Should healers now be allowed to play how they choose to play?

[Taika]

There are posts here that disagree with that statement, and plus I havent seen anywhere from SE that Healing role is dps/healer otherwise it would be called that. I have seen quotes that state that they didnt want healers to be forced to dps though.

You don't need an official statement to see how the game is actually designed and played. It is the objective truth that the game's design supports healer DPS and in fact it's even required for some instances (like Antitower boss which turns both DDs to dolls and it's up to the healer and tank to DPS them out).

When you que for an instance its healer, dps, or tank. Healer is not a dps, in my view it is a healer,

"This job should be limited to X because the icon is green" is a very bad argument. As said, you're trying to create artificial limitations to how jobs are supposed to be played. And yet you're not accepting the same argument for BRD/MCH, for example.

In terms of roles and not talking about efficiency here , but with your logic, because summoner has a healing spell and because healing isnt nessesary in some instance,we could not even bother with a healer at all and make the summoner heal.That way you can maxise dps more you job is redundant then isnt it?

If having tank, SMN/BLM and 2 other DDs would be the most effective way to do dungeons, it would be the current meta and how the game would be designed and therefore supposed to be played. But it isn't. Since a healer brings both powerful healing and powerful DPS to a group, it's much more effective to bring one of them.

[Dsync]

We can have this back and forth until the cows come home, but it's not going to change a thing. Don't like the meta? Oh well, going to have to suck it up. Hell, they even lowered the accuracy requirements in dungeons as healers were missing when trying to do damage.

[Spiroglyph]

We can have this back and forth until the cows come home, but it's not going to change a thing. Don't like the meta? Oh well, going to have to suck it up. Hell, they even lowered the accuracy requirements in dungeons as healers were missing when trying to do damage.

This right here should tell us something, at least.

[Ghishlain]

So, out of curiosity, does anyone, from either side of the healer DPS coin, have a direct quote from the Dev team indicating that you're either "only suppose to heal" or "you must use your DPS abilities". I ask because I don't recall the Dev's being so forthcoming about this information.

Any discussion regarding the dev's intent can easily be warped into a pro-DPS or anti-DPS way which leads me to believe the Dev's are happy leaving healer's with the choice or not of expanding past their own defined roles.

And in the case of a healer, your primary role is to mend:

[Feyona]

So, out of curiosity, does anyone, from either side of the healer DPS coin, have a direct quote from the Dev team indicating that you're either "only suppose to heal" or "you must use your DPS abilities". I ask because I don't recall the Dev's being so forthcoming about this information.

Any discussion regarding the dev's intent can easily be warped into a pro-DPS or anti-DPS way which leads me to believe the Dev's are happy leaving healer's with the choice or not of expanding past their own defined roles.

And in the case of a healer, your primary role is to mend:

I have seen that quote thanks for pointing out that healing is your primary role, to all those scholars that dps 70% of the time

[Taika]

I have seen that quote thanks for pointing out that healing is your primary role, to all those scholars that dps 70% of the time

You do realise that if one SCH spends 30% of their time healing and 70% DPSing, and another SCH spends 100% of their time healing, and both are keeping their parties alive, the first one is much better at their job... No one is saying that healers shouldn't cover the healing requirements for an instance. It's simply logical that after those healing requirements are covered, the healer will spend rest of their time doing something useful (which is DPS). And the better one is at healing, the less time they will have to spend covering those healing requirements and the more time they have for DPS.

[Wanzer]

I have seen that quote thanks for pointing out that healing is your primary role, to all those scholars that dps 70% of the time

Yes, but primary suggests a secondary state to me.
And nothing wrong with scholars dps'ing 70% the time, especially if these 70% are just nothing but free time. So, i just come back to my question that nobody answered so far : What are you doing during this free time ? As you keep saying there is always something to do as healer. I'm very curious about this.
Please, don't say overhealing...

[Ghishlain]

I have seen that quote thanks for pointing out that healing is your primary role, to all those scholars that dps 70% of the time

My post is directed to both sides of the coin, or rather, to put bluntly:

To the pro-healer-only player - "What's stopping a healer from adding more DPS if they're idling for 10+ seconds at a time" - nothing the Devs have stated indicated that you only have to heal
To the anti-healer-only player - "Why are you so adamant about all healer's NEED to DPS" - nothing the Devs have stated indicates that a healer must DPS

The point I'm getting at is the fact that the only thing is clear with the healer role is to maintain party health - and that both sides of the coin are correct, though one aspect of the argument is certainly more optimal than the other. The only thing that a healer can do wrong is basically let a party member die / wipe the group due to lack of healing.

[Juicinators]

Personally I don't care what other jobs do as long as we clear the dungeon. If it ever came down to not being able to clear a dungeon I would just disband the group and find a new one.some of us play the game for fun and can live with not clearing a dungeon. I don't mind dps'ing to make the run go faster, I think switching stances is exciting and fun. it really should not be expected. Especially in roulette where your playing with randoms.

[Dsync]

So, out of curiosity, does anyone, from either side of the healer DPS coin, have a direct quote from the Dev team indicating that you're either "only suppose to heal" or "you must use your DPS abilities". I ask because I don't recall the Dev's being so forthcoming about this information.

Best I've seen for both sides: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ccuracy-Issues

They intentionally nerfed accuracy (for dungeons) so healers could do damage in dungeons. They're less comfortable with raids by the looks of it.

And no one here is saying that a healer should forgo healing if the party needs it. Your main goal is to keep the party alive. It's the argument that you don't have to do anything else beyond tapping cure and medica where the issue lays.

While the link I gave doesn't confirm their true intentions, it shows that they have a different attitude depending on type of content. They're pretty much leaving it up to the community.