Healer dps in difficult raids and trials.

[Erakir]

The funny thing is, I take a party of noobs over a party of overgeared veterans anytime. People messing up is the only unexpected thing that can happen to you as a healer and a bit of chaos and ameliorating player mistakes is what fulfills that healer fantasy the most for me.

I mean, it's the same thing that gets me going - carrying groups that should have wiped 4 minutes ago and pulling through to a clear is one of the biggest things I enjoy about healing in general - despite that in XIV when that happens usually the group thinks you're a terrible healer because people were dying and they have no idea that 6 people all had 4 stacks of vulnerability. I can't do anything more than top you off and maybe Benison you before a tankbuster, tank. The rest is up to you.

But what people say is just generally true. ABC, always be casting. The damage structure vs the strength of our heals and our general MP economy means that once you're in a group with people used to the content - not veterans/raiders, just used to the content - you're going to find yourself with lots of downtime outside of healing and FFXIV has decided against giving us filler utility spells.

Even ASTs have been changed such that their time spent managing cards doesn't interfere as much with their normal GCD so they can just keep churning out those casts - which translates to damage since we've got nothing else to do unless things are going wrong.

It's not my preferred healing system but it's what we got, so if you have any desire to optimize or play 'well' you'll find yourself DPSing more and more. There's a few fights in normal content that have a higher healing requirement so common little screwups mean you are doing more of that triage non-stop healing, but I'd call them the exception and not the norm.