Healers are competitive because of their defensive supplications. When healers don't have their defensive supplications they have virtually nothing to keep them competitive with any class. So when a shaman comes along and is able to literally negate all of your sups with communing one spell a couple of times that seems a little off balance. I mean in a raid situtation as a healer, you might as well not even go if there's a shaman there. The best case scenario is that you get to escape without being bashed/tripped lagged and beatdown because some shaman 6 levels below you just unraveled your sanc, protection, aegis, and protective shield with one dispel. I mean can anyone think of another class matchup where one guy can completely negate the other guys skillset? So a mage's major protection spells can't be removed but healers have to deal with their sanc and protection being dispelled so easily by a class? And the thing is that mages have actual offensive capabilities. It's like healers have been nerfed over and over again with the changes to cabal guardian/NPC healing and having flying taken away. Let me just put it like this. How are these changes doing anything other that making healers play more and more conservatively with an already conservative class. I know I'm probably coming off as whining jackass so I'm sorry. Can you not look at sanc and protection or dispel? Maybe make it to where certain supplications like sanc and protection on the actual healer cast by said healer can't be dispelled or at least much more difficult to do so? I came back to the game after a long time and it just seems that healer's abilities have been toned down or taken away, but what exactly has been given to make up for it? Were healers like getting out of hand with their power level compared to other classes so they had to be nerfed over and over? I don't know, maybe I'm putting too much weight on this but it just seems off to me. Healers as a class just seem less effective and easier to kill...why?

That's basically a paper's rant about scissors. Because shaman is like the ONLY class that can screw you over real quickly.

Dispel from a shaman has always been a bitch to handle, especially for other priest classes. Even though a mage cannot have ABS dispelled, they can have most of their other spells removed via shaman dispel which will still be a horrible situation for them to be in if its shaman + 1 or shaman + 2. Difference is they stay alive slightly longer because of the dmg redux but they still are pretty much toast.

The reason for making it so that healers can't heal cabal guardians was (primarily) done to make it so that a single hero level character couldn't prevent the retrieval of an item pretty much forever from the one or two out of range people trying to regain it.

Fly was taken away in an attempt to offset the fact that you can play a healer with full access to their entire sup collection without gaining empowerment anymore. Some people may feel like that is not a worthwhile trade but it doesn't change the fact that they were given something while something was removed.

Are you playing an empowered or a non-empowered healer? If you are playing an empowered one then the only difference in your own survival potential comes in that you now need to drink fly potions. If you are playing a healer without empowerment (and the assorted hurdles that come with it) then its pretty much by design that you aren't as effective as a healer who has gone through the empowerment steps.

But I will say this. In case anyone reads this thinking about rolling a healer.

GET EMPOWERED!

It may be cool that you don't have to sit in a shrine and rp at level 15 for hours just to keep going, but the unempowerment nerf really makes a difference. Having healing cut by 30% is not worth it. Just be patient and get empowered. I mean it sucks for a good healer, and I would assume that it sucks even worse for neutral/evil.

Lots of examples.

Necro vs shapeshifter (sleep + forget, or just forget).
Nage Waza Assassin vs almost anyone who can be thrown.
Shig-ru vs ragers (enslaved mob with cutoff or entwine, fallback, bash).

In fact, IMHO, it was totally getting out of hand how powerful healers were becoming.

They still require further nerfage to bring them back into line with drow warrior STSF/Space/Flow types but the removal of the Fly commune was a good start. Hopefully more nerfage to come (for example: healers with pass door makes no sense whatsoever, that commune should be removed.. there are potions that healers can use instead).

You must have missed the memo: nerfing makes more people want to play the game.

There were some players who stopped playing completely after the recent priest nerf, and mainly because of the changes to healers. Healers were not extremely op, or even somehwat op. Healers with a very specific set of gear plus a very specific set of items can make them very very powerful, but that's the case with any other class. They do not need further nerfing. That is just insanity.

He didn't miss the memo, because there was none. Practically every change the game has ever see has been met with likes as well as dislikes. Nerfing actually has killed some people, but that's because those idiot kids were playing capture the flag with their cars and nerf guns. They ran some people over.

gr

nt