Quote Originally Posted by Khalithar View Post
Because in other MMO's if you only want to heal you can, healing in a game like WoW or SWTOR there is enough incoming damage that you basically have to be constantly healing, watching HP bars, buffs, debuffs, dispelling, etc. Whereas in this game, there is much less pressure to be constantly healing, in some content if I'm playing say... a whm, I can throw a regen on a tank and he'll be fine without me needing to cast anything until the regen wears off.The way the fights are designed in this game, when I do heal I often find moments of downtime where I can just stand there waiting for someone to take damage and it's boring. It's not the same actions per minute, it's less, and for some of us that prefer a more active playstyle, it isn't very fun.

Which brings me to the point about the whole dps action thing, leaving aside the fact that healer dps in cleric isn't terrible and that you can cast a regen and switch to cleric with no penalty to it's healing. For one, it's the only way to keep that more active playstyle that I myself am used to and for another, I've always been of the opinion that I should always be casting something whether it be a damage spell or a healing spell, standing there watching paint dry is just a waste of my time when I could be helping out my party more. Sure, I can JUST heal, but if I can keep everyone alive while actively making the fights go faster? I'm always going to choose what speeds it up the most.*

When someone says "I'm tired of being a healbot," they're referring to the fact that they aren't just standing there doing nothing when no one is taking any damage. Back to other games, in a game like WoW or SWTOR back in the day when you overgeared content, your healer could just stand there doing nothing. I'd run dungeons with a healer buddy of mine and he would complain that I'm taking no damage and he has nothing to do because healers in OTHER games do such piss poor horrible damage it's not even worth it half the time. It got to the point where he'd ask me to unequip some of my gear just so I'd take some damage and he'd have something to do.

Gear in that game reached the point where I didn't even need a healer, I'd go in with 2-3 dps friends of mine, pull 50-75% of the entire dungeon at once (not exaggerating, completely serious), use my cooldowns, and they'd aoe everything down and I would honestly not even need a single heal since my paladin could recover HP on it's own. It rendered healers completely worthless at that point! Now with the DPS setup in this game, if no one needs healing, you can make a larger contribution in a meaningful way.

*I will concede the point that I don't dps in content that is brand new, I wait until I've taken some time to get used to it and the way the mechanics of it work.
Sorry, maybe my point wasn't precise. What I'm specifically asking is, why do healers like to DPS in this game? Looking at answers on the forums, it generally seems to be "because I like being optimal and there's not enough healing required to max out my number of actions per minute" or something like that - they're usually answers that have nothing to do with actually liking DPS in particular, it's more liking efficiency. There's a few people who mention liking the spell effects of moves like Holy or Gravity in particular, but for the most part I'm trying to point out that it's possible for the game design to change where healers can still max out "actions per minute" but have most of those actions be healing moves, buffs, or dispels, rather than moves that deal damage. And then I would ask the healers that like to DPS, "would you still like healing if the game were balanced more in that direction?", and people like the one I quoted might say "no because I can't DPS anymore" and that's why I'm trying to understand what it is about that point that's appealing. If you really enjoy just straight-up doing damage, why not actually play a damage dealer? Their rotations are way more interesting an in-depth than a healer's 3-4 dot application and filler spam.

In my experience, Jedi Sage in SWTOR could actually do some serious damage, no? I recall this earthquake move that was just pants-on-head with how strong it was, though it's been a while since I played so I might be mistaken. I could also tear up the meters in easier content in World of Warcraft by using my owl chicken affinity as a Resto Druid in dungeons and doing a Moonkin-esque DPS rotation, to say nothing of how Disc Priest is a class designed entirely AROUND the idea of doing healing through damage. Maybe older expansions of WoW had healers twiddling their thumbs because their damage was poop, but I don't think it's really the case in Legion, which is where the bulk of my WoW experience comes from (some WoD, but lolWoD). The difference is, there's just plenty to do healing-wise in content that you don't outgear, and more difficult content like heroic/mythic raids and M+.

Idk, hopefully that clarifies my point a bit.