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

[Wyntir]

Just coming to this thread so I'm not reading all 131 pages of it, but I personally am not a fan of dpsing as a healer. If I wanted to dps, I'd play my summoner. I do DPS when I can, since it helps things go faster, but I'm not worried about my DPS either. I've seen a fair few healers complain about tanks in roulettes being too squishy so they can't DPS (which usually results in a wipe because they try to do it anyway, instead of just healing?) or DPS getting hit by things so they have to stop DPSing to heal them.. which is kinda mind blowing to me. I get that they shouldn't be getting hit by retard mechanics, but still, your role is to HEAL. I also keep seeing shit in PF, people doing speed runs and only wanting healers who are expect to pull X DPS... like.. WHAT? Makes me glad I didn't play HW and only came back now to get ready for SB.

[Lambdafish]

Just coming to this thread so I'm not reading all 131 pages of it, but I personally am not a fan of dpsing as a healer. If I wanted to dps, I'd play my summoner. I do DPS when I can, since it helps things go faster, but I'm not worried about my DPS either. I've seen a fair few healers complain about tanks in roulettes being too squishy so they can't DPS (which usually results in a wipe because they try to do it anyway, instead of just healing?) or DPS getting hit by things so they have to stop DPSing to heal them.. which is kinda mind blowing to me. I get that they shouldn't be getting hit by retard mechanics, but still, your role is to HEAL. I also keep seeing shit in PF, people doing speed runs and only wanting healers who are expect to pull X DPS... like.. WHAT? Makes me glad I didn't play HW and only came back now to get ready for SB.

TLDR of the thread: healer DPS is complex, and most people won't bite your head off if you don't do it often. However, please don't be lazy, and don't not DPS on principle of being a healer. People appreciate if you at least try and fail to play your job to its full potential than idle when mechanics don't hit hard. This is especially true of SCH who has a fairy and a strong DPS toolkit that compliments their healing by being DoT.

You seem to be doing that, which is good, and means the topic shifts to how the healing meta could be improved, which is a huge topic that could be talked about in length, and would take a lot of changes to the game to be fully realised both mechanically and socially.

[RopeDrink]

<snip> like.. WHAT?

Those are people problems, not Healer problems.

There are players out there who just want to spam that healthbar to full and little else. There are players who aren't happy unless they're out DPS'ing DPS with overgeared tanks. There are also people who want to cherry pick and min-max certain content. The real-deal healers are guaging their tank and weighing them up versus overall damage, knowing when it's safe to DPS, when they shouldn't be, and fulfiling a nice blend of keeping people healthy vs getting enemies unhealthy. The lines blur in many cases, but the essence is the same. I love DPS'ing as a Healer and get a bit sour when I'm healing a squish-tank who makes that difficult, but I never forget what I signed up as.

[ADVSS]

Those are people problems, not Healer problems.

There are players out there who just want to spam that healthbar to full and little else. There are players who aren't happy unless they're out DPS'ing DPS with overgeared tanks. There are also people who want to cherry pick and min-max certain content. The real-deal healers are guaging their tank and weighing them up versus overall damage, knowing when it's safe to DPS, when they shouldn't be, and fulfiling a nice blend of keeping people healthy vs getting enemies unhealthy. The lines blur in many cases, but the essence is the same. I love DPS'ing as a Healer and get a bit sour when I'm healing a squish-tank who makes that difficult, but I never forget what I signed up as.

If I do get off my ass and heal something, I usually guage how fast the tank is dying before i even consider to dps, if they are allergic to cooldowns, ASAP
or even tank stance, theyll probably get filler dps spells out of clerics, or clerics when theres only 2 or 3 mobs left. More retrospectically as a tank Ill also test the waters, and as long as im not dying in 3 or 5 seconds, Im not too entirely worried. @ spells come to mind, consciously or unconsciously. Ill never not notice holy, or gravity, And depending on how dead i am while hearing this spam go off, Ill either panicly drop LD or HG or just pop something light, for their come down from their unnoticible spam. Back in 2.0 the grating noise of Holy was akin to the sound of a thousand angels, in any dungeon I ran. But I switched to DRK and usually it cauases me to drop grit and pop BW

whats really stupid here is how holy spam just wrecks bloodprice, and probably the happiest moment of being a drk, using DAAD limitlessly. But outsode of that a good player will adapt somehow. Taking too much aggrp as dps, slow the output. Tank dying from cure 1 spam, use a cure 2 maybe. Not enough? f it benediction.

[Stormbad]

Those are people problems, not Healer problems.

There are players out there who just want to spam that healthbar to full and little else. There are players who aren't happy unless they're out DPS'ing DPS with overgeared tanks. There are also people who want to cherry pick and min-max certain content. The real-deal healers are guaging their tank and weighing them up versus overall damage, knowing when it's safe to DPS, when they shouldn't be, and fulfiling a nice blend of keeping people healthy vs getting enemies unhealthy. The lines blur in many cases, but the essence is the same. I love DPS'ing as a Healer and get a bit sour when I'm healing a squish-tank who makes that difficult, but I never forget what I signed up as.

Exactly how I feel. A good healer needs to be able to make that decision in an optimal manner to adjust to a variety of player skills. Not just defaulting to always healing or always dpsing. On that note, every job shares an equal responsibility to help the group out for example, using self heals or monks using mantra or bards using foes or ninjas using shadewalker or dragoons using elusive. All jobs need to be able to adjust to a variety of player skills and not just default to always doing one scenario.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Makes me glad I didn't play HW and only came back now to get ready for SB.

Unfortunately, I doubt this will change come Stormblood. In fact, I suspect it will only get worse unless the devs make a decision one way or another in regards to the DPS meta. If they continue to ignore, people will further push for healers to DPS because there just isn't enough outgoing damage even in the hardest content. Watching a pov of a cautious WHM, there were so many spots where she literally did nothing. That all said, this mostly extends only to Savage. If that isn't your forte, then you likely won't come across it in-game as much.