Dear Healers who don't DPS

[Sebazy]

No they're not. I agree healers should dps if they're able to, but that behaviour is absolutely not the same as a healer not dpsing. What you describe is a player who deliberately doesn't use some of his kit designed for his primary role, which is more like a healer who only does single target heals and refuses to do any aoe healing.

Arguing about semantics taken to the next level here =(

My primary role is to help my team kill the dragon/clear the dungeon.

I'll use every last button I can to the best of my ability to do so tyvm.

I don't know why people feel such a need to over complicate and compartmentalise things.

[Penthea]

Arguing about semantics taken to the next level here =(

I honestly can't see how someone thinks a tank only using flash and no aggro combo is the same as a healer not dpsing. The aggro combo is part of a tank's tanking kit. Dpsing is not part of a healer's healing kit. It's apples and oranges.

Some people have some very funny ideas as to what counts as part of a primary role or not.

Well you meet all sorts in the forums.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I honestly can't see how someone thinks a tank only using flash and no aggro combo is the same as a healer not dpsing. The aggro combo is part of a tank's tanking kit. Dpsing is not part of a healer's healing kit. It's apples and oranges.

Because Flash, Overpower and Abyssal Drain generate more aggro than anything else in a tank's toolkit. Therefore, if they were to only do their primary role, they needs only maintain aggro and rotate cooldowns. Even if you do want to include just their base aggro combo, a Dark Knight spamming Power Slash with Grit on throughout the whole encounter is equally awful. So as Sebazy said, it's semantics. The crux of the point is all roles should use the full arsenal of their abilities to help your team.

[Penthea]

Because Flash, Overpower and Abyssal Drain generate more aggro than anything else in a tank's toolkit.

So? Cure II heals more than Cure I. Doesn't make Cure I any less a part of the healing kit as it still has its place.

The crux of the point is all roles should use the full arsenal of their abilities to help your team.

I agree, I just think some of the analogies/comparisons are woeful.

The best argument to make is that you don't see tanks and dps stand around doing nothing if mobs are still alive, so healers shouldn't either.

[Miste]

I honestly can't see how someone thinks a tank only using flash and no aggro combo is the same as a healer not dpsing.

It is the same thing because if a tank can hold hate with only flash then why do they need to use the aggro combo? The aggro combo may be part of the tanking kit, but if you can hold hate without it then it is objectively not required so why would you need to use it if a tank's job is only to tank? For dungeon trash pulls AoE Flash hate is technically more important than combos anyway especially if the DPS are using AoE damage.

I don't know how else to get you to understand this so I am going to be really over the top descriptive here.

A tank's job is to tank therefore it only requires holding hate and using mitigation; if holding hate can be accomplished by an easy one button press of Flash until I run out of MP then why do I need to waste energy doing combos? If DPS isn't a healer's job then DPS isn't a tank's job either so if I can keep hate while doing 0 DPS then why would I try harder and have to press more buttons just to do DPS? It's not a tank's job to do DPS so if I can ignore it and still do my tanking job then it is totally fine.

It's all about double standards which I already mentioned to you.

If someone makes the argument that a healer is only required to heal (which is the statement made by the poster I initially responded to on this subject) then by that logic a tank's job is only to tank therefore if you have an issue with how a tank plays doing 0 DPS and only using flash and mitigation that is pure hypocrisy.

If it is acceptable for a healer to do 0 DPS since DPS is not their job then automatically a tank doing 0 DPS must be acceptable as well since DPS isn't their job either. Only DPS jobs have to DPS. I realize PLD is the only tank that can actually do this while keeping hate in dungeons since Flash does 0 DPS, but it still means that if you believe that healers are okay to do 0 DPS then you cannot have an issue with a PLD doing 0 DPS either because like I said double standards and hypocrisy.

I don't know why you think this is a bad argument. It is literally a mirror image to a healer claiming they don't DPS because "a healer's job is only to heal so it is okay if I do 0 DPS". Instead it is a tank saying "a tank's job is only to tank so it is okay if I do 0 DPS." It is literally the exact same mirrored mentality.


I am sorry to be so blunt about all of this. I am not trying to be mean or rude to anyone who doesn't DPS on healer. I am just trying to explain objectively why this mentality is just wrong. It just doesn't work in this game due to how it is designed. Healers are not pure healers because the healing needed is just too low to need to dedicate all your GCDs to healing and you have plenty of opportunities to just DPS some. Doesn't matter if it is a lot, it is all about just putting a bit of effort into tossing some damage here and there. If the tank is bad, or under geared and therefore squishy then np, but in groups where there is a lot of downtime between healing then most players should have time to just throw a little bit of damage.

If a healer is literally not skilled enough to do DPS and will cause deaths or new to the fight then fine, but simply using "a healer's only job is to heal" as an excuse not to DPS on healer is just silly. This is highlighted by my silly tank parallel.

[Penthea]

If it is acceptable for a healer to do 0 DPS since DPS is not their job then automatically a tank doing 0 DPS must be acceptable as well since DPS isn't their job either. Only DPS jobs have to DPS. I realize PLD is the only tank that can actually do this while keeping hate in dungeons since Flash does 0 DPS, but it still means that if you believe that healers are okay to do 0 DPS then you cannot have an issue with a PLD doing 0 DPS either because like I said double standards and hypocrisy.

I feel this is a very poor comparison to make because dps does directly help tanks to maintain threat but dps doesn't directly help healers. Yes dps can indirectly help with healing because things die faster, but its relationship with healing isn't as close as it is with tanks. Healers doing dps doesn't make healing numbers pop up elsewhere, tanks doing dps actually adds to their threat generation. The responsibilities of tanks and healers are quite similar in some ways, but the way they perform their roles in this context is far too different for this comparison to make any real sense.

I mean you may as well start arguing that dps as bad as non-dpsing healers are the kind who only move out of telegraphs that render a dps loss either by killing them or debuffing them, and otherwise don't move at all because their role is to do damage, not mitigate it.

Why is it so hard for people to say "Tanks and dps don't stand around doing nothing while mobs are alive, so healers shouldn't either"? :P

Yea I get that many think some healers cannot grasp the above, well honestly I think they all eventually do but some choose to be lazy instead. Lazy players exist in every role, and a healer not dpsing is how it often happens among healers. Threads like this won't suddenly inspire these healers to do more. But kicking them for it would.

[Deceptus]

Why is it so hard for people to say "Tanks and dps don't stand around doing nothing while mobs are alive, so healers shouldn't either"? :P

Because people have been saying that this whole entire thread and still there are healers who refuse to accept it.

[Penthea]

Because people have been saying that this whole entire thread and still there are healers who refuse to accept it.

You know how you get people to see that their behaviour is unacceptable? Don't put up with it. Kick these players and say why you are, or leave and say why you're leaving. Does a thread like this affect these healers while they're in an instance? Hell no. I'm sure most don't know it exists. But what certainly would affect them is hindering their game by removing them or yourself.

[MoroMurasaki]

I feel this is a very poor comparison to make because dps does directly help tanks to maintain threat but dps doesn't directly help healers. Yes dps can indirectly help with healing because things die faster, but its relationship with healing isn't as close as it is with tanks. Healers doing dps doesn't make healing numbers pop up elsewhere, tanks doing dps actually adds to their threat generation. The responsibilities of tanks and healers are quite similar in some ways, but the way they perform their roles in this context is far too different for this comparison to make any real sense.

Would you argue that SCH and Noct AST only have to use their direct healing moves then? And WHM should never use Divine Bension. These shields are mitigation, same as healer DPS. I have a hard time separating the two but I do feel that if a DPSing healer and a lazy non-DPSing healer ran the same group through the same dungeon the overall incoming danage in the DPSing healer's group would be considerably less, especially on WHM where an amazing Stun just happens to be built into our AoE DPS.

So where is the line? Do we play to the best intetests of our party and mitigate through shields and DPS or let the damage roll in just because we have the potency to heal it anyways?

[Vyriah]

So where is the line? Do we play to the best intetests of our party and mitigate through shields and DPS or let the damage roll in just because we have the potency to heal it anyways?

Yeah right, use those SCH shields in dungeon, they're really so great and mana is for the lazy people anyway.
I'm not sure if can not make point harder than that.

Trying to be "moderate" and all is cool, but what you're doing is monitoring players and asking them to play how you want them to play because they would be lazy, wich is certainly that exact attitude SE want out of its game when they talk about healer not DPSing. And when its come to the point where you're saying "SCH should prevent damage instead of healing them because they can" while this is certainly the worst way of playing it possible currently, we're not talking about the game anymore. We're talking about you wanting to clear dungeon faster and that's your buisness, not every else's.

Actually, playing efficiently is something that you aim yourself, not something you do because some guy you don't know wants you to do it. If you don't want to play with those random guys that don't play like you want to, don't use the DF. There's FC, there's friendlist, there's PF. Get a party of like minded player and play with them. Or is suddenly "using everything available" not a matter anymore ?