The "To DPS" vs "Not DPS" Debate

[SeraviEdalborez]

You could say this is merely a debate of semantics since people have varying degrees of good and bad.

...

There are many examples that we could use to label people on other jobs as 'good' or 'bad', but I would argue such players are good or bad players, and not good or bad Dragoons/Paladins/etc.

For the more sensitive people in the crowd, let's swap all cases of "bad and good" in your post with "good and great". Because this is otherwise spot-on.

[Penguinmayhem]

I'll agree with the sentiment about White Mage, but not Scholar.

Scholar is a DPS job. Actually, it's both, though really more healer than damage. Your fairy does a whole lot of your work for you, if you know how to manage her properly, and as long as things aren't too rough, so much of the time should be spent adding extra debuffs and dots to things. Knowing how far you can push that, how much your tank can deal with, and when you need to switch focus from supporting to actually healing, is important, but the fact that you're not the sole source of healing takes a surprising amount of enmity off you.

White Mage, on the other hand, I would personally recommend either not DPSing at all, or if you must, be very careful with it. White Mage generates a metric ton of hate. In my experience so far, you're spending more time doing nothing as a White Mage than actually doing anything, partly to avoid aggro and partly to avoid burning through MP or getting caught in a cast. You have Aero. You have Repose. You have Fluid Aura. These are useful things. But a White Mage should never feel guilty for being the least active member of the party.

If you're a Scholar and you've got your hands full, you're doing your job.
If you're a White Mage and you've got your hands full, things are going very wrong.

[SeleneVenizelos]

But a White Mage should never feel guilty for being the least active member of the party.

There's a difference between being active because you're putting in maximum effort and being inactive because you just don't bother. I think this thread is aimed at healers who will stand there for ten seconds doing absolutely nothing; there's no healing to be done and nobody is in any danger. They just stand there doing nothing.

In those situations, yes they should feel guilty. They're bad or lazy. Choose whichever word makes it sound nicer. Many jobs could say they don't have to do this, they don't have to do that. The difference between being an average player and being an exceptional player is making the effort to do things you probably don't need to do.

I don't have to Heavy Thrust as Dragoon. It's not like we'll die to any rough DPS check in Amdapor City because I'm not using Heavy Thrust. But why wouldn't I? It's a 15% increase to my damage. No difference in this situation. If you have time to scratch your arse and reflect on being the least active member of the party, you probably have time to nuke. And on the hate front you have Shroud of Saints. Also, you could probably claim the tank isn't as good as they could be if a White Mage nuking is pulling hate. I have no problems keeping hate off a White Mage going hell for leather with holy and in four man dungeons it probably makes their curing easier because the monsters are stun locked most of the time.

From my experience as White Mage, in AK, AC, WP, etc, etc, take your pick, I can basically spam Holy every pull and so long as I keep Regen on the tank I hardly have to heal them. I could just put that Regen on and stand there for thirty seconds doing nothing, but I like to put the extra effort in to be as good at my job as possible. Not only does it make me happier knowing I'm trying hard, it also speeds the run up, so it's finished quicker.

Everyone benefits.

Who benefits if you just heal? Well, just you because you do less. The outcome of the battle is exactly the same either way it just takes longer; unless you've overnuking and people die, but once you find a balance you're experienced with it will very rarely happen. This of course does not count people who refuse to dodge anything and die anyway. In those situations, you could argue a White Mage shouldn't be nuking; but this is down to other people's mistakes and not the design of the job itself. Should a White Mage stand there for thirty seconds doing nothing just incase somebody fails to dodge an attack? And since Cleric Stance can be toggled like a bi-polar traffic light it's not like it takes plenty of your time to switch back and cure them up. I do it all the time.

The only argument that I can think of is if you run out of MP being too nuke happy and don't have any to heal people. Even then, it's such a rare occasion that it's almost not even worth mentioning.

[BinaryJack]

/snip

Scholar rolls as a Healer. It is not a DPS job. The end.
If you're a WHM or a SCH and you are standing around twiddling your thumbs, you can DPS.
Knowing when to heal with a SCH and WHM to ensure that you do not draw enmity is part of understanding your class/job.

[Ashkendor]

If you're a Scholar and you've got your hands full, you're doing your job.
If you're a White Mage and you've got your hands full, things are going very wrong.

After playing Scholar, I find it very hard to DPS on a White Mage. It just feels... clunky. On SCH I have no problem dropping into cleric stance, throwing out a full set of DoTs and a Shadow Flare, and then switching back to do some healing. As a White Mage, I feel like I'm locked into long cast animations and the only thing I can really effectively do most of the time is get Aero and Aero II on things. I don't like playing it because I *do* feel like I have a lot of down time and I'm not sure what to do with it (this is discounting standard things like buffing or debuffing, etc). Maybe it's just the fact that SCH has its origins in a dps class where WHM is a healer from the get-go?

I feel this more like telling the tank to switch between Shield Oath and Sword Oath. I do not hear people screaming at the tank to switch to increase DPS even if they can hold hate on trash mobs or most bosses.

There are actually times it's appropriate to switch to Sword Oath. I do it pretty often when I'm not MT.

So yeah, basically never in four-man content; it would be when solo/fate grinding or in eight man content.

[KikoriL]

After playing Scholar, I find it very hard to DPS on a White Mage. It just feels... clunky. <snip>

CNJs still have to get used to offense to do their solo quests, so they should have practice.
You still have a fairy casting while you're doing dps, so you at least know the tank won't drop without at some healing first. But WHMs have a smaller window of opportunity for DPS. Stance on for six seconds, and then ~2 seconds of Cure cast time after. Eight+ seconds of a tank taking damage.
Two spells during stance is a good start. Turn it on, Aero II + Aero, off, cure, on, Stone II x2, off, etc. It becomes a lot easier to plan for how you get used to your DPS. I know I can get away with letting Stoneskin fade away during Aeros, so one regen later, I can just leave Stance on and Stone blast the tank's target easily (on a normal pull). The dps is great, and it's only a couple cures after that mob drops to bring up the tank from like 50% HP.

[Ashkendor]

CNJs still have to get used to offense to do their solo quests, so they should have practice.
You still have a fairy casting while you're doing dps, so you at least know the tank won't drop without at some healing first. But WHMs have a smaller window of opportunity for DPS. Stance on for six seconds, and then ~2 seconds of Cure cast time after. Eight+ seconds of a tank taking damage.

Yar, this plus the fact that Lustrate ignores the penalty to my healing is huge. I can actually keep DPS'ing and drop a Lustrate every so often if I choose to. It makes it a really fun class to play. I actually leveled WHM to 50 first, then started leveling SCH to get Eye for an Eye. I totally fell in love with SCH's play style, though.

[Mjytresz]

I've played a ton of MMOs over the last decade and the commonly accepted rule is that there's three kinds of healers:

1) The "I'm a healer so all I do is heal" mentality.
2) The "I'm a healer so I heal but DPS when I can" mentality.
3) The "I'm a DPS that just so happens to have heals" mentality

None of them are wrong but all of them have their place and uses. The key to being a healer that's anything more than generic is finding the balance and working around it. Just doing Brayflox HM runs on my Scholar, there have been times where I'm screaming at Aetherflow to get off CD because the tank is about to die and other times where I'm blowing Bane on every pull for extra DPS.

Also lol @ those tags: terribul healers

[Staris]

I mean if your only required to wear 15 pieces of flair, and you only wear 15.... your a bad healer.

[Ghishlain]

I mean if your only required to wear 15 pieces of flair, and you only wear 15.... your a bad healer.

I'm confused.

Everyone's role is to make the run be successful.

I agree.

Why is this even labeled a debate? Many times a healer can keep everyone alive while only using a percentage of their time. The remainder can be used either to DPS, or for useless unnecessary stuff. So of course you DPS then. As the difficulty of fight increases, maybe you heal more and DPS less. And then there are the cases where win or lose depends on the group's DPS: Titan Heart, fast conflag in t5, super slug in t6, etc. Healer DPS can then be the difference between win and lose (same for tank).

I labelled it as such because all too often in game and on these forums you hear this:

"OMG YOU ONLY HEAL THEREFORE YOU'RE BAD"

Or when a quote like this arises:

(WHM) "Why are you not dodging 100 tonze swing?"
(BLM) "if you got time to nuke your not working hard your a f---ing healer not a black mage play your job properly"

Neither is true.

• You are a BAD healer if you consistently let your party face plant
• You are a BAD healer if you cannot remove status effects when all you're doing is spamming cures
• You are a BAD healer if you tunnel vision DPS and let your party wipe
• You are an AVERAGE healer if all you do is heal (I will make the concession that you are also a lazy healer when it's blatently obvious you don't care)
• You are a GOOD healer if you can DPS and heal and keep your party healthy and unhindered during the course of a fight
• You are a GOOD healer if you maximize the utility of your healer toolkit

Players should be working to attain the pinnacle of healing prowess, which involves maximizing the usage of your toolkit. The players that excel will the ones you'll be taking to Coil and EX Primals while the average players you'll leave for the more friendly 4-man DFs/DRs/etc. And you don't want to touch the bads with a ten foot pole.

And then there are the cases where win or lose depends on the group's DPS: Titan Heart, fast conflag in t5, super slug in t6, etc. Healer DPS can then be the difference between win and lose (same for tank).

In response, I quote myself:

Fights are tuned to a certain ilvl. If your DPS is of that ilvl, your party should be able to overcome all mechanics associated with that fight WITHOUT your assistance in this regard. If you are forced to DPS as a healer to help "push a fight forward", the fault lies squarely on your lackluster DPS.

With that being said, this is not to say healer DPS isn't contributing to a clear, but allows the party to clear content faster. HOWEVER, when a healer (or to a degree, even a Tank) is outright blamed for causing a wipe when the DPS can't clear the content in a DPS check and are of appropaite level, then the fault is not the healers, but of the DPS instead.