Paradigm shifting for healer needs to be fixed.

[Pence]

Even with the accuracy loss for healers right now I am finding healers are constantly creeping (along with tanks) on the damage dealing abilities of some pure dps jobs like machinist and bards.

I find you're playing with terrible BRDs and MCHs. If you're creeping up to their DPS then it's definitely not an issue of healer DPS, or even MCH/BRD job design - it's player skill.

[Vlady]

How much will a skilled bard pull single target? We are seeing scholars pulling about 1100 on the high end with bards around what?

[Blessedbythesun]

You have to look at how much time has to dedicate to DPSing to pull off those numbers. Don't get me wrong, I find it amazing that SCH and even WHM have that potential, but there is a balance issue. I would have to cross my fingers that SE doesn't nerf healers more than already have, ei removing accuracy from gear, lack of crit on SCH gear.

[Lastelli]

We are seeing scholars pulling about 1100 on the high end with bards around what?

1100 single target for SCH? I don't think so...
BRDs can pull 1200-1300 single target. SCH around 800 if they go full dps.

[Blessedbythesun]

1100 single target for SCH? I don't think so...
BRDs can pull 1200-1300 single target. SCH around 800 if they go full dps.

It's possible, but it's not a constant thing for a SCH to pull those numbers without the use of mind pots AND det/crit food.

[Lastelli]

It's possible, but it's not a constant thing for a SCH to pull those numbers without the use of mind pots AND det/crit food.

I can see it happen in a 1 min parse, but I really doubt that a SCH can pull 1000+ on single target for more than 3 minutes.
http://i.imgur.com/v7ByFlL.png
This is the best SCH in A1S. To get there he surely had to apply dots on both oppressors, inflating the numbers.
https://gyazo.com/7da36157c1371f0f11d9486bee29145d
This instead is the best SCH in A3S, very low HPS so it means he was dpsing most of the fight, and A3S is a real single target, so this number should be closer to reality.
Btw now I'm curious, I'll ask someone to parse me on a dummy later.

[Blessedbythesun]

That is true. the max I was able to pull in A1S on Faust was near 450 and that was over the course of 30 seconds to a minute, or how ever long it lasted before I had to switch to healing. This was also when I was ilvl 189.

[zuzu-bq]

The paradigm isactually not bad. You have a Healer focused on heals and one that can focus on support and damage dealing ispart of that support.

The main problem about all of this is not the content, the problem are the players that shit on cleric stance only SCH while they complain with the WHM/AST when someone die on lack of heals. The both healers must heal, you're a healer after all. If you want to go full dps, bring a dps class instead and put the other healer to solo heal. But when one out of the two can handle all healing alone for a while, why can't the other occupy himself doing anything else like dealing damage, applying buffs, applying debuffs, positioning, using waymarks. People say this game has no support job, but that's not true, all healers are support. Know how your toolkit fits on the fight and try to get the best out of it.

Other thing that I see as a problem is that many groups rely on Healer damage, you also shouldn't. As I said the damage both healers can bring into a fight are part of the support healers can bring to the party. Also their dps is pretty unreliable thanks to accuracy.

I've seen somany scholars complaining about digititis because they can't dps and lot more that keep dealing damage even with the stupid damage down debuff.

[Lobotomite]

Incoming, somewhat stream-of-consciousness ramble. Hopefully someone can crystallize some of my points.

The problem, in my opinion, speaking as a person who raided Hard Mode Temple of Sacrifice in Star Wars: The Old Republic (basically that game's equiv to Savage Alex) but has little/if any interest in raiding on this game, isn't so much the "healers must DPS" so much as it's the overarching meta for every advanced fight in the game. Thordan is a little bit of a break, but even in his case, you're rewarded for pushing DPS hard in the form of being able to avoid Phase 8/9. In SWTOR, outgoing damage in advanced fights is usually so high that healers don't have the opportunity to DPS other than maybe throwing out instant dots on occasion. And that's what I want as a healer: a team of two healers struggling against an onslaught of crazy damage nearly all the time. Not "Oh no! Busters are coming up! Hopefully the SCH will flip out of Cleric for 10 seconds to help me heal!"

It's great that Square wants to create some highly scripted fights like Titan, but almost every fight in this game is. Square attempted a raw heal check with Nisi in A4S, but basically everyone prefers to cheese rather than do it as intended. If this isn't telling that the current raid meta is way, way too focused on DPS, I dunno what is.

Your strategy as a healer in most of Savage can be summarized as:
1) Print out a timer of the boss's attacks/important mechanics.
2) Play "pin the heal on the mechanic" by looking at the damage each mechanic and attack causes, write down on the piece of paper which heal to use.
3) Commit the list to memory.
4) DPS the rest of the time, because you obviously need to gitgud if you don't have 100% GCD uptime all day every day despite you having crazy-good clutch skill and effective HPS.

Yes, there's (minor) variation, such as who gets marked for mechanics, but your response for dealing with the mechanics themselves doesn't change; you just switch targets. There has to be some way to break out of this cycle or at least make things feel less formulaic.

While my server may not be the best representative sample (we're traditionally near the bottom for progression), there's a) an enormous glut of SCHs and b) an enormous dearth of WHMs and diurnal ASTs. Why? Too much falls on the main/bolus healer for too little reward because their healing partner is too busy DPSing (whether that's by intentional design or because raid groups are pursuing path of least resistance is another matter).

In general, I don't think Square has a good understanding of what most (non-SCH) healers want. Yoshi was worried about Mocianne being too much of a raw heal check (read: he couldn't do it), so it got nerfed. Yet even post-nerf, Mocianne is one of the most entertaining endgame dungeons Square's ever released simply because--you guessed it--outgoing damage is pretty high for a dungeon, especially on Queen Hawk and Bella. This, I think, is what most healers want to see more of.

Do we need to entirely get rid of the meta? No, because the SCH role is arguably designed around having a certain amount of DPS uptime. But some variety would be really darn nice.

[Twilite]

I think more about healing and less about DPS..

You're all turning this into WoW, and shame on me for not noticing that sooner.