Healer dps in difficult raids and trials.

[Belgianbeer]

Is dpsing mandatory for healers in those instances?

I'm a total noob when it comes to the more difficult endgame content, but so far I get the job healing wise done. It's just that getting to deal damage in a consistent way often gets lost among the chaos.

Now things obviously will get better with experience, but I'm wondering nonetheless if it ever will become a problem if you don't dps well as healer.

I mean I have seen some weird things (at least I think it's weird) being done by my much more experienced cohealers for the sake of dealing damage. For example have I seen it multiple times that they just let people die if they are out of range for heals instead of running towards them (and lose some personal dps in the process). While I know that as a well positioned healer you shouldn't have to chase people, I'd much rather lose the healer dps than risk losing an actual dps, no?

[Ilyrian]

Don't do it until you feel comfortable. Priority is always healing.
When you learn the fights you'll find it quite enjoyable as the general flow of the encounters are very scripted - there is actual downtime you'll want to fill.

[supaiku]

The thing is, there is so little damage going on, even in savage raids, that a lot of the time you can just heal the party with an indom (for example) then you have nothing else to do as healer. So instead of staying around doing nothing, use your free time to dps. When you are new, you won't know in which situation you have to use which healing skill, so you propably will have a lot of overheal, but with experience this will decrease, meaning you will get more and more time to dps, because you will use your skills more efficiently. For example, if your party is at about ~80% health and has a regen on them, you don't need to waste more mp to heal them, because the regen effect will do that. Don't be afraid to dps, this is just a question of practice and experience. After a few runs you will know in which situations you will use your cds and in which situations you are free to deal damage.

[Wice]

For example have I seen it multiple times that they just let people die if they are out of range for heals instead of running towards them (and lose some personal dps in the process). While I know that as a well positioned healer you shouldn't have to chase people, I'd much rather lose the healer dps than risk losing an actual dps, no?

A well placed healer shouldn't have to chase the tank. Sometimes (mostly I find in Alliance Raids, as in other cases the battlegrounds aren't really large enough for this) DPS will frequently position themselves such that you are either in range to heal your alliances tank or that DPS. So when raid wide damage goes out or they screw up a mechanic, healing them requires abandoning the tank. So that's why if a DPS is way outside of my range I might not run off and heal them- if I can close the distance quickly without going out of range of the tank I will do that. But if that DPS is so far away that I can't get to them easily then I think it's more dangerous to abandon the tank to heal them than it is to let them die. That is, it may be that these healers you're seeing not going after far away DPS aren't protecting their own DPS, they're not gambling with the tanks life.

[Connor]

Healer DPS is entirely mandatory and non-negotiable in all content, unfortunately. Once you get more experience, though, you’ll realise not only that ‘healing’ isn’t really a thing in XIV, but that healers are all specifically designed with the intention of maximising their DPS.


The entirety of your healing can and should come from oGCD healing. You can pretty safely remove Cure / Physick / Benefic from your hotbar if you really wanted. Which means that you have a ton of time where you’re not using your GCD (and thus not doing anything).
And because support spells are too hard to implement or whatever excuse they have, literally the only option you have is DPS or nothing.

You will never be considered a ‘good healer’ unless you do high DPS. Most people would rather have a high DPS low heal healer than one with good healing but low DPS; they’d also agree that healers are better to let DPS die than interrupt their own rotation. The main reason I don’t main a Scholar is because spamming Broil II and DoTs is mind-melting levels of boring.

In my honest opinion it’s an awful system that’s perverts if what healers actually are; you either heal too much and do too little DPS or you aren’t healing enough to satisfy your party members.. But in future, if you really want to do well you pretty much have to accept that you are not a true healer. You’r3 a DPS with healing spells, or a support that deals damage while providing some healing, whatever you want to think. But you’re not a ‘healer’ in the traditional sense of the word. If you tried to play as a true healer and didn’t focus on DPS, there’s a good chance, you’ll be considered a pretty bad healer by many people’s standards.

Personally, I don’t care about a healer’s DPS unless the party has take no/negligible damage for an extended period. Even if they’re just using Cure or whatever to keep the tank topped off, I’d rather have a healer that heals too much than one that just does DPS. Some won’t be as forgiving, however.

A lot of it really is to do with how you want others to perceive you. Do you want to be seen as a good’ healer by XIV standards? Maybe you’re happy as long as is everyone is healed and aren’t bothered by how high your damage is as a healer. My advice is that I personally don’t think it’s a problem if a healer focuses too much on healing. As long as they aren’t using it as an excuse to go afk

[Exiled_Tonberry]

The way fights are designed in this game, there's usually a single raid wide aoe, and a following tankbuster. For the next 20 seconds or so, there's no real damage going out other than boss auto attacks, which can be dealt with by regens.
In most cases you could just use aoe regens and let raid wide damage slowly tick everyone up too, that's how far apart the damage is.

In all that downtime, you can feel free to DPS as you like without too much to worry about. I actually find it best to think of myself as a DPS or tank. They wouldn't just stand around doing nothing, I shouldn't be either.

[Dualgunner]

I don't know who "they" are, but whoever says that letting a dps die so as not to interrupt your own dps is in one of two situations:

The healer is outdpsing the dps, which shouldn't ever happen or

They're crazy because its an rdps loss to let a dps die for a healer's pdps.

[Belgianbeer]

This was really depressing to read. I know that since most fights are telegraphed you should know the instances when healing are needed and when not (that is ofc if everybody else know how to avoid things as well), but considering healers as pseudo dps seems like extremely faulty design. Especially since as healer you have to spam ONE spell.

At this point I wouldn't mind if they removed the need for healer dps altogether and replaced it with spammable, but conditional, support spells. Something where you have to keep track of what skills your allies are using and then use a fitting support spell accordingly. I don't know. Maybe change only AST, SCH this way and keep only the WHM as is and thus give it the unique place people are asking for.

[Wice]

I get the complaint about healer DPS being quite simple. It is (for White Mages and Conjurers) simply "apply DOTs, throw rocks", and ranges from being between 2 and 4 buttons. The reason it's this simple though is because it's not really designed to be "the thing you should be concentrating on" like it is for DPS classes. What you should be concentrating on is the party list so you know when someone needs healed and can respond accordingly. Healer DPS is simply something to do when no one needs to be healed- it's an alternative to "standing around looking lost." It's mandatory because standing around doing nothing is pointless, but it is only something you should if no one in the party needs you to do something else.

[Connor]

At this point I wouldn't mind if they removed the need for healer dps altogether and replaced it with spammable, but conditional, support spells. Something where you have to keep track of what skills your allies are using and then use a fitting support spell accordingly. I don't know. Maybe change only AST, SCH this way and keep only the WHM as is and thus give it the unique place people are asking for.

I totally agree with the sentiment, but unfortunately the devs and players both seem very happy with the current healer playstyle. I’ve been asking for support spells for healers for ages, the role skill slot is perfect for them. But there just isn’t enough demand