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

[Lambdafish]

I play as both WHM and SCH. SCH being my main. And I accept people who wishes to play a certain way. If healers don't want to DPS, they shouldn't have to. They shouldn't be kicked just because they don't DPS. Or be degraded upon. I qued for level 60 roulette and got ARF a few weeks ago. I didn't DPS, because the tank was taking WAY too much damage, and the DPS wasn't dodging. So, how am I to DPS if other people don't do their job right? Us healers get bitched at so many times, it's freaking disgusting. Even though tanks/dps are wrong as well. If a tank takes too much damage, and the DPS isn't dodging, it is not my responsibility to DPS when healing is obviously more important.

Don't get me wrong. I DPS like a sailor drinking his ale. I love to DPS on my healer jobs. But, people needs to understand, we can't do anything if other people don't know how to use CDs, dodge, etc.

First of all, I think you read the title and not anyone's arguments. In the run where you didn't DPS you were busy healing, i.e. doing your job, you were actively engaging in the content and performing your role. This is not the argument, we all know that heals > dps on a healing job. The ISSUE comes when people idle and over-heal and do not engage in the content. If I'm playing WAR, I am expected to use my full rotation and keep maim and storms eye up as best I can, but I can't do that if there is a tonne of AOE and I need to overpower and flash lots (doing my job), which is completely different to spamming butchers block combo and not using berserk or any wrath stack at all (but im keeping aggro right?). Relevant healing > DPS > idling and over-healing is the argument people are making, and while I personally wouldn't kick anyone or even care about it, the mentality that it is acceptable is not ok.

[VraeliaValkyria]

Relevant healing > DPS > idling and over-healing is the argument people are making

My apologies. I was only adding my two cents. And yes, I agree. Healers who are sitting at full MP not doing anything, bothers me. If the party is safe, then Cleric Stance and DPS. Help speed things up. Don't just do nothing. It is why Yoshida/SE gave us DPS tools. To use. Not waste.

[Dogempire]

My apologies. I was only adding my two cents. And yes, I agree. Healers who are sitting at full MP not doing anything, bothers me. If the party is safe, then Cleric Stance and DPS. Help speed things up. Don't just do nothing. It is why Yoshida/SE gave us DPS tools. To use. Not waste.

Just my personal experience, but I'm too busy trying to burn down mobs/the boss to really care about what the healer does aside from their main job of making sure nobody eats dirt. If the healer dpses, then great! If not, then w/e, I'll just spend a little longer doing the dungeon.

Now if we hit an enrage timer and I see the healer isn't dpsing, then I would encourage them dps to boost the party's overall damage, not force them. At the end of the day the fault of hitting the enrage timer lies with the dps, not the healer.

[Gallus]

The only problem about this whole new mentality about healers DPSing is that it has created a bad trend of healers that mostly neglect their healing duties and just stand there spamming Stone III/Malefic II/Broil, which, in my book, is far worse than a healer that only heals but does it well.

Too many times I see myself debuffed, or very low in HP, or even dead, and I swear I see my healers' bars casting offensive spells over and over again.

Don't get me wrong, a healer that can both DPS and heal and does it correctly is far better than one that only heals, but assuming they can only do one thing at a time, they should focus on healing.

Too many times I see healers boasting about their DPS when the DPS rotation of a healer is 3 buttons for single target and 2 for AOE damage, some people should realize DPSing as a healer isn't hard, it's actually the easiest thing to do in the game, what requires some skill is stance dancing while keeping your party alive.

I swear I'd put all these scrub healers that only DPS in Sephirot EX playing as a BLM and I'd grab my popcorn while I count with all the fingers of both hands how many times they lose enochian and how many times they hit the floor before noticing that keeping Enochian or BotD is slightly harder than broiling a boss for the next 40 seconds.

[Dogempire]

Snip

Yeah, I just picked up ninja and hit level 46 and BOOM, instantly 4 or 5 new skills from 45-46.

I have a 60 summoner but I forgot how much of a struggle adapting to new rotations is.

Honestly, it's a good thing that healer rotations aren't complicated because it's so easy to get tunnel vision when you don't know your rotation too well.

Though at the end of the day, when you get your rotations on lockdown, dpsing isn't that hard.

[FunkyBunch]

Just my personal experience, but I'm too busy trying to burn down mobs/the boss to really care about what the healer does aside from their main job of making sure nobody eats dirt. If the healer dpses, then great! If not, then w/e, I'll just spend a little longer doing the dungeon.

It's pretty darn obvious to me when the Healer is doing jack all. I'm running out of TP or a 7 minute fight is taking 10 minutes.
I watch what everyone is doing, so I can help them. I'm not actually a jackhole in game.

I routinely teach new tanks how to tank more effectively. I'm frustrated with how Healers are in game, so I complain here. I also solved my own personal problem by being the Healer in DF content for the most part.

It's not just a "little longer" it's a significant amount of time (20-30% longer depending on party make-up) because Healers have some of the best AoE in the game.

You're also completely ignoring the fact, that Healers not DPSing will literally cause wipes in many instances. Same as if tanks aren't using cooldowns.
You can't do the full pull in Fractal or Neverreap for example if the Healer doesn't DOT or Gravity or Holy a few times because you will literally die.
Healers are holding back far more parties than any other class, because it's the only class that thinks that doing nothing is fine.

Please note, not a single person is advocating for DPSing if someone legitimately needs healing. Like you have an undergeared tank pulling too large. You may not be able to DPS much. You guys keep mixing in things that are not what we are asking for or even talking about.

All I want is literally for you to not be standing around doing nothing and doing a bit of DPS if it's possible. I'm not asking you to top the DPS charts. I'm not asking you to maximize your rotations and keep everyone at the minimum health level. I'm just asking you to not stand around and stop arguing that not DPSing is good. It's worse than the in-game text tells you to be. End of story.

[Ashabel]

Jfc dude, you have beat this into the ground for pages now. I don't think you can make your stand point any clearer but repeating the same phrase over and over again doesn't make it right. Healers not DPSing does NOT hold back parties, and it does NOT cause wipes. I don't know what fantasy world you live in but for God's sake have some sense before you spew nonsense about what Healers are supposed to do. 20-30% longer? Are you that desperate to feel justified in your dogmatic (and quite frankly asinine) quest to drag an entire class through the mud because you feel they're inadequate? If you're alive at the end of a dungeon then that Healer did a lot. In fact, they did what they were SUPPOSED to do. Healers DPSing is OPTIONAL, it always will be OPTIONAL, and there's NOTHING that's going to change that.

[FunkyBunch]

Jfc dude, you have beat this into the ground for pages now. I don't think you can make your stand point any clearer but repeating the same phrase over and over again doesn't make it right. Healers not DPSing does NOT hold back parties, and it does NOT cause wipes. I don't know what fantasy world you live in but for God's sake have some sense before you spew nonsense about what Healers are supposed to do. 20-30% longer? Are you that desperate to feel justified in your dogmatic (and quite frankly asinine) quest to drag an entire class through the mud because you feel they're inadequate? If you're alive at the end of a dungeon then that Healer did a lot. In fact, they did what they were SUPPOSED to do. Healers DPSing is OPTIONAL, it always will be OPTIONAL, and there's NOTHING that's going to change that.

I've brought up statistics that show that healers make a huge difference. I've also given examples of how a Healer NOT DPSing will cause a wipe. See the full pull on Fractal for example. The tank doesn't have enough cooldowns and the Healer doesn't have enough HPS to get through the fight if the Healer doesn't throw in some DPS. You will literally die. I'm not going back through FFLOGS a second time to find out specifically how much longer it takes. I did that already under very onerous circumstances to prove to someone who said it didn't matter. It matters.

Further it's not OPTIONAL. A bunch of people think it's optional, but SE specifically decided, after many bad people made it to 60 and were doing healz only, to add text to the game to say that you should DPS when no one needs healing.
To me, and most people with a brain, that means you should DPS a little bit instead of standing around doing jack all.
Just because it's not optional, doesn't mean people will do it. There are tanks that don't use cooldowns, there are NINs who don't AoE. That makes them terrible at their job, that doesn't make those skills optional.

Again, I know I can't force people to be good. But I can certainly state why I think they're bad.
Also, I now do Healer almost exclusively in DF content, because I'm sick and tired of being paired with bad Healers. I saw a problem, and I fixed it.

The problem with Healing is that it's disportionately bad when you have a bad healer. The thing that started to make me realize was that it was the DPSing healers that were good and the non-DPSing healers were bad, was when I saw people die often in Void Ark/Mhach when the Healers were doing zero DPS and when I regularly saw Healers in Cleric Stance I noticed no one was dying regularly that wasn't standing in stupid. And then I started noticing the same thing in DF. The healers being bad and not using Cleric were the same ones letting people die. Which is when I said "enough is enough, I'm doing to do this myself".

[Dogempire]

I've brought up statistics that show that healers make a huge difference. I've also given examples of how a Healer NOT DPSing will cause a wipe. See the full pull on Fractal for example. The tank doesn't have enough cooldowns and the Healer doesn't have enough HPS to get through the fight if the Healer doesn't throw in some DPS. You will literally die.

What kind of idiotic tank pulls more mobs than the healer can handle? Obviously the wipe is the tank's fault and maybe the dps' fault to some degree, but this is by no means the healer's fault. If the tank's health was yo-yoing I sure as well wouldn't be trying to set up my DOTS, I would be stalling for time hoping the dps could burn down the mobs before the tank's health hits 0

Further it's not OPTIONAL. A bunch of people think it's optional, but SE specifically decided, after many bad people made it to 60 and were doing healz only, to add text to the game to say that you should DPS when no one needs healing.

The debate isn't over if you SHOULD be dpsing, it's on whether you HAVE to be dpsing, which is a no. Dpsing is the dps' job and if the healer wants to help out, then great. If not, then that's fine too.

Just because it's not optional, doesn't mean people will do it. There are tanks that don't use cooldowns, there are NINs who don't AoE. That makes them terrible at their job, that doesn't make those skills optional.

Exactly, there are bad players for every class, there are dpses that do less than 500 dps on level 60 content, tanks who healers have to babysit because see my signature, and healers who for some reason, are incompetent at their basic job of keeping everyone alive.

The problem with Healing is that it's disportionately bad when you have a bad healer. The thing that started to make me realize was that it was the DPSing healers that were good and the non-DPSing healers were bad, was when I saw people die often in Void Ark/Mhach when the Healers were doing zero DPS and when I regularly saw Healers in Cleric Stance I noticed no one was dying regularly that wasn't standing in stupid. And then I started noticing the same thing in DF. The healers being bad and not using Cleric were the same ones letting people die. Which is when I said "enough is enough, I'm doing to do this myself".

Simple, people who only heal are more likely to be bad healers, and people who dps and heal usually have the skill and confidence to keep the party alive while contributing dps.

When you play as a healer your first thought is "I hope nobody dies when I'm healing," not "I hope I can outdps this black mage." First you learn to keep everyone alive, then you learn to turn on the cleric stance and turn it off when you have to heal people, and even then it takes a leap of faith to do so for most people.