If you have some spare time, sure throw your hands up, but your job, the one you picked, the one you are specc’d for, is to heal. If you want to DPS, choose a DPS spec, boohoo if it takes longer to find a group or get into group finder.
No thanks to people asking for healers to DPS, no thanks to people streaming some dodgy and dank strategy do we end up with lower level players failing.
I just ran a low level key for fun, joined some random group and the healer could not even heal one person on Rezan, but yet, they registered on the DPS meter. For half the fight they they couldn’t even get one person’s Grievous under control as they were too busy throwing their hands trying to DPS, than got eaten by Rezan, and than left the group.
The same goes for everyone, just because you can do something like tank in a DPS spec, or run an M+ with a specific group of friends without a healer or pull 6 packs at once, it does not mean it’s possible for everyone to do it even if they have the correct gear.
Some of the worst players I have seen recently:
A BM hunter pulling more auto attack damage than their pets, combined.
A 479, full mastery fire mage pulling 15K DPS.
Multiple tanks who yell “Hold on, I seen this done before”… and than die.
Melee too busy linking DPS meters, but yet registering zero interrupts while the group slowly falls apart with each new pack.
You all just need to play within your own limitations, the limitations of the group you are with and slowly learn to get better and push yourself. Stop jumping into higher keys and raid groups trying to be some hero just because you’ve seen it done or someone is telling you a healer must do DPS.
What you must do is whatever you can do and that is it. If you want to get better work your way to getting better.
Not even gonna read this because all that really needs to be said is that healers who DPS in higher Mythics are likely to help time the key. Just my experience, as a healer, that needed to stop being lazy and do some DPS when healing wasn’t imperative.
I’m not sure where this idea came from but healers aren’t designed to dps in groups. If you can do some dps while you’re healing, great, do it. Enjoy it even. But the game isn’t designed for it. Well, except for something like Disc priest where your damage lends to healing. But the dps isn’t going to be significant.
The only thing I’ll say about tanks is, please just hold aggro. I don’t care what else you do whether I’m dps or heals. Just hold the aggro. Pull the entire dungeon, run as fast as you want through it, doesn’t matter. Please just hold the aggro.
The idea comes from healers usually not needing to heal 100% of the time. Healing is obviously always the priority, but at times when there is nothing to heal, a good healer will do something else useful.
on my R druid I like to toss out some HoTs on a pull, then DoT adds. This isn’t hard, and the players that don’t do it are likely new or new to healing so I don’t push for them to go out of comfort for a few K dps that’s negligable.
However, on higher keys and with gear healers generally have great utility to CC and dps, although they should not be expected to DPS in numbers that compete with the actual DPS themselves. It certainly seems applicable that a few DoTs certainly don’t hurt.
Um yes they are. They have a spammable button that is mana efficient. In wotlk with lfg people started overgearing dungeons so much they barely had to heal, so they started using damage to make runs faster. Then we had specs like disc that were changed to heal by contributing damage. We also had healer talents that returned mana with using damaging abilities. Holy Paladins do more damage in close range and have talents to use there damaging abilities. To either heal or damage. Monks had fistweaving and have some form of it as talents.
Usually damaging is made to be mana efficient to so you don’t have to worry too much about mana when spamming one spell.
Sure your priorities are to heal your group, but good healers can do both. If your group can not do basic stuff you will not advance to do more advanced stuff that is obvious.
Unless they have some mechanic that provides healing while they are doing dps, the game isn’t designed around healers adding to dps. I wouldn’t know about that particular bit of Paladin skills.
It’s about the timing and what kind of contribution is being made. WoW’s encounters are fast paced and very reactionary. This includes the healing aspects. It’s a result of having mods that allow nearly split second timing in reactions. Combine this with the amount of dps that a healer can provide compared to the amount of dps that dps classes can provide.
Healers don’t provide a make it or break it amount of dps, or even a “make encounters noticeably easier” amount of dps. They just aren’t designed to do that. Even the paladins. I’ve never heard or seen at any point in the history of the world (of warcraft) where the dps provided by healers was the reason a raid was successful. Everyone except the healer or healer and tank dies but the boss dies too? Sure. But that’s not really successful, that’s as much luck as anything else.
Now, that said…
I tend to agree with this. It’s also boring to just stand there. It’s easy, but if you can hit the mobs with something while you’re waiting, why not? It may not be meaningful, but people obviously appreciated it. I would say though, learn to heal first. Dps is just a distraction and can keep you from doing the thing you’re supposed to do, which is heal. Even in easy content you may be missing some key component of how your class works to heal if you’re trying to kick the mobs in the face.
Try telling that to any guild/group that pushes difficult content and see what kind of reaction you get. Healer dps can mean the difference between getting a world first mythic raid boss kill or finishing a M+ key in time.
You should really stop now before you make yourself look any worse.
Ok so disc priests are doing it wrong? I’m confused.
So if you have super smart DPS who aren’t standing in fire. You have a blood DK who is healing themselves. What do you suggest the healer do? Play solitaire on their second monitor?
You’re right, those same healers also don’t need to attempt to join any meaningful content so they don’t get inevitably kicked and or replaced for underperforming at the higher levels. You can stick to less difficult content and heal without DPSing to your heart’s desire.
You have to familiarize the concept of group dps. If your dps is slacking or can use some help adding even a bit of damage helps especially if you have ever wiped to a boss at 1%…
Over gearing a dungeon is making the encounter design irrelevant. I’ve solo’d dungeons with my Disc priest. I get it. I totally get it. At that point, it doesn’t matter what you do because the other players probably won’t need healing, and the tank probably won’t need to hold aggro. Everyone can just run amok.
I’ve already mentioned the Disc thing. But guilds aren’t going to start stacking Disc priests for the dps unless there’s some advantage to having multie Disc priests for healing. At which point Blizz would probably nerf it. They aren’t going to start stacking other healing classes for their dps either, because there are dps classes for that particular task and they are going to be much better at it. That’s what I’m saying. The dps that healing classes provide may be appreciated, but it’s largely irrelevant.
Because this is the problem I am talking about, you sit here and say “Oh but I can pull 70K DPS on a boss”, like sure, maybe if you stack IS or something ridiculous. But that sets a precedent that if another person reads this and wants to try it they may just fail miserably at everything and that is not what we want healers to do.
I never minded doing some dps as a healer back in the day. My issue is Blizzard saw it and is now designing content around it. Its why I absolutely HATE timed runs of anything. It forces the healer by default to heal and dps.
I also find current healer dps in general to be very lackluster. I feel like a fresh level 120 dpsing. So being forced to do it is not fun.
Depending on where your gear is at and what is available. I knew when I used to heal it made it a much more fun experience to weave dps rotations and healing with restoration druids. (Using cat form is fun for that while no one is taking damage). Sure depending on where you are at in progression you may need to heal more but if your group can avoid avoidable damage then that is great time for you to dps and contribute to group dps.
Most healers have an ability that is also mana-cost efficent for contributing to damage if you take notice when you are playing. Healers are designed with flexibility and being able to help dps in downtime. In BFA we also have access to g eneric traits that allow to spec for dps too. At one point people took resto druids cause they did the most dps. And have good utility/ healing output.
I was able to pull 40k on certain bosses in raid with 1 Ineffable Truth and no other corruptions at ~458-460 ilvl on this paladin. You don’t have to stack anything, you just have to not suck and be playing with other players that don’t get hit by every single avoidable mechanic in the game. Pretty reasonable expectation for anyone that is planning on doing anything besides casual questing.
Once you nail down the basic dungeon triad of dps/tank/healing your realize many classes can do a little bit of 2 or more. As long as everyone is on the same page people can do dps with a bit of offhealing. Some tanks can do offhealing. All dps have damage mitigation abilities. And some have offtanking capabilities if needed for a few moments.
It really just depends on how confortable you are with your group. With guilds there is room to do more. The basics are still the basics but when you get to more advanced gameplay it most certainly helps to be flexible.