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Clarification: Ghostcrawler's Healing in Arenas Comments
Recently Ghostcrawler made a comment on the forums that really set a lot of people off about healing in arenas. This is a fairly important clarification.
Healing in Arenas
I made an unclear post that ended up setting a lot of people off. I did not mean DPS classes should be able to faceroll healers. I did not mean that one DPS should be a match for one healer. I did not mean that CC should have no role in Arenas. I did not mean that healing should have no role in Arenas. I did not mean that we think healers are finally getting their just deserts in season 5.
The best way I can think to say it is: Burst damage should not dominate Arenas. Crowd control should not dominate Arenas. Healing should not dominate Arenas.
I don't think this is really news to people who have been doing Arenas very long.
Blue Posts
On Healing Overhaul
I have given an ETA and I will give another one. It will be a long time. Do not look for it in the next patch or so. We want to take a comprehensive look at healing the way we did at tanking, and that took a long time. Healing may even be trickier to change. I also always add when I comment on this topic that you should not assume that all or even most healers hate healing or even find it clunky at best. Many players love healing and we have to be careful not to break the game for them.
Current State of Arenas
Blizzard is talking about the current state of Arena. It's not appropriate for me to say anything about it yet because honestly we need more discussions with our entire design team. It isn't fair for me to give you my opinions without consulting them, particularly not on something that elicits such passionate responses from players. Anything that brings about this much discussion from the community is going to promote discussions at Blizzard.
Healing vs. Damage in Arenas
No, this was actually my point. When shamans see the only way to kill a healer to be a stun, silence or mana drain, then they understandably ask for those abilities. We don't want Arena to be a system where every class has the same tools and just endlessly counter each other. Damage in Arenas needs to be a factor.
On Arena / Chess Comparison
Healer PvP Rings
The mp5 is a different story and gets into the whole larger issue of what is that stat supposed to do and who is it for if not paladins?
Damage in Arenas
I would say we are definitely worried that players are dying too fast, particularly to a handful of specs that combine high damage with high survivability. We know resilience will make a difference, but they jury is still out on whether it will make enough of a difference. Regardless, it's clear a lot of players aren't having fun, so it is something we are talking about.
Replacing Naxx Gear with PvP Gear
Right now they can kill you quickly, so they might as well have 20 health.
Once they can't kill you as quickly (because you have more resilience) then their defense becomes more important. Unless you are on the legendary 3 healer comp, your side can do some damage too. If the healers survive longer, then everyone has to worry more about defense.
Now some players (esp. rogues) with too much innate survivability have been able to avoid PvP gear in the past, or reach the resilience cap so easily that they can mix in high DPS PvE gear as well. This is definitely a concern with paladins and death knights at the moment.
If your contention is that no amount of resilience is going to keep them from three-shooting you, then the attackers are never going to need defense because the battles will never last long enough. That is why we are trying to predict what things will be like with more resilience so we know how much we have to backfill.
