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

[Cynfael]

disagreed. anything less than full heal is that much less HP for them to work with the moment their stupid-proofing wears off and starts leaking. And 9-12s with the group not taking damage? by the time I finish stacking dots(assuming mechanics even give me that much time) I'm going to have to go into overdrive because they'll constantly fail. why risk being in the middle of something and not at the ready to react to damage? that extra second of delay coming out of cleric stance is just going to make healing them back up before they faceroll into something else and die less secure.

a safe, secure run is my only objective. I don't care if I have to heal moar as long as the chance of a wipe is as close to 0% as possible. you can't count on people to keep themselves alive, and even if they promised you that you could, they'll wind up breaking it.

The key flaw in that logic is the word "react." Most of what you do as a healer (or as any role in this game, really) is plan for what's going to happen and use your skills accordingly.

No, your best-laid plans will not 100% cover the occasional party member who seems determined to die to mechanics, but when you know what is coming down the pipeline and what your party is expected/supposed to do about it, your mental flow chart will be pretty reliable. Having to weave in an "oh crap" instant heal or having to swap to Plan B (i.e. "drop everything else and help the party member who screwed up badly") doesn't mean that you need to remain on standby or that you need to keep everyone 100% full 100% of the time.

Also, there is no delay coming out of Cleric Stance. You sacrifice nothing by using it correctly, and that goes back to learning the fights while keeping your emergency options on your mental backburner in case something does go horribly wrong. Personally I deal with this by thinking of what mechanic is about to come up and how likely it is that someone could die from it if they screwed up and didn't get my immediate help. If there's a fair chance of death, I'll make sure I'm ready to drop CS if I have to; if there is no risk, or if it's one of those modest raid-wide AoEs that kills no one and is followed by nothing immediately after, I'll finish whatever I'm doing and then patch up the boo-boos. If I feel particularly fancy, I'll drop CS to shield up and then go back into CS to keep pushing while the AoE does little or no damage.