I recently picked up healing because of lack of healers on our server. Does anyone find this enjoyable? I feel like there are so many tweaks that could be done to make raid healing more fun. But it got me thinking, is the reason there aren’t many healers because healing isn’t fun? Then again maybe I’m in the minority?
Raid healing can be pretty fun. Once you get to know the raid fights, you can predictively cast heals at the right time to do the most good. The biggest problem with raid healing right now is that raid events in ToL are just too long and as such, it becomes pretty exhausting to concentrate on healing and doing the emotes for the entirety of the event. Also, there's a lot of abilities that are just plain useless, now, due to how the game mechanics work. Every single debuff without counters can't be radiant cured off. I never really have to worry about running out of mana, so the damage mobs do to the tanks is very high, so you pretty much have to be constantly healing the tanks like a twitch based shooter game in order to keep them alive. A good change to the game would be to increase how much mana the heals cost and reduce the damage done by the mobs, so there's more decision making process in healing and there's more time between when the mob starts attacking someone and they die. This would make the game more interactive in that you would actually need to make decisions as to whether to cast a heal and how big of a heal, and you would have more time to react after someone starts getting attacked instead of always just needing to predictively spam heals on who is supposed to be tanking.
I equate fun with satisfaction in doing a necessary raid role well. You already stated the obvious, raids don't exist without healing. Some group content or progression can't be done without a live healer, especially when you're trying to learn how to win a mission or heroic. But I'm probably different or weird, being a druid and all.
I've been maining a cleric on Mangler since Velious, currently in Veil of Alaris (level 95) era. Up until GoD was honestly pretty boring since it's primarily CH chains. But once healing becomes an active job with more buttons to push I find it to be a lot of fun. It's a role that really needs to be on focused and on point most of the time. Personally I find pure DPS classes on raids to be pretty one dimensional.
I have played a cleric on raids for a couple of different raid teams, and I have frequently enjoyed the experience. This is more modern era, after CH chains are no longer a thing, which I think I would find pretty boring. But nowadays, it can definitely be a challenge, especially if the raid force is light on healing, which is not unusual. Also as it's not my main, I think the added challenge of playing a class I'm not as intimately familiar with adds to my enjoyment of the challenge. The main drawback is it can be largely a thankless job. People can be quick to blame you for dying, and are short on praise when you do a good job. That being said, when you do get some props for saving someone, it does make for a nice little boost and makes you happy you've decided to heal as your contribution. I've enjoyed it, know many that hate it, I think it all just depends on what you find fun, as usual.
I enjoy Raid Healing, it's not my favourite thing to do but knowing you can make a big difference to the overall raid doing well feels great & at an individual player level you can make the difference between someone having a s****y day & an okay one. At a team level it's very rewarding being one of the key roles for success, as much as everyone has to pull together to get the win your actions absolutely do matter as a healer, in group games I only enjoyed healing if the content we were tackling was hard, healing in boring easy content is a zero thrill scenario for me.
There was a time when I really enjoyed raid group healing as a Paladin. Think it was around DoN or so where it became a lot of fun to juggle between single target, gheals and HoTs depending on the need of the fight. That role also came with curing responsibilities, before splash cures were a thing. That was kind of fun as it meant keeping multiple cures up and knowing which to use on what. Often meant building an on-the-fly priority list in your head based on who could soak up a few DoT ticks and who couldn't. Eventually it got to the point where splash was the only cure worth casting and the attached heal meant it was also the only multi-target heal worth casting. Became just throw out splash regardless, maybe offset when you start casting to match DoT timing. As I have heard and began to experience in group/solo stuff, cures aren't able to really do anything useful despite giving us so many upgrades to them.
Raid healing is fun if you have a nice wide masochistic streak, or your OCD is epic level, or you find positive affirmation is unnecessary, and you have a bladder trained by years of alcohol abuse and you have a simple-minded ability to focus on little red health bars for literally hours on end. Luckily for most guilds there's a few of us freaks out here.
Raid healing is fun. If you can lead your heal parse as a cleric, beating cheating shamenses, and rez more than anyone else and the rebuff more than everyone else, you win. Group healing is only fun when it's challenging enough to keep me awake. Like 5+ mobs in camp at all times and ToL mission runs for achievements. Conq
Evye, wave! One thing I would say is make sure you've tested out the various types of healing assignments because perhaps you aren't put in the best slot. Specifically I mean different heal skillsets are needed if you are healing in the main warrior group versus if you are healing a knight that is kiting or offtanking. You use some similar heals but there are very distinct heals you use (or don't use) in each group. Also, there's sort of a third type (utility cleric) who can focus on things like making sure DI is on, shining vie line is on, reapplying short term heals/spells where needed or buffing dead. Raid forces handle this role in different ways ... but it really is a different skillset - specifically what you lean towards. I haven't raided in a few years now so can't speak to today's raids really, but did want to mention these differences. It may be that you are being assigned a role that doesn't fit with what you think about, especially coming from the ranger role which can be more about DPS and situational awareness (which is why I mention the utility role).
I can see how mouse-over-targeting/healing could be very useful. Currently, the extended target window can be used for targeting, just assign a suitable key to each slot, for instance from the number pad. And multi-bind the key to healing spell on a hot bar. It's the difference of using your keyboard for targeting/healing vs. your mouse.
IMO - playing a healer is by far the hardest role there is on a raid. As others have said its often a thankless job. Tanks and DPS often go out of their way to make your job harder. The EQ developers insist on making raid scripts that force you to juggle moving, ducking, dancing, and spinning china plates while reciting the alphabet, ... backwards, in the snow, up hill , both ways .... while keeping everyone alive. On the other hand, it can be very rewarding knowing you literally make or break the raid.
The flip side to this is that if you can put ROI style DPS into an event you make the clerics job so much easier because it's over quicker and with fewer chances to fail. I'm a big fan of earth shattering DPS!
Well Evye as I use to heal you quite a bit on raids, raid healing can be fun and a pain at the same time. Don't be a raid shaman. It's a thankless job but not boring. You are always doing something. I pride my self on keeping my group alive on raids. Recently though, the epeen DPS parse, I find deaths are way more than necessary. Melee very rarely ask for buffs (beside my buffs) after a death and the next big AE they are dead again. On CTG raid some think I can keep them alive when they don't follow the emotes and get death touched. I rather be in a tank group healing at times. Most fun was back in the day when I was in the puller group ( yes, they had to clear to get to the boss). Keeping that group ( 2 monks and a bard) up was a riot, especially when they try to kill the healer and bard for fun.
I remember the trash clears quite well. We would challenge each other (monks) to push the limit and find just how big of a trash pull we could hit the raid with with out (quite) wiping the raid, with bonus points for any bards we got killed via prox song agro.
