Dear Healers who don't DPS

[Rezef]

Tanks are here to take DMG and use their GCDs in order to take less damage. Healers on the other hand have a few DPS skills but their job is to keep the party alive. As long they do that there's no reason to demand more. If the healer feels safe enough that there's no threat of wiping then they should DPS, after all it's boring to just sit there and do nothing if no healing is needed.
Everyone asks where did healers go when it was them that made most ppl not feels comfortable with this role and changed to sth else.

[Deceptus]

Yes, but equating them as some major tool for DPS and mitigation isn't really much. Earthly Star should really just be prioritized for healing in the majority of cases since most fights have some big AoE (it's also really useful on those big pulls still but for healing). The damage is just like an incidental bonus. Shadow Flare just...is. It's just a little bit of extra damage. I don't think anyone is putting it down because "Oh, I need a 5% slow!"

5% slow, enemies hit less often than they normally would. Damage diverted. That's mitigation by any standard. It's not much, but it's better than nothing. Coupled with a tank CD, it all adds up.

[Sebazy]

Shadowflare should equate to about 10% of a SCH's DPS in a dungeon give or take depending on how well they time it. That's a pretty healthy amount of damage, the slow is the icing on the cake imho.

[Taika]

Healers on the other hand have a few DPS skills but their job is to keep the party alive. As long they do that there's no reason to demand more.

You are free to only demand this from your healers, but what if "keeping the party alive" doesn't require the healer to do anything at all, or only use one action every couple of minutes or so? In HW I healed an expert roulette dungeon by being active only 17% of the time. That's 83% of dungeon time doing nothing at all (well, doing /mandervilledance and /icam). Again, if this is an acceptable level of participation for you, fine. But how would you treat a tank or a DD who would only be active 17% of the time?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

This entire post is toxic.

As previously noted, it's incredibly ironic you accuse me of toxicity when you proceed to completely ignore portions of my posts specifically outlining healers aren't expected to DPS when tanks mass pull. I even put the caption in bold. Adding to that, you imply I'm an idiot when I made no personal jabs at you. Hmm, who has a toxic behavior I wonder? Mayhaps you are projecting your frustrates a tough too much.

Wall to wall pulls are barely even saving any time. In some cases, it's a waste of time and its even worse with a wipe.

This is objectively false. You can shave upwards of 15+ minutes on dungeons with mass pulls and a semi-decent group. For comparison sake, I did Kugane Castle with friends in ten minutes. When our tank went to sleep, we wound up one who pulled one pack at a time in Kugane Castle. The difference doubled the run time just through small pulling alone. Why? I can top 6,000+ DPS on Samurai with a large enough pull; nearly broke 9,000 on the Temple mega pull. Those numbers are remotely possible on baby packs nor are there nearly enough targets. Not hard to see why it speeds up the run. And like Taika said, even through mega pulls, I can still put out a Holy or Aero III. I just have to pick spots. Granted, I don't expect them either unless I put up Hallowed Ground or Living Dead.

So, if you want Healers to do DPS, don't pull wall to wall like the idiot tank who wants to stand in AoEs like you are that forces Healers to dedicate even more time to spamming heals. That way you only guarantee Healers don't get a chance to cast any damage spells at all. It's like the stupid tanks who wait until their HP is down to 30% before the activate a cooldown.

Or the healer who spams Cure II when the tank drops to 95%, which is what this thread is actually about. How you go off on a tangent about standing in AoEs I don't know. Now you're just moving goal posts and not arguing what I actually said.

However, keeping a tank at 80%+ is a viable strategy. For some classes, you need higher and the reason for that is that's about how much damage the tank buster deals. It's better to keep a tank topped off with smaller heals and avoid the need for the big cd instant cast spells that are for emergencies until when you really need it. That way, the chance of the tank dying to the tank buster drops to 0, even if the tank doesn't pop cds.

First and foremost, we were discussing dungeon pulls not tank busters. There you go again, moving those goal posts. Regardless, you remain mistaken. Tank busters are 100% scripted damage. You should never overheal the tank so they can avoid using cooldowns. My CDs exist for no other purpose than hard hitting busters. If I can survive the hit with Shadow Wall at 80% HP, it's far more efficient to let me take it and using Essential or Tetra, thus getting the full benefit of their potency. In fact, most Savage strategies involve tanks rotating their immunities to completely ignore said busters. Therefore, any healing you did would be completely useless. The only time you should be topping anyone off is if they won't survive whatever onslaught of mechanics the boss has.

For starters, the more you pull, the less likely a Healer is going to be able to DPS because they're too busy keeping an idiot like yourself topped off because you pulled wall to wall instead of a small group. There's a reason why they are divided into small groups of usually 3 mobs and why most Healers only DPS in Raids. It's the only chance they ever get to assuming the tank that refuses to dodge AoEs.

I suppose I must be a rare unicorn who deals damage despite tanks pulling the room or am the tank who doesn't stand in AoEs. It's almost as though you can do large pulls and still play your job correctly. But yes, you continue with those personal jabs. It certainly shows how toxic I am.

[HyoMinPark]

This entire post is toxic. It immediately targets Healers as nothing but heal bots. It was started with a strawman argument accusing Healers of not DPSing. You want to know the reason why it happens though? It's because tanks pull wall to wall so that Healers don't get a chance to DPS at all. They're stuck on a mindless loop of spamming a heal every 3 seconds unless they're a WHM that has benediction up so that they can quickly cast an Aero III or something just so they can DPS with a DoT.

Did you read any of this thread? Like, at all? Also, what kind of tanks are you getting in duties, because I've gotten tanks that do large pulls in the level 70 dungeons, and can heal and DPS just fine. Obviously, if you have a tank that refuses to use cooldowns, or is not keeping their gear up-to-date, that makes it difficult, and literally no one here is bashing healers that get saddled with such tanks. The people posting in this thread are calling out healers that are, for the most part, completely idle in a duty, only healing every once in a while. Or sometimes, not at all.

If you want Healers to use their full kits. You need to give them an opportunity to do so.

A tank using mitigation/cooldowns IS giving healers an opportunity to use their full kit. As are DPS using their AOE skills to kill things faster before the tank runs out of mitigation techniques. WHMs have a mitigation tool built into their kit: Holy. Not to mention, it's still pretty powerful, so to not use it is not only hurting yourself, but the tank as well. ASTs also have Celestial Opposition, available once every 2 minutes. While not as convenient to use as a WHM's Holy, it is still a good technique to mitigate a huge burst of incoming damage during a large pull: Celestial Oppostion mobs > while they're stunned, Essential Diginity or Benefic II your tank.

Wall to wall pulls are barely even saving any time. In some cases, it's a waste of time and its even worse with a wipe.

This is false. Case in point: I did a run of Kugane Castle a couple days ago. The tank, although far overgeared for the dungeon (320-330 stuff minus two pieces that were 310), insisted on doing single-pack pulls. They also waited a good 15-20 seconds before each boss for no reason either before deciding to pull. Not sure if something was going on on their end or what, but the entire dungeon took 20 minutes longer than "normal" runs of Kugane Castle where the tank at least does double trash pulls. 20 minutes longer. That's enough for another Expert roulette, since fast and efficient Expert Roulettes are usually 15-20 minutes.

So, if you want Healers to do DPS, don't pull wall to wall like the idiot tank who wants to stand in AoEs like you are that forces Healers to dedicate even more time to spamming heals. That way you only guarantee Healers don't get a chance to cast any damage spells at all. It's like the stupid tanks who wait until their HP is down to 30% before the activate a cooldown.

Again. No one is this thread is bashing healers that get saddled with paper tanks that play their job inefficiently. They are arguing against healers that stand around doing absolutely nothing the majority of a duty.

However, keeping a tank at 80%+ is a viable strategy. For some classes, you need higher and the reason for that is that's about how much damage the tank buster deals. It's better to keep a tank topped off with smaller heals and avoid the need for the big cd instant cast spells that are for emergencies until when you really need it. That way, the chance of the tank dying to the tank buster drops to 0, even if the tank doesn't pop cds.

In casual content, there is no reason to keep a tank completely topped off 100% of the time. Unless your tank is woefully undergeared, there are no tankbusters present in anything (again, this is barring Savage/some Ex trials content) that would drop a tank from 80% to 0%.

For starters, the more you pull, the less likely a Healer is going to be able to DPS because they're too busy keeping an idiot like yourself topped off because you pulled wall to wall instead of a small group. There's a reason why they are divided into small groups of usually 3 mobs and why most Healers only DPS in Raids. It's the only chance they ever get to assuming the tank that refuses to dodge AoEs.

You should probably avoid personal insults if you want people to try and agree with you. Name-calling in a debate/discussion is entirely unnecessary, and all it serves to do is to get people to automatically dismiss and/or disagree with you. You talk about Bourne_Endeavor being the toxic one, yet I see nowhere in their post where they resorted to name-calling. Someone is a pot calling the kettle black here, and I don't think it's the person you quoted.

[Blanchimont]

You should probably avoid personal insults if you want people to try and agree with you. Name-calling in a debate/discussion is entirely unnecessary, and all it serves to do is to get people to automatically dismiss and/or disagree with you. You talk about Bourne_Endeavor being the toxic one, yet I see nowhere in their post where they resorted to name-calling. Someone is a pot calling the kettle black here, and I don't think it's the person you quoted.

My post was directed at the OP, but Bourne_Endeavor brought up the point of "always casting" and is something that shows that he/she has probably never mained a healer. A healer's duty is to keep everyone alive. Their overall DPS is insignificant most of the time unless you have dual healers for the current end game content (it's actually better to not have 2 healers and have 1 dedicated healer due to DPS checks, but 2 healers provide more room for error). Your uptime for DPS is only maybe enough for a cast maybe every ten seconds provided your rotation timing does not match the attack timing of the enemy (swiftcast can help a little) combined with the big wall to wall pulls.

Wall to wall pulls will make it so that healers will almost never get a chance to DPS. They are focused on keeping the tank alive and have to watch the spikes from random crits or failure to dodge AoEs. The more enemies there are, the more likely it will happen. As long as you are doing wall to wall pulls, you are overpulling and not giving the healer a chance to DPS and it will force them to pay more attention to your HP than outputting damage. If you want a healer to DPS, stop doing wall to wall pulls so they can focus on something other than the tank's HP or the idiot DPS that runs ahead and pulls in more mobs. Mitigation alone is not enough when you are overpulling because the healer has to spend most of the time casting heals to keep you from dying. The most you save from a competent team is a few seconds unless you have excellent AoE.

Most of the time, you don't and the finishing time is roughly about the same. From my experience, I can finish a lvl 70 clear in roughly the same time as mass pulls, about 20 min average. If you have great AoEs, then it is going to be shorter for mass pulls since it is worth sacrificing healer DPS in exchange for the DPS class being able to AoE.

If you want to dismiss my argument, go for it. I don't really care.

tl;dr - if you want healers to DPS, stop pulling wall to wall. They can stop paying attention to your HP.

[Cynfael]

My post was directed at the OP, but Bourne_Endeavor brought up the point of "always casting" and is something that shows that he/she has probably never mained a healer. A healer's duty is to keep everyone alive. Their overall DPS is insignificant most of the time unless you have dual healers for the current end game content (it's actually better to not have 2 healers and have 1 dedicated healer due to DPS checks, but 2 healers provide more room for error). Your uptime for DPS is only maybe enough for a cast maybe every ten seconds provided your rotation timing does not match the attack timing of the enemy (swiftcast can help a little) combined with the big wall to wall pulls.

All of that makes me wonder if we are indeed playing the same game.

As a healer main, I can vouch for "Always Be Casting" as a gameplay philosophy. I practice it whether I'm in a dungeon or in Omega Savage; the important decision is simply whether the next spell needs to be a heal or barrier vs. a DoT refresh or a nuke.

Also, why the excessive focus on mass pulls? Sure, more healing is necessary in these situations, but a lot of these healers do next to nothing even when healing requirements are low. Going by some of the responses around here, big pulls = "I have no time to DPS" (they usually do if the tank is cooperating, but it's not a coincidence that many non-DPS healers are inexperienced in using their CDs and oGCD abilities efficiently); small pulls = "I shouldn't have to DPS, it's not my job/I'm entitled to slack." There's no winning.

On a final note with mass pulls, when the tank and/or the DPS are weak or unskilled, there is a point beyond which they become less efficient. I think most of us are referencing business as usual, not the worst case scenarios where you're stuck with a party that both pulls everything and sucks at AoE.

[Deceptus]

Their overall DPS is insignificant most of the time unless you have dual healers for the current end game content

When I heal, I out DPS the tank in every dungeon I do, and occasionally the DPS as well. Healer DPS is NOT insignificant.

[MoroMurasaki]

My post was directed at the OP, but Bourne_Endeavor brought up the point of "always casting" and is something that shows that he/she has probably never mained a healer. A healer's duty is to keep everyone alive. Their overall DPS is insignificant most of the time unless you have dual healers for the current end game content (it's actually better to not have 2 healers and have 1 dedicated healer due to DPS checks, but 2 healers provide more room for error). Your uptime for DPS is only maybe enough for a cast maybe every ten seconds provided your rotation timing does not match the attack timing of the enemy (swiftcast can help a little) combined with the big wall to wall pulls.

Wall to wall pulls will make it so that healers will almost never get a chance to DPS. They are focused on keeping the tank alive and have to watch the spikes from random crits or failure to dodge AoEs. The more enemies there are, the more likely it will happen. As long as you are doing wall to wall pulls, you are overpulling and not giving the healer a chance to DPS and it will force them to pay more attention to your HP than outputting damage. If you want a healer to DPS, stop doing wall to wall pulls so they can focus on something other than the tank's HP or the idiot DPS that runs ahead and pulls in more mobs. Mitigation alone is not enough when you are overpulling because the healer has to spend most of the time casting heals to keep you from dying. The most you save from a competent team is a few seconds unless you have excellent AoE.

Most of the time, you don't and the finishing time is roughly about the same. From my experience, I can finish a lvl 70 clear in roughly the same time as mass pulls, about 20 min average. If you have great AoEs, then it is going to be shorter for mass pulls since it is worth sacrificing healer DPS in exchange for the DPS class being able to AoE.

If you want to dismiss my argument, go for it. I don't really care.

tl;dr - if you want healers to DPS, stop pulling wall to wall. They can stop paying attention to your HP.

I was going to disect this and point out everything wrong with it but I have a headache so time for the abridged version...

You say healer DPS is insignificant "most of the time". My DPS on WHM in particular is better than virtually every tank I get in 4 man and at least half my DPS because WHM shines on these big pulls you're complaining about.

Do I sometimes still need to spam Cure II? Sure, there are always going to be bad tanks out there. It is not the majority of the time certainly.

Your problem isn't tanks pulling big it's you not using CD's and oGCD heals properly and you admit that in your post. You're hording these amazing abilities "just in case" things go south... things almost never do go south though. They are wasted. If Assize, Tetra and Bene sit on CD for more than 10 seconds outside of specific situations I feel like facepalming because I'm wasting time and MP on GCD heals.

In summary don't give poor advice about something you barely understand to people who love that same thing.