Healers doing damage

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

I think KisaiTenshi makes one very good point, though. The healer is responsible for keeping the party alive and if anyone dies or we wipe, we WILL get the blame. (Especially in Cleric, even if the cause is they didn't avoid a telegraph).

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This was never a discussion about healers DPSing and the party dying, though. It was about:

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

If you're playing FFXIV as it was designed, the healer role is not meant to DPS inside the dungeons, but the option is there. If you want to play a healer who can DPS or a DPS who can heal, you pick Scholar/Summoner, but you still don't expect the DPS to heal any more than you expect the healer to DPS.

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(one of the many similar statements)

So in other words: If you're DPSing as a healer "you're not playing it as it is designed to be", rather than being someone seeking to be as efficient as possible. And as result this makes minmaxers/endgame raiders/fill in your label:

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

a spreadsheet nerd. If you are so hardcore that everyone must be maximizing every last second of the boss battle, you're completely sucking the fun out of the game. It's a game, not a freaking job at McDonalds.

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On healers and FATEs: I prefer having dps around because otherwise they take too long. Tagging everything with bio gets gold, and if I get to a FATE partway through, I tag with bio then switch to spamming heal on someone. I've ended up with credit arriving at 75% on bosses.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

When you do SOLO content, the WHM has only one AOE, Holy. You don't get to use it for most of the FATES because it's a level 45 spell. ACN/SMN/SCH has Bio II (Level 26,) Thaumatuge/BLM has several AOE's you get at level 12 and 18.

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Erm.. Bio II is single target with a 2.44s cast - things are usually dead before it completes if there are a bunch of DPS around. Bane is level 30 and spreads dots to 3 targets (but again, if things die that fast, good luck using it), plus is bound to aetherflow stacks/has a 10s cooldown. Miasma II is an instant (very weak) aoe, but that's at level 46. I've done fine with FATEs (at light farming stage now) without ever even using blizzard II.

When I'm healing, my primary focus is keeping tank/others alive. It's not my preference to DPS at all, I'd rather people be getting hit like crazy and I have to be on my A game to keep everyone topped up... but that being said, if I'm in a situation where there is a lull in people taking damage (I just landed a huge crit adlo, boss is doing some move that has a stupid long cast time, etc) or there is a DPS check and the dedicated DPS just isn't quite cutting it, I'll throw up Cleric Stance and try to put out.

If my DPSing is putting the group in jeopardy, it's not worth it. If someone complains about it but the content is still getting cleared, they can stuff it. On the contrary, if someone wants to complain about a healer DPSing and the party is still alive, they can stuff it too. If there is a problem with people dying, or DPS checks not being passed because of the healer focusing too much on DPS or not DPSing at all, then maybe it's worth a complaint. Otherwise, deal with it.

Only one thing to remember with healing... party health is primary, DPS is secondary. OP seems to be taking care of the primary, so there's no problem doing the secondary.

Take a look at the Final Coil parses. Healers are required to DPS. It makes things a lot easier, and can even give you that push needed to get through a phase. Tell your FC mates to take a look as well. As long as you're not out of MP and everyone is alive at the end of the fight, then I don't see the problem. They can get their heads out of their arses and give you the MvP award.

Well so here is my opinion on the matter, and to give you an idea on my experience healing in this game i have zeta on both healers, raid on sch (t13 progress) and have been healing in this game since release.

So, should a healer DPS if the conditions are available for them to do so? Yes, a big big fat yes. However, as you may see how i phrased the question, it is conditional. The priority is healing over dps.

However, what i dont get are these people who are so vehemtly against this idea that a healer should dps. Even in game, progressing through the healers job quests, it is made abundantly clear to you that, as a healer, you also should be dealing damage when you are able to. The CNJ storyline is all about a healer who wont use any kind of damaging spells, and you, as a fledgling CNJ have to change her mind by showing her, by example, how a healer should dps. The WHM storyline has similar tones, with it also being your responsibility to protect the Black Shroud as a WHM not only through restorative magic, but through damaging spells used against those who seek to harm the Shroud.

The SCH storyline also requires you to harm and kill enemies through damaging spells. And dear lord, that final lvl 50 quest on SCH is the best one in the game.

Hell, even in FF14 lore, the war of the magi was between the WHM of Ampador and the SCH of Nym.

In final coils, as SCH (which i raid on), it is required that you dps.

Should the conditions arise, and you can keep everyone alive, then go ahead an dps, and ignore these people who catagorically state healers should not dps. DPS'ing healers are in the lore of the game, and integral part of the healers storylines and the devs have given us the tools to be able to dps and heal.

But above all else, have fun.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

When you do SOLO content, the WHM has only one AOE, Holy. You don't get to use it for most of the FATES because it's a level 45 spell. ACN/SMN/SCH has Bio II (Level 26,) Thaumatuge/BLM has several AOE's you get at level 12 and 18

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So WHM has 2 AOEs: Blizzard 2 at level 12 (thm crossclass) and Holy at level 45
SCH: Blizzard at level 12 for the same reason, Miasma 2 at level 46 and Shadow Flare at level 50. Also arguably Bane at level 30.

Also, arguably Holy is one of the most powerful skills in the game, not in terms of raw power, but the conbination of high AOE damage and a stun. If the healer was not meant to DPS, i doubt Holy would have been designed like this.

for coil 3, I am sure your DPS could do with a bit of support, especially during phases that a WHH can handle by himself
you can clearly go above 100DPS as SCH on some phases
and bio spell never misses so no accuracy issue, so use it when possible

Until some of these people learn how to DPS properly as healers, they won't get it.

However, because they don't believe that they should have to contribute in this way, they won't even try to get it right.

Hence we have players who claim not only that healer DPS is unnecessary, but that sitting on your GCDs is preferable since FFXIV is not at all predictable but is instead a work of George R. R. Martin, where anyone could die at any moment with little-to-no foreshadowing.

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Originally Posted by DarkmoonVael

So WHM has 2 AOEs: Blizzard 2 at level 12 (thm crossclass) and Holy at level 45
SCH: Blizzard at level 12 for the same reason, Miasma 2 at level 46 and Shadow Flare at level 50. Also arguably Bane at level 30.

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Blizzard II is only effective as a dps skill combined with umbral ice and even with it the damage is still awful. While scholars and white mages can get it, the way it's meant to be used completely changes and it's better used for the bind effect and being a fast cast aoe. IMO, the only use i've found for blizzard II was to spread adds on brayflox hm last boss (bombs) and the tanks on keeper of the lake 1st boss. Sch wise, mainly those at level 12, sacrificing cleric/protect for blizzard II is a terrible idea.

Just to add something... Do you know that EVERY fight (for now) is solo-healable ?

This means that if you need only 1 healer in 8 man content to do the job correctly, when you bring 2 healers, you necessarily have 1 of the healers pretty 'useless' for healing purpose at least 90% of the time.

The question is do you want to spend that 90% of the time doing :

1) Nothing

2) Overhealing

3) Dpsing

That's up to you but I suppose nobody will want to choose the first when they stand for "a healer wants to heal first" so let's assume you choose the second! Congrats, you are now healing in the wind because there are so few healing requirments and you keep duplicating things like over-protecting a target, over-using AOE healing because you actually don't pay attention to the %damages needed to heal and you just "I saw a raid wide damage AOE, I need to heal through it" without looking at what the other healer is doing...

Unfortunately, teams are not perfect and if you are in pick-up team I guess you can have a bad healer partner or even all the dps taking unecessary damages. For sure in this sad situation you should not worse the things more than they already are and instead just stick at healing. Personnaly I will do everything I can not to join pick-up things and look for a FC that suits me because otherwise you are bridling your owns capacities by playing with sub-average ppl (they are making you a sub-average healer because they prevent you from dpsing where you should).

And fortunately, the opposite situation happens too, not everyone is playing in pick-up team or with bad players (I hope at least) so you just end-up choosing 1 healer in charge of healing job and the other one to the dps job 90% of the fight.

As long as you don't analyze the fight AND the stuff of your healer partner, you will never see that most of the time 1 healer is enough. For now you are actually only standing for overhealing when it's come down to dps, not to the "I'm a healer first I should heal". That's completly different and pretty inefficient but as you wish!

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Originally Posted by mp-please

Blizzard II is only effective as a dps skill combined with umbral ice and even with it the damage is still awful. While scholars and white mages can get it, the way it's meant to be used completely changes and it's better used for the bind effect and being a fast cast aoe. IMO, the only use i've found for blizzard II was to spread adds on brayflox hm last boss (bombs) and the tanks on keeper of the lake 1st boss. Sch wise, mainly those at level 12, sacrificing cleric/protect for blizzard II is a terrible idea.

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Thank you. However, in the context of the quote I was responding to, the issue isnt wether the spells are useful or not, but that these classes have more aoe than was claimed (even getting the abilities of one spell wrong with bio 2). Also, the person was refering to FATES in the quote, and that is the only probable place that blizzard 2 is useful for whm/sch, hense bringing it up. It is, however, utter trash in any other circumstance......so bad that its probably a waste of a slot on a hotbar to be honest :).

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Originally Posted by mp-please

Blizzard II is only effective as a dps skill combined with umbral ice and even with it the damage is still awful. While scholars and white mages can get it, the way it's meant to be used completely changes and it's better used for the bind effect and being a fast cast aoe. IMO, the only use i've found for blizzard II was to spread adds on brayflox hm last boss (bombs) and the tanks on keeper of the lake 1st boss. Sch wise, mainly those at level 12, sacrificing cleric/protect for blizzard II is a terrible idea.

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IIRC Umbral Ice doesn't have any effect beyond increasing MP Regen and decreasing the casting time of your next fire-aspected spell when at 3 stacks.

Anyway, the point about Blizzard II and FATEs has little to do with its damage; it's about gaining enmity on as many targets as possible when they're clustered up. A lot of players forget that FATE credit isn't about kill count or sheer DPS.

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Originally Posted by mp-please

Blizzard II is only effective as a dps skill combined with umbral ice and even with it the damage is still awful. While scholars and white mages can get it, the way it's meant to be used completely changes and it's better used for the bind effect and being a fast cast aoe. IMO, the only use i've found for blizzard II was to spread adds on brayflox hm last boss (bombs) and the tanks on keeper of the lake 1st boss. Sch wise, mainly those at level 12, sacrificing cleric/protect for blizzard II is a terrible idea.

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Blizzard II has a potency of 50. With Ruin II having a potency of 80, on 2+ targets, Blizzard II is a dps increase.