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

only mazohists play healer now:-D only playable pvp class is now juggernaut, nothing else:-D or perhaps not the only one, but bioware clearly buff and nerf classes blindly.

I think the Expertise changes are what sets everything off... i agree that a healer getting bonus healing, damage and absorption isn't fair but instead of adjusting it so you can choose damage or healing bonus they just nerf one side =( sad panda!

The way the DPS were expressing the unfairness in the forums is that the damage reduction and damage bonus mitigated each other and nothing mitigated the healing...

But what mitigated the healing was that he/she was HEALING not DPS'ing, so why should a dedicated healer not get the same bonuses to potency as the DPS?

So now not only did healers get nerfed in healing expertise bonus, EVERYONE gets a damage reduction nerf as well? this compounds the issue of dedicated healer's survivability further than other classes, because now Healers cant heal as much AND can't take as many hits(but gets bonus to damage which he/she is not specced for), where a DPS can not take as many hits but damage is way higher (which is a DPSr's purpose), and a TANK is probably the least affected because both damage and survivability serve equal purposes. basically it is pushing classes to DPS instead of heal in tight situations and the logic is beyond me.

Holy hell, my head hurts after reading this...

I don't know how pub heals go, put it on to begin with. My main and pretty much the only toon I play with is my sorc healer. I got into WOW late and loved the idea of being the healer so my first toon I made here was a healer. Right off the bat I noticed being a healer was BA and was def more appreciated. The longer I played and speced more into healing tree the more I noticed I had glitches that helped and since I learned a good healing routine, I was able to deal massive healing and stay alive under serious duress. The glitches absolutely needed to be fixed and new healing routine I'm working on seems like it will be ok, not great, but ok. I agree with main point that healers used to be more appreciated and more a main part before. Now we are more squishy and can't heal as well, which would be fine if teams worked as teams, if healers are not protected (allies) or are not targeted (enemies). We as healers get hit too fast along with not healing as much, so we are not the spotlight anymore, I can live with that, healers are usually in the background not getting credit. However I fear healers giving up and not continuing the fight if others do not pay attention. Now it is the most important to keep an eye on your friendly neighborhood healer and give them atleast a verbal good job if not the MVP vote, you don't damage if you're dead, and we cant heal unless we are alive as well. That being I wont give up and will still be healing.

Kreisha (Sword of Ajunta Pall)

I'm going to have to disagree with you on the mobility issue. Combat Medics are very immobile relative to the other two healing AC's and to the mechanics of the dps classes.

We don't have any reliable separation. If there is a z-axis (huttball) then we can create distance with the kb, otherwise it's not particularly good. Except for Scoundrel/Operatives all of the melee classes have either pulls or leaps to keep us engaged, as well as stuns and slows to keep us from escaping. We have one stun and a cast-time mez.

Our instant heals (the core of your argument that we are mobile) are very weak or on cooldowns. Hammer Shot is okay at topping someone off and is better than nothing if you're having ammo problems, but it won't effectively heal someone under pressure from a dps. Kolto bomb has always been more useful for the buff than for the actual healing it does. Bacta infusion is a pretty weak heal and the 17 second cd (with set bonus) means that you can't really heal while on the run. You're not going to be able to extend anyone's life with hammer shot, kolto bomb, and a medium heal every 17 seconds. And, yes, Tech Override makes one cast-time ability instant, but it's on a 2min cd.

Both scoundrels and sages have heals (or bubbles) that they can cast on the move that are a core part of their rotation. In addition they have far more cc abilities as well as escapes. Commandos are easy to catch and keep pinned in one place because we have to stand still at some point and heal either ourselves or others.

You're right that with all of our cd's available we only have to stop for 3 seconds, but what if you're under pressure? How will you escape? What if your cd's aren't up? We have small windows of mobility, but most of the time we're going to have to sit and cast something.

I think the class changes to combat medic were probably fine. What's so damaging to the ac is the change to expertise. We had to be a little bit tanky because we couldn't really escape once we were engaged. Pre-1.2 we were probably a little too tanky, but post 1.2 we melt too fast. Now a good marauder or powertech will stomp a combat medic's face in with ease. And you have no chance of getting away.

On top of all that, the changes to expertise means that burst dps exceeds burst healing by a significant margin. Given equal gear and a similar skill level, I don't believe it's possible to keep a target (or yourself) alive through burst damage. My experience yesterday certainly bore that analysis out. And before the l2p people get in, neither my nor the people I play with are bad players.

to continue the story ill write about my own experience as a healer since this game has came out. First of all I as well have played the entire game as a corruption sith sorc and it seems all good things come and go. When i hit 50 it was about 2 weeks into the game but still there was an array of other level 50 operatives and mercs and many of the other classes who put out insane numbers early in the game. My gear never became good (or what i considered good) untill i got a full champion gear set (for 6 extra expertise im not a big worry over BM gear). For a long time this meant go in and do my daily so i can have a chance at gear and never got a piece from the bag untill i already had the piece from straight buying it. I struggled for about 2 weeks but i enjoyed PVP healing because looking at numbers you can figure you were able to cancle out another players efforts ( heals > damage done by an opposing member). While I would read comments of terrible nerfs on my healing class as well I never thought any of them were detrimental to my class (no more free consumption, sure fine i can manage), however at this point i was unaware of just how much damage would change. Being a healer walking into a warzone yesterday in the same gear realizing it was impossible to keep ANYONE alive. People dropped no matter how much healing i put on them. The name of the game is try and let this person get a kill before they go down. Yes I was targeted some but it didnt matter like before because my team was dieing with or without me there. Also when i was targeted i noticed there was nothing keeping me alive being in light armor and having so much extra damage being thrown my way even against only 1 DPS. At this point i had to start making concious decissions if it was better to allow a team mate the few seconds of extra time so they might actually get a kill and sacrifice myself or heal myself keeping the DPS from moving onto the next target and start wreaking havoc elsewhere.

Now back to pre 1.2 i would genuinely like how even DPS and healing could be. There were times in huttball were i pulled a maurader or assassin off to one of the expertise powerups and have 5 minutes of fighting with them because i knew it was even, i couldnt do enough damage to pass their self heals and they couldnt do enough to pass my heals. seems fair to me that 1 person should = 1 person (assuming all else equal). But now its 1 DPS > 1 healer/tank. When they upped the DPS from skills and nerfed healing and then on top of that made damage the biggest part of expertise it showed were favoriteism is lieing in 1.2. If any part of expertise should outshine another it should be damage reduction because not everyone in a warzone will do damage or heal but everyone will take damage. I kind of thought this was the idea of adding medals for things like protection and healing but when these are reduced and damage is increased it makes it hard not to jump on the bandwagon and respec to do 5X more damage then possible before.

Wise. I must add that both DPS or healer are played by people who honestly paid same 15$/month. So there should be no "DPS must kill healer" agenda. Instead balance means that everyone must get some fun for their money.
DPS class pressing healer exclusively makes that both are playing. But if healer spends like 3-10 seconds dying then 1.5 minute to respawn,walk, find some place where something happens then die again in 10 seconds - there is no fun in that.
Personally i think imbalance is why we don't have Arena, 2v2 situation will too clearly show what is wrong. WoW walked a long road, we are here with SWToR and we are in some ways betatesters.

this!
Well thought out and factual.

i as a lvl 50 healer have some complaints but it's not about the typical healing nerfs or dps buffs etc etc..instead my complaint is this..why is it that i can heal the crap out of my entire team, sheild them keep them alive to get the 40+ kills and sometimes get only 1 vote?

i was in a huttball game yesterday where i had 264k healing done, scored 3 goals, had several medals and objective points yet i recieved 1 vote..instead the majority of the team voted for the guy who had 42 kills, 0 goals scored, and 0 objectives..

my biggest complaint i guess is that sure getting kill credits for healing people is nice but teammates should remember to thanks those of us keeping you alive to do your tons of dmg and get lots of kills..

it makes no sense that a player like me who actually plays the warzones as intended and not as a personal team death match should be lacking in mvp votes. i personally vote for other likeminded players who do the game objectives and i wish others did the same.

Never understood the how people struggled to kill healers pre 1.2 As a Jugg I could burst down healers (especially sorcs who'd i'd crit for 6k+) before they knew what hit them: