I'm done.

[Alisa180]

As for raiding, only DPS when you can. Never feel obligated to DPS just because someone tells you to. The healer's ability to DPS comes strictly from the performance of the other 7 people in the party. If people aren't giving you the opportunity to DPS, then don't. Your meta is to heal. That's it.

My issue is that I *can’t* DPS as a healer ‘when I can’ or ‘when I have the opportunity.’ When I do, well, as I said it tends to end in death. I’ve been practicing, and practicing, but I just can’t get the hang of it. I eventually came to the painful conclusion that it's not a skill I’ll be able to master, especially not at the level required for Savage and other harder content.

Tbh, the trick is to master multi-task. The only way your gonna be able to do harder content is to know your class rotation by heart so that you can concentrate on Mechanics. It takes tons of practice but you'll get better with time.

One issue is that for healers in the current meta, you effectively have to memorize two rotations. Your healing rotation, and your DPS rotation. And you can only use one or the other depending on the circumstances. Unlike with tank stances, being in or out of CS renders one of the two rotations effectively useless. It is incredibly easy to accidentally DPS while out of CS, or heal while in it. The 2.5s CD for Cleric Stance doesn’t help either.

You also have to be able to shift targets well, and it can be tricky to learn how to smoothly transition between healing the party and DPSing (Assist Target helps, but it's not a perfect solution.) AND you have to do all this while keeping an eye on both your feet and the party’s HP. I play on a controller, BTW, which does not help the targeting thing.

Multitasking has never been my forte, and that might sound strange from someone who’s playing SMN. It’s just easier to handle one, albeit complex, rotation, then two different ones.

Well you don't need to dps in normal groups but let me tell you in Savage (you mentioned this raid so imma talk about it) you're going to want to dps because you're going to get so tired of not meeting the enrage and dying with 1% hp remaining on the boss. After so many wipes at 1% you just want to clear by any means at that point. Still though even in savage as a whm you're still healing 98% of the time, the healing requirement in Savage is no joke either

I know. That’s why despite complaining about healer DPS frequently, I tried desperately to learn how. The problem is, especially in, say, AS3, there *very* little margin for error. Especially if you’re a healer. In the end, I simply couldn’t close the gap in my skills. And you’d be very hard-pressed to find a group that would accept even a WHM that refuses to use CS at all.