Why not abandon high tank damage?

If we just chilled out tank damage, then healing would be a lot easier. While I know it's popular in this forum to claim that we only want to make life hard for the healers, I think in reality many of you would get bored or risk losing your spot when the raid didn't need as many healers.

A better answer, in our opinion, is to increase tank health and have bosses hit hard but not as often. The end result would hopefully be that it took several big heals to bring a tank back up rather than a single Holy Light crit. Currently overhealing isn't particularly scary because mana is cheap and the risk of the tank (or anyone dying) on a given GCD is very real.

If you currently put say 3 healers on the tank that isn't because it requires that much healing per second to keep the tank alive. Instead, it's because with 3 healers hopefully someone will be always casting and can land a heal after big hit one but before big hit two, which would kill the tank. If a few hots or shields get stomped on along the way, oh well.

Ideally, you put 3 healers on the tank because it takes 3 big heals to get the tank back up. If you don't coordinate well or use a big heal when a medium heal would do, then you'd risk too much overhealing and ultimately running out of mana. You'd need to heal smart as well as just healing fast and big, which is what the current design really encourages.

I predict health pools of all players will go way up in Cataclysm relative to player damage and healing. Everything (meaning PvP too) would be slowed down just a little so that making the right choice would sometimes trump making the fast choice.

I'll also add that many players think 10-player raid healing is currently more fun than in 25s because you are often splitting duties with just one other person -- "You heal the tank. I'll heal the raid." In 25s you get more of that whack-a-mole feeling where you're competing just as much with other players to heal someone first and nothing feels very organized or efficient.

I agree with the folks scratching their heads about the nostalgia for crushing blows. They added a lot of RNG to fights. If a boss used a special and got a crush near simultaneously, it was really hard to keep the tank up. They were entirely unpredictable. You couldn't save up a tank or healer cooldown for the crushing blow because they could come at any moment.

Yes shield-users could push them off the table, but I don't think that was done in an interesting way. Can you mash Shield Block every time it's up? Gratz, you beat the crushing blow mechanic. I think we get a lot more out of the more predictable and timed heavy boss attacks now. You know it's coming soon if not in the next couple of seconds so you can decide whether to blow Last Stand / Shield Wall / Guardian Spirit / whatever or save it for the next emergency.