Healers doing dps.

[cigawoot]

Spending half my mana pool to do 0.2% of the bosses' health? I'll just tree slap the boss instead.

[Kralljin]

But it's still a core gameplay part of resto shaman.

It isn't, because nothing but the cutting edge difficulty is designed around it.

As resto it's not as much about funneling damage to single target, but rather using only instant cast spells for damage, which you can easily do while moving, too.

...or you can use those GCD's to throw out riptides, drop HST or just watch the raid frame and see which targets are taking damage and figure out which to heal first.

Sure, you can multitask this, but the players who raid normal or heroic are likely not capable of this sort of multitasking, especially if it opens them up for fucking up their prime task (keeping the group alive) or fucking up some mechanic.

It's the sort of thing i'd advice only to players that are clearly more than capable at managing their most basic tasks, not something i would raise anybody must perform at every level (which would be true for a core mechanic).

Yeah, not in the first time you play in an encounter, but after that you do. Does everything need to be regarded with the mindset of someone playing the game for the first time all the time? Even after nearly 20 years?

Because most encounters are simply not tuned around it, it is quite the jump in difficulty to pull it off and frankly, when you have a healer in a normal or heroic guild that manages to dps while also keeping the group alive, then that healer does not belong in a normal or heroic guild but a top tier Mythic guild.

Only cutting edge difficulty is designed around even DPS players doing dps. Other difficulties are whatever in terms of dps anyway.

I'm just going to assume that this is a typo and if it is, then you're literally repeating what i said: It's only necessary in the hardest difficulty of content and by that, cannot be considered a core mechanic.

A core mechanic is something like interrupts, where even at lower difficulties you will struggle if your players are incapable of doing it, not something that only applies at the highest levels of challenges.

[Recovery]

Why don't healers dps more in raids? I know this is a weird question to some but I've been reading over logs as I get ready to hit 80 and go into Tier7.
Fights like Loatheb which have high downtime for healers, (I'll use Holy Paladin for example) seem like a great chance to make the fight easier by dpsing.

Obviously dumping your mana pool ad letting people die is stupid and you need to pump during your short healing window.
That being said it seems quite common for Holy Paladins to just stand at range and afk, instead of meleeing with seal of Wisdom and using that mana to Judge, Shield, Exor and Holy Shock to speed up kill times.

Am I just trying to apply retail gamer logic to something that doesn't need it? For context the guild I happened to join is on the lower end, taking 2.5-3 hours to clear Naxx 10man.

Maybe your healers just dont care, but alot of us do dps, especially on loatheb. For example, I have a 99 parse on Loatheb25 at 1900 dps on holy paladin, while only 3 healing the fight. Granted, the 2 Rdruids in the fight did almost all of the healing, they both parsed around 80 for their damage as well. So, between the 3 of us, it may have been equal to 1 extra low dps.

[shise]

Are we still playing this game? "Just you wait for x raid that's when the real difficulty begins in classic, huehue".

I've seen this movie already a few times I know how it ends..

Not sure where you got that from... what game? we are talking about healers and how reducing them to bring more DPS in is more efficient than having too many healers who will start "DPS"ing..

Until Ulduar HMs it´s all very easy. Ulduar HMs will pose a challenge to some raid groups, so they wont be able to go in with just 4 healers.

Now, where did you get that from, again?

[DazManianDevil]

Appreciate all the responses, I totally forgot spell hit was a whopping 17%.
When I go into raids this weekend I'll be sure to have realistic expectations and not worry about it too much. Tier7 is after all theme park status.

[hambone2626]

Because we heal why should I have to dps not my job.

[Rusken]

I DPS while healing but only during downtime. Naxx is so fkn easy that half the raid is spent DPSing with a few Riptides and Chain Heals thrown in, maybe I'll NS a big heal if the Tank takes a damage spike but otherwise I'm pumping as much DPS as I can. If nothing else than for something to actually do..

Standing half-afk waiting for damage to happen while the rest of your raid does the fight is the single most boring gameplay style WoW can offer, min-maxing DPS while keeping everyone alive is its own mini-game that makes Healing much more interesting in general.

[hambone2626]

Mana is an issue, as well as hit. We are still two xpacs behind before healers can contribute meaningful damage to raid encounters.

Ever since we made healers start to dps the game went down hill I loved healing because I could sit back and just cast heals. It is Why I do not play retail anymore.

[unbound]

Why don't healers dps more in raids?

Until Cata, mp5 was important. Mana regeneration is much higher when you haven't cast anything for a few seconds. Since most healers won't have hit gear anyways, they would wasting mana trying to attack (and mostly missing) and not recovering mana which they'll need for the next burst.

[Kralljin]

Until Cata, mp5 was important.

No, not really.

It was treated as important because the playerbase at large was frankly not playing correctly, it was the mindset at the time that whenever you struggled on an encounter, you just need more healers, which further prolonged the encounter, which then also increased the total damage taken and thus made more healers necessary.
On top of that, due to that misconception, healers often stacked regen stats, which reduced their output and then further made more heals necessary.

Spirit gets a pass because both priest and druid have talents that synergize with it but Pally and Shaman don't have similiar ones for Mp5.
If you feel like you need more mana on a Pally / Shaman, you just should stack Int (which you should as Pally anyway), because it also increases your throughput and increases your Mana available (it's just a fixed amount rather than one thst scales with the encounter duration).

[Segus1992]

This is a very good point, hit is almost never on healer gear.

Hit is literally never on healer gear, that's what makes it healer gear. With spellpower and spirit being generic (unless you're a paladin or shaman) the only difference between healer gear and DPS gear is hit vs mp5. Most of the gear is shared.

[Dalinos]

I'm a tank. When people say "Healer DPS" you know what I think of?

A priest, of any spec, throwing 1 Shadow Word: Pain that lasts 24 seconds on the boss.
A shaman, of any spec, keeping up Flame Shock which also has 20sec+ duration on the boss.
A paladin, throwing Ashen Hallow on a big pack and then proceeding to just continue healing.
A druid, spreading some Moonfires/Sunfires/Adaptive Swarms, while keeping HOTS rolling on everything.

When the vast majority of people talk about "healer DPS", that's what they're referring to. I never expect my Resto Shaman to forget to Riptide because he's too busy popping a DPS trinket + Int potion + Lava Burst/Chain Lightning spam. Nor do I expect my Hpala to bring out a 2hander and start smacking mobs left and right when he's supposed to be spamming Holy Lights. Then again, you have classes like Druid, who can pop HoTs on everyone in ~10 GCD's and then spend the next 20 seconds in cat form putting bleeds up.

Now, all of this could be considered "optimal". It is, after all, free DPS. But is it NEEDED, in WOTLK Classic? The answer is no. Unlike Retail, you dont have a timer ticking down that influences the rewards you get (except Hodir Hardmode). You don't get an extra achievement, in most cases, for killing the boss in 3 minutes instead of 5 (again, a tiny number of exceptions exist, like Malygos). Clear-Speed is not promoted as a thing players should be taking into account, since there are no rewards for it. Time a +20 in Retail you get max-ilvl dungeon drops, + an extra piece of loot. Fail the timing, you get 1 piece of max ilvl dungeon gear, 2 pieces of non-max ilvl gear. There is a tangible, measurable reward for beating the timer, in retail. In WOTLK Classic, not so much.

[Recovery]

I really hate this retail meta that tanks and healers are supposed to push dps too.
The Classic content is soo easy (especially in this tier) so it is absolutely not needed.

Not needed but makes content go down quicker, so why not do it for your raid? whats the point in just standing around with empty globals doing nothing? Its not necessary for dps to respect most fight mechanics either, but they do it because otherwise healers will complain.

[Dalinos]

Not needed but makes content go down quicker, so why not do it for your raid? whats the point in just standing around with empty globals doing nothing? Its not necessary for dps to respect most fight mechanics either, but they do it because otherwise healers will complain.

Read my post above. Here's a funny analogy for you.

You go to a gas station to put some gas in your car. The dude comes up, asks what gas you want, you want Unleaded 95, he pops the hose into your car, it's 43 bucks, you take out a 50. Employee needs to go back into the store to bring your change.

Now, we KNOW that customer satisfaction is important. We know a good service is important. By all intents and purposes, the employee should SPRINT back to the store, get your change, and SPRINT back out. That way, he minimizes your waiting time, and maximizes his service quality. Theoretically.

But he won't. He'll just walk back, get your change, walk back out again. And that's normal. You don't expect the dude pouring your gas into your car to sprint to get your change as if he's Usain Bolt. Would it be OPTIMAL if he did that? Sure it would. Is it needed? Not really. Will he get payed more if he sprints? Most probably not.

That's what healer DPS is in WOTLK. It's optimal, yes, but it is not needed, nor is it rewarded, unlike retail.

[Recovery]

Read my post above. Here's a funny analogy for you.

You go to a gas station to put some gas in your car. The dude comes up, asks what gas you want, you want Unleaded 95, he pops the hose into your car, it's 43 bucks, you take out a 50. Employee needs to go back into the store to bring your change.

Now, we KNOW that customer satisfaction is important. We know a good service is important. By all intents and purposes, the employee should SPRINT back to the store, get your change, and SPRINT back out. That way, he minimizes your waiting time, and maximizes his service quality. Theoretically.

But he won't. He'll just walk back, get your change, walk back out again. And that's normal. You don't expect the dude pouring your gas into your car to sprint to get your change as if he's Usain Bolt. Would it be OPTIMAL if he did that? Sure it would. Is it needed? Not really. Will he get payed more if he sprints? Most probably not.

That's what healer DPS is in WOTLK. It's optimal, yes, but it is not needed, nor is it rewarded, unlike retail.

Bad analogy.

A better analogy would be what "the dude" does at the gas station, when there are no customers to pump gas for. Does he just stand around waiting on a vehicle to pull up, or should he make himself useful and complete another task while waiting for the primary task?

My guess is that whoever employs "the dude" probably doesnt want to pay him to stand around and wait when he could be useful to his coworkers by helping in another area.

[anon5123]

There's no point in trying to dps when you have 0 hit rating and will get a shitload of misses/resists. If you truly find yourself in a situation where you have so many healers that your healers are DPSing, that means you have too many healers and some of them need to swap to a DPS spec for that boss.

- - - Updated - - -

Not needed but makes content go down quicker, so why not do it for your raid?

because not everyone is a sweat-drenched minmaxer trying to do 120% at every single aspect of the game

I'd rather save that extra mana just in case it is needed, instead of throwing out a piddly amount of DPS that will not make any kind of noticeable difference.

[kenn9530]

Not needed but makes content go down quicker, so why not do it for your raid? whats the point in just standing around with empty globals doing nothing? Its not necessary for dps to respect most fight mechanics either, but they do it because otherwise healers will complain.

If healers are doing nothing you have too many healers, have one spec dps instead, you would get far more damage from an offspec healer than all healers doing pathetic damage from any expansion below MoP healers damage was bad.

[davesurfer]

I really hate this retail meta that tanks and healers are supposed to push dps too.
The Classic content is soo easy (especially in this tier) so it is absolutely not needed.

I am a tank and I push DPS. Actually that is how you build threat. I always look at my DPS parses. My wife is a Disc Priest and she also puts out DPS. You job is to get the boss to zero the fastest way possible

[cococabana]

Bad analogy.

A better analogy would be what "the dude" does at the gas station, when there are no customers to pump gas for. Does he just stand around waiting on a vehicle to pull up, or should he make himself useful and complete another task while waiting for the primary task?

My guess is that whoever employs "the dude" probably doesnt want to pay him to stand around and wait when he could be useful to his coworkers by helping in another area.

This is also a bad analogy, as the raiders in most groups are not analogous to paid employees. They are effectively volunteers. The only remuneration paid by a guild is a tool to do your work better.

If I'm bored in a raid, and have mana to spare, I'll dps. Otherwise, there are 0 incentives to do so. I'm working for free, and outside of my specialty the amount I can contribute, while non zero, is hardly worth the effort, is unnecessary, and has risks involved. If the encounter is that easy, would be better to just go dps and off heal rather than go heal and off dps.

[Kikazz]

-Implying Ulduar will be hard.

Hahaa, this time for shure.

they said they are releaing pre nerf Ulduar.

like they said pre nerf Sunwell, look how many guilds killed Muru, pre nerf, before they nerfed it, literally f all guilds.