How scared should I be about DPS?

[Sylvain]

You shouldn't be stressed at all and the guy saying "your main function is healing and you should focus on that" is absolutely right.

You are a healer, not a dps. (de don't even count healer dps to calculate dps check. Altough I have high doubt whether or not this is true for v4/8 ans super savage.

Now before anything, since ff14 dmg c
Mostly comes into the form of burst (avoidable or not).
It means that the more you know how these burst come, the better ans faster you can heal through those (leaving you more free time).
Then come tank and dps. The better à tank will mitigate, the less heal he'll required (so more free time) and the less dps die and take useless dmg, the less spot heal will be needed.

In the end, once all the avoidable dmg is avoided, tank mitigate properly and you perfectly optimise your cd, you'll realise you have A LOT of free time.
Now at this point, the question is "should you spend 70% of the fight doing nothing?"
If you feel like "yes" then don't dps
If you feel like "no" then dps.

Finally, there's something funny happening when you don't need to heal.
If you don't need to heal, it most likely means no one is failing or dying.
If no one is failing or dying
, then most likely the dps are competent enough to meet the dps check.
If dps are competent enough, the in fact your dps contributions is useless because the boss will die anyway.
The sad truth is, the more dps fail and die, the more your dps will be valuable.

I personally dps whenevr I can but I absolutely do not feel pressured. If we meet the enrage on anyrhing that is not v4-v8 or super savage, it is surely not because I didnt d enough dmg.


Dps is simply optimisation, it's candy it's a bonus.
The fact that you ask this suggest you havent even set foot into savage. If your group (for baking for ex) needs your dps, well your group is just terrible because theres no way an average group should need heal dps to complete the fight.


(skipping phase is a different story)

[Wrothgar77]

Sometimes I feel like dps'ing as a healer, and sometimes I don't. If you aren't doing progression raiding, there shouldn't be an expectation to. As is so often said - you pay your own sub, play how you want

[RopeDrink]

Sometimes I feel like dps'ing as a healer, and sometimes I don't. If you aren't doing progression raiding, there shouldn't be an expectation to. As is so often said - you pay your own sub, play how you want

So do the other X people in your 'team'. It is a self-contained comment vs a team-environment where we all pay our subscriptions, so I really don't get the point of this trite 'I pay my sub' comment as it doesn't mean anything outside of solo-content, where you can laze around as much as you please with no impact on anyone. I'll be over here, throwing stones every chance I get in order to get content done that little bit quicker, giving myself more time to do more things with my 'subscription', because not only is that efficient for myself, it's efficient for everyone else.

[RopeDrink]

Healing is a variable: dependant on your team, their ability to dodge mechanics, their defenses/gear/health, the tank, your own gear/healing power, how much DPS the team has overall, and how much freedom all of these factors give you.

I never think of myself as 'there to heal', I think of myself as 'there to keep people alive'. There's a big difference. As you gain more gear and become accustomed to content, especially when you've an equally geared tank, you'll eventually learn all the patterns and inevitable damage intakes content throws out like the back of your hand, to which you can save yourself time with proactive heals and thus give yourself more time to do something else (whether that is damage or heal a different target).

Example - I did an Ala Mhigo today where I was 2nd overall damage dealer as a WHM (granted, it's AoE heaven for a WHM). This had more to do with me knowing when damage was going to happen as opposed to how many damage spells I threw out. That first boss, for example - unless people eat the line-mechanic, nobody will take any worthwhile damage outside of the AoE 'jump' he does, which also has a cast timer and only does about 10% HP damage party-wide (ie. you don't even have to heal it until later). As a WHM, this means I go in there knowing that Regen/Benison will keep the tank alive by itself (no tank busters), a proactive Med or MedII will look after the DPS (if they really need it), and I have all the time in the world to 'react' to the rest - if there's nothing that needs reacting to, I'm throwing Stones like a lunatic. In short, just because someone took damage doesn't always mean "Oh my golly-gosh, I better heal that damage up" - at least outside of content with actual healing checks.

When it comes to crunch time - did you keep people alive? Yes? Good. Job fulfilled. If, in keeping people alive, you find yourself with opportunity windows (and managed to weave in damage), all the power to you - that is the type of Healer I want on a team.

Those complaints you claim to be familiar with? The bulk of those are squarely aimed at Healers who have above mentioned freedoms literally handed to them on a regular basis but decide to stand around doing nothing anyway. Unless you're in a PF group where people absolutely will be checking damage numbers during specific raids, then the bulk of said complaints won't apply to you seeing as you are clearly willing to contribute when you have no other immediate priorities, which is welcomed in casual content.

Raiding isn't overly different, insofar as the 'variables' still apply in raids and you will also still get opportunity windows, yet they will come in-between more frequent mechanics and healing checks.

[miraidensetsu]

So I have to admit, I'm coming from the steam forums where people are....opinionated? But while I know healer DPS is something you should do because it makes the job less boring and helps your team. There was a guy over there that kept claiming that healing DPS is a bonus and your main role is to heal, so you should focus on that before worrying about DPS.

Healer DPS is a bonus. The healer's role is to heal, indeed and that's why you are on the group to begin with.

But every bonus is welcome (specially on savage/ultimate).

But two others kept shouting him down and saying they blacklist lazy healers who aren't doing their absolute best. I am just now starting to get my gear into I guess a decent place, since I can run all the raids with my gear score. How stressed should I be about putting out top DPS as a healer? Because frankly in roulettes sometimes even when I focus on healing it's all I can do to keep groups up, let alone worrying about trying to put out top DPS.

That discussion should be made with your group. The people here will say that you doing top percentile DPS is the bare minimum for being a decent healer, but your group can have a top DPS that lessen the need of focusing that much on DPS. Or the group is still learning the fight and you are their safety net and should focus more on healing and only DPSing when there are no heal to do. On the end of the day, the only person who can accurately answer that question of your is you, based on the cards you have at hand.

And don't give that much attention to what they say. They have good tips to share, true, but "if opinion were good, it would be sold, not given".

[Taika]

The people here will say that you doing top percentile DPS is the bare minimum for being a decent healer

Having actually read this thread, I'm pretty sure the opposite of this is what "the people here" have been saying.

[Vyriah]

Having actually read this thread, I'm pretty sure the opposite of this is what "the people here" have been saying.

Most of the thread seem off the point though. I think that's because no one really knows about TSW and Rift.
I'm pretty sure anyone coming from those absurdly open game-system MMO is gonna be mechanically scared of doing DPS in FF XIV(outside the absence of double targetting wich is in both of my Rift memories are not too hazy).

It was more a question about the player community.
And the only answer is that some people just want to be angry anyway, no matter how you actually perform.

[Katlyna]

I concur with others posts. If you want to be primary healing, not DPSing you shouldn't worry. As you get comfortable with higher end combat and your gear in relation, absolutely use extra cycles to dot, nuke and AE. And as you get better you can do this more. None the less the offhealer I am with doesn't DPS much at all and we still progress in savage raiding. So even at the high end one healer can focus heavily on healing without much damage.

So don't worry and enjoy!

[Sumizu]

I haven't gotten to the the hardest content yet, but from my personal experience so far I like to DPS as healer too just because it's boring to stand there and watch health bars go down or maybe occasionally dodge some AoEs. If everyone's topped up on health and won't be dying anytime soon, heck, I'll Stone or Holy some mobs if I want to >:v Besides, outside of a boss you have more than enough MP to both DPS and heal.

However, DPS as healer is by no means necessary and let nobody tell you otherwise. DPS is certainly welcomed, to help speed things up but if someone criticizes you because you haven't been doing any then give them a kick in the shin on my behalf and carry on doing you. I mean, until they somehow come out with a healer class that lets you heal based on outputted damage, it should be optional that a healer do anything other than heal.

[Taika]

However, DPS as healer is by no means necessary and let nobody tell you otherwise.

A lot of the highest level content in this game has indeed required healers to DPS for the party to meet the DPS requirements. As in the rest of your group can have fully melded highest item level available gear on them and be the best players of their class in the whole world, and they still would not be able to clear the fight if their healers do 0 DPS. It is extremely misleading to claim healer DPS is "just a bonus" or "not necessary" in this game.

And once again, even if the healer DPS would not be strictly required, it's not fair to make your tanks and DDs push 90% efficiency and activity while allowing your healers to stay far from that.

There isn't even need for contradiction, why are you trying to do that healer DPS discussion over again ?

I am not trying to start another discussion, but I also don't like seeing people spreading misinformation. Since this thread is started by a healer new to healing in this game, and quite possibly read by many people in similar position, it's not good if they get the false image that healer DPS is just "something nice" and not something that's a vital part of playing their job and rightfully expected from them (the level of the expectation depending on the difficulty level of the content they're taking part in). It's a shame if newbie raid healers walk into Savage expecting the other party members to carry the responsibility of beating the enrage timer without them because they have been given a false impression.

Having read the OP, and now again before typing this reply, the topic of discussion includes how players see the role of DPS in healer play, and knowing if it's needed or not and in which content is certainly a part of it.