If you’re reading this, chances are high that you’ve just alt-tabbed from World of Warcraft Dragonflight to kill time while you’re waiting for a healer to grace your party with their divine presence. Gentle and tilted as they are, healers have become one of the rarest creatures of the Dragon Isles—and not just because they’re playing Diablo 4 instead.
Coming into Dragonflight season two, Blizzard Entertainment has made a lot of changes to Mythic+ dungeons. For the most part, these were positive. The devs removed outdated affixes, added three new ones, and switched up the Mythic+ dungeon pool. In the sea of these overwhelmingly great decisions, Blizzard slipped in one dreaded change that increased player Stamina (the stat that determines your health) and enemy damage by 25 percent and it has left a mark on the Mythic+ meta more than any other update.
But this isn’t the only change that has driven healers away from Mythic+ dungeons. Luckily, this beloved Restoration Shaman (that’s me) will guide you through the exact reason why we’d rather do open world activities or head straight for Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible instead of delving into Mythic+ dungeons.
We have to heal more, and then a bit more, and then a bit more…
As I already mentioned, the biggest change for healers came with Dragonflight Patch 10.1 on May 2 and it increased players’ overall health and damage done by all enemies by 25 percent. With enemies doing more damage and players having bigger health pools, healers have to spend more time spamming their lovely healing buttons on you to top you off.
In Dragonflight season one, the healing meta was centered around burst healing and Preservation Evokers were your go-to healer with strong and bursty healing cooldowns. So, if Blizzard kept burst healing as a core mechanic, the only way to make players feel endangered was to threaten to one-shot them. Instead of that, Blizzard increased damage and player Stamina. In a nutshell, this has made healing more intuitive, fluid, and noob-friendly since you don’t have to know by heart each and every ability in a dungeon. Don’t get me wrong, you still need to know dungeon mechanics when doing higher keys, but now your DPS won’t simply be one-shot.
No more healer DPS
Although this is not obligatory in lower keys, healer DPS in 20+ Mythic dungeons can make or break a run. Ideally, healers should average somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 DPS on a pack and they should always prioritize healing and dispelling over doing damage.
In Dragonflight season one, I had no problems dealing damage since I could easily top off my group and then get right back into the fray. But now, I’m ticking my teammates with my heals and I rarely have time to help out in the damage department. This is because of the 25 percent Stamina and enemy damage increase.
Wanted: Dispels
During Dragonflight season two, the most valuable asset a healer can bring to a Mythic+ run is dispels. No matter if they are just poison dispels or mass dispels, dispels are of huge value this time around because of Incorporeal and Afflicted affixes as well as regular dispels you have to do throughout the dungeon.
Essentially, this means you as a healer have to opt for dispels in your talent trees and you’ll most likely lose out on healing bonuses. With weaker heals you have to diligently and continuously press your healing buttons, especially because DPS specs are not willing to sacrifice a couple of talent points to help their fellow healer out.
An overwhelming number of mechanics
While I’m juggling my healing with poor DPS output and dispelling, I still have to do the dungeon mechanics properly if I want to live more than five seconds. While I’m healing my heart out on Altairus in the Vortex Pinnacle, praying everyone survives, I still have to move upwind, dodge the frontal and cute little swirlies on the ground, and jump into Twisting Winds to dodge Downburst.
Related: Top WoW players are always bringing one DPS spec to their Mythic+ dungeons
This is trickiest in Dragonflight dungeons with each boss having five or more abilities that can easily take over your screen and overwhelm you. Although this is a challenge and a skill on its own, imagine juggling dungeon mechanics while healing. I have to admit that it didn’t happen to me just once: I died to a boss mechanic just because I was trying to squeeze in one more heal before dealing with it. Overall, the pacing in Mythic+ dungeons is extremely fast and you have to spend at least half an hour fully aware of everything happening on your screen, so where am I meant to find the time to make sure my team has their health bars topped up?
How do we lure healers back to Mythic+ dungeons?
Honestly, you really can’t bring healers back unless Blizzard intervenes. The 25 percent Stamina and enemy damage increase has had a domino effect on healing in Mythic+ dungeons and we simply have too much responsibility on our hands. Essentially, all healers have to heal, manage cooldowns, do dungeon mechanics properly, dispel, and if they can, deal damage. On the other hand, DPS just deal damage, do mechanics, and manage their cooldowns.
So, to say the least, we healers feel overburdened, and unless Blizzard does something about healing in the upcoming patches, no-healer teamcomps might truly become the meta in Dragonflight.
