Idea to fix controversy about healer dps.

[Gemina]

How does a healing-only playstyle benefit the player? I don't see any benefit to it. There are certainly times when you have to pump out some HPS but if you're only healing you're only prolonging the encounter you're in.

It benefits the heals-only playstyle because they don't want to DPS. You seem to be mistaken, and believe that the heals-only healer cares about quick clears. They don't, otherwise they'd be contributing to the group's overall DPS. A clear is a clear, whether it takes 15 minutes, or 30.

In terms of not giving much of a reward that depends on context.

In EX primals and Savage (anything with an enrage really) your benefit is a quicker clear and not dying to enrage.

In content without an enrage you get a quicker clear.

A clear is everyone's objective for entering an instance. Both a DPSing healer and a heals-only healer will get this reward. You can bring up EX/Savage (enrage timers), but heals-only healers get clears here too. You do know that healers cannot be condemned for the group not beating an enrage timer, correct? Sure it still happens, and normally comes from the player who hinders their own DPS rotation by failing mechanics and dying. This player, is very quick to blame a healer if they are DPSing.

I will acquiesce that there are situations in which your dps as a healer can feel more like a drop in the bucket. There is a BLM in my FC who is absolutely amazing and the few times I've done dungeons with him I have certainly felt like my dps doesn't matter as much.

I will name one of those situations: When the devs do their testing before releasing content. The whole 'healer DPS isn't factored into clears' thing. Don't get me wrong. I never said healers not DPSing isn't a problem. It just doesn't lead to anything game breaking if they chose not to do it, nor is it as big of an issue as everyone makes it. I specifically stated that the problem is the design of content (and to a further extent, the way healers are designed), and the attitudes of the playerbase.

Both Tanks and DPS jobs are designed in a way that they always have to be pushing something. This is not the case for healers. However, healers are the only ones tasked with keeping everyone alive. It is impossible with the way the game is designed for healers to not have downtime. What they choose to do with this downtime is where the meta and players attitudes come in. The faulty attitudes comes from those adamant about scorning healers for not DPSing, and the healers who outright refuse to add offensive skills to combat.

That said, nothing makes me feel more worthless as a healer than when my group still clears a boss with over 50% HP and I'm lying on the floor. It's like, "Why am I even here?" Again, bad design. This should not even be possible if SE wants healers to be healers.

It becomes a question of competence. Outside of AoE burst any tank or DPS playing at a competent level will utterly destroy my dps numbers on WHM. Even though I feel like I do upper-end dungeon dps on WHM I just don't have the toolkit for single-target or sustained AoE like they do.

Of course not. You're a healer. It is not good design for healers to be able to keep everyone alive whilst putting up comparable numbers to actual DPS jobs. Healers in this game are already quite powerful enough as it is.

How about when you are the only competent person in your instance, though? Dps not doing anything resembling a proper rotation, tank perpetually in tank stance generating unecessary aggro... these are the times when I end a dungeon at 30% or more of the group dps. When you consider how slow these runs are despite my dps (20-25 mins with no wipes) tacking on another 30% has you doing 40 mins in Kugane Castle.

Why is that not seen as a detriment?

My thoughts exactly. But you're raising a different issue than healer DPS or lack of it. This situation is a faulty group, not a faulty healer. I've carried clears before. They're not rewarding. In fact, I usually feel like crap afterwards thinking it was all my fault even though in the back of my head I know I was contributing 110% to that group, and likely still got scolded because I was DPSing. Do you feel this is rewarding?

At both the highest and lowest ends of content healer dps is literally nothing but beneficial and costs the party (and healer) nothing to contribute. The potential gain over time can be huge and there is simply no logical reason to deny your party this aid. To say it isn't detrimental to play a heal-only healer is like saying it isn't detrimental to not do your homework in school - you probably aren't going to fail because of it but it can only help you grow, learn and perform better.

Healer DPS is only beneficial if they can reliably do it and still take care of the party. If they cannot, then it hurts the party. There is no disputing this. Your primary role and the reason why you are brought into content is to heal, and if you're not doing it you will be kicked far more swiftly than not DPSing. However, there is also no disputing that competent healer DPS benefits everyone, but I already made that point in my OP.