First, before I begin, I am not proposing any current healing style (though they are all very similar) should be removed. The "fun" in the title is in quotes because different people find different things fun, and I didn't want to imply the people who like the current methods of healing aren't having fun. Rather I mean to say there should be other types of healing fun available for other people.

Now, healing has some major problems in it. Part of the problem with healing is that not enough people find it fun. This is nearly a trivial observation one can notice in multiple ways. Healers get into groups quicker in the dungeon finder; before the Finding it was hard to find healers normally; getting healers for raids is difficult; etc. Blizzard really needs to make healing options that are more attractive to people out there.

Now, some people might say "it's not Blizzards problem if people don't like healing!" This is false. People play the game to have fun. Blizzard makes raid and dungeon content for them to have fun. If finding healers is a problem, then people will have trouble having fun with that content. This is definitely something that interests Blizzard. Heck, I even stopped playing for a while because finding healers is so difficult my guild couldn't raid for a while (and hence the guild kinda fell apart).

At the moment I'm not going to say what my ideas about what Blizzard might do are (I don't want this thread derailed before it begins by the main point being lost in some specific idea that came to me in the middle of the night). I think some of what they have said about Cataclysm will help a little bit, but it sounds like a lot more still needs to be done. Anyhow, good reader of this post, what do you think should be done?

Ideas that would make healing more fun are good things to discuss in this forum, particularly with an eye towards Cataclysm.

The idea to let healers dps a little is a controversial one though. Some healers just have no interest in it, so while it might make healing a lot more fun for you, it risks making healing a lot less fun for them. I would not approach that idea as an obviously intuitive one that all healers will rally around, because I suspect that's just not the case. :(

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Q u o t e:
I like healing in general, but if I had 5-10 talent points to spend that would convert damage to healing that would be an interesting choice in my tree. I can see where a healer doing dps could lend to a lot of issues concerning gearing etc, but that is for another discussion.

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I could see that if the tree was structured in such a way that you had to give up a little bit of healing for that dps (and to be fair, talents like Searing Light already exist), such that it was the kind of thing you might do while soloing or running easy content (like Dungeon Finder when overgeared). In other words, I wouldn't want us to do it in such a way that healers were then balanced around doing damage -- like we calculated healer damage when we come up with boss berserk timers. Then it goes from a playstyle choice to being the only way to play.

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Q u o t e:
There is literally nothing Blizzard can do to address this issue in any significant way. That isn't to say that they can't improve things for those of us who do enjoy healing mind you, only that no revamp to the game's healing system will bring in additional healers.

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We don't need to bring a lot more players to healing. Dungeons, raids and Arena teams generally seem to find what they need, and I'd argue some players are attracted to healing specifically because they know it makes them a treasured commodity. What we do need is to make healing fun for players who like healing. We don't want to lose the healers we have.