The "To DPS" vs "Not DPS" Debate

[Ghishlain]

I mean if your only required to wear 15 pieces of flair, and you only wear 15.... your a bad healer.

I'm confused.

Everyone's role is to make the run be successful.

I agree.

Why is this even labeled a debate? Many times a healer can keep everyone alive while only using a percentage of their time. The remainder can be used either to DPS, or for useless unnecessary stuff. So of course you DPS then. As the difficulty of fight increases, maybe you heal more and DPS less. And then there are the cases where win or lose depends on the group's DPS: Titan Heart, fast conflag in t5, super slug in t6, etc. Healer DPS can then be the difference between win and lose (same for tank).

I labelled it as such because all too often in game and on these forums you hear this:

"OMG YOU ONLY HEAL THEREFORE YOU'RE BAD"

Or when a quote like this arises:

(WHM) "Why are you not dodging 100 tonze swing?"
(BLM) "if you got time to nuke your not working hard your a f---ing healer not a black mage play your job properly"

Neither is true.

• You are a BAD healer if you consistently let your party face plant
• You are a BAD healer if you cannot remove status effects when all you're doing is spamming cures
• You are a BAD healer if you tunnel vision DPS and let your party wipe
• You are an AVERAGE healer if all you do is heal (I will make the concession that you are also a lazy healer when it's blatently obvious you don't care)
• You are a GOOD healer if you can DPS and heal and keep your party healthy and unhindered during the course of a fight
• You are a GOOD healer if you maximize the utility of your healer toolkit

Players should be working to attain the pinnacle of healing prowess, which involves maximizing the usage of your toolkit. The players that excel will the ones you'll be taking to Coil and EX Primals while the average players you'll leave for the more friendly 4-man DFs/DRs/etc. And you don't want to touch the bads with a ten foot pole.

And then there are the cases where win or lose depends on the group's DPS: Titan Heart, fast conflag in t5, super slug in t6, etc. Healer DPS can then be the difference between win and lose (same for tank).

In response, I quote myself:

Fights are tuned to a certain ilvl. If your DPS is of that ilvl, your party should be able to overcome all mechanics associated with that fight WITHOUT your assistance in this regard. If you are forced to DPS as a healer to help "push a fight forward", the fault lies squarely on your lackluster DPS.

With that being said, this is not to say healer DPS isn't contributing to a clear, but allows the party to clear content faster. HOWEVER, when a healer (or to a degree, even a Tank) is outright blamed for causing a wipe when the DPS can't clear the content in a DPS check and are of appropaite level, then the fault is not the healers, but of the DPS instead.