If you thought the healer DPS debate would change with the change...

[Hezzlocks]

How is it people are going back and fourth on this subject. If you are ONLY healing that means you are idleing which is not cool. You don't have to straight up DPS but throw something out for crying out loud. Never just stand there and do nothing.

Not *entirely* true. There are plenty of times when it *is* true, yes, but sometimes a healer is "idling" because they're actually managing their mana. Times have changed since SB, and mana management is a very real thing these days, and the worse the group is the greater the management required, especially with how expensive rez is now. Sometimes Lucid just doesn't cut it and you need to take a little breather during downtime, when throwing out a DPS spell will just strain your MP reserves further.

That said, if you're sitting there doing nothing with a near-full MP bar and Lucid off cooldown, yeah, you're totally idling and that's not cool. Not the end of the world if a healer idles like this, but certainly not something they should be doing.

[Schan]

Well I am feeling powerless in term of healing power with my AST, but it could simply my ilv is not crazy overgear like the end of SB

Basically yes. Now that I overgear the dungeons it's easier to heal but doing it while leveling / gearing up is a pain. You basically need to try hard all the time. You need to dump everything on the tank and hope he doesn't dodge your Collective Unconscious / Earthly Star that would give you a bit of a breather.

[RopeDrink]

If I recall the developers said something along the lines of them wanting healers to DPS less and focus more on healing.

The trick with a statement like this is that it does not directly imply 'reduced damage' or the changes to their damage options. "DPS'ing less" can be wrought by stricter healing requirements rather than actual changes to Healer DPS itself, which is the safer bet seeing as (I believe) they were quoted saying they wanted things to be more healing intensive. It just hasn't happened. Yet.

Times have changed since SB, and mana management is a very real thing these days

Not for WHM, which is the same as it was, except now everyone is levelling one and I've had just about enough of these AFK'ers spamming revamped MedII over and over again before standing around picking their nose and waiting for a tank buster or some equivalent. Meanwhile, I head into any dungeon on my WHM and my healing button is Holy. Sure, there are some exceptions, but so long as healing req. remains so low, one can't keep relying on those niche cases. The game is rife with Healer downtime and it's plain that a vast majority don't know how to better use that time.

People can resort to the tired old "It's not your job" or "Don't do it if you want", but so long as the game keeps providing you nothing better to do with so much downtime other than dealing damage (unless you value overhealing or idling, which any self-respecting healer won't), then such comments will remain meaningless unless Healers get either higher healing requirements or better damage tools.

[Ayer2015]

Why are people still arguing about this topic.....? Its been years. Just agree to disagree and move on.

[Xiun]

For dungeons - Big trash pulls I'm not expecting a healer to DPS, and I have yet to be told to "do more dps" on big pulls - The only time I really get a chance is near the end of a pull when some things have died and tank damage is lower, or if I pop lightspeed+gravity and use my OGCDs to keep the tank alive until I need to hard cast into them. For bosses, there's really no excuse for a healer to not be dpsing most of the time. There are a few bosses here and there with a lot of AoE damage that keeps a healer from going ham, but outside of that, they shouldn't have too much trouble.

In the EX trials I find I'm mostly DPSing, using lucid on CD to keep mana at a comfortable level, and only very occasionally hard casting heals - mostly AoE for horoscope or to get a noc. shield up. HOWEVER - If your team messes up really hard, dies, or takes too many vuln stacks, you will be forced to put your mana into healing and rezzing. I have had a few pulls where I have to just stop doing anything for a bit because I have enough mana for benefic 1 and that's it. It DOES happen - just communicate with your co healer - depending on their CDs and mana they might just have to take over for a bit while you wait for lucid or for mana to regen quicker.

No ideling is ideal. It seems we're still very much in the "do as little healing and as much dps as possible" but that'll only work if the whole team is doing well - any messups and your dps will go down.

If I see a healer just sitting there staring at a wall with full mana... I get a bit upset. But I'm also the type of person that's not going to really "yell" at someone in a PuG unless we're very clearly wiping because of them (if its just the healer dps then there's more than one issue). Any other time I'd be in an organized group where I would hop everyone would be open to criticize one another on improving.

[MrSmiley]

I just tried healing again after taking a 2 year break, switched to tank, and was enjoying it but once I got to the end game, its back to usual. Even with the removal of a large chunk of the healer DPS spells and abilities, the player community is still demanding, not asking, demanding that healers still DPS.

Not a welcome experience for me one bit. I don't mind contributing when I can but being outright told that I am causing trouble if I am focusing on healing because... well...they need to be healed (people standing in the fire), it really gets to me. I cant DPS if I am spending my mana on rezzes or heals or needing to save mana for a mechanic, etc. I know the devs are trying to reduce the need for healer DPS but it isn't working.

TLDR: Healer DPS is more important than anything else, if you don't, your dead weight, get lost.

The problem is, healers still have a 70% downtime. I cast more glare than heals in titania because healing is only barely necessary. Otherwise there is nothing to do but stand around idling, and no one wants to see players idling. If se wants to fix this, they have to fix the base problem, healers not having anything better or more important to do than spam dps spells.

[Connor]

Healers will always be expected to spend free GCDs on dealing damage, unequivocally. It’s non-negotiable, nor was it ever a debate. DPS on a healer or play a different game

[CaesarCV]

Hm...I have a few thoughts on this particular topic.

For one, obviously focus on healing over DPS. That's your job above all else. Healing is different from DPsing in how rather than a rotation it's more of a flowchart. One has to evaluate the situation quickly and figure out what best to do in that moment, whether that be throwing an excogitation on the tank, shielding the team from an incoming raidwide, or dealing damage to make a DPS check easier. The issue is...

You won't have to spend all of your time on Healing. I mean, even in Expert Roulette Undergeared with wall to wall pulls I get to spend a significant portion of my time dealing damage. As a SCH I have tons of tools like Whispering Dawn, Excogitation, Adloquium and other skills to give me free time. The same applies to WHM and AST regen among other things. When things are cool and the DPS aren't standing in fire, you have some time to yourself. Might as well make use of it right?

That is of course, assuming that A) the Healer knows their class and B) the other players in the group aren't failing. And if either of those conditions aren't met, sure you might have to spend more time healing. That's cool and good! In a way it feels nice as a healer to be needed like that! But the vast majority of the time you should be able to contribute at least some DPS, and often a good amount of it.

As to players judging healers by their DPS, it's a shockingly good metric to determine ones' efficacy as a healer. There's only a certain amount of damage that comes out of a fight, and going over that is just a waste of resources. So the challenge becomes reaching that amount of healing in the least time/difficulty possible. A better healer has more time to DPS, so they get higher DPS. If you do no DPS, you've done the bare minimum, just like a Tank who dealt next to no damage but kept aggro or a DPS who killed the enemy but took 20 minutes on a trash pull. People usually expect more than the bare minimum.

There will be times when you can't DPS of course. Sometimes mechanics are too crazy, or your group is new, or you have a tank running into a level 80 dungeon wearing Scaevan gear. Sometimes you might just panic and spam area heals out of a desperate attempt to keep order among the chaos. It happens, and don't beat yourself up over it or anything! Just try your best, and if you do that I'm sure you'll find that you have some free time. Why not spend it on something?