DPS Talents in healing trees, your thoughts?

[Amamaeth]

Just gauging how people feel about these. Personally, I don't mind them as long as they don't become 'required' talents for high end raiding. I mean, I rolled/spec'd a healer to heal, not to fake dps. The 'standing around doing nothing' when there was little going on, at least in vanilla (which is the style they are trying to work towards and improve), was more of a strategy. My inaction here leads to greater action later.

I'm glad they worked the talents in the current build for discipline to be at a point where you can skip the dps talents entirely for a pure healing build. However, I worry that, in an effort to make the dps talents more appealing, that they'll make those talents too good and they'll be required anyway.

Another thing is I think the talents are backwards. It would be much better to me, at least, if the talents were healing talents that gave dps bonuses. So instead of my smite increasing my healing, which forces me to constantly smite to maintain peak performance, you would have your heal increase your smite performance, so you could throw in a smite whenever you had a lull, and not all the time.

So how do you feel about the dps talents in healing trees so far? What thought or suggestions would you make?

[Epira]

I think it does give healers a different role in Cataclysm.
With the ability to dps with the chance of healing someone in your raid/party, i think having a spare moment to dps is a wise idea because you'll still, in turn, be healing.

I think giving healers dps talents will give way to certain raid boss mechanics in the future that require having everyone dps to beat a certain mechanic.

I'm excited to lolsmite

[Martie]

I haven't studied all the new trees in detail, but I kinda liked some of the additions they put in there.
To me, it seems pretty clear that they want to give healers the ability to do some dps while in their healing spec. I think this is a good thing - once you outgear content, the healers will have less and less to do. Right now, if I run a heroic with one of my guilds healers, they go in dps spec because they know I won't need much healing, and it's more fun and makes the run faster.
Heh, that reminded me of the run I had with one of my shammies. He healed, I tanked. He was #1 dps, I was #2.

[Airowird]

Let's see:
Paladins get their usual Judgement/Holy Shock thing as well as Denounce procs.
Druids get chance on free instant Wraths once in a while.
The priest one is a pre-emptive, as disc you get the instant healing on Smite and as Holy you get the flash heal tickle on damage casts.
Shamans get a buff from shocks that gives part of the mana back + makes the next cast heal more (pre-emptive for big heals most likely)
AND they also get a talent to return mana on the damage done by Lightning Bolt, which pushes them towards sacrificing first tier Enhancement talents in favor of both Convection and Elemental Precision in Elemental.

In total, I think Paladinds & Druids are where they should be with the talents (2 pure DPS talents, rest comes from class mechanics). Priests are too focused on the "DPS first, heal later" thing atm (5 or 6 talents, depending on spec, non which proc from healing) and Shamans require a LOT of talent points (10 total available, while you only have 2 'spare' when taking most of the direct healing increase talents) to actually do damage without major healing or mana loss, which makes it feel a bit of "I wonna be Elemental" instead. (and again, no procs from casting heals)

I would prefer the Priests to be changed to:
Holy: chance on heal to make your next Smite/Holy Fire to be instant and cost low/no mana
Disc: Evangelism now gives the Archangel +healing/damage, Archangel now takes on the Evangelism buff instead.
As for Shamans:
Depending on your 'free time' as a healer, both Convection and Elemental Precision are too appealing for someone with Telluric Currents. That means you either skip healing talents, or you will feel like you miss out on stuff. TC and Focused Insights should be merged preferably, although Elemental Precision could do with being a Tier 1 talent for easier access.

[Harmacy]

I don't mind more utility or even DPS talents as long as we can still do our jobs effectively.

Look at the combat rogue tree in Cata - half of the tree is utility talents with no bearing on DPS, because they know that without forcing utility talents down their throats, no rogue would take such a talent.

Likewise, no healer would take a talent that didn't have some bearing on their healing unless they had no choice. The only reason Holy specs into stuff like Spell Warding or Divine Fury is because it's filler.

I would actually like MORE stuff like this, and I think that the new mastery system and all the nifty bonuses you get at level 10 is a great start. By baking a lot of the mandatory talents and abilities into masteries that you get without a single talent point, we can get the healing power we strive for and still get to spend talent points on fun raid utility or DPS talents.

They still have a lot of work to do on the healing trees before I'm happy with them of course, I still think there are too many 'mandatory' talents in the Disc tree that need to be reworked to give us some more free points to spend. But I love the idea behind it.

[Mmiz]

just a noob question but without hit rating wont the dps effect of these more or less be a "waste".

example:as a shamman I might need shock 4 times to hit with it. (yes blizz hates me I have sucky rng)

[Airowird]

1) The Shock talent is on cast, not hit. Further more the extra healing will be such a boost you'll want to go for the cheapest anyway, even if it's Frost Shock!
2) That's why Shamans will want/need to go into Elemental that far. To get Elemental Precision which will convert Spirit (currently all the mp5 on your gear) into Hit Rating.
3) The same is true for all other classes though.

Oh, another thing I dislike about Telluric Currents: "Hey Rogue, think you can tricks me please, I need the extra damage to get mana back!!"
Not to mention that it doesn't work on Lava Burst, which means no synergy with the Shocks. (see #1)

[Insahnity]

Givens for this post:
-Currently, the only time I DPS is in heroics. Even if I'm steamrolling through ICC, I rarely DPS in any significant quantities. So my observations are based on this.
-Beta numbers are buggered, and you can't base anything on those as of yet

When I DPS in a heal spec, there are 2 outcomes: My DPS is nowhere near a DPS class (my best DPS is about 5k on trash using Holy Nova, compared to the 12k+ a DPS class would pull), and my mana plummets like a rock. If I am only healing, even with a fail group who stands in fire, I can heal to my hearts content because my spells cost a lot less due to talents. For a DPS, their spells costs less through their talents (generally). Sometimes, it's slower if I DPS because now I end up OOM and the party needs to wait for me to drink, and the meager DPS increase doesn't justify the stopping period.
In Cata, we are supposed to watch our mana. We are supposed to possibly go OOM just on heals alone. Assuming this, and current outcomes of WotLK healer DPS, why on earth would we be looking at DPS?? The only answer I can come up, really, is PvP, where mana is less of an issue.

[Amamaeth]

A quick point, many of the DPS talents in healing trees either provide free damage spells or mana return on cast, which should cover the cost of the damaging spell and then some.

[jvitelli3]

I have a DPS spec and a Healing spec. When I'm healing I'm healing. I don't really care to DPS. I have a Shadow spec for DPS and I do use it just for a break from time to time but mostly I'm only concerned with healing. If I do toss out an occaisional SWP, fine I've got the time and Mana to burn. In a Raid, I almost never do anything but heal. I've got plenty to do watching the fight trying to anticipate the next round of damage.

[Gretchin]

The way I see this is that it should be good while leveling. It can be good or fun when you outgear for instance heroics giving you something more you feel you can do when healing isn't the main focus anymore. In raids however I think it will be really limited to how often I will use a smite when I have time to do so, I'll rather save that mana for a heal. Perhaps if it's a raid a tier or two back who you start to outgear or early stages in a raid instance that you have really control and farm mode on.

It is in my mind situational when to use it and it's hard to tell the future but I doubt that my focus when raiding will shift from pure healing to some healing and some damage dealing.

[feralminded]

When I outgear a heroic I generally just use my shadowspec and heal with it ... works well enough honestly unless I have a dramatically undergeared tank (in which I case I just run in circles and holy nova). I never understood DPSing with the wrong spec unless you have to. I think it's fine what they're going for in cata (DPS a little for either free or to get some mana back ... back in vanilla we always just wanded which is effectively the same thing). I could imagine the current druid talent in the feral tree that returns mana on a crit being a good example of an interesting implementation of this. The resto druid goes oom, or near it ... shifts cat and attacks until they replenish their mana.

Basically I think blizzard is trying to avoid raid situations where healers go oom and sit around like they used to in BWL and MC. Every serious level 60 healer back in the day was capped on their wand skill and/or first aid simply because they had nothing else to do.