I'm not in a major raiding guild, or anything, but we are aiming to progress past BWL. Last night we downed Chromaggus and Nefarion, and our aim is to start heading into AQ40 and Naxx in a week or two.

An argument recently started among the officers of our guild, concerning the rights of some class to dps. Particularly, it was argued that shaman and druids can "spam moonfire" or "shock when the cooldown is up" when a boss such as Nefarion is below 5% in health, to hasten his end.

It is my estimation that that is total BS, and unfair to our priests. Why should shaman and druid mana be wasted on crappy burst dps while the priests are solely responsible for keeping the tank alive through damage spikes. I have learned long ago that the way to keep tanks up during burst damage and spikes is the lower rank heal SPAM. A shaman wasting a 1.5 second global cooldown for horribly inefficient dps is not anywhere near optimal, and interferes with this efficient way to heal. As I see it, the only utility of shocks in a raid setting are to offtank drakonoids or other relatively weak non-boss mobs.

Naturally, I am nowhere approaching "God of WoW" status, so I would like to get feedback from those closer to the real endgame of WoW on what the role of hybrid classes should be. I stick to the "if it can heal, it should be healing" mindset, especially during later fights, near the limit of our personal progression.

Thoughts?

edit: fixed my crappy attempt at formatting

This is why Warriors get Execute. If your guild is impatient enough to get the last 5% down you're going to screw up sooner or later when nobody is healing for a few seconds because they're all DPSing and your tank goes down, and you wipe horribly. It's probably more a case of certain classes being bored and wanting to do something else more than anything.

Tell your priests to smite. Rogues will bandage and make up the healing.

(Where is the rolleyes emote...)

There's really no prize for ending the fight with extra mana. As long as the raid members aren't dieing, I'd much prefer to have my healers able to assess a situation and use good judgement on when to add (safe)DPS where appropriate than to not, especially if it puts a little spring in their step at the end of the raid. One of my fondest memories of raiding was way back when we were first doing golemagg...and the first time we actually killed him was a shaman ankhing up to earthshock him. Probably wasn't necessary, but it was a good experience for everyone.

If they're burning mana (or time) which indirectly causes the raidmembers to die and the raid to wipe though, that's just dumb and if they're not morons, they should realize that themselves.

If it is a fight that is still difficult for your guild or the boss does increased damage at lower health %'s I'd tell them to focus on healing. Otherwise it shouldnt matter.

On a lot of fights, it becomes important to "follow through" and maintain your pace/technique right through the end. When you're learning Emps or something, you want to make sure poeple don't go to sleep at 2%

Moonfire spam is to be avoided at all costs - it knocks off good debuffs in favor of a crappy one - tell your druids to find their wrath button.

The honest to god truth - many bosses in wow can be killed with 5 healers and a tank. The rest of you are window dressing there to speed the end of the mob. While there are some fights that are more difficult than this - once you get past nef's 20% zerg, a 5 man party could in theory keep him tanked/healed while your 35 hunters killed him.

Yes, at some point bonus damage helps - especially if there's a time limit (C'thun last weaken going to the wire without the ability for the raid to endure to another weaken springs to mind) You want your raid able to determine when the time for that type of all out dps on the boss and be done with him has arrived.

There's still no reason to ever spam moonfire on a single target encounter though.

Hybrid class DPS on fights like that makes sense in two scenarios:
1) There is so little healing required that having everyone do nothing but heal is a complete waste. Examples: Garr, Nef Phase 1, Ebonroc, etc.
2) There is a hard timer on the fight, and you are cutting it close with regard to that timer, such that any DPS becomes more important than any healing. If Noth is at 8% and you have 20 seconds until he teleports to the balcony for a phase that you know you can't survive, then damn right you want as many shocks and such on him as possible. If Thaddius is going to berserk in 10 seconds and he's at 4%, then yeah, you want everyone burning him down.

Nef Phase 2 is neither of these, and if the MT dies and then he turns and shadowflames the raid at 5%, you can still wipe at 5%. Why risk that?

(Also, I find that on Chromaggus, particularly with easier breath combos, I can melee and shock him to exploit 3 of the 5 possible vulns while still handling poison/disease removal with instant casts. I've finished ahead of "real" DPS classes like warlocks and hunters on Chromaggus doing this.)

The damage that a druid can do in the last 5% of a mob "spamming moonfire" is probably equaled by all real DPS being on it a second or two longer; instead of doing what got you to that 5% juncture (healing tanks), why would you abandon that for some pitiful damage to leave only priests to heal through (enraged?) mobs? I don't think your officers realize just how pathetic "moonfire spam" is, unless you've got like 40 druids.

Do you trust the judgement of your healers? Will the shaman and the druids be paying enough attention to the priest mana and number of priests up to make the right choice? Or in your mind are they thinking "ZOMG 5% MOONFIRE! FROSTSHOCK!"?

Priests are essentially a hybrid caster class, they can Smite and the 2 second cast time isn't that far behond the global cooldown. Smite is more effecient than Moonfire unless the druid waits out the 12 second DoT period.

We aren't much further along in progression than your guild. Our priests are constantly encouraged to fill remaining debuff slots with SW:P throughout most fights (obviously some this isn't appropriate). Our priest class leader is PI specced and has a decent set of damage gear and I'm Holy/Disc with +375 damage gear. The two of us DPS through the front half of Molten Core and switch to healing gear when appropriate. Our first Skeram kill was a mess and I was chain casting Smite through the last 5% or so.

But you're right, losing a tank at 5% can be a lucky 'burn it down' or it can be a long slow agonizing 1% wipe. And lets hope those 'allowed' to burn it down aren't saving their mana for DPS at a 20% enrage, only to lose the tank at 10% and have a big ugly wipe at 5%.

So, do you trust your fellow healers?

I'd assume your raid leader is a hybrid and therefore wants a way to cheer himself up. Mind you...tanks HATE dying when the mob is at 1% so do whatever you can to keep him up.

I only DPS on fights when I have extra mana...and there is noway I'll waste a dot slot on frost shock (for the few bosses thatll take it) or flame shock. I always keep searing totem down against a mob that wont resist it, and I lightning bolt spam on bosses like Onyxia (stage 2). I always earthshock vael every timer and just use an assist macro to spam heal his target while I watch healthbars.

I'd be lying if I didnt say that 2/3's of priests are better DPS'rs than me. I dont even have 2hand spec. I assume my role is healer and I carry that out till the end.

If you think you can dps...dps. But if your tanks start to drop, then its time to l2play.

Actually, I think Nef falls under an Ebonroc style fight. He does very little damage. Only thing you need to consider are the class calls with priests and druids. However, I could easily see the whole fight being done with 6 healers or so. I think we had 9 healers the last time we did him and the fight was rediculously short.

Man, AQ40 fights and BWL seem so easy after so long doing nothing but Naxx. I think we did Flamegor in 2 min, Chrom in 6, and Nef phase 2 in 4. Which is far far faster than we ever have done before (I don't even think we have done chrom in less than 9 min before). Though I am sure many guilds have done them far faster.

As for non dps classes doing dps? Basically I give our healers a task. If they can do that task and still do damage then they are welcome to it.

I guess it depends on where you are progression-wise. If you're just killing Nef for the very first time, his DPS isn't necessarily trivial. It's not going to run your healers OOM, no, but if a curse is a couple of seconds late in being dispelled and then you get a Shadow Flame+crit combo, that can get messy if 2/3 of your healers are busy nuking.

I guess I just don't see the upside to it. Saving yourselves 5 seconds? Nef is no different at 5% than he is at 95%. If there's enough healing to support some periodic DPS from the hybrids then it should be happening from the start. Suddenly abandoning your normal practice and saying "omg 5% time to spam starfire" just seems silly.

After thinking about it some, it might be best from a pure theorycraft point of view to have your priests dps throughout, shielding for shadowflames and healing during druid/shaman calls. I suppose it depends on the mana reserves (which is gear/faction specific).

I know we've had a LagWall (TM) kill with only 5 healers alive from 50% -> 0, so it's not a huge amount of damage against the raid if you're focused on mitigating it.

Something to try on our next bwl run I suppose, anything to make the farm nights end earlier.

You should not be telling hybrids when to dps or when to heal etc. It is their job to diagnose when it is appropriate to use their different abilities.

Using examples above Noth is an encounter where I would be very disappointed if any of my shaman do not dps at some point on this encounter because it implies that they are not paying any attention. Pulling adds off of healers, dps'ing noth, dealing with the mage adds, maybe even stealing a loose noth to save a decurser etc.

These are examples where it could, but not always, make a great deal of sense for Shaman to be dps'ing. Over the course of a fight though opportunities will always present themselves.

There is no hard line in the sand "this marks where shaman should dps."

Declaring a static condition where shaman/druids abandon their main role is a slippery slope. You need to have people aware enough to do the appropriate thing based off of what is going at the time.

The real problem is that shaman healing gear is not necessarily shaman DPS gear - particularly true for shaman melee dps, but still pretty applicable for shaman caster dps. Especially when it comes to the Earthshatter set. Making a decision for a shaman to add DPS to an encounter means he's going to start swapping out gear, which is going to diminish his healing capacity - and since he'll likely be going for a hybrid mix of gear at that point his dps isn't going to be too hot either.

From experience, the easiest way to wipe your raid on an encounter you would have otherwise defeated is to hit 5% and go "omfg he's almost dead zerg him down". So many things can go wrong with that mentality it isn't funny. You really need to bring a boss down in a controlled situation. Many bosses uncontrolled can wipe your raid in seconds flat. Especially in naxx, you have untauntable bosses, and quite often chain reactions on one person's death.

As has been stated, the only reason you would ever really want to go "omfg zerg him" is if you're in a situation where you have a guaranteed or extremely likely wipe if you don't take him down in the next x seconds. In any other situation, having people lose concentration and go "omg 400 damage smite" is the quickest way to wipe.

let people figure it out themselves
if they feel comfortable doing some damage at 5% and it works, next time they might start at 50% and see how it goes and in the end they can do it for the entire encounter
and that will probably speed things up a bit
then again, this implies you play with people who can think beyond 'zomg i might get on the dmgmeters!!!!111'

Death Talon Wyrmguard that are Nature vulnerable are always fun as a tank when 40% of your healing suddenly stops as they all trinket up and PEWPEW.

I tend to agree with this - you really want to have your raid members aware enough of a situation so they can make their own call. Unless you want to do every encounter the "paint by numbers" way after swatting up on all the strat guides out there and have people only doing exactly what they are told. As long as people aren't sacrificing healing stats for their last few seconds of DPS glory and tanks aren't dying in the last 5% you don't have a problem. If all your healers go DPS mode and the tank dies you have a pretty good argument on your side - OMG FROSTSHOCK is not a good boss strategy! It really depends on how much faith you have in your healers and their ability to assess the situation and the raid leadership style you want to adopt.

Healing non-stop gets boring - if you let them have their few moments of DPS you'll probably keep a happier, more attentive raid group rather than burn your healers out in a hurry. Having said that it is encounter specific - there are some encounters where half your healers could DPS from the start and there are others where you need every single one of them on the ball until 0%.

Nef p2 is easier than onyxia. On our first kill i recall 2 shamans 1 priest and 1 druid healing mt for last 6% (hadn't ot's for fears that time :( ) And hey, last class calls were shaman&priest. Only hard part in p2 is to take care of random deaths (fear&cleave-dead-sadpanda ) and take out 1fps zerg. Shamans are still pretty oom most of the p2, they cannot dps and druids which we are always short of cannot do dps because of priest class calls, oom shamans dont heal that much :)

The last 5 percent is about the worst place for this - any screwup at that point is really annoying and wastes a lot of time, so people should be playing it as safely as possible. We suffered from this on Anub'rehkan on sunday - he was on 6% so rogues stayed in too long on a transition to do a bit more damage, giving us scarabs that people ignored as they wanted to finish the boss off. We usually have a very cautious Anub strategy, so it takes about 25 minutes to kill, so the wipe this caused on 1% wasn't popular. Obviously this is less of a problem in some encounters but I feel its far better to just keep doing the last bit properly, and ensure you get a clean kill, rather than risking a late wipe.