Is DPS'ing as a Healer Vote Kickable?

[Zojha]

[...] so DPS don't have to work very hard.

A healer dealing 50th percentile DPS will add as much damage to a boss as two DPS increasing their performance from 50th percentile to 90th percentile (on average). It's likely even more on groups.

Or in other words, asking DPS to compensate for the lack of healer DPS or "work harder" is to ask them both to become pros so that the healer doesn't need to play on their level. IMO, that's just a tad unfair.

[Malzian]

Adam Savage said it best...

[TaranTatsuuchi]

I said it before and i will say it again, if a DPS ask a healer to DPS, I guess your DPS suck that much you need to ask someone else to do it for you, so instead of asking a heaelr to DPS why dont you stop being lazy and learn your rotations so you can do those "speed runs" better?

Also, tanks, If you ask a healer to DPS, I would ask you to go full sword oath and just do "damage combos" not a single "enmity combo" for the entire run and your enmity MUST be higher than the whole party, if you cant do that, you are lazy and you are NOT playing your class well.

Alright then, on the topic of being lazy.
Here's a test someone did of only healing...

Yesterday I did some testing on how it really is like to only heal in expert roulette, which I think is a good example because it's content probably ran by majority of player base this discussion is relevant to.

I queued to expert roulette as WHM and we got Xelpathol. In addition to me, the party consisted of a WAR who had never tanked the dungeon before (no endgame experience as WAR), a BLM (his Savage job, currently on A11S progression), and a DRG (no endgame experience as DRG). So quite a random party composition with people more or less familiar with their roles in that dungeon.

The WAR pulled as much as he could at the time (not knowing the dungeon as tank he failed this a couple of times) and I would only use my healing abilities. This was the result, my every single heal cast for the whole 21 min dungeon run:

- Regen x24
- Medica II x16
- Asylum x7
- Assize x4
- Cure II x5 (between pulls, not during them)
- Tetra x4

So in addition to Medica II, the only thing I actually had to cast in the whole dungeon was Cure II, which I did a total of 5 times (between pulls, not during them). Everything else was instant cast abilities. I also used Eye for an Eye on tank and sometimes Esuna, and I cast stoneskin on everyone between pulls.

Even with this little use of healing, my overheal was 35,9%, so the actual healing requirements for this dungeon are even lower. I was active 17% of the whole dungeon while the rest of my group members were active 72-77% of the dungeon.

This is a perfect example of the low healing requirements in the game and how it causes a huge activity difference between a healer who doesn't DPS and their group members. On that run I did not contribute nearly as much as my group members, in fact I was using /icam and doing /mandervilledance while they were actually making an effort. If it would have been the tank or a DD only being active 17% of the time and dancing and idling for the rest, they would have been removed from the party, but for me, some people would actually argue I was doing just fine.

I took a video of the whole run and uploaded it in case someone's interested. This is the final boss fight, during which the only things I actually cast were 3 Medica IIs. Other than that, I used Regen (4), Assize (2) and Asylum (2). Here's the direct link to the fight: https://youtu.be/jBgMe5uHPsE?t=17m17s

TLDR: Not DPSing as a healer means you're just being carried by your group members for over 80% of the dungeon time.

With only healing they were pusing buttons only 17% of the time.
Where the rest of the party were pushing buttons over 70% of the time.

How is that not being lazy for the healer?
If there's no support required, there should be dps going out.

[Greedalox]

It's easier to ask someone else to do it. There's no shortage of dpsing healers after all, so DPS don't have to work very hard.

This seems like an odd thing for you to say. You didn't strike me as the type of person who's black or white. You make it sound like there's a cap on group damage that if healers are contributing with DPS then suddenly DPS are having their individual potential diminished and aren't allowed to DPS further.

We both know that's not the case then, so why would you speak of absurdities? Healers CAN (And do) DPS to go beyond "Good enough" to better. Nobody goes into a dungeon and says "Wow am I glad this AST used Gravity 2 times, brb in 10 minutes."

[Saito_S]

This seems like an odd thing for you to say. You didn't strike me as the type of person who's black or white. You make it sound like there's a cap on group damage that if healers are contributing with DPS then suddenly DPS are having their individual potential diminished and aren't allowed to DPS further.

We both know that's not the case then, so why would you speak of absurdities? Healers CAN (And do) DPS to go beyond "Good enough" to better. Nobody goes into a dungeon and says "Wow am I glad this AST used Gravity 2 times, brb in 10 minutes."

Thunda's posts have all been about how if healers are DPS'ing, then they must be doing a terrible job of actually healing, therefore healers shouldn't be encouraged generally, let alone asked directly, to DPS. Going so far as using "if a healer intentionally wipes their group to squeeze out some more DPS, that's terrible!" as if it were some kind of argument against the pro-healer-DPS crowd. Like ANYONE in said crowd, in this thread or just in general, actually would consider it acceptable play to DPS so hard as a healer that you wipe your team. lol

Supposedly this experience - of healers getting so caught up in DPS DPS HOLY SPAM RAAAAGH that they straight-up forget to heal and people start dying - is something they encounter all the time, a claim which I am quite skeptical of.

So with all that said, this weird assertion that suddenly, healer DPS is all about actual DPS being lazy and it being "easier to ask someone else to do it" - while absurd - doesn't surprise me.

[DPZ2]

I'll ask again. Why should a healer move into Cleric Stance in order to DPS in a dungeon instance? (We know the answer to that in the MSQ: "So we can complete the story line, duh."

We already know healer DPS is not considered from a dungeon design point-of-view.

I suspect that a few healers would even be encouraged to cast DPS if they don't have to worry about being called out for "not being in Cleric Stance".

[TaranTatsuuchi]

I'll ask again. Why should a healer move into Cleric Stance in order to DPS in a dungeon instance? (We know the answer to that in the MSQ: "So we can complete the story line, duh."

We already know healer DPS is not considered from a dungeon design point-of-view.

I suspect that a few healers would even be encouraged to cast DPS if they don't have to worry about being called out for "not being in Cleric Stance".

Because the dungeons don't require the healers to be healing 100% of the time.

Once the party members no longer require support skills, the only thing left for the healer to do is to use damage skills.


Otherwise, they're sitting around without using their GCD.
Meaning they're contributing less.


As I linked 3 posts before yours...
Someone tested doing an expert run as heal only.

They were active 17% of the entire run.
The rest of the members were active over 70% of the entire run.

And considering they had 35% overhealing even then, over one third of their healing wasn't even necessary!


It's a question of parity.
Would you accept other roles only pressing buttons for less than 20% of the duration of the instance?

[Altena]

Hopefully Stormblood will get rid of Cleric Stance and make nukes based on MND rather than INT.

At least then, healer-only-healers may be tempted to step outside their comfort zone and toss a nuke or 3.

It continually baffles me how some people don't understand that increasing overall raid / dungeon DPS also reduces the amount of healing required.

[Malzian]

I'll ask again. Why should a healer move into Cleric Stance in order to DPS in a dungeon instance?

We already know healer DPS is not considered from a dungeon design point-of-view.

For the very same reasons your real-life bosses don't want you sitting around twiddling your thumbs even when all of your normal work is completed. Because they want you looking for opportunities to go beyond what you 'have' to do into things that are above and beyond, because it makes things better for the company and allows them to save money and be more profitable.

Healer DPS may not contribute massively to a dungeon run, but it does contribute and it will make the run faster even if only a few minutes. It's the difference between turning a project in on time and getting exactly what you expected... or taking all those moments you could have been working when you were not doing anything and getting a bonus on top of it. The only thing here is... this is a project for the group, so it's not just you who gets the bonus, everyone benefits. When you sit around and don't do anything but what's 'required' of you when everyone else is working hard to make the project good, you are viewed as lazy and holding the group back.

[pushin_tin]

If I shouldn't be DPSing as a healer, then I guess I also shouldn't be doing any more DPS on a DPS class than is necessary to complete a dungeon in the 90 minutes allotted. We can take our time to appreciate the scenery of Sohm Al.