As a healer, is it my job to DPS? A new perspective.

[Keramory]

It would have been nice for you to put legitimate numbers into this on say average dungeon monster kill times with/without healer dps'ing vs amount of heals it would save doing so. Not arguing your point at all, would have just been interesting to see.

I don't think many people would argue that a healer would be more effective if he/she were to DPS as well. What I think the argument comes from is healers feeling that they are being picked on to be expected to do more then other classes for the mindless daily dungeons.

As for myself personally, I would say about 90-95% of the time I DPS in content as a healer. That's what I do. However I completely support healers who do not. Why? Not because I feel as though they can't do better, but because the average DPS and Tank are not doing anywhere near their best either, from my experience.

With that being said, I do think it's somewhat unfair to expect optimization from a role but not from the others. I almost never see any threads about lazy DPS or Tanks who are not using their abilities and rotations (I'll leave rotations out, abilities alone lets say) as they should. I would argue if they did, perhaps the monster would die just as fast as if the white mage helped DPS. Imagine if they were ALL held accountable! Monsters would die so fast!!! But again, with of course exceptions, I don't see the DPS or Tanks doing anywhere near their best, so why is there an urge to call out the healers? Simply because it's more noticeable visually.

So sorry, despite my own personal play style of DPS'ing in content, I will never jump on board with healers being expected to DPS. Not while the other roles are not being called out.

[KaitlanKela]

Legitimate numbers are good, but they are a LOT of effort to produce when few people actually take the time to process them. It didn't seem worth the effort.

And your argument is basically ALL roles play their job badly, so it's okay for healers to play their jobs badly? Why is this acceptable at all?

Furthermore I don't agree that I don't see people complaining about low DPS. Maybe it doesn't happen on this forum so much, but on Reddit there's nigh daily complaints of carrying dps that can't be bothered to spam more than a single ability. That's clearly unacceptable. DPS frequently get kicked or runs are vote abandoned if the DPS check is not hit consistantly (I'm looking at you, Final Steps of Faith).

Like I said in my last paragraph, people are within their rights to choose to only heal. Just like people are within their rights to only spam their hate combo, or hit heavy shot over and over again. And I don't frequently call out people for any of that. My only point is that it IS deliberately choosing a lazy style of play (no matter what role) and people have a right to be irritated by that as it's an inconvenience to them during a cooperative game.

Basically to say, nobody else has to play good so why do healers have to play good is completely beside the point.

[amihavingfunyet]

As for myself personally, I would say about 90-95% of the time I DPS in content as a healer. That's what I do. However I completely support healers who do not. Why? Not because I feel as though they can't do better, but because the average DPS and Tank are not doing anywhere near their best either, from my experience.

With that being said, I do think it's somewhat unfair to expect optimization from a role but not from the others. I almost never see any threads about lazy DPS or Tanks who are not using their abilities and rotations (I'll leave rotations out, abilities alone lets say) as they should. I would argue if they did, perhaps the monster would die just as fast as if the white mage helped DPS. Imagine if they were ALL held accountable! Monsters would die so fast!!! But again, with of course exceptions, I don't see the DPS or Tanks doing anywhere near their best, so why is there an urge to call out the healers? Simply because it's more noticeable visually.

So sorry, despite my own personal play style of DPS'ing in content, I will never jump on board with healers being expected to DPS. Not while the other roles are not being called out.

People are making tons of thread asking for parser to be able to call out DPS for underperforming. If you have some experience with other classes it's also usually not hard to figure out if someone is underperforming.
And that may not be true for the whole community, but underperforming tanks and DPS get kicked from my groups just as well as underperforming healers.

[Keramory]

I should correct myself, I don't see a lot of people complaining about DPS'ing or tank dps'ing unless it is raid content or healers are being put in question and use that as a reply.
My comment was made for threads in which someone brings up DPS problems in regular dungeons (the root of most of these healer dps problems). Maybe things have changed recently and I'm unaware but this healer DPS debate has been going on for a long time, when I was more inclined to view the forums.

And to answer the OP, in short, yes that is what I am saying. I do not expect healers work harder then other classes. Although ideally every role should step their game up, it isn't happening. If one were to call this problem out in its entirety, then I would completely support that. What I don't support however is just chosing the easy class to chastise and pretending the other problem isn't there, at least to the point where it is as very much a problem as the healers.

[wooperthemad]

... I almost never see any threads about lazy DPS or Tanks who are not using their abilities and rotations...I don't see the DPS or Tanks doing anywhere near their best, so why is there an urge to call out the healers? Simply because it's more noticeable visually.

It's also more noticeable in time to kill as well. My tank friend is always jealous of how consistently faster my dungeon runs are compared to his. Healer DPS can come close to a DPS when played optimally. But even doing something as simple as casting 4 offensive spells the entire fight can make a big difference because of how potent our AoE capabilites are. DoTs + Bane and stand around means I've cut a quarterish of a group of enemies health off if the DoTs tick out (they don't if DPS is decent). That's not optimal, it's just casting 4 spells.

I don't think most of us are asking for optimal, just not the bare minimum.

[Judge_Xero]

It would have been nice for you to put legitimate numbers into this on say average dungeon monster kill times with/without healer dps'ing vs amount of heals it would save doing so. Not arguing your point at all, would have just been interesting to see.

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/Aqkgm1KNXbtzpxL7#boss=0

Well in this 20:30 run, my contribution to DPS shaved 8 minutes off the time.
Given the average damage taken per second I mitigated almost 300,000 Damage through the use off my Offensive Mitigation Tools. Which amounts to 38% Mitigation.

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For that example:
28% of Party DPS, No Deaths, Damage Taken 778k, Damage Healed 715k, Time Saved 8 minutes, Extra Mitigation 38%.

Healers are the most powerful role in the game, when used to their full potential.

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I was always taught to "Do onto others, as you wish done on to you" as a kid. I always wish for others to play at a high skill level, so I always try to perform that way myself. I am always pleasantly surprised when I run into someone who does, but I'm starting to understand that not everyone shares those same values and that's ok. All I can do is hope to inspire others to be the best they can be, and share in my example.

[Caitlyn]

Making damage as WHM is pretty easy and makes your healing job a bit easier.

Holy stuns your enemies for a very long time, which means you dont have to heal during this time. And if your enemies dying faster, you have less to heal. Making a fight shorter is better for everyone: tanks just need less defensive cooldowns, while DPS can save a few offensive cooldowns. And you cleared your dungeon in a shorter time.

1. SE decreased the accuarcy needed for level 60 dungeons, so healers can do some damage again
2. SE give you alot of offensive skills (cleric stance, holy, s.o.), why not use them?
3. SE give you a big mana pool and a few skills for mana-regeneration (even for WHM). If you have full mana every time, you re doing it wrong ; )
4. SE give us Level 60 dungeons, which are extremely easy to heal (just need a few HoTs even on bigger pulls)
5. Healing your party and doing extra damage at the same time (stance dancing yay) is fun : D

[_slowpoke_]

What I think the argument comes from is healers feeling that they are being picked on to be expected to do more then other classes for the mindless daily dungeons.

Except that expecting healers to DPS is not expecting them to do more than the other roles. It's expecting them to perform at the same level as everyone else at the very least, by always casting something, and not standing around doing nothing to contribute to the team effort for up to 100% of a pull.

The crux is that doing damage is (currently) the only meaningful and productive way to reduce downtime as a healer in this game, whether people like it or not. If we had party buffs (like Haste) to maintain in downtime, it's what we would probably do instead, but we don't, so Cleric it is. And, in my personal opinion, DPSing and stance dancing is way more fun and engaging than being a buffbot, but this is were I think different opinions are absolutely valid.

However I completely support healers who do not.

Then you openly support and therefore implicitly encourage objectively bad play. Please stop, you're not helping.

Not because I feel as though they can't do better, but because the average DPS and Tank are not doing anywhere near their best either, from my experience.

But that's not an argument, that's just a cop-out. Also, among DPS and tanks, there's no regular and recurring attempts to justify standing around doing nothing. It's general consensus that step 0 is "Always Be Casting/Attacking". Healers are the only role that has these debates.

And before anyone points out that tanks do have the debates about tank DPS, those are fundamentally different in premise, because they generally revolve around trading survivability for damage, and not around whether or not a tank should be attacking the boss all the time.

With that being said, I do think it's somewhat unfair to expect optimization from a role but not from the others.

But that's exactly what's being done - from the other roles. It's unfair that healers should be the only role that's given a free pass at being lazy when ABC is the absolute lowest level of basic, adequate play for all other roles - we're not even talking about optimizations yet.

There's really only two ways to argue here: either people take the position that ABC is also not required for the other roles, or they make a convincing and sound argument why ABC does not apply to healers. I have seen neither, and anything else is a big double-standard.

I almost never see any threads about lazy DPS or Tanks who are not using their abilities and rotations (I'll leave rotations out, abilities alone lets say) as they should.

There aren't any threads about this because, as I've pointed out above, it's basic and general consensus that DPS and tanks who don't ABC are bad. No one debates about this because no one will try to justify that a DPS player or even tank who stands around for the majority of a fight is anything but bad and lazy. We only have these endless discussions about it among healers.

But again, with of course exceptions, I don't see the DPS or Tanks doing anywhere near their best, so why is there an urge to call out the healers?

Because we're in the healer forums talking about bad healers, not bad DPS or bad tanks - which is a related issue for sure, but not the one at hand. Absolutely every role should be called out for underperforming (intentionally or not), and healers are no exception. Pointing to the other roles is merely shifting the blame and trying to distract from the issue at hand, which is that not doing damage as a healer when there is absolutely nothing else to do that would meaningfully contribute to the group is objectively bad playstyle and we have people continuously trying to defend this.

[Canadane]

And before anyone points out that tanks do have the debates about tank DPS, those are fundamentally different in premise, because they generally revolve around trading survivability for damage, and not around whether or not a tank should be attacking the boss all the time.

Heck no, it's the same argument here as the healers. Unless you will die or lose enmity focus, you should be in your offensive stance as a tank.
Like I could go on a huge tank related tangent here but it really us the same logic applied to the healers. Everyone needs to give 100%!

[Vulcwen]

Heck no, it's the same argument here as the healers. Unless you will die or lose enmity focus, you should be in your offensive stance as a tank.
Like I could go on a huge tank related tangent here but it really us the same logic applied to the healers. Everyone needs to give 100%!

It's not the same argument, tanks being in offensive stance means they take more damage, meaning the healer will need to heal more, to the point it's going to lower healer DPS, therefore the argument about tanks being in offensive stance is more about HOW much more damage they take, and whether the DPS gain outweighs the DPS loss for the healer (in addition to consistency arguments). Of course if the damage is so low, a regen/fairy can still keep you up in offensive stance, that question is easily answered. The argument for tanks is questioning whether it's optimal (and the answer depends on the situation), the argument for healers is cultural.


It's exactly because the argument for healers is cultural, that it's such a big deal. Healers contributing to DPS is optimal, there is no doubt about it. There are a few things here that tend to make people choose for a less than optimal way to play:

- Understanding of job.. You can see healing as a job, or you can see contributing to the team as your job. In the second case, you take on the ROLE of healer, because others can't do it, you have the toolkit to do it, others don't, so you do it.. but when healing is covered, you won't stop contributing. In the first case, when healing is covered, you're basically done.. doing things outside your job can piss people off, so you don't, because, yes there are tanks/DPS that bitch at healers that DPS as well, even if they do nothing wrong. Also in the real world, people can get mad if you try to help them, cause they don't want you to meddle with their problems.
Again, this is a cultural thing, and as long everyone in the group has the same understanding of the job, there is no problem.

- DPSing and healing requires some skill, to learn that skill you have to take risk of being actually detrimental to the group's performance. This risk/reward system does make the DPS healing meta fun, but can scare people off. It's very likely that you will screw up when learning it, so you will be detrimental in some of the runs you do. Whether being detrimental for a few runs at first is worth being able to contribute more later on, is a personal/cultural choice.
I personally don't mind if a new healer causes a wipe when learning how to stance dance, but other people don't want to wipe NOW so that this random healer they'll likely never meet again can speed up future runs, and possibly learn how to deal with clutch situations better.

This skill argument might overlap a little with tanks, but tanks don't experience as much risk as healers, as healers don't just need to deal with their own mistakes, but also with that of others (and failing to cover for that is still your fault).