One element people seem to forget is that the game is designed with healer’s damage in mind.
Blizzard removed the 5 second rule long ago. Why? because it encouraged healers not using their abilities during downtimes to recover mana, which is a boring, unengaging gameplay experience. Nowadays, most offensive spells cost just a fraction of the mana that most healing spells cost for a healing spec. Even 3 healing specs are designed with using damaging abilities in mind.
If they were never intended to be used for damage purposes then they would not do damage and Blizzard wouldn’t do things like buff all of Resto Shaman’s damage spells like they did last beta cycle.
But frankly it does not matter. A damage ability doesn’t stop doing damage just because it contributes to another resource (or doesn’t). Damage is damage regardless of what else that damage was accomplishing and it still kills people faster. Regardless of what the original intent was.
For instance, a Resto Druid catweaving is still a good thing since damage is still useful. The Druid doesn’t get any healing benefit from catweaving. Yet it’s still a good thing for them to do. Why is that?
Then you are arguing against a strawman. This is not something anyone in this thread believes.
Where you’re getting pushback from is when you argue that a healer doing damage doesn’t help the group. It does. Timer aside, I keep reiterating that shorter fights are safer fights. No one has even argued against that point yet. Doing damage makes the success of the group more likely and good healers should strive to do it.
Do you HAVE to do it? No. As it turns out perfect play is not required in basically any form of PvE content in this game unless you’re a top MDI player or a world first raider. But there’s a whole gradient of performance gates that will require you to steadily improve if you want to keep progressing in WoW. Doing damage as a healer is one of many avenues you can go down to improve your performance and unlock higher gates. It doesn’t mean it’s the only path you need to walk, it’s simply one more way to refine yourself as a player. What is so wrong with making new healers aware of this fact?
Go and read all 2000 posts and then come back here and tell me it’s not a strawman.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/removing-healers-in-keys-if-they-arent-dpsing/1393055
missed this did you?
Nope, both he and me participated in that thread very actively.
Don’t bring the 1 post out of 2000 from the 1 guy in that thread into this thread. It’s a strawman.
Go reply to that guy in his thread if you want to argue with him, gl getting a response, he’s long gone and got what he wanted.
Some people solo level in thier heal spec. Healers have always been able to do damage - even back to vanilla WoW.
healers are meant to heal. End of discussion. Let’s remove all their dmg ability. Why do they deserve to have a dmg ability. Problem solve
I literally told you YESTERDAY that yes I remember the thread. You have officially lost the benefit of the doubt. We all saw the thread. We (as in people on the pro-healer-damage side) all routinely said that the OP was likely trolling and that we didn’t support kicking healers for not doing damage.
You do not get to keep milking one troll forever to justify your crusade. You sir, are nutpicking. One troll with the ability to click “new thread” does not mean it’s a widespread position held by every single player who thinks healers doing damage is good play.
One post? Hes the OP of the thread. Its a sentiment felt by some in this thread.
Healers who do damage do speed up the run a small amount and do display a slightly higher level of gameplay. But were trending towards it being a necessity. I dont like that.
I fully believe blizzard never intended for healer DPS to be like this. Why have such a huge disparity between Mistweavers and say resto shamans if healer DPS was going to be important to keys.
Quote them.
He wasnt trolling. Youre making an assumption based on your own feelings. Meanwhile Im reading his words as he wrote them.
He’s either a troll or a jerk. Frankly I don’t care. He gets no love from me. Take your pick.
And ? Humanbeak OPs lots of threads. What’s your point ?
Oh right, you don’t have one.
How about this guy? Theres youre quote. Berated for not doing damage.
blizzard never intended anything really. They give us player a canvas to play with and we get it done. The issue is this healer doing dps debate is just stupid and dumb. DPS and tank have 100% uptime on dungeons and raid while healer just afk? And they said healer is the hardest role to play. Kinda a joke if you ask me.
isn’t he the player known to just buy boost?
Healer isnt the hardest role, but certainly the one who gets blamed if things go haywire and players start dying.
I would say healing is more focus intensive than DPS’ing. and possibly equal to tanking.
You said people advocated for kicking healers who don’t do damage. I don’t see that.
And setting aside his tone, it is still better play to contribute damage than to not. If you seek to run high level keys, then people are going to have some amount of performance expectations for you. Do you think that from that entire post that he intends to kick you from a +5 if you don’t do damage?
Nothing is a “necessity” in this game. You can even finish lower keystones by completely missing one player (or more, if the rest are geared enough).
Yet, as you seem to agree, doing damage as a healer is better gameplay. You can call it “slightly higher” all you want, but it is better gameplay. I run my pug keystones trying to perform to the best of my abilities (sure, sometimes I might be less focused than other times, but I still don’t try to downgrade my performance on purpose), because I understand I’m dealing with strangers that are themselves doing their jobs to the best of their abilities, and I respect other people’s times.