PLEASE, stop teaching/telling new healers to DPS

Whether or not I DPS generally depends on how the very first pull (or the first few pulls) of the dungeon goes. It will pretty much lay the ground-work on who I'm dealing with. There have been dungeons where I've barely had to throw a cure... and then the next run of the same dungeon, I will have a group of people that are either new to the game (which is cool) / rocking low gear (which is cool if you're new :P) / or the whole group is just sucking for whatever reason, some groups have no cohesion, some people are being derps, what have you.

Point is, in the latter circumstance, we will do the first pull and I will normally find out almost immediately that this group is taking more damage than others or that we have agro problems or what have you, and I need to focus on observing health bars closely otherwise we're probably going to die. I do not have time to muck around with dancing in and out of Cleric Stance to DPS just because someone thinks watching health as a healer is "lazy".

On the flip side? I am not going to stand there and watch someone's full health bar fight after fight just waiting for an opportunity to toss a cure. If the fights are going that smoothly then I am definitely gonna do something with my time, which generally means DPS.

This sort of thing is all about knowing what you can and cannot do within the confines of any given group. Observation and reassessment is key at all points.

There is no such thing as "A healer should always DPS"
There is no such thing as "A healer should never DPS"

Get over it.

I have a level 42 SCH, and a level 35 WHM.

on my sch, I dot up an enemy, spread the love to his friends and then focus on keeping everyone near 100%. I prefer to see full health bars :3 and use a combo of SS and AD as damage mitigation just for slow server response/I wasn't paying enough attention. I use Selene to augment the party's output. I only cast ruin after SS/AD drops, then reapply.

on my WHM, I fire stone once for the debuff, then aero straight after, then focus on healing for the rest of the pull. I just don't feel /quite/ so reactive as my whm, probably cause Eos/Selene might manage to save 'X' player's bacon by a few hp just long enough for my psycik/AD to get through.

I use quick-cast on both classes because it is a god-send to us~ usually used for 1second rezzing

If i have only healed i feel i would wipe the party a lot of times:
t5: fast conflags, throw instant burst in cleric, poison, stone 2: never seen them blowup after that, tank never had issues dying knowing when to stoneskin and heal tank in death sentence.
Twisters: Dreadnight about to kill pt member if i dont stone1, then good chance death would happen, seen a lot of close calls. Again only thing im worried about is death sentence which i know is not inc yet, even if it would i can cast ss and slow dreadnight.
Last phase everyonce dying and im raising and healing everyone, good recovery.. or not, very close to downed, cool, enrage gg.
Last phase: Close to enrage, obviously going to cleric, not even going to bother healing anyone except tank unless its just regen if they are really low.

Now everyone is i90 so t5 is easy, however if this was before i would be compelled to throw dots, i.e running from twister: cleric throw dot, can still ss tank even in cleric.
Titan ex almost dead, half pt fell, im forced to dps before superbombs dps check,

t4 Dreadnaughts: dps is too low, if i dont dps we will wipe for sure, so i dps every dreadnaught and keep tank alive, gg we win,

A lot of times feel im making a calculated risk to dps, forget cleaning the run faster, however just to improve our parties chances, even in trash, i can holy aoe stun, mitigating tanks damage taken since , mobs are stunned and tank has regen on so i dont have to heal.

If i didnt develop these skills in low lvl dungeons it would be hard to do this in end game, however when i do a raid i want to play my class the best i can play it, therefore making the best decisions in the fight.

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Originally Posted by wildgalax

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I believe the OP is talking about new healers, which probably also means that they aren't doing raids...much less Twintania.

What you do in Twintania probably doesn't have a lot of bearing on what a new healer does in Toto-Rak. Most, if not all, groups can survive without a newbie healer DPSing.

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Originally Posted by LiadansWhisper

I believe the OP is talking about new healers, which probably also means that they aren't doing raids...much less Twintania.

What you do in Twintania probably doesn't have a lot of bearing on what a new healer does in Toto-Rak. Most, if not all, groups can survive without a newbie healer DPSing.

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First new healer's shouldn't be told how to play, especially when the advise isnt that good. Second healing is always a juggle, idk why any player would want spells in their hotbar that should just be discarded, especially when they can be ultilised very well.

My point was simply how long dpsing can go, by first getting into the habit of cleric stancing in dungeons, its a great place to start since the overall dungeon is not very hard. Even if your just cleric stancing for 1 dps move and back and getting a feel for it. Which is what i did from the first mob in the first dungeon till it became second nature, hence my example. Incase you missed it, thats not just for raids, however for dungeons, where you are doing your group a favour to throw some dps. e.g last boss in ak a while ago, i wiped 2 times in a row at 1% cause the party stricly told me not to dps ever, guess it would be no issue to throw some dots, even 1 and have the tank healed, tank just died to the same catastophe. Similar to op's sentiments, which i dont find very helpful to new players, that is all.

Whenever I see, "my group wiped at X% because I didn't dps as a healer" it shows to me that your team was either not good at their classes or their gear was not right for the instance and they shouldn't be there.

WHMs I understand a bit more the limitations on DPSing. However, when I see SCHs just standing there and not even keeping shields up, im like wtf, then realise i'm a bad ass SCH ^^
but seriously, if you find yourself twiddling thumbs when healing you should dps.

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Originally Posted by Lyrinn

Which still doesn't make the advice wrong.

And no, that is not how the OP came off to me. Here's the exact quote.


I'm perfectly fine with this qualifier, except it's immediately followed up with an absolute:

If healers aren't attacking when they can be, they aren't playing their class to their full potential. Fact. And I'm not going suddenly say it's false because a few dummies don't know the basics.

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If people aren't working when they can be, they aren't live up their full potential.
So, did u live up ur full prtential?? It's a game, stop taking it as a second job_(:з」∠)_

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Originally Posted by Krisstina

If people aren't working when they can be, they aren't live up their full potential.

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More like are you doing only what's on your desk and sitting around for half the day because you technically did what you were supposed to do? Good luck ever getting a promotion.

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Originally Posted by Krisstina

It's a game, stop taking it as a second job_(:з」∠)_

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The irony is that I'm one of the more casual players who spends more than half the day crafting. Still have 0 myth items, cleared only turn 1 of BCoB, and have almost all of the new primal and dungeon quests still unfinished.

I simply try to do my job well.

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Originally Posted by tOnni3

as a scholar, bind Embrace <f> to all atk spells and dps all day long :)

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The <f> is focustarget I'm guessing. What would be the macro for that?