So I was kicked from Halatali today

[Causality]

Time saved is time saved is time saved. 5 minutes is not a lot to you but it may be 10% of someone's daily play time. Get more stuff done, get it done efficiently. What is wrong with wanting this at the "price" of a miniscule amount of effort?

What's inefficient here is the tank not pulling more mobs. If a healer has time to be in cleric stance then there should be faster and larger pulls by the tank Especially if there's an Archer/Bard or Thaumaturge/Black Mage in the group. A healer is there to heal. That is it. If they have time to DPS then the run is moving too slowly. DPS should not be an issue in low level dungeons like Halatali."

[raela]

I see a healer with Cleric stance on, I assume they're bored and pull more mobs. If a healer has time to be in cleric stance, then the tank needs to pull more mobs. At least that's my tanking Philosphy

Even if the tank pulls half the map, I'm going to swap into cleric and drop a shadow flare and maybe a miasma II before bouncing back. I feel it makes a noticeable difference (though 95% of the time, I'm queueing with a ninja DPS, so no dual blm for me). In lower dungeons, substitute that for dots+bane (as I make sure to hit stoneskin+adlo on tank at the end of a pull to buy me dps time). You'd rather take forever for melee dps to single target down a mass of mobs while the healer spams cure on you??

[Cynfael]

What's inefficient here is the tank not pulling more mobs. If a healer has time to be in cleric stance then there should be faster and larger pulls by the tank Especially if there's an Archer/Bard or Thaumaturge/Black Mage in the group. A healer is there to heal. That is it. If they have time to DPS then the run is moving too slowly. DPS should not be an issue in low level dungeons like Halatali."

Sometimes bigger pulls are more beneficial, but as raela pointed out, there are situations where more mobs does not = greater efficiency.

Even when I see a BLM in party, I'm not automatically convinced that we'll be in AoE heaven; I've seen way too many of them do dumb things like opening with a single Flare (not even a single F3 first, mind you), transposing, and proceeding to spam Freeze. I do far better AoE on SCH than this, especially as GCDs tick by, and a Holybombing WHM will rack up heavy damage in a short time while preventing mobs from hitting the tank.

On the occasion where the stars align and you get a great BLM for your AoEs, you will still have a use for your healer to DPS as some mobs die faster and the tank requires less babysitting, leading to healer idle time if not filled efficiently.

[Atmora]

That has got to be the most STUPID reason to kick someone that I've heard of in a while. If the dps was so slow that they needed a boost from the healer in Halitali, then what more can be said? You didn't get votekicked so much as the universe saw fit to deliver you from the presence of two morons and a nub tank. Sounds like a get-out-of-fail card to me.

Usually they don't need the dps boost, but there is a negative stigma towards healers who don't also dps since they're seen as being lazy or only playing half their job.

[moudoka]

Personally, I play all sides of the field. When I'm tanking, I'd rather be alive, than have a few dots thrown out, or the occasional holy. However, I leave that option up to the healer, as generally I have to trust they will do the appropriate action. In many duties, I can mitigate plenty of damage on my Warrior, and the healer is able to DPS if they so choose. Given that I have two classes dedicated to DPS, it's hardly a requirement.

As a healer, SCH mainly, I'll throw out some dots, and a shadowflare in a decent-sized pull. My first and foremost action is keeping the party alive. DPS is entirely last place when that is the concern. If my tank is doing a fantastic job, I will gladly DPS. If they are struggling, I will focus on their HP being kept up, as well as the support from Aldo, and Succor.

[KisaiTenshi]

On my current WHM gear (From 2 days ago):
250 damage with Holy, 2000HP Cure II without Cleric Stance
600 damage with Holy (920 Critical), 650HP Cure II with Cleric Stance.

On my crafting gear(eg so only the weapon is taken into consideration)
250 damage with Holy, 170 Stone, 210 Stone II without Cleric Stance
350 damage with Holy, 90 damage from Aero, 90 Damage from Aero II, 240 damage from Stone, 290 damage from Stone II with Cleric Stance.

The point being that a healer doing DPS is not very effective at DPS or Healing with Cleric Stance. When Cleric Stance is off, Cure's are 3X more powerful, but DPS is only 40% as effective. When all the gear but the weapon is taken out of the equation, the difference isn't quite so far away. Which is why early on during the Conjurer's storyline, new healers might think Cleric Stance is useless.

Now consider how THM/BLM and SMN/SCH/ACN recover Mana. BLM's recover mana extremely fast (assuming they alternate between Ice and Fire), while ACN/SMN/SCH have Aetherflow. WHM has Shroud of Saints which is... well relatively weak.

Which comes back to the reason why WHM's aren't a good DPS class. Are you going to waste your mana DPS'ing when your priority is healing? If you get an awful party (like that guy who took a dirt nap 3 times during the final boss because he was way-undergeared, and wouldn't get out of the AOE every time) then you're going to burn all that MP. Is it more important to make up for weak DPS members? No. That's not your problem. In the particular example I stated, I probably could have sped up the dungeon run by DPS'ing, but the Tank was also weak and pulling mobs into the flame trap areas.

How often are bad runs? maybe 1 in 10. And by bad, I'm not talking about going too slow that I want to help DPS. No, I'm talking the ones where the Tank is either undergeared or pulling too many monsters that they are still losing HP with regen, Medica II and being CureII spammed.

I have yet to encounter a party that demanded that I DPS, but I have encountered parties that were so under-geared (particularly in AV) that reviving mid-boss battle ends up being a thing because they can't take a hit.

[SeraviEdalborez]

The point being that a healer doing DPS is not very effective at DPS or Healing with Cleric Stance.

I don't know how or why you think anything you said "proves" your point.

Your reasoning is awful and your gear (in that it's all tome gear that require 0 actual effort) tells the story: you have little experience with healer DPS. You probably tried it once (maybe never?) and didn't "feel" the contribution.

[Elysaine]

I don't know how or why you think anything you said "proves" your point.

Your reasoning is awful and your gear (in that it's all tome gear that require 0 actual effort) tells the story: you have little experience with healer DPS. You probably tried it once (maybe never?) and didn't "feel" the contribution.

I play a healer class to keep people up and running to the best of my abilities. That's my primary task. If I can DPS a bit on the side if the group allows it, fine. If like last night in Brayflox. With a way undergeared tank who basically got 2 shotted everytime then I'm on healing duty 24/7.

You make it sound that healers are to DPS. Otherwise we are awful.
Judging people on their gear. You have lousy gear, so you must be awful and your opinion void.

Change that attitude of yours and maybe people are willing to listen. Now you just sound like a big elitist *insert something here*.

[Lyzern]

Which comes back to the reason why WHM's aren't a good DPS class.

Everything you say is just full of randomness and confusion lol, you make zero sense and your arguments don't stand. I'm starting to think you're a troll, but I'll reply once more:

Nobody said WHM's or SCH's are DPS classes, what we're trying to say is that they do decent damage, decent enough to be noticeable and help the runs go faster and smoother.

Also, your math just showed that you deal twice the damage with Cleric Stance on, even though I've no idea why you'd compare crafting gear with combat gear, but whatever. I don't know where you see that's not "efficient", because if it doubles your damage, it's pretty damn good, no?

Also, you don't heal in Cleric Stance and you don't deal damage outside of Cleric Stance, what gave you that impression? You switch to Cleric Stance, deal damage and then switch it off when heals are needed.

Mana management is a big part of WHM whether you deal damage or don't. But here's the deal: I'd rather see a WHM go down to 1k MP and the boss dead, than seeing a WHM doing nothing with a full bar. But either way, you don't deal damage until you barely run out of mp, you deal damage until you're left with a pool big enough for you to be comfortable.

You mentioned bad parties twice, and in once you say that bad parties are the reason you don't deal damage, which I agree with, obviously. But then you say bad parties only happen 1 out of 10 times. So what exactly is preventing you from dealing damage on the other 9 times?

Look, you can do whatever you want, but if I see a healer who doesn't deal damage in my party, he's not a good healer in my book. Maybe he's learning, which of course is understandeable, so I'd never call anyone out on it, but standing around doing nothing is plain lazy, sorry! We're healers, but that doesn't mean we can't use all our spells to the best of our ability.

[Cynfael]

The point being that a healer doing DPS is not very effective at DPS or Healing with Cleric Stance. When Cleric Stance is off, Cure's are 3X more powerful, but DPS is only 40% as effective. When all the gear but the weapon is taken out of the equation, the difference isn't quite so far away.

Please review how to use Cleric Stance properly by toggling on/off at appropriate times. I think all of this confusion on your end stems from a lack of understanding on how any of this is supposed to work.

Also consider that MP management, while not an entirely unrelated issue, often has no bearing on whether or not a healer can or should contribute DPS. Hell, a WHM can Holybomb themselves down to virtually nothing in any 4 man dungeon and still retain sufficient MP and base MP recovery to heal through just about anything.

P.S. Consider that all of the people telling you that healers don't work the way you think they do are not crazy and are actually giving you good advice. Ask for clarification on specifics if you don't get what we're saying. I personally don't write posts like this simply to be contrary; I would actually like to help others improve.