Recently, wowhead interviewed Morgan Day. In response to a question regarding healer damage in raids and M+ he stated that: Ultimately we prefer that healers are spending their time healing, so the combat and encounter team are in constant communication about what kind of damage output should we be putting out there on the player and our encounters? Not just avoidable damage, but unavoidable damage as well. The community often calls it the rot damage and how much is ticking away at you.
With Blizzard stating that they would prefer us to be spending our time healing how does this bode with the healers-must-dps crowd?
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It bodes fine. The general consensus is that a healer should DPS during their empty GCDs if they have nothing to heal.
If they don’t have empty GCDs then they don’t need to DPS. Pretty simple.
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there’s no conflict here. if healing is needed heal. if there’s downtime, dps.
that’s all the “healers must dps” crowd has been saying all along.
Always Be Casting. don’t stand around doing nothing. simple.
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This is very much an example of “you think you do, but you don’t” that won’t age like milk.
If encounters are tuned so strongly that a healer “needs” to heal every global, that content is going to be downright impossible at higher levels. After all, if every global a heal had to go off or someone died, how is that going to translate to harder difficulty levels? Now you need to straight up get lucky and get low damage rolls and/or avoidance streaks to survive until eventually healers are straight up replaced by another DPS to burn the boss down before the tanks die.
If we don’t live in that world, than it is only logical that healers have downtime and it then begs the question what to do with that downtime. Waste mana on overhealing? Literal waste. Spend next to no mana on a damage spell? Sounds good. What’s that? Damaging the enemy kills it faster and thus causes less damage to need to be healed (and at a MUCH higher mana premium cost)? Why, dealing damage just became a form of pre-emptive healing in itself.
Because THAT is what doing damage as a healer truly is…pre-emptive healing.
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Who are these healers must dps? What kind of content do you play that you must DPS as a healer?
Should only be the top % honestly. If you get anybody like that just kick them out of your group.
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“what type of content” doesn’t matter when the philsosophy is “contrbiute as close to 100% of the time as you can”
always be casting.
if there’s nothing to heal, what should you be casting?
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Well, at least we can finally put all of these healers must DPS threads to rest now via WoW’s associate game director. Great post OP. 
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nah, read the entire section, he also said:
So yes, we certainly keep an eye on healer damage. In the grand scheme of things it’s much smaller than say what a DPS, or in a lot of cases, even what your tank is doing, but we recognize when you’re talking about Mythic Plus, one fifth of your group is your healer, so any damage that they can put out is going to add up over the course of the Mythic Plus run, versus, let’s say, if you’re in a 20 or even 30 person raid. You know, that healer is a much smaller percentage there. So that’s something that we look at. We do consider it in terms of its total package of what the healer is bringing, but ultimately we really focus on how much that is playing into what they’re bringing to their group’s total contribution.
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" but ultimately we really focus on how much that is playing into what they’re bringing to their group’s total contribution."
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The people who expect healers to dps are the same who “?” In the chat when they are suddenly smacked into oblivion for standing in bad the next moment. Sometimes healers are paying attention to where the dps are positioning themselves, and to the unkeen eye it might look like “healer stop standing around doing nothing” when that same idiot dps doesn’t realize he’s standing in the boss’ cone the very same moment. Healers should focus on keeping the group alive, not playing an extra dps because the originals are too bad to down the boss in time.
As someone else said if you need your healer to dps you better be in the hardest content.
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this precisely.
additionally the lower skilled healers are going to be outclassed far earlier in a “you must heal 100% of the time” scenario than they are currently.
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Context is king. Use the full quote. It is overtly stated that they see damage dealing as an element of the healer’s toolkit.
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With the 40/40 adjustment and the way encounters are now designed in Dragonflight Beta - it seems like you will be healing a lot more than SL content. There’s a lot of heavy AOE damage and constant unavoidable damage.
Sorry, but I am going to listen to WoW’s associate game directors idelogy on what a healer is supposed to be doing in the game which is healing lol.
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Not sure why anyone would think it’s fun to stand around doing nothing when no healing is needed, but you do you.
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Wait, is blizzard actually trying to improve the game?
What has been going on lately? What’s this feeling I’ve been having? Is it hope?
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That may be what the “prefer”, but there are plenty of times where healing is just not needed. So, you should be contributing, rather than standing there doing nothing. As a healer main, this 100% occurs.
DPS and tanks are using their globals to contribute consistently. No reason the other 20% of the group (the healer) can’t do the same. That’s the ONLY thing people have been asking for.
Can’t wait for the intense healing requirements to happen in DF M+ and these same people to be up in arms that they can’t handle it lol.
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It’s a lot different in Dragonflight Beta atm. There’s quite a bit of damage going out. Yes, there are moments where you can provide DPS - but it’s not as often as SL seasons.
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If I need to heal, I’ll heal. If I don’t, I’ll contribute my damage. It’s pretty simple.
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I’m aware.
I can nearly guarantee you, the people who are complaining that healers should be healing and not DPS’ing will also find the HPS requirements of these new bosses/dungeons to be too much for them as well. No one has been saying healers HAVE to DPS - simply they should be contributing. If the damage requires healing, heal. If it doesn’t, literally just do SOMETHING.
The healers who refuse to do DPS right now will find themselves being far more active in DF if they don’t nerf the dungeons. So, if they’ve become accustomed to just standing around in S3 and S4, they better get ready. They’re going to get what they’ve been asking for, but I don’t think they’ll like it lol.
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