Blizzard promises hefty changes to healing after a miserable WoW Dragonflight season

If I’m being honest, healing in World of Warcraft Dragonflight season two hasn’t been the most satisfying role. But this is all about to change with season three because Blizzard just promised major changes to healing.

Looking at the first Guardians of the Dream PTR development notes from Sept. 7, you can see the devs are generously buffing pretty much all healing specs, including Restoration Druid, Restoration Shaman, Preservation Evoker, Discipline and Holy Priest, and Holy Paladin. These buffs are mainly focused on increasing single-target healing to make it a bit more rewarding.

Besides that, all healers are getting improved mana regeneration from sources like Mana Tide Totems for Shamans, Daybreak for Holy Paladins, and Symbol of Hope for Holy Priests.

In a Blue Post onSept. 7, Blizzard explained the main goal of these changes:

“At its core, we want healers to have interesting abilities and choices to make while healing, and we want you to have to manage your mana pool. We’re hoping our changes reduce the amount of overhealing and make mana matter slightly more, which should make healing across the game a more enjoyable experience,” Blizzard said.

So that’s why players are seeing an increase in the power of single-target spells and mana generation. Blizzard also said group healing spells will get their effectiveness reduced further down the road. The devs believe these abilities are simply too strong in a raid environment. 

“Raid survivability cooldowns feel like they have all entered the territory of making your raid feel nearly invulnerable when being used. While it’s a great moment for everyone to stack in a Power Word: Barrier and reduce damage taken and stack a few healing cooldowns, we think the combined power of these has escalated to a point where they make the raid slightly too sturdy,” Blizzard explained.

After looking at all of this, it seems as if Blizzard’s goal for Dragonflight season three is to improve single-target healing and mana regeneration but nerf strong AoE abilities like Healing Tide Totem, especially in a raid environment. Hopefully, this will all make for a better healing experience.