The Great WoW Healbot Debate

Healbot is a WoW add-on created by healers, for healers in a raiding environment but it will forever be a subject of discontent for many WoW raiders as people argue over whether or not Healbot is a legitimate add-on to use.

Let us first say that we do not use Healbot.  We believe in having the abilities yourself.  Getting this abilities are not hard, either.  If you play the Horde, Joana’s Horde Guide will teach you to level your character quickly and easily. And Zygor’s Guides do amazing things for Alliance players.  With the knowledge from these guides, you will not need add-ons such as Healbot.  But what is the Healbot debate all about anyways?

What does Healbot Do?

Healbot provides an easy to use frame of players that the user can click when they are taking damage. Rather than choose the right spells themselves however, Healbot users simply click on the affected player and Healbot determines which spell would be the most suitable given the situation. This means pretty much all of the decision process involved in healing a raid is made by the add-on and not the player and the healer them self simply has to click on a player taking damage in order to play.

So why is Healbot a bad thing?

Many healers who use Healbot swear by it in raids and some even testify that no healer can raid without it. However, not everyone agrees with this line of thought. Healbot is an add-on that completes all the decision making on behalf of the player so all the player has to do is click where it tells them to and it will sort out the rest. This means the healer using Healbot is no longer playing the game at all; it is in fact the add-on itself that is doing the healing. Because of this, many players are unhappy with the use of Healbot in raids and while they do not ban the add-on from their healers they consider it very bad if a healer cannot heal without the add-on.

If the Add-on does it for me what’s the problem?

Many hardcore raiders have put a lot of time and effort into their characters which includes learning how to deal with certain situations, how to adapt their rotation adequately and when to use other abilities over their usual ones. Healers who use Healbot tend to omit this learning curve and therefore when they are left without the add-on it is quickly revealed they do not know how to play their class. This can be problematic for a variety of reasons including the sense of injustice felt by players who have to learn their class properly in order to play. Other problems include raids being without a healer if their add-on breaks such as after a patch day, or certain raid situations that call for alternative thinking such as Phase 3 of Anub in the ToC10/25 raid where healing is to be kept to a bare minimum and the downgrading of spells is often used which Healbot has little to no support for.

Raids are too hard to heal without Healbot

This is the argument often presented when healers who use healbot defend the add-on to others. Often enough they are arguing this point to a non healer class and as such many people simply allow them to get on with it without questioning their logic. However, it’s worth noting that this is not the case and many of the top raiding guilds will simply not abide this level of ignorance in their healers. Blizzard specifically developed WoW to be playable as a healer without the use of Healbot. Healbot was not created by Blizzard but by healers looking to ease the load on intensive raid healing. This means it is not simply too hard to hard to heal a raid without Healbot, but more like it’s significantly easier to do so with it. Consider the test realms where patches are released for testing prior to actual game releases. In these test realms there are no add-ons available so content must be tackled the old fashioned way (without Healbot or other add-ons). This content has been tested and re-tested by thousands of WoW followers and dedicated players who raid every day and they have completed content without the help of any add-on. This in itself signifies that no raid is too hard without Healbot as Blizzard certainly are not in the habit of making content to difficult to play (quite the opposite in fact in recent years). Healbot is a tool to assist healers, and not the defining aspect of their class or spec.
Should I not use Healbot?

Whether or not you use this add-on is entirely up to you, the matter of the legitimacy of this add-on is still very much in debate and it is not an illegal add-on to use in game. Blizzard may change the way in which macros can be used in the future to cut down on some of the automation of this add-on but in the meantime you are free to use it how you please. It is up to you whether or not you wish to play your healer class yourself or get a helping hand form an add-on just like any other class. The only thing you should remember is that if you do use healbot, take care to remind yourself that it is a tool to assist you and not a tool so that you can play in the first place.