Like
20

Healers are capable only because rest of 4 player are ACTUALY CC`ing and Use DEf cd!! U Blind FOOL!

But in this current season this is to much to ask from ppl. and tanks are used to be strong and overpull more then the group can handle on either fast DPS clear or CC`s.