A Healer's 1.2 Grievances: The story of why healers are upset

I both agree and disagree with your post and that's why.

First things first, i have as a main a Sentinel of full BM gear and a Commando Medic of 48 lvl so i am kinda touching on both sides.

Pre 1.2 as a DPS,i could and would take down healers. It was certainly not an easy job, it required my full focus (depending on their skill) and a very considerable amount of time, which would increase exponentially as we moved from less mobile to more mobile healing classes (BH to Sorc to Ops). What i mean by mobile is that since movement/LoS is KING in PvP the less casttime-dependent (aka more mobile) the class the more effective it is (in PvP). Throw in a tank guard and you needed at least 2 DPS to fully lock down/kill the aforementioned healer. Another issue the less mobile healing classes had to endure was the extreme amount of knockbacks, pushbacks, stuns, interrupts that exist in this game (don't get me wrong everyone has to deal with that - but the effect is SO MUCH MORE for a casting-dependent class compared to a more instant-cast class). What less mobile healers had to compensate for, was their survivability as well as their healing effectiveness. It was a weird balance, but worked... a bit on the healer side, which needed toning down, that's why a nerf was called for. Healers shouldn't be immortal, nor the "center of attention" nor anything. However a carefull nerf was the proper approach - a nerf in steps, watching the results and going from there.

What has currently happened is that the healing effectiveness both in terms of output and cost/effectiveness has been decreased (welcoming nerf), while at the same time the damage output of certain DPS classes have been increased, the amount of CC has remained the same as well as the mobility issues remain unchanged. On top of that the main nerf has occured in the less mobile healing classes, while leaving the mobile ones in a very good state.

Again this only is extremely visible in PvP as in PvP the more you are stationary the less effective you are. The more you get interrupted/KBed/Stunned the less effective you are. When you have classes like the CM, quite justifiably named "turret healers" due to their heavy dependency on castable heals (our instants are extremely non-effective), you have practicaly performed a much more major nerf than what is visible by patch notes, due to the class'philosophy.

To end this wall of text, my take is:
Nerf heals, increase mobility. Perform nerfs in steps rather than 3ple (less heals, more cost, more DMG) nerfs at once. Nerf according to class gamestyle and not universaly.

And that is coming from a main DPS. Yes...healers were OP...but now some of them are simply easy-mode.

Basically, healing is a hard job and takes real skill. Bad players thought they were good at healing. but in reality it was that healing was overtuned.

Now healing is balanced, the bad players will leave, the good players will continue to heal, life goes on.

Why is it the problems you get as a healer I never have?

Healing is easy, doesn't require any skill... never did.
Still doesn't post 1.2. Get better

What are you doing wrong?
You're not LOOKING at what you're doing.

As I said, the commando ammo regen change was needed. There wasn't a real point to ammo till the change. It was the expertise change that gave more to damage to dps and less to heals that probably broke the camel's back.

I'm mostly upset about why DPS feels justified that it should be like this. Instead of the focus being on the healers. The focus is on the DPS. Healers are out. Marauders and powertechs are in. They just flipped the priority of who should be killed but in a fashion that causes more people to spend more time waiting to respawn.

People also undervalued cc and knockbacks on top of interrupts which I didn't go into detail about. You didn't have to kill that healer to cap that civil war node that you spent half a game attacking. You could've been fancy with your cc. Why were you attacking a healer for half a game by yourself in the first place if you knew they were hard to kill 1 v 1.

thank you

OP has a couple decent points, mixed in with his "I'm sad because I am not OP anymore". But its mostly just "I'm sad because I'm not OP anymore".

Hard to take seriously when he talks about how happy he was being "immortal".

Just going to add my 2 cents. I never had a hard time killing a healer pre 1.2. It took maybe 2 interrupts of the right skill.

I thought the nerfs were because of PvE.

Cross heals were a little annoying because but if I had an equal number of dps, it still would not be a problem.

I understand the pain healers are feeling. But not because healing was fine prior to 1.2, it was definitely borked. Even, as the OP stated, really under-geared healers that knew their class could be almost impossible to kill.

One of the guild I run with on the Republic side has a very good commando healer. It was a running joke that he never lost. It wasn't true of course, he did lose occasionally. But when he was in a WZ with even moderately good DPS he would often finish with 0 deaths and would always top the healing charts.

I ran 10-15 WZs since 1.2. Good healers still can tip the balance but now they can be killed so their team has to be aware of their healers and protect them. This is as it should be. Prior to 1.2 geared healers were almost in a "God Mode". Many people wouldn't even bother attacking them. 1v1 few DPS could take down a healer.

I've played a healer in many MMOs. I stopped playaing one here because it was just too easy in WZs. Now I may go back to healing on one of my toons because it is challenging again and challenging = fun to me.

ok, then tell me how to heal better because I've been closely following pretty much every guide to scoundrel healing there is out there. (that I deemed worthy of reading after having healing experience in MMOs for 12 years now)

if you can tell me how I am supposed to get at least 3 medals in a 3 vs 8 voidstar match when your opposing pre-made team is in full battlemaster gear, please feel free to do so.



btw, I definitely agree that healing was a bit 'extra easy' in warzones when I had a guard on me, I did feel pretty 'invincible' a lot of times.. but now? give me a break.

This change to healing in PVP does suck, bad. Despite what someone said, no single dps should be able to kill a healer, it should be a stalemate. Same thing with a tank, no single dps should be able to kill a tank. Now, it's a joke. If you are not guarded, you are dead, and fast, and I have almost full battlemaster. I pug almost all the time, so most of the time the tank classes are gonna dps, that's just what happens when you play with a bunch of lone wolves. But unless I get a guard, I might as well do nothing more than throw myself a couple heals and drop dead.
Now as a sage to top it all off, I have terrible force regen, in that noble sacrifice always takes a big chunk of my health, like the dps are getting a free shot on me.
This is probably one of the biggest nerfs I have seen in an MMO at one moment in time. I honestly don't want to heal in a WZ anymore, but am reluctant to switch since I heal for raids, and I can't dual spec yet.

CC is also terrible in this game, and has been since I have been playing. There is way too much of it, too many interrupts, and all classes should not have them to this extent. Any two people fighting a caster can lock him down and almost keep him stun locked. There needs to be severe diminishing returns for stuns and snares.