Okay, I know that WoW isn't balanced around 1v1... but a lot of the time it comes down to that.

Here's the scenario, faced a 2400 PHD and got it down to Feral (hi) versus a Holy Pally... everyone else is dead. Neither of us are going to be able to dps the other down, neither of us will ever run out of mana.

Are these stalemates supposed to exist?

I remember at one point the official statement was that "a dps should be able to down a healer eventually"... but that's clearly not the case for SOME dps (Feral Ret Enhance etc). "All things being equal," some dps just can't kill some healers 1v1... ever... because they'll never OOM and we don't have any damage output or MS to make up for it.

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Q u o t e:
I just remember GC being quoted as saying "all things equal, eventually a dps should be able to kill a healer"

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I think my point there was that the healer will eventually run out of mana. If they are able to damage you while healing themselves though, they will likely win.

It comes down to this: If a healer can't beat a dps one on one, then there is no way a healer will be able to keep an entire three-person team alive. In that scenario you might as well just run with 3 dps and there becomes no role for the healer in Arena teams.

Note: this does not mean that in every single case that a dps spec defeats a healing spec in a duel that there is a problem with the class. :)

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Q u o t e:
GC,
doesn't that kind of thinking neglect the fact that the vast majority of arena teams and comps are based on how individuals can peel or cc members of the other team? arena matches should never be 3v1 at any point because out of all the specs in arena, there's always going to be at least 1 form of cc available to hold up at least one opposing player.

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Well, sure. That's why we say we don't spend just a ton of effort balancing these little one on one encounters that don't ever really happen outside of duels or world ganking (which are rarely going to be balanced since it's the most fun to gank someone lower level than you).

I think what is going on here is dps guys who think "I do dps, so I should always be able to pwn the guy who doesn't do dps," and don't stop to think about what that means if healers are that fragile.

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Q u o t e:
They don't run out of mana.

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I think this is a case of people jumping into a thread from Bluetrackers.

To reiterate:

1) I said at some point "All things being equal, a dps should be able to kill a healer."

2) OP wondered what the context was for that statement.

3) I said the context was probably (because I don't remember) mana: meaning that all things being equal, a healer should eventually run out of mana. In other words, the way to counter a healer is to run them out of mana. It can't just be "I explode the healer with my awesome damage" because if that was true, it would mean a healer couldn't heal themselves through one attacker and would have little chance keeping themselves or a team member alive vs. 2 attackers.

4) The real take home message is that we don't put a lot of time balancing 1 v 1. The reasons are A) that there is nothing in the game that showcases 1v 1 encounters (you don't get Arena points from duels), and B) 1 v 1 balance doesn't scale well to team balance, which is showcased in Arena and BGs.

Players like to argue "If it's balanced 1 v 1 then it will be balanced for any number of participants." But that math doesn't actually work because of team synergy. The definition of synergy is that the total effect is greater than the sum of the component parts, or in other words, 1 + 1 > 2. The second you buff someone you are making both of you more powerful -- the buff is not divided by the number of recipients. Your team is more powerful than just the sum of what each of you can do individually. A 3 v 3 Arena match is fundamentally *not* a trio of 1 v 1 duels happening simultaneously.

Another way to consider it is to look at the damage done by a 10 player raid. Is a 25 player raid roughly 2.5 times that of the 10 player? No, it's probably closer to 3.5 times. It's not a linear scale. Now to be fair some of that is from fewer healers and tanks, but even that helps to support my point that you can't extrapolate upwards from 1 player and expect to have a meaningful encounter.

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Q u o t e:
Right now, healers are lot less fragile than just about any other class in the game. Druids and paladins both operate with out any regard for mana at all, at present. They basically have unlimited healing resources which creates unlimited health. Pull data on how many healers have healed 400k+ damage in single arena games and you will start to get a feeling for what DPS is experiencing. At the moment, a healer beats a dps in any match up (except arms warriors) and there is very little we can do about it.

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If healers were overpowered relative to dps then you would see more two healer teams. Most of the time, that's just not worth the sacrifice you make in giving up that second dps player. I wish we saw more 2 healer teams in 5s, but that's a slight tangent.

I do think mana for healers is too easy to come by and I've said that several times. Even if healers ran dry more often though, I don't think that should let a dps guy just beat a healer in every duel because "Hey, I'm dps -- I should win."

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Q u o t e:
You are forgetting the fact where skill comes in. Most bad healers will lose 1v1 to a dps, does that mean the dps class should be toned down or the healer should learn to play?

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We don't balance just around the best players or just around the worst players. In general though, I would recommend looking at your own game first before assuming the problem is class design. :)