As a healer, is it my job to heal pets?

[Rheckameohs]

Their job to pay attention to their pet. If they don't want to deal with managing a pet they need to reroll. On a side note as a tank I always let pets die if they have growl/threatening presence on, there are few things more annoying than those pets in randoms.

This. I sincerely hope Blizzard puts out a hotfix that automatically turns off pet taunts whenever you zone in. I'm rather tired of losing aggro on a boss every 8 seconds because it's still enabled. God forbid there are two hunters with taunting pets.

Anyway, to answer the OP's question, I don't play a healer, so I don't quite understand healing ethics, but I would assume that pets aren't a priority. Whenever I play my hunter, I keep track of my cat's health and cast Mend Pet like an intelligent individual if he starts taking damage.

[Potente]

i play a lock, hunter, and disc priest.. i 100% do not expect any heals to be given to my pets.. its my job to keep them up.. but on the other hand, ill toss a quick heal on a pet when im playing my priest if i have the time / mana.

[SamR]

I think pet taunt is only an issue if the pet owner turns on auto-cast. I manually cast it when I solo and even a stiff breeze will knock it off. Mounting and unmounting knocks it off and I have to keep re-casting it when I'm doing dailies.

[yurano]

I can't stand posts like this...it is every raider's job to help kill the boss IN ANY WAY THEY CAN. If a hunter's pet dies its a pretty big dps loss for a hunter and if you are doing 10 man you lose a buff.

The hunter should mend pet first. If and only if mend pet and AoE heal cleave are insufficient should a healer actively heal the pet. Even in that case, its the hunter's job to call it out in vent.

Its not like healers don't want to pad meters. Healers just don't have the facilities to track class pets because it messes with raid frame organization.

[Airwaves]

It's not that I refuse to heal pets, I just don't have them on my raid frames. Of course I only "raid" in LFR these days and there's enough crap on my screen I have to watch as a healer without throwing pets in there that would never need active healing anyway unless the pet owner or the tanks screwed up.

There is nothing in lfr to even kill a player let alone a pet. So it does not matter to you or the person with the pet. Not healing them on a tight enrage heroic fight where the hunter/other class with pet shouldn't be wasting a gcd on a pet heal is different.

[SamR]

There is nothing in lfr to even kill a player let alone a pet. So it does not matter to you or the person with the pet. Not healing them on a tight enrage heroic fight where the hunter/other class with pet shouldn't be wasting a gcd on a pet heal is different.

And which heroic fight is this and how is the pet taking enough damage that he needs heals?

Is there a special "pets receive more damage" mechanic in heroic raids that I don't know about?

If it only takes 1 heal to save the pet, why not save the GCD and wait for the pet to heal to full from rampant AoE healing? Pets take super nerfed AoE damage and at any given time, there's tons of AoE healing sitting around the melee area where the pet is. If it takes multiple direct heals, then what the heck is the pet doing?

[Shiandra]

I generally don't bother in pugs because I don't care enough about the people to be nice to them, but in raids with friends and guildies I will.

[Gandrake]

in a dedicated raid group, i would take some responsibility. but only because of the "united we stand, divided we fall" kind of feeling that I like to have in a raid environment.

but i just let them die in 5 mans. players who don't know how to turn off their taunt should be punished for it.

But in most cases, players who play pet classes are 100% responsible for their pets.

[Rainmunin]

The only time I recall my pet dying, was either my fault from not pulling it back for something (wall of fire on sarth) or a big dot that was on my pet like a certain boss in Naxx. Which is the only boss I've ever wanted a healer to at least dispell my pet or something like that. Otherwise I think it falls on the hunter, especially when ferocity has a free rez for the pet now. I am yet to find a boss fight in MoP that my pet needed a heal on.

[Servasus]

The poll might as well read, "Are you ignorant on pet mechanics: YES or NO?"

Pets shouldn't die during an encounter EVER, because the pet owner has built in class mechanics specifically made to prevent that. If the pet is dying, the owner is doing something terribly, terribly incorrect.

The people who say if you need to heal a pet to win at an encounter, you should, clearly have no idea what they are talking about. That situation would never arise if all players within the raid are doing their job.

[Celista]

This is litterally the only reason why anyone would heal pets like ever. The only legit reason you have for healing a pet is if its tanking. As a healer healing pets will make you go oom faster and could cause a low percentage wipe because you decided it was "smart" to cast a single target heal on a pet.

I never go oom or let anyone die in raids, I have been playing heals a long time and am good at managing my mana. In dungeons there might be a smartass tank or two who tries to tank level cap heroics in ret spec and gear or something so it may have happened a time or two on LFD. In LFR....yeah its fun to pad the meters a bit, but it's not at the expense of someone dying.

As I said earlier, there ARE legit reasons to heal pets because they contribute significantly to damage done for certain classes. But generally pets take very little damage, aoe healing is generally enough...last time I seriously had to focus heals on a pet was when we had a hunter pet tank the adds on Nef during progression.

[Deleted]

As a former eleshaman, I certainly never blamed the healers for my fire ele dying, it was always me using it at the wrong time or place. A real pet class should have even more options to avoid their pet dying since they can actually control them and move them out of the bad stuff.
As a current disc priest, if a pet dies (and it's not due to some form of mc - in which case I can't heal it anyway) then it must either be a bug or the pet owner is doing something terribly wrong as I'm mostly using atonement heals which annoyingly often end up on pets.
I don't have pets on my bars and if pets will need heals due to some unavoidable bug, I expect the pet owner to tell me between pulls. I will not target pets with heals outside of that situation or the pet doing some amazing save-the-day tanking.

[Blackmist]

The only time my pet ever dies is when I fuck up and send it in before the tank. Zor'lok and Elegon spring to mind.

Sometimes you see it go low for some reason, but a quick Mend Pet fixes that.

Seriously, how incompetently are your guildies playing if they need their pets healing up by you? Tell them to switch growl off and man up. If their pet dies, it's a DPS loss. Heart of the Phoenix is instant and not too bad. Any other resurrection takes time. That should be reason enough for them to be keeping their pets alive themselves.

[Elhorn the Doomchicken]

As a tank, if the pet has their "taunt" on... I let 'em die, I don't even try to taunt off them as they will out aggro me again and my taunt will be on CD. A good hunter/Warlock/DK will be able to manage their pet, the bad ones will let their pets die. If the pet is tanking, I'm doing my job and not taking damage!

As a healer, same idea... I let 'em die, every pet class has a heal they can use on their pet, a healer's job is to keep the players alive, they can manage their pets.

[Frizzlewits]

in random 5 mans i have healed pets. but only as low prio, but when i notice when they still got growl on, i stop healing them.
but i will say they got growl on and should turn it off.

in raids i do not have pet bars up. i got my eyes focuses on the 10/25 ppl in the raid.
and they get heals from aoe heals.
hunters and warlocks got also tools to heal their pet but on spike damage it wont be enough.

[FuxieDK]

Absolutely not, in fact I get ticked off when my smart heals jump to pets.

Theyjump to pets, BECAUSE they are SMART heals.. They try to make up for what YOU lack..

Healing pets IS a responsibility of healers, but if it comes to a player dying because a pet is healed, then the healer does it wrong.
If you can keep pets healed with AoE heals and pasive abilities (Smite, Chain Heal, Tranquility etc) fine, but NEVER say it's not your responsibility as a healer, because it have been since day 1, and still is.

Funny, how people say ALL pet classes have heals for the pets..
- How does a frost mage heal his elemental? Oh yeah, HE CAN'T..
- How does a warlock heal his minion? Small passive healing, since Health Funnel was removed. And with Soul Link reducing the minions health by 50%, it's in a REAL danger of dying..
- Unholy DKs, can indeed heal Timmy, however, it's at a HUGE sacrifice of DPS, as he doesn't build stacks, when DCing Timmy.
- Hunters can't counter a sigle DoT on his pet, if Mend Pet is unglyphed, and since there are more important glyphs than MP, (virtually) noone use it for raiding..

[Marfrilau]

Healing pets IS a responsibility of healers, but if it comes to a player dying because a pet is healed, then the healer does it wrong.
If you can keep pets healed with AoE heals and pasive abilities (Smite, Chain Heal, Tranquility etc) fine, but NEVER say it's not your responsibility as a healer, because it have been since day 1, and still is.

While that may have been true once, it simply isn't anymore. If a pet dies the player with the pet is doing something wrong these days. It would be like demanding that healers keep healing really bad dps standing in fire. That dps is at fault not the healer. That dps should be removed from the raid group not the healer. While classes have different roles in a raid group they should ALL minimize the damage they take. The same goes for pets and if that is done no pet should ever need a direct heal from a healer.

[Temp name]

If a pet dies then that's too bad, but I still won't heal them.

[Chrysia]

As a hunter, the only time my pet ever dies is during the MC phase of Spirit Kings, so I'm wondering where the hell all this damage is getting thrown at these pets.

[Deleted]

Healers should not heal pets for the simple reason that if they require healing the pet owner is playing wrong and needs to be replaced.

Pets take very little dmg from aoe, and so splash heals will keep them alive perfectly well. They only take large amounts of dmg or death from avoidable boss mechanics which the pet owner should move them from. IF they cant do that, they cant play their class, and the healer should not have to carry the slack from someone being a liability.

Fights are designed around healers healing a set amount of dmg, which assumes 10 characters (in a 10player raid obviously!) and that people avoid most avoidable dmg. If you add healing targets in pets, and let them take avoidable dmg, you are putting the raid at risk by effectively reducing the proportions of healers in the raid.

Any pet owner expecting healers to heal pets is basically saying they cant play properly, and expect someone else to cover for their inability to manage their class mechanics.

---------- Post added 2013-01-22 at 10:25 AM ----------

Funny, how people say ALL pet classes have heals for the pets..
- How does a frost mage heal his elemental? Oh yeah, HE CAN'T..
- How does a warlock heal his minion? Small passive healing, since Health Funnel was removed. And with Soul Link reducing the minions health by 50%, it's in a REAL danger of dying..
- Unholy DKs, can indeed heal Timmy, however, it's at a HUGE sacrifice of DPS, as he doesn't build stacks, when DCing Timmy.
- Hunters can't counter a sigle DoT on his pet, if Mend Pet is unglyphed, and since there are more important glyphs than MP, (virtually) noone use it for raiding..

Not played pet classes for a while, but frost mages could heal with waterbolt.

Also, pets wont be targetted by most boss mechanics anyway so never get specific mechanics, and the pet owner can move them out of aoe effects.