As a healer, is it my job to DPS? A new perspective.

[RopeDrink]

It's starting to sound like I'm the only one who's actually quite happy with Cleric Stance the way it is. I like walking that tight rope, punching above my weight in content, not having to worry if I'll be able to handle basic trash or level up comfortably, while also not having to worry about whether I can DPS just as good as non-independant alternatives - and all it takes is worry over one global cooldown. In WoW, if you want to level up as, say, a Healer Priest in decent time - yes, even the now DPS-Centric Disc Priest - your best bet is still to dual-spec into Shadow Priest for ease & efficiency. If you applied Cleric Stance mentality to a WoW healer, 9/10 chance is you're not going to provide anything meaningful due to them typically hitting like soggy noodles, thus it's mostly down to utility - which is fine, just not very exciting.

Disc is currently one of (if not the) least desirable healers in the game for content, or at least they were up to and including the Guldan patch - not because they are more DPS centric now than ever before, but because applying DPS requirements in their entirety (rotations et al) while having Healing stem from it presents problems that direct healers simply don't have (ie. easy/noticable/direct/impactful heals right now vs moderate healing and lesser emergency CD's for the sake of being able to heal through damage instead), and such a system will also always come with the dev-fear of it getting its cake and eating it if unbalanced, and community hate if balanced. The same will apply to some of above mentioned suggestions, meaning it's less desirable than just slightly tweaking numbers surrounding how it exists now.

Healer with high damage AND healing at the same time with no consequence? Problems. Healer lacking in one but super strong in the other (epic raid healing but can't even kill basic trash /vs/ respectable DPS but can't heal if their own lives depended on it [which is ironic as a healer]) Problems. Split down the middle? Community begin playing tug'o'war to influence a change in a given direction, encouraging more 'tweaking' that never reaches a happy consensus (not that any class/spec ever truly does). Meanwhile over in FFXIV land, we have a 36 page long debate squarely aimed at the MENTALITY surrounding one ability, not any/all of the above mentioned details outside of possible meta-discussions. Some may be more desirable than others, but you can't say any of them are incapable, and said desire doesn't stretch to how it used to be in old WoW where you needed X number of specific healers (sometimes preferably 0 of others) if you wanted comfort and/or success in X content.

As a more recent example regarding Priest, I levelled Disco from scratch in Legion after the streamlining (after I finished with my main and off-main characters - had already played all past iterations of it since TBC, as well as Shadow), and it was a slog to get through with the sole reward being the understanding that I would not be accepted into high M+ due to being that spec. Half of that is aimed at the design/meta, the other half (which is 99% of this discussion) is people's attitude towards it. I've seen videos of people who took it the extra mile and are enjoying some form of success, though it doesn't change the paintbrush mentality or the meta.

its heals were low its dps was quite high and was a shield healer

TLDR: This will appeal to certain players, but not raid leaders who want consistancy. You can make it work (and many have, kudos to them - they're essentially raid wide-healers now with mana-management worries) but at the cost of far more effort compared to a barebones direct-healer of any kind who produces equal (usually better) results with less work/resources.

[Kitfox]

It's starting to sound like I'm the only one who's actually quite happy with Cleric Stance the way it is.

There's nothing wrong with Cleric Stance per se, I quite like it as well, but there's no denying the offensive spectrum of healers could be more interesting. The fact that each healer got a stronger basic nuke that replaced their old one (Ruin→Broil, Stone II→Stone III, Malefic→Malefic II) on HW release kind of goes on to prove how unimaginative it is. There's a lot options they could use with different kinds of buffs/debuffs to spice up the offensive side of healers on top of the very basic dots + nuke structure.

[Sebazy]

It's starting to sound like I'm the only one who's actually quite happy with Cleric Stance the way it is.

Oh you're certainly not, it's arguably the main difficulty factor that separates healers now given the comparative ease of this tier. The problem is as things currently stand, it puts off more casual players from using healer DPS abilities in group content and there's no system in place to actively reward or teach them otherwise outside of very basic dps dummies/SSS. Removing the need for it at the same time as adding utility and value to the healer DPS abilities would be in line with removing the DPS reduction on foes for bards. It won't please everyone (And I STILL see bards that refuse to sing it) but it would help move things forward for sure.

Making DPSing more rewarding without also making it more accessible to the masses won't achieve much unless they blow the rewards out of proportion imo.

[Judge_Xero]

Removing the need for it at the same time as adding utility and value to the healer DPS abilities would be in line with removing the DPS reduction on foes for bards. It won't please everyone (And I STILL see bards that refuse to sing it) but it would help move things forward for sure.

Hmmmm? I may be confused on your wording but Foes doesn't give BRD a DPS reduction like Ballad/Paeon. I do see your other points though that nothing other than the player base really enforces the Healer DPS Meta outside of solo content.

---------------------------------------------------

Creating a mini-game within the healing tools for healers to manage outside of DPS while increasing required healing seems like a fun idea. I still just worry about healers that can barely heal Creator Savage while others are able to DPS the majority of the time while keeping everyone up.

At least what we see currently with the healer DPS meta is that the healing requirements are pretty low so:
- healers that struggle just to heal can keep up
- healers that are more skilled can keep everyone alive while fitting in DPS where they can
- Top tier healers can just DPS 90% of the time

How would that get addressed so that we don't have players coming back here asking for the healing requirements get nerfed because they keep getting kicked from statics for not being able to keep everyone alive?

[Feyona]

Hmmmm? I may be confused on your wording but Foes doesn't give BRD a DPS reduction like Ballad/Paeon. I do see your other points though that nothing other than the player base really enforces the Healer DPS Meta outside of solo content.

---------------------------------------------------



At least what we see currently with the healer DPS meta is that the healing requirements are pretty low so:
- healers that struggle just to heal can keep up
- healers that are more skilled can keep everyone alive while fitting in DPS where they can
- Top tier healers can just DPS 90% of the time

How would that get addressed so that we don't have players coming back here asking for the healing requirements get nerfed because they keep getting kicked from statics for not being able to keep everyone alive?

3 levels of difficulty, instead of a huge leap from hard to extreme and normal to savage if I was doing the first two id still like a mount tho, because id still be putting 100% effort into it. Saying that tho normal is a joke how easy it is now I can dps alot of it, but it wasnt at first. Also some of this ability to dps comes from being in a good group like tanks using cds and dps staying alive. Its not really so clear cut as just the healer's skill level.

[Judge_Xero]

3 levels of difficulty, instead of a huge leap from hard to extreme and normal to savage if I was doing the first two id still like a mount tho, because id still be putting 100% effort into it. Saying that tho normal is a joke how easy it is now I can dps alot of it, but it wasnt at first. Also some of this ability to dps comes from being in a good group like tanks using cds and dps staying alive. Its not really so clear cut as just the healer's skill level.

I was wanting to look at how things would work if the healing requirements were much higher where the potential for DPS is 0 and all healers can focus on is keeping people alive and how difficult that would be to balance.

So minimum ilvl Creator Savage: i255
A12S = 50% DPS uptime MH and 90% DPS uptime OH 70% combined DPS uptime with 80% Combined Healing uptime (HOTS, PET Etc) @ 4200 HPS

This group has the potential to increase their HPS by an additional 2.1k HPS @ i255 for a total 6300 HPS

VS Max ilvl i270
A12S = 0% DPS uptime MH and 40% DPS uptime OH 20% combined DPS uptime with 95% combined healing uptime @ 4400 HPS (3200 HPS if converted to i255)

This group has the potential to increase their HPS by 800 HPS @ i270 for a total of 5200 HPS (3800 HPS if converted to i255)

If the raids were tuned to the healing requirement of the max healing potential of skilled players then team 2 would need 20% Echo @ i270 to reach the healing potential of team 1 @ i255 without Echo.

---------------------------------------------

Sure 3 levels of difficulty would be nice, but IMO wasted resources because most wouldn't touch the highest tier of difficulty and those who did would complain that it's impossible to heal.

But the main thing I'm asking is how would you lessen the skill gap between average and skilled players where you allow average players to beat content and reduce DPS windows for skilled players.

[Feyona]

---------------------------------------------

Sure 3 levels of difficulty would be nice, but IMO wasted resources because most wouldn't touch the highest tier of difficulty and those who did would complain that it's impossible to heal.

But the main thing I'm asking is how would you lessen the skill gap between average and skilled players where you allow average players to beat content and reduce DPS windows for skilled players.

Does t have to be attuned to the very max healing potential, or are you allowed to take a breather for two second? After all humans arnt always so precise about movement. You still got your absorbs as well im guessing you didnt count them in your calculation. Smart though, Im not a numbers person myself. As for three difficulties Id think it would be set at a difficulty level that people according to statistics could do

[Judge_Xero]

Does t have to be attuned to the very max healing potential, or are you allowed to take a breather for two second?

What I wanted to illustrate was sort of how the healer DPS meta formed. Absolutely we are allowed to take a breather for two seconds which is how SE inadvertently created healer DPS windows.

The key point is that my comparison was between skilled i255 max healing output VS i270 low/average potential with most players somewhere in between. What does this mean?

TLDR: Even if average players don't have the skill to even heal through content, skilled players are still going to DPS a lot.

After all humans arnt always so precise about movement. You still got your absorbs as well im guessing you didnt count them in your calculation. Smart though, Im not a numbers person myself. As for three difficulties Id think it would be set at a difficulty level that people according to statistics could do[/QUOTE]

When we look at how DPS checks are balanced with enrages and burst checks in savage, is there any reason not to balance healers as strictly if they only had a healing kit? Would it really be unfair if at below minimum ilvl healers would need 90%+ throughput to keep up, when the DPS classes are expected to push at that level anyway?

It would not be unfair at all IMO except when you look at how skilled healers create current DPS windows, VS others who struggle to simply heal.
(i.e. 3000 HPS with just regens combined with an extra 3000 HPS from just raw heals VS C2 spam with 50% overheal)

This also effects how healers would manage to heal/do mechanics if the healing requirements were higher. Skilled players may not be able to heal/dps but average players wont be able to heal/mechanics.

-----------------------------------------------------

Sebazy reminded me of this bringing up T1 btw. I wasn't a healer in BCOB so I never got to experience but I do remember the snakes hitting really hard to the point where:

- People needed to bait tail swipes to reduced some attacks on the tanks
- coordinating keeping regens on both tanks
- tanks cycling CD's to reduce average DTPS
- even @ i90 the Tank Kite strat where people would rejoin the two snakes and then have a tank kite/sprint around the arena while both healer tried to keep him alive waiting for LB to build. Healers at max ilvl still struggle with the heal check of T1 to the point the kite strat was made. Then OMG T2 most teams couldn't even beat without the Enrage strat because the healers couldn't even start to think about keeping up.

But yeah, it's not like we are even talking about mere 2 second windows here. One of A12s' many huge DPS windows is just shy of 30 seconds long (In this case, between inceptions and fountains) with nothing but 3k auto attacks every few seconds . That's a huge amount of time for two healers to be stood about scratching their arses whilst Eos and a Regen takes care of things.

Exactly, and yet there's healers who can't grasp the level of damage going out at that point not realizing that a regen will cover the damage, who continually spam Benefic/Cure/Physic etc.

Imagine if it was 12k per hit, do you think most people could time a heal between two 12k hits and a 20k Divine Spear, and then have the tank topped and shielded for Punishing Heat?

Then consider the level of MP efficiency that would require, lol

[Kitfox]

Creating a mini-game within the healing tools for healers to manage outside of DPS while increasing required healing seems like a fun idea. I still just worry about healers that can barely heal Creator Savage while others are able to DPS the majority of the time while keeping everyone up.

At least what we see currently with the healer DPS meta is that the healing requirements are pretty low so:
- healers that struggle just to heal can keep up
- healers that are more skilled can keep everyone alive while fitting in DPS where they can
- Top tier healers can just DPS 90% of the time

How would that get addressed so that we don't have players coming back here asking for the healing requirements get nerfed because they keep getting kicked from statics for not being able to keep everyone alive?

When we look at how DPS checks are balanced with enrages and burst checks in savage, is there any reason not to balance healers as strictly if they only had a healing kit? Would it really be unfair if at below minimum ilvl healers would need 90%+ throughput to keep up, when the DPS classes are expected to push at that level anyway?

If they wanted to make healers more healing centric, I think they should do that. They can't really get rid of the offensive side of healers though, since gear progression will increase that portion, and it would result in idle time for the top players. But increasing healing requirements across the board outside of mechanical bursts wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. I do think that would require making the healing toolkits more interesting though, as the bread and butter heals are still just the basic HoT + cure/benefic/physick, which is incredibly bland if that is what you're required to spam for the majority of the time.

[Feyona]

It's starting to sound like I'm the only one who's actually quite happy with Cleric Stance.

Your right, at the beginning of pandaria it was almost unplayable cos theyed nerfed it so much. but by the time you got to raiding it really was op after the adjustment. I did get a sort of buzz out of being the highest healer through dps. It was a very fun class to play though and was 'different' it a shame people didnt like it being op etc and complained so much it was nerfed for 'bala'nce. It actually wasnt op as a healer unless you played it right and you couldnt just spam smite in raids . 2 discs in a group had a job to keep healing up. But here the healing requirements are lower and dps requirements higher. Ideal for the job here. I dont like walking tight ropes tbh . In fact hate it needs a balance there. On wow healing really was a full time job. I had all six healers and my least favourite was holy priest, which is almost the same as wmg here boring to play and just direct heals. I like sch here cos its a different kind of healer. I dont like all the dots on it cos its tedious and repetitive. I hate cleric cos it causes wipes and Ive seen it happen and its makes me panic . It is in my view an unnecessary handicap.