Let me start by saying I think healers should DPS. However, having played a DPS class, it is really fun to weave all your abilities and cooldowns into an engaging rotation. Even tanks get to use a bunch of abilities that do damage and pull aggro synergistically.
Healers however, have like 2 DPS spells (exaggerating a bit) and most of those DPS abilities don’t heal. I can only spam smite or crusader strike for so long. It’s wildly unengaging to DPS as a healer. When the group doesn’t need healing, I am playing the world’s most boring DPS class.
Can we get something a bit more involved? I don’t have a solution, just noticing this disparity between tanks, healers, and DPS. Again, I agree that healers should DPS and contribute at all times.
I really love when DPS abilities line up perfectly with healing abilities, then I macro them together and expect the same behavior from the same button (but to whoever I want to cast at).
For example, I love how smite and flash heal have similar behavior. I love that shadow word pain and renew are both instant casts weakish hots/dots. I love that resto druids have moonfire to pair with rejuvenation.
I also love recently the spells that can heal or damage in the same button. Evokers have that Living Flame ability and I’m a fan. I also like that resto shaman talent that turns your healing rain into a circle that damages enemies and heals friendlies. More stuff like this would be sweet.
ESO is probably my favorite mmo with healers’ dps rotation considering how their ability trees function. You get skill points and can build a whole spell bar for heals and a whole spell bar for dps, with a nice variety of spells n abilities to choose from.
My Holy Priest already has an unholy number of keybinds. DPS rotation involving Smite, Holy Fire, Chastise, Divine Star, SWP, and SWD as the core. Bit of Nova here and there. I don’t want any more things to keybind.
Most of the complexity of dpsing as a healer comes from rotating between the two - necessarily, when healing IS required, a complex DPS rotation would become significantly moreso.
A boring DPS rotation when healing isn’t required is better than a stupidly complex one when healing is required.
I love to be able to DPS , it helps me to speed up dungeon when the DPS is not good and it also help me to solo content without changing spec.
Except that I am Holy Paladin, so my damage is negligible even when I tried.
It ain’t just the rotation that is bad. The damage is really bad too
I’m not saying the solution is to make both healing and DPS complex, making you have to do 2 complete things at once.
Again, I don’t know the solution. But tanks can pull aggro with abilities that do DPS. They don’t switch to a completely separate set of abilities when they have aggro. All of their roles are baked in to one rotation.
Tanks may swap out an ability or 2 when the situation arises, but not like healers. There must be a way to cohesively merge these two jobs in an interesting and engaging way.
I feel like the answer to this is introducing a spec that targets allies primarily and causes heals to damage enemies around the targeted Ally. Or have the over heal become damage on a nearby enemy. Or have heals buff the outgoing damage of the Ally. Or have mechanics that target enemies that debuffs them so that allies heal when they damage them. There’s a lot to play with here.
Uhhhh if your playing holy paladin you do have a pretty involved DPS toolkit with how holy shock, divine toll, daybreak, and shield of the righteous works…
pass , you can play your dps spec for that. also somehow i do not believe that people will master their healer abilities to extend to their complicated dps rotations . even ff14 is a one button rotation healer damage
Oddly enough the fella is a Shaman. Restoration Shaman has a lot of opportunity to run through a DPS rotation while healing. On my Shaman I’m constantly weaving in my damage spells, procs, and interrupts.