Healers Being Forced To Do Damage is a good thing

Community General Discussion
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So your comparing a healer not using dps abilities to a dps not using dps abilities?

Any player sitting with empty globals that could be used to do something productive and not using them is a bad player, DPS or healer.

And again your healers arn’t doing = damage to your chaos bolt.

If you could equip an item that increased your DPS by 10k would you do it? Of course you would without a second thought. That’s what a healer DPSing can add to a group.

Again doing heroics with a heroic guild is for fun.
Its aimed at the casual players who want aotc or close to it by then end of the raid tier.
A huge amount of player don’t play close to this level.

There’s absolutely nothing advanced about casting mana-free DPS filler spells. Even in situations like this the group can be improved with healer dps.

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You can also setup a shift modifier for your mouse scroll and get an additional 6 key binds via

middle mouse
Middle mouse modifier
Scroll up
Scroll up modifier
Scroll down
Scroll down modifier

Those thumb buttons can probably use shift/alt modifiers too for an additional 2 buttons.

I don’t believe anyone loves our mastery (me included) however, you’ve spec’d into an additional button to boost your mastery due to your positioning when you could just move closer to targets for the same result. It’s completely up to you, but if you was wanting less buttons to hit that would be a start and you’d pick up additional defensive timer reductions with the passive in that row to help you better line up for aoe damage incoming.

I’d go as far to say it’s useful even if you don’t have glimmer. Your talking about getting your primary heal off cooldown faster and each cast has a chance to boost your next flash or Hlight which in turn can give you far more healing output than bestow.

I’m not saying bestow is unusable, but the majority of the time it’s about to go off, usually another healer will have sniped the healing needed within that 5 second window rendering it absolutely useless as the healing was nothing more than overhealing.

Nobody does, but you’ve already described you use some modifiers, have you tried using alt and shift modifiers combined to increase your keybinding potential?

I play with the numpad as I never liked using wasd so my layout is weird but I play roughly the same as a wasd user and I’ve got plenty of buttons at the tip of my fingers. The 6 buttons above the arrow keys is now 12 keybinds and I get an additional 6 from my mouse scroll alone as I said above. That gives me 18 keybinds that are controlled by 2 fingers and I can fit the entirety of my dps/healing rotation in them with buttons to spare for defensive and major healing cd’s.

While this is true in some ways… Holy paladin and with the addition of glimmer has gone even deeper into the melee style healer. Not attempting to play your spec the way it shines the most in all content will just leave you suffering in the long run if you ever intend to do higher content. Even if you don’t have glimmer CM will still out preform bestow any single day of the week because holyshock is such an important heal in your arsenal and it having more uptime will lead to much more healing.

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I understand the concept of a healer dps completely.

A lot of the time the healers aren’t wasting GCD’s.
They most likely are over healing.

Not sure where you got the idea of dps spells being mana free?

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As someone who used to heal on a disc priest alt occasionally… eh, no thanks. I miss the shield-heavy version of Disc that wasn’t hybrid DPS. I don’t find the juggling fun, and the spec doesn’t deal well with spike damage as a result of healing through damage.

Also, in PvP it’s gross when healers can not only outlast you but also kill you. I get healers living forever in PvP – it’s the only way to survive in a large team setting – but they shouldn’t also be a threat to enemies on their own, because that’s having cake and eating it too.

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Ran healers b4 went ORC.
Never know when damage coming.
if you REAALLY need to dps, then run DISC priest; hurt while you heal hehe

If group needs heals to help out in damage, then dps is problem NOT heals

Cromgaru has spoken

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Both are roughly equal in how detrimental to the groups power they are.

Losing say, 10k DPS is losing 10k DPS, even if its from the Healer not DPSing when they could, or the DPS deciding they don’t want to put the effort into playing correctly.

It’s a rough example. I picked out a random log and I did like 9 mill CB and healer did 7-8 mill. It’s not a 1:1.

Maybe, if that was my point whatsoever.

Healing is all about making choices. It’s not always the correct choice to DPS over healing, but choosing nothing over DPS is almost never the correct choice.

It’s not about what level you play at. You can play inefficiently or even badly at lower levels of play, or even mid levels of play like Heroic.

But it doesn’t change the fact that poor or inefficient play is poor or inefficient, even if it’s still good enough for the content you’re doing.

Which is my point. I’m not arguing that healer DPS is necessary, it’s really clearly not, especially at the lower end of content. But it not being necessary doesn’t mean it’s the not right choice.

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…or maybe that kind of ‘games’ is what appeals to OP he he

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Not sure where you got the idea of dps spells being mana free?

Probably from playing my resto druid and casting 0 mana wraths with my free cat form? If you want to turn up the damage and spend mana on it to do even more you can, but you can do it without spending any.

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Guess i was going by the fact the title of the thread is forced to do damage.

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Confused about casting wraths with cat form but most healers dps spell cost base mana.

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No, they don’t and haven’t for literally like 5 years now. Every healer’s main spam DPS spell is free. Lightning bolt? Free. CJL? Free. Smite(For holy)? Free. Crusader strike? Free.

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Sorry was just going off wowhead tool tip. don’t enjoy healing.

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If we entertain the idea of Healers needing literally every point of mana for healing, and being able to devote 0 mana to DPS’ing:

Cat Form abilities doesn’t cost Mana. I’m fairly sure that shapeshifting doesn’t cost mana either.
Flame Shock/Lightning Bolt doesn’t cost mana.
Disc/H Pal wants to DPS to Heal efficiently anyway.
Blackout Kick actually GENERATES mana (with the right talent at least) for Monks. Though it competes with a pretty strong talent in Mana Tea, so typically it’s mana neutral.

Every healer has a zero mana source of damage, even before we factor in popular trinkets like Mauts Claw, or the Rustbolt Rep trinket.

Which wasn’t actually the content of OP’s argument.

Obviously you aren’t being physically forced to DPS as a Healer (unless you’re a Disc Priest or Glimmerdan I guess), it’s an optimization of play no different than performing your rotation correctly, or gemming/enchanting correctly, or having a good Azerite Trait/Essence setup as a DPS.

It not being a mandatory optimization doesn’t change the fact that someone who does choose to DPS as a Healer (in the correct situation of course), is a better healer than someone who never chooses to DPS as a Healer, all else being equal.

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Honestly not sure what we really are discussing anymore.
TY for the info about mana free spells.
Don’t think we will ever see eye to eye when it comes to casual vs bad players.
GL with ilg prog.
Fun boss =P

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I agree, it is annoying to die as the tank because the healer was deep frying a mob.

Shrew did make a good point about it being a problem in pvp. Healers shouldn’t be able to be raid bosses in a BG.

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There’s a difference in designing a kit to make healers do dps (disc) versus good healers realizing the can dps during their downtown. The prior is always going to be impossible to balance, b/c you have to account for the dps allowing clears to be easier, but then they can’t have the HPS/damage reeducation of a non dps-healer, or they are too OP. Weaving in a LB or cat form differentiates a great healer from a good one. But it shouldn’t be required

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Mouse wheel is used for controlling camera zoom. Unbinding that sounds like a recipe for disaster. I tried alt-binding my thumb buttons and found it to be really awkward.

Rule of Law also extends max healing range. You’ve never been forced away from your healing targets by mechanic positioning? And that hunter who’s standing in Antactica but needs heals is just SOL?

CM assumes you can be in melee to hit something, that it’s not more dangerous to be in melee (for your or others), that you can spare the globals to use on CS. None of those are necessarily true, depending on the fight. Sure, BF is overhealing sometimes, but other times it’s not. Looking back at my logs it seems I was using Light’s Hammer during progression most of the time anyway, so you’ll probably jump on me about that too.

Eh, I could look into Shift, but that’s an uncomfortable stretch for my thumb. I think we’re missing the point here anyway. Sure there are ways to have more keybinds, but not without uncomfortably changing my keyboard layout. I took issue with you calling HPal melee healing design “the best fleshed out” and “just feels good” while requiring more that 12 active keybinds.

Which I hate and I hope goes away, or gets much more streamlined. We’ll see what Shadowlands holds.

I’ve done higher content, no melee needed.

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It’s really not.

I leave my camera at max zoom and in this current raids setting I’ve not needed to adjust once as having more visual awareness is perfect for raids. You can rebind it to something you never use like I did so you can still adjust when needed.

I just gave you an additional option to consider as you said you didn’t have the space. It’s by no means required and it in no way creates a situation that causes you issues in your game play.

I’m aware.

I have, but I’ve never been forced so far away I need a button to add an additional 20 yards to keep healing. Hasn’t even happened on the wider fights like nzoth with the tent splits and a few other bosses.

If he’s at max range and away from your group passively without doing it for a mechanical reason, then they’re in the wrong.

So yes, if they were standing beyond 40 yards out in Antarctica for the sole reason of just to stand out there I would indeed let them die over moving out of range of my tanks and other ranged dps standing in the correct position over being forced to take a situational talent that is mainly used to support people with bad positioning. I’m not saying it doesn’t have its legitimate uses in a high tier raid settings. but if your main reason of taking it is due to johnny on the spot not actually being in the correct spot, I’d consider having more defensive uptime and loh having reduced cd.

Again, I don’t have an issue with people taking it, but that was in response to you saying you had too many buttons and I simply offered an alternative. If it works for you, then by all means use it and use it well.

The vast majority of the time you’re more than capable of being in melee range. I do it on every single boss fight in the raid with zero issue and minimal downtime due to run away mechanics or swaps due to certain fights like the eyeballs/tents.

I mean, it’s not a good heal at all compared to the other 2 options due to just how poorly it scales and requiring all your melee to not be hopping around and zipping in and out of it with the addition of an extremely long cd for such a small heal.

I’m not trying to jump on you for anything, I’m trying and probably doing a terrible job at explaining why those other 2 options are just so weak and if you would even consider playing more melee range and weaving in cs you could increase your healing by quite a bit over waiting for a 5 second heal to go off on a 12 second cd. It will surely make you work a bit more, but I promise you it will increase your effective healing by a ton.

Again, you don’t have to do it, but I wanted to make it perfectly clear that the style I’m talking about is the best your spec can get when done right.

Understandable.

I said it because it is the best melee version of a healer after they gutted monk. It is the best fleshed out for weaving in melee damage and also increasing your healing output.

Druids can catweave but it won’t increase their healing output and requires additional globals to shift into their forms.

Monks it’s more of the same as you spend globals to do damage, you’re not actively working towards enhancing your next set of heals outside of the conflict and strife major that gives you melee healing for a short time for a chunk of your mana and a very specific build for rising mists.

The holy paladin just does it better in the current state of the game, it could change later, but for now it’s at its strongest when played in melee range and with the cm talent to pump out holy shocks fishing for additional boosts to your fol and hl.

If they wanna do anything with it I’d like to see our useless mastery replaced with glimmer so you get built in glimmer procs by default and the mastery can enhance the additional healing/damage done by it when you cast your next holyshock for targets that have the buff/debuff.

Just out of curiosity, what was the higher content?

You deff don’t need to melee in heroic range raids or 10-12 range keys or lower. But actual high content like mythic raiding and keys above that range just end up hurting your performance and teams chance of timing a key by spending all your downtime when nobody needs heals doing absolutely nothing.

I’m not saying you can’t play the game unless you have those things, I’m just saying you will perform better at your given role with that specific spec. There is a reason all the top paladins are glimmer and have that talent.

I’ll leave it at that as I feel we will just keep going back and forth and won’t agree on it due to personal opinions on the subject at hand.

Cheers and enjoy your spec in whatever way you choose to play it.

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I’ve done higher content, no melee needed.

You haven’t done any high content on that character. Properly played paladins want to be playing glimmer builds, which benefits greatly from melee range

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I will add… DPSing is a BONUS. It should always be for the players who aspire to be the BEST to do more damage. If you are an extremely effective healer you should be more than able to throw in a few spells. If you can’t, then you’re probably not as effective as a healer as you can be.

And isn’t M+ aspirational content? Is it not? Are we not supposed to push the edge of what our characters can do in M+ content? Why are we wanting the BEST OF THE BEST (the “top key” mythic raiders as you people call them) to not push the edge?

Or has WoW become so diluted that now we should have no challenge? Nothing to aspire towards? Nothing to push harder and harder and optimize for?

That’s such a lame way to think of it.

To put it another way: TO BE A PART OF THE BEST OF THE BEST, YEAH, YOU’D BETTER DO DAMAGE. BECAUSE THAT’S A PART OF BEING THE BEST OF THE BEST. To contribute to the successful completion and do AS MUCH AS YOU CAN to forward a fight.

If you don’t want to be the best of the best, who cares? But if you do, get learnin’.