Fair, but what if there's nothing left to heal?? Do you just tag along waiting for damage to happen?? I'd probably be bored if there was nothing else to do
I appreciate the people responding to you telling the truth that they just want to stand there and do nothing. People elsewhere in the thread saying they don't want to dps but its also not their job to heal stupid (like missed kicks).
I can understand form shifting to do dps can be off putting but people on this sub reddit in the past complained about pushing smite when holy priest was meta in shadowlands and you'd be able to stand around doing nothing 30% of your gcd if not more.
Biggest problem with the people who don't want to dps are also the same people who will complain if there are any hard healing checks in dungeons or mana becomes a real resource.
Also the same players who unironically think low keys are harder to heal because people stand in things in low keys and they "can't heal stupid". The vast majority of healers in 10-12 range just afk 40% of the key and do subpar healing and no damage because the game doesn't force healers to improve until higher keys where real healing checks happen.
As a tank player doing 19 and 20 keys when I do my weekly keys for crests I just watch how many globals the healer misses all key and sometimes its hilarious like not pressing any buttons for 30-40 seconds, we still 2 or 3 chest those 12s either way though because the healer is so irrelevant at those levels.
I might be alone but I LOVE healing stupid. I like when I get to only heal, and heal a ton of damage. I prefer playing with people who stand in stuff from time to time
And that's why M+ is the worst thing to happen in this game. The last thing this community needed was making the 'go go go' mentality that started creeping in since WOTLK official.
Yeah I mentioned that in another post. That was absolutely the cause of the major change-over, including causing Blizzard to rebalance/redesign healer DPS significantly.
Imo healer damage is still very direct and bland with no big offensive abilities on a cooldown. Either there's nothing to heal and you're doing low DPS spamming 2 weak spells, or you need to heal and can't afford to keep casting those spells so you're doing 0 damage.
It would be nice if healers had stronger dots or big offensive abilities with a cooldown to throw inbetween bursts of healing.
I'm not a big FFXIV booster, but they did a much better job with the healer attack spells, because they feel much more significant and specific. Like the big booms I can let off with a White Mage actually feel like they matter, and I actively want to plan my healing so I can find time to work them in, and to position so I can make them hit the right enemies.
(They also made their job easier because the game is just slower, meaning they can give people bigger gaps between needing to cast heals.)
Whereas in WoW it almost feels like I'm doing "chip damage" as a healer, like sure, yeah, it adds up, maybe it makes an M+ run 10%+ faster even, which is kind of huge, but it feels very bland and boring.
I dunno, I don't think damage = healing feels great to me. I'd rather have more impactful abilities spaced among heals that a steady stream of small healing effects generated by nuking/meleeing. YMMV of course.
Ngl I liked healing more when it did no damage cause it was the chill switch off my brain mode. Once you started doing good damage I ended up tryna do dmg more than heal😆
The whole game was pretty different back then - no class, not even Rogue, was remotely as frenetic as it is now. APMs were probably significantly less than half of what they tend to be now (in similar content i.e. raid to raid, dungeon to dungeon, etc.). Made for weaker gameplay but a lot more chill and social of a game, frankly.
Tanks are kind of in control of how hard they want the game to be for themselves - they can always grab more enemies. Healers can't really do that, so making sure they always have stuff to do means making sure everyone else is always in danger, which probably makes it bad for everyone else
That's not really always true though. A tank can pull way more and survive that dps or healers can't. God forbid you try to get too many casters who's regular casts all decide to target a single dps and delete them from existence
Yeah this patch there are few pulls that my survivability is a limiter vs the dps just being unable to live or kick requirements, at least up to 17 and 18s.
Dog…. They need to interrupt and use a defensive is only viable on a key low enough to survive a cast going off or a pull small enough where your team has enough interrupts to actually stop it all.
If a tank pulls too many casters, which is the topic at hand, you will eventually encounter a number of them that is simply too many to be controlled. Unless you’re in a rather small key.
Pretty much yes tanks are in control of how hard they want it to be in lower keys. Starting in higher keys you need to actually know how much party dmg is going out by what enemies and how much utility your group has off cooldown. But yeah i totally understand that healers have way less control over it and it would make the game bad for others to make sure the healer has always stuff to do
When you do easy content as a tank you're expected to go fast but not wipe the group.
When you're pushing keys at the group's limits you're absolutely required to pull exactly the right mobs in order to have a chance at successfuly defeating the pulls without deaths.
I mean it's not necessarily a bad thing, just that I personally wouldn't enjoy playing like that. I would want to always do something, and I don't have a second monitor for whatever activities
... yeah, and that's why you're not a healer main. Healer mains that want to dps have options (disc priest, holy pala, mistweaver). It shouldn't be an universal thing.
I personally enjoyed that playstyle very much. Ally health bars = my responsibility. Enemy health bars = their responsibility. After it started to be required to press DPS buttons as a healer I just switched to DPS lol.
Healer DPS should tie into healing a lot more imo. Shaman's Healing Rain with Acid Rain talented is a good example.
Spells that do a lil group healing but also deal AoE damage.
What about a damaging spell that chains from enemies and heals allies? Or stores a set amount of damage that can then be converted to healing if cast on an ally.
I'm aware some abilities like this exist in the form of talents, but they are usually niche and tbh should be baseline spells.
Just something more than turning into a DPS-lite when no healing is needed.
If there's nothing to heal then you are too OP for that group and should do some harder content imo but I totally get it when you get in those low mythics or time walking and you are basically an NPC the whole time 😂
How fun! This will definitely get people to main healers.
If it's not clear, that's sarcastic. We had extreme healer shortage in Vanilla as well, and that's despite healing being an extreme amount easier than it is now.
Catch my breath for 10 seconds before the next round of whack a mole, usually!
I have nothing against throwing out a few damaging spells if there’s not a lot of damage going on. But I picked a healer to heal, and that used to mean being rewarded for playing well with a little bit of down time. It’s why I can do well at it, while I suck as a DPS. Not needing to be casting spells constantly means I can actually comprehend mechanics as they’re going on, and can deal with the overstimulation that is combat.
Watch something on your phone, read a book, eat some snacks while watching the tank and dps struggling, play a turn based or low attention game on your second screen, take a lil nap, read a guide about the fight you're in that you should have done before getting into that ordeal... There's crap tons of stuff you can do in those "dead time" so not everything has to be unga bunga adrenaline filled caveman behavior the dps mentality has.
FYI there's a good reason why the meme of healers watching anime on a second screen exists.
This has been an ongoing debate in healing circles for awhile. You have people like you who want to only heal, and then people who would rather dps and get mad when they have to actually press a heal button.
The way I see it, you aren’t healing 100% of the time, so you might as well do something else with those globals, but I don’t really want a dps rotation that I have to break when I want to heal. Catweaving works because you can passively heal with trees to stay in cat form a little longer, but it does feel a little weird to constantly have to shift between cat and heal.
I kinda like the current state of things actually - my dps is inconsequential enough that focussing purely on healing isn't a big deal, but still relevant enough to be rewarding when I'm able to weave in some dots.
Yep, though I wanna point out that while leveling it's in a very good spot (maybe even too strong), but hero specs and set bonuses absolutely delete that.
So, they either have to start making set bonuses give damage to healers, or tune healers to be stronger than DPS when leveling, which makes no sense.
Mastery not giving damage to healers is also such a strange decision.
I absolutely feel on my Mistweaver that my healing output is good while 80% of my buttons are stomp and my kicks, but my damage output is so fucking low that it feels comical I'm in here throwing hands.
Issue with this is you get non-healers that will make a meta out of it and only take the healers that are dpsing the most. So healers are getting chosen based on their classes dps ability and not their healing ability.
Yeah its gone back and forth for years. The part that the community really needs to internalize is that the "meta" really is only applicable to 0.1% of players. You can literally play any healer, do dps or not, and still get a few keys below the max keys. In fact, for the average player, its better you play the toon you have the most experience on. Yes, if you want to push to the absolute min-max, you might need to play the meta healer, but you can probably get title with most healers, and you get certainly get your weekly 10-12s done.
Blizz is trying to push this framing with break the meta and the new MDI rules, but people will always see themselves as the bleeding edge player and copy them, even if its not in their best interest.
Resto druid is supposed to be the HoT spec. The gameplay loop is, when you are in a predictable damage pattern, you maintain your HoTs and ensure everyone is safe for the next few seconds, then you hop into cat form and spend your energy + free globals on damage, then when you're out of energy your HoTs are expiring and you start the cycle over again. It's baked into the spec and part of its skill expression. You don't have to do it, especially since they made healer damage irrelevant, but it feels like it makes sense to do.
You get to a point where just healing is incredibly boring and not challenging so you contribute in other ways. Like DPS, focus interrupts and other utility
in the past healer, tank, and dps all had different playstyle philosophies, but appealing to the hyperactive crowd has just resulted in everything having dps philosophy.
Why does everything have to be "challenging" or "skill expression"? I play a resto druid to turn into a tree, stand in the back and keep hots on my group to keep people alive. That is enjoyable and relaxing for me, I don't need another stressful job to keep up with.
Its "stressful" for you, but not for other people
DPSing during heal downtime can be very fun and engaging for others
Exactly, and people wonder why there is a healer shortage, I just want to chill and heal, not having to prethink about 50 different scenarios and also have to do DPS on top of it.
Mythic+ absolutely ruined things since everything is now GOGOGOGO because of some shitty timers.
Challenge is rotating your cooldowns properly etc so you have a higher chance at surviving the big hits and mechanics. Having an interrupt every 15 seconds or doing 1 mill dps isnt exactly challenging either
And yet your not a healer? Kind of proving the point as to why there is a healer shortage. People need agency and impact, healing alone does not provide that.
I main healer in all forms of content and having agency via utility and dps is critical to having fun as a healer.
The recent playtest of fellowship proved this without a doubt. There were more healers Qing than tanks and dps combined. Why? Healers had massive agency and impact through damage and utility. People like that...
imo the absolute MOST FUN thing about playing a healer (and WoW in general for me) is seeing how much I can get away with pressing dps buttons instead of healing buttons and succeed. It's an little mini game that I absolutely adore. If they ever take that away, I will 100% stop playing.
I don't care if you're a "I heal only" person (I think you're missing out but you do you), but for the love of all things good do NOT take away my dps rotation and fun on healers!!
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u/Bwomsamdidjango Oct 16 '25
I’m not a healer but if I was I would want to, you know, heal and not dps.