Is DPS'ing as a Healer Vote Kickable?

[Arg0n]

what drives me nuts it when I as a DPS are on the verge of death I look up at the party list AND THE HEALER IS CASTING AERO
if you are a healer and don't healer then you have no right to go into DF as a healer

Did you die? If not, he has done everything right. DD's normally just get a medica II or regen...

Well, most heal only healers are better at keeping the group healthy

I'd say this is wrong ^^. Most heal-only healer are lacking "healburst" in extreme situation and are normally bad at healing (wiping city, dun scaith etc.) or if tanks drop to fast and vita is not enough...

than the thrillseekers that like to let the tank drop too low to recover promptly from while dpsing like a madman, but some people also like wiping, apparently. So long as we win and I'm happy with my performance, I dunnot care about anyone else's 'efforts'.

Normally I let tanks drop hard, but as long as they live, who cares?
With 10% hp you are still alive and can do whatever you want to. It ends with 0, not 10 or 50%.
We have instant healing for reasons

[Yeol]

^ Exactly.

I keep my tanks HP low because I know when to heal them. If he is a friend of mine? Hahaha.. I'll let it get even lower :P

Most important point here is that no one dies.

[Altena]

Here's a very brief story for you.. Levelling AST, just did my last run of Gubal. (It's my first 60 healer, normally a tank main / dps secondary).

Had a DRK that was pulling small, but after a Regen I didn't need to cast a single heal every group of mobs. So What do you people do if you don't DPS? Stand there and look at the tank, immediately casting Benefict 1 the moment they drop 1% of their health?

If you're not DPSing as a healer, then what on earth are you actually doing in a dungeon? Watching Netflix?

Sure there are times where it is difficult / next to impossible to DPS (A tank that's not popping buffs, pulls big and the only way to keep him up is back to back Benefict II's)..
That's basically the only time..

Cleric Stance exists for a reason.
Gravity / Holy / Bane exists for a reason.
Malefic II / Stone II / Ruin exist for a reason.
Combust / Combust II / Aero / Aero II / Aero III / Bio / Bio II / Miasma all exist for a reason.

What do you think those skills are for? Healing?

[Aldora]

When i started playing A Realm Reborn, my main job was playing as a White Mage. At that time, everything duty we entered was new, so we didn’t really know what to expect in there and how we should play our own classes. I started off as a “I’m a healer, so my main focus is keeping the party alive. Not to DPS.”

As the years go by, you get more experience playing as that specific class. You (and the people around you) are starting to get better gear, making it your job easier as you go. After a while, i found myself with some spare time where the party didn’t require any healing. At first, i would just wait and brace myself for the increase in the damage the party would take, but most of the time it simply didn’t happen.

Eventually, i added a certain rule of thumb to my playstyle, which i called “Knowing your ABC”. In this case, the “ABC” would stand for:

Always Be Casting

This would mean that i would always be casting something and not stand idly by. Depending on the situation, i would either heal more (if the party was taking a lot of damage) or inserting attack spells so that we could kill things faster. This is when i started learning how to “Stance Dance”.

True enough, we all make mistakes, so things didn’t go as planned at various occasions. This had mostly to do with the vast differences between players and their skills with their classes. Not every tank is the same. You have tanks that seem to be invulnerable and don’t require any healing outside of a single Regen, or a Tank who’s HP drops to 0 in a matter of seconds.

Finding a good balance and being flexible with your skill set, is what makes you a good player. As a healer, you are not required to deal damage, but if you are standing idly by, you might as well experiment with your skill set and try inserting an attack spell here and there.

As you gain experience, your skills with the class will improve as well.

That being said, kicking healers from a party because they don’t want to DPS or they do a lot of DPS (rather than healing) is generally not OK. People should always communicate with each other and work out their problems together. And by that, i mean come to a mutual agreement and taking every member in the party into consideration (even the members who are struggling to keep up).

However, this also means that you have to put your best foot forward and give it your all. Put all of your skills to the test and try to improve yourself as well. You can only improve, if you strive to be better with each attempt. After a while you will notice that you will have less trouble keeping the tank alive during bigger pulls and maybe even dps in between healing.

“You can’t advance by standing still.”

[Taika]

The reason healers need to DPS (yes, need to) apart from very particular and rare circumstances is that the healing requirement for content in general is so low, otherwise they end up contributing much less than any other party member, and that is simply not fair. If the party can live with a healer casting 1 regen on tank once a minute, that's what the healer should be doing for healing part - and then use the second half of their toolkit to help the party with DPS. It's in no way "good enough" contribution for a healer to participate once a minute when the other party members are constantly using their actions to advance the group's goals.

I think it would be a good question to ask oneself, "If everyone else in my group would play at my level of effectiveness, would we be able to reach our goal in a reasonable manner?". The minimum standard should be same for healers than it is for other party members. If a tank or a DD would only use useful actions once a minute or even more rarely, the group wouldn't likely get very far.

Well, most heal only healers are better at keeping the group healthy than the thrillseekers that like to let the tank drop too low to recover promptly from while dpsing like a madman

Based on my experiences, the opposite is true. Lately I've been running Creator normal and met way too many of these "I only heal" healing partners. If they've refused to DPS or even communicate in any way (these two seem to go together), I've let them solo heal. Which they've often been completely unable to do (not able to keep tanks alive in A10 normal or in A12 add phase, for example, while no one in the party has been making any mistakes). Last time I did A12 with a healer like this, I ended up healing the group more than my healing "partner" while also DPSing...

[Ageofwar]

Did you die? If not, he has done everything right. DD's normally just get a medica II or regen...

oddly yes I did

so you are saying its OK to keep DPS at <25% in a fight that has heavy unavoidable AOE damage like the last 3 fights in the latest 24 man?

[Yeol]

oddly yes I did

so you are saying its OK to keep DPS at <25% in a fight that has heavy unavoidable AOE damage like the last 3 fights in the latest 24 man?

This might help:

I don't think 24-man instances are examples good enough to stereotype healers in general - as I see it a lot of people in 24-mans don't even necessarily go in as their main class, because they're hoping to gear up alts.

I main healer (SCH specifically) but having a set of 260 gear that is upgradable makes Dun Scaith drops redundant, so I've been going as BLM (alt which i frequently play) ever since 3.5 was released. Admittedly, most of the healers I see in that place have no idea what the heck they're doing... they can't even keep their tanks alive, much less react quickly to such changes. Most wipes I've seen in DS so far happen partially because one team's healers die (thus the whole team ends up dying shortly after), and NO ONE pays attention to the allince member list to see if any of the other teams needs any support.

Most healers there either DPS-only, thus dumping the responsability of doing any actual work on the other healer, or stand around uselessly casting regens when no raid wide damage is happening. D:

[Ageofwar]

This might help:

The incident in question happen in a 4 man dungoen, mind you I have come across a lot of bad healers and tanks since 3.5 hit

[Sylve]

What do you think those skills are for? Healing?

Soloing, actually. Hard to level from 1 - 15 or do MSQs as a Healing Job if you lack any kind of ability to deal damage.

[Arg0n]

oddly yes I did

so you are saying its OK to keep DPS at <25% in a fight that has heavy unavoidable AOE damage like the last 3 fights in the latest 24 man?

Unavoidable AoE?
There's is definitly not much of them. Most damage can be avoided easly!
But yes, if it could be healed, healer should heal and not dps'ing lol.

But the problems in 24 man raids are, there are so many players which can't play their class or even do the mechanics they have to do.
So it's a bit different... you take so much damage and earn debuff stacks if you do something wrong or another one fails and the whole alliance has to suffer from this.

Normally i'd say yes, cast a buffed medica II on everyone, even if they have <25% life, should be enough to keep dps'ing after medica.
But through experience, i heal them up to 100% and refresh medica II cause I know, 50% or more players take a lot of damage due to ignoring mechanics.