+healing should be removed from the game because:

a.) It leads to a self-perpetuating cycle where content is balanced around healers having +healing, and thus it is the only thing they want.
b.) This leads to healer roles being restricted to healing and healing only.
c.) This leads to scaling of incoming damage that further increases the stature of warriors being the only tanks.


+healing is 96% more effective than +damage/healing. A healer prioritizing +healing will be much more effective than one who prioritizes damage/healing. Skill being equal, of course. This is such a large difference that game designers must design content around healers having +healing gear. To do otherwise would create trivial encounters. In the absence of +healing, designers would have to design around healers having half as much, and nothing would really change. My point here is that the efficiency of +healing on the stat budget is so huge that it affects design decisions. +Fire/Ice... etc do not have the same concerns because fire is not always useful while healing always is, and the designers made +damage schools only 20% more efficient than damage/healing.

Because +healing is so good, because healers all want it and almost nothing else, healers end up decked with it. Shaman.. the Caster/Healer hybrid.. has a Tier 3 suit that has 0 points of +damage on it. ZERO. And we all loved it because it allowed Shaman to do their primary job of healing. However, they would have never needed all that +healing if content hadn't been designed to need it. The result is that uber shaman in T3 do not have the capacity to do good secondary damage.. any mana usage issues aside. Shaman damage does not scale at all, because to keep up in the healing race they have to spend their itemization points on +healing. This is a concern that will not go away in the expansion.

The fact that +healing ramps up so quickly affects the incoming damage that a main tank can take. Fights like Twin Emps, Patchwerk.. etc are all based around a certain amount that can be healed. Warrior Tanks are the best at damage mitigation and avoidance. As damage levels increase and increase, the ability for other classes to tank decreases, because the absolute difference gets larger and larger. Now, this argument I have thought about the least, so I may be a bit off on it.


So, to sum up. +healing is a massively overpowered stat that has distorted the balance of wow and vastly contributed to the shackling of healers to just +healing and not damage/healing. I don't think anyone would miss it if it was removed or toned down. In fact, quite the opposite, I think healers would enjoy it a lot more.

y hello thar wow general forums

I'm not quite sure why you think this belongs in wow general. I may have used a slightly inflammatory title, but I think the point stands.

It's an interesting argument but what would you have take its place?

Yes, you tried, but I really don't think it makes any sense. What design model would you create wherein every class won't just compute the optimal stat choice for what they want to do, and then min/max for it?

Most people are going to read this as:
Aside from that, it feels like more of a whine to me really. You don't have any compelling points aside from the fact that our raid healers aren't decked in +dmg gear.

I would advocate just +damage/healing. Healers are in a conundrum. They must get +healing to increase their primary effectiveness. However, the +healing stat is just too efficient to ignore at the moment. I suppose +healing/shadow and +healing/holy could be created, but that might be too complex.

I'll try to address some of the concerns.

One, I don't read wow general at all. Ever. I rarely read the class boards. I read blue tracker and that's about it. So if someone brought it up there, I didn't know about it. They may have taken a different take on it. I'm coming at it from the perspective of a guild leader at 4h horde side.

Two, I hope that it is not read that healers should not get upgrades or +damage gear. I let my healers take +damage gear. I'm just dissapointed that in a lot of fights they don't get to use it. Or.. put it this way. My mages get +damage/healing. They are mostly fire, when they need to use frost for something.. the damage is still there. My shamans are in T3, they mostly heal, when they go to do some dps.. they get no use from the healing. When I asked my priests how much their SW:P did 2 years ago.. it is the same answer they gave last night.

Three, my intention is not to call for a nerf to healers, and yes, I understand that this affects pvp. I belive that, in general, a reduction in +healing could be balanced around in the pve game. I'm not 100% sure what this would do to pvp. However, it doesn't seem like a huge distortion.

This isn't a bad thing. There are people who play healers who really like the fact that since they specialize in healing they're better healers than people that don't specialize in healing. Your argument may as well be that +defense should be removed because tanks that specialize in +defense are locked in to tanking and are poor DPSers as a result. All it takes is a gear swap to be effective in either case.

If there was dmg/healing on every item, loot wars between warlocks/mages would then get embroiled with the priests/druids/paladins.

Now, if they were to make dmg/heal on items, AS WELL AS only +dmg on items, then that would be something.

I'm still not sure why no items in the game have only +dmg on them.

You could make the same argument around any purely PvE stat - defense, spell hit (past the PvP minimum), or even extend it to entire specs.

Specialization will exist in gear. Are you arguing against that or only the item budget cost +healing is too low? What would be a more appropriate value - 50%? At what percentage difference does out of raid versatility overcome raid efficiency? I suspect the answer would be different in every guild environment, making any attempt to objectively arrive at a value pointless.

Haven't we learned our lesson with Warriors about people who get to have two classes at once?

Shadow Priests in non-set gear come the closest to a mage's dps. However, my suggestion would not increase their dps.
It would increase the dps of Holy and Discipline specced Priests who gear to raid.
I really can't imagine any proper dps class being threatened by a holy specced priest, even in full damage/healing gear.

Asking for +healing to be nerfed is just a convoluted way of asking for Priest damage to be buffed. That's why this is WoW General territory.

Welcome to the shit heap. May your stay be short and arduous. Unless you can suggest a complete game system overhaul such a statement is just utterly ridiculous, it's like saying +defence should be removed from the game and warriors should rely solely on armour.

Most of the healers I know agree that +healing is most NOT the end all be all of healer stats. Around 1k + healing, which is fairly easy to get provided you're a naxx guild, you want to STOP getting it. Focus instead on spirit/mana.

I had 1150 +healing, full T3. But I found mana regen becoming a problem on endurance fights, so I've actually dropped back and re-equiped 3 peice stormrage.

I will admit, I don't care much for +healing as a stat. It boring. It's a passive stat. Its not proactive. Its not like AP or whatever where it helps the fight go faster, things die more, massive crits etc. Its actually about making me push my button less. Its a stat that doesn't make me feel more powerful. The tank is more integral to survival than my heals are. Its up to the TANK'S stats to be the primary determination of a fight. If he dies before I can land the heal, all the +healing in the world is useless.

But its a nessecary evil. There isn't other realistic way to improve healer power. New spells every dungeon? Against their design philosphy of incremental upgrades instead of periodic plateuas. Spell haste? Oh jesus no, that'd be insanity. I just don't see any other way to give healers loot thats even midly interesting without +healing. Otherwise the only thing healers would get from their gear is more stats.

I expect this thread to be in the heap soon. Maybe I'm wrong.

You can still edit the title to be more situable to what you are thinking (even it is crazy and will never happen), but it may not matter once Gurg gets back.

For fuck's sake don't do this:
etc.

If you think a thread doesn't merit conversation, then here's a thought: Don't reply.
If you think a thread is so flagrantly stupid or otherwise violates rules such that it doesn't belong on the forums, report it.

When you post to say "hi this thread sucks" you aren't exactly making a sparkling contribution to discourse yourself.

I completly agree with the last bit Praetorian. I was cheering that Shamans FINALLY got a set that got the x/5 and +healing that they wanted for raiding. Set purity that other classes had for a long time.

I'm just saying that, because I was so happy about it.. it means there is a flaw in the game. When purity is that important, perhaps that means it is too important.

And for a few other people, I'm talking specifically of the relationship between +healing and +damage/healing. I completly agree that regen, manapool, etc. are all part of 'getting it done' as a healer.

No, the problem was how they designed shamans as hybrids in the context of the pre-TBC raid game. The expansion will fix a lot of that, as it should, I think (though elemental still needs some help for raiding!). Shamans in the WoW endgame are currently healers who drop buff totems and have some very minor utility (interrupting Eye Tentacles, etc.). Yet they kept itemizing for us as though we were some type of true hybrid. Helm of the Lifegiver was the only pure healer item that Blizzard made, for far, far too long. Sure, Infernal Headcage and Ten Storms legs and so forth were nice for PvP and grinding, but shamans don't nuke on raids. We don't melee as a primary role, any more than a holy priest uses Smite all the time. A shadow priest properly specced and geared can genuinely contribute at all levels of raiding, also offering nice synergy with warlocks. A feral druid can tank Naxx bosses if need be (not optimal, etc. etc., whatever, but the point is they can do it). Shamans never had alternatives on that level, yet Blizzard kept making tons of mail with +dam/heal, lots of spell crit, and so forth. That's what was frustrating.

It's not that +healing or whatever is just that amazing. It's that Earthshatter was the first set Blizzard ever designed that actually catered to what shamans really do in raids.

I think you do have a point, and I've seen this brought up even on these forums before (it was quite a while ago). The issue brought up then was that it was pushing healers into a corner and that caused significant burnout due to being *only* able to heal with the optimal raid gear. They can't farm, grind, or even solo pvp with all their +healing gear. Which is a valid argument and I think its something Blizzard should look into.

Someone brought up that its the same thing as druids not having healing + feral gear. Sure, in theory thats true, but how many other classes fight over those high armor/sta leather items? Any piece of leather that drops (with a few exceptions) goes directly to a druid for their pvp/grinding set of gear. When a non-set piece of cloth with crit and spell damage drops, how often does it go to a priest or druid? In my experience, not too often. Many of the misc damage gear is very good for both mages and warlocks for both pvp and raiding, so they get priority in most cases.

Best solution to the problem? Although I'm sure druids will complain about lack of feral gear, I don't think its really that bad. Most of our druids have put together decent sets that make a hell of a difference when they're not in a raid. That being said though, raid content is currently designed for druids/priests to be healers, so there isn't enough gear available to equip a feral druid with the ease of equipping a prot warrior. Which is something they'll be changing in TBC from what I've read. Anyway, I think priests are looking for similar to what druids have in their feral options currently.

Now, your solution to the problem (making healing cost more in item formulas) may help a bit, but the same general flaw will be there. Whether you're comparing 150 healing to 100 damage/healing or 200 healing to 100 damage/healing, the healing is still "better" in a pve enviroment. It'll just be easier to say "I can sacrifice that much healing so I can have fun outside of raids". Removing the stat from the game causes even more issues that take a defining stat away from a class so I don't think thats a very viable solution.

What if they were to add tokens that were acquired like frozen runes, set amount per week from chests after certain bosses, which you could turn in for alternate style gear. Basically, priest damage items, druid moonkin/feral items, paladin dps items, and other alternate/pvp style items (maybe upgraded stamina/survival). Make the items close to, but inferior to the pvp items obtained from arenas and other pvp events so that there's a clear distinction, to keep the pvpers from complaining. You could even use them as a progression check, have a fight that forces priests to do damage, druids to tank/do damage, etc... Arena style pve! :P I'm just throwing some ideas out there.

Thats all the time I have for now, gotta head to a meeting, but you get the point I'm trying to get at.

Maybe this is an option for the + healing gear.

Make a talent in a tree that applies a % of plus healing to work as plus damage and healing? That could address the problem without gimping healers for taking the gear and it would still allow them to level, do damage ect.

Thoughts?