Healer DPS or no?

[Cynfael]

It's all a matter of how you see your responsibility to the party as a healer.

You can either see yourself as a guardian angel of sorts whose main contribution to the party is to ENLARGE THE MARGIN OF ERROR so you can get a clear with less tries, or as a Half DPS who don't give a single proverbial F to people who fail mechanics and only deems acceptable for everyone to perform flawlessly, only feeling that you need to heal unavoidable damage.

Each of those different healers will have a different answer to "should I be DPSing". And each of those different healers are better suited for different groups. If they match, then it's wonderful. If it doesn't, you AND your group are in for an awful time.

I generally agree with your point, but I'd mention that dungeons can be healed on fumes; you can AoE your heart out, have virtually no MP and no MP management CDs, and still meet the healing requirements.

The only thing you can't do on empty, as discussed, is perform multiple resurrections, but I suppose that's where the notion of responsibility comes into play. Personally I don't save CDs for ease of raising players because A) I don't anticipate them dying frequently or hopefully at all; B) dungeons are lax enough that I can raise mostly at will; and C) if players die excessively, they can wait on my convenience. I believe in supporting as a healer, but I'm not there exclusively to save other players from their own mistakes, even though I will do so to a reasonable degree.

[Gunnie]

It's all a matter of how you see your responsibility to the party as a healer.

You can either see yourself as a guardian angel of sorts whose main contribution to the party is to ENLARGE THE MARGIN OF ERROR so you can get a clear with less tries, or as a Half DPS who don't give a single proverbial F to people who fail mechanics and only deems acceptable for everyone to perform flawlessly, only feeling that you need to heal unavoidable damage.

Each of those different healers will have a different answer to "should I be DPSing". And each of those different healers are better suited for different groups. If they match, then it's wonderful. If it doesn't, you AND your group are in for an awful time.

Are we playing the same game? Dungeons do not output such an amount of damage that anyone is in 1 shot territory. There is no need for a bigger margin of error. If the tank is doing big pulls and not using cooldowns, you can't DPS because you're spam healing this awful tank. If the tank is pulling big and using cooldowns, You have ample time to DPS. DD who fail at a single AoE not moving out, are far from lethal territory. A quick heal can fix that easy. Should a DD get combo'ed by standing in to many AoE circles/etc, no amount of MP can save that DD.

In short, the situation you discribe is highly unlikely, in general the groups you play with fall in the decent to good catagory.

[AlexionSkylark]

Snip

First, I'm talking about content in general, from roulettes up to Neo Exdeath. And also, why you must worry so much about doing DPS? In the case of that "awful tank" scenario. Why does it matter?
And as for the "in general the groups you play with fall in the decent to good catagory"... well... maybe in roulettes. Only.

[Zfz]

Couldn't care less. I'd enjoy a high dps healer as much as one with 0 dps but tells jokes during combat. As long as my HP is kept above a safe level.

[Hierro]

I just want to get my dungeon over with. That said, I despise any healer that sits there like he's curebot3000. All they do is slow a run down. Come on guys, you have holy. Use it. Was it given just to sit there as a shiny button? Am I missing something now? "Scary" cleric stance was removed, why are there more curebots now more than ever?

[Moogly]

Well I'll give my little opinion on that too...

What is the dev team position on that ?
They don't really like it. They don't mind players doing it, but they firmly believe it shouldn't be mandatory to clear any content, even savage. Now did they tune the content's difficulty accordingly ? That is up to anyone to appreciate.
They tuned the SB dungeons so as people don't mass pull rush them (not very effective...)
They changed the cleric stance mechanism - so as to make dps easier for pure healers who'd like to try DPSing, and reward those who were already skilled at stance dancing with a damage bonus.
But they made it clear that healers are not expected to DPS.
With that said, no way you can criticize a player for not doing any DPS at all and just heal, heal and overheal you and the deeps.

What is most of the community position ?
Performance, efficiency, speed. So healer better DPS.
Emulation. The best guilds healers DPS, so healers must DPS.
In DF, may be 1 tank out of 20 will complain if a healer dps - usually if he dies because healer was hooked on dps... But I think it's even 1 out of 50, or even 100 - what most tanks care for, is just that the healer keeps them alive. As for a tank complaining of a healer doing zero dps, I haven't seen that more than maybe 2 or 3 times.
In raids, it usually happens after a couple wipe, when people start checking parsers...
So although there's a common consent that healers should dps, I guess the community is pretty lenient when one doesnt dps - just keep me alive.

I personnaly love dps - if not casting a heal, I'm casting a dps spell - and I just cant stop casting... messed up and wiped many, many times... sorry tank pals
As a tank... well like most people here, I honestly don't care, just keep me alive and lets get through with that roulette... same thing in raids. And if I die because healer messed up... like I said above, sh*t happens...
But I think it is wrong to call on a healer to do DPS on normal content. It is even worse to tell him he's not playing his class right or efficiently - that he's not good at it and that he should quit healing - that is utterly wrong.
Same thing cannot be said about savage content though.
A healer only healing on normal content is doing his job right. He could do more ? Yes, definitely. But he could, not he should.

[Deceptus]

What is the dev team position on that ?
They don't really like it. They don't mind players doing it, but they firmly believe it shouldn't be mandatory to clear any content, even savage.

They have never said this. They say the fights are (edit) not (end edit) tuned with healer dps in mind. They have NEVER said they don't like healer DPS.

[Destatiredux]

They have never said this. They say the fights are tuned with healer dps in mind. They have NEVER said they don't like healer DPS.

They have in fact stated that they have tuned things without healer dps in mind, repeatedly. The only situation they have cited where healer dps is possibly necessary is when parties try to push an instance beyond the minimum requirements of the given fight (I.e. First world clears of savage before the minimum Ilvl requirement of the party has been met). Don't go spreading misinformation when you don't know what you're talking about. Also, Yoshi P has gone on interviews to say that he doesn't like the "healer dps is mandatory" mentality. So there you have it.

[Galgarion]

Hell yes to healer DPS. Every little bit helps, and now you can't complain when I give into the voices and get my Fell Cleavus on.