Why must the ability to heal as a DPS = underwhelming performance as a DPS?

...can someone translate this?

This is one of those largely meaningless absolutes that gets thrown around a lot. Just because someone has a green button to heal doesn't mean anything by itself. Having the raw capacity to heal or tank is irrelevant; it only matters if those are useful abilities in real situations on difficult encounters*. In all but a scant few situations, the answer to this is "no."

*I specify difficult encounters because that is the only place balance makes a discernible difference in pve or pvp. When everything is easy/noncompetitive, the magnifying glass gets very small.

I think that if the DPS truly lacks it should be raised.

However I think that self heals being counted towards survivability is a valid way to look at things.

If cast time is the issue perhaps emulate the commandos solution, add a stack building mechanic that reduces the cast time of a heal to disturbance, making it instacast at full stack. Then again from a survivability standpoint that's shafting the commandos a bit considering all the other tools sorcs/sages have to get out of dodge at present. Queue the never ending spiral of placating buffs heh.

If you play a sorc, you'll see how having heals is in no way a valid way of looking at things. it takes, now this is with out push back, 1.5 seconds to heal 2.7k, or 3 seconds to heal 4.6k. In almost every situation, this can't really be used as a CD. At the very best, it can be used to heal while flagged as being in combat. But not much else. And that's not a very good cd. Now, if it was instant, then sure.

Now, if they made it so a sorc could gain Wrath like procs for the heals...well, that is still a problem...but you get where I'm going.

For crying out loud, the argument is that the ability to do a secondary function should not be a gimp to the function which a players decides to do. Stop yelling at people and think for half a second, take the title of the thread and replace "heal" with "tank;" its the same fundamental question that is being argued. Fact is that you actually agree with this thread but that you don't understand you agree with it. Or you are just trolling; if option two is the case, please stop. I can't continue reading your posts, the typos are giving me a headache.

Why? Because all the Bioware devs worth a damn bailed or got canned and now we are left with a cadre of people who can play office politics. Balance was never better than at launch (sans a few bugs) and the moronically imbalanced lvl 51 class abilities should never have made it into game.

i'll preface this by saying that yes, i understand that pvp and pve environments are mechanically very different, so not all of this applies to both. that said, this is from a pve perspective.


so getting on with it, the fallacy in 'pure dps classes should do more dps than others' is that they're focusing on the classes.
every class in the game has at least 2 specs entirely devoted to dps, so each spec should be able to perform its desired role. i am not a combat medic commando or a sawbones scoundrel and therefore should be considered a 'healer' or 'hybrid' but a dps as my desired spec tree represents that.

additionally, when we look at things like lethality gunslinger and compare it to the hybrid, the argument doesn't apply. 'its a pure dps spec that can't heal, so it should do just as much dps'
but it just doesn't, and these disparities between gunslingers specs were even more apparent before 2.0


so putting damage potential aside for a second, we should consider raid utility.

all sentinel and gunslinger specs have two very key raid wide utility skills: inspiration and scrambling field, neither of which have a negative impact on the user's dps (sentinel also has transcendence, but it can be argued that it lowers dps)

as for other classes, with the exception of grav round (and to a lesser extent, sunder armor), nearly all other utility (off healing / in-combat rezz / stealth rezz / pulls / etc.) takes time away from being able to dps.
in that instance, a class throwing out off-heals instead of doing damage, should do less damage because they are not spending their whole time doing damage.

however, the ability to throw out off heals should not mean that a particular spec should inherently do less damage than a one that can't. and the problem with this is that bioware has asserted this stance from the beginning and only now has seemed to change its tune. i would really like for someone from bioware to clarify tbh.

but to continue, the argument is inapplicable when we consider a dps spec that can taunt. other than firebrand and stormcaller, being able to taunt as a dps offers practically no utility for a raid. and in fact, in that example, it's just a way to bypass mechanics of the fight, so i don't think it can be considered an intended use of the skill.



but let's say we remove taunts and heals, pulls, and even stuns. and let's say there was actually some way to make it so that every dps spec in the game did the exact same dps.
sentinels and gunslingers would still win by a lot. i think a lot of people underestimate the perceived necessity of inspiration and scrambling field (whether it is warranted or not is irrelevant: the perception is definitely there) not to mention that these do not take time away from doing dps.

so if we take away offheals, would people be ok with putting inspiration and scrambling field on a shared cooldown like the battle rezz to make things even again? just my guess, but i don't think people would be very happy about that. and i don't think that improving the dps of other classes would remove the value on sentinels and gunslingers. it will certainly lower it, in that other options are now more viable, but considering utility, they still have quite a lot to offer.

I disagree, inspiration uses the sentinel's stack of centering which could have been used for zen for himself. Also during it he does not build centering. So relative to the rest of the raid he is giving up personal DPS to benefit the group. It also turns off the centering building of all other sentinels in his group. Scoundrels, commandos, and sages also have an ability that with the cost of one cool down offers help to the raid, the ability to cleanse allowing the raid healers the freedom to focus on just healing when it might otherwise their job to cleanse. Another benefit all three as DPS bring is the ability to combat rez. Frankly when a combat rez is needed it is a huge help to allow then already taxed healers to keep healing while one of the DPS does the rez. Both of these are single target but I argue both are not a small thing epically in the toughest of fights when it really matters.

I do not know DPS sage builds well enough to point out any other benefits they bring besides DPS or scoundrels but commandos do bring koto bomb which at a low cost does bring a decent heal on an instant cast to up to four raid members. I do believe DPS sages can bubble other players but I am unsure of the cost to their power.

But again I do not agree that there is a DPS tax currently being applied to the healer classes that opt for DPS builds. I agree there should not be much of one though but argue there is not presently.

You'd have a point if he was talking about Transcendence (Predation) but he did specifically say Inspiration (Bloodthirst). That's a bigger DPS gain for the zen stacks on the sentinel solo too.

I'd like to start by saying that I personally like sorcs as they are, because while they deal less single-target damage they can be devastating against groups. I play primarily PVE, but I have been known to do PVP from time to time and found that my assassin is much more effective, with similar gear (even slightly less powerful) at a similar level. In PVE my assassin (lvl 51, gear ranked 146) regularly deals 5k damage with a single hit, whereas my sorc (lvl 55, gear ranked 146, fully outfitted with MK6 Willpower augments) deals closer to 3k to individual targets, but with Force Storm and Chain Lightning she clears whole groups in about the same amount of time as the assassin. My point is that sorcs are good for area dps and should be used as such, whereas assassins ands snipers focus on 1 enemy at a time and so should have more direct damage per hit.

However, while reading this thread (yes, I did read the whole thing) I noticed 2 counter-arguments which really need to be addressed:

1: The ability to heal provides survivability that other classes don't have. Meh, yes and no. Several months ago, sorcs and sages were given an instant self-heal, which definitely helped sort out some balance issues, so I'm happy about that. It's a good panic ability that can restore a bit more health than an equivalent-level medpack. But that's the only healing ability that a dps sorc/sage should ever use, because if you're being attacked and you cast a healing ability with a casting time, the base casting time + pushback means that over the course of casting you will take more damage than you eventually heal when you finally finish casting. How is that in any way helpful? Yes, you can raise a Static Barrier, but in endgame content that would last about as long as a single casting of a healing ability, then with the 20-second lockout you take 3 times as much damage before you can create another Static Barrier. Again... not helpful.

2: Sorcs have more range than other classes, so shouldn't be hit. Uh... no. Sorc attacks have a range of 30 metres. Snipers have 35, and more damage, so a skilled sniper can take out a sorce before he's even in range to fight back. Other classes can also hit from a long way away: Knights and Warriors have Force Leap to close the distance; Troopers/Bounty Hunters have pistols with a range of 30 metres; Assassins/Shadows have stealth and Force Speed, so they can close the distance before the Sorc/Sage even knows what's happening; only Ops/Scoundrels might have trouble getting close enough to a Sorc/Sage to fight them.

So, once again, I like sorcs as they are, but I wouldn't be unhappy to see their direct damage output increase slightly. And if people are going to argue as to why a certain class shouldn't be buffed, they should really come up with something better than "it would make them godly" unless that really is the case (giving Sorcs the ability to deal 7k damage per second for 5 seconds over an area of 60 metres, for example )