Healers that don't want to DPS are like DPSes who refuse to move out of AoEs.

[Atos]

This community has known and openly agreed to for the most part that this game needs very little healing in most content and scenarios. That's been talked about and like I said- mainly agreed upon, so why talk about it more?

Which leaves the next issue, pointing fingers at a subcommunity within the community as a whole (Who reminded, agree that healing requirements are HEAVILY undertuned) who instead of making the best out of a shallow situation (Dps or nothing) choose nothing. CHOOSE nothing.

So yes, you're trying to scapegoat with a well known and agreed upon game design flaw. The healers may not have to heal much, but that doesn't mean they have to do nothing.

Say what? Agreed upon where? I don't see any agreement, I didn't agree on anything. And regardless of what you agree upon with whom you still have no business telling me how to play.

Most people who complain about healers not dps'ing do not themselves play as healers, let alone raid heal. Then you get brand new players who got carried through latest primal, saw a thread like this then start going off at people without any idea what they're talking about. Healers heal, they don't do nothing. The content I mostly play is raiding and primals, where good healing is pretty relevant. And quit hiding behind "community that agreed upon something" - what you say is your own assertion, take responsibility for what you say.

[Greedalox]

Say what? Agreed upon where? I don't see any agreement, I didn't agree on anything. And regardless of what you agree upon with whom you still have no business telling me how to play.

Healers heal, they don't do nothing.

I've yet to hear a single argument by this community that this game offers full or near chain healing expectations out of a healer. That is mainly agreed upon. I don't tell you how to play either, I'm saying I and apparently many others in the community have a basic expectation out of you- apparently more than you have for yourself?

Healers heal for 20% of the time, and THEN they do nothing. Sorry misconception I may have spread to make you think I said they 100% of the time do nothing.

You do you, no matter how many people agree or disagree with your laze, you always have full control. Nobody has ever said anything about taking that from you. I hope you're not asserting that other players be revoked of their rights to kick you though for laziness.

[Atos]

I've yet to hear a single argument by this community that this game offers full or near chain healing expectations out of a healer. That is mainly agreed upon. I don't tell you how to play either, I'm saying I and apparently many others in the community have a basic expectation out of you- apparently more than you have for yourself?

Healers heal for 20% of the time, and THEN they do nothing. Sorry misconception I may have spread to make you think I said they 100% of the time do nothing.

You do you, no matter how many people agree or disagree with your laze, you always have full control. Nobody has ever said anything about taking that from you. I hope you're not asserting that other players be revoked of their rights to kick you though for laziness.

Chain healing is a strawman, MP management is a big deal as well. You can easily leave yourself with no mp by blowing it on dps. There are other reasons too, but I'm pretty sure you ignore them in favor of your own narrative. And while you did not explicitly tell me what to do, that's what you're implying. There are plenty of posts that explicitly demand that healers dps. And where did that 20% come from? You evaluate what a healer does based on your own assumption, go heal for a bit yourself before talking.

[Greedalox]

Chain healing is a strawman, MP management is a big deal as well. You can easily leave yourself with no mp by blowing it on dps. There are other reasons too, but I'm pretty sure you ignore them in favor of your own narrative. And while you did not explicitly tell me what to do, that's what you're implying. There are plenty of posts that explicitly demand that healers dps. And where did that 20% come from? You evaluate what a healer does based on your own assumption, go heal yourself for a bit before talking.

If you're not chain healing a massive pull, you have time to DPS. It's not a strawman. You can also stop DPS'ing if you're about to put yourself in a critical MP state (It's a strawman to assume anybody is arguing OOMing yourself with DPS).

The 20/80 is based off a wonderful video that was created by someone in the healer forums and then analyzed and broken down. What it depicted was less than 20% of the time there was Healing casted during pulls, and 80% of the time was doing the Manderville Dance (/mdance).
It wasn't a random percentage pulled out of my ass . But that would have been based off your own assumption, wouldn't it?

Edit: Oh I didn't see that you offered me the advice to play a healer for insight on the matter. I play AST at 60! Thank you though.

[Atos]

If you're not chain healing a massive pull, you have time to DPS. It's not a strawman. You can also stop DPS'ing if you're about to put yourself in a critical MP state (It's a strawman to assume anybody is arguing OOMing yourself with DPS).

The 20/80 is based off a wonderful video that was created by someone in the healer forums and then analyzed and broken down. What it depicted was less than 20% of the time there was Healing casted during pulls, and 80% of the time was doing the Manderville Dance (/mdance).
It wasn't a random percentage pulled out of my ass . But that would have been based off your own assumption, wouldn't it?

It's a strawman because I didn't say anything about chain-healing and you portray it as the only factor, which is not the only relevant consideration.

Though 20/80 is not what I usually do/see during dungeon runs. And there's a method that people use to approve what healer does dps-wise? I'd love to see it. Because it seems to me that it's just "dps or gtfo". Also you seem to be talking about dungeons, whereas what I see is the attitude that healers have to always dps whenever they're not healing, raids included. I see a lot of awfully un-specific blanket statements that people use to justify something they made-up themselves.

Edit:

Ok, looked at the video. Unless there are more that's a pretty small sample size. I admit that it happens, though my experience is generally not quite as smooth. And again, dungeon. Not Alex savage, not Zurvan ex, a dungeon.

[Greedalox]

It's a strawman because I didn't say anything about chain-healing and you portray it as the only factor, which is not the only relevant consideration.

Do I? I wonder if you've been reading the whole thread then, or if you kind of just popped in.

I can't find the video so can't say anything about it.

It was reposted right on the page before this one by the person who originally made it.

Because it seems to me that it's just "dps or gtfo".

I've never kicked someone from a dungeon for ZDPS, nor have I brought it up on the spot in a dungeon because most people have trouble attempting drastic changes on a dime. So I think you're absolutely mistaken here. I advocate on the forums because I believe the player base is capable of being better than what it is if educated on the benefits and lack of cons to DPS'ing as a healer in the games current state of low healer requirements.

[Atos]

... I believe the player base is capable of being better than what it is if educated on the benefits and lack of cons to DPS'ing as a healer in the games current state of low healer requirements.

Yeah well that's not what I'm seeing. I don't see a lot of "educating" going on, more like berating. Can't be bothered to count how many posts I've seen that mentioned kicking people out of the party for not following this arbitrary standard they're trying to impose.

[Taika]

And where did that 20% come from? You evaluate what a healer does based on your own assumption, go heal for a bit yourself before talking.

I did Xelphatol back when it was a current expert dungeon as WHM (i249 back when higher item level gear was already available with Scripture tomes). As I was only healing, I was only active for 17% of the dungeon with over 35% overheal. I did not have to cast a single Cure spell during the pulls. The tank didn't even have any current gear for that patch.

Here's my original post about it:

Yesterday I did some testing on how it really is like to only heal in expert roulette, which I think is a good example because it's content probably ran by majority of player base this discussion is relevant to.

I queued to expert roulette as WHM and we got Xelpathol. In addition to me, the party consisted of a WAR who had never tanked the dungeon before (no endgame experience as WAR), a BLM (his Savage job, currently on A11S progression), and a DRG (no endgame experience as DRG). So quite a random party composition with people more or less familiar with their roles in that dungeon.

The WAR pulled as much as he could at the time (not knowing the dungeon as tank he failed this a couple of times) and I would only use my healing abilities. This was the result, my every single heal cast for the whole 21 min dungeon run:

- Regen x24
- Medica II x16
- Asylum x7
- Assize x4
- Cure II x5 (between pulls, not during them)
- Tetra x4

So in addition to Medica II, the only thing I actually had to cast in the whole dungeon was Cure II, which I did a total of 5 times (between pulls, not during them). Everything else was instant cast abilities. I also used Eye for an Eye on tank and sometimes Esuna, and I cast stoneskin on everyone between pulls.

Even with this little use of healing, my overheal was 35,9%, so the actual healing requirements for this dungeon are even lower. I was active 17% of the whole dungeon while the rest of my group members were active 72-77% of the dungeon.

This is a perfect example of the low healing requirements in the game and how it causes a huge activity difference between a healer who doesn't DPS and their group members. On that run I did not contribute nearly as much as my group members, in fact I was using /icam and doing /mandervilledance while they were actually making an effort. If it would have been the tank or a DD only being active 17% of the time and dancing and idling for the rest, they would have been removed from the party, but for me, some people would actually argue I was doing just fine.

I took a video of the whole run and uploaded it in case someone's interested. This is the final boss fight, during which the only things I actually cast were 3 Medica IIs. Other than that, I used Regen (4), Assize (2) and Asylum (2). Here's the direct link to the fight: https://youtu.be/jBgMe5uHPsE?t=17m17s

TLDR: Not DPSing as a healer means you're just being carried by your group members for over 80% of the dungeon time.

My question is, why is it good enough participation from a healer to only use 1-3 abilities every minute, while this would not be accepted for a tank or DD? The only argument I've seen for this for now has basically been "it's ok for them because their jobs are called healers", which just isn't very convincing.

[Atos]

... My question is, why is it good enough participation from a healer to only use 1-3 abilities every minute, while this would not be accepted for a tank or DD? The only argument I've seen for this for now has basically been "it's ok for them because their jobs are called healers", which just isn't very convincing.

Because people always take it to the next level and start demanding that you always dps when not healing. And as I've said before, you get new players that adopt that mentality from the get-go and start turd-flinging without a clue. If a healer does nothing else they'll dps naturally, or not, who cares. It's what this type of mentality evolves into that causes problems. I've played DPS, tank and heals in raids, and heal dps is never an issue if you just want to clear/progress through instance. It's only an issue when people make it an issue.

[Taika]

Because people always take it to the next level and start demanding that you always dps when not healing.

And what's the issue with that? As a healer, when no one is in any danger (and you should know it as all fights are scripted), what else is there to do but DPS? It's a choice of 1) DPS, 2) do nothing at all, or 3) do something useless (overheal or spam Stoneskin over and over or something). There is only one correct choice here (unless you're in a very specific situation in which the best thing you can do for your group is to do nothing or do unnecessary overhealing, which can happen, but is rare).

And as I've said before, you get new players that adopt that mentality from the get-go and start turd-flinging without a clue.

This is a slippery slope argument, and also a strawman. No one is advocating healer play that puts DPS before keeping your party members safe. The argument is, 1) when you know your party members are safe and don't need healing, do DPS, and 2) required healing in majority of the fights is so low that there is almost always room for healer DPS.

I've played DPS, tank and heals in raids, and heal dps is never an issue if you just want to clear/progress through instance.

Are you claiming that it's been possible in this game to complete Alexander Savage raids without any healer DPS when they've been released? Because I'd like to see a group like that for sure.

There is no alternative to play if you don't like DPS. Healer is the only job that fits that role. If you don't like pets and want to DPS, there are other options available to you.

Unfortunately, since every single job in this game is very DPS focused, if you don't like to DPS, this game probably isn't for you. There also isn't room for alternative play styles for any job in this game, since the design is so straightforward and there's only one effective way to play each job. You can't really play a pure support BRD or pure healing healer and be an effective party member even if you wanted to. You can ask for changes in game design, but there's no point in asking changes for "play styles", when current design doesn't allow for any.