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

[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.

[FunkyBunch]

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

A tank that knows what's possible at high level play? It takes one or two Holies/Gravities, a Swiftcasted ShadowFlare or DOTS combo to make the difference between a wipe on Fractal and doing all of the mobs in one section in one pull.

Granted that's extreme. Because that's optimal play to minimize dungeon time.
If you do it properly, you do it while your protection spells are still up before the Tank's HP starts yo-yoing. Then go back to Healz while the DPS kills the things. And as a few things die, you go back to doing a bit more DPS. The tank is literally going to use all his cooldowns, so you're safe for at minimum 10 seconds of DPS. However, if you do nothing, the tank will die, and then everyone will die.

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.

and the problem is there are MORE bad healers than anything else.

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.

THAT IS WHY THERE ARE SO MANY BAD HEALERS. If you only learn how to do them one at a time, you can never do more than one at a time. Very few people can bridge that gap once they've practiced a bad way to play for 60 levels. Which is why the Hall of the Novice tells you at level 15 to start DPSing so it's not impossible for you to grasp by the time you get to 60.
If you don't start by doing both while it's simple and easy, you'll never learn when it gets complicated. The step-by-step approach doesn't work. The game already gives you the best way in that the easy dungeons don't really require much healing so you can DPS more and it just gets a bit harder as you level up.

[lulunami]

THAT IS WHY THERE ARE SO MANY BAD HEALERS. If you only learn how to do them one at a time, you can never do more than one at a time. Very few people can bridge that gap once they've practiced a bad way to play for 60 levels. Which is why the Hall of the Novice tells you at level 15 to start DPSing so it's not impossible for you to grasp by the time you get to 60.
If you don't start by doing both while it's simple and easy, you'll never learn when it gets complicated. The step-by-step approach doesn't work. The game already gives you the best way in that the easy dungeons don't really require much healing so you can DPS more and it just gets a bit harder as you level up.

Yeah I think practicing large pulls is good for healers and tanks to learn the limits of emergency healing and anticipating huge spikes of damage. Although, these types of big pulls tend to only work if you have competent DDs and tank. If you can have a premade party, these things go very smoothly. However, doing these types of pulls with randoms in duty finder might be an exercise in frustration since not everyone is on the same wavelength in terms of expectations and ability.