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

i'm going to go out on a limb here and say you've probably never played a heal spec merc or commando if you think all it takes is a 3 button spam in order to be effective.

I actually noticed I healed for a little more in PVP BUT do less in PVE...weird

May I guess how you play PvP: You go into a random PuG, maybe with 1 buddy and you're both DD's. Now you attack a healer together and wonder why you can't kill him.

In GW (which was and still is the best PvP-MMO that was built around 8-man groups) you couldn't kill a Healer just by simply bashing on him either, you could've been 3-4 DD's unloading everything and it wouldn't go down, why? Because it is a team game!

The Healers are the Backbone, everything revolves around killing the Healers, which in itself makes everything evolve around DPS-classes as well. But you can't and shouldn't be able to just bash on Healers to kill them, thats not how a Team-based MMO is supposed to work. Every class in this game has tools to either keep healers alive, or to kill them and it should be frustrating and hard to kill a healer, because killing the healer makes your team win the engagement.

What can you do to kill Healers, which even worked very well before 1.2:

- Count down from 3 and make every DD in your team unload burst-dmg upon a Healer. Don't just pressure him, cuz he will be able to survive with HoT's, Stuns, kiting etc. If you focus all your DMG and maybe stun him as well, there is no chance for him to keep him alive.

- Interrupt him: The pressure-heals of the Healer have a rather long casttime and time decides between life and death if you're a healer: If you pressure a Healer, just interrupt his heals!

- Take out 2nd and 3rd healers and support: 1 healer alone isn't a problem, but if he get's supported by other healers, Tanks etc. ppl may think that healing is OP. But simply CC'ing, stunning or keeping the other healer running by attacking him with a Melee-class will take out a huge amount of healing-power. You can't attack 1 Healer and leave his support untouched and wonder why nothing goes down.

This is a team-game and basically every whine-thread about basically every class, be it sages being too strong at healing, CC being too strong, operatives dealing too much DMG, can be easily "fixed" by not playing alone, but utilizing every class in your group.

In 1.2 having a healer on your team is a liability. n+1 dps is always better than n+1 heals

I used to dread void star matches that would end with no kills for either side because it was SOOOO easy for healers to keep people up. It still feels just as tough for me to 1v1 a healer and I'm a jug that was buffed. I, for one, am glad to see that people are actually KILLING each other in pvp.

Everybody feels like that though. If I get put into a late game on the losing side with my dps toon I'm not happy either. What match you get to join when you q depends on luck for now. It's not just healers being sad and mad and screwed when they get put on the losing side in a 50-350 Alderaan or likewise. All ya can really do then is try and hurry to get your 3 medals.

As a shadow tank, I think the OP is alluding to a shift in game balance that is going to REQUIRE tanks to up their game. Every tank I see is some kind of DPS gear wearing tank/damage hybrid, and I think that this will need to stop.

With damage going up, tanks are going to have to really learn better how to keep their healers alive, and stack more defensive stats to make that happen.

One of the big things BW needs to address is the use of shields in PvP. If shielding worked against more abilities, tanks could stack a wider variety of defensive stats and increase their survivability, becoming better at keeping taunts and CCs rolling on DPS trying to kill their healer.

I suppose it's an evolving system, I really hope BW starts making it less about OMGZERGDPS and more about playing smart.

Well there are two different things that went on with this patch.

The first were the general nerfs to Sage and Commando healers, and the buffs to smuggler healers. Before, Sages and Commando could heal constantly without much worry of resources. This was toned down and smugglers brought up to that level. These changes, while painful, were probably needed.

The second was the change in expertise. Before having full expertise the bonus to damage done, healing done, and damage reduction was generally the same. Now, the healing bonus is about the same, so healing output is the same or a little less, due to stat changes on gear. The bonus to damage taken is slightly higher. The bonus to damage done, is much higher, almost double, plus some classes got buffs. This is the change people are scratching their head over. I'm not sure why it was felt that people needed to die faster.

The problem is, if a good DPS can put out as much damage as a good healer can put out healing (assuming same gear, same uptime), then why play a healer; might as well play a DPS at that point? A tank would be just as successful guarding a DPS and the best teams will be melee assist trains.

That said the sentinels in my guild are REALLY happy!

True, but not because we were fortresses. Depended on your class. As someone said the Commando was the turret heals. Sages had to do more dancing. It was the implications of what having less stress on dealing with one person meant. It meant a healer could be responsible for healing much more than just himself.

A healer had the role of being able to heal like you do in PVE ops in a PVP setting. Coupled with the fact that tanks were allowed to guard in PVP settings, it felt like that was the experience BW was going for.

The mentality wasn't how do I keep myself alive. It was how do I keep myself alive and those other 3 people.

Since a lot of people are adverse to the idea of healers not being able to be killed 1 v 1 since DPS is conditioned to believe heals should be an easy kill, I'm willing to settle for making tanks unkillable and bestowing that unkillable love onto heals with guard.

You guessed wrong. Close, though. I do solo queue. And, yes, I apply most of the strategies you mentioned in pre 1.2. Healing was over the top pre-1.2. The 1.2 patch went too far the other way to counter it... but it still needed to be brought into line. I am sure that it will be tweaked back but hopefully not back to pre 1.2.

I played GW, too. It wasn't all that fun a game nor interesting.