Are healers lazy or do some really live by "I only heal"?

[saberchic]

I can honestly say that out of the hundreds of dungeons, trials and raids I've done on my various characters, the tanks who were in them royally bitched at the healers if they DPSed in a good 90% of those runs.

That's funny. My experience has been opposite.

Healers should throw out some dps once they are comfortable with the dungeons. I can understand not dpsing if the healer is not very familiar with the fights, but once they are, they should help.

[Februs]

Healers should throw out some dps once they are comfortable with the dungeons. I can understand not dpsing if the healer is not very familiar with the fights, but once they are, they should help.

That's pretty much my stance on it as well. It's the same for every job in the game, but tanks and healers in particular have to deal with it to a greater degree.

In comparison to Dps, Tanks and Healers have to know the dungeons much more intimately to be comfortable with it. Tanks have to know practically EVERYTHING (how strong the mobs are, how many, where they are, what kind of mobs they are [ranged/physical/magic], when to use what Cd's, what is each mob's effective pull range, how should each mob should be positioned ... etc). On top of that, they have to know their own job well enough to adapt on the fly and manage aggro efficiently. On top of that comes the advanced stuff, like maximizing your personal dps, for example. The advantage they have is that they can pull at their own pace. When you see them hesitate before a pull, it's probably because they don't know the dungeon as well as a seasoned Tank.

Healers have much less to know, but they have a disadvantage that the Tanks don't have. They basically have to know how much dmg they have to mitigate, and what kind of dmg they are mitigating (ranged/physical/magical/status effects and AoE). The easy part for them is that, assuming things are going smoothly for the tank, they really only have to heal one person directly (save for Aoe's). Their disadvantage, though, is that they are at the mercy of the tank. They can't go at their pace. They have to go at the Tank's pace, and they have to put up with a variety of Tanks who may not know how to use their cooldowns as effectively as others. That can be pretty rough. So, I kind of understand when healers only heal.

That being said, when they know a dungeon, and the tank is good, they should be going beyond just healing. I get it when they're new, but they're not new forever. There's a point when they should be actively seeking to optimize their role. As long as it's not at the expense of the tank's health pool (No tank should have to pop extra CD's because of a bad healer) seasoned healers should be upping their game to match the efforts of the rest of the group... of course, that's not very high if the rest of the group is total crap as well...but still.