Dear Healers who don't DPS

[Snow_Princess]

Posts like these make me want SE to bring dps roles's dps casually up to 7/8 times what any tank/heal can ever dream off and adapt the overworld accordingly.

If you are reduced to the point of shitting on healers not dpsing, I'll make it a point to *not* dps if I ever meet you. Not that I can't. Your attitude pisses me off and and you don't need my dps to clear such casual content anyway.

and what about the dps that still manage to do less then healers? forcing people to run slow dungeons now?

[MoroMurasaki]

I feel like this thread has veered slightly off topic.


OP said nothing about healers "playing optimally" or "90% healer DPS", he simply stated that healers should use all GCDs on something worthwhile which either means healing the party or doing damage. If you feel that using all your GCDs is going to mean you're playing optimally or that it's going to skyrocket your parses to the pinnacle of fflogs you are mistaken. There is a difference between the sort of nasty elitism that, frankly, has no role outside of premades and asking a healer to use all their time wisely.

The real comparison is best done by someone with a healer and tank/DPS at 70 - do a run of something tanking or DPSing then do that same run as a healer contributing zero DPS. You will be bored out of your mind with the amount of time nothing is required of you and you'll likely overheal a ton from hovering over all the health bars waiting for something to do.

The bottom line is healers who are at the very forefront of progression DPS because they (and their groups) are skilled enough to handle it. The rest of us don't have to even run anything blind, there will be a Youtube guide within a day. Once you have a basic understanding of a fight you can either choose to do something and play the game or you can sit back and rely on your party to carry you.

[Saefinn]

I'd like to hit a point with the OP:

Every other job in the game has to be pushing a button on every single GCD, why do so many of you feel you don't have to do the same? You should be pushing some button every GCD that has a positive effect. That includes DPSing. Healers that don't simply aren't using their full kit and it would be unacceptable for any other job to be doing the same.

Every other job doesn't though. From my experience healing since BETA, I can find that I am picking up the slack of the rest of the party in PUGs, cos they're making mistakes, aren't using their CD's as effectively, or eating tank busters that can be avoided. It varies. Sometimes it is the healer that carries. So it goes both ways IMO.

I don't complain, because they're PUG's. People have varying levels of experience and skill. If I am new to a fight, there's a good chance I'm not DPS healing, I prefer to get a feel for it first, should tank busters or party busters appear.

[MoroMurasaki]

Every other job doesn't though. From my experience healing since BETA, I can find that I am picking up the slack of the rest of the party in PUGs, cos they're making mistakes, aren't using their CD's as effectively, or eating tank busters that can be avoided. It varies. Sometimes it is the healer that carries. So it goes both ways IMO.

I don't complain, because they're PUG's. People have varying levels of experience and skill. If I am new to a fight, there's a good chance I'm not DPS healing, I prefer to get a feel for it first, should tank busters or party busters appear.

I completely agree that many times as a healer I carry new tanks/DPS and I know sometimes that can be rough.


I feel that this is still no excuse for poor play though. Just because sometimes the rest of your party is bad is no excuse to be bad yourself. Again, as I said in an earlier post in this thread, there are occasionally fights where DPS as a healer is going to be a bad choice from an mp perspective but those (incredibly rare) occasions are not what is being talked about here. The OP said that he leveled healers to 70 first which means he is not likely a huge pull no CD sort of tank because he understands that is not fair to your healers.

I think that this thread makes it clear that we need to be able to strike a balance on this. No one on the pro-DPS side wants to wipe because a DPSing healer let the tank die. Very few people on the opposing side seem against situational DPS, they seem more against this notion that they will be kicked if they aren't DPSing to meet some sort of golden number for that particular fight.

The only real outliers/problems here are those that say that no matter the ease of the content (we are talking stuff we outgear by 100+ ilvls here) or the skill of the party in reducing/avoiding damage there should never be the expectation of healer DPS. This is a stupid and indefensible point to try to make. You do not get to ride on the coattails of the rest of your party because you have a pretty green icon by your name.

[Saefinn]

I generally say try your best. I'm not going to have a problem with a low skilled player if they're trying (heck, I'll help them out), but if they're not healer DPSing my first assumption wouldn't be they're a bad healer at least. If they're just being lazy and have a poor attitude, then I might see issue (or poor attitude in general I dislike). I'll add that I try to DPS when I can, depends on the group and whether I am half asleep or not (hey, I play after work) and whether I am drunk or not...though I maintain I am still a good healer drunk, I've helped carry in City of Mhach drunk when other alliance healers have all dead, so as long as I am healing better than everybody else, nobody can be mad that I'm drunk, right? :P

[EbonySeraphim]

My 2 cents in (very weak) support of the OP: I'm a WHM main and eventually my SCH follows. I recently leveled up DRK to 65 (for the cracked clusters) so I consider myself a n00b tank despite probably statistically being in the middle probably. As a healer though, I certainly fall on the DPS happy side but certainly change it depending on if I feel like I have a grasp of what the incoming damage is.

Just about any healer understands incoming damage is a function of:
1) Tank's ability to use CD's correctly
2) Number and type of mobs on the tank
3) Boss fight phase

I'd like to add that latency and luck is another factor that can completely screw with our ability to establish incoming damage. If a low number of hard hitting mobs suddenly have direct + critical hits come in that is a lot of damage coming in that shouldn't have been there. Similarly, seeing a period with low incoming damage could be due to dodging which the next round of of auto's simply don't miss. These variables create the unlucky moments that sometimes (still very rarely) lead to tanks dying. Latency, is a problem because it turns a steady decrease in the tanks HP bar to chunks of missing damage that is very hard to follow. The sad truth is that when I recognize or feel like this is happening, I may simply not do anything because of the risk of a massive increase in incoming damage becoming a problem too quickly.

Last but not least, instant cast skill delays are deceptively hard to know based on feeling compounded with lag. I've been playing WHM for a while now and I still sometimes find the delay behind either a cancelled cast or Aero II insta-cast very steep. At the time I started to realize the tank will need healing, I come out with a cure I and finally get to starting the cast but by then, a much bigger chunk is missing and the newly measured rate of death is greater. Do I cancel the cast against for a cure II or do I have to finish it and emergency heal (cure 2 or tetra) after? Judging this correct in a fashion that is MP-efficient and not overreactions is an unstable thing. If I have those penalties fresh in my mind without enough gear headroom to confidently fix bad situations quickly, I might do nothing for a few seconds.

All that being said, I was really really nit picking and only giving an example of why I might not be caught DPS-ing for a few second window. It's practically a reflex to apply Aero III and Aero II -> Stone spamming once I switch from "heals needed" to "everything is seems ok" mindsets.

[ShadowPayaso]

My only defense towards healers not DPSing is mana. While WHM and AST is not that big of a deal, SCH has to really micro-manage their mana and casting Broil or Miasma II can make a difference between spamming Adlo on an Aetherflow CD or Lucid Dreaming CD. Once I am super comfortable with a fight, I usually try to throw something in there, but more often than not I would prefer to keep the party alive with just heals (unless it's a dps check)

[Cynfael]

My only defense towards healers not DPSing is mana. While WHM and AST is not that big of a deal, SCH has to really micro-manage their mana and casting Broil or Miasma II can make a difference between spamming Adlo on an Aetherflow CD or Lucid Dreaming CD. Once I am super comfortable with a fight, I usually try to throw something in there, but more often than not I would prefer to keep the party alive with just heals (unless it's a dps check)

I hear you, but this MP concern comes up way too often in this thread for how irrelevant it usually is in practice.

Someone who knows how to heal well should know how to manage their MP correctly and be able to function (i.e. both heal and attack) comfortably over an extended period barring true emergencies. The other day I ran with a SCH who claimed he was spamming Ruin II because Broil was too expensive...and at no point was he actually pressed for MP. It was absurd.

The MP argument was more of a thing while people were initially leveling in SB, but by now most players should have had time to adapt and get used to using their tools correctly. Most of the players around here who are saying they don't DPS because they don't want to "waste" MP are throwing excuses at the wall hoping they might somehow stick a justifiable point; so far it hasn't been working.

[Maeka]

-snipped stuff about running out of MP-

I take it you've never had an undergeared tank mashing the Sprint button to round up mobs while also in a group with "meh" DPS?

Cure2 spam will run you dry even with Lucid, Assize, Benediction, and Tetra. I've never been run to absolutely zero before, but I have come close at 25% left after a pull because the tank needed every single GCD on Cure 2 just to stay alive and even then, I was falling behind and had to use Tetra/Bene to keep him alive.

It was so bad, that Regen was impossible because he would have been dead before I could Cure2 him afterwards and I didn't want to blow a Tetra/Bene because of how fast he was going down.

This is WITH using Lucid, and again I ended that pull at 25%.

So yes. Tanks overpulling while undergeared = TEH SUCK. It's worse when the DPS are "meh" then the whole thing just takes too long.

[ShadowPayaso]

My thing is I said micro-managing mana is an issue, I didnt say people shouldn't dps as to not "waste" mana. Not wanting to "waste" mana on DPSing is far different from feeling the need to micro-manage mana. Especially in long fights or after dying, in which having any mana regen on CD is a SCH worst nightmare. And quite frankly, it's more efficient(mana and dmg wise) to use Broil than to use Ruin II so that guy was being an idiot