It’s not as simple of a fix as you’re making it out to be.
There’s 2 types of healers ingame: throughput and battle healers.
Battle healers heal primarily by dealing damage to heal their team mates and throughput healers can only choose to heal or damage.
Most throughput healers can do the same amount or more damage as battle healers in a pure DPS scenario, but in a raid scenario the battle healers win out because they simply have more DPS uptime.
So you can’t simply fix throughput healers damage by buffing them by a % because if they can’t DPS for 20 seconds of a healing intensive part of the fight than they’re not DPSing to begin with.
There’s also no penalty against battle healers. They can do the same healing as throughput healers. Blizzard doesn’t want to handicap guilds or create sub-groups of healers where it’s like “you bring these 2 healers for their extra damage” and “these 2 healers need to make up for them doing 10% less healing.”
You would need more passive abilities such as heals convert into damage amongst other things to truly balance it.
I just stated the issues and ways i could think of fixing them and i agree not perfect but something does need to happen. while i agree all heals should do some sort of damage the large disparity has lead to even guilds that try to get AOTC only looking for “battle healers”
i could see a large healer overhaul in the near furture designing healers that could work as well (and honestly its probably needed at this point as healers are the only ones truly being cherry picked while tanks and DPS everything is nearly viable )
Any kind of healing overhauls would be done next expansion.
Also, I haven’t seen any AOTC groups that strictly look for battle healers. They usually are looking for people with prior AOTC knowledge.
Everyone is outgearing the content already so actually needing battle healers dps to time stuff isn’t really relevant anymore. It’s relevant early on the tier when everyone is undergeared (iLvl 230-235), but most people are iLvl 248-250 already.
The problem is as far as mythic plus goes, the highest damage healer will always be the one that groups try to make work as long as they can. You can’t have all healers doing comparable damage because the kits are completely different from healer to healer.
Some healers have healing throughput that is higher than others to make up for other weaknesses.
The one I don’t agree with right now is how low disc priest damage is. I’ve played all the healers up to the +17-20 range and it’s literally healing on hard mode with disc, all for dps and hps numbers that are just lower than something like a resto shaman that is far easier to play.
There needs to be reward for playing harder classes
they could also do it pre expansion. but this isnt based once over gear happens its normally relevant early to mid once its late it doesnt matter as much but then (and you can go look at any recruiting forum post) they will want either hpally,disc, or rshaman.
Resto druid doesn’t require any setup. You literally just press sunfire and instantly DoT the entire pack…
Don’t get me wrong, the spec is in a bad place, but not because you are having to do some overly complicated rotation…your abilities just don’t do good damage, meanwhile hpal got a 4 minute giga-cooldown ability that does crazy AoE damage and healing.
the DPS for any healer isnt complicated and do not take allot of effort or set up. however i was talking about healing not damage in that case resto druid has to prehot and know the fights in order to get any healing done otherwise it just turns into overhealing.
hpally just does dps sees someone hurt and pops a insta heal and continues doing dps. disc requires set up but their damage is part of their healing allowing them to do a ton of damage and healing/shielding
Fussing over Healer DPS is a symptom of the M+ ecosystem where everyone doing damage helps the key get completed so obviously the healer should be pumping too, right? So pugs develop a bias for wanting Venthyr Holy Paladins who have damage baked into their rotation and Kyrian Resto Shamans meanwhile they would do just fine with a MW, Disc, Rdruid… etc.
The major problem is when people watch top class streamers and determine that their healer’s (lack of) dps is what’s holding their group back when at this point in the expansion you can time a 20 with your healer pulling a comfortable 100 dps.
Then there’s the issue of the healer not being able to even minmax damage in the first place because their team isn’t kicking/stunning important casts, is standing in bad stuff, has a tank who doesn’t rotate defensives properly… which basically puts the healer in position where they have no time to dps anyway
while i agree there is also a issue with this happening in raids. just go look at any recruitment forum post 99% of them doing heroic+ are asking for hpally disc or rshammy. i know people and have myself been told that you play X class we dont want you as you dont offer anything as a healer. Mass DR + high damage+ good healing output doesnt equal well to healers who just have good healing output such as druid hpriest and MW (tho MW can do decent damage compared to the others)
I know it’s not the meta, but I’m here for the fun (not the achieves)… if they kill resto cat the game is basically dead to me at that point. It’s the only reason I log in most weeks.
Unfortunately pugs will always go for what’s super ultra meta even when they could get AOTC with like 12 survival hunters lol. In Raids MW and Rdruid absolutely pump heals and Holy Priest isn’t anything to sneeze at either. Obviously Shaman has Link, Disc has Barrier and Pallies have Ashen/AM which are incredibly powerful spells but you don’t need a mega stacked healer core for heroics beyond the initial raid release weeks when those utility spells might really be needed.
It’s an age old problem on WoW of pugs always wanting the very best class/specs without really understanding why, or making full use out of them and it really sucks when you’re trying to pug content on ‘offmeta’ specs whether it be your main or an alt so all you can do is shrug and run your own stuff unfortunately.
That’s probably what determines the most how much dps a non-“Holy Paladin with Ashen up” healer is going to be able to do.
But healer dps isn’t just an M+ thing. Often-times it’s a pretty big deal in raid encounters where you need to make specific break points to avoid getting extra mechanics that you simply don’t have cds to cover.
Overall? Because that would mean that pretty much every pull is big enough (and spaced out enough) for them to pop off with Boon of the Ascended on a ton of mobs. Chances are, a healer’s not going to have the opportunity to do that in anything below +20s because the group simply isn’t pulling big enough.
might be something to consider reworking.