What if certain bosses had the oppositeof an enragetimer?

[Khalithar]

I don't understand how wearing vit gear instantly stops tanks from trying to dps. And healers, as long as they don't have to spend a gcd healing, they're going to be dpsing.

Assuming we're not talking about bads, anyway.

The point is, when vit gear/tank stance becomes necessary to survive, tanks cannot afford to use str gear and their dps becomes negligible and isn't factored in to beating enrages anymore. The same can be said for the healers, imagine a fight designed where in the time it takes the healer to cast that dps spell someone dies, forcing them to not use them and to only cast healing spells or they have to be ready to cast a healing spell at a moment's notice and spending even one GCD on a dps spell means someone dies.

The best example I can think of in this situation, is what the raid damage was like in Wrath of the Lich King, a WoW xpac. The boss damage was tuned to be super high, a single hit from a boss reduced a tank to less than half of their hp and would one shot any tank without enough HP or a dps that pulled aggro. Taking unavoidable AoE in to consideration, it meant that healers didn't have time to cast any of their dps spells as they basically had to keep every one topped off at all times and wasting a GCD dpsing usually meant someone was going to die.

Is that bad encounter design? I don't think so. But it forced tanks to focus on surviving, healers had to keep the whole raid topped off while doing mechanics, and the pressure was on the dps to finish the fight as quickly as possible because the damage was high enough that if it dragged on the healers would run dry and everyone died. It made for some very tense encounters.