How scared should I be about DPS?

[Malkria]

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.

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.

[Elamys]

I mean, your main role is healing. You should be focusing on healing first and foremost. If the group is taking a lot of damage you shouldn't be flinging Malefic. DPS is something you do when the healing required is light or nonexistent. If an Aspected Benefic keeps the tank alive, throw that on him and do some damage in the meantime.

Don't be too scared about DPS. Most people are more relaxed about it and don't expect you to output top DPS numbers all the time. It's a lot easier now that Cleric Stance is no longer a thing. With practice you'll come to find more windows you can DPS in. Even something as simple as throwing out a few Combusts helps. And sure, there may come a time when someone dies because you got a little too focused on damage, it happens, but so can any other kind of mistake. A simple "my bad" is enough.

[Taika]

How stressed should I be about putting out top DPS as a healer?

Not at all. When you're fresh level 70, barely meeting the item level of the content you're doing, and running said content for the first time, no one should expect you to pull "top DPS" numbers. In fact, you are fine to not DPS at all if you feel like you need to focus your efforts on learning the fight, surviving the mechanics, and keeping everyone else alive too. It's a good idea to let others know it's your first time running the content, but even if you don't do that, it's unlikely anyone would say anything at all even if you did exactly 0 DPS throughout the run (unless it means you're not using your Earthly Star at all, maybe ).

First things first: get comfortable with your job and with the fight, then when you know what's coming and when and you are aware of your resources, start adding some DPS. You are likely to find that the more experienced you get with the job, the easier it will also become to start DPSing right away in new content too.

DPSing is a part of playing the healer jobs, but everyone agrees that healing comes first. People don't generally have an issue with healers who are new to content and their jobs and have to focus their efforts on handling the healing part of their job. People do have issues with healers who are experienced with their job and the content they're doing, which means they can get by with as low as 9% healing activity in the content, and they choose to spend the rest of their time doing nothing at all instead of helping their party with DPS when they easily could.

Edit: Talking about DF content here, the normal mode Omega, 24 person raids and so on. When you enter more challenging content with enrages (raid finder content: extremes and savage), you should already be comfortable enough with your job to be able to do some DPS while learning the fight.

[KDSilver]

I think Taika pretty much said almost everything.

I'd just add a little something really easy to do as a healer to have a small dps contribution at no effort : put your DoT (if your an Astrologian, that's Combust II).
It's an instant cast (so you can use it when running). You'll only have to refresh it every 30s. If you're new and learning, start with only that, that'll be okay.

The rest will come from your experience when you'll gain more self confidence.
Don't listen people to much, a lot are exaggerating because they are frustated. ^^

[Vyriah]

I got kicked from a party because I was doing too much DPS healer this week.
No matter what you do, someone in this game think you shouldn't play as you do and will be needlessly aggressive about it no matter how you perform.
And better than doing because you should do it, do it because that's how you want to play. If you're interested about more difficult content about the game, you must be interested in playing your job in a more optimised way. DPS is just a part of that, not really something to be concerned with that much.

That said, it's a sane approach to be concerned by your performance, especially as a healer. I'm not sure how this sound like, but it's more because having a sense a responsability is a good thing while a lot of player in this game go for "everything is easy". If you're stressed about it, it means it's not easy and it won't get easier when you're more confident about.

You shouldn't be stressed about playing a video game, but you should keep in mind what you where concerned at that time. It'll later show you how much you progressed and where you'll likely to make mistakes no matter you much you progressed.
Mistakes doesn't really matter in a video game anyway, enjoying the learning process is much better than being stressed over it.

[basketofseals]

If dealing damage while healing is causing you some major anxiety, try to use the more casual 8 mans as practice. You'll have another healer capable of covering you, and if someone dies, it's not usually a big deal.

[Metsonm]

Check if someone is about to die. Is someone about to die? Make sure they're not about to die.

Is it time to DPS? No.

Double check if they're about to die. REALLY make sure nobody is about to die.

Now you can throw out rocks or poison or imploding stars or whatever. Eventually you learn when the damage is coming out and you can get more comfortable throwing out more attacks, but don't feel bad about standing around a few seconds if you're in a duty for the first time and not sure what's going on exactly, just realise that next pull those few seconds could be spent doing damage. Like any job you're looking to optimise your time and it's a gradual process.

[Pastahnak]

it sounds like your doing casual content and for healers that comes with a unique difficulty because how much dps you can do depends on how well geared you and your tank our. Since your already max lvl im guessing most dungeons your gear wont be an issue, but your tank could likely be lower geared and you can either check that before the dungeon or just wait to gauge how much damage they take on the first pull and adjust accordingly. If your tank is adequately geared and using cooldowns to mitigate damage feel free to do more damage and if they are undergeared lean towards focusing on healing or suggest doing smaller pulls. at the very least i try and put dots up on all the mobs and (im a white mage) throw out stones and holys between healing. and the most important thing is to not worry about when you make a mistake and to grow off it, if your tank dies because you were pushing your dps too much and you wipe just admit your fault to the group and learn from it, most people in game are a lot nicer than people on the forums give them credit for :P.

[Malkria]

It isn't so much that healing and doing DPS gives me anxiety. It's something I've been doing since I realized it was something I could do. I've played other mmos where healing was actually based on the DPS you did, like the Chloromancer in Rift or using the AR in Secret World. So i'm not afraid of doing DPS. But I also don't want to have to download a parser, which is 'technically' against the rules of the game, or have someone deciding to kick me because I chose to throw out more heals then DPS because I felt as a healer that was the priority at that moment.

While I get that nobody wants a 'healbot' as some call it, and I don't want to play one, I am the healer. It should be MY call as to what I am doing at any given moment as long as I am doing something. I don't want people kicking me or giving me grief over doing my job instead of pushing DPS which is secondary. Especially as an AST where I only really have four attack spells to begin with (minor arcana is to RNG to count).

[Elamys]

I have been kicked from a dungeon exactly one time in this game, and I've been playing for three years. I was kicked because I didn't want to give the bard a Balance card when he was busy berating the dragoon. So it was more a conduct thing, really.

Don't base this game's community on Facebook groups, the forums on here or Steam, or really any other online community. On the whole, people are understanding and at the end of the day, they just want the clear. If you're a polite person and you do your best, you're not going to have any problems. There's no need for a parser or anything. Every once in a while you'll get that person with the terrible attitude but all you can really do is shrug and move on. It's best to just not engage them.