I used to love healing back in the day when watching your mana pool was as important as watching health pools if not more important, so there just didn’t exist an option to dps while being the healer.
I haven’t played one since early WotLK and the urge to start again is returning, but everywhere I look I see comments about healers having to dps while they heal and I am not talking about the Discipline Priest since that is healing by doing damage.
The thing I loved most about playing a healer was the wack-a-mole playstyle, standing in the back keeping everyone alive and leaving the damage to the dpsers. Heck I didn’t even have any damage abilities on my holy priest back then once I hit max level (was during vanilla though, so very early days).
The gameplay expectation now is that if you’re not healing, then you’re doing damage. And if you can do both at the same time, then that’s even better.
The players’ constant pursuit of optimization eventually found its way to healers, and this was an obvious area to squeeze more performance out of the role. So that’s how it functions now.
Of course you don’t have to use your damage-dealing spells, but it’s definitely the community perception that you should.
Nope and it sucks… made me switch from mainly playing healers back then to avoiding them and instead do the tanking. Don’t have the patience to find comfortable keybindings for double the amount of spells as a healer than I need for every other role and the constant switching is just annoying.
You’re there to kill bosses. You do that my contributing your whole toolkit. Not being useful in slack time just makes me think of some jaded government employee saying “not my jerb!”
It would be like my boomkin not throwing an emergency heal on someone because im ‘dps’
Well, when everyone is safe, you have the options of a) staying there twiddling your thumbs until something happens; or b) contribute whatever little you can do killing the boss / enemy team / trash pack / whatever. Obviously, b) is more than a) by any measurable degree, so twiddling your thumbs while you could do something else is naturally bad play, ain’t it?
Double up your dps and healer keybinds… my macros will heal a friendly target/mouseover and harm an enemy - will work for any healer - just change the spells.
Sure, as said, it’s a gameplay area that players have managed to optimize over the years.
I mean, in the older days if there was no healing needed, then you just stood around and waited for something to happen. It wasn’t really engrained in the players that they ought to do damage then. That gameplay optimization hasn’t been there since the start, but it is here now.
Really annoys me when healers just stand there doing nothing waiting for damage to be far. Imagine if the tank or DPS did that you’d go nuts. And at the end of the day damage just saves future heals, making everyons life easier.
Times have changed from old MMOs doing that, and become more complex. Raids are built a round healer damage, keys are timed and a healer just doing 1-2k shaves minutes off the timer. And makes the tanks life way easier not having mobs last too long, and running out of defensive CDs.
Not only this gameplay is annoying for most classes but it’s completly put aside when it comes to balance. Like devs don’t feel need to make it even, when you look at charts holy pala does 3 times more dps than holy priest. Imagine this kind of difference in dps classes, where 5% more dps can decide about being at S or A tier.
I wish they could make doing dps as healers as easy as possible and I won’t cry on forum if they simply nerf it out of existence.
I mean, imagine if it became the new normal that whenever there’s a transition phase in a boss fight, then all the tanks and damage-dealers should use bandages to help heal, instead of just waiting around doing nothing.
That’s weird and at the same time you can see the min/maxers go: “Huh, that’s a way to save 0.0001% mana for the healers!”
The better the group you have the less healing you need cause they dodge crap.
So it is expected that you will dps as a healer instead afk looking at screen.
Everyone can heal and not let the group die, a good healer can heal and do dps to help.
Haha slightly different to someone stood 50% of the content picking their nose waiting. When everyone else is pushing themselves. Any good tank/dps would heal themselves in down time anyway.
Well that’s because a DPS always has something to DPS, a tank always has something to hold aggro.
When there is nothing to heal, they should be recovering their mana.
You could also ask why isnt the tank pulling more, if the healer isn’t having to heal?
But I think that’s the issue right, M+ doesn’t like downtime, so healers either need mana issues so the downtime is forced to prevent them having to DPS, or they have plenty of mana and DPS.
Personally I do not enjoy having to DPS as a healer. I was getting into healing in WoD but then M+ stomped all over any potential interest in the role.
Any healer can choose not to dps, and thus be a pure healer. There are certainly days/affixes when I will talent and gear to stand at range and have less APM. Sometimes I do it on progression boss fights where we’re nowhere near a kill and also not getting close to straining my mana, because that way I can see more of what’s going on and get more awareness of mechanics before I dive into melee on later pulls.
OTOH, if I’m in a key/boss that is on the edge of what the group can do but we think we can handle it, it’s not efficient to have downtime. If healers can add 5% overall dps, then that could be the difference between a timed key and a depleted key, or between a kill and a 2% wipe.
Why would you intentionally let your group fail?
So the thing is, if you were to design a pure healer, it would by definition also be a weak healer. You’d be using 100% of your GCDs just to keep the team alive, which others are doing with ~50-75%. Why would anyone take that healer?
By helping to end the encounter faster you are removing damage that would occur if you didnt.
Dps as a healer is easy as you have limited spells available.
In raids you can probably get away with little to no damage (if you are not a healer with it at the core of its toolkit) but in m+ you should as there is a timer to beat.
I would say try it out, you might actually end up liking it.
Don’t think that works with the standard UI, and I’m a very visual person, I need the “right” pictures for my spells. xD
I never run out of thing to do as healer - hot targets, cast less mana intesive spells on the tank; now I just feel stressed when I have to switch between DPSing and healing; happens now and then that someone dies because I had to dps before. And it’s not even fun - most healers do bad dmg, so I’m basically just wasting gcds.
Yeah I get where you’re coming from. I’ve always said to my mates I push keys I’d much rather pull big, and have the healers just heal. If tanks pull 3 packs the DPS can go nuts and do 30k+ damage pulls, much better then a healer chipping in the odd 1k damage here and there.
Same way I always prefer a tanky tank, like a guardian druid that can do huge pulls. Over a damage tank pulling small doing 4-5k damage like a prot pally. The overall damage is miles higher, and the healer can focus on what they do best.
I guess it’s just what you like doing, I’ve got mates who hate damaging as healer. But I love nothing more on my healers then pushing damage and getting new records. When you start averaging 2k+ you know you’ve really helped put on the timer, that’s literally an extra 3 minutes saved on the run.
