Hello guys and welcome to my new video and today we're talking about dragon flight healers and this is going to be a pure discussion based video, we’ll be talking about my opinions about which aspects make healers great or meta, how the community perception is shaped, we’ll be talking about the utility we’ll be talking about damage healing all of those things this is a discussion based video, if you have any opinions if you disagree or agree or how do you feel blizzard should approach the healing game in the next expansion.
First of all before we get started again a mandatory disclaimer because I do have to mention this unless you're pushing really high-end content or pugging for rank 1 meticulous achievements and things like that I don't think you should focus on meta or best healers, I think you should play the heal that you enjoy the most because believe it or not a lot of the times the difference between the best healer and the worst healer might not be as big as the community make it out to be and on top of that dragonflight is introducing quite a few utility abilities for healers and we'll talk about it.
But first of all I want to talk about the things that make healers met and I think there are three things that I need to talk about here and I don’t think every healer needs to be the best at every each one of these aspects to be meta but it does help so there is such a thing as a Healer meeting healing requirements surprise surprise A Healer has to heal, now this kind of concept has been diluted throughout the expansions because you do have to deal damage as a Healer you do have to provide utility and healing requirements again if you look at season 3 in shadowlands in Mythic plus the healing requirement was really really low every single healer was able to meet the healing requirement in every single dungeon.
This led toother aspects playing a bigger or more important role in terms of determining what healer is going to be great AKA damage and all the sudden healers that could provide the most damage whether it’s going to be through their personal DPS by dealing damage or providing utility something like pi and we'll talk about Pi or power infusion because it is making a comeback in dragonflight and I still think it's going to be somewhat toxic or a big portion of when determining priest viability or meta capabilities so healer being able to meet healing requirements has been a big thing because again in season 3 I talked about meticulous healing requirements really really low in season 4 shadowlands you'll start to see the Mythic plus healing requirements being increased vastly all the sudden bosses like moroes things like shade of medivh if you keep people alive you're going to beat the boss and you're gonna time the key and all the sudden a lot of the healers or healers who could provide more HPS were valued a little bit higher.
So this leads to my next Point, healers are only perceived to be meta based on the content that they're doing, if they’re doing a Mythic plus content or rating content which requires a huge amount of healer checks there is going to be a different Community perception around that and this begs the question and I really really want to know your opinion about this and this comes down to season three in shadowlands versus season 4 Mythic plus, do you want meticulous to have big healer checks where Gila feels like a Healer because if you keep people alive it doesn’t matter how much damage you do if you keep people alive you will kill the boss and he will time the key or do you want to go back to season 3 where you’re spending probably majority of your time dpsing and a lot of the times you almost feel like an off healer.
Based on my early testing and meticulous in terms of dragonflight a lot of the scaling was a little bit off the first week of mythical testing you were not scaled up and things like that so even a plus 10 would feel like a plus it would feel a lot harder but then after all scaling came into effect and the blue stance were really really easy but the initial requirement of the healing requirement felt pretty how do I say it felt pretty rough there were a couple of bosses or trash bags where you would actually have the home page BS in order to survive those mobs and I like to think that even with higher key levels scaling and the scaling is being changed in dragonflight in terms symmetic plus there will be a pretty substantial healing requirement at least on few of the Mythic plus dungeons that I got to test.
So just to quickly summarize some of the aspects I consider to be important for a Healer, now healer checks you need to make sure that your healing plants can meet the healing checks and that is going to be dependent content that you're doing and that is also going to be dependent on how how blizzard is going to tune Mythic and raiding content, on top of that healers do have to provide damage and the highest content if you're trying to push High meticulous keys or trying to do Mythic rating and again if you’re not meeting the DPS check healer DPS is going to be a thing and that involves evaluating healers through DPS output whether that's going to be true direct means of healer just doing damage or providing utility like power infusion or holy Paladin's God blessing of Summer and we have to see what is the total DPS value from that and then another aspect of healers is going to be utility certain healers have better utility.
Utility
Now every healer provides something in terms of utility but not everyone is made equal and this is where we're going to evoker because evoker is a new healing class being introduced in dragon flight and where does a evoker fit in terms of Niche and utility, I actually generally feel that blizzard doesn’t even know at this point where to bring evoker because I think initially they really thought they wanted the broker to be this mid-range Healer not melee not range they had a 25 yard range or majority of the heals they got moved up to 30.
And then on top of that last day or yesterday they added Echo being instant cast without having a cast iron which also begs the question what other spells are you going to cast during your Hoover besides living flame which maybe they’re going to allow and power the builders to be cast during hover which again we'll have to see but this is just to summarize the fact that blizzard is not 100 sure where to push evoker right now because there was a lot of negative feedback about evokers range limitations, there was feedback about the fact that evoker doesn't provide utility that is absolutely mandatory.
Now evoker does have a raid both blessing of the bronze which again provides cooldown reduction to your major movement ability which is pretty nice but it's not really mandatory compared to something like a Resto Druid it's Mark of the wild which gives you three percent versatility that kind of parity or Raid buff especially in meticulous environment reverse is one of the best stats is absolutely insane but blizzard kind of saw that and they were like okay evoker doesn't have enough utility their Niche is kind of slipping away from them let's give them bloodlust or heroism which makes a lot of sense because they were lacking something and bloodlust is absolutely huge and something like meticulous environment where you only have five people and getting bloodlust might not be as easy as it sounds but when you compare it to raid environment there is a very high chance that there's going to be multiple classes to provide these utilities so evokers raid utility I still don't think there is a huge Niche or Raid utility they provide that will get them invited to every single raid or race the world first but that can absolutely change.
Damage Reduction Abilities
So now we established there are three things that may kill our meta and you don’t have to have all of those things you don't have to be the best DPS healer, the best healer in terms of HPS or the Healer that provides the most utility to be brought in the raised world first or highest meticulous Keys done because there are multiple examples of healers that provide two of those out of three and they become super super strong as an example you can look at some poker in terms of holy Breeze now.
So poker logs are really misleading because most of the race the world's first content was done with one legendary then two legends unlocked and then some of the healers popped off in terms of pure HBS but the initial best deal or the the Healer that was brought to most raiding environments in terms of race the world first versus polka was holy priest, holy priest Hossa’s very very strong it was comparable to a lot of other healers with one legendary and they didn't provide the most utility they did have symbol of Hope which can't be pretty strong but they had pi and now this brings me to the discussion of external Buffs and the main culprits here is going to be power infusion for priests which is coming back in dragonflight and you also have blessing of summer for Holy paladins.
Holy Paladins are also or pilots in general also getting powerless which is another boom to their utility toolkit especially in something like meticulous environment where getting power rest might be a little harder I do have to look at engineering Ballers as well I haven’t looked into professions too much so we'll have to see how that's going to work but it's hard to obtain or how it is to use but blizzard did see issues about power infusion and what it should be brought back in dragonflight.
There's alot of people against it I think in a perfect world parent Fusion does odd class fantasy to priests because your support type healer you're adding value but we're not living in a perfect world we’re living in a world where people trying to get the highest bars as possible and trying to optimize every single percentage and power infusion can become a toxic almost a toxic ability in certain situations but blizzard did end up bringing it back in dragonflight at the cost of some utility priest is the only healer that does not have interrupt and they did lose certain utility abilities like Shining Force and things like that and that's what I call the pitax blizzard looked at their performance they looked at their utility toolkit and they were like okay if you're bringing power infusion back there needs to become cost Associated at least this is my opinion there needs to be some costs associated to priests because they have this huge utility ability that can bring a huge value.
I am speculating here but I’m assuming that power infusion is also going to be insanely strong in dragon flight unless it gets nerd now to finish off the segment we talked about certain things that can make healer meta we talked about healers meeting healer checks we talked about healers doing damage and utility we also talk about damage reduction cooldowns but I think that fits rating even more and you also have to consider that a Healer could provide the most did it in the game but they don't meet the HPS requirements so they don't meet the DPS requirements when compared to other healers and that was a prime example of resto Shaman at the start of BFA in terms of raiding where Resto Shaman still had Spirit link and healing cooldowns and things like that but their overall output wasn’t strong enough.
To lesser extent you could say the exact same thing about resto Shaman in dragonflight they do have a good class 3 a good spec tree they do have a lot of utility but they could use a simple Aura change to provide more damage in HPS and they would climb immensely in a lot of these dealer tier lists let's talk about raiding and what makes you look great in raids and things like that I don't want to Ramble On too much we'll talk about dragonflight we'll talk about my predictions a little bit of my prediction so we'll talk about previous data from shadowlands and what you see right.
Now on your screens is the poker Mythic raid HPS rankings now HPS does not define healers the best or worse and things like that because at higher and the healers need to provide utility, HPS and damage but these are somewhat misleading because the polka raised the world first a lot of the progression or race was done we with single legendary and the HBS meters were different, the second nature it came out and you saw Helios like wrestle Jude and mystery or running away with HPS and this feeds into the age-old discussion for the longest time Charter expansions blizzard was how do I say a lot of the healing the pure HPS this is not is not tracking damage reduction that's very important distinction it's not tracking or master the 15 damage production the holy pattern can provide or three percent damage reduction that it provides consistently with Devore so things like barrier for this increase things like Spirit link and stuff like that there is a lot of things that are lacking from this list but for the longest time people were very angry about the fact that in previous expansions holy priests and discipline priests would provide the same amount of HBS.
On top of the fact that they would have damage reduction cooldowns which did not show in this meter and they would also be very strong in terms of dealing damage because they would deal damage passively while healing so there was a lot of hatred towards this increase on Holy Bible and I think that in the last expansion or at least the very end of shadowlands Blizzard looked at this and they were like okay guys maybe these healers don't provide damage reduction but they're going to be pumping pure HPS and if you have a raid fight which requires huge HPS requirements don't look at rest of druid passive damage don't look at the resto druid lack of damage reduction look at how much it can carry in terms of Pure Healing and then all of a sudden you might actually be inclined about inviting resto Druid because you just want to meet the HPS check.
And now this is another point of discussion that I want to ask you guys, how should blizzard handle dragonflight raid HPS should healers that don't provide damage reduction do more healing should heal us to provide damage reduction do less is that how blizzard should balance healer rate performance because again there's a lot of other things in the mix here, things like power infusions their accounting is a big part of their utility it's not going to show up here’s looking at pure HPS for healers is not the best way to determine meta healer but should blizzard head the same direction that they did at the end of shadowlands and go in the same direction in dragonflight.
Now a big disclaimer I have been talking assuming the guilds in terms of possible raid roster submerging anything can change right now spell tuning is still ongoing and a lot of the healers got nerfed in the last couple of days but there is a lot of things to be said about double distance increase or distance increase and holy priests being included in a roster right now because power Shield matter or shielding meta for priests could be very strong, discipline did get a nerf but the Baseline power or Shield got an increase so we have to keep an eye out on this absorbs because if absorbs are going to be really strong this has been produced on multiple discomfiture could be considered for a lot of these raiding environments especially top end raiding environment and again priests in general they still have power infusion.
Power infusion I can almost bet you unless something happens to power infusion it’s going to be a very strong utility tool Avery strong there's always going to beat least one or couple of classes that are going to benefit a great amount from getting power infusions all the time a lot of people have been talking about holy pounding because their niche of tank healing has always been strong especially at the start of an expansion we have to look at the tank balancing and I think a lot of the viability for Holy power that is going to be based on whether tanks need a huge amount to sustained healing if there's going to be multiple tanks in a raid that are getting wrecked all the time Holy Paladin and the passive tank healing that they provide could solidify a spot in raiding roster for them regardless of the pumping out HBS or not I think Holy Paladin is doing pretty well right now in dragonflight even with the spell tuning anything can change but the fact that their Niche is pretty strong I think a lot of guilds will have at least one Holy Paladin.
Again take this with a pinch of salt and then a lot of raiding guilds were considering have at least or finishing off the raid roster with either mistweaver or druid, I think a lot of people were looking at resto druid because their HPS was really really strong but guess what happened in the last couple of days every single healer that I talked about here has been nerfed, resto Druid was nerfed mystery was nerved Holy Paladin was nerfed Priest winner and that left rest of Shaman and evoker.
Resto Shaman and evoker I think the high for them was a little bit lower in dragonflight especially in raid content because even though resto Shaman was providing a bunch of utility their numbers in terms of healing or DPS were not there compared to everyone else but you can change that with one simple Aura change and all of a sudden resto shaman could be tough, the same could be said for a evoker to a lesser extent because I think a evoker utility is not as strong as rest of Shaman and evoker those have absorbs or things like temporal anomaly they do have that raid movement speed both they do have Zephyr and things like that but I don't think their utility is all that or even Niche is all that amazing.
The whole point of the last segment was to showcase the blizzard is keeping their ear to the ground in terms of what healers are emerging in that rate method because they know that the community is going to look at race the world first they’re going to look at the healers that they’re bringing down and that effect is going to trickle down and lower in guilty do think that the dealers that Talked about in terms of being strong or possible raid roster submerging, I think that will change I think blizzard is going to look at how to include every single healer especially a evoker I don’t think they know exactly what they want to head with evoker but I don't think they want the evoker to be a Healer that’s not used anywhere because it is the flagship feature of the new expansion I find this fascinating I find the whole process of which healers are considered to be good or bad the whole process is really interesting because there’s so many different things that play here and there's multiple questions in this video that I want you to answer I want you to give your opinions about first of all meticulous how do you want the encounters to shape out do you want season 3 or season four do you want meticulous to have very low healing requirements where you're spending most of the time dpsing and you're considered as a support healer more than a pure healer or do you want season 4 of the emergence of season 4 healing requirements where your main goal is to keep people alive because there's going to be one or two bosses in every dungeon that are insanely hard in terms of pure HPS or healing checks and then all the rest of the time you're basically spending dpsing or providing damage but healing checks are there.
And lastly I want to know your opinion about the Raids method do you want to have a similar direction that you had in shadowlands where you had healers that don't provide damage reduction cooldowns doing more HPS, is that the way forward in dragonflight, is that the way to have the best healer balance, again guys this is a huge video, this is very long video there's a lot of things to talk about here I'm really interested in your opinions and let me know where do you think the game should be heading when it comes to Healing, if you like this video like And subscribe and I'll see you in my next guide!