It's no secret that a dedicated healer is a tremendous advantage to a team. Even a bunch of half competent players who know how to stick with their healer can perform similarly to a full premade without one, as they all take minimal damage, receive huge amounts of healing, receive sustain through skills like shards, and receive minor buffs to damage. A premade running a dedicated healer is on a whole new level, and can completely dominate a BG. Typically they all sit directly on top of the healer, and protect them like there's no tomorrow.
Now, personally, I don't think that strength should go away. Maybe toned down a bit, but it shouldn't be nerfed into the ground. Instead, I think the queue should attempt to balance teams with healers, to avoid situations where one or two teams are running a dedicated healer, and hence have an incredibly unfair advantage over other teams. The queue could borrow from the group finder, using the roles.
There is a problem with something like this, though, and it's that this could slow down matchmaking considerably, especially if the healer population is low. Not 100% sure how to account for this, maybe someone has an idea, but my proposal would be to only attempt to match with healers if a healer happens to work its way into the match. That way the hit to matchmaking speed only applies if there is a healer in the match.
Healers and the queue. 6 votes
No, please specify why you disagree in comments.
2 votes
Other, please specify your alternative in comments.
1 vote