Rant on healers acting as a dps role

[Ashkendor]

Had this with a DF'd SCH in A3, a while back, with a party that stood in everything, I was the main healer and DPS so low we nearly hit enrage with a million cascades that were filled with medica spam with our lives depending on DS/PoM/whichever was up at the time.
At the end, the SCH left a biting remark about having to drop Cleric/stop DPSing somewhere in there (not that it felt like they did, at all).
I wanted to scratch their eyes out. :|

See, that's just not right. I love to DPS as SCH, but if there are things that keep me from doing that it's not the end of the damn world and I'm not going to yell at the other healer for it, especially since it's very likely that it isn't their fault at all. Whether it's an undergeared healing partner, DPS standing in the stupids, low damage, whatever, the fact of the matter is that I queued as a healer and I accepted that as my primary role when I did so. With a partner that's willing and able shoulder the bulk of the healing, I can put out some decent numbers (better than the DPS in some cases but that's a different story entirely...) but the second I see that things are getting out of hand, I drop cleric stance and go back to healing until the situation stabilizes. If things are really going south, I just never go back to CS at all. The way I see it, everyone in the instance queued up with the common goal to clear the content. Me pushing my own personal numbers (as fun as it is) is secondary to that goal.

I can't disagree with your first point. Some content does require it. But... Well, for example, I got into an argument with an LS person about Thordan. That fight, a lot of mistakes are recoverable, but the person I argued with just thinks recovery should not be part of a healer's job description at all. If someone makes a mistake (of any role), they're on their own.

Obviously I don't agree with that but I have to be careful about where I voice that opinion. And my perception (might not be the same across all servers and colored by the people I associate with, I know) is this is an upwards trend.

Thordan is very recoverable at a lot of points in the fight, especially early on. A healer that's not willing to leave cleric stance to help someone recover from a mistake is basically deliberately wiping the group IMO. Repeated mistakes, that's an issue where you may need to look at replacing someone, but everyone screws up once in awhile no matter how long they've been farming the content.

I wonder how that healer would feel if the BRD/MCH told them they were on their own for mana management.

[ruskie]

I wonder how that healer would feel if the BRD/MCH told them they were on their own for mana management.

Considering that some threads mentioned heal priority with basically:
me > tanks > good dps > bard/mch > bad dps

It's obvious most don't care much for external mana mangement.