DPS Cures Everything: Be Nice to Your Healers

I always go on and on about damage dealers and DPS and expecting more from them.  This time an experience in the LFR made me think about it again.  A poor healer got harassed and eventually kicked when I do not feel they deserved it.  There were a slew of damage dealers not doing their job of putting up big numbers while following mechanics and avoiding junk.  DPS cures everything.  Don't always blame the healer.

I've spent a great deal of white space on this blog posting how important I believe DPS is.  Everyone loves to toot the horn or tanking or healing as being important and they are, but are they that important, do they make the fight shorter, when all things are considered?

Don't get me wrong, I've basically been tanking all expansion, have not even stepped into one single raid as DPS yet so I am not saying other roles are not needed.  I am sure some people will read into what I am saying as I am meaning tanking and healing are not important and they would be wrong.  I am saying that DPS just makes everything easier.  Even tanking and healing.

As a tank, when you first attempt a new boss and you are rotating your cooldowns and learning how best to time them it becomes an iffy issue.  One wrongly timed cooldown when you could have used it for more effectiveness 6 seconds later could mean the difference between a kill and a wipe.  But as you get more attempts in and the DPS keeps going up as the damage dealers get more used to the fight and refine their output while doing the mechanics and avoid the junk you gain the luxury as a tank of not having to save those cooldowns for later, just in case, because later will never come.  The faster the boss goes down the less work it is for me as a tank to keep myself alive via cooldowns and less work it is for the healers to keep me up because they have to worry less about conserving mana the shorter the fight becomes.

When first learning a fight I always say all the pressure is on the healers.  Always has been and always will be.  When something is new they have less regeneration, smaller healers, and longer cast times.  Also, just like damage dealers get better with practice so do healers.  But unlike damage dealers when something is new and they are just learning you can often pin the wipe on not enough healing.  Unless you hit the enrage timer you will usually never say it was a DPS issue.  Unless you are me of course.  Enrage timer means nothing except you need more DPS for sure. It doesn't mean if you don't hit it you don't need more DPS.  You always need more DPS.

I say everything is a DPS issue.  Perhaps that is because I hold damage dealers to a much higher standard.  I expect more from them.  Some might say I value DPS way to much and they might be right but the way I see it is that DPS cures everything.

When doing the daily grind that first day of mists after reaching 90 they seemingly took forever.  Now with gear and pulling triple, or more, the DPS I was when I first hit 90 the dailies are just laughable.  I can run in and grab the 12 mogu I need to kill all at once and 30 seconds later go to turn in the quest whereas it used to take me what seemed like 30 minutes just to kill 12 of them.  DPS cured the dailies taking forever.

When doing old content it is really apparent as well, just like it is with the dailies.  Do you remember doing rag your first time and it took a while to down those fire elementals during transition?  You needed to assign people to areas, weaken some and move to others.  You would need to have them set up who goes where based on where the hammer fell and even when you executed perfectly, or it seemed so, one could still get through.  Go do it now, I implore you.  Even a tank can one shot the fire elementals.  The hardest fight of all of the last expansion is made trivial by DPS.  I can not speak for others but for my guild it was that transition phase that took us forever to get down.  Now it seems like nothing because they are all one shot mobs.  DPS cures everything..

I like to solo and I can tell you for sure that most solo fights are all about DPS.  Yes there are many that are about timing and using your abilities at the right time and your skill playing your character but many are about DPS.  Or at least in part about DPS.  I remember the first time I did many bosses solo.  Being a hunter with no real way to heal it became a race of who will kill who first.  AoE fights are not very hunter friendly.  Unless of course you can pump out the DPS.  If you can kill the boss before the boss can kill you then you are golden.  See, DPS even cures some soloing issues.

No matter what aspect of the game you are talking about DPS means everything.  DPS makes everything easier.

Now to the point.

A recent LFR run when the group was getting on the lowest healer (and I do admit they were pretty bad compared to the others but they were gemmed, enchanted, reforged and trying, you could tell) because their numbers were not great after two wipes made me think, why isn't anyone looking at the real issue.  There were 3 people, yes, just three people doing over 50K DPS.  If the rest of the raid were doing more DPS the fact this one healer was doing 8K less than the other five wouldn't mean a damn thing.  The boss would have been dead.

This is one of the reasons people do not like playing tanks or healers sometimes.  They get all the pressure put on them when the damage dealers get away scott free most of the time.  I hate that.  I say put more pressure on those that deserve it.  DPS cures everything and more pressure should be put on the damage dealers to do their job better.  Instead of blasting some poor druid healer that is barely the item level to be in there for being 8K HPS under the others try busting the balls of the damage dealer that has a 480 item level and can't break 30K. 

Put the pressure where it should be, on the DPS.  DPS makes everything easier.  Bad damage dealers makes everything harder, and remember, it is not just about damage, it is about avoidance as well.  Doing top DPS is never an excuse for standing in the bad.  So never try and say, I am making the fight easier on the healers by doing top DPS to make the fight faster so I am allowed to stand in the bad.  Nope, being a good damage dealer is about doing as much damage as possible while taking as little damage as possible.

DPS cures everything.  Give LFR healers a break sometimes, they might deserve it if they are not really that far behind.  Start bitching at the damage dealers that are not doing their job.  Easy or hard, the DPS decides.  Next time you wipe in the LFR don't look at the healer or the tank instinctively, look at the damage dealers.  Sure, it could be the fault of the tank or the healer but it usually isn't.  I'll bet you 4 out of 5 times if the damage dealers were better that wipe would have not happened.

Just look at the facts.

More DPS means a shorter fights.  Shorter fights means more cooldown up time for tanks.  Shorter fights means less mana issues for healers.  Short fights means less chances for someone to screw up a mechanic.  Shorter fight means healers covering for the idiot damage dealer that stands in junk becomes possible.  Shorter fights means easier fights.  Shorter fights are all thanks to DPS.

DPS cures everything.  Leave the poor healers alone unless they really deserve it.