Quote Originally Posted by Supreme_Dalek View Post
I don't agree with the healer dps'ing. I'm a tank and in advanced 8 man content, I don't want to see healers dps'ing at all. Your reflexes have to be on the ball all the time as a healer in tough content. If a healer is dps'ing in 4 man content then obviously I'm not doing my job properly. I should be pulling enough mobs to keep the healer engaged in his primary duty to heal the group.

Maybe I'm just old school?
This heavily depends on your DPS. It's pretty common in this game to see big spike damage, which is mitigated primarily through managing small pulls. If you don't have the right DPS composition, big pulls are pointless and a significant waste of time due to the risks involved. For example, with the old Brayflox SRs, what good is it to bleed a healers MP dry and risk wiping by mass pulling with a MNK and DRG? Likewise, it also depends on your tank and their own capabilities/gear. If they wouldn't survive large pulls, but can survive the intended small group, chances are there's going to be open opportunities for the healer to throw out some DPS to speed things up (due to how spike damage works here).

If a healer has the time (or necessity) to DPS, it's not exactly saying that anyone is doing their role wrong. It's just that the content isn't designed for healers to have zero downtime and must spam heals every second they're in combat. Healing isn't as mindless as 1-2-3 or overpower spam, though admittedly there are many times that it is mindless to heal. Some people need those small periods of downtime, which in some content could be because they need to manage their MP.

Also the idea of pulling more because your healers are bored is NOT old school. Old school is the use of CC or very small pulls simply because your healers wouldn't be able to outheal the damage from more than the minimum. Pulling more (see Speed Runs) didn't really emerge as common until Burning Crusade in WoW. There were some cases of such stuff before that time, but it was because the content itself was designed to be that way or the group heavily outgeared it. Maybe that's just showing that I'm old school if that's the case though. /shrug