What Makes the Healer Class Unpopular? Part3

How to make a Happy Healer

If you are looking for an truthful answer then you need to ask difficult questions. Probably an ancient eastern proverb but right now its just how I am tackling the priest problem and it is a problem. Just look at the population numbers for any MMO and you'll see what all the complaining is about. The fact that clerics and priests are required for any advanced encounter and that they are rare is just another time sink. So lets get our hands dirty, our brains tired, and are fingers cramped by trying to figure out what can be done.

What's the difference between healers and other classes in MMORPGs?
1) They focus on achieving victory by keeping others alive
2) They have to be more aware of hitpoints and other player's actions.
3) Their ability to heal is most effective in groups

What are the negatives aspects of these differences?
1) No direct damages done to enemies from healing
2) They have to be good at multi-tasking to watch everyone's health
3) They are required to be constantly paying attention which often leads to higher burnout rates in raids/groups
4) Dealing damage to enemies draws attention away from healing and uses mana
5) Soloing can be much slower for priests then grouping

It just doesn't seem like a priest receives enough credit by healing people. How come there's no videos on YouTube of epic priests healing people for 5k? Because its boring and people are more impressed by damage dealt directly then damage dealt by healing the main tank.

Some abilities that address direct damage:

1) The Death Bubble: Give priests the ability to bubble allies in a shield which bursts and deals damage to the enemy that hits them. Assign the damage to the priest but assign the agro to the shielded target.

2) Lifeburn: Warlocks sacrifice others but priests are all about self sacrifice. Thus allow them a spell that uses their own life to deal damage to an opponent. Blood Elf paladins are already getting a similar ability in Seal of Blood

3) Wand Mastery: Allow an talent or ability that allows priests to cast a healing spell without interrupting the auto wand ability. Other spells should stop it but come on allow them to heal while doing mediocre wand damage

Multi-tasking is one of the big problems I personally have with playing a priest. Its not that I am lazy but its challenging to keep the main tank alive and watch out for suicidal dps classes.

4) Auto-Heal: An ability that automatically casts a priest's small heals on party members with less then a certain amount of life. The ability can have a slow cool down so its not as effective as manually healing. But it would allow a priest to watch one health bar and not miss out when someone else takes damage. There is already a Emergency Health Monitor mod in World of Warcraft so I guess the developers are not set against lessening the multi-tasking healers have to do.

5) Auto-Self-Heal: When not in a group the priest can use a ability which automatically heals them for a low number of hitpoints without interfering with any other casting. The ability uses up mana for every heal so think of it as a heal over time that the priest can end or start whenever they want

If you notice, all the changes I proposed don't interfere with the priest's ability to heal others. They basically allow the priest the do a little more direct damage to targets and have a bit more survivability in solo combat. Feel free to tell me what you think of my suggestions.


Part 1 - The History of the Hard to find Healer
Part 2 - A Healer does not a Hero make
Part 3 - How to make a Happy Healer