The reason we healers DPS

[CorbinDallas]

I wish I could heal more, but 99% of the time my co healer in a 24/8 man completely invalidates anything efficient I try to do. I'll pop Whispering Dawn after a raid wide, which then goes completely to waste because people can't even heal well even if they don't DPS. Practically the entire duration of Dawn is wasted thanks to Ms EveryoneNeedsToBe100%AllTheTime over there mashing that Medica button everytime the group is tickled by minor damage.

So being jaded by all that I just don't bother anymore if it looks like someone is gonna play like that. I'll 100% only DPS and let you solo heal, because you may as well if you're going to heal as badly as that.

[RowanLauron]

I dps because a lot of the time I'm just sitting there not doing anything. May as well dps and end the fight faster. That's my logic. If you're low on mp or something, then don't dps, or only put up a dot or something. Anything helps. Healer dps can shave off a percent or two that the dps would have had to deal with.

[Shurrikhan]

I prefer to focus on healing.

I dont DPS unless I know the tank can handle a few seconds without a heal or two.

I feel like there are far too many healers who want to DPS and neglect actually doing their real job as healers.

I far more often die because a healer refused to dps than because they refused to heal.

With my CDs, healing against a multi-pack pull can be sustained off oGCDs and HoTs/Eos alone for a significant duration.
But, once the CDs run out, no amount of GCD spam is going to keep me alive if no enemies have yet died.
By healing excessively, you denied us enough damage to survive the pull by denying kills before the CDs-covered period expires.
You, by not understanding the actual impact of your toolkit whilst clinging to a fanciful mandate of your "role", have killed me.

[Millybonk]

I far more often die because a healer refused to dps than because they refused to heal.

With my CDs, healing against a multi-pack pull can be sustained off oGCDs and HoTs/Eos alone for a significant duration.
But, once the CDs run out, no amount of GCD spam is going to keep me alive if no enemies have yet died.
By healing excessively, you denied us enough damage to survive the pull by denying kills before the CDs-covered period expires.
You, by not understanding the actual impact of your toolkit whilst clinging to a fanciful mandate of your "role", have killed me.

Wonderfully worded.

The stance of "I'm a healer, therefore I only dps in emergencies" is really illogical:

• If there isn't constant incoming damage on the group, which forces you to spam-heal constantly, what are you doing in your downtime: manderville dancing instead of being useful by dpsing?
• If I extrapolate this stance to tanks:a tank doesn't need to do damage as long as he sustains enough enmity. So if we have a tank who doesn't do damage, as he "tanks", combined with a healer, who only "heals", a normal Sastasha run will take ages and my blood pressure would rise to unhealthy levels being a dps in that run

[xbahax92]

• If there isn't constant incoming damage on the group, which forces you to spam-heal constantly, what are you doing in your downtime: manderville dancing instead of being useful by dpsing?

To add here, FFXIV has been the game with "dancing" mechanics. I cant see how much room wide aoe damage they want to apply on every boss. They could activate a poison debuff for all fights to increase the amount of healing, but lets be real here. Mechanics exist to dodge or complete them. Some require to stack, to spread, to drain, etc. I doubt we will see any changes to that, meaning healing will still be a predictable thing like it is now.

[Knoahl]

I far more often die because a healer refused to dps than because they refused to heal.

With my CDs, healing against a multi-pack pull can be sustained off oGCDs and HoTs/Eos alone for a significant duration.
But, once the CDs run out, no amount of GCD spam is going to keep me alive if no enemies have yet died.
By healing excessively, you denied us enough damage to survive the pull by denying kills before the CDs-covered period expires.
You, by not understanding the actual impact of your toolkit whilst clinging to a fanciful mandate of your "role", have killed me.

Yeah a dead enemy can't do damage exactly, offence in its own right is effective mitigation. wonderful reminder.

[Limonia]

in a game in which the creators are literally pushing for something they call a "pure healer" and removing DPS skills to support this clearly the intended way to play this role is to heal.

I've already gotten this kind of answer a few months or maybe a year ago. I replied something along the lines of this (but didn't get an answer back unfortunately):
If the "intended way to play healer" is to only use healing spells and abilities, why is there a) so much downtime between healing needed* and b) why do we have so MANY so strong abilities like Excogitation? If every healer had like one "emergency button" like Benediction and Lustrate back in ARR, I could understand the answer "it's for emergencies". But now healers have just SO MANY incredibly strong healing tools that are oGCD and have rather short cooldowns, that no one can tell me they are all for emergencies. They are for efficiency. If you ONLY use healing spells, which in most content is definitely more than enough if you ONLY focus on healing, you wouldn't ever even have to make use of even 1/3 of all those strong healing tools.
Some examples (about a normal party situation of course, not about bad or chaotic groups): If there is a raid-wide AoE incoming and you use Asylum, everyone gets a regen. So you do not need to cast more heals unless there is another raid-wide AoE incoming where the previous Asylum isn't enough. And if it's that case, you would rather cast no regen because you would have to heal over it anyway and would have used Asylum for the second AoE and then let the regen tick. So Asylum actually grants you healing downtime - it makes that you don't have to heal for a while. Yes, there is the tank, but Regen and Divine Benison make that you don't have to cast Cure on him all the time = more downtime.
Excogitation makes it so that you can ignore healing the tank until it triggers. It's even beneficial to NOT heal him when it's up or it won't trigger until the timer is up when he may be at 90% HP anyway. Eos will heal the tank at 99% in the next expansion. So you will have to use Physick or Adloquium even less, which creates even more downtime. The healers are getting more and more strong heals, so that they will have to cast less healing spells during a fight.

* According to the media tour videos of the new leveling dungeons, healing requirements will not rise so much that full healing will be required. The dungeons are MOST LIKELY quite finished aside from minor fixes and you can see the healers DPS just fine in there.

"pure healer"

Fore the devs, "pure healer" means a healer that directly heals the damage with direct healing spells or regens instead of applying shields to prevent the damage ("barrier healer" = SCH and Nocturnal AST). They were actually meaning giving SCH and Nocturnal AST more "pure healing" spells, that's why SCH got a regen on their Sacred Soil, a shorter Emergency Tactics cooldown, and Fey Blessing. AST got ways to apply regens in Nocturnal Stance (Celestial Intersection and Opposition, Neutral Sect) and Horoscope.
All of those will make it possible to DPS even more because less active healing will be needed.

I'm on mobile at the moment but I'm happy to add in sources of official statements from the devs later if you've not read them.

Yes, please, I would like to see those. The devs DO want the healers to NOT ONLY do DPS while only using heals here and there. But if they wanted healers to ONLY heal, they would create fights so that more active healing is needed in the first place and not SO MANY tools that prevent the need of active healing.

This being the case, how can someone who does nothing but heal be considered as not doing their job? That is their job, assuming no one is dead.

If you say it like that, yes, it's their job to keep the other players alive if he queued as healer. But why is it enough to "do their job", to do the bare minimum? Why is it alright if the healer can just stand there and cast a heal every now and then while the other players do things all the time?

The argument over DPS is other players putting their expectations on others and really has no standing aside from individual play style.

Individual playstyle is not really a thing in an MMO where there is like one optimal way to play. It would be like saying it's ok for the BLM to only cast ice spells because it's "his playstyle". He is indeed doing his job by just casting Blizzards, but he's not putting in any effort at all and is dragging down his TEAM.

I'm not arguing if a healer should DPS or not. I'm arguing it's no one else's business if they do or not as long as they are fulfilling their party role.

But it IS my business if the healer gets carried by me. If the healer only contributes like 10% because of whatever weird reason, I have to farm his loot while he is idle most of the time.

We don't put this same expectation on any other role. Is a tank who is not using all of their defensive abilities constantly a bad tank? As long as they have hate and are in position for us not to be cleaved, they are doing their job.

Yes, we do. If the WAR is just standing there, doing Overpower here and there and maybe use one defensive CD and uncombo'ed Butcher's Block, he isn't putting in much effort. If the BRD mostly uses Quick Knock during bosses and only sings a song once every two minutes, he isn't putting in any effort.
It is just way easier to notice a healer not doing things because he will either just stand there or spam Cure. That's easy to spot even fore inexperienced players.
And btw, I'm not talking about new players here or players that are still learning.

[Keddera_StormMoon]

I prefer healing where healing is all I do. I only DPS because I was expected to and I'm a team player.

As SCH, I'm losing a lot of offensive tools - and I could really care less. I welcome the changes - this feels right to me.

In fact, make things hit harder and challenge me - make me work for it.

[Kaitoo]

This whole drama could be avoided long time ago if they would just upped the dmg and increased auto attack frequency.
But as someone pointed out, a certain part of the playerbase could not netflix then (maybe they are even too lazy/bad to turn on netflix, who knows). So now we have this shuffle every xpac

[Gemina]

I far more often die because a healer refused to dps than because they refused to heal.

With my CDs, healing against a multi-pack pull can be sustained off oGCDs and HoTs/Eos alone for a significant duration.
But, once the CDs run out, no amount of GCD spam is going to keep me alive if no enemies have yet died.
By healing excessively, you denied us enough damage to survive the pull by denying kills before the CDs-covered period expires.
You, by not understanding the actual impact of your toolkit whilst clinging to a fanciful mandate of your "role", have killed me.

If mobs are still alive after a healer has exhausted all their ogcds, I think schitty DPS killed you in this situation, not a heals happy healer. The tank also doomed the party by pulling more than what they can handle. Yet, you are blaming your death on a healer who wasn't DPSing? I can't make an logical sense from this at all.

The person you quoted is correct. I can't even think of one time I've died or wiped because a healer wasn't DPSing, but I can think of numerous where players died or full on wiped because a healer tunnel visioned and did not wake up in time.