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

[Makeda]

Personally, I don't consider it a healer's job to dps, but I do consider it boring to stand around as a healer when there's not much to heal outside of throwing out a regen to the tank here and there. Plus, a little extra dps speeds things up and there's no wrong in that.

I generally agree with you. But most of the people conversing here are talking about the content at level 60 and not in the levels we're at (your profile when I typed this said level 50 WHM, 53 on another server).

At the current content, they're dealing with what sounds like some kind of 'rage timer' (as they call it in WoW) - not enough DPS by some point in time means something bad happens. In an MMO like WoW such rage timers are built on the presumption that if all the properly geared DPS are carrying about 60-70% of their proper weight (if you fail a rage timer in WoW, you were really failing... they make it pretty hard to fail, but so many don't learn their classes/roles that it actually happens often enough), you will just make it through. So in WoW a healer or a tank never needs to switch to DPS unless they're getting bored by the mechanic.

I am guessing that here, at the top content - the DPS might need to pull about 80-90% of their potential... so anyone getting a 'carry' is going to put a LOT more lead onto a group's shoulders... in such a situation, a Healer DPSing can fill in whatever slack that 'subpar DPS' is leaving... it's actually pretty easy to 'under-perform' by only 10-15% or so... a little bit of lag, a moment of confusion, etc... will do it... so a healer filling in the gap will likely make all the difference if your team isn't 'amazing'...

That said, if somebody noticed the healer isn't DPSing, that is 'eye-time' not spent looking at their own actions. That alone will drop their DPS by a good 5-10%... So if you wipe because "the healer wasn't DPSing" it is more likely you wiped because half your DPS were watching the healer's cast bar rather than their own...