Healer & Tank DPS (WoW vs FFXIV)

[Hunky]

I'm speaking from my experience as a white mage player. I've never been in a situation where I thought doing nothing would be more helpful than dpsing.

And that's because healers, at least white mages, get plenty of tools to help us out in that regard.

For most normal content, keeping up regen and asylum on the tank is enough, with an occasional cure thrown out. For group wide damage, a single medica 2 is enough to get everyone fully healed up.

There are instant reactionary heals meant for when tanks take a sudden burst of damage, and these usually do not cost any mp, such as benediction and tetragrammaton. And they're also extremely potent.

As far as mp regeneration goes, white mages have access to assize, lucid dreaming, and thin air (which reduces the mp cost of your spells to zero for a time).

You also have access to other helpful spells such as divine benison (shield), largesse (increases healing potency), and swiftcast (makes your next spell instant).

All these incredibly helpful and powerful spells, combined with the fact that damage in this game is scripted, telegraphed, and bursty, means that healers have a lot of downtime.

At lower levels, it's even less healing intensive.

Run a dungeon and you'll see. Healers end up having a lot of time in which they don't need to heal. This is why it is considered optimal and efficient to dps as a healer in this game. Not only that, but healer dps does help out a lot. It can help make dungeons noticeably faster.

There's even a video out there of a party running a dungeon in which the healer only heals. It was meant to show players just how much downtime the healer had. They were able to spam dance emotes and all. I don't have the link though.

EDIT: SaitoHikari provides an eloquent and thorough explanation on the bottom of page 4. Thank you for such a great post! You put it better than I could.

[zipzo]

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Great post.

What do you say to the idea that in such a case where your healing is not frequently needed, you can just bring another DPS in your position so that the remaining healers have more to do?

If the healing requisite is low and MP required to support that healing is nearly a non-issue, doesn't your spot become redundant to a healer who heals 2x as much and spends 2x as much mana as you do? If you are frequently experiencing down time and very rarely having trouble with MP, isn't the logical choice to just bring another actual DPS?

[jameseoakes]

Great post.

What do you say to the idea that in such a case where your healing is not frequently needed, you can just bring another DPS in your position so that the remaining healers have more to do?

If the healing requisite is low and MP required to support that healing is nearly a non-issue, doesn't your spot become redundant to a healer who heals 2x as much and spends 2x as much mana as you do? If you are frequently experiencing down time and very rarely having trouble with MP, isn't the logical choice to just bring another actual DPS?

Some fights are solo healerable but this tends to come a little later after people overgear the fight. The extra mitigation the second healer will often bring really helps with the more punishing parts of fights

[Hunky]

Thanks!

Are you talking about 8-man content where there are two healers in the party?

In that case, it is like how jamesoakes said. If it is an older fight and people are mostly overgeared, one healer can solo heal the fight.

However, there are times when one healer might die and that secondary healer becomes the new primary healer.

There are fights that can be pretty punishing and if there were only one healer and that healer dies, it'd be extremely difficult to get through the fight.

It's why we also have two tanks. Apart from tank swap mechanics, a second tank is there to ensure that there will be someone who can tank the boss should the first tank be killed.

[zipzo]

There are fights that can be pretty punishing and if there were only one healer and that healer dies, it'd be extremely difficult to get through the fight.

It's why we also have two tanks. Apart from tank swap mechanics, a second tank is there to ensure that there will be someone who can tank the boss should the first tank be killed.

That seems like a lackadaisical reason to waste a spot on a "extra" healer though.

If your healer dies, maybe it'd be more prudent to consider that a catastrophic mistake leading to a wipe and just move on to the next pull and try again? You'd stand to complete the encounter much more efficiently in the event your healer doesn't make such a mistake, no?

In a world where healers and tanks are optimizing to the point of maximizing DPS, isn't it contradictory to cast a safety net of such extremity for your raid, that of bringing a 2nd healer in case the first (presumedly the only *necessary* one) dies, when they shouldn't?