Dear Healers who don't DPS

[Seoulstar]

I swear, wasn't there some comment by yoshi about healers not being dps?

From what I heard he doesn't like it. But last I remember he made a comment on it and said it's not mandatory, you don't have to dps as a healer. And that did not settle well for the pro healer dps crowd.

[Rubiss]

You could make damage spells cost no mana, have no cast time, all be oGCD and have a 1 second recast and these healers wouldn't DPS. I recently broke my right wrist (dominant hand) and I stilll DPS and heal in dungeons. It's not a matter of skill. There is something fundamentally off in the heads of these players. I wouldn't bother with them. Avoiding commending them and kick from party whenever possible.

[Hestzhyen]

If SE wants healers to heal... When you get into a party of 4+, they should reduce healers dps potency to nothing. I'm sure they could get it in the system. That would be a good definitive way to say "hey, healers are healers, not dps"

That's a great way to turn off a bunch of people from healing. I'm a heal main and I wouldn't touch dungeons for TEN cracked clusters if you told me I couldn't DPS in those instances. This isn't an MMO that requires constant healing. If you're telling me to stand around and do nothing just to settle a stupid forum argument, then hi there will be one more DPS player clogging up the queue.

If a healer doesn't want to DPS that's on them. I won't comm them and if they /follow and endlessly spam heals on full-health people I will curse myself for coming as a different role. But telling one side or the other "You must/shouldn't DPS!" is stupid.

[Elamys]

Thankfully the game isn't as one dimensional and narrow viewed as your reference. Might want to check that comment in it's entirety.

I dug out the full quote:

Q3.) So...healers now have their DPS scale with Mind AND accuracy is no longer an issue. Do you think this will lead to players having even higher expectations of healers to contribute DPS to content since it is a much easier thing to do now?

A.) First of all, we do not expect healers to contribute to DPS. However we know a lot of the cutting edge players enjoy this aspect about the job and that those progressing in the raids early on use it help clear the fights. We decided to make it so that the idea was more approachable and less punishing so that if a player wants to try it, they aren’t sacrificing all of their healing capabilities to do so like they were with the old Cleric Stance. We didn’t like seeing healers doing entire dungeons in Cleric Stance, especially if they forget to switch back and heal!

That being said, and I want you to really reinforce this to your viewers, I firmly believe it shouldn’t be mandatory and we do NOT have the expectation of them to DPS.

So it's not a 100% "no, healers don't DPS!" but they didn't like seeing healers spending half the fight DPSing. So if you're going to make snide remarks, perhaps you yourself should read the entire quote.

There's also this, which is about how they do not include healer DPS numbers when balancing fights:

Yoshida: Yes. Since all DPS jobs will be increasing up through level 60, it makes sense to have the white mage's DPS extend by a proportional amount as well. For development, such as with Bahamut's Coils, the development team assumes what the item level should be for general equipment on players when they clear a raid. They sum up the basic DPS for four DPS and tanks at that assumed item level and cut that by about 10-15% for the minimum clear DPS. Healer DPS is not taken into account when this is set.

Certainly for people who are at world's first level, their goal is to clear it at as low an item level as possible, lower than the one assumed during development. So if you look at the fight and figure out that if it's not numerically possible to clear with four DPS and tanks, you'll need to make up the gap with DPS from healers. Then when those publish clear videos and other people see the healers DPSing, they might think that healers need to be DPSing even though its a situation that only arose because their clear would have otherwise been impossible. While we could take this into account, and assume a different item level in the next update which would then make it impossible to clear even with the healer DPS, we'd eliminate this type of play for highly skilled players who use communication, items, and a high level of understanding to come up with those last second clears. That would be a tough decision to make, so I still think it should be up to each party's own plans.

This is also one of the reasons we decided to implement both a normal and savage version of Alexander. Once again, healer DPS was not included in the development team's calculation as it was for other jobs, so you should just think of healer DPS as a last way to get your overall party's DPS up to where it needs to be.

So the game is clearly not designed around an expectation of healers NEEDING to DPS.

[Taika]

So the game is clearly not designed around an expectation of healers NEEDING to DPS.

If you look at the latter quote, healer DPS is required to beat the raids for at least until the party has reached the intended item level (and even after that unless the DDs and tanks are playing at 85%-90% of their capacity, in which case, it makes no sense for the healers in the same group to be playing at below 50% of their capacity...).

But more importantly, the question isn't if healer DPS is 100% required for the party to beat a fight. The question is, are healers able to contribute to the party DPS while covering the fight's healing requirements, and since the answer to that question is yes, they should. Especially since if they don't contribute, they will be significantly less active than their party members, which means they're making everyone else work harder than they themselves are willing to.

[HoodRat]

So the game is clearly not designed around an expectation of healers NEEDING to DPS.

No one said this game is designed around an expectation of healers needing to dps. Some people have just been smart enough to realize that dps is much more beneficial to the group than standing idle or healing people who are already at full hp. I don't really know why, but many people seem to struggle with this for some reason.

[Elamys]

A fringe portion of the game's population requiring healer DPS to push at minimum ilvl to me hardly constitutes that the game is designed around the healers needing to DPS. Unfortunately, as he said, people watch those world first clear videos, see the healers DPSing, and for some reason use it to bash players in casual DF content, where you really shouldn't be expecting much anyways. Why treat this as some epic battle of fairness and ethics? It's just a daily roulette. Half the time DPS don't use their utility, I don't give them a hard time for "not working as hard" either. The majority of bards I have met in roulettes since SB was released don't even use songs, and that's a core part of their class!

[Taika]

Why treat this as some epic battle of fairness and ethics? It's just a daily roulette. Half the time DPS don't use their utility, I don't give them a hard time for "not working as hard" either. The majority of bards I have met in roulettes since SB was released don't even use songs, and that's a core part of their class!

I guess we just have different expectations for our party members? I do expect my healers to DPS (at least try to), my BRDs to sing and provide TP/MP, my melees to use Goad and so on. If they don't, I will point it out and give them advice so they can improve. If they refuse to co-operate, I may kick them. I think everyone should try to be active and effective party members when they participate in group content.

The difference here is that no one is defending dps who don't use their utility.

This too, I've only ever seen this kind of lazy "play style choice" defended for healers.

[HoodRat]

A fringe portion of the game's population requiring healer DPS to push at minimum ilvl to me hardly constitutes that the game is designed around the healers needing to DPS. Unfortunately, as he said, people watch those world first clear videos, see the healers DPSing, and for some reason use it to bash players in casual DF content, where you really shouldn't be expecting much anyways. Why treat this as some epic battle of fairness and ethics? It's just a daily roulette. Half the time DPS don't use their utility, I don't give them a hard time for "not working as hard" either. The majority of bards I have met in roulettes since SB was released don't even use songs, and that's a core part of their class!

The difference here is that no one is defending dps who don't use their utility.

[Elamys]

I guess we just have different expectations for our party members? I do expect my healers to DPS (at least try to), my BRDs to sing and provide TP/MP, my melees to use Goad and so on. If they don't, I will point it out and give them advice so they can improve. If they refuse to co-operate, I may kick them. I think everyone should try to be active and effective party members when they participate in group content.

It just comes down to that I don't think it's worth the effort. I don't think it's worth the time spent talking to someone who likely isn't going to listen, and I don't think it's worth the time waiting for somebody else to fill in the spot if we kick (you're not even supposed to kick for that stuff anyways, but SE has stopped caring about people who abuse vote kick). When I'm on a DPS class and the dungeon is going just fine without the healer DPSing, why am I going to throw a fit? It's just not worth it. I like to DPS as a healer. But I fully accept that there are those who don't. I just don't think it's worth it.

I think we can all come to the realization that it's unlikely anybody's minds will be changed here. I hope that one day SE will make it so that healers have to spend the majority of their time healing. But I just really don't think it's worth the energy to complain when people don't in DF.

The difference here is that no one is defending dps who don't use their utility.

When is the last time you've seen a thread solely directed at DPS who don't use their utility, with an OP such as this one, with a tank refusing to tank? My guess is never. Healer DPS threads seem to be a daily occurrence around here; even more frequent if you participate in FFXIV groups outside of the forums, like on Facebook, even MORE if you for some reason hang around shout chat in Rhalgr's Reach.