Not tanking: when should i say "i'm not healing"?

I wasn't really able to find a decent title for the topic tbh, this one makes some sense but not exactly what i mean.


Basically, we're now on 4/5 MH and 1/9 BT.

I got a healing set, wich is composed by Karazhan epics + a couple epics ninjaed in Heroics or Zul'Aman.
I also have to admit that while i was quite a good healer when i player my priest in the old WoW-Vanilla days, and also with this paladin back when i was Holy, i'm now not really used to heal anymore, and i quite fail on healing with this character.

In Hyjal, there are 3 fights where i'm not tanking. Winterchill, Azgalor, Archimonde.
In Black Temple i'm not tanking anything only Najetus (well, i wasn't supposed to tank on Supremus, but since our warlocks can't resist to DoT up the boss during the Kite phase, i'm now supposed to maintank him due to easy pickup via Exorcism + Captain America Shield).

The question is: should i keep "pretending to heal" on those fights where i'm not tanking, or instead, i should grab my wannaberetri gear (again, mix of Kara and heroic epics) or even just swing my Nightfall.

To give some idea of what i mean with "failing at healing", on last Winterchill i ended up with 4% of healing done (less even than shadowpriests) with 40% of my heal being overheals because other healers are just faster than me and i menage to have their quick heals landing before my Flash of Lights. On KazRogal i've ended up by wearing healing gear to have 11k mana and then going meleeing the boss with JoW and SoW up.

Mostly the question means: is it worth for me to work on my heal, is it possible that having a additional "half healer" might make the difference in those fights, or i would just be more useful pretending to DPS, using as only heal a emergency LoH on the tank?

I actually just feel useless pretending to heal since i'm very bad at it, i feel more useful adding that little DPS through Nightfall procs or SoB...

As a note, getting better gear from raids is out of discussion, since offspec gear costs still DKP, and i'm not going to spend any on that and then losing some real tanking set that will be needed later in the progression.
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I think it's more of a question to ask your guild, and what situation you are in. My guild understands that my healing is a bit crap, and so is my DPS. On most fights where I'm not tanking, I will help heal. But later on when it seems that we can do without my heals, and it's a long fight, I will be asked to go melee and keep up Wisdom instead.

I myself prefer to heal, cos it's like EZ-mode all over again. Even if my healing is horrible and I overheal much, I do not feel responsible at all because my guild asked me to
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Are you wiping because of enrage timer? Go DPS
Are you wiping because of raid damage? Go Heal
You are not wiping at all and just farmin? Go AFK like everyone else
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If you are not needed to tank, keep your judgement on the boss/mob, and off heal or autoattack as necessary with a good spell damage set.

I do this on Leo usually, since we have several tanks for human phase, and use a warlock for demon phase. I just respec'd for Imp SotC (well, 2/3), and that extra 2% crit really does make a difference on that fight. Last night he went down in exactly 6min 40seconds, and I like to think that extra crit helped speed that up.

We are all about utility. Tank when possible, debuff always, and heal when you have nothing better to do. I consider a full mana bar as a wasted raid slot, and we DO have healing buttons for a reason....just don't EXPECT me to heal, cause I'm a tank
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<3 Bram

The enemy outnumber us a paltry three to one, good odds for any Paladin!

I'm kind of in the same situation, we have to many tanks in our guild, got 2 very good geared Warriors (one transfered cross server, so they both have BT/MH gear), and we got 2 Feral druids, one of them with extremely nice gear (24k hp buffed or something).

There is no question that me tanking in MH has boosted our progress a lot, but after that, tanking gets slim, I don't tank any bosses in BT or MH, and the trash/add that I'm used on in BT I could tank in Holy or Ret spec (with Prot gear). Tanked one side of the adds on Shade of Akama as holy spec.

We clear MH in 1 day, so there is 1 day that I am useful it feels like. I got some nice compliments on my new HP after the 2.3 patch, might get me on a few main tank positions I hope.

I'm thinking of specing retribution, got a decent set from stuff that warriors didn't have any use for. Healing is just so godamn boring, I don't mind respecing holy for a day or two if we are low on healers (got nice healing set) but I don't want to be holy MOST of the time and prot only 1 day in MH.
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Just by spamming Flash of Light I can normally keep up with the bottom rung of our healers. Granted I switched from holy to prot fairly recently and my holy gear is still on par with the other healers and better than recent apps. I'd say until the boss is on farm on encounters like Najentus and Azgalor you should at least help spam the tank. Heck on Azgalor in general if you aren't tanking I'd reccomend afk'ing over being in melee range. No need for another target to get rained on top of taurens and rogues. Granted my guild rolls melee heavy so there is rarely a spot for a non tanking warrior/paladin around Najentus either. There have been encounters where slapping on healing gear or even going and respec'ing due to lack of people online has been a huge help. Our last Illidan kill we lost a lot of random people during a phase 2 mishap and were several healers short afterwards heading into the rest of the fight. Simply by swapping on my healing weapons (mace/shield/libram) I was able to keep up our demon phase lock tank. The healing was not noticable on a meter (Spriests beat the prot paladin in FR surprise surprise) but I kept the lock up after many mana pots and we killed him.

To stop rambling when not tanking just do whatever you can to help. If your healers don't need help go melee, though I'd imagine you'd do more damage with your spell damage tanking set than with ret gear after one-hand spec and such.


Off topic, statements like

Well, I'm not at the progression point that you guys are yet so I'm not running into that issue. I hope that I don't have that problem at that stage though.

Our tanking team consists of the MT Warrior, Myself, a newly recruited Prot Warrior, a Feral Druid and a MS warrior with some points in Prot. I'm mostly add tanking on Hydross, Tidewalker, Vashj, Al'ar, and Solarian while I'm on of the MTs on Leo and VR and I OT (eat whirls) for Lurker.
I expect that I'll be add tanking for Kael and after that who knows.

The problem that I may run into is that we have a Ret Paladin who in our 4/5 SSC run last night was putting up very good DPS numbers so me standing around to kept JoW up isn't really an option.

I am trying to work on my healing gear but like Worldie I refuse to pay full DKP. I took that Trash SSC healing boots last night to save a DE on the promise that I wouldn't get charged full cost.
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Dragonzbane - 70 Paladin - Khadgar

To be honest, taking Healing gear is 2 times out of discussion for me, because of the dkp cost, and because we started MH just 2 weeks ago so about every healer is still in the process of gearing and needing everything anyway
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Yeah I have a purple healing set from Kara and from SSC/The Eye, before I could go prot. So my gear it somewhat okay, it used to be on par with most the people, but now a days it's just kind of crappy. And as others said the only way I will pick up a healing peice of loot is before it gets DE'ed, and thats it. But we have a few new folks who need some healing gear so I don't feel bad about not getting it.

But as tanking goes, it still is hard for folks to get over the whole tankadin. The boost in our health helped out big time I think, as the raid leader is now testing me on new encouthers, and I am able to do great on all of them. Think it's pissing him off since he is a prot warrior.
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While I'm only in Karazhan, I tend to heal when I'm not tanking. I'm a pretty good healer I like to think, having a holy priest whom I regularly play in Karazhan as well. My Paladin isn't quite up to tanking Prince/Nightbane (although maybe thats not true anymore, with the super awesome combat expertise buff) so I usually let the other tank tank them and heal.

Since the 3 healers we bring would be enough to keep the raid up anyways, I do feel pretty useless at times, but I've been told that my meager heals can help. Since I am the RL I try and have the actual healers focus on the tank, while I focus on spot healing any damage people may take from infernals/charred earth/whatever. That way the healers can stay focused on keeping the tank up and for the most part, not have to worry about keeping the raid up too. Cleansing is always good too, and I judge the boss as often as I can, meleeing if I have nothing to do, to keep the seal going.

Although, you probably can't have the healers focusing on the tank and you on the raid in 25 mans the same way >_>
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i have to totally agree with Joanadark. Meters dont mean anything at all. So what if you over heal 99% of the time what happens if that 1% is the time that saves the raid from a wipe. I personally run around with my nightfall out on fights i am not needed to tank but since i have grid and item rack i can switch into my healing mace/shield instantly and toss a quick heal to someone who is really low.
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