Healers are the key to progression

[Deja Thoris]

Does your shadow priest cast power word shield on himself when damage is incoming? Does your ret use DP? The other team might be ahead of you because they do the little things right. The fact that you "do higher dps" kind of shows that its not the be all and end all of things.

I don't think the healers are the most important. Different fights emphasize different things and each role has a time to shine.

[Lei]

He is on 10 HC atm, means he is progressing(?) on the 11th, which is... Thok. Do the math...

[Deleted]

In SoO personal survival is probably the most important; so I'd agree. Healers play an important role in this, but personals are very important too (thok for instance).

In ToT though tanks had the most important job by far (10 hc that is).

[Deleted]

As a healer, I used to think healers were most important too. The more and more I play and more I think of it I kinda ended up thinking the opposite.

Theres always gonna be a huge difference between how good people are at surviving. Even in very high level guilds you'll have DPS1 who carefully maps out his defensive CDs. Maybe theres a fight where you're expected to take 5 big chunks of some kind of damage. He'll make sure to use his defensive CDs one by one at each instance. Make sure to use HS at some point too. Or if the mechanics allow maybe he holds the CD until just a second before the damage hits and make a split second decision whether to pop his CD or not, should it be needed. And if its avoidable or random damage, he'll adjust his defensive CD management to the point where he pops them if things get dicey or to when he takes unexpectedly high damage due to random elements in the fight. He also knows when its viable so sacrifice DPS (say, sit in an iceblock) and when its not because the DPS is 100% needed.

And then theres DPS2, who keeps firing those nukes into the boss. And then if he dies to a big boss AoE he silently thinks "damn, healers couldnt keep me up". Or if he is unlucky and gets hit by unexpectedly high random damage he thinks "crap, everything really lined up on me there, nothing I could do". And then he awaits the res and gets back to nuking.

The difference between those two is immense.

If you could somehow produce a raid where no one took any unnecessary damage, healing would be absolutely trivial. Healers are mostly there to cover up for failures and to take care of the unavoidable damage, which generally isnt that bad.

Obviously theres exceptions to everything depending on fight mechanics though, but thats how I feel in general.

[Slant]

Guilds that are now 10/14 HC usually are pretty overgeared for the encounters already. It's not a question of how good your dps is, it's more a question of how suicidal it is. Healers and Tanks are equally important, but the dpsers tend to fall into a way of thinking where they say "We're the biggest group, I can play risky, because it won't be such a problem if I die". Tanks don't think like that and healers usually don't, either. But the dpsers thinking like that are wrong. Your dps sucks when you're dead. Many people don't understand that. Even if you pump out 400k+ dps single target, you're worthless if you risk dying once a minute doing that compared to a guy with 350k dps playing it safe.

[Sqeen]

at the moment healers have the most work to do imo. Tanks just stand around and taunt at <random> stacks, dps follows a click pattern but healers have to at least make some decisions whom to heal first and easily get distracted by the blinking health bars. On the other hand, healing is not really hard either but it is also not always their fault if people die. Not standing in crap should be baseline for heroic progression but there are also some other factors to consider.

[KaPe]

Being a healer myself, I disagree. Yeah, sure, every once in a while you get something really stupid like Thok, where you simply need 7-8 healers and it makes that role way more important than usual - to the extent that we're respecing DPSers.

On the other hand, most of the stuff that kills you has little to do with actual healing. Tank didn't use his cooldown. DPS didn't kill add X in time. Idiot Y stood in glowing shit for way too long. Someone chained Uber Spell of Doom. Lots of damage is fairly predictable, there are tons of raid cooldowns coming from DPS classes, huge amount of smart heals and damage reducing cooldowns. Really, the better you raid is, the less important healers become. You still need some token amount so people actually have enough hitpoints to survive whatever is thrown at them, but there's a ton of ways to make our job easier.

Add to this the fact that I'm playing Disc and using Atonement + lvl90s can be boring as hell... yeah. Healing H Siegecrafter... gawd, there's nothing happening there. Paragons seem to be a bit more chaotic, but still nothing quite that bad. I assume Garrosh will be boring to heal, too.

[Deleted]

at the moment healers have the most work to do imo. Tanks just stand around and taunt at <random> stacks, dps follows a click pattern but healers have to at least make some decisions whom to heal first and easily get distracted by the blinking health bars. On the other hand, healing is not really hard either but it is also not always their fault if people die. Not standing in crap should be baseline for heroic progression but there are also some other factors to consider.

I don't disagree with you, but I think you're overstating the difficulty of healing quite a bit. At this time smart heals are just so strong that the "triage" part of healing is mostly trivial. Keep half the raid alive with your personal heals and the smart heals triggered by it will cover the ones that you don't personally heal. (Applies less on fights without much damage on the whole raid)

[Deleted]

I think healing classes who can DPS efficient and keep up a good potion of heal are the safest and best healers in game. You get both sides of the coin.

Have never seen a downside to that. You need more DPS, healer can dps more... you need more heal, they focus more on healing... win win

[Raiju]

I think healing classes who can DPS efficient and keep up a good potion of heal are the safest and best healers in game. You get both sides of the coin.

Have never seen a downside to that. You need more DPS, healer can dps more... you need more heal, they focus more on healing... win win

so can a lot of dps, and tanks.

[Deleted]

Does anyone agree that healers have the most important role in raiding? My 25 man guild is 10/14H at the moment and we have better DPS then the realm 1st guild who are at 13/14H.

Any raider with a clear view on the topic will say clearly NO!
It all comes to pure DPS. Very simple example - Council's Blessed loa spirit. If you dps dont kill it in time its a waste because the boss get healed for 10% :X
Another example - Lei Shi Adds. If you dont kill them ASAP they will rape the raid and no healer will help that.
Diffrent kind of example - Gara'jal the Spirit Binder. Tight enrage timer, aka dps check. Norushen HC - same.

If you dont have the dps to kill the stuff you need to kill in time/before they do theyr shit no amount of healing and tanking will help you.

Also here is the major diffrence with roles:
Tanks - they need to keep the attention of the creeps on them so they dont run rampart and use here and there CDs to improve theyr survivability.

Healers - heals the tank ensuring they wount die, so the said creeps dont run rampart and wipe the raid.

DPSers - KILL! Kill the prio target "that add will explode in 30 seconds. KILL IT!". If they fail you wipe cuz of the explosion and this cant be healed or tanked again. However on the other note. Nowdays is not only "KILL!". Blizz' devs have given everybody enough selfdefencive cooldowns to help the healers and to increase DPS survaivability against the tons of mechanics they put in the encounters and its only 50% healer's fault that a DPser died.
There is one basic rule about the DPSers - "Dead DPSer does zero damage!" This is theyr biggest responsability - to stay alive as long as possible and kill what it have to die in time. If they fail in in either of this they are noth worth for dpsers.

Overall - DPS have the highest value for killing a boss. Tanks and healers have theyr parts too but however if the whole raid stay alive long enough due healing and tanks pick up all the adds and survaive the boss its ok, BUT there is one mechanic Blizzard put there to be more fun. Its called enrage timer. I think everybody know what this mean. If you hit it then there is something wrong with your dps and ,ill repeat again, no amount of healing or tanking will help you in enrage.

[Deleted]

I say TS is dead wrong.
There is a reason why you gear your DPS first, then the tanks and lastly the healers.

[Thelxi]

What is the most important changes depending on the group, but I would say that bad healers and bad tanks are by far the biggest hurdle in most groups. Dps can carry each other and cover each others weaknesses, they can also be replaced more easily. Bad healers, but also tanks, are a clean burden on the team and much harder to replace. Not just because there are fewer decent healers and tanks out there, but because in most groups healers and tanks hold higher positions in the social hierarchy.

I've been in groups with bad dps before, a problem that got sorted out over the course of a tier and I have been in groups with bad healers/tanks, a problem that never got solved and they remained stuck struggling with progress forever.

[Thalur]

Does anyone agree that healers have the most important role in raiding? My 25 man guild is 10/14H at the moment and we have better DPS then the realm 1st guild who are at 13/14H. I think the fact that they have much better healers is the reason.

The reason you say that is because you are stuck at Thok, where healers are most important.

Siege of Orgrimmar is a great raid for healers, it has many fun and challenging fights where good healers can make a difference. Heroic Thok is my most favorite boss as a healer and I'm looking forward to doing him each week. However, once you kill Thok, the progression fights where healers are important are over. For the last three bosses, movement, awareness and dps are much more important than strong healers.

So, seeing that you are stuck at Thok, the healers may be your problem personally, but generally, for the cutting-edge progress, having strong tanks and dps is at least equally important. And I guess your realm first guild not only has better healers but is generally much better if they are already at 13/14H.

[Barnabas]

Does anyone agree that healers have the most important role in raiding? My 25 man guild is 10/14H at the moment and we have better DPS then the realm 1st guild who are at 13/14H. I think the fact that they have much better healers is the reason. DPS has never been a problem in our raid since TOT, it's always been people dying here and there (sometimes it's the DPSer fault but I believe our healers should take the most responsibility usually). If you got a few bad DPS, it's alright because the stronger DPS will carry them, or when everyone gears up, theres pretty much no pressure on DPS. Say you got 5-6 healers vs 16-17 DPS in a raid, losing one of them is gonna have a much bigger impact than losing one DPS.

A 3 boss advantage, at this point, just shows they have better players overall than your guild. I put emphasis on, at this point, because by now it's not a matter of being undergeared. It's being in average gear and still having players making costly mistakes.

[Nobleshield]

Like what? Staying alive, that's really tough. Don't stand in bad shit.

More than that, having DPS who know how to help out the raid is a godsend too IMO. For example, I'm a Retribution Paladin, and I do much more than just DPS and stand out of the bad stuff on fights: I'll toss Sacrifice on the tanks or on other DPS to help with damage, or Salv our bear tank so he doesn't rip aggro back during a tank swap. I'll use Flash of Light (via Selfless Healer) to heal someone up so the real healers can focus on something else. I'll use Hand of Protection to save a healer or DPS's life. If you ask me that makes me infinitely more valuable than someone who just stands there and does damage.

[Sprinky]

Its been mostly covered but my thoughts are that its down to individual playskill rather than a specific role. There will be times where I save the tank with a lay on hands or well timed hand of sacrifice. There will also be times where a good dps spots that an add isnt dying fast enough and hops over to kill the add and save the attempt. A good dps isnt always top on the meters, they are the ones that are willing to make a sacrifice in dps to do something that is helpful to the attempt.

[Deleted]

More than that, having DPS who know how to help out the raid is a godsend too IMO. For example, I'm a Retribution Paladin, and I do much more than just DPS and stand out of the bad stuff on fights: I'll toss Sacrifice on the tanks or on other DPS to help with damage, or Salv our bear tank so he doesn't rip aggro back during a tank swap. I'll use Flash of Light (via Selfless Healer) to heal someone up so the real healers can focus on something else. I'll use Hand of Protection to save a healer or DPS's life. If you ask me that makes me infinitely more valuable than someone who just stands there and does damage.

Ah yes a dps doing basic dps things, good job ?

[Deleted]

I think healing classes who can DPS efficient and keep up a good potion of heal are the safest and best healers in game. You get both sides of the coin.

Have never seen a downside to that. You need more DPS, healer can dps more... you need more heal, they focus more on healing... win win

This might be true for Monks and Discpriests, but as a resto druid I can't really contribute more than 30-40k dps, and that's only when I completely stop healing. Sure I throw down a moonfire here and there on low damage phases but I can't say it's super meaningful.

[Tzalix]

Having good people in all roles is key to success.

Every role takes quite a bit of attention to play optimally. It's not just topping the meters and staying alive, it's about doing that and constantly keeping an eye on the rest of your raid and the mechanics of the fight and do whatever you can to keep everybody alive. This is what all good players do, no matter whay role they play.