Do i need to DPS?

[Cynfael]

Yes, you should DPS when you can do so without letting someone die.

This topic comes up frequently, and the few circumstances under which a healer should consider abstaining from DPS include...

- Being completely unfamiliar with a challenging encounter (i.e. you are forced to react rather than to anticipate since you have no idea what is going on)

- Being stuck with a party that excessively taxes your resources

Under average conditions it takes little MP to heal an encounter (even most raids), especially when you meet or exceed the expected minimum ilvl. There's rarely any need to purposefully hoard your MP; intelligent use of CDs is generally enough to allow you to more or less always be casting.

[Whiteroom]

On AST, I'll dps just so I can see the animation for Gravity.

Gravity-Swiftcast-Gravity makes me smile twice as much.

[Xikaz]

I don't know why you wouldn't. Obviously you should never put anyone in danger to dps, but if you know the zone and no one is getting hurt why just stand there and do nothing?

I don't ever do that when I'm playing a tank, and certainly not when playing a DPS class.

There aren't going to be many surprises running Neverreap or Fractal for the 100th time that require tons of emergency healing, even in DF groups.

[HolyGlassofWater]

You absolutely should dps. Not only can it be good practice for things to come, but it's also common courtesy for your group I believe.

Think of it like the tank. The tank doesn't NEED to dps. His job first and foremost should be establishing threat and maintaining it before he starts to going "ham" so to speak. How would you feel if the tank made sure he established aggro, and then went afk for 20 seconds while the dps did their job, or just jumping up and down until his threat goes low and he needs to flash/overpower again. Or maybe he'll be spamming flash/whatever when he already has tons of threat and doesn't need to do so, because he wants to be "sure." Perhaps he'll even throw in a defensive CD now and then.

But the matter of fact that is not the case, in fact there's a huge HUGE number of people going around now, telling tanks they're dumb for wearing Vit gear, the gear that SE designed for them for them for their specific job, rather than STR gear. Why? Because even though you don't NEED too, the extra dps is always welcome if you can properly use your CDs, the same logic applies to the healer here. This is also goes for stance dancing in both roles.

So in essence, tanks need to worry about tanking AND dps, healers need to worry about heals AND dps, and DPS need to worry about...um...well dps, if any run were to go as smooth and fast as possible. If you don't want to see your tank jumping up and down in shield oath once he's not worried about losing threat anytime soon, then it'll be nice to learn when YOU should dps as a healer

[Krindor]

Short answer is no, you don't need to. But the runs will go quicker if you dps, personally if I see a healer standing around doing nothing for a long time I will make the next pull bigger if I find the DPS capable of handling it when it comes to dungeons, in raids I will just quietly swear to myself.

[Shurrikhan]

I feel like the better question is... why not? Any time you could be doing something but instead choose to remain idle should be for a good reason, e.g. to keep up mana or because a tank buster coming in under 6 seconds (too soon to drop CS precast a heal). Anything short of that is typically just slowing down each encounter by 10 to 30%. (A SCH among a low-AoE party is a huge boon, as is a Holy spam opener.)

You're a WHM/SCH/AST, not a health-battery. Your going inactive for a part of the fight just because no heal is currently needed is no different than a dps stopping his attacks for bits at a time, or a PLD spamming flash unnecessarily (when he could be combo-ing).

[Asheilin]

In every MMO I've ever played I've done some dps as a healer. My secret? Macros. I have my dps spells set to [shift] numbers, every dps spell is a 3 part macro"

/macroicon combust
/ac "Combust" <t>
/ac "Combust" <tt>
/ac "Combust" <ft>

<t> is target, <tt> is Target's Target (great for healers so you can still keep your party targeted), <FT> is Focus Target (I used this mostly in WOD or any boss that you need their health bar/cast bar visable for inc damage indications.)
This macro also makes it really easy to solo as it tries to cast on <t> first, then <tt>. with <ft> as last ditch target. Every dps sepll on AST, WHM, and Arcanist is written this way (with smn pet commands added at bottom for added help)
All you need to remember then? Turn of Clerics!

[pushin_tin]

I was looking at other threads and i seen people talking about healers being "lazy" for not dpsing any. And I am not being lazy just don't want people to die also I want to save as much mana as I can. So I want to know am I just being a bad healer or people just being upset that things are not dying a few seconds faster?

I say this as someone who always DPS's on my WHM: you do not need to DPS. A bad healer can't keep his party alive. A good healer keeps his party alive. A great healer keeps his party alive and contributes DPS. You don't need to be great, you just need to be good. You find that as you become more comfortable with healing in midcore/casual content, you'll start having more downtime during which the party is not taking damage and any healing you do will just be overhealing. At that point, hopefully you will strive to break into that great healer territory.

[TitaniaYaerem]

You don't have to dps as a healer. The only time where you might want to, is if tank isn't really taking much damage, nothing to heal, then doing a little dps gives you something to do, it just helps stuff get done faster. You are not required to unless you there is some sort of enrage mechanic and they need every bit of dps because dps may or may not be on the low side.

[Samsta]

I myself have always done dps in dungeon long before these discussions were had, it feels so stupid to just stand there when no one needs healing when you can do something. Also makes playing a healer more fun and challenging.