It's definitely challenging to heal in Cataclysm and that's by design. We want players to pick and choose what spells to use and when. Those in your group will also need to be conscious of whether or not they're putting out enough DPS, taking too much damage, and more. You'll probably be pulling out more "tricks" from your bag than you've been doing in awhile. You're also going to miss a time or two, run out of mana at a bad time and find yourself trying to figure out just what went wrong. Even experienced healers are going to have to dig their heels in a bit.

That said, we're keeping an eye out for how healing is going and should we feel there need to be adjustments, we'll make them. As many have noticed, we're starting to get a larger population of level 85 players who will be running through the content and getting better gear to compliment their spells and abilities. That should help some.

Flesh_Wound posted:

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The real problem is not the healing design, it's getting the other 4 members of your group to understand it.

I've pretty much shelved healing until more pugs understand how useful vital CC is now, even for some normal pulls (rly). Once people are playing like a group again, I'll come back to it. Guild runs are, of course, a different thing.

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-Spacelord- posted:

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I stopped healing too, my favorite role. It is unbelievable to be nerfed that much. I understand their design but it is too much responsibility for one role while other all they have to do is swear at the healer.

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Voqar posted:

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-Spacelord- posted:

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I stopped healing too, my favorite role. It is unbelievable to be nerfed that much. I understand their design but it is too much responsibility for one role while other all they have to do is swear at the healer.

---

I don't think it's nerfed at all.

People got used to never ending mana, spamming inefficient heals, overhealing ridiculously (you could see meters with most healers over 50% overhealing - that's insanely inefficient - but they could get away with it due to mana mechanics).

I like that healing involves thinking and strategy and is more of a group responsibility. I like that morons who used to just spam healbot wacamole are having to truly learn how to heal. I like that as a tank/healer, I have to really push to minimize incoming damage and strategize more (use CC, pull smarter, etc).

It's a gear thing (most people are undergeared, not enchanted, not gemmed, and going "LOL i'm 329 let me q for heroic").

Undergeared dps morons who don't put out decent dps AND who stand in puddles, don't interrupt, don't pay attention to dmg, etc cause way more stress on healers and tanks.

It's also an eduction thing. People need to learn the mob abilities, kill priorities, pulls, layouts. It'll come along.

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Quazimortal posted:

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Holy crap what a bunch of whiners. I've been having more fun healing randoms in the last week than I ever had since the random daily system was implemented. Oh noes you have to select which spells to use to conserve mana? Oh noes you have to let that dps sit at 20% life to heal up the tank first? The current implementation will truly show who is a good healer and who is one of those 'Wrath' scrubs I keep hearing about here on VN. Tanks and DPS weren't the only ones to get stupid with that expansion you know!

P.S. I've actually found that pointing out when someone is doing something wrong in a less than hateful way can usually cause people to learn from their mistakes. How many people have complemented me on how awesome my healing is this past week? I kinda lost track...

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-Peo- posted:

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Quazimortal posted:

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Holy crap what a bunch of whiners. I've been having more fun healing randoms in the last week than I ever had since the random daily system was implemented. Oh noes you have to select which spells to use to conserve mana? Oh noes you have to let that dps sit at 20% life to heal up the tank first? The current implementation will truly show who is a good healer and who is one of those 'Wrath' scrubs I keep hearing about here on VN. Tanks and DPS weren't the only ones to get stupid with that expansion you know!

P.S. I've actually found that pointing out when someone is doing something wrong in a less than hateful way can usually cause people to learn from their mistakes. How many people have complemented me on how awesome my healing is this past week? I kinda lost track...

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Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal.

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_Kewk_ posted:

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Healing randoms is nothing. Healing raids right now is ridiculous and not fun.

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spaceurface posted:

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What has been disturbing for me is when playing my mage. I poly a mob to make everyone's engagement - primarily our healer's - life easier and less stressful and the tanks play on like it was just like before.

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DragonKeeperofThi posted:

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i've been pugging since level 20, 47 now and i have only seen 1 rogue SAP twice. Blizzard forcing people to CC again isn't happening, I still see tanks pull everything and wonders why we have to wait on the healers, or me since i'm a shammy, while pugging.

Last night I was in Dire Maul and the healer had one hella of time healing the tank, I had more health then him. The last 2 bosses the healer dropped, I switched to heal him and it was hard. He was good at his job but poorly geared and the fact he was 5 levels lower then me. I told him to get better gear and he'll be fine.

There are a lot of tanks out there that can't even tank, had several that couldn't taunt or pull mobs off the healer.

I'm going to continue going as DPS.

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Unstruck posted:

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DragonKeeperofThi posted:

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i've been pugging since level 20, 47 now and i have only seen 1 rogue SAP twice. Blizzard forcing people to CC again isn't happening, I still see tanks pull everything and wonders why we have to wait on the healers, or me since i'm a shammy, while pugging.

Last night I was in Dire Maul and the healer had one hella of time healing the tank, I had more health then him. The last 2 bosses the healer dropped, I switched to heal him and it was hard. He was good at his job but poorly geared and the fact he was 5 levels lower then me. I told him to get better gear and he'll be fine.

There are a lot of tanks out there that can't even tank, had several that couldn't taunt or pull mobs off the healer.

I'm going to continue going as DPS.

---

Blizzard's stance on "need to CC" is in relation to level 85 heroics and raids. It may be necessary in level 80+ regular dungeons, but isn't as much of a requirement depending on group composition.

Anything below level 80, save some BC heroics, do NOT require CC, nor was it intended to after the latest expansion from my understanding.

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Quazimortal posted:

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Holy crap what a bunch of whiners. I've been having more fun healing randoms in the last week than I ever had since the random daily system was implemented. Oh noes you have to select which spells to use to conserve mana? Oh noes you have to let that dps sit at 20% life to heal up the tank first? The current implementation will truly show who is a good healer and who is one of those 'Wrath' scrubs I keep hearing about here on VN. Tanks and DPS weren't the only ones to get stupid with that expansion you know!

P.S. I've actually found that pointing out when someone is doing something wrong in a less than hateful way can usually cause people to learn from their mistakes. How many people have complemented me on how awesome my healing is this past week? I kinda lost track...

---

TruthyID posted:

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... posted a bunch of absolutely true stuff ...

TLDR: GC forgot that he's in charge of a GAME that is supposed to be FUN. The new healing system isn't fun, at best it's boring, and needs to be reworked.

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Spookysheep posted:

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Its only been a week. A major patch will be forthcoming soon that will reverse all this stupidity.

Blizzard loves their money way too much to watch it dwindle.

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Flesh_Wound posted:

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The real problem is not the healing design, it's getting the other 4 members of your group to understand it. The example I've been using is the first pull in HoO. Is it possible for a tank to just run in, pick up the 3 little guys and tank the big one? Yes. Is it utterly brutal and stupid and painful to heal even on normal? Yes. It's not even so much that people got used to steamrolling stuff because it was easy. They got used to essentially breaking gameplay design in terms of incidental damage, pulls, etc.. You just can't do that anymore without the result being shunted directly to the healer (and in turn, the group entire).

I've pretty much shelved healing until more pugs understand how useful and vital CC is now, even for some normal pulls (rly). Once people are playing like a group again, I'll come back to it. Guild runs are, of course, a different thing.

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TruthyID posted:

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This just in, Holy Pallies have been nerfed. Tower of Radiance no longer generates holy power when holy light is cast on the beacon target and the healing done by Light of Dawn has been reduced.

From the healing forums:

Nethaera on 12/14/10 9:38 PM (UTC)

These hotfixes were intentional and we wanted to share more information about the "why" for you all here:

Mana is supposed to matter for healers, and in the case of Holy paladins, that just wasn’t happening. We were seeing raid groups attempting to learn new bosses where the other healers were out of mana while the paladins were still at 90% of mana. We also thought the experience of paladins healing harder heroic dungeons was inconsistent with that of other healers, or our design intent. We thought it was only a matter of time before groups started going out of their way to stack paladins for raids or recruit them for dungeon runs, which of course is not our intent. For this reason, we thought it was important to address this point now rather than sitting on it until a future patch.

The main culprit for the increased paladin efficiency this was Holy Power from Tower of Radiance. We were seeing a strategy develop where paladins would cast Holy Light on a Beaconed tank, and then cast Light of Dawn on the raid (and use very few other spells). This strategy was remarkably successful considering how simple it is. The Holy Power-based heals are supposed to be an important component of the paladin kit, but because Holy Light is designed to be super efficient, the overall strategy was too efficient. The intent of Tower of Radiance was to make directly healing a Beacon of Light target less punitive, but instead it was becoming the only smart way to play. You can still generate Holy Power by using Flash of Light or Divine Light on a Beaconed target, or through a variety of other ways. Remember, overall it isn’t balanced if paladins are just as mana efficient as other healers and have several mana-free spells.

Light of Dawn was adjusted because it was completely eclipsing Word of Glory. We lowered the healing of Word of Glory late in development, but also redesigned Light of Dawn. They had fallen out of sync, and Light of Dawn was just too good.

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Broken_Kayfabe posted:

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Quazimortal posted:

---

Holy crap what a bunch of whiners. I've been having more fun healing randoms in the last week than I ever had since the random daily system was implemented. Oh noes you have to select which spells to use to conserve mana? Oh noes you have to let that dps sit at 20% life to heal up the tank first? The current implementation will truly show who is a good healer and who is one of those 'Wrath' scrubs I keep hearing about here on VN. Tanks and DPS weren't the only ones to get stupid with that expansion you know!

P.S. I've actually found that pointing out when someone is doing something wrong in a less than hateful way can usually cause people to learn from their mistakes. How many people have complemented me on how awesome my healing is this past week? I kinda lost track...

---

I hope you're not counting on it staying that way...

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huldu posted:

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Far too many players pick the healer for one reason and that is to be carried through content. Now, the same players complain that it is hard to heal. Yeah, because healing was insanely easy before cata. Healers would fall asleep, go dps and what not in dungeons before cata. What is needed right now is to weed out the crappy players so the real healers can actually shine for once. Healing should never be easy.

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huldu posted:

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Far too many players pick the healer for one reason and that is to be carried through content. Now, the same players complain that it is hard to heal. Yeah, because healing was insanely easy before cata. Healers would fall asleep, go dps and what not in dungeons before cata. What is needed right now is to weed out the crappy players so the real healers can actually shine for once. Healing should never be easy.

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slythetove posted:

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huldu posted:

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Far too many players pick the healer for one reason and that is to be carried through content. Now, the same players complain that it is hard to heal. Yeah, because healing was insanely easy before cata. Healers would fall asleep, go dps and what not in dungeons before cata. What is needed right now is to weed out the crappy players so the real healers can actually shine for once. Healing should never be easy.

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You're an idiot.

I chose to play the healer (the role NOBODY else wants to play) because nobody wants to do it.

The role is underrepresented in even the best of times, and you (and apparently Blizzard) want to make it so painful that even less people want to do it? You are out of your freaking mind.

On Tuesday queue times for healer at 80 - 82 were 8 to 10 minutes.

At 85 on Sunday they were 3 to 5 minutes.

By last night at 85 they were instant.

Think about it. Think about why.

--Sly

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TruthyID posted:

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As it stands there are some pretty glaring inequities amongst the different healing classes. If someone tells you healing is just fine and doesn't need to be fixed they're likely playing a holy paladin, or not playing a level 85 healer at all and have no idea wtf they're talking about.

Healers are really frustrating to play right now for a number of reasons.

1. Healers scaled backwards from 80-85.
Unlike every other role in this game healers actually got WEAKER every time they got a level from 80-85. Heals don't really scale at all however mana costs grow at an alarming rate. There really isn't anything fun about getting levels and better gear only to feel like you're worse off than you were before. Not only are we less powerful than before, health pools scaled like they never have before. Tanks in blue gear have 150K+ health going into heroics. Meanwhile we heal for nearly the same as we did in Wrath. As a % of the tank's health that our heals restore we've never been weaker.

2. Blizzard left it up to healers to educate the rest of the WoW community that the paradigm has changed.
Healers have effectively become "Cataclysm dungeoning instructors." We have to inform the tanks and dps that they can't just pull everything and aoe it down anymore. More often that not polite requests for CC or mana breaks is met with arrogance, anger, or even vote kicks.

3. The only feedback mechanism for poor play is death or ooming which is blamed on healers
Tanks and dps need to be learning from their mistakes in order to adapt to the new model but they're not. At this point they're lashing out at healers for not compensating for poor play. Obviously this shouldn't be happening but it is happening, a lot. Healers are getting abused in randoms even though they're playing their class as well as it can be played in the new paradigm.

4. Healing didn't get more "interesting" it got LESS interesting
Supposedly this change was about making healing more "interesting" by making it about choosing the right spell at the right time. Turns out that the right spell is almost always slow efficient spell, heal, holy light, etc. GC has said that he didn't want healers to spam one spell, then he goes and designs a system that encourages healers to spam one heal, the whole thing's mind boggling. The mana conservation game seems to boil down to using anything other than your slow efficient heal as infrequently as possible, how interesting.


TLDR: GC forgot that he's in charge of a GAME that is supposed to be FUN. The new healing system isn't fun, at best it's boring, and needs to be reworked.

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Voqar posted:

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-Spacelord- posted:

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I stopped healing too, my favorite role. It is unbelievable to be nerfed that much. I understand their design but it is too much responsibility for one role while other all they have to do is swear at the healer.

---

I don't think it's nerfed at all.

People got used to never ending mana, spamming inefficient heals, overhealing ridiculously (you could see meters with most healers over 50% overhealing - that's insanely inefficient - but they could get away with it due to mana mechanics).

I like that healing involves thinking and strategy and is more of a group responsibility. I like that morons who used to just spam healbot wacamole are having to truly learn how to heal. I like that as a tank/healer, I have to really push to minimize incoming damage and strategize more (use CC, pull smarter, etc).

It's a gear thing (most people are undergeared, not enchanted, not gemmed, and going "LOL i'm 329 let me q for heroic").

Undergeared dps morons who don't put out decent dps AND who stand in puddles, don't interrupt, don't pay attention to dmg, etc cause way more stress on healers and tanks.

It's also an eduction thing. People need to learn the mob abilities, kill priorities, pulls, layouts. It'll come along.

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TruthyID posted:

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huldu posted:

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Far too many players pick the healer for one reason and that is to be carried through content. Now, the same players complain that it is hard to heal. Yeah, because healing was insanely easy before cata. Healers would fall asleep, go dps and what not in dungeons before cata. What is needed right now is to weed out the crappy players so the real healers can actually shine for once. Healing should never be easy.

---

If people want to be carried through content they'd be better off rolling dps. Mages can still top meters while doing their taxes.

The complaints don't stem from the new playstyle being hard, they stem from healing not being fun. The new model just fails to deliver the fun factor. The new model isn't even that difficult to master, it just feels underpowered which is frustrating.

It's a sad state of affairs when it's more difficult to heal ICC as a lvl 85 than it was to heal it at lvl 80 even with new talents and better gear.

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pattongb posted:

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^^ Sorry Truthy but WRONG WRONG WRONG!

You must have never healed pre-WoTLK.

When you work hard to be good at healing, acquire the necessary gear, get sought after like a valuable commodity, run a difficult pug, using skill and experience you successfully heal a tough run, you sit back smile and say "God Damn that was awesome!"

Thats fun. I experienced it many times pre-WoTLK.

Being picked up as a healer as an afterthought, doing dps because your heals overheal by 20% and your mana pool never dries up....that is NOT fun. Not for a skilled healer anyways.

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TruthyID posted:

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pattongb posted:

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^^ Sorry Truthy but WRONG WRONG WRONG!

You must have never healed pre-WoTLK.

When you work hard to be good at healing, acquire the necessary gear, get sought after like a valuable commodity, run a difficult pug, using skill and experience you successfully heal a tough run, you sit back smile and say "God Damn that was awesome!"

Thats fun. I experienced it many times pre-WoTLK.

Being picked up as a healer as an afterthought, doing dps because your heals overheal by 20% and your mana pool never dries up....that is NOT fun. Not for a skilled healer anyways.

---

I'm not sure why people keep assuming that people who don't enjoy the new Ghostcrawler healing are "wrath facerollers." As a matter of fact I've been healing endgame since vanilla. That said, someone's WoW bona fides don't have any impact on whether or not this system is fun, and frankly, it's not.

The new healing system isn't difficult, it's boring and frustrating. Healers feel impotent and much of the toolbox isn't very useful anymore. If anything a healer is less of a valuable commodity than ever because they don't bring much to the table. It's irritating to play your character optimally and just scrape by because healing is weaker than it's ever been. The system doesn't reward good healing, it punishes all healing.

I would welcome a return to BC style healing but this simply isn't it. In fact it bears only a passing resemblance to BC healing. I decided to reserve judgment on Cat until I hit 85, but I think the naysayers may be onto something, Ghostcrawler and company have no idea wtf they're doing with healers.

Have you tried healing in pvp yet? Based on what I've seen 3s are going to be dominated by 3 dps teams because heals are so lackluster right now. This wasn't the case in BC either.

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TruthyID posted:

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Have you tried healing in pvp yet? Based on what I've seen 3s are going to be dominated by 3 dps teams because heals are so lackluster right now. This wasn't the case in BC either.

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TruthyID posted:

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I'm not sure why people keep assuming that people who don't enjoy the new Ghostcrawler healing are "wrath facerollers." As a matter of fact I've been healing endgame since BRD was a raid. That said, someone's WoW bona fides don't have any impact on whether or not this system is fun, and frankly, it's not.

The new healing system isn't difficult, it's boring and frustrating. Healers feel impotent and much of the toolbox isn't very useful anymore. If anything a healer is less of a valuable commodity than ever because they don't bring much to the table. It's irritating to play your character optimally and just scrape by because healing is weaker than it's ever been. The system doesn't reward good healing, it punishes all healing.

I would welcome a return to BC style healing but this simply isn't it. In fact it bears only a passing resemblance to BC healing. I decided to reserve judgment on Cat until I hit 85, but I think the naysayers may be onto something, Ghostcrawler and company have no idea wtf they're doing with healers.

Have you tried healing in pvp yet? Based on what I've seen 3s are going to be dominated by 3 dps teams because heals are so lackluster right now. This wasn't the case in BC either.

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slythetove posted:

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and when you do succeed it's not rewarding it's ... relieving at best.
--Sly

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Fedup23 posted:

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Whaa! WoW is faceroll!!! wait... Whaa! Wow is too hard!!

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Spookysheep posted:

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Its only been a week. A major patch will be forthcoming soon that will reverse all this stupidity.

Blizzard loves their money way too much to watch it dwindle.

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Fist_de_Yuma posted:

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I've been working on a portal mage on my second account, farming to build crafting and enjoy learning the new lands; so I have not been running instances. I ran one with friends this Sat. and decided to use my shaman healer. We had a few deaths but mostly from people doing stupid stuff. The last boss was kind of strange.

I was healing but seeing little effect. I could see the heal numbers but people's bar health did not improve much. I was thinking it was just something they tossed in for this one encounter but now I'm starting to worry.

I have a lot of DPS players and my tanks and healers are duel spec'ed for DPS. I was intending to learn the instances by healing; as the job did not use to change much in the old instances. My worry is that the healing will not scare with the large increase in health and damage. If this is true we are in for a rough ride. Queues are already long and starting to get longer. How long will players pay to sit?

Warrior tanks were becoming borderline unplayable and surely not fun. If they repeat that with healers I don't see much future in playing. The game was fun. The game should be focused on having fun. I'm worried that the developers are getting into a US vs Players mode. They might win but winning could prove costly.

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TruthyID posted:

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Healers have effectively become "Cataclysm dungeoning instructors." We have to inform the tanks and dps that they can't just pull everything and aoe it down anymore. More often that not polite requests for CC or mana breaks is met with arrogance, anger, or even vote kicks.

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-MrBean- posted:

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And I too fell like the devs have gotten an us versus them mentality and honestly, no good ever comes out of that.

WoW is the tops right now, and honestly no other game can knock it off it's pedestal. So if it starts to decline and go down the tubes, it will only be from the devs own doing.

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Spookysheep posted:

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-MrBean- posted:

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And I too fell like the devs have gotten an us versus them mentality and honestly, no good ever comes out of that.

WoW is the tops right now, and honestly no other game can knock it off it's pedestal. So if it starts to decline and go down the tubes, it will only be from the devs own doing.

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This.

Morons like Ghostcrawler state "we think" or "we like" in every idiotic post he makes.


He is too stupid to realize that no one cares what blizzard thinks, players care what players think.

There is "enough" outrage on this issue that people really will vote with their wallets and changes will occur.

Its a shame though, that you have to cancel your sub for a while in order to get blizzard management to get retarded developers heads out of their collective azzes and get things done right.


The funny thing is, even the most die hard sycophant blizzard fanbois cannot defend the game currently without knowingly sounding as retarded as the B-team who developed this design.

Notice they are remaining silent on this issue so as not to remove all doubt?

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Cawlin posted:

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Actually, if the development staff can bring people's overall playing skill up a few notches, it gives the development staff more breadth to design interesting content. If everything is an AOE fest, even the most anti-social, anti-PvE player will eventually get tired of going "See all you elitist pricks, I got the same gear as you did, it's not hard!" and get bored with the game.

Requiring the players to actually use more of their characters' multitude of abilities ultimately is better for the game because it increases the diversity of the type of content that can be offered.

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Priests

* Blessed Resilience now increases healing received by 15/30%, up from 5/10%.
* Focused Will now reduces damage taken by 5/10% and 10/20%, up from 4/8% and 6/12%.
* Healing done by Glyph of Dispel Magic no longer improperly caps out at a certain health pool range.
* Holy Concentration's mana regeneration component has been increased from 10/20% to 20/40%.
* Player-controlled vehicles return an Invalid Target error when attempting to use Leap of Faith on them.
* Rapture's mana regeneration component has been increased from 1.5/2/2.5 to 2/4/6%.

Ashmaele posted:

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Priests

* Blessed Resilience now increases healing received by 15/30%, up from 5/10%.
* Focused Will now reduces damage taken by 5/10% and 10/20%, up from 4/8% and 6/12%.
* Healing done by Glyph of Dispel Magic no longer improperly caps out at a certain health pool range.
* Holy Concentration's mana regeneration component has been increased from 10/20% to 20/40%.
* Player-controlled vehicles return an Invalid Target error when attempting to use Leap of Faith on them.
* Rapture's mana regeneration component has been increased from 1.5/2/2.5 to 2/4/6%.

---

Bremen_Gaheris posted:

---

Ashmaele posted:

---

Priests

* Blessed Resilience now increases healing received by 15/30%, up from 5/10%.
* Focused Will now reduces damage taken by 5/10% and 10/20%, up from 4/8% and 6/12%.
* Healing done by Glyph of Dispel Magic no longer improperly caps out at a certain health pool range.
* Holy Concentration's mana regeneration component has been increased from 10/20% to 20/40%.
* Player-controlled vehicles return an Invalid Target error when attempting to use Leap of Faith on them.
* Rapture's mana regeneration component has been increased from 1.5/2/2.5 to 2/4/6%.

---

They obviously are acknowledging that things are definitely not right with healing, specifically with Priests. But they are still not fixing the real problem....throughput. Instead of buffing healers back to godmode mana regen, why not just buff all the direct healing spells by about 20% and see how that feels? Then if that is not enough, tweak it a tad higher.

I don't get it, why is this so hard for them?

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Cawlin posted:

---

Bremen_Gaheris posted:

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Ashmaele posted:

---

Priests

* Blessed Resilience now increases healing received by 15/30%, up from 5/10%.
* Focused Will now reduces damage taken by 5/10% and 10/20%, up from 4/8% and 6/12%.
* Healing done by Glyph of Dispel Magic no longer improperly caps out at a certain health pool range.
* Holy Concentration's mana regeneration component has been increased from 10/20% to 20/40%.
* Player-controlled vehicles return an Invalid Target error when attempting to use Leap of Faith on them.
* Rapture's mana regeneration component has been increased from 1.5/2/2.5 to 2/4/6%.

---

They obviously are acknowledging that things are definitely not right with healing, specifically with Priests. But they are still not fixing the real problem....throughput. Instead of buffing healers back to godmode mana regen, why not just buff all the direct healing spells by about 20% and see how that feels? Then if that is not enough, tweak it a tad higher.

I don't get it, why is this so hard for them?

---

Balancing an MMO is like an armwrestling contest between lepers - one wrong move and the whole thing falls apart.

It's a different thing when you're looking at one class only or an ability that is only related to that class as opposed to a whole ROLE (i.e. healing) is considerably more tricky. Seeing them make small(ish) adjustments to individual classes is better imo than seeing "across the board" changes which have the potential to create a REALLY gutwrenching pendulum ride.

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Cawlin posted:

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Balancing an MMO is like an armwrestling contest between lepers - one wrong move and the whole thing falls apart.

It's a different thing when you're looking at one class only or an ability that is only related to that class as opposed to a whole ROLE (i.e. healing) is considerably more tricky. Seeing them make small(ish) adjustments to individual classes is better imo than seeing "across the board" changes which have the potential to create a REALLY gutwrenching pendulum ride.

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Cawlin posted:

---

Balancing an MMO is like an armwrestling contest between lepers - one wrong move and the whole thing falls apart.

---

Cawlin posted:

---

Actually, if the development staff can bring people's overall playing skill up a few notches, it gives the development staff more breadth to design interesting content. If everything is an AOE fest, even the most anti-social, anti-PvE player will eventually get tired of going "See all you elitist pricks, I got the same gear as you did, it's not hard!" and get bored with the game.

Requiring the players to actually use more of their characters' multitude of abilities ultimately is better for the game because it increases the diversity of the type of content that can be offered.

---

Spookysheep posted:

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Cawlin posted:

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Actually, if the development staff can bring people's overall playing skill up a few notches, it gives the development staff more breadth to design interesting content. If everything is an AOE fest, even the most anti-social, anti-PvE player will eventually get tired of going "See all you elitist pricks, I got the same gear as you did, it's not hard!" and get bored with the game.

Requiring the players to actually use more of their characters' multitude of abilities ultimately is better for the game because it increases the diversity of the type of content that can be offered.

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I agree with you in theory that this would make the game more fun for those of us who actually spend time learning the game.

But WOTLK proved (with numbers in the millions) that in reality, the players you describe do not get bored with the game. In fact, the opposite occurs and they bring friends and subscription numbers rise.

WOW's sub numbers went up because of what they did in WOTLK. For every person that got bored and quit, 3 or 4 more new subscribers replaced them.


The masses want mindless, easy, fun, entertainment. They don't read forums, or MMO champion, or wowhead, or anything else about how to play the game. They just want to log in and faceroll their way to epics.

That is how blizzard got numbers to rise.

Why they thought reversing it would not revers subscriptions boggles the mind.

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Cawlin posted:

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Spookysheep posted:

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Cawlin posted:

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Actually, if the development staff can bring people's overall playing skill up a few notches, it gives the development staff more breadth to design interesting content. If everything is an AOE fest, even the most anti-social, anti-PvE player will eventually get tired of going "See all you elitist pricks, I got the same gear as you did, it's not hard!" and get bored with the game.

Requiring the players to actually use more of their characters' multitude of abilities ultimately is better for the game because it increases the diversity of the type of content that can be offered.

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I agree with you in theory that this would make the game more fun for those of us who actually spend time learning the game.

But WOTLK proved (with numbers in the millions) that in reality, the players you describe do not get bored with the game. In fact, the opposite occurs and they bring friends and subscription numbers rise.

WOW's sub numbers went up because of what they did in WOTLK. For every person that got bored and quit, 3 or 4 more new subscribers replaced them.


The masses want mindless, easy, fun, entertainment. They don't read forums, or MMO champion, or wowhead, or anything else about how to play the game. They just want to log in and faceroll their way to epics.

That is how blizzard got numbers to rise.

Why they thought reversing it would not revers subscriptions boggles the mind.

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I don't know if the subscription numbers rose more during WOTLK than they rose during BC, or even during vanilla for that matter.

I also don't know why those numbers rose (if in fact they did) more during that period.

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Spilt_Milk posted:

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I am done healing until they fix their mistake. It's just plain not fun anymore.

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Elaok posted:

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LFD is totally not worth doing right now can down a boss or 2 but it just feels DPS go aboslutely RETARDED by a third or second boss and decide to stop interrupts or decide the healer can heal through this.



The Holy Pally nerf was hard on me it took me a day to get back on my feet i'm still healing heroics and we are clearing them as a guild but the tank is super geared and we still wipe quite alot




IN THE END they just need to like double the heals i think that'd be a good place to start i'm giving it a month but i'm close to voting with my wallet and telling them healing is just not fun as it is right now

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Auenwing posted:

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You still have to factor in what someone called (Bremen I believe), "filling 5 bathtubs of water with a thimble."

Lich King, it was all about offense. Hitting hard. Taking mobs and players down fast.

Cata is old-style defense: outlasting the mobs, peeling them off one at a time. And healing through that. If the healing is weaker, that's a problem.

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