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

[NordWitcher]

I've picked up healing again after being years away from the game since early MoP. Do Healers have to DPS during down time these days? I'm lost and confused.

I picked up healing on a Holy Paladin and a Resto Shaman. I found myself being pushed into using Crusader strikes on enemies and bosses. Which turned me off the spec and class that I enjoyed healing on back in the day. I levelled up a Shaman and decided to try Resto. I've been seeing a lot of talk about healers doing a ton of DPS in Mythic keys and am wondering if I should be DPSing as well when not healing or during downtime?

I've done a few low keys, and I barely have time to keep up with healing let alone DPSing. How are healers expected to or are DPSing at higher keys? Is there something I ain't doing right or should be doing? Thanks for any and all advice. Could really use it.

[Swnem]

Yes.

This should not be news. Even in vanilla you'd wand if you weren't healing. Any damage equals the fight ending sooner and less healing/mana being required.

If you aren't keeping up with the healing you should not dps. You should focus on the healing. Healer dps is a bonus.
But, if you have the gear and are being efficient you should have time to damage. Some specs also heal through damage.

[Very Tired]

For holy pallies, DPSing is actually part of our normal rotation.

I get that its not appealing, basically doing a dps's jobs on top of healing. But believe me, ESO and FF14 are even worse if I recall correctly. WoW actually manages to keep healers healing most of the time. In those games healers are basically just DPS who cast an occasional heal.

[Guidance]

depends on what you are doing, and the level, in mythic+, raid and arena no one can force you to do that, although some want to force others,

but at a certain level like mythic+ high, boss miticos and high rating arena, it makes a lot of difference, so your damage even if little depending on the pact and the class you play may be enough to break the key, or kill the boss/player of the enemy team

plus some class like disc you need to damage to heal more

[morrouac]

Yes.

This should not be news. Even in vanilla you'd wand if you weren't healing. Any damage equals the fight ending sooner and less healing/mana being required.

If you aren't keeping up with the healing you should not dps. You should focus on the healing. Healer dps is a bonus.
But, if you have the gear and are being efficient you should have time to heal. Some specs also heal through damage.

At higher keys, tanks and dps (should) be better than lower keys at using defensives and interrupts creating even more time for you to dps. Often times I will just triage heal the pulls and top off in between them creating even more dps time.

[kenn9530]

Yes.

This should not be news. Even in vanilla you'd wand if you weren't healing. Any damage equals the fight ending sooner and less healing/mana being required.

It is not required in any content, there is 3 healers that include dmg for thier actual healing but the others gain nothing to thier healing through dmg, infact they should just remove healers doing dps completely, a healers job is healing and not have to do dps because players in the raid are not playing a dps class as well as they should.

[GotNoRice]

Of course it's not a bad idea to toss out some damage spells if there is nothing else going on. Many fights have burn phases where there is almost no healing that needs to be done. You would be negligent IMO if you didn't toss out at least a few spells during situations like that. Even if mana is tight, most/all healers have damage spells that cost no mana or are part of their normal rotation anyway. For example, a Resto Druid can cast Wrath mana free.

But your focus should always be 100% on healing, as that is your job. If you aren't healing at the top of your game because you spent too much time focusing on damage, you'll end up hurting your group more than you help them. If a DPS has to turtle or similar instead of focusing on DPS because you aren't doing a good job healing them, their lost DPS will more than negate any DPS that you bring.

So focus on healing. DPS when you can do so without any compromise to your healing. If that means not doing any DPS at all, because you had to heal harder than you planned, then so be it. In higher keys you always get control freaks with huge egos eager to blame any issue that crops up on someone else and try to tell others what they did "wrong". Don't worry about it.

[Byleth]

and FF14 are even worse if I recall correctly.

Not really, healers have pretty much one AoE button and one ST button. But yes, damage is expected.

Also, FFXIV is kinda different in that on most fights upwards of 80% of the damage is avoidable, so really you have a lot more downtime if your DPS are onto it.

[Very Tired]

I should add healer dps is mostly for when every bit of DPS counts. High end mythic+ and mythic raids. Anything below that and you're more than likely shortcoming on things other than dps. Most people won't get on a healer's case for not damaging outside of their normal rotation.

[Powerogue]

I don't know how efficient it is, but my fistweaving setup on my monk works decently with the talent that causes my melee attacks to regenerate mana, using the fistweaving during moments of low healing to get mana back.

[hynx]

I've picked up healing again after being years away from the game since early MoP. Do Healers have to DPS during down time these days? I'm lost and confused.

I picked up healing on a Holy Paladin and a Resto Shaman. I found myself being pushed into using Crusader strikes on enemies and bosses. Which turned me off the spec and class that I enjoyed healing on back in the day. I levelled up a Shaman and decided to try Resto. I've been seeing a lot of talk about healers doing a ton of DPS in Mythic keys and am wondering if I should be DPSing as well when not healing or during downtime?

I've done a few low keys, and I barely have time to keep up with healing let alone DPSing. How are healers expected to or are DPSing at higher keys? Is there something I ain't doing right or should be doing? Thanks for any and all advice. Could really use it.

this is why i miss the good ol' shockadin build days. or the smite healing priests of panda land. you were built to go pew pew or heal, still very relatively effectively.

[Tziva]

A few thoughts:

The main thing is that you shouldn't have "downtime" as a healer. If you need to spend 100% of your time pumping out heals to keep the group alive, then fine, but if you don't need to do that, DPS should be done instead of thumb twiddling. Do want you need to and what you can, but as long as you are always active, you're not really doing it wrong.

How important it is that you find the ability to contribute DPS really depends on where you are. In middle or low keystones, it's honestly not that important and if it's the healer DPS that makes or breaks things, then your group had other problems. It's worth noting that the higher the key gets (outside of top-tier pushing anyway), the easier it is to find time to DPS because by the time you're pushing that content, your teammates are taking way less damage and are killing stuff faster. I've had 18 keys that were enormously easier to heal with more DPS time than some 5 or 6s I've done. Just because you're finding it super hard to squeeze in DPS time now doesn't necessarily mean anything on you and it's not necessarily reflective of how hard it will be in higher keys. You could be with learning groups or undergeared alts or whatever that are putting a greater stress on you than you'll find in harder content. Playing a healer is weird that way.

As a final note: as a holy paladin, DPS is part of the way you heal now. If you're not playing that way, I'd recommend hitting up a guide since hpal is pretty different playstyle now than in the past and you might need an update. As a resto shaman... yeah it's pretty much the same as it's always been.

[potis]

I've done a few low keys, and I barely have time to keep up with healing let alone DPSing. How are healers expected to or are DPSing at higher keys? Is there something I ain't doing right or should be doing? Thanks for any and all advice. Could really use it.

People at higher keys usually know what they are doing and dont take pointless damage, which means the healer stands there staring at the cieling, hence why you are supposed to be DPSing whenever you are given the chance.

Of course not every pack is like that and not every dungeon or weekly affixes, so highly depends on the group, stuff like "Storming/Spiteful" weeks and you have 3 ranged DPS, there is barely any damage taken to the group, etc.

[dacoolist]

Just like the rest stated, if theirs no damage going out that you have to heal or pre heal: you want to dps to make yourself look better.

People really only bring hpals in m+ for the extra damage they do. By the end of the dungeon you’re over 2k dps, and that helps the groups significantly.

As for raid: its tough to rate how much it matters unless you’re progressing or pushing world first, and its absolutely required 100% in pvp. If you pug in pvp and you dont cc/do damage, 100% your team will drop you like a brick

[kamuimac]

I've picked up healing again after being years away from the game since early MoP. Do Healers have to DPS during down time these days? I'm lost and confused.

I picked up healing on a Holy Paladin and a Resto Shaman. I found myself being pushed into using Crusader strikes on enemies and bosses. Which turned me off the spec and class that I enjoyed healing on back in the day. I levelled up a Shaman and decided to try Resto. I've been seeing a lot of talk about healers doing a ton of DPS in Mythic keys and am wondering if I should be DPSing as well when not healing or during downtime?

I've done a few low keys, and I barely have time to keep up with healing let alone DPSing. How are healers expected to or are DPSing at higher keys? Is there something I ain't doing right or should be doing? Thanks for any and all advice. Could really use it.

yes - in order to push keys healers absolutely have to dps whenever they can .

[Azerate]

Sadly yes. For me personally, this is the reason why I will never be a healer.

Yes.

This should not be news. Even in vanilla you'd wand if you weren't healing.

Blah blah.

Maybe high end min-maxers, which were few and far between in the old days, did that.

WHen I played between Wrath and MoP it was never the case that healers were expected to do damage. Back then it was perfectly normal and acceptable not to see healers on the damage meters at all.

[Biomega]

Healing is different from DPS, because it's bounded by incoming damage - if there isn't any damage on people, you don't have anything to heal. So unlike a DPS who can (almost) always just pump numbers into SOMETHING, healers can only heal so much because once everyone is healed up that's it. That means it's only logical that during the times in between heals you can and therefore probably should contribute damage to the group - how much damage, that depends on what's happening, and what's about to happen. Good M+/raid groups can contribute to the healing load passively by simply taking less damage; which works on two fronts, because it not only creates more damage potential for the healer, but also happens to be in a situation where that damage is more likely to matter.

As a player in lower/mid-tier encounters, damage from healers is both less available (because people are likely to stand in the proverbial fire more, and thus need more healing) and less critical to overall success. But if you plan on doing well and climbing your way up the content ladder, you'd do well to get used to doing damage. With a little practice it's not actually that challenging to do, but it has a high skill ceiling both for the healer and for the group - watch a top-level M+ group and you'll see just how little healing is sometimes needed, simply because people are experts at avoiding damage and properly controlling fights.

[Dazu]

I mostly on my resto shaman aim to use interrupts and keep flame shock etc up. Flame shock plus instant lava burst procs can be substantial over time, ive regularly done 1k dps over an entire dungeon just using flame shock and instant lava bursts when it procs.
Though regularly on bosses and some slower pulls I can keep my tank alive between Earth shield, Riptide and HST in which case I weave lightning bolts and/or lava bursts along with interrupts/stuns/purges etc as needed.
IMO interrupting and purging is far more useful to actual damage as most times 1x interrupt GCD saves 2+ healing/cleansing GCDs.

As others have mentioned, its all on your team members. Ive had runs in M8-9 where I spent 60-70% of pulls dpsing. Ive done 2s where I spent the entire time spamming healing surge around riptides because the tank didnt know how to use active mitigation or defensives at all (nothing more fun than nearly going OOM on a pull while the DK tank hasnt moved from full runic power for 30+ seconds and spikes like a MF'er.

[Nnyco]

Always has been that way.

On your topic though about lower keys, more unexperienced players usually take alot of avoidable damage so it can seem very overwhelming from your pov to actually dps same time when you constantly have to fix their misstakes.

[VinceVega]

It is now. Sadly. I hate that. I play healer because i want to heal not do damage.

In Mythic+ a Disc or Pala just do their normal rotation and dish out a bunch of damage.

As a druid you are basically fucked. You have to use convoke to do serious damage which you should use to heal spikes. Whcih is why some healers are way more favoured than others.

On the other hand everyone whined, that they want healers and tanks to be able to do damage for solo content. Which they can now with the added effect that in higher elvel content healers need to do damage because they together are basically another DD now which makes everything easier and faster.
So this is hear to stay. If you are not doing damage as a healer you gimp your group which in turn forces you to heal more.

The only way to change any of that is to make healer damage non existend again. Which will anger the people who (for some reason) don't want to change their spec for the few quests you have to do sometimes.