Is DPS'ing as a Healer Vote Kickable?

[MisterLucie]

It's only clunky in the sense that it sometimes doesn't click on/off. It's purpose is pretty straight forward and anything but clunky.

What purpose is that, exactly? Any healer with a brain is going to know when to be in or out of it, it doesn't require a particularly noteworthy amount of skill or forethought. It's occasionally unresponsive, which means even when you are using it perfectly you can still get screwed over by the game's own limitations. And, probably the most annoying of all, is that healers in PvP are reduced to nothing but healbots because they literally can not do any noticeable amount of damage.

Get rid of cleric stance, balance healer damage to be a bit lower than what it currently is in cleric stance, and make the role more flexible in what it's capable of performing.

[Saito_S]

On a personal level, for instances like Dun Scaith where a run can go from smooth to utterly chaotic in under a few seconds, I freely admit that I do very little Stance-dancing, if any at all. I prefer to stay sharp to keep the group up when an add goes astray, multiple mechanics are failed, or when another alliance starts faltering - if my own is healthy, I can heal and raise to assist another team. You're right in the sense that I'm not "doing" anything, but I do think there are circumstances where it might not be unusual for a healer not to DPS even when the run is going fairly uneventfully.

I DPS pretty much all other content, though. Just, there are times in Dun Scaith where I've DPSed heavily during the beginning portions of the run and ran out of gas when things went south, so I prefer to stay prepared in an instance like that where plenty of people are new or still struggling with mechanics.

I have this vague recollection of someone earlier in the thread saying that 24-person raids are a poor way to measure this whole healer DPS thing -it might have been another thread, but regardless, I agree with the idea. Weeping city and Dun Scaith even more so, because they seem to be harder than Void Ark or the CT series were.

So in those instances, what you are saying is perfectly reasonable (and you said that you DO DPS outside of that for the most part). Outside of those, I myself have played things that way during certain boss fights or trials, where some combination of the boss' ability to deal out fast damage and my party in that case being possibly not the greatest, gives me pause. I can recall instances where I kept placing my finger on the trigger, so to speak, hovering over my Cleric Stance key, but never pulled it, because every time I was going to, something made me second-guess myself and stick to being ready to toss out heals. Was I right in doing so? Certainly not on every occasion, and if anything, I'd bet I'm way too cautious as a healer because I never felt confident at the basics of the job (and I'm rusty as hell at it; haven't tried it in ages).

If I were to answer that question myself, in instances where I end up hardly every going into Cleric's and not DPS'ing much if at all, what do I do with all the downtime? Fretting! I freely admit that I'm not a particularly good healer, and while I would like to give it another go at some point, I have a lot of room for improvement.

I'd still like to hear from someone who flatly refuses to DPS during downtime "on principle" or whatever, what they do while waiting for damage to come in...

[Yasuhiro]

Better not get in a group with me then. I am there not heal and keep people alive not dps. I do not dps on my healers, if I want to dps then I will go on a dps job.

There is no requirement to dps as a healer, our job is to keep everyone alive so they can do their job.

It's one thing to say this
but I'm more puzzled why this post has 21 likes, hooray for encouragement I guess.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

It's one thing to say this
but I'm more puzzled why this post has 21 likes, hooray for encouragement I guess.

Not everyone likes dps crazy healers. I personally can't remember a single smooth run with them ever.

[Greedalox]

Not everyone likes dps crazy healers. I personally can't remember a single smooth run with them ever.

I can't remember the last time I've seen a dps healer drop a tank in a dungeon run. Are you using your CD's?

That's a serious question BTW, I know some people on these forums claim they stop playing their role when the tanks/healers aren't playing how they like, so they force it.

[jameseoakes]

Not everyone likes dps crazy healers. I personally can't remember a single smooth run with them ever.

Strange I find runs are smoother with healers who are able to DPS

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

I can't remember the last time I've seen a dps healer drop a tank in a dungeon run. Are you using your CD's?

That's a serious question BTW, I know some people on these forums claim they stop playing their role when the tanks/healers aren't playing how they don't like to force it.

Tanking dungeons are kinda boring, so I really just run them as dps. I do however use my cd's appropriately as a tank in order to maximize my dps stance uptime and minimize stress on healers.

Incidentally, I find that even when dps stancing dungeons, the dps don't tend to be that great, so even with big pulls a run can take 20 mins+. I'd rather go as a deeps, since I have a run of 15 or lower with a one or two minute wait.

Okay...but what about a middle ground of damage and healing? Why does it have to be one extreme or the other?

Because there really isn't a middle ground from what I've seen. People are either kept healthy, or with just enough HP to survive the next unavoidable AoE, unless RNG curses them with a surprise crit, and even then it's still possible they might die anyway. I know I certainly got in the habit of keeping health potions on me, because most of the time I can't trust my own healers will be able to keep me alive.

[Yasuhiro]

Not everyone likes dps crazy healers. I personally can't remember a single smooth run with them ever.

Okay...but what about a middle ground of damage and healing? Why does it have to be one extreme or the other?

[Amirya]

The argument is more meta/general; i.e., "is this acceptable play?" And barring legit difficulty (someone is really trying, but just isn't very capable), disability, or some other such factor: no, it isn't.

Just out of curiosity, how, precisely, would anyone be able to discern a complete stranger's "really trying, but just isn't very capable" or disabilities? What would be acceptable "some other such factor"?

I mean, I get what you're saying. I really do. But that's such a vague statement. Unless the healer is either me - or one of my friends - I'm not going to know if my healer is high on drugs (illegal or otherwise), or has some sort of disability that would affect reaction time, or has their little sister playing.

[Derio]

Whenever I see a healer that doesn't dps during the downtime I assume they are new to healing