Isn't playing WHM optimally going completely against what SE wants healers to be?

[Dregenfox]

considering the majority of people discussing healer DPS seem to admit "yeah, you should really only DPS because there's just not much healing to be done," whereas the devs have stated multiple times that they don't want healers to be dpsing a majority of the time, does that not indicate a flaw in the design that they are trying to achieve?

I love this game. I don't hate DPSing as a healer. But it often feels like why have a healer role if 80% of the time, I'm DPSing? It's a legitimate flaw in the game's design because it has been stated by the game's designers that they want healers to heal most of the time. It's not a matter of taste.

Where did you get this quote from the devs?

[Elamys]

Where did you get this quote from the devs?

There are two quotes in particular that Yoshida has made on the subject.

The first one is from a pre-Stormblood interview with...was it Mr. Happy? I don't watch a lot of the video interviews and I don't really follow streamers.

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.

This one is from a rather old interview:

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.