Difficulties with Rushing as a Healer
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Let me start off by saying this is entirely an opinion, and I would love to hear what others think about it, both for and against, but please try to make it constructive rather than just telling a person to 'git gud' or 'just do meta' or the likes. That sort of behaviour is part of the issue I hope to illustrate in this topic.
TLDR: Rushing is the norm and people blame you if you cannot keep up, especially as the Healer.
In my time playing as a Healer on Ascension, I have found a grievance that never seem to go away, but I want to begin by clarifying the good parts I found being a Healer first...
- Playing around with the various Mystic Enchants is great fun and there is a lot of interesting ways you can build a Healer. More so now that the devs are adding more damage+heal MEs.
- Playing with a full party of friends in a call is absolute bliss as a Healer, especially when trying for World Challenges or Mythic+ Dungeon content.
- Healers are always in demand. Yay.
- Aaand that is the end of the list. Really.
Now for the grievance:
Unwritten rule of RUSH. In dungeons, if you don't have a group of friends to play with, or at the very least a friend that Tanks, good luck having fun as a Healer. Countless times have I encountered Tanks that rush far ahead, pulling groups upon groups that in retail would be unfathomable to survive. And if not the Tank, then one of the DPS snipes the next group in before the Tank is ready and then all hell breaks loose. This is especially the case if you are running for pre-mythic gear.
You are not given time to have mana breaks, unless you beg for it. You better be able to follow the tank around corners/obstacles. And if you can't keep up or the party wipes, the Healer is to blame. Complain about them rushing or admit that you can't keep up? Nah, Healer gets kicked.Now there are healers out there that can keep up and kudos to them.
I have seen it happen to tanks too, where one or more of the DPS tells the tank to pull more, tank then doesn't, so DPS gets mad and pulls instead. Tank tries their best to catch the pulled group, but now the DPS is steamrolling their full burst on everything around, because they have a itchy rush-finger. Tank loses aggro, chaos ensues and voila, now the tank is the bad one here for sucking at tanking. That is what happens, instead of the DPS getting the blame.
Why the rush? Am I right in thinking that everyone are running with such HUGE confidence, that rushing is just the norm? And if someone fails to live up to that standard, they are the issue? You just have to do better or run the most optimal build?
Now, the blame-game is nothing new on retail either, and I'm not saying every tank or DPS here on Ascension is like this, but in my years of playing here, that is the impression I am getting. Something has really been screwed up in what people expect when running dungeons and how immature they react when those expectations aren't met.
Is it because that some Healers out there can keep up with the rush, that everyone are just okay with doing it? Are those Healers rushing by choice or because "that is how it has always been" and just accept it? Some other reason?
Will Healers just become unnecessary outside of raids at some point? When will it end up with everyone just being their own healer, for the sake of pumping out more DPS so we can rush more?
Are nobody else tired of experiencing party kicks for not rushing? Or that everyone leaves because of a single wipe?
My suggestion on how to tackle the issue:
I would love if the Group Finder got an extra box to tick, where you can apply to Rush or not. Either that or a reputation/karma system, where poor teamwork/behaviour becomes something visible to the public or used by the Group Finder to match with others closest to each other in rep/karma.
Please do comment your thoughts on all of this. It is by far my biggest concern as a Healer, and likely one of the reasons no one wants to run Healer, but I only have my own experiences to base it on.
Thank you for reading.
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@LuchiousCaine I don't have a lot of end-game experience on Ascension as a healer (mostly doing trials on league/season servers), but like 80-90% of my dungeon runs during levelling is this rush. Maybe that's fun for tanks and/or dpsers, but really stressful for healer - you constantly trying to catch up with tanks (and i swear it looks like some of em trying to get out of LoS on purpose) while avoiding mobs cc (oh that Razorfen piggies with frost novas and earthgrab totems).
So yea, i agree with you - it would be nice to have more relaxed groups. As for karma system i'm afraid it will work against you: what's stopping dps/tank give you a minus before kicking for not rushing? And there are four of em and only one of you So you can end up with bad karma in the end. -
@Newfr Phew, I hadn't considered the counter-point to the karma system. It would be really bad if it was used for harassment that way - But if that is how it would actually turn out, that says a lot more about the community if so, if that sort of behaviour is silently accepted and/or expected.
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Well, healers and tanks have always had a hard time in MMORPGs, so they have to be the smarter ones, unfortunately, because people who play DPS are mostly driven by numbers (DPS meter) and don't need to care about anything else (threat for dps is unknown, you don't have mana, who cares I want to have high DPS) and unfortunately M+ dungeons also support this mentality of DPS players because they are for time. But in WoW, the job of a healer is relatively simple, keep everyone at 100% HP if possible. I used to play an MMORPG where you, as a healer, had to watch over the players so that they had a specific % of HP and alas, how did you exceed it? Imagine maintaining 3x DPS at max 30% hp (game had a party for 7 players). And in addition, WoW is still deprived of a Support class, so DPS players can only complain about healers and tanks. If there was a support class in WoW, part of the blame would go to the support (such as why the healer didn't have enough mana, why I ran out of buffs, why DPS under tank and so on)
So, in short, DPS is not responsible for anything, everything is the fault of an incompetent healer, tank, (support)
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@WiliemDemon For example, playing a DoT tank on Ascension is impossible because no dps will wait for the first tick from the DoT effect (and at the same time the first damage inflicted causes an increased threat)
And yet nobody cares at all https://discord.com/channels/215946029277642752/265735119505981440/1173315614434140270
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