do I hafta..

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

This is fine in the spirit in which I believe it was intended, but also keep in mind that this is the kind of argument used by the WAR who needlessly spams Flash or the DRG who spams Impulse Drive; they're technically doing their jobs, but much more poorly than they could be, and to the detriment of the party. Time is valuable, and occasionally completion is also put at risk, even in casual content, if these people are bad enough.

Giving one role permission to underperform compared to the others is a slippery slope.

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You should have used Bard for your example, as a Dragoon is a pure dps class they aren't support, so you can't compare it to a healer type that can ALSO dps.

Though I get the point you were making :D. The War example is technically perfect.

It's morning I barely woke up I'm not even sure if I'm arguing with you or furthering your point. I think I'm helping your point ?

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Originally Posted by Whiston

DO YOU NEED TO DPS AS A HEALER : Absolutely not.

And her are a few more examples.

Do you need to use cool down as a tank? No.
Do you need to use heavy thrust as a dragoon? No.
Do you need to get greased lightning stacks as monk? Nope.
Do you need to use ninjutsu as a ninja? Not at all.
Do you need to use all the skills available to you on any class? Nope.

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As much as I believe a comfortable healer can and probably should dps (and I would), these are about the most asinine arguments I could possibly imagine to justify it. For a dps to not do what you are suggesting would require them to actively avoid doing so. That kind of example is not an effective argument...

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Originally Posted by Noira

You should have used Bard for your example, as a Dragoon is a pure dps class they aren't support, so you can't compare it to a healer type that can ALSO dps.

Though I get the point you were making :D. The War example is technically perfect.

It's morning I barely woke up I'm not even sure if I'm arguing with you or furthering your point. I think I'm helping your point ?

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I think you're helping it :)

But anyway, the DRG example applies because it's about not performing your role as well as you could.

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Originally Posted by Tsilyi

As much as I believe a comfortable healer can and probably should dps (and I would), these are about the most asinine arguments I could possibly imagine to justify it. For a dps to not do what you are suggesting would require them to actively avoid doing so. That kind of example is not an effective argument...

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I think the poster you're quoting was intending to be absurd to illustrate the difference between "do you have to?" and "should you?"

<Situational Awareness means more than staring at the party list's health bars.>

On topic - posted in one of these threads a long time ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHpPKgi-niI

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Originally Posted by Byonka

<Situational Awareness means more than staring at the party list's health bars.>

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So I had a WoD run where one of the alliances kicked their SCH healer after a Wipe. I can only guess why. I'm in Alliance B in this one.
http://i62.tinypic.com/2s8lle8.png
We also kicked the rude DPS from our party, which was also the one who kept having to be revived.

And the reason I censor out names/alliance names is so I'm not accusing people who might be in the same data center as me of being slackers, because I don't know the entire story. For the sake of arguments on the forums, the names are not important.

This is the very thing I'm talking about when it comes to carries and Healers doing ineffective amount of damage. In the 24-person raid, there's so little opportunity to DPS as a healer, that you may as well not bother so you don't get chewed out when one of the DPS players or Tanks dies.

There was a earlier Mainstream storyline run where the other healer (a SCH) entered in Cleric stance mode and didn't exit CS until I said something. They were doing all their heals with Cleric stance on up to that point. After that, they probably could have solo healed the entire party, but the first set of mobs... two characters die including one of the tanks. Now would it have happened had they been paying attention? I don't know but they were being entirely cheeky about it. This is not the first time a mainstream run through Castrum where I've reminded the other healer to turn cleric stance off during healing after waiting to see if they notice themselves.

My experiences are indeed closer to "worst case" scenarios, because I've been playing exclusively with PUG groups. That's how you tell the difference between bad players and good players. Bad players can't figure out how to make lemonade from lemons, so they keep buying premade lemonade. Average and Good players can play with whatever they are given and shouldn't have to get into arguments over who isn't pulling their weight.

That's what the entire "should I dps as a healer?" argument comes back to.

Quite honestly the amount of elistist snobbery that comes out of the people who farm Coil is enough to just write off that content without a static group of players who actually want to play it for fun.

@KisaiTenshi

Either you're the most unlucky player around (every single pug group is a horrible mess), or you're just paranoid and just assume every group is terribad (even if they turn out to be awesome).

Adaptation is one of the key qualities in being an excellent healer.
I love to dps as a WHM, an additional 200~250 DPS in an encounter is nothing to scoff at, but with that being said, if I were unlucky enough to be paired with a terribad group, I'll ADAPT, and switch my priorities over to keeping the group alive.

On the other hand, you should be able to do the same as well!! If you were lucky enough to be paired with an awesome group, instead of being paranoid that the group can suddenly do a 180 and become terribad, why not ADAPT? Start contributing in DPS numbers and make an awesome group even more awesome :).

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

This is the very thing I'm talking about when it comes to carries and Healers doing ineffective amount of damage. In the 24-person raid, there's so little opportunity to DPS as a healer, that you may as well not bother so you don't get chewed out when one of the DPS players or Tanks dies.

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I'm not sure what 24-person raids you've been doing, but unless things are falling apart, there's almost always time and opportunity to DPS in most of the battles in Crystal tower as a whole, unless things are really falling apart. If your tank is MTing the boss, there's a bit less time, but from a scholar's perspective, there's almost always time to get some cleric stance-buffed dots tossed on after the first Adlo while you wait and see which party members are going to be the ones to stand in ALL the AoEs this time. This is all from DF groups, same as yours if not the exact same groups.

It's CT. (My fav content <3 all 3) I have every fight macroed and use realtime reminders. Heals do not cover someone ignoring/ignorant to mechanics. The hydra fight you referenced - most players don't know Stack with Purple icon, Run away with gold Icon. They don't know:stand in poison to stop spawns or to pass the tethers. Most WHMs don't know that a fresh SS allows players to dodge Heatwave. (dependant on HP/weakens) Many players get cleaved because they don't know how large the hydra's reach is. Lots of adds to help kill, when he casts discordance - HOLY BOMBSSSSS!


"should I dps as a healer?"

YES! Even if one can't manage cleric stance as of yet - get use to your dps skills! I had to spend a lot of time in low level dungeons getting use to the timing on Cleric Stance and it was the best thing I could have done for my game play.

Another good thing was downloading Advanced Combat Tracker.
http://oi57.tinypic.com/ohols5.jpg
Top DPS are both healers and in the same party.

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Originally Posted by DreamWeaver

@KisaiTenshi

Either you're the most unlucky player around (every single pug group is a horrible mess), or you're just paranoid and just assume every group is terribad (even if they turn out to be awesome).

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Honestly this is how most PUG's go, your data center may be different:

A "Perfect" run means nobody has to be resurrected

4-man Low level: So rarely do I get one newbie, it's almost unheard of to get two, but today I got a party with the second-worst combination: New Tank and new DPS. Both DPS Melee Pugilist. (Worst is all 3 being new and DPS all melee.) So this will set my baseline for what I expect from newbies vs non-newbies. This was also Tam Tara Deepcroft.
- Tank stands in every AOE, each AOE hit removes slightly more than half their HP.
- Tank fails to hold emnity (given I probably outgear him by an order of magnitude, I think he was having to use Flash every 3 heals.)
- One Cure recovers half the tank's HP
- Both DPS don't attack the same target
- Both DPS die within 2 seconds of each other due to having enmity.
- I don't have time to switch to CS and heal the tank at the same time, so I alternate between curing the tank and hitting Aero.
So that boss took about twice as long as I expected. The other Bosses nobody dies. However the Tank was still standing in the AOE's.


4-man Low-level other than Satasha, Halitali and Tam-Tara Deepcroft (Those three tend to be the only dungeons that I'm tolerant of newbies making boneheaded mistakes):
- I expect a "perfect" run.
- I expect the DPS to not stand in directional AOE's.
- I expect the Tank to not stand in directional AOE's
- I expect that everyone will at least try to get out of omnidirectional AOE's, but I'm less annoyed by it.
- I expect the DPS to not take any damage from trash if the Tank is doing their job.
- I expect ranged DPS to not take any damage from trash, even during boss rooms unless the boss has a room-wide AOE (eg Cutter's Cry)
- I expect that everyone has appropriate gear. You should not be wearing any gear in any slot that is 5 levels below the dungeon level on the left side. All the dungeons are 3-4 levels apart, so if you ran the dungeon 3 times (usually the minimum needed to level up) you should have had enough opportunity to get dungeon drops. The Right side is a bit harder to get drops for, but it mostly affects things other than defence and hitpoints.

On average, if anyone dies during a 4-man low-level before the first boss room, that's an indication that they don't know the mechanics well enough to avoid taking damage.


4-man "Hard" dungeons, AK and WP:
All of the above except I do not expect a perfect run and:
- I expect that the Tank will try to pull the largest amount they are comfortable with.
- Some tanks may try to pull trash all the way to the first boss room door, which is NOT recommended except with two BLM's who know what they're doing. Nearly every tank that does this fails.
- I expect the DPS to use AOE's.
- I expect BRD's to use songs whenever appropriate, which seems like no BRD likes to.
- I do not expect everyone to have ilevel gear over 90 before "Keeper of the Lake", AK Hard, and WP Hard. Most of the time they do, so I don't check people's gear unless they are taking disproportionate amounts of damage. (eg the Tank losing half it's HP in a single hit.)

8-man Mainstream:
- No DPS should be taking damage from AOE's
- Healers tend to generate too much Emnity, and it's usually the healer that drops a healbomb first. With this in mind, remember how the game mechanics work.
- Main tank should be keeping the bosses busy, Second tank should be rounding up the adds and bringing them to where the DPS can burn them.
- Main healer should be focusing on the Main Tank. Second healer should be focusing on the second tank and the DPS.
(Rarely does this happen.)
- If the party has full HP, and is fighting any boss other than Ultima Weapon, I don't care of the healers DPS. There's more opportunity to DPS during Castrum.

24-man Raids, While I don't expect everyone to always know the mechanics:
- If you step in avoidable AOE's, you're not ready for this.
- If your Alliance is Main Tanking, your Healers should NOT be DPS'ing. They should be healing the Main Tank.
- If your Alliance is not the Main Tank, your alliance should not be fighting the Main Tank for control of the boss.
- For the one-hit-kill mechanics, if multiple party members die, I don't expect a repeat the next time that mechanic comes around.

Unfortunately:
- Routinely there are party members who go to the wrong rally points, even when they're hilighted, so they end up out of range of being healed in the larger boss rooms. In one recent example, the second tank in LotA was -ALWAYS- out of my range that I was wondering if he was even in the room as I wasn't able to click on him for the entire boss room run.

WoD has a lot of unavoidable killshots. Particularly Angra Mainyu. Cereberus also has a few. The rest of the Bosses have generally not resulted in Wipes.
CT only has one mechanic that people routinely get crushed on, and that's the stacking part with the final boss. However as I mentioned before, there was at least one run where the "vote abandon" came up several times.
LotA, I've seen only one wipe before, and that's from someone jumping the gun where the parties split up, resulting in a wipe.

There have been bum runs with all the Raids at least once where I end up in the party with the people who don't know the mechanics, or just plain are awful, and these are predictable by how much healing you have to do to the party members other than the main tank. Yet none of them have required abandoning the Raid. Lemons, Lemonade.

The thing that irks me the most are the people who suck the fun out of the game.
- Demanding that people read a walkthrough/guide or video before even playing some aspect of the game for the first time.
- Demanding that players "maximize" their effectiveness the first time they run something, or anytime they want to farm something.
- People selling "Carries" for content, or "selling" wins on primals.
- The Speedpullers who don't even wait for buffs before they run off.
- The foulmouthed ragequitters after they die once.
- Players spouting "Healers must DPS" or get kicked. I haven't personally seen anyone do this, but clearly it's happening or these threads wouldn't exist.
- People who seem to think that bots are somehow good or sanctioned
- People who want freemium-style featurecreep.

TL;DNR: Please stop sucking the fun out of the game by making demands of (all) players that are clearly unnecessary.

Back to the OP:
You are not required to DPS if you are a healer. There are no game mechanics in the game that require it, but there are game mechanics that you may find boring if you stick entirely to healing, but that's your prerogative.