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

[CookieMonsta]

It was the design of Gordias that started the DPS Meta, and come Stormblood we may still be seeing DPS Meta. I agree with the fact that Healer DPS is playing 'optimally', and should be in most cases once you're familiar enough with stance dancing and finding the windows available as a healer, but the elephant is still in the room no matter what.

- End Rant -

Gordias didn't start it, it merely exposed its power. Among other things, it separated the good, bad and mediocre. Content that was finally tough enough (and not just the DPS side) to warrant considering optimal healer-tank damage.

[VanilleFang]

Can someone who is anti-healer DPS explain to me how standing around for 98% of a fight or spamming Cure/Physick/Benefic is more fun than Stance dancing?

And also explain to me why your personal choice to slow down a run is acceptable? You may be fine with a run that's 5ish minutes longer but what about the other 3 people playing? I guess you>them?

[Tint]

Can someone who is anti-healer DPS explain to me how standing around for 98% of a fight or spamming Cure/Physick/Benefic is more fun than Stance dancing?

And also explain to me why your personal choice to slow down a run is acceptable? You may be fine with a run that's 5ish minutes shorter but what about the other 3 people playing? I guess you>them?

uhm, that's not the point. at least not for me. i don't want to stay around 98% of the time either - i want to HEAL, not dps and not staying around. but since you all are right - healers should dps when there is nothing to heal - and actually there is nothing to heal in most of the content - i quit healing. but i still want that square is getting rid of the dps-meta, removing cleric, increasing the damage of all monsters so healers have finally something to heal...

and on the other hand... i can't understand why you all are defending the dps-meta. it seems you all WANT nothing to heal, so you can pull more dps. seems you all picked the wrong class... if you want to dps, there are classes with an red icon... can you explain me that?

i mean: the whole "new perspective" for healer-dps in this topic is about making more damage to have less to heal - sounds legit, but i WANT to heal. i hate dpsing, why should i do something i hate to do something i love even less?

[CookieMonsta]

uhm, that's not the point. at least not for me. i don't want to stay around 98% of the time either - i want to HEAL, not dps and not staying around. but since you all are right - healers should dps when there is nothing to heal - and actually there is nothing to heal in most of the content - i quit healing. but i still want that square is getting rid of the dps-meta, removing cleric, increasing the damage of all monsters so healers have finally something to heal...

Be careful what you wish for, what is the difference between a healing rotation and a DPS rotation then if healing was more difficult? They're both rotational type playstyles. At the moment, this heal/DPS duality lends itself to the most unique playstyle of all the classes. 100% healing is more boring than you think.

[Taika]

uhm, that's not the point. at least not for me. i don't want to stay around 98% of the time either - i want to HEAL, not dps and not staying around. but since you all are right - healers should dps when there is nothing to heal - and actually there is nothing to heal in most of the content - i quit healing. but i still want that square is getting rid of the dps-meta, removing cleric, increasing the damage of all monsters so healers have finally something to heal...

That would require them to item level cap all content. Which would be fine by me, personally (apart from the removing cleric part, since that removes the opportunity for the most skillful players to shine, and I don't see why anyone would want that), but probably not for the majority of the playerbase, as it would make obtaining new gear completely irrelevant.

and on the other hand... i can't understand why you all are defending the dps-meta. it seems you all WANT nothing to heal, so you can pull more dps. seems you all picked the wrong class... if you want to dps, there are classes with an red icon... can you explain me that?

I personally chose healer exactly because it's the most versatile role of the game: because I can support my group with heals, shields and DPS, and I feel in this role there's most room for pushing your limits exactly because of this versatility. If the healer roles would be only about healing, I wouldn't play them.

[Laerune]

Is it your job to DPS, NO But do you want to help the group:
- Finish the dungeon faster?
- Do things instead of standing there and wasting mana?

Then you should DPS, I dont think all the healers have to DPS, but if they are able to and can do it, why not help the group by casting some damage dealing spells? If SE wants healers to only heal, then they would have made mobs hit the players with more damage, which inturn means the healer needs to stay out of Cleric Stance and heal or they could just remove Cleric Stance from dungeons, like what they did with PvP. I think the reason why they have not changed this is, because they want to give the players a handicap, by giving them an extra dps that is disguised as a healer.

[VanilleFang]

snip

You didn't even answer my questions. If you are not casting DPS spells then what are you doing? YOU quit healing, but I'm asking those who choose to still play a healer job but refuse to do something of use for the majority of a run.


I'm not defending the dps meta. It's what we have so we have to deal with and make the best of it. You can refuse to optimize your play and/or protest the meta all you want but it, honestly, just looks like you are stamping your feet and crying like a child who can't have a toy. It may not be what you want but refusing to work with it helps no one and will fix nothing.

I will reiterate this again, even though it's been said at least a bazillion times already, if you are not DPSing as a healer you are not being efficient and are either over healing like crazy and/or standing around being dead weight. Why is it okay for a healer to watch Netflix while playing but tanks and dps have to focus on doing proper rotations? A DRG can spam Heavy Thrust and still kill shit, but this is unacceptable. How is that fair when you think a healer using only Cure 2 is completely fine?

And before anyone says "oh but we aren't saying healers should only spam one healing spell"... you can heal most content by just spamming Cure 2.

[Thoro39]

Demanding tougher healing requirements in regular dungeons through higher damage from Tanks also has a chance to alienate "inexperienced or bad" healers from joining the casual content.

Right now, the dps meta caused by low healing requirements has a nice side-effect:
1) Healers, who know how to be efficient at GCDs, will have a lot of GCDs to spare and can put them into dps instead
2) inexperienced, sleepy or bad healers, who have long reaction times, are not that good at keeping the GCD rolling efficiently, or want to take a try in dungeons, still can fullfill the healing requirement of not letting anyone die without much difficulties.

Let's say, hypothetically,a fight in a dungeon currently needs 3 out of 10 GCDs strictly for healing.
However, once you amp up the healing requirement to the extent that a Group 1) healer needs to spend 9 out of 10 GCDs strictly to healing, what happens?
Group 2, who previously passed barely, will be hard pressed and stressed to fulfill the basic healing requirement, leading into failure, death, maybe ragequits, maybe leading into better players, lots of potential outcomes really.

Eitherway, the dps meta has been the meta since pretty much final coil to differentiate good from average players for a good reason.
Healers wanting to only heal and demanding tougher healer requirements for casual content need to also think about what it means for the lower end of players.

[Taika]

Demanding tougher healing requirements in regular dungeons through higher damage from Tanks also has a chance to alienate "inexperienced or bad" healers from joining the casual content.

DPSing as a healer in casual content isn't significantly demanding, though. I would say keeping up with the extremely low healing requirements and doing some DPS is at a similar level of difficulty than filling the minimum requirements for a tank or DPS job. And that's what's being asked, not optimising one's performance.

[HoodRat]

Can someone who is anti-healer DPS explain to me how standing around for 98% of a fight or spamming Cure/Physick/Benefic is more fun than Stance dancing?

They don't know how to heal so they think they have no free time because they're busy overhealing and waiting for people to take damage, which is pretty sad. I'm absolutely terrible at healing and even I can find some time to dps.

Also, I personally am against increasing the healing requirement for content. Healers are already bad, that's why they claim they have no time to dps. So I just don't see why you'd want to make them have to heal more when they already don't know how to do it. Maybe I'm just biased though, I have plenty experience with the common random player being absolutely terrible and showing no signs that they even want to improve.