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

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.

For the most part shaman and druids should focus on healing. Both classes can sneak some damage in here and there, though. Shaman can use Searing Totem and Flame Shock if mana is not a problem, and in some cases auto-attack with Windfury while they cover their healing assignments.

There are a few encounters where healing requirements are low and you benefit more from increased damage output. For example against C'thun a shaman could heal the damage from a small eye tentacle's Mind Flay, or he could just annihilate it before it's even finished appearing. We used shaman dps on Razorgore, Nefarian phase 1, Fankriss, a little on Twin Emperors, and C'thun.

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.)

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.

3) The mechanics of the fight have forced an odd choice of dps classes on you - see stomach on c'thun selecting 3 paladins and a druid - druid spams wrath because it's better than pally mellee, priest arrives - swap over to healing priest while priest dpses, etc.


I'll agree with the poster that mentioned priests as a viable hybrid dps class - even in healing gear, a simple weapon swap may get them more spell damage than a druid in healing gear, and SW:Pain is a decent debuff unimproved.

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.