Downtime is good.

[RyuujinZERO]

I see a lot of people asking for 'Less downtime', and pointing out that the focus on DPS is a symptom of how much downtime there is between actual heals being required, and thus there is so much room for DPS. But I feel like I should point out a subtle problem with this logic and the preferred dungeon meta:

This surplus of 'downtime' is the same reason tanks can make absurdly large pulls; if a healer is spending 30% of their time actually healing on a single group of trash mobs, the tank can afford to pull 3 groups of enemies, and the same healer will still be able to heal through it, now spending roughly 90% of their time actually healing. (Yes i know those numbers probably aren't accurate for you personally, it's an illustration)

If they make us actually work to keep a tank up during a single pull, to discourage us from helping DPS too much, we're not going to be able to do massive pulls, and if we can't do massive pulls dungeon clear times are going to get really long and boring. Remember those late-ARR dungeons that have gates every few steps to make sure tanks can't pull more than one or two groups?



Obviously this doesn't apply to raids. A lot of raid content has a LOT of downtime and that could be made more taxing because you can't typically scale up the size of an encounter during a raid. But it should also be remembered that they need to account for the lower common denominator outside of savage content. That there are some really awful healers and they don't want too many PUGs disbanding, because the healer is 30% off the expected performance metric, and the fight is tuned to demand a healer be healing 90% of the time.


At any rate I thought I should just throw that out there. be careful what you wish for - That particular demand could backfire horribly.

[Ilenya]

Wait, we could actually get *challenging* dungeons if we complain about downtime?

[Jaelommiss]

Maybe for a week or two until 6 CPM healers complain about it being impossible and SE bends over backwards for them.

[RyuujinZERO]

Wait, we could actually get *challenging* dungeons if we complain about downtime?

No.

You'd end up with single-group trash pulls tuned so they require as much investment as a double or triple pull does currently, and pulling more than one group at a time would result in damage that exceeds your capacity to heal and the party wiping. So dungeons would take 2-3 times as long to finish, but be no more engaging than running large-pulls previously. (Which IS fun, but I don't feel like dungeons need to be LONGER)

[Ilenya]

No.

You'd end up with single-group trash pulls tuned so they require as much investment as a double or triple pull does currently, and pulling more than one group at a time would result in damage that exceeds your capacity to heal and the party wiping. So dungeons would take 2-3 times as long to finish, but be no more engaging than running large-pulls previously. (Which IS fun, but I don't feel like dungeons need to be LONGER)

Maybe you'd enjoy that but I think making dungeons take 3 times longer for the same rewards would not be a rewarding experience

So you are saying we'd get dungeons that reward people being good at their jobs by allowing them to still pull more, because remember, they have to make sure every healer can heal the single pull.

[RyuujinZERO]

No, this a maths problem. There are hard limits to what a healer can do.

If a healer is exerting over 50% of their potential on a single pull, then a second pull is physically impossible*, you cannot give more than 100%


*Caveat: Strictly speaking a pull over 100% is viable if the party can burn down the enemies before the tank dies, with the healer essentially 'offsetting the burn' rather than truly healing. This does not seem like a good strategy however to encourage as standard PUG play.

[Ilenya]

That sounds like a challenge, my friend.