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

[Blazinhart]

IMO
Our role (yes, I'm a healer) is to heal. So what is really important is to maintain party members alive. Healers aren't obligated to DPS, but if you feel comfortable and can manage healing time well, you can help with some damage. It really piss me off when I hear people complaining about healers not DPSing. Man, if we wanted to DPS we would change to a DPS Role. If the DPSs aren't dealing enough damage, so they need to review their rotation, geras, or anything that is letting it down, and not blame healers for not doing what they were supposed to do.
When I go to a DG/Raid/Trial for the first time, I never DPS, because I need to learn the timing and mechanics of the battle. If I get used to the battle and it isn't a hard constant-healing MP-sucking battle, I DPS if possible. Otherwise I prefer to do my role the best way I can and do what the job has to do.

[Leigaon]

I strongly disagree. These threads(not forums) need to stay alive because it is an important topic about gameplay...

4. Sadly many healers do not learn this. There have been countless times that I have encountered healers who completely ignore their damage spells unless they are soloing. There are also tons who do not use/hotkey/crossclass Cleric Stance. I have also met many who remove older healing spells (ie. no Cure or Cure II just Cure III) because they don't read and don't take the time to understand their spells. Yes, this is kind of off topic, but I am using it to make a point: there are healers who don't take it upon themselves to learn how to play their class, and while they can do this if they want it isn't effective or efficient...

I think the frustration comes from the fact it's the same question each time and the answer is the same. Where people get into arguments is they don't like how some justify the use of their time as a healer. You get people who get upset and mad going "Well when I heal..." making that person feel lesser. Then it's just natural that person gets defensive and thinks up their ways of justifying what they do. When in reality, even though it is part of our skill set not everyone always gets down to that level of priority for one reason or another.

People use themselves as an example but make it sound like their way is the staple. For example, one other topic was about cleric stance going away. That person felt it was useless because they've never let anyone die due to them being in DPS stance so it made no difference on their play style and should be removed. While that's great they fail to see the others views and take in the pros / cons of each situation. If you couldn't do what they did then you were a bad player. This makes that person one sided and at that point you can't communicate to them.

Though your 4th point, is actually more of what we need. Macros, new players on how to set up cross bars, helpful HUD set ups. These things are much more helpful now that we know what the answer is the entire DPS / Cleric Stance question / concerns.

Then again, if people believe it's really helpful. Then..continue to make them. Now that you mention it I think I'm going to go look up some new HUD and maybe try to re-think a few of my healing setup macros and crossbars to make my healing life a bit more fluid! Good luck to all you healers out there!

[ManuelBravo]

It's not mandatory but as a mentor who tanks and dps I can tell 85% of most players get frustrated when the battles are for example easy mobs and healers don't DPS. If your standing there not healing or doting yes it gets on peoples nerves and recommend to do so to help a bit and you don't get too bored of not doing anything but healing. In raids, trials, and bosses by own means is up to you. Temple of the Dead, unless your focusing on 0 ko's for new floors we don't want you dpsing. All an all it depends on how you want to play your role. As a mentor I can say people out there lack common sense and want people to be at their pace. Just worry about enjoying the game and believe me tehre will always be groups who take on healers who just want to heal.

[SDaemon]

IMO
Our role (yes, I'm a healer) is to heal. So what is really important is to maintain party members alive. Healers aren't obligated to DPS, but if you feel comfortable and can manage healing time well, you can help with some damage. It really piss me off when I hear people complaining about healers not DPSing. Man, if we wanted to DPS we would change to a DPS Role. If the DPSs aren't dealing enough damage, so they need to review their rotation, geras, or anything that is letting it down, and not blame healers for not doing what they were supposed to do.
When I go to a DG/Raid/Trial for the first time, I never DPS, because I need to learn the timing and mechanics of the battle. If I get used to the battle and it isn't a hard constant-healing MP-sucking battle, I DPS if possible. Otherwise I prefer to do my role the best way I can and do what the job has to do.

At the moment there is just far too much downtime with healing. I've gotten into the habit of DPSing just to pass the long periods of time where people just don't need healing. Honestly rather than continuing this DPS meta focus, I wish SE would adjust how outgoing damage is so that there is more of a constant need for healers to heal and also for tanks to worry more about survival and aggro than dps. But egh, I'm currently resigned to this because I don't foresee SE doing such an overhaul to their fight setups.

[FunkyBunch]

IMO
Our role (yes, I'm a healer) is to heal. So what is really important is to maintain party members alive. Healers aren't obligated to DPS, but if you feel comfortable and can manage healing time well, you can help with some damage. It really piss me off when I hear people complaining about healers not DPSing. Man, if we wanted to DPS we would change to a DPS Role. If the DPSs aren't dealing enough damage, so they need to review their rotation, geras, or anything that is letting it down, and not blame healers for not doing what they were supposed to do.
When I go to a DG/Raid/Trial for the first time, I never DPS, because I need to learn the timing and mechanics of the battle. If I get used to the battle and it isn't a hard constant-healing MP-sucking battle, I DPS if possible. Otherwise I prefer to do my role the best way I can and do what the job has to do.

Honestly, that way of learning a fight is the least optimal way to learn a fight. If you don't learn by using all your kit, it's going to take you way longer to actually learn the fight. Your way would be like a Nin only using the AE combo until he learned the mechanics. It's just bad play at the end of the day. And for some reason, it's only okay for Healers to be bad.

CS. It's a single 5 second cooldown. And you have Swiftcast/Rez for the times you really blow it. There's zero excuses to actually not use it, besides your own irrational fear of failure.

[VanilleFang]

CS. It's a single 5 second cooldown. And you have Swiftcast/Rez for the times you really blow it. There's zero excuses to actually not use it, besides your own irrational fear of failure.

Let's not forget that all healing jobs also have abilities that heal the same regardless if CS is up or not. There's also mitigation tools that can used while in CS, as well as the ability to apply HoTs on the tank before entering CS.

Healer's have so many options that just make CS such a useful tool that is foolish to ignore it (if you actually care to git gud).

[Raven_Darkstar]

I wasn't planning on chiming in on this debate. As my opinion has been stated already, and probably far better by others. Personally, I'm firmly on the dps whenever you can side of things. However, it's really been bothering me how some are being so dismissive of others points of view. And I also think there are some factors here that aren't taken into account enough.

For one thing, I see the complaint all over the forums, about content being too easy, not enough damage to heal. Healers are bored, bored, bored. "SE, fix it!" It seems to me though, that these complaints are often coming from people who overgear said content. Of course it's going to seem easy to them. Of course they're going to have plenty of time to dps. Outside of no cd using tanks and aoe eating dps parties, of course. ;P However, to those closer to the minimum ilvl, they have less opportunity to be bored. They're going to be healing much more, and dpsing less. I don't think anyone would argue that this makes perfect sense, yes?

But now, we have tanks and dps perhaps noting that the healer in their group isn't dpsing as much as some they have seen, and they think "Aha! One of these lazy, slacker healers, trying to get away with being carried! Not in My group you don't!" And they call out said healer, to varying degrees of insulting. When in fact, that healer did nothing wrong, and was doing their best to keep the party alive, and fit in some dps when they felt safe to do so.

This, is where this healer dps meta, and the pressure on healers that if they don't dps they automatically suck, is a problem. Because you have people in other roles, who have never played a healer, know nothing about what it's like, but yet feel that they have a perfect right to judge a healers performance and harass them for it. Not taking into account the difference in gear and quite probably skill levels, between the healer they are harassing, and the godlike healers they're comparing them to, and finding them lacking.

I know this is idealistic and horribly naive, and also will never happen, but it would be nice if at least among the healer player community we tried to be a little more understanding, objective, and less inclined to trot out statements like "git gud".

One last thing in this horribly long post lol, don't misunderstand me. I am not in any way excusing those who truly are simply being lazy (jumping, emoting healers, I'm looking at you >.<). I'm just asking people to take into account all the factors and possible circumstances before making judgements.

[Watachy]

SE designed this game in a way that everyone (healers included) have to dps

/end of thread

[Chevronone]

I just find that people take things way too personally most of time, and it's best to just leave them be.

I mean, I usually keep my mouth shut when it comes to healing related issues because my extent of knowledge when it comes to heals is pretty much "make HP go up=good." But if I see a healer standing there for what amounts to literal chunks of time without doing anything, I'll admit I get annoyed. I'll perhaps ask if they could possibly help push dps if they don't mind and if they respond with "im not really that comfortable, still learning,"'etc then absolutely no problem at all. Tanking isn't my main, so I understand. But usually what I get in response is, "excuse me, play your own class,mind your business," etc...

...and then of course I have to be a child and forget how to use my CDs effectively. They only want to heal, right? Let them eat cake.

[Cynfael]

I'm just going to reiterate, in case there is any confusion out there, that healer DPS is not a phenomenon born exclusively of everyone being overgeared for content. Players have been successfully contributing DPS from the healer role regardless of ilvl since the beginning.

It's true that increased ilvl relative to content difficulty makes it easier for everyone to play more aggressively, but it's a huge oversimplification to suggest that healers DPS simply because they are overgeared and bored. Skilled players look for opportunities to do more and play better, and this is an obvious way that healers of all ilvls do that.