Dear Healers who don't DPS

[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.

[Lucke]

I wonder how many people/DPS saying "Healers should DPS! They suck if they don't!" Really mean "Healers should DPS so they can carry my scrub self since I can't be arsed to do the one thing I am expected to do". When I heal, I try to do damage where I can but for some reason it seems if I don't constantly spam heals, the tank dies.

[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.

[Kurando]

We need to drop this attitude of comparing Tank DPS to Healer DPS. At the end of the day the vast majority of content was/is made by NOT taking Healer DPS in to consideration, therefore literally most scenarios you can get by without it, (Tank DPS WAS considered by the way so let's clear that up).

It's all down to a person's playstyle. Honestly if the healer can throw in a bit of DPS here and there then great, but if they don't and the party is having no problems progressing anyway then lack of deeps from the healer shouldn't even matter. Every healer should be able to make their own assessment on what to contribute and whether it falls within their comfort zone. If high standards are to be expected, well there is the PF for that, simple stuff really.

[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.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

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.

Right, but we're comparing the minimalist effort plausible while still doing your primary job. A healer who only heals spams one or two buttons at most. Therefore, the equivalent would be a tank spamming Abyssal Drain and maybe Hard Slash.

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.

That's the difference though. Tanks and DPS literally can't stand around doing nothing and still perform a portion of their role. Healers can. That's why many people compare Flash spamming to non-DPSing healers; it's the closest equivalent to "nothing" while still being a tank.

I wonder how many people/DPS saying "Healers should DPS! They suck if they don't!" Really mean "Healers should DPS so they can carry my scrub self since I can't be arsed to do the one thing I am expected to do". When I heal, I try to do damage where I can but for some reason it seems if I don't constantly spam heals, the tank dies.

Either you have a tank not properly using their CDs, you aren't or one of you isn't geared enough to handle the pulls. No one here is asking you deal damage to carry scrub players, but that you always be casting. If the tank's HP is plummeting that you needs baby them, you're doing something. It's the idle healers or those who cast Cure for the slightest bit of damage we're talking about. For example sake, I got into a row with someone on a youtube video because she stubbornly insisted letting the tank's HP dip below 80% makes you a bad healer. Everyone must be close to topped up and anything less means you're "an idiot who shouldn't play healers." Her words, not mine, of course. Hilariously, she used the "I've played since beta" argument. These are the healers we don't like. They are lazy or obstinately refuse to do more than their assigned role when the game simply doesn't need that much healing.

[Ghishlain]

@Tank DPS topic - take into account that YoshiP has stated in an interview that raid encounters are tooled towards DPS and Tank providing a basic amount of DPS. I would consider Tanks using the absolute minimal damage tools to generate enmity to be more of a detriment to the raid than a healer who refuses to DPS if we're using the developer's logic.

[edit] Even then I don't count a zero DPS healer as a detriment to the party either using S-E's logic.

[Cynfael]

@Tank DPS topic - take into account that YoshiP has stated in an interview that raid encounters are tooled towards DPS and Tank providing a basic amount of DPS. I would consider Tanks using the absolute minimal damage tools to generate enmity to be more of a detriment to the raid than a healer who refuses to DPS if we're using the developer's logic.

[edit] Even then I don't count a zero DPS healer as a detriment to the party either using S-E's logic.

I automatically discount any statement of opinion by the developers that isn't directly backed up with coding. Aside from ostensibly calculating minimum clear DPS with tank and DPS role efforts exclusively in mind, they've taken no measures to enforce a vision of DPS-less healing; they just don't want to come out and tell players that they need to "git gud" since that is a poor business practice in the context of a semi-casual game.

I fall back to my usual position of "party member doing the bare minimum is a detriment." I'm amazed at the mental gymnastics some people on these forums go through to justify healers ignoring huge chunks of their kits. IMO this incredibly literal interpretation of the Healer role is damaging in that it promotes a sort of entitlement that does nothing to improve anyone's gameplay experience except arguably that of the entitled healer. Some posters go so far as to cry elitism when faced even with reasonable arguments as to why healers should attack when they can, but the idea of "I'm a healer; you should be grateful if I keep you alive and truly blessed if I deign to kill a monster (but I shouldn't have to)" reeks of its own brand of elitism.