As a healer, is it my job to DPS? A new perspective.

[KaitlanKela]

I've seen so many of these threads come and go on this forum throughout the past year, and I find that the most fundamental problem in the debate is a disagreement on the basic premise: is it my Job to ONLY heal/mitigate damage?

Now, the people in the DPS is good camp take major issue with this premise. I find it dubious myself because I think it's an assumption that didn't originate within the game. Therefore, most arguments on this topic the two sides just end up talking past each other: the no-DPS camp insists that anything that isn't healing/mitigating is a waste, and the DPS camp says that decreasing dungeon time is the ultimate goal so standing around is a waste. Because of this, there's hardly ever any resolution to be had and bystanders, who may be new to healing or the game and are looking for answers just leave feeling confused and unsatisfied.

Therefore, in this thread, we are going to ASSUME for the SAKE OF ARGUMENT ONLY that the premise "healers should only heal damage or mitigate damage" is a solid assumption. Spells that increase damage output, whether they are direct damage-dealing spells, or friendly damage increasing buffs like Balance and Fey Wind are optional at best, and a waste of mp at worst. We are also going to assume that overhealing is bad and to be avoided and that wasting mp is bad and to be avoided.

Under these premises, at first glance it looks like healers DPSing is objectively a bad thing. And I think this is where most of the misunderstanding comes from. However, I'm going to prove that that's actually not the case at all.

Take this hypothetical, but in practicality very common scenario, of not needing to heal the tank every GCD. The tank only takes enough damage to warrant using your basic healing spell, say, once every four GCDs. Anything more often than that is overhealing (bad) and a waste of mp (bad).

We now have three options with what to do with our remaining time:

1. Stand there and wait until the tank needs a heal again (approx. 9-12 seconds)
2. Shield the tank with some kind of mitigation (Adloquium, Stoneskin, etc)
3. Cast offensive spells to increase damage output

Obviously, option two is superior to option one. Option three may be equivalent to option one under the given assumptions, but we'll clarify that in a minute.

So with your next GCD you increase the tank's effective health by casting a shield. This, however, only increases the amount of time remaining until you have to heal again: maybe it gave you another two extra GCDs worth of time before you have to cast your next healing spell. Now, that's still objectively a good thing because you've prevented damage, but at this point it becomes inefficient to cast that spell again for a while because shields are pretty mp consumptive and you start running into the overhealing issue again, since the shields don't stack they overwrite the old shield.

So after that you're down to DPS or do nothing. One could argue doing nothing is better, because you're not wasting mp DPSing which would otherwise be used for healing (let's assume MP is actually a limited resource, even though in the vast majority of content it's not in practicality). HOWEVER, there is one reason why DPSing is still superior:

If you are doing damage to the mob, you are killing it faster. If you kill it faster, IT DOES LESS DAMAGE THAT YOU WOULD HAVE OTHERWISE HAD TO HEAL.

This is the fundamental issue that I think most people in the "healing's my only job" camp miss. If the mob does less damage because you cast some offensive spells, it dies anywhere from 15-20 seconds faster. And all that time it's not doing damage. And if it was alive during that time, it would be doing damage which you would be healing anyway. So preempting the damage with mitigation-intended damage spells and healing the damage caused retroactively are in essence the same thing.

Now the DPS also comes with the added bonus of completion of objectives faster. I know that's not an end in an of itself to all healers, but you have to admit that healing/mitigation held constant over the two scenarios (meaning that you've "done your job" equally well whether you chose to do it by dpsing proactively or healing retroactively), a faster run is preferred. Opportunity cost of time and all that.

So there you have it. TL: DR, DPS = mitigation = PART OF YOUR JOB no matter how you slice it. So if you choose not to do it, some people might accuse you of not doing your job properly, and they have an airtight argument.

Final point: if you continue to choose to only use direct heals and mitigation and avoid damage dealing spells, that is your choice and you are within your rights to make it. However, you cannot deny that you are not doing your job as efficiently as if you were using damage spells when healing/shielding is unneccessary. Therefore you cannot expect everyone on the internet to tolerate your playstyle. I would never hope that anyone got kicked from an instance, it's my sincere belief that we can all accept each other's differences for the duration of one dungeon. However, you can't deny that if/when a group takes issue with your gameplay that they do, in fact, have a valid point.

[Keramory]

It would have been nice for you to put legitimate numbers into this on say average dungeon monster kill times with/without healer dps'ing vs amount of heals it would save doing so. Not arguing your point at all, would have just been interesting to see.

I don't think many people would argue that a healer would be more effective if he/she were to DPS as well. What I think the argument comes from is healers feeling that they are being picked on to be expected to do more then other classes for the mindless daily dungeons.

As for myself personally, I would say about 90-95% of the time I DPS in content as a healer. That's what I do. However I completely support healers who do not. Why? Not because I feel as though they can't do better, but because the average DPS and Tank are not doing anywhere near their best either, from my experience.

With that being said, I do think it's somewhat unfair to expect optimization from a role but not from the others. I almost never see any threads about lazy DPS or Tanks who are not using their abilities and rotations (I'll leave rotations out, abilities alone lets say) as they should. I would argue if they did, perhaps the monster would die just as fast as if the white mage helped DPS. Imagine if they were ALL held accountable! Monsters would die so fast!!! But again, with of course exceptions, I don't see the DPS or Tanks doing anywhere near their best, so why is there an urge to call out the healers? Simply because it's more noticeable visually.

So sorry, despite my own personal play style of DPS'ing in content, I will never jump on board with healers being expected to DPS. Not while the other roles are not being called out.

[KaitlanKela]

Legitimate numbers are good, but they are a LOT of effort to produce when few people actually take the time to process them. It didn't seem worth the effort.

And your argument is basically ALL roles play their job badly, so it's okay for healers to play their jobs badly? Why is this acceptable at all?

Furthermore I don't agree that I don't see people complaining about low DPS. Maybe it doesn't happen on this forum so much, but on Reddit there's nigh daily complaints of carrying dps that can't be bothered to spam more than a single ability. That's clearly unacceptable. DPS frequently get kicked or runs are vote abandoned if the DPS check is not hit consistantly (I'm looking at you, Final Steps of Faith).

Like I said in my last paragraph, people are within their rights to choose to only heal. Just like people are within their rights to only spam their hate combo, or hit heavy shot over and over again. And I don't frequently call out people for any of that. My only point is that it IS deliberately choosing a lazy style of play (no matter what role) and people have a right to be irritated by that as it's an inconvenience to them during a cooperative game.

Basically to say, nobody else has to play good so why do healers have to play good is completely beside the point.

[amihavingfunyet]

As for myself personally, I would say about 90-95% of the time I DPS in content as a healer. That's what I do. However I completely support healers who do not. Why? Not because I feel as though they can't do better, but because the average DPS and Tank are not doing anywhere near their best either, from my experience.

With that being said, I do think it's somewhat unfair to expect optimization from a role but not from the others. I almost never see any threads about lazy DPS or Tanks who are not using their abilities and rotations (I'll leave rotations out, abilities alone lets say) as they should. I would argue if they did, perhaps the monster would die just as fast as if the white mage helped DPS. Imagine if they were ALL held accountable! Monsters would die so fast!!! But again, with of course exceptions, I don't see the DPS or Tanks doing anywhere near their best, so why is there an urge to call out the healers? Simply because it's more noticeable visually.

So sorry, despite my own personal play style of DPS'ing in content, I will never jump on board with healers being expected to DPS. Not while the other roles are not being called out.

People are making tons of thread asking for parser to be able to call out DPS for underperforming. If you have some experience with other classes it's also usually not hard to figure out if someone is underperforming.
And that may not be true for the whole community, but underperforming tanks and DPS get kicked from my groups just as well as underperforming healers.

[Keramory]

I should correct myself, I don't see a lot of people complaining about DPS'ing or tank dps'ing unless it is raid content or healers are being put in question and use that as a reply.
My comment was made for threads in which someone brings up DPS problems in regular dungeons (the root of most of these healer dps problems). Maybe things have changed recently and I'm unaware but this healer DPS debate has been going on for a long time, when I was more inclined to view the forums.

And to answer the OP, in short, yes that is what I am saying. I do not expect healers work harder then other classes. Although ideally every role should step their game up, it isn't happening. If one were to call this problem out in its entirety, then I would completely support that. What I don't support however is just chosing the easy class to chastise and pretending the other problem isn't there, at least to the point where it is as very much a problem as the healers.

[wooperthemad]

... I almost never see any threads about lazy DPS or Tanks who are not using their abilities and rotations...I don't see the DPS or Tanks doing anywhere near their best, so why is there an urge to call out the healers? Simply because it's more noticeable visually.

It's also more noticeable in time to kill as well. My tank friend is always jealous of how consistently faster my dungeon runs are compared to his. Healer DPS can come close to a DPS when played optimally. But even doing something as simple as casting 4 offensive spells the entire fight can make a big difference because of how potent our AoE capabilites are. DoTs + Bane and stand around means I've cut a quarterish of a group of enemies health off if the DoTs tick out (they don't if DPS is decent). That's not optimal, it's just casting 4 spells.

I don't think most of us are asking for optimal, just not the bare minimum.

[Judge_Xero]

It would have been nice for you to put legitimate numbers into this on say average dungeon monster kill times with/without healer dps'ing vs amount of heals it would save doing so. Not arguing your point at all, would have just been interesting to see.

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/Aqkgm1KNXbtzpxL7#boss=0

Well in this 20:30 run, my contribution to DPS shaved 8 minutes off the time.
Given the average damage taken per second I mitigated almost 300,000 Damage through the use off my Offensive Mitigation Tools. Which amounts to 38% Mitigation.

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For that example:
28% of Party DPS, No Deaths, Damage Taken 778k, Damage Healed 715k, Time Saved 8 minutes, Extra Mitigation 38%.

Healers are the most powerful role in the game, when used to their full potential.

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I was always taught to "Do onto others, as you wish done on to you" as a kid. I always wish for others to play at a high skill level, so I always try to perform that way myself. I am always pleasantly surprised when I run into someone who does, but I'm starting to understand that not everyone shares those same values and that's ok. All I can do is hope to inspire others to be the best they can be, and share in my example.

[Caitlyn]

Making damage as WHM is pretty easy and makes your healing job a bit easier.

Holy stuns your enemies for a very long time, which means you dont have to heal during this time. And if your enemies dying faster, you have less to heal. Making a fight shorter is better for everyone: tanks just need less defensive cooldowns, while DPS can save a few offensive cooldowns. And you cleared your dungeon in a shorter time.

1. SE decreased the accuarcy needed for level 60 dungeons, so healers can do some damage again
2. SE give you alot of offensive skills (cleric stance, holy, s.o.), why not use them?
3. SE give you a big mana pool and a few skills for mana-regeneration (even for WHM). If you have full mana every time, you re doing it wrong ; )
4. SE give us Level 60 dungeons, which are extremely easy to heal (just need a few HoTs even on bigger pulls)
5. Healing your party and doing extra damage at the same time (stance dancing yay) is fun : D

[_slowpoke_]

What I think the argument comes from is healers feeling that they are being picked on to be expected to do more then other classes for the mindless daily dungeons.

Except that expecting healers to DPS is not expecting them to do more than the other roles. It's expecting them to perform at the same level as everyone else at the very least, by always casting something, and not standing around doing nothing to contribute to the team effort for up to 100% of a pull.

The crux is that doing damage is (currently) the only meaningful and productive way to reduce downtime as a healer in this game, whether people like it or not. If we had party buffs (like Haste) to maintain in downtime, it's what we would probably do instead, but we don't, so Cleric it is. And, in my personal opinion, DPSing and stance dancing is way more fun and engaging than being a buffbot, but this is were I think different opinions are absolutely valid.

However I completely support healers who do not.

Then you openly support and therefore implicitly encourage objectively bad play. Please stop, you're not helping.

Not because I feel as though they can't do better, but because the average DPS and Tank are not doing anywhere near their best either, from my experience.

But that's not an argument, that's just a cop-out. Also, among DPS and tanks, there's no regular and recurring attempts to justify standing around doing nothing. It's general consensus that step 0 is "Always Be Casting/Attacking". Healers are the only role that has these debates.

And before anyone points out that tanks do have the debates about tank DPS, those are fundamentally different in premise, because they generally revolve around trading survivability for damage, and not around whether or not a tank should be attacking the boss all the time.

With that being said, I do think it's somewhat unfair to expect optimization from a role but not from the others.

But that's exactly what's being done - from the other roles. It's unfair that healers should be the only role that's given a free pass at being lazy when ABC is the absolute lowest level of basic, adequate play for all other roles - we're not even talking about optimizations yet.

There's really only two ways to argue here: either people take the position that ABC is also not required for the other roles, or they make a convincing and sound argument why ABC does not apply to healers. I have seen neither, and anything else is a big double-standard.

I almost never see any threads about lazy DPS or Tanks who are not using their abilities and rotations (I'll leave rotations out, abilities alone lets say) as they should.

There aren't any threads about this because, as I've pointed out above, it's basic and general consensus that DPS and tanks who don't ABC are bad. No one debates about this because no one will try to justify that a DPS player or even tank who stands around for the majority of a fight is anything but bad and lazy. We only have these endless discussions about it among healers.

But again, with of course exceptions, I don't see the DPS or Tanks doing anywhere near their best, so why is there an urge to call out the healers?

Because we're in the healer forums talking about bad healers, not bad DPS or bad tanks - which is a related issue for sure, but not the one at hand. Absolutely every role should be called out for underperforming (intentionally or not), and healers are no exception. Pointing to the other roles is merely shifting the blame and trying to distract from the issue at hand, which is that not doing damage as a healer when there is absolutely nothing else to do that would meaningfully contribute to the group is objectively bad playstyle and we have people continuously trying to defend this.

[Canadane]

And before anyone points out that tanks do have the debates about tank DPS, those are fundamentally different in premise, because they generally revolve around trading survivability for damage, and not around whether or not a tank should be attacking the boss all the time.

Heck no, it's the same argument here as the healers. Unless you will die or lose enmity focus, you should be in your offensive stance as a tank.
Like I could go on a huge tank related tangent here but it really us the same logic applied to the healers. Everyone needs to give 100%!