Is not dps'ing that rare?

[Transient_Shadow]

it all depends on your party. if they refuse to avoid damage then it can't be helped. You can't dps if your too busy keeping idiots alive.

[Sylvain]

It is not rare

But no matter what other people say about DPS.

Your first, main and only concern should be : healing

If you know the fight, know the downtime, know you have nothing to do for the next few seconds, and feel comfortable about it regarding the state of your mana, you can and arguably should throw some dots.

If you are not comfortable with stopping healing because you don't know the fight, aren't sure about downtime or just don't feel like you can afford loosing 1-2 global cooldown on the boss. Do NOT do it.
If someone dies because you were dpsing (I mean, they died from a lack of healing, not from standing in a instant death aoe marker), you'll never be able to do enough dps to overcome the dps lost by this death, even if he you rez him assap.

So, if you are "noob" as you pointed. Do not do it.
If someone complain "healer can you dps", reply that you don't feel like you know the fight enough to do so.
In any case, it has been confirmed that fight are balanced around healers doing 0 damage. Which means that if your group cannot pass dps check, it is not your fault. It's the dps not dpsing enough.

If your group keep failing a dps check by a few % (like, 1-2), your dots and dps can definitely help. If they fail by 10-15%, unless you simply stop healing there's no way your few dots and broils will help.

Your job, above all, is to heal and do mechanics.

[Taika]

In any case, it has been confirmed that fight are balanced around healers doing 0 damage. Which means that if your group cannot pass dps check, it is not your fault. It's the dps not dpsing enough.

Please don't say this, it's very misleading. Savage fights have been balanced to players doing them with higher item level that is available for them when the content is released and with DD players performing close to their optimal potency. So a pair of healers who won't DPS in Savage would need to have the rest of their party overgeared and demand their DD players to do a top notch performance - while the healers themselves would be slacking. This is not a fair attitude or realistic expectation for any Savage group (while the content is current).

[Lambdafish]

It is not rare

But no matter what other people say about DPS.

Your first, main and only concern should be : healing

I'm going to chime in agreeing with the previous two posts. I spent some time thinking about how to respond because technically you aren't wholly wrong, you just have an extremely narrow-minded view of healing, which is dangerous to teach to less experienced players.

Your job is to always be casting something useful. Healers use a priority system when it comes to their skills, and that includes all skills, not just the healing ones. Healing spells are most important, Shields are situationally important, and if those aren't needed then DoTs are used (if they are DPS efficient), and then if none of that is relevant then you stick to your basic DPS spell.

Bottom line is: Healing is your main concern, Overhealing and idling is useless, always be casting, you can work the rest out from there.


Edit: I should point out that I'm not advocating that you need to be a pro DPS on healer, but having the mentality that DPS is optional as a healer is objectively wrong, and we should not be teaching that mentality to new players.

[Sylvain]

Please don't say this, it's very misleading. Savage fights have been balanced to players doing them with higher item level that is available for them when the content is released and with DD players performing close to their optimal potency. This is not a fair attitude or realistic expectation for any Savage group (while the content is current).

Yes, I agree, and this not-even-a-scholar-yet is definitely asking for advice regarding the attitude to have to enter a savage group this week.

healers who refuse to learn to DPS, whether by principle or anxiety, are being a liability to their party by following a mediocre playstyle by FFXIV's system and standards.

Well I agree with you, and I did say that if he feels he can do it he should do it. I didnt even say "if he feels like it" or "if you want or are bored", I said that if he has time and feel he can do it he should throw some dot (I can edit and add broils too if you want)

I'd like to point that everyone is basically treating him as some sort of long term healer not enjoying to dps. He's not even a scholar. He hasn't healed a single dungeon yet.

If he ever reach the point he'll attempt savage, I'm pretty sure he'll have mastered the art of dps heal. I highly doubt healers who can't dps are doing savage content.

My advices were regarding a new player, with low experience in FF14 and new to healing, to basically play safe.

And wtf was that example with a ninja not dpsing? Are you really to make a valid point by comparing heal dps to dps dps? What's next? Just stay alive and cast nothing, let your fairy handle the work.

you just have an extremely narrow-minded view of healing, which is dangerous to teach to less experienced players.

Bottom line is: Healing is your main concern, Overhealing and idling is useless, always be casting, you can work the rest out from there.

I agree I could have been clearer on that point, that one line where I say that he should throw dots when he can doesn't stand out that well from my text.T
The poster should read your bottom line.

[Taika]

Yes, I agree, and this not-even-a-scholar-yet is definitely asking for advice regarding the attitude to have to enter a savage group this week.

I'm not sure if I understand what you're trying to say. You were referring to a quote about balancing Savage content, yet now it seems you're saying you weren't discussing Savage content but a different level of play entirely. If we're talking about dungeons, at least some of them are definitely designed for healer DPS (the example that always comes to mind first is the Antitower boss where both DDs are turned to dolls and it's on the tank and the healer to free them or the group will wipe). More importantly, all dungeons are definitely balanced to have room for healer DPS.

My advices were regarding a new player, with low experience in FF14 and new to healing, to basically play safe.

I think it's better to advice new players to push their limits from the start. If they just "play it safe" and not think or practice DPSing while they're leveling, it doesn't magically come easy to them at level 60. The worst thing to do is make new healers afraid of doing any mistakes ("mess this up and your tank will die and your whole group will die and everyone will hate you forever!1!"), as Fernosaur pointed out above. It's much better to try and sometimes mess up than not try at all.

[Fernosaur]

To add to Taika's post -which is 100% true,- I will also say that telling a newbie to NOT DPS because they don't know the fight is just a form of fear-mongering that does nothing but spread misinformation. We should be encouraging new players, specially those who are interested in actually performing at an average or above average level.

Yes, your job as a healer is to heal and do mechanics, but also to contribute as much as you can to the party, which is something every one of your other party members is doing at all times. That's like telling a Ninja not to worry about keeping DoTs up or using Mudras because it's overwhelming and it distracts them from mechanics, or telling a tank that it's okay to just spam the enmity combo over and over because their job is just to tank and hold hate, and focusing on DPS just distracts them from their main function.

How much DPS a healer puts out, and if they optimize their MP use towards DPS+healing is the player's choice, yes; but contributing to the party's overall actions-per-minute is everyone's responsibility. No matter how many times you repeat that idea of combat balance not taking healer and tank DPS into account, the fact remains that healers who refuse to learn to DPS, whether by principle or anxiety, are being a liability to their party by following a mediocre playstyle by FFXIV's system and standards. This is not "toxic community meta," it's an objective analysis that is even supported by the game's Hall of the Novice and the availability of so many DPS spells in the healers' toolkits.

If, as a healer, you refuse to look for DPS opportunities, or don't create them for yourself; or even worse, refuse to DPS at all, then you have not the right to complain about DPS that don't put out decent/good damage, or about tanks not mitigating or positioning well, or about any other kind of mediocre playstyle, since you yourself are perpetrating one.

[Mhaeric]

0 dps healers bug the heck out of me, since they're either standing there picking their noses until they actually need to heal that one needed time every 20s, or they're spamming cures over and over resulting in a lot of overhealing. It just irks me how incredibly inefficient and/or phoned in it is.

As long as I see some dps numbers on a healer then I'm happy. High ones are great obviously, and I personally strive for this, but healer dps numbers rely heavily on how the other members do their jobs since it makes a big difference how much healing you might have to do if people aren't avoiding aoe's or how geared they are. Even in the worst case scenario and you're only accounting for 3-5% of the run's damage output that means that you were at least putting in an effort and that's all that really matters.

[Cyrocco]

With so many forum posts I'm tempted to leave them to their non-dps playstyles so there's more raids for me.

[Fernosaur]

Exactly! And that was my point from the beginning. We should all stop telling new healers that they shouldn't DPS until they feel safe, because as content gets harder they're never gonna feel safe, and telling them the world will end if they accidentally let the tank die because of Cleric Stance will just intimidate them and keep them from trying to DPS altogether. We should stop doing this even more so now that Cleric Stance is a thing of the past!

Remember that the first dungeons a healer will see will be Sastasha, Tam Tara and Copperbell Mines. All of those are incredibly easy to DPS through as a healer. Some of the smaller pulls don't need a single cast of Cure or Benefic to keep the tank alive. These are the perfect places to teach healers that yes, there is a lot of downtime, and they can use these downtime to speed up the mob killing.

I got a newbie healer on Sastasha today who was casting Stone without Cleric on. At first I asked if she was new and when she confirmed it, I offered that she could ask me or my friends anything, and we could just stop for a bit and explain it (the tank was a friend of mine too, so there was no prob with that). After a while I asked her if she knew what Cleric Stance did, and she seemed intimidated by the idea that healing was hurt by using it, but I explained that 5 secs was just two casts of Stone and she could probably get much more before having to turn it off and safely heal the tank. She started DPSing afterwards, even though my friend was doing two pulls at once every time.

I told her that maybe she'd end up accidentally killing a tank one day, but it was all part of the learning process to balance healer DPS and healing needed, and she was very open about learning this and seemed eager to "not suck," to quote her words. This is what we should be pushing for when we find new healers: encourage them to explore all the tools in their job, we should [b]not[/i] intimidate them and impose artificial barriers on their skill and learning curve.

Sorry if I came off a little aggressive, Sylvain, that wasn't my intention, but teaching newer players how to play the game is something I'm very adamant about.