Healer dps in difficult raids and trials.

[whiskeybravo]

This was really depressing to read..

Indeed, but it's the way of the world. As most others have mentioned, as you get more comfortable with the content you will (or should) recognize the patterns they present. At least throughout SB, every boss fight is basically 100% scripted. Meaning, once you learn the pattern, you're rotation will hardly ever change. The mantra of "Always Be Casting" is a sure way to align your rotation with the fight patterns. You'll start to figure out how many attacks you can get out between raid damage, tank busters, etc etc and it generally will always be the same (I'm excluding derpy things that happen that will mess up your "flow", but that's always a risk)

But it's not really something you can escape from. Nearly everyone in this game judges damage, not just on damage dealers but on tanks and healers as well. Can't avoid it. So you just have to embrace it and realize at the end of the day you are much more than a healer. Tanks have been debating this for years now - "but I'm a tank my job is to hold aggro". OK, a monkey can hold aggro. What separates you from a monkey? Once you get the basic responsibility of keeping people alive down, from there you grow into contributing more damage, it's the evolution of improving as a player.

[RopeDrink]

How I operate:

Would anyone benefit from healing right now? No.
Are there any upcoming mechanics worth pre-healing, or mechanics in general that require healing soon? No.
>>>
Are my DoTs up? No. Aero's.
Are my DoTs up? Yes. Stone.

Rinse and repeat.

Comfort boils down to fight familiarity vs workload of the trinity - something you will get gradually by default. Until you hit that comfort level where you know a fight and the pattern, enough to know when you NEED to heal (outside of any variables, like Random Joe eating mechanics all day, or failed mechanics in general), then you'll start to know WHEN it is safe to DPS. I'm perfectly fine with people entering content and feeling uncomfortable due to lack of knowledge or experience, but when it comes to people who actually DO know a fight, I'll cringe extra-hard when I see them standing on the side-lines AFK when healthbars are full. What makes me cringe harder is that 90% of AFK healers I see don't even pre-heal... Meanwhile, as a DPS-minded Healer, if I'm in content I'm familiar with, I'll not only maintain relatively decent damage across the fight, but am also far more likely to also pre-heal or react faster despite doing both things. Again, it comes with familiarity vs attitude.

Nobody will expect you to 'compete' with DPS, but people most certainly will expect you to contribute if you have nothing else to do (which is surprisingly often). The faster things die, the less healing you have to do. As far as I'm concerned, I'm not there to keep people at 100%, I'm there to keep them alive.

~ Example, back in Ala Mhigo dungeon, the very first boss begins the fight by casting an arena-wide AoE for light damage (about 15% from squishies). This is followed by a long window where only the tank will take damage until the missile-drop phase, so little in fact that a regen will keep the tank at 100%. There is no reason for me to waste time or MP healing the party when I could help shave plenty of health off the boss, though someone going into that fight blind or unaware might not see it that way. Meanwhile, someone familiar with the fight but harbouring the "I'm not here to do damage" mentality would likely cast medica for no gain and then watching the next 15 seconds of downtime go by whilst doing absolutely nothing, waiting for healthbars to drop (which they won't unless people eat a rocket or flame-beam, or the next phase of AoE damage). Considering I've done that fight 20 bazillion times, 90% of my spells = Stone IV.

Again, you're not there to compete, but if you find yourself with nothing to do, consider at least throwing DoT's on the target. Something is better than nothing, even while you're learning.

[miraidensetsu]

I assume you've never healed Savage?

I assume he never healed anything.

[Sylvain]

considering healers as pseudo dps seems like extremely faulty design. Especially since as healer you have to spam ONE

Well there are over a quadrillion post on this topic so welcome

But as people said, it is kinda mandatory.
For instance, me and my coheal usually do around 3k dps when learning (so virtually 0 cd coordination and loads of overhead and "waiting" in case something would happen) and then we slowly raise as we learn the fight to something like 5k.

Which could be considered a fifth bad dps.

There is no way we would ever have downed any boss without that extra juice. We don't have top parser be beside ou fresh NIN, everyone is around 40~50 perf. And we're still somewhat borderline on the dps check.

Any content before savage doesn't require it tho.
Like, if we wipe for the enrage on suzaku, even if a healer had 0 dps I wouldn't blame them. The dps check is so lenient,any group with remotely competent dps should be able to down her in time.

But if you intend to enter the savage scene (which I would encourage you) you're gonna have to learn to dps.
A good start is to keep your dots up on the boss.
Then as you learn the fight try to place more broil2 in between mechanic.

Obviously, healing is always your priority.

[Mirch]

I assume you've never healed Savage?

I assume you've never healed Feast?

[mosaicex]

I assume you've never healed Feast?

Isn't the topic "Healer dps in difficult raids and trials."?

[Yui_Tenshi]

If you want to run Ex/Savage, you may need to learn to Heal and DPS if your group constantly hits enrage. Otherwise, I could care less as long as the healer stays alive and dodge mechanics if they're only healing.

[Kogekigami]

In savage raids yes healers should be contributing to the dps as much as they can without compromising the primary role.

In expert/dungeons/trails and such. Not so much.

The key thing in mind is you should always be casting. Be it healing up the tank, apply regen to the party, shielding up for damage or throwing out dots and your basic dps move if party health allows it. You should never just be standing there waiting to heal.

A it a sign of a bad healer/lazy player and b its just bad manners to the party.

If your new to content your other healer may be willing to shoulder most of the role so you can learn the fight but you should do the minimal you can to help. Be it keeping up party regen/shields and applying dots. Once you know the fight try weaving in some dps between the difficult mechanics and your normal role requirements until your more confident. Best thing you can do is communicate with your other healer and tank to gauge there abilities.

Im quite lucky I run most content with my co healer...this tend to turn into 'you do all the healing ~I'm dpsing lol.'

[Penthea]

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.

I admit sometimes content can be boring if there isn't much to heal because most of what I do is reduced to broil spam while the dps and tanks actually get to continue to engage in interesting class mechanics. Broil spam bores the hell out of me.

[EaMett]

If you aren't big on dpsing (aka itt's not that fun for you). Then just solo heal raids, simple as that. Any healer class can do it, it's rewarding, nobody will complain if you don't dps like crazy.