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

[Taika]

I'm a fresh 60 WHM and am uncomfortable stance dancing in current content. It seemed like every time I went into CS, something happened and I have to click out of it to heal or try to click out of it and it screws up and I'm sitting there healing in CS wondering why people are dying Lower level content is fine, especially in leveling roulettes. I try to dps a little in 50 Roulettes, but often times, the tanks are doing huge pulls and I'm focusing on trying to keep everyone up.

It's ok to be uncomfortable at first and practice one step at a time. Cynfael already posted some great advice for you. I'd like to add to that that remember than when you Holy, you will stun all the monsters so that they're not hitting the tank at all. If you have Divine Seal Regen up on the tank, Eye for an eye on the tank, and Asylum covering the tank, the tank is already being covered by a lot (you can even add Medica II to this, so you'll have 3 HoTs ticking on the tank at once). You can start practicing DPS with casting just Swiftcast Holy followed by Aero III. Holy will stun everything, giving you time to cast in peace and Aero will DoT everything. Then drop out of cleric stance again. When you get more confortable, add more Holys. Remember you can use Assize, Asylum and Benediction to heal while you're in Cleric Stance (Assize is good to use whenever it's up anyway and it does damage too).

[GraumSenpai]

Now I want to point out that there are several combos you can do as a Healer which have major effects on total DPS output and required healing. AST is my main so I'll only do one example with it.

Let's get started:

1. Regen your tank
2. Clerics stance (right away, I dont care how many mobs you have on that guy, screw it... do not use Essential dignity)
3. (use your judgement here)
a. Use Luminiferous Aether for mana regen (or skip to B if you don't have time)
b. Use Celestial Opposition for a super long stun (as well as adding 10s to whatever buffs you have, including that regen you just tossed out (saving mana~~~) and even your sprint)

[GraumSenpai]

(PART 2)
4. Begin your Gravity Spam. Cast this once, cast it again, and then Swiftcast into a 3rd, at this point the adds are up again and they are dealing damage to your tank (who probably healed 20-30% or more of their HP in that time because of your regen, which is still ticking away for another 18+s btw)
5. Remove Clerics Stance!
6. Essential Dignity
7. Heal as necessary as damage coming in might be enough to hold you out of clerics still.

[GraumSenpai]

(PART 3) (RIP 1000 character responses)

Hey guess what! You successfully did 1.6-2k total DPS (thats damage per second by the way... thats TWO THOUSAND DAMAGE EVERY SECOND FOR THE LAST X SECONDS!), your tank is topped off on HP, your mana is full (and still gaining... over MP regen a bad thing too? Trash pulls I say nah), and to top it of (this is the most important part), you look like a bad mothu trucka... which is the whole point of healing right? You hold the power of life and death for yourself and 3 other people... what can be cooler than that?

[GraumSenpai]

(PART 4) (UGHHHH)

These rotations are so effective, that unless its some BLM outgearing me, Its not uncommon for me to have the highest DPS overall, beating out the DPS as well. Essential Dignity, Tetragramaton, Benediction, whatever skills you filthy SCH have that your pet does... there are so many ways to instantaneously gain health back on your tank its litterally the stupidest thing every to say you cant do DPS in a dungeon. I will admit, ABC isn't honestly the best thing for a healer... I have moments where I stand around for 1 or 2 GCD depending on the situation. Essential Dignity down? Swiftcast used already? Lightspeed kind of like Benediction where you feel like you somehow lost the game if you had to use it? Alright sit around in order to have an option so you can comfortably let your tank use Hallowed Ground or Living Dead or Holmgang only to laugh cause they wasted the cooldown cause guess what? Your a bad motha trucka.

[Fernosaur]

whatever skills you filthy SCH have that your pet does...

Bwahahahahahaha~!



As Cynfael said, you can evade the 1000 character limit by writing your entire post, cutting a bunch of text with ctrl+x, posting, and then editing the post to add the remaining text back in.

[Cynfael]

Graum, your enthusiasm is great, but FYI you can write your post, copy and delete the bulk of it when you get the "exceeded character limit" error, then go back and use the Edit function to fill the rest in

[GraumSenpai]

Ah I didn't know that... the extent of my Foruming on here is just asking for Statics :P

[Kurtyzana]

I don't dps as healer in dungeon only sometimes in raid(i also think that is stupid to except from Healer to do DPS on raid there can be so many problem with other members that Healer need always be on alert so they don;t die...i know many healer wich like so much dps that they forgot to heal...and wipe the raid...and also know ppl that they demand from healer to DPS it is so anoying) why becouse i had many time complain from other ppl in party that i need DPS even if I'm Healer, few times i was kicked becouse i didn't dps...so i started lvl up DPS is soo stressless role...and only heal when i go with my friends

[Cynfael]

I don't dps as healer in dungeon only sometimes in raid(i also think that is stupid to except from Healer to do DPS on raid there can be so many problem with other members that Healer need always be on alert so they don;t die...i know many healer wich like so much dps that they forgot to heal...and wipe the raid...and also know ppl that they demand from healer to DPS it is so anoying) why becouse i had many time complain from other ppl in party that i need DPS even if I'm Healer, few times i was kicked becouse i didn't dps...so i started lvl up DPS is soo stressless role...and only heal when i go with my friends

Sorry that you feel stressed out by the expectation to DPS as healer, but for what it's worth, it gets easier if you try. If you dig your heels in and DPS only when you feel pressured to do so, you will never become comfortable.

There's been a lot written lately (and over the past 2+ years on these forums), but I'll just reiterate that most players only take issue if they observe healers with lots of obvious downtime doing nothing.