What's up with healers not healing?

Too many players griped that healers did not DPS enough so it has gotten to the point where there are few REAL healers left. You have DPS dressed as healers who either do not know how to heal or they do not care to. I am tired of people not playing their own roles. I am fine adding to the damage when healing is not needed, but I am a HEALER FIRST. I am sick of those who say you are a bad healer if you use any regular skills, they should all be OGCs and the rest all damage. I am not a DPS player. I should not let my tank get down to the last tick of health (and giving him/her a heart attack) before healing them. Not saying they must be topped off constantly, but make sure they are not going to die and do not make PLDs feel like they must use clemency. Sorry but this is something that has bugged me for a long time.

Just heal and do damage, unless you're in top tier latest and greatest content it's not like it's hard.

All this 'people said to DPS so now I only DPS' stuff is childish as hell.

The optimal way to play Healer is to just DPS and weave OGCD heals as needed. Only once you've exhausted your OGCD heals should you resort to spending any GCD's to heal.

That said, in 99% of this game's content I ONLY care if the Healer is healing. DPS if you're comfortable doing it, but if you're not then just sit there and focus every single bit of brainpower you have on keeping yourself and everyone else alive. I just want to get through the run; I don't care if it takes an extra 3 minutes because the Healer is only Healing.

As someone who is trying to learn WHM now (I healed for 15 years in other games) I can tell you that for me anyways DPS wise the best I can do many times is get a few DOTS out. The rest of the time I am healing. Between people standing in bad. Me trying to dodge bad myself while healing. Tanks pulling huge and running off. My poor level 29 healing kit just does not afford me much time to DPS if everyone is going to stay alive. I am learning. I will get better. Right now I am focused on keeping people alive 1st and foremost.

Most people have been very nice to me as I learn. There are unfortunately always exceptions and those can be pretty off putting. If I didn't have so much experience healing in other games with far worse communities than this one I probably would have given up after my first dungeon when a very nasty person linked parses and screamed at me for bad DPS. I was like um dude its Sastasha and I have never healed in this game before. I did what I felt I could do safely and no one died. Thanks for reminding me why I left those other games. LOL

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Originally Posted by Barwara

Jokes aside, I try to adapt to every situation differently.

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That's pretty much what you should do.
When you que for something, you won't know if someone is a hardcore, veteran player, a try-hard trying to copy what they've seen without actually knowing what they're doing, a newbie doing content and/or playing a job for the first time, etc.
While you should push for doing as much DPS as you can (the party won't take damage if the enemy is dead), the party still needs to survive long enough to get to the end of the fight.

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Originally Posted by BorisDaBlade

O1n-o4n: incoming tank buster, pop cd. Wait for heals, wait for heals, wait for any type of heal, boom die to auto attacks.

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Get better armor. Most tank busters are a joke.

*pops blackest night* :<

On a more serious note: this can't be very widespread behavior, since it is typically quite unhealthy for the healer to let the tank die.
I'll heal you if you drop below 50%.

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Originally Posted by Granyala

On a more serious note: this can't be very widespread behavior, since it is typically quite unhealthy for the healer to let the tank die.
I'll heal you if you drop below 50%.

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With 8-man content, it could be a case of one healer thinking the other healer will get it so that they both don't waste a cooldown.
With no form of voice chat, healers can't really coordinate with each other other then stopping what they're doing and typing (which can be especially bad for controller players, who will have to drop their controller to do it).
Other factors are things like the mudding and the attempted removal of proactive vs reactive healing and the lessening importance of off-tanks.

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Originally Posted by Myrany

As someone who is trying to learn WHM now (I healed for 15 years in other games) I can tell you that for me anyways DPS wise the best I can do many times is get a few DOTS out. The rest of the time I am healing. Between people standing in bad. Me trying to dodge bad myself while healing. Tanks pulling huge and running off. My poor level 29 healing kit just does not afford me much time to DPS if everyone is going to stay alive.

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That's quite normal in leveling content, especially if you are a genuine lowie with crap gear and not an alt decked in HQ crafting gear of appropriate level.
Don't worry, it will change drastically once you hit max level. You will be DPSing ~ 80% of your time, even during mass pulls, provided you have a competent tank at the helm.

Expert dungeons are ridiculously easy, of you go back to leveling dungeons you realize that some of them hit like trucks by comparison.

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

With 8-man content, it could be a case of one healer thinking the other healer will get it so that they both don't waste a cooldown.
With no form of voice chat, healers can't really coordinate with each other other

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Unless we're talking savage or extreme, a tank needs a lot of time to die from auto attacks. If that happens, both healers were asleep at the wheel. "I thought the other guy would do it" is not an excuse, once the tank drops below 30% it should be obvious that the other healer has no intention of healing.

Coordinating is fairly easy. Just watch what the other is doing, you can see the casts after all.

Doing both is no more difficult than asking a tank to both DPS and well.. tank...maintain aggro, and mitigate damage, control the boss.

Healing in this game is attractive to many people because we do not just stare at HP bars and can contribute in more than one way. Been there, done that boring , no thanks.

Also, accusing healers as @rxantos as just trying to skip DPS queues or not "doing their jobs" is frankly getting annoying as hell. I am sure that applies in some cases, but people "not doing their jobs" can apply to some people who play each job. It's just easier to hide on many other jobs, so I would suggest that the community shows a bit more respect to those people who actually play classes that by their nature are not so forgiving and in fact can end up compensating for people who expect on occasion to be carried.

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Originally Posted by NekoHina

Too many players griped that healers did not DPS enough so it has gotten to the point where there are few REAL healers left. You have DPS dressed as healers who either do not know how to heal or they do not care to. I am tired of people not playing their own roles. I am fine adding to the damage when healing is not needed, but I am a HEALER FIRST. I am sick of those who say you are a bad healer if you use any regular skills, they should all be OGCs and the rest all damage. I am not a DPS player. I should not let my tank get down to the last tick of health (and giving him/her a heart attack) before healing them. Not saying they must be topped off constantly, but make sure they are not going to die and do not make PLDs feel like they must use clemency. Sorry but this is something that has bugged me for a long time.

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I agree, we are healers first.

That should give you a lot of free time to DPS. That doesn't mean anyone needs to have a "heart attack", you'll have your comfort level and tanks should know that having let's say 30% health at various points is just fine. There could be special occasions (i.e. leveling) when you do less DPS and more healing . So what if someone pops clemency.

So-real healers also DPS . They don't just stand around and keep everyone at 100% health for no reason.
That doesn't make you a DPS player by any stretch. It makes you a good TEAM player and that is our role.