WoW dev chat – Twitter: on making healing “more fun”
Today’s WoW developer chat on Twitter is now complete! The selected questions and answers are here.
Q. Is the Valithria Dreamwalker encounter a deliberate move towards making WoW more “fun & interesting” for healers? Will we see more encounters like this?
A. We want to make healing more fun, yes. Part of that is letting healers use their whole repetoire instead of just their best spells. Part of it is trying to get healers to look at the battlefield a little more and unit frames a little less, that of course means a little more time in between spamming heals so you can do stuff like that.
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Sigh.
I loathe this trend towards making healing an FPS twitchfest. I just want to look at my unit frames; 75 rectangles, changing over time. I resent having all this movemen, like some bad xBox encounter.
Why can’t they make some healers have 25 spells and at least one being something less chaotic. I think all this lobbying is to make healing more enjoyable for the people who don’t heal now and won’t in the future while making it less appealing to the people who currently are healers. I.e., not everyone likes managing others health and their mana, but those people probably are not playing healers now and won’t be in Cataclysm, while the “2.4″ healers are unimpressed with the new mechanics.
After all the paladin nerfs and looking at the trends, I quit healing with 3.2 and am just waiting until Cataclysm, albeit not with a sense of optimism.
I admit I’m a little worried too. The best fights for me are the ones where I’m constantly thinking about what I need to do next, which heal to use, where to move. The ones in which your brain is always engaged. Whilst having to manage your mana is one thing, standing around doing nothing is another entirely.
I’m also a little insulted by the fact that they seem to think all healers don’t see any of fight because we are tunnel visioned staring at little green boxes. My boyfriend was our main tank for years, up against a wall looking at a large boss and he saw less of a fight than I did. Does a rogue stabbing the back of a boss get an awesome overview of the fight, of course not.
They got rid of downranking, they made the five second rule dancing pretty much worthless and now they want us to stop and take breaks to smell the roses and admire the scenery….
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I think healing is already fun. If I didn’t I wouldn’t be doing it. Sure, I spend a lot of time looking at raid frames, but I also spend a lot of time paying attention to the environment during fights. I assume that goes for all healers, or at least all good healers, because if you’re not paying attention to the battlefield, you’re not going to live long.
The dev’s answer to the fun question is misguided. Fights that are healing-intensive and require a lot of spamming are fun. Challenge is fun. Standing around with nothing to heal is not fun. Would they ever suggest that dps stop spamming their attacks so they have more time to look around? I doubt it.
Plus, I think you definitely have a point Keeva. If less healing is needed, less healers will be used.
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if i want to look at the scenery, i’d be a dps.
having healed and tank on my druid, i can say neither tasks allows for much looking at the scenery except to see when you are standing in bad stuff. tanks – you’re either looking at your threat table, what debuffs the boss is throwing on you, where you are positioned, etc etc. and healers – mainly raid frames, people’s health bars, and my mana bar.
meh, if they want us to enjoy the scenery, allow us to enter raid zones without any boss or mobs in them.