So with content getting easier you would think that I wouldn’t moan so much at being kept challenged by people who want to experiment in dungeons.
I am a Dps at heart. Long time readers will remember my complete and utter disdain at being made to heal. But I want my cake badges. When on a good day I can do one instance in 12 min – why would I want to wait 13 min to then spend as long as the wait in a run = less badges, less gems to sell = less time doing other stuff. So I heal. Popular opinion seems to be I do it well ( unless you make my life difficult and then I rant.)
As I have two 80 priests, I am much more confident Dpsing as a Holy spec on my main Zahraah – with more mana, better gear she can hot up a standard tank, throw a mend every now and then, flash a little, then dot up the boss. Holy fire a mob, ( love the lightening bolt spell graphic) do a mindblast, Holy Nova a pack – or even mind sear!
(Seems silly to give Holy mindsear and not mindflay)
I have never lost a tank because I was dpsing. I may have lost a dps though when they stole agro unexpectedly.
I also know you’re wondering if my desire to dps causes me mana issues, and no – I will only dps with a strong tank – if its a weak tank needing more heals my attention is always on them .
On Ostara my Holy only priest I am not as geared, so when healing on her gear I’m not as confident, but depending on the tank, she will do what she can to add to the damage.
I won’t go disc to dps/heal – I like healing as holy.
As a holy dpser we don’t get the benefits a shadow spec would get eg replenishment procs, and a real healer would never dare to spec into the Dps points available on the holy tree. However Staying active sure beats standing there with a dopey expression on my face.
^^ perpetual dopy look.
But here is my challenge to all healers but the Trees ( sorry.. Unless you want to melee the mobs) More dps = faster funs without the tank having to go pyscho pulling. ( Yes there are too many of you doing that!)
Healers! I call you to arms. Or wands or staffs or whatever.
I want you OUT DPSING THOSE SCRUB DPSERS
and I want screenshots. I shall endeavour to do the same.
We measure a dpser by how much dps they do as it usually means they have been active, and that they are continually casting. Measuring the success of a healers dps will not be as easy. We are otherwise occupied some of the time, but damage done should suffice for now.
Then one day ….. I shall enter a LFG in Holy Spec as a DPSER! *shock horror* then I can be the scrub dps that people laugh at.
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Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog 
For the healers that can dps and not lose the tank, that’s fine – I really don’t care. That tells me you know your limits and it makes things go faster.
But I’ve had far too many who go mass dps, pull a next set of mobs for me as the tank and then die because either my aoe is on CD, I don’t see it happen, or I just let them die because I’m sick of dealing with healers who do that, and then I die and we wipe as a result.
I’ve had a healer so set on beating the dps, that he stayed boomchicken, pulled for the tank and while the tank was gathering up mobs, the ret pally in the group and my enhancement shaman [an alt] were trashing our dps by dumping heals on the tank to keep him up [and we consequently got laughed at for our dps after having done that the whole instance].
So please, let me re-emphasize the notation of dpsing with caution! I’ve had a LOT of problems with healers in instances lately [and I say that, having a healer of my own as well]
@youyankityoutankit – Pulling for the tank is over the top. Wouldn’t presume to do that – but yes the need for caution is noted. The idea is to make the run slightly speedier – keep the healer occupied and more productive, not waste the random dungeon gold reward on wipefest repairs.
well i’ll admit to pulling for the tank. =\
thats only because i feel that the tank is really taking his own sweet time to pull and also maybe that i’m confident (or maybe too confident?) that i can keep up the tank no matter what.
aweee don’t pull for the tank.. that just means the healer has to heal you more when you get hit.. >< and u will earn the animosity of tank… and besides they might start couch tanking if the dps bring the mobs to them,
Does couch tanking mean sitting back and letting the DPS die? I do that now and then, when the DPS pull.
Resto druids with full mana are expected to moonfire in my groups. I see no reason why priests cannot at least cast a holy fire, or several, or spam holy nova while hopping like a crazed rabbit.
I was imagining a couch tank, on the couch beer in hand slurring.. bring me that one.. pointing at a mob – and the dps chasing after it trying to kite it back to the tank without dying.
What is about holy nova that requires jumping around? I do that on both my priests.. bounce bounce flash.. bounce bounce flash
I, as a resto druid with full mana, I like to spend my free time bouncing, keeping up Moonfire, and Insect Swarm. Mostly bouncing.
I see mages bounce a lot too – Warlocks are way too serious to bounce..
I keep doing this and keep swearing off it. As much as it bores me to stand around when doing nothing, it is Murphy’s law that as soon as I wind up a chain heal, someone will get insta-gibbed. It puts me in a weird headspace too where I can see someone needs heals and instead of immediately switching to heal, I will wait till the cast finishes otherwise it would be a waste. Then I boggle at my own attitude and once again swear off DPSing.
Screenshot already posted, the other day on my stupidly screenshot full post.
At the very minimum my fire nova goes off once per fight.
If everything is under control (ie, tank only one tanking damage) then earth shield and riptide will take care of the heals. Oh shit button if things go south.
Occasionally things are going well… At which point I need to dps.
1 chain heal
1 chain lightning
1 chain heal
1 chain lightning
I have read a few posts lately where tanks have asked for the healer to respec dps. I’ve had at least one myself.
A shadow priest mate of mine often heals in shadow, and I have had a few runs where I wonder why I am healing as health regen is coming incidentally from other sources.
For guild EoF runs, we often just run with 4xDPS, and an understanding that someone will throw a heal if it looks necessary. (And there must be someone with healing spells there, or we couldn’t queue for the daily random)
Everyone in the party over 3k DPS is a sane goal, I find. Class mechanics mean that it’s hard for some classes to get much above that when mobs die as fast as they do in the face of ~20k combined DPS.
Oh, and druids can manage just fine – they just need to not be in tree form. Hurricane is well suited to this style of zergfest.
As a shaman, I throw in flame shocks, chain lightnings, etc. if I’m bored and the situation allows for it, but it always seems like such a drop in the bucket. Even at full bore I can’t seem to do significant DPS in my resto spec, so even though it has to be _better_ to help out, I don’t bother sometimes. Discipline priests seem to do pretty well at this though…I’ll occasionally run randoms on my tank with my arena team’s discipline priest, and we’ve been on runs where both of us beat the DPS.
Funny you say that Tree healers shouldn’t DPS unless they want to melee…
While a Paladin basically has no choice BUT to melee. 10 sec CD Judgement and 30 sec CD Holy Shock does not a DPS make!
And those Trees can just switch to “not a tree” form and cast Moonspam and Wrath. It’s what I do! 🙂
Now, if a Paladin healer wants to DPS, they can do what I do. Queue as a healer? Check. Wear healing gear? Check. Roll in Retribution spec? Check!
With my tank on focus, I go in with guns blazing. Crusader Strike! Divine Storm! Divine Storm heals people! Judgement of Light heals people! Art of War procs keep my tank alive! And mana is a non-issue thanks to the HIDEOUS mana return from Retribution talents.
I’ve only ever had one tank question me one WTF I was doing… 🙂
Ya, I dps as a tree all the time, well, I’m dpsing and healing as a night elf, that is.
Oh, and since I do more tanking than anything else, I have this message for the terminally hyper: If you pull in a group where I’m the tank, I sit down or run out of the instance. Period. That’s asshole behavior, and you can stop it, kick me or solo the dungeon with me on follow. If you want me to tank, then you’ll cut it the hell out. I wish every tank had the balls to insist on it, because then I wouldn’t have to deal with it in 1/2 my groups.
There are six things I have found that make a dungeon run go faster, in order of decreasing importance:
1. Not wiping.
2. Not wiping.
3. Not wiping. (getting the picture? 1 wipe is worse for speed than getting everything else about about as wrong as it could possibly go without wiping.)
4. Controlled pulls for max aoe and minimal mob chasing.
5. Good DPS
6. Pulling faster.
IMO, wtf ever to #6. Yeah if people sit around and basically afk for 2 minutes, then it will take forever. If somebody is occasionally stopping to buff, drink or type something in chat, or is just 1 second slower at pulling than you would be, get over yourself. We’re talking about maybe a 1-2 minute difference in the whole run, and remember that it is the tank’s *JOB* to know when it is right to pull. So I do things like wait for the healer to have decent mana and be at close range. If you want me to pull when you have 1/2 mana or are out of my LoS, because you are OP, then say that at some point. If you aren’t the healer, then I don’t really give two pieces of excrement when *you* think I should pull. Go wait in a 30 minute queue for some other tank if you don’t like the way I do it.
what makes you think trees can’t dps? all they have to do is regrowth-rejuv and then shift out of tree form for wrathspam. hell, i’m pretty sure it’s entirely possible to heal a dungeon with a restokin spec, and do even more reasonable amounts of DPS. I once hit about 3500 with hurricane on an aoe trash pack. that’s gotta stand for something, right?
Give a Mage a Tree and this is what it comes down to…
“Yeah I’m a healer.. but look at my AoE!”
😉
I’m constantly dpsing on my healer. If the tank is good, why not? It’s better than sitting there, doing nothing, and watching the “real dps” slow as down with their 1k deeps. I don’t mind when they’re undergeared and hey, I have no problem carrying them either, so I’m not going to fuss when someone’s dps is legitimately lower than others. There’s no harm in me picking up the slack and not falling asleep, though.
After reading this I’ve taken it to heart. If the queue pops anything less than HOS, I spam holy nova the entire run and my pocket druid with way too much mana hits me up with innervate every 3 mins. Hit 800 dps today, Respeccing tomorrow, hope to break 1k.
One of my more memorable runs was one where I, as the holy priest healer, was 2nd on DPS. Below the tank. Yeah.
But I have all my damage spelled macro’d to target-of-target for easy switching between healing and DPSing, and I usually just end up hitting what the tank is hitting. My goal in easy heroics is to out-damage someone while healing, be it the tank or fail DPS. Sometimes this gives me mana issues – not so much “crap no mana to heal” as “oh whoops I’m almost OOM – time to fiend I guess”