Unless I’m doing something very wrong, since the update, making healers basically have to wear full light armour to be able to sustain your team has been a death sentence for me. In PvP it is totally fine, I expect to be targeted by muskets and great axes so that’s not the problem. The problem is the fact that I take SO MUCH aggro from NPC’s in dungeons and on runs such as Mines and Myrkgard that it’s incredibly difficult to auto attack to lower my cooldowns and heal my allies at the same time. Add to that the fact I’m getting basically one shot from enemies, my experience since the update has basically been spent getting downed constantly. I’m running 275 Focus with 125 Intelligence.
I could switch to Constitution but I was using the Int for my Void Gauntlet. I just don’t feel like the Con will make that much of a difference since I’m still getting too much aggro it feels like. I’m using Carnelian gems but they make zero difference what so ever. I just don’t think the aggro gained from healing should be a thing. My enjoyment for the game is rapidly declining because I’m having to work ten times harder just to sustain my team and then the comments like “where the hell are the heals” are infuriating because a lot of the time I’m having to heal myself, either that or just get downed and then the rest of the team suffers anyway.
I agree that the nerf to life staff and general paladin build was warranted, but only for PvP, I just think it’s had too big of an impact of us healers in PvE content.
It’s really hard to find a good tank that’s using the right gems in their weapons plus picking up bonus to threat on their sword/shield. Not all tanks are using a off-hand like hatchet or hammer for a back up taunt either.
One problem with the sword/shield only taunt(s) is they’re on a long cool downs - which is why I like to take reverse stab for cool down reduction so I can taunt more often.
DPS also doesn’t always wait for the tank to pull so if a tank is caught with all 2-3 of their taunts on 10-20 sec cool downs all the enemies agroed are going straight to the healer. In fact I’ve had DPS pull in 95% of the dungeons I run which is why I was running 3 taunts + bonus threat on gear + CD reduction on sword abilities. Even with all that there are moments of about 5-10 where I might not have a taunt I can use if I wasn’t able to manage them as well as I’d like to.
Healers can run threat reduction on gear but you’re still very high up on the threat list if the tank isn’t trying to gain agro in a meaningful way. So many players say they’re tanks but they’re really just bruiser DPS with high con.
In open world content you can just forget about it. Almost no one will taunt in corruption portals. I always have 5+++ 65 elites on me in those. No way you can run them very easily in light armor.
they have destroyed healers in this game and honestly i think its by design.
they need to just remove life staffs imo
i say this as a healing class since 99