The Fallout

One of the more curious side effects of the 2.3 patch is we're now seeing a lot of Paladins who originally rolled their character with the idea of being a true front line fighter now re-speccing from Holy to Ret. I've seen a few stories on the forums, heard a few say that they're going to re-spec on my server, and even gotten a couple of e-mails with questions from former Holy Pallies who are now trying to make Ret work for them. And the switch is, of course, always from Holy to Ret.

What interests me most about this is the transition pains of a game that has now come to rely on having those healers available. While druids and priests have really started to outshine us in healing these days, we're still tops at keeping up single targets, and best healer or not, so many of the healers for many guilds are Holy Paladins, and there are clearly Paladins who want to live their original vision for the class, the Uther Lightbringer ass-kicking.

I'm curious as to how many healers are eventually going to be lost for many guilds who rely on those healers. I assume most will stay Holy, for the sake of progression and filling your guild's niche, but there's going to be some lean times for a lot of guilds, and I don't think a lot of guilds have been saying to themselves, "Man, we have so many healers!"

I suppose ultimately we'll see how it pans out. Perhaps this is all overblown in my mind, but the number of Paladins I've heard say they're re-speccing has surprised me. If it does play out in this fashion, I'll probably have a comment or two on the short-sightedness of this game's design that shows up at times. Really, making a healer out of a class every Warcraft player would've assumed to be a melee character? When you do get around to patching it up to making that melee playstyle not just viable, but vividly and clearly viable to the majority of the players, you end up taking out a huge chunk of the healers that you designed your game around. Tsk.