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

[Genaxx]

I had a 'debate' about this recently with a healer during expert roulette. The healer had alot of downtime due to me being at 90% hp during pulls, I asked them if they could use cleric stance, their reply was 'But I will heal less'. To me that point is moot because they weren't healing anyway.

Healers can mitigate damage by using offensive skills. Holy for example, less damage to the tank because they are stun locked and die quicker due to its high damage.


Maybe when I tank I shoud stand there and do nothing once I have enough aggro and wait for it to drop again

[Shurrikhan]

It's your job to continuously contribute, as it is for any tank or DPS. To not DPS when everyone is topped off would be like your PLD, once having sufficient enmity, waiting out the DoT duration of Goring Blade rather than throwing in RA and RoH combos between GBs, or never using anything but RoH and Flash in the first place despite massive excess enmity (much like overhealing).

[Fevelle]

I had a 'debate' about this recently with a healer during expert roulette. The healer had alot of downtime due to me being at 90% hp during pulls, I asked them if they could use cleric stance, their reply was 'But I will heal less'. To me that point is moot because they weren't healing anyway.

Healers can mitigate damage by using offensive skills. Holy for example, less damage to the tank because they are stun locked and die quicker due to its high damage.


Maybe when I tank I shoud stand there and do nothing once I have enough aggro and wait for it to drop again

He was OBVIOUSLY not confident in entering Cleric Stance. I swear players in this game have ZERO empathy.

[Shurrikhan]

He was OBVIOUSLY not confident in entering Cleric Stance. I swear players in this game have ZERO empathy.

If the tank isn't dropping below 90% HP despite the healer having "a lot of downtime" in which they "weren't healing anyways", there is no reason to be scared of 5 seconds' diminished healing. I'd have empathy for the healer back in Sastasha and/or for as long as it takes for the healer to get comfortable with the tank's rate of damage taken. But by 50+, having already seen the tank's health rates across numerous pulls?...

[Fevelle]

If the tank isn't dropping below 90% HP despite the healer having "a lot of downtime" in which they "weren't healing anyways", there is no reason to be scared of 5 seconds' diminished healing. I'd have empathy for the healer back in Sastasha and/or for as long as it takes for the healer to get comfortable with the tank's rate of damage taken. But by 50+, having already seen the tank's health rates across numerous pulls?...

Personally I'd still give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they have problems, or maybe their skill level is not high enough, I don't know. If I have to stay 10 or 15 more minutes in a dungeon so I don't force someone into being anxious by doing something they don't feel capable of, then I'll take it anytime.

[KaitlanKela]

FTR: this thread wasn't really meant to address healers that aren't comfortable DPSing. It's meant to address the argument that it's good and acceptable for healers to choose not to when they otherwise could.

That said, if anyone reading this isn't comfortable with cleric stance, I would recommend experimenting with it at low level dungeons to acclimate yourself in a low pressure scenario rather than just writing it off as too difficult (if your not a CNJ/WHM, put it as your first cross class to have access to it in Sastasha, for example). It introduces complexity and fun to the job, in addition to the added utility! Best of luck!

[AristocraticCorgi]

It's your job to continuously contribute, as it is for any tank or DPS. To not DPS when everyone is topped off would be like your PLD, once having sufficient enmity, waiting out the DoT duration of Goring Blade rather than throwing in RA and RoH combos between GBs, or never using anything but RoH and Flash in the first place despite massive excess enmity (much like overhealing).

This is my creed.

So many people out there are not confident enough to heal and dps at once. Others are just unskilled and/or lazy and don't even bother trying.

When healers, tanks and dps continually contribute to eliminating mob, it becomes easier to clear out dungeons and achieve objectives more quickly/efficiently.

[KitomiSaitichi]

This is my creed.

So many people out there are not confident enough to heal and dps at once. Others are just unskilled and/or lazy and don't even bother trying.

When healers, tanks and dps continually contribute to eliminating mob, it becomes easier to clear out dungeons and achieve objectives more quickly/efficiently.

There's only one solution, and that is to attract a certain type of player that either (a) aims to better each time (like competitive ranked MOBAs or hardcore raids) or (b) does not want to burden other people (like in JP server).

As long as the majority of profits come from casual players who put out an average level of skill and effort, and are okay with playing 30 - 60% of their potential, then that is what the company will continue to appease to. It's very hard to change people. You can establish goals that have players self-select themselves outside of a certain desired demographic, but being the nature of said game, if it hurts the bottom line, then the company won't necessarily try to market the game as a hardcore one or implement a system to weed out non-improvement based players.


In North America, our values are more attuned to independence, freedom, autonomy than conscientiousness, harmony and personal accountability. Poorly paid = lowest marginal effort to do something and get away with it, paid = obligation to do the best and not bring shame/dishonor. Not to mention we have more tolerance for those without equity, those with disabilities, lack of aptitude, etc with our social programs - this translates into the same kind of mindset of being non-judgemental about other peoples' skills, not being conscientious about how our ineptitude is causing other people more suffering (time-wise), etc. We do what 'I want' - not what others want mentality that perpetuates everywhere from our clothing, style, accessories, goods, etc. Customize what we want, how we want it experience a la cart. There's just no roundabout way of turning everyone into caring about achieving objectives quickly and efficiently. Not to mention people are at varying points of caring about efficiency and quickness.

Most people can tolerate the 30 - 40 minute dungeons. Not many can tolerate 2 hours. Most don't care to be super optimized to play down to 15 minutes a dungeon. You have a Gaussian distribution at both ends of the spectrum where each marginal minute invested into 'research, tactics, strategy, method, optimization' yields a certain trade-off of efficiency gain in being 'faster'. The value of being 'faster' simply for most people is inelastic at the curve of 0 - 80% clearance time. It's not until the 90, 95 and 99% percentile of being respective of 45 minutes, 60 minutes and 90 minutes that people start getting annoyed at incompetence.

Of course this threshold is at the lowest tolerance at the highest level of play, since people value their efficiency and time to the .5 second margin due to the structured goals that the game has set up which require long, arduous hours of practice, knowledge, skill and competence which most simply don't have, and an investment of that time into 'x, y, z random player' doesn't guarantee returns.

[AristocraticCorgi]

Kitomi: you are spot on.

I agree with everything you said, particularly with your last two paragraphs.

(Wrote a larger post in response to yours but the forum does not let me post it... oh well!).

Thank you for your thoughts.

[gehrtalert]

Man... Can we just end these posts yet? It's the same post over and over with the same responses.