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

[Taika]

I just did a dungeon on AST and I mainly healed. I did dps whenever i could do so comfortably. I could not always dps though. If i felt over-stressed things would go south and so i chose to gimp out on dps until I knew my party was ok. Just healing alone and no dpsing, I know for certain i was active more than 70% of that dungeon. If you include dots and my single target attack spam.. id say i was active more than 95% of time my party was in combat.

Sure there may be cases in which the required healing is enough to keep the healer active, and that's of course alright, no one is objecting that. What people are objecting is exactly what I did in that dungeon: I healed enough to keep people alive but was afk for everything else, resulting in 83% of inactivity (was parsed by someone so it's a fact, not my own estimation). It's not ok to afk over 80% of the dungeon, and because of the low healing requirements and major overgearing, that is exactly what a healer will do in many cases if they don't DPS (or do ridiculous overhealing, which doesn't help the group any more).

In short, the argument is: a healer should be as active as their other group members and they should contribute in a meaninful manner. If the healing requirement in a situation isn't enough to keep them active, they should be contributing with DPS.