Do Healers have to DPS now during down time in between heals?

[Gestopft]

It’s designed for the mdi

This is a silly accusation every time I see it.

It’s designed so that group coordination is the biggest factor in how far keys can be pushed, not “can the healer pump enough.” Yes, there have to be times that test the healer, but rewarding group skill and coordination has to take precedence

[Kumorii]

It's more common to drop healers

Sure, that is something we do as well. Depending on what roles people want to play... it was more of a response to the context of the guy i quoted. Doing both is even more logs. Same as pulling back some healers CD's so anothers CD can do more etc etc. Plenty of ways.

[kenn9530]

Simply put, no. If you are looking at healing logs you are doing it wrong as a raid lead. They are functionally meaningless. It is probably true that bad players will rarely get good logs - because if they aren't good enough to do simple stuff right, they probably aren't good enough to game the system. Good parses are far more strongly correlated with external factors (the ones listed previously). They have little to no correlation with skill (save perhaps the very worst parses). If you are dropping healers based on parses, you really don't understand how healing works. They are not at all like dps parses. Your causality is completely the wrong way around.

Nope you are wrong, you look at how capable the player is, how much healing they can do, how much damage they take compared to others in the raid, its really hard to get gold logs so you have to be good because gold log players get fed with buffs, if you can get gold without those extra buffs then you are a very good player, healer damage is simply not required even in mythic raiding content and is not a measure of how good a player actually is.

If all healers get crap parses then chances are you are overhealing it, if healers are not at least casually getting 60-70 logs without even really trying the healer is probably just bad.

[Fenrys]

Yes, which is what I was saying. One of those healers will look good in logs (because he does a fuck ton of healing), but the other will be worth bringing (because no one can ever die).

Sorry bud; misread your post.

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Nope you are wrong, you look at how capable the player is, how much healing they can do, how much damage they take compared to others in the raid, its really hard to get gold logs so you have to be good because gold log players get fed with buffs, if you can get gold without those extra buffs then you are a very good player, healer damage is simply not required even in mythic raiding content and is not a measure of how good a player actually is.

If all healers get crap parses then chances are you are overhealing it, if healers are not at least casually getting 60-70 logs without even really trying the healer is probably just bad.

I'm going to be frank; I've set out why this is a totally wrong-headed view on healing parses with good reason. Buffs aren't the major factor here - your raid has to play sub-optimally or some other non-skill related modification to parse well. You don't seem to be getting it - you also seem to be in denial about what makes a good healer (re: damage). I am very glad I don't raid with you. In a raid where everyone plays perfectly, you will struggle to get even solid parses.

You don't drop a healer because they parse well. They parse well because you dropped a healer.

[kenn9530]

Sorry bud; misread your post.

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I'm going to be frank; I've set out why this is a totally wrong-headed view on healing parses with good reason. Buffs aren't the major factor here - your raid has to play sub-optimally or some other non-skill related modification to parse well. You don't seem to be getting it - you also seem to be in denial about what makes a good healer (re: damage). I am very glad I don't raid with you. In a raid where everyone plays perfectly, you will struggle to get even solid parses.

You don't drop a healer because they parse well. They parse well because you dropped a healer.

No you dont have to play sub optimal to get parses, infact you have to play better and do the content with less healers so the whole raid has to play optimal to avoid extra damage, what makes a good healer is keeping everyone alive and playing your role the best you can, i have participated in realm first content because of the skill i have as a healer and can do whatever content in WoW i want. If you do the content properly and with less healers it goes faster than using extra healers that do damage and that is a fact.

Healers shouldnt be forced to do damage, that is terrible gameplay as is proven by how boring/bland holy paladin and disc is, its no wonder why players cant be bothered to play the game anymore with all the terrible decisions about gameplay that come into WoW, just because a healer can do damage it doesnt mean its optimal to do it or it makes them a bad player for not doing it, its a choice to do it plain and simple.

[Fenrys]

No you dont have to play sub optimal to get parses, infact you have to play better and do the content with less healers so the whole raid has to play optimal to avoid extra damage, what makes a good healer is keeping everyone alive and playing your role the best you can, i have participated in realm first content because of the skill i have as a healer and can do whatever content in WoW i want. If you do the content properly and with less healers it goes faster than using extra healers that do damage and that is a fact.

Healers shouldnt be forced to do damage, that is terrible gameplay as is proven by how boring/bland holy paladin and disc is, its no wonder why players cant be bothered to play the game anymore with all the terrible decisions about gameplay that come into WoW, just because a healer can do damage it doesnt mean its optimal to do it or it makes them a bad player for not doing it, its a choice to do it plain and simple.

I'd recommend reading this; https://mechanicalpriest.com/why-hea...s-dont-matter/. It goes into more depth than I have here and I think you would find it really useful. You are misunderstanding my point. Of course fewer healers means more dps and faster fights - but fewer healers enables healers to parse well, rather than having high parsing healers meaning you can run fewer healers. You have it the wrong way round.

Your second point is fine. I don't disagree as a matter of game design. Its perfectly fine to think that healers *shouldn't* have to dps. The game is not designed that way however so in order to play well you need to dps. If you don't, you aren't a good healer for the game as it is.

[Drusin]

So you don't mind healing on a dps.. But dpsing on a healer is too far?


k

Yep, exactly as I said and like I also said, I just quit healing

[Temp name]

Yep, exactly as I said and like I also said, I just quit healing

I'm curious as to why though..
As a dps your job isn't to heal
As a healer your job (in your mind) isn't to dps

Why are you okay with one but not the other?

[Drusin]

I'm curious as to why though..
As a dps your job isn't to heal
As a healer your job (in your mind) isn't to dps

Why are you okay with one but not the other?

No clue ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I didn't notice before it was pointed out to me, I admit it is strange but I really do dislike having to dps as a healer but I will actively look for chances to heal people as dps or tank lol

[kenn9530]

so you think healers should just stand around doing nothing when there's nothing to heal? lol...

Healers should do what they want to do thats how a game works, if you are raiding dont bring too many healers and they wont have nothing to do.

I'd recommend reading this; https://mechanicalpriest.com/why-hea...s-dont-matter/. It goes into more depth than I have here and I think you would find it really useful. You are misunderstanding my point. Of course fewer healers means more dps and faster fights - but fewer healers enables healers to parse well, rather than having high parsing healers meaning you can run fewer healers. You have it the wrong way round.

Not the wrong way round at all, bring in the min healers to complete the content, means the healers usually have to just focus on healing and the content is then cleared faster and the content is more enjoyable, then skilled players will then be able to parse better without even having to try because you are not over healing the fight, if healers have time to dps then either the content is designed poorly or you have brought too many healers.

[Temp name]

Not the wrong way round at all, bring in the min healers to complete the content, means the healers usually have to just focus on healing and the content is then cleared faster and the content is more enjoyable, then skilled players will then be able to parse better without even having to try because you are not over healing the fight, if healers have time to dps then either the content is designed poorly or you have brought too many healers.

wat
You do realize that most encounters don't have constant ticking damage that needs to be healed (and those that do doesn't have that damage tuned around needing all your healers to actively heal it) ?
Soulrender, Painsmith and guardian all have passive ticking damage on your raid, but that gets taken care of by 1 or 2 of your healers while the rest are just there to do dps and pop CDs at the right time so the actually dangerous parts won't kill you.

In literally every fight you have downtime where there's not much damage going out, but you still bring 4-5 healers so you can heal and have CDs for all the dangerous parts.
Having healing requirements tuned around all your healers needing to heal 100% of the time would be awful because it would mean you have 0 downtime, and the enrage is now when your healers run out of mana instead of anything interesting (again like Painsmith or guardian).
Oh and if one of your healers dies because they fucked up mechanics? Oops, you just wiped because the others can't keep up anymore

[Fenrys]

Healers should do what they want to do thats how a game works, if you are raiding dont bring too many healers and they wont have nothing to do.



Not the wrong way round at all, bring in the min healers to complete the content, means the healers usually have to just focus on healing and the content is then cleared faster and the content is more enjoyable, then skilled players will then be able to parse better without even having to try because you are not over healing the fight, if healers have time to dps then either the content is designed poorly or you have brought too many healers.

Please try reading what I have said at all, because your response makes zero sense in the context of my statement. Is there a language barrier here because this isn't the first time that your response does not correspond at all to what I am saying. I am not arguing against (where appropriate) bringing fewer healers to bring more dps. That we agree on. Your point, which is utterly wrong, is that you bring fewer healers if the healers you have parse well. My point is that in order to parse well you need to (amongst other things) run fewer healers. You have it the wrong way round. Good healer parses =/= skilled healers. They correlate far more strongly with external factors (number of healers, how mechanically good the raiders are, healer assignments).

As to the first point - by all means play the game how you want to play it. You are objectively less skilled than a healer who is willing to play optimally though.

[erifwodahs]

Please try reading what I have said at all

He can't read. He can't comprehend anything or base his claims on anything either. He is just a bad player with too much time on his hands, but instead of getting good he sucks his own... agenda.

[kenn9530]

wat
You do realize that most encounters don't have constant ticking damage that needs to be healed (and those that do doesn't have that damage tuned around needing all your healers to actively heal it) ?
Soulrender, Painsmith and guardian all have passive ticking damage on your raid, but that gets taken care of by 1 or 2 of your healers while the rest are just there to do dps and pop CDs at the right time so the actually dangerous parts won't kill you.

In literally every fight you have downtime where there's not much damage going out, but you still bring 4-5 healers so you can heal and have CDs for all the dangerous parts.
Having healing requirements tuned around all your healers needing to heal 100% of the time would be awful because it would mean you have 0 downtime, and the enrage is now when your healers run out of mana instead of anything interesting (again like Painsmith or guardian).
Oh and if one of your healers dies because they fucked up mechanics? Oops, you just wiped because the others can't keep up anymore

Healers healing 100% of the time is what has been the case for most of WoWs existance, healer damage has been completely useless until last expansion because it was only slightly not useless anymore, its a simple fact in all WoW content healers are not required to do damage, its simply just bad gameplay design by blizzard to even allow healers to have damage to be slightly relevant.

As to the first point - by all means play the game how you want to play it. You are objectively less skilled than a healer who is willing to play optimally though.

Too many healers means noone parses well, less healers and more dps means everyone in the raid will have better logs, logs are a main focus on farm content, only a skilled healer can get purple or higher logs, a terrible healer will be lucky to maintain blue logs. All parses matter as you wont get in a good guild without them, and can use them to improve yourself further and try pushing higher.

Doing damage or not doing damage as a healer has nothing to do with skill, its a choice to do it and skill doesnt come into it, there is nothing optimal about healers doing damage in the slightest.

The whole point is healer damage is not needed to clear the content WoW has to offer, i dont mind healers being able to do damage but it should hurt your mana management if you decide to do it, the best times WoW had with healing was WotlK/Cata/MoP where you didnt get a chance to do much else but heal.

[Elbob]

The whole point is healer damage is not needed to clear the content WoW has to offer, i dont mind healers being able to do damage but it should hurt your mana management if you decide to do it, the best times WoW had with healing was WotlK/Cata/MoP where you didnt get a chance to do much else but heal.

You mean back when priests and druids would afk for spirit regen and wand/auto for JoW procs or OoC procs? Or does that damage not matter?
Or in Cata when shamans would spam lightning bolt as often as possible cause of telluric currents?
Or Paladins keeping up JoL through spamming judgements and using hybrid dps/hps talents?

Yep no time to do anything but heal here bois lets call it a day and move on....

More on topic of your posts, I'm really beginning to question the level you play at in current wow, you have cited doing "server first" things a few times over this horrendous thread but you don't really seem to understand how healer minimums in raids work or why they are what they are. Very few fights have consistent raid dmg levels to heal. Healing requirements go up down throughout combat and the number of healers brought in organized content is usually based on how many healer CDs are needed to keep the raid up through the toughest moments.

What about the rest of the fight though? Usually on the pull there is almost nothing for healers to do but dps. Raid damage starts either non existent or very low and incoming tank dmg is low because they have full cds and AM available to them. Do you propose healers should just afk in this time? Them contributing to dps in times of low activity makes the fight better for everyone and push times can often make healer parses better as well. (IE BL uptime or more optimal CD usage). Are you also against dps using healing abilities to keep themselves or the raid alive? Should a moonkin never Hotw rejuv spam even when the boss isnt targetable?

You are right btw because you are pressed back in a corner and depending on one word in all your arguments and thats "required". None of the content in wow is hard enough that you need to squeeze every drop of juice from every player in your raid. Most the people ive seen in this thread are not arguing against your word choice and are pointing out its purely beneficially for healers to dps. They are correct.

[Fenrys]

Healers healing 100% of the time is what has been the case for most of WoWs existance, healer damage has been completely useless until last expansion because it was only slightly not useless anymore, its a simple fact in all WoW content healers are not required to do damage, its simply just bad gameplay design by blizzard to even allow healers to have damage to be slightly relevant.



Too many healers means noone parses well, less healers and more dps means everyone in the raid will have better logs, logs are a main focus on farm content, only a skilled healer can get purple or higher logs, a terrible healer will be lucky to maintain blue logs. All parses matter as you wont get in a good guild without them, and can use them to improve yourself further and try pushing higher.

Doing damage or not doing damage as a healer has nothing to do with skill, its a choice to do it and skill doesnt come into it, there is nothing optimal about healers doing damage in the slightest.

The whole point is healer damage is not needed to clear the content WoW has to offer, i dont mind healers being able to do damage but it should hurt your mana management if you decide to do it, the best times WoW had with healing was WotlK/Cata/MoP where you didnt get a chance to do much else but heal.

Sorry mate, its not possible to have a constructive conversation about this if you aren't going to read a word I say or at least engage in good faith. I would agree with Elbob below that it seems very unlikely you do any sort of difficult content at all. That is fine - not everyone needs to be in Limit - but you have at the at the very least implied you are raiding at a decent level.

[Temp name]

Healers healing 100% of the time is what has been the case for most of WoWs existance,

Uh.. no.

No it hasn't.
Vanilla through cata healers stopped casting completely to regen
Starting in MoP healers did damage during downtime because it was mana neutral, and was semi-required in CMs, so it carried over into raids as well

and again, if you need healers to always be healing to survive a raid encounter, then if a single healer dies, it's a wipe because the others can't keep up. There is *always* downtime in raid encounters where not a lot of damage is going out, or it's a patchwerk style fight where the entire point is to push numbers.

healer damage has been completely useless until last expansion because it was only slightly not useless anymore, its a simple fact in all WoW content healers are not required to do damage, its simply just bad gameplay design by blizzard to even allow healers to have damage to be slightly relevant.

They're not required to, but they might as well do it, since it's free damage.
And is it bad design? Maybe according to you, but I like it. I like having something to do when I'm not healing
And "until last expansion" is just laughable.. Healers have always been capable of doing okay damage when they actually try

[kamuimac]

I've yet to see a 15 Tyra Stradama done with no healer - and it's just one example of many. Maybe in some weird self-heal/immune comp? But yeah, if you have strong DPS and cooridnated kicks, most things will die before they can hurt you. That's nothing new. Thing is, in an average key you will have players taking damage. It's basically a given.

In general, I don't argue against what you're saying. The best of the best do many things average players will never be able to - but should it really concern them? If you see a bunch of kids playing a game of football in the backyard, you don't go lecture them on how professionals do it, you just let them have fun. So let it be known that no, in a ~15 key, you don't have to DPS, at all. And you don't need to aspire to be like the best of the best. If your aspirations end on a 15 key, just learn to heal and dodge mechanics, and you're good to go. I'll never understand the mmo mentality that you constantly HAVE TO improve. You don't, and you don't even need to if you just stick to your level of play. That's why context is important. The thread question has two answers, depending on the context. The answers are:
1) [in the context of normal play] No, you don't have to DPS as a healer.
2) [in the context of pushing keys as high as possible] Yes, you have to DPS as a healer. And a lot more, like playing a healer class that can dish out respectable DPS.

without any healer its probably impossible.

but last season i did one 16 PF with literaly 170 itlv resto shammy . ofc rest of team was in 220+ gear and properly coordinated on voice comme - managed to time it without issuses .

thats why when i see people who fail there geared to the teeths and blame blizzard for it - its just lol.

[Nitrax]

Healers have to dps now? You can be a good healer even if you dont dps. I think people are mixing up ”good” with ”excellent”.

[Kalisandra]

I think there's a reasonable discussion to be had on how the role is supposed to work. Right now when I tank, I tend to do more healing and more dps than my healer. It's really unsatisfying to feel like you're not really reaching your potential as a healer. When you're able to do 8k hps and you end up doing 3.5k hps and 2k dps, that's just lame and feels poorly designed.

While I don't have a problem with tanks having some self-healing, I find it really quite depressing when I'm healing m+ runs and the tank has vastly more healing than I do. The change from armour and avoidance to absorption and healing for tanks has not improved the game, IMO. Also, in content that the group does not considerably outgear I should not be going through the run competing with the tank for DPS and knowing that the only reason I couldn't do the run as Elemental was a couple of trash pulls and one boss (and I do wonder if some weeks a couple of hybrid DPS wouldn't be sufficient). Heck, sometimes if there's a stuff up our Warrior tank and Fury DPS kill some bosses on their own from ~30% on non-Tyrannical weeks.

I think that if there are periods in a fight where no healing is required, healers should still be having to ask themselves if they can afford the mana to DPS, rather than DPSing being a no-brainer. Healing in WoW is supposed to include mana as a consideration, and was never supposed to be ABC - 'Always Be Casting' was a DPS mantra, not a healing one. Lulls in healing were opportunities to look forward and work out what was going to happen and what cooldowns you were going to need to use, and who should be pre-shielded, etc. Or, if you you something like a Paladin in Wrath, a chance to take a quick breather, check your position, and reapply short-duration spells before the back-to-back healing spam started again.

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I mean, did you ever try to heal a ~15 key with a PUG of random people? I swear there's so much to heal there, and more often than not!
There can't be more healing to do, because the skill difference between a random PUG and a premade with capable tank, coordinated kicks and good defensives usage is vast, and I mean, vast like a damn ocean. If you make it so that a healer in a good group has to be on his toes all the time, no PUG will ever be able to finish a single run.

Maybe pugs with no comms, etc. shouldn't normally be able to complete m+15s, just as they're not expected to complete mythic level raids. I do not see why some top-end content (and m+15s are top-end, considering that that's where the gear tops out) should be puggable when the other types generally aren't.

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Now, I think there maaaay be a way to (at least partially) counteract this, but it comes with its own downsides too. Basically, what you would do is increase everybody's health- you could then have a greater proportion of incoming damage beg unavoidable, and players would spend more time injured. Mistakes would be less immediately punishing to the player(s) making them (since more abilities would be survivable), but then the healer would have to "catch-up" before the next unavoidable damage event. However, this would take a good deal of the urgency out of healing, and lessen the impact of the moment-to-moment decision making that many healers find thrilling.

There's a way to fix that - the tank takes constant damage, so if you don't stay on top of it, you won't have time to bring up the rest of the group between those waves of party-wide damage. Also, you would have to manage your spell choice so as to stay between going oom healing faster than necessary and not healing enough through being too cautious with mana. Give healers decent 'oh, crap!' mana regen cooldowns, but with cooldowns long enough they can only use them on a few pulls so they are actually for emergencies and not something you should use all the time, and it gets a lot more interesting.

If this is set up right, healers will really appreciate DPS who help by hitting damage mitigation cooldowns during the damage waves, and/or throw out some pinch heals when the tank's getting hammered and they're trying to hold the whole party's health up enough they don't go down. As it is, most of the time DPS can just forget about that stuff unless it really is challenging content.

Challenging content for healers shouldn't mean 'content where I have to find time to DPS'. It should mean 'content where I have to heal smart, and balance throughput with mana'.