Such as…? Again you’re just disagreeing with my point. You haven’t actually given me an argument to work with.
1 Like
Utility. btw im not buying that argument about making the timer keys. we have never had any problems with timers and if we did it would not be because a healer was not dps’ing every 4 minutes. give me a break
Meanwhile I’ve been trying to retool my holy priest to be able to do some kind of ok dps so I don’t have to switch to disc because it’s getting back to that being all anyone cares about.
then you don’t push keys.
I’ve had keys that were timed with less than one second left.
its funny to look at peoples profiles harping about healers doing dps. Imagine not even doing contents where this matters or buying carries for contents where this matters. Like if i look at your rio and your doings 10s then suddenly its 20s, we know you are buying carries. And virtually none of these people are even healing. Not to mention where this matters healers are already dpsing so this is a non issue.
healers have been dps’ing for years. it just doesnt really matter or contribute much. in some cases if you have tank problems or dps issues obviously a healer dpsing would contribute more. like border line dps or tanking
Hulahoops did a write up that everybody in this thread has read in regard to mythics and healers dpsing. the problem is Hula is wrong.
Sure. I think that for every class in the game (tanks, healers, DPS… everyone) they should use their utility when it’s useful. This usually has a higher priority than damage. Even on my Feral Druid, I will sacrifice a GCD to use Incapacitating Roar if the group needs the AoE disorient. This comes at a cost to my damage since I’m sacrificing 2 GCDs to do it, but stopping and entire mob pack’s cast is worth the trade. Same with healers, when the utility is useful, use it.
However utility is not always useful. If I use Ursol’s Vortex or Entangling Roots on a mob that isn’t going anywhere, that doesn’t help the group. So what should The healer do when none of their utility would be useful right now? If someone needs healing then obviously you heal them but if no one needs healing, you do damage.
As it turns out, damage is just another form of utility. Would you call Resto’s Nature’s Vigil a utility skill? I would and its sole utility is dealing damage. However the unique part about damage as utility compared to other forms of utility is that it’s never worth 0 and is always available since every spec in the game has a way to deal damage without a cooldown. So long as the enemy is not dead and the encounter hasn’t been won yet, dealing damage contributes value to the group. If you compare that to things like knockbacks or interrupts, those do have moments where they’re worth 0, for instance of you don’t want the mob to move the knockback is worth 0 and if the enemy isn’t casting anything right now then the interrupt is worth 0.
That’s fine. It’s honestly never been an argument that I thought was particularly central. I see it more as a cherry on top. The fact that dealing damage makes it easier to time is nice, but it’s not the main reason that dealing damage is good. The remain reason is because shorter fights are safer fights. It’s easier to play perfectly for 20 seconds than it is to play perfectly for 25 seconds. Every extra second a fight goes on is another chance for a party member to make a fatal mistake. Another chance for the enemy to do a hard-hitting attack that you need to spend resources healing. Generally speaking, the less time an enemy is alive and attacking, the fewer resources you need to spend on healing, meaning you get to go into the next fight with more resources than you would have otherwise. (And check the mana values of your damage spells vs. healing spells some time, the damage spells require far fewer resources.)
WoW is a game of little advantages. Even if you doing damage is not THE ONE THING that caused your group to succeed when it otherwise would have failed, it is still a little advantage. Think of it as a sliding scale from bad to good, with a breakpoint in the middle that determines if you win or not. (I typically call this scale the margin of error.) Every time you make a mistake (you mess up your rotation, or stand in the wrong spot) the needle on the scale moves more towards the bad side. Every time you do something good (clutch interrupts, slide in some extra damage) the needle moves more towards the good side. Eventually if you do enough good things, you win. Dealing damage when able to as a healer is a good thing and when taken in combination with all the other good things your group is doing helps your group to succeed. As the difficulty rises that “win” breakpoint on the needle slides further and further to the “good” side of the scale. You need to do more good things in order to win. By dealing damage, you help your group hit that marker even in very difficult content.
1 Like
when there is time in between life saving heals, i rather spend my time observing and calculating in my head outgoing damage and be proactive on my next set of heals and on who needs what. dsping is pretty easy i think. but the healer is tasked with many things and dpsing in on the list but im sorry to say its at the bottom. healing effectively to ensure we have sustained mana throughout a long encounter, dispelling, trying to help interrupts hitting. haha.hey dps spammers, u can throw a hot on me every once in a while (druids) while you spam. help a guy out
healers should dps when they have downtime. its only right.
Raid/party damage is already pretty crazy in Mythic and high end M+.
The only way this would work is to nerf damage intake, and match it with a heal output nerf.
Boring… This is why we see 9/10 priests as Shadow…
Healers who deal damage are doing this as well. They’re just doing their observing at the same time as doing their damage rotation. Healer damage rotations are generally pretty simple. Once you commit them to muscle memory, you’ll be able to evaluate and deal damage at the same time. Some target macros might help with this so that you don’t have to waste any time/effort with target swapping. If you’re worried about being caught mid-cast when healing needs to go out, don’t be. You’re not married to your cast and can cancel it if you need to. (Try putting some /stopcasting commands at the top of your healing macros. Now you have a button that does a heal immediately regardless of what you’re doing when you press it.)
If doing damage and evaluating at the same time is not something you can currently do, then I would encourage you to practice it as developing that skill set is one way for you to improve as a healer. Yes doing it is harder than not doing it, but it’s something that skilled healers are able to do and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that skilled play is more difficult than unskilled play.
I agree! Using all of your toolkit when it’s useful applies to every class, not just healers. On my Feral Druid, I can cast Regrowth with Predatory Swiftness every CP cycle with no cast time. Whenever I’m pooling energy I absolutely throw out that Regrowth on someone who’s injured, usually the tank. (In fact, my macro for Regrowth is probably the most complicated one I’ve ever written.) I’m also using Nature’s Vigil at planned times in every fight, times when the healing demand is high and usually sync’d with my damage cooldowns for more healing pulses. These are both on top of me using my defensives, Healthstone, health pot, and Renewal to keep myself alive independent of the healer.
I also pop out of Cat Form to hardcast Regrowth in between pulls in order to help the healer clean up Grievous stacks. If you want to go REALLY extreme… there have been times where I exit Cat Form to do a Night Elf form Convoke the Spirits when my group needed an extra healing cooldown. You wanna talk about DPS doing off-role healing? Well hoo boy am I happy to have that conversation.
PvE is a team effort. Every member of the team should be contributing as much as they can and reducing the burden on the other team members as much as they are able. So you’re dang right I should be throwing out some off heals to help you out.
2 Likes
Here’s the thing about Blizzard’s “preference”. They can say they want their healers to spend time healing, but as I’m leveling my shaman, there’s a talent that literally gives me a boost in healing and a reduction in mana cost whenever I use my offensive abilities.
So this whole “we want our healers to heal” is a load of garbage when they’re designing healing classes with offensives in mind.
I think that’s overly reductive. “We’d prefer healers to spend most of their time healing” is not the same as “healers should never do damage.” Indeed, we have direct evidence to the contrary. Both in the form of Blizzard designing abilities like the one you mentioned that reward healers for doing damage as well as the devs direct statement in that very same interview that they consider a healer’s damage to be part of the utility kit they bring to a group.
What Blizzard was saying with that statement is that they want the majority of healers focus and resource commitment to be on healing. By and large, that goal has been met with the high levels of unavoidable damage in current endgame content. But that doesn’t mean that there are zero opportunities to do damage, just fewer opportunities to deal damage. Good healers still take those opportunities no matter how frequent or infrequent they may be. This isn’t a binary yes/no issue, it’s a sliding scale.
But no matter how tight Blizzard tunes the healing requirements of PvE encounters, it doesn’t change the fact that some healers are better at healing than others, whether it be by skill or by gear. In every MMO that has ever been made, the reward of good healing has always been that there’s less healing that you need to do. In most games (WoW included) healers can turn that reward into more opportunities to deal damage.
you make all good points. for the Shaman and dpriest there are benny’s for healing by doing dps. while my opinion was that dps by healers is negligible in m++, dps in arena’s especially 2v or 3v the dps should be balanced a lot more. more time should be given to dps by a healer as well as utility. I just dont think its as necc by far in mythics++ @Grufo indeed.
1 Like
Looking at some logs for +20s, healers doing damage are usually responsible for around 6% of their group’s total damage output. They’re usually doing about 21% of the damage of one of their DPS players.
If you could give one of your DPS players a permanent 20% damage boost for the entire dungeon, would you call that negligible? Because that’s basically what healer damage is. This one Jade Temple log I’m looking at had the healer do a total of 28 million damage over the course of the dungeon, which is almost an entire Tyrannical boss’ health bar. It adds up.
well ig it depends on the class and spec but not all healers. i think in the 5 or 6 percent range you might be talking about some classes and specs but not all.
i think its more like giving your dps a .4% buff at the expense of overly multitasking. or 1 dps player with a perm 6% damage boost.
where do you get 20%?
I don’t care much if healers dps at the key level I play at, I’m more concerned with how little dps other dps contribute. I think the only time dps should open their mouths about the healer’s dps is when they’re absolutely hitting the limit on their own dps and still not able to time things.
To be fair certain healers “Must DPS” to actually heal 
. Try playing a disc priest without DPSing.
Awesome so not only do healers have to do your job, but they also have to do their own job.
And this is why the retail community completely sucks. Their argument boils down to “MEH META!”.