Healing during FATEs = no credit?

[Risky]

Last night, I was in a party that successively completed "The Eyes Have It". I'm relatively new to FF14 and am enjoying playing the Healer role as a WHM. Unfortunately, when we defeated Steropes, everyone in my party received credit for the fate except me. I did not receive any exp, gil, seals, the achievement, or the minion drop that my fellow party members received. As the healer, I did no damage but was instrumental in our success by healing and raising those who fell. I even received the achievement "The Kindness of Strangers I" for my actions during that battle.

I'm not asking for credit after the fact. I'm raising awareness for those like myself to do some minimal damage before the fate completes. I'm also asking that the developers make an attempt to not require damage as a requirement for receiving credit after these battles. As a healer, my focus is to support my party, so my active hotbar was configured for support only. I shouldn't have to worry about contributing damage when that's not what my role is.

[MilkieTea]

You should note that the Conjurer questline specifically warns against what you're attempting to do. IE, you need to focus on balancing damage and healing. As a healer, your first and foremost role is damage mitigation. The best form of damage mitigation is ensuring that the fight is faster - ie, doing damage yourself. Dead mobs cannot deal damage to your charges - so kill them.

In order to receive rewards for fates, you need to generate some form of enmity with the mob.

[Connor]

Contributing damage is a healer’s role.

Whether you think that’s a good idea from a design standpoint is another thing. A healer must deal damage or you’re useless

[Nezerius]

Contributing damage is a healer’s role.

Whether you think that’s a good idea from a design standpoint is another thing. A healer must deal damage or you’re useless

Actually, in OP's case (which is FATEs, or more specifically boss FATEs), a healer spamming high potency AoE healing will contribute more to the party, and increasing the likelihood of said party obtaining the gold reward. This is because boss FATEs are based on enmity generated on the target, rather than the amount of damage dealt to it.

To the OP: The way the FATE credit system works is that it doesn't detect your personal participation until you've actually caused damage to the mob. Changing this would likely require them to rework how FATEs detect participation from non-damage actions without an initial attack. Since the solution is rather easy, by simply throwing out an Aero at any point in the fight, I can't really see them spending resources on this.

[Kirika-]

To add, unlike other actions performed during a FATE, healing/shielding/buffing doesn't require you be synced to the FATE.
In order to participate in a FATE, you must sync to it. If the FATE level is close to your level, you automatically sync.
If the FATE level is not close, you must manually sync.

The FATE is a level 39 FATE, as a L54 healer it is easy to start concentrating on healing and forget to sync, as you can still heal the group or others outside the group while not-synced.
As others above said, you need to do at least one point of damage in order to be added to the enmity table of the FATE and you can only do damage while synced.
I have flubbed this a few times, forgetting to sync and try to participate ...oops.
So, always double check you are synced before attempting a FATE, in party or not.

[Jojoya]

I shouldn't have to worry about contributing damage when that's not what my role is.

Except contributing damage is also part of a healer's role in this game. Unless everyone around you is failing mechanics miserably, you'll never lack for free GCDs that you can be using to deal damage between heals.

That said, there are a couple of things that might explain why you didn't get credit for the FATE.

First, were you level synced at the time the FATE ended? If you're not synced when it ends, you don't get credit. Something I'll frequently do on achievement FATEs to make things easier for other players is to intentionally heal unsynced until the boss is down to the last 2-3 percent, at which point I'll go ahead and sync if I want credit (I don't always).

Even if you level synced earlier during the FATE, you might have strayed out of bounds at some point and lost it (extremely easy to do in that FATE with the way players run around to avoid the boss mechanics). Because you were only healing other participants and not trying to damage the FATE monsters, you would not have received any sort of error message to indicate you are no longer synced.

Second, were you in a party? Enmity does matter for most FATEs (collection FATEs are the exception) and being part of a party means you share your party's enmity as long as you're healing others in it. If you were solo, you may not have generated the needed enmity to get credit.

The big takeaway - always toss in some damage even if you're mostly healing during any sort of group content. As WHM, an instant cast Aero on a boss before going back to healing is a good way to do it until you're more comfortable weaving damage abilities with your healing. The damage will keep ticking for spell duration even as you're continuing to heal others around you.

[Curisu]

You have to make at least 1 attack on the fate or boss.

Also, healers in FFxiv are played a bit different.
For example, in a standard 8 player group of 2 tanks, 2 healer and 4 DPS, the healers contribute 15-20% of the overall DMG.
Let it be through buffs on other player or in case of a WHM by his own DMG.

The general rule for healer and caster is the ABC.
Always Be Casting.
So, if your group is at 80%+ HP and and no one is dead, then you should be casting your dmg spell.
And every healer has a dot spell. You should have the dot active one a boss for 100% of the time. You should refresh it when it has 5 sec left, so it never runs out.

[Liam_Harper]

I shouldn't have to worry about contributing damage when that's not what my role is.

Damage is support. Support is providing whatever is useful at any given moment with your toolkit. Healing when healing is needed, extra damage when it isn't. A support who refuses to use half their tools is far less useful to a team.

[dspguy]

I've done plenty of FATEs on healer. Even some where I healed more than not. However, I always land at least one spell on the mob. If you truly healed and did not cast Aero/Stone/etc a single time, that might be the problem.

[Risky]

Actually, in OP's case (which is FATEs, or more specifically boss FATEs), a healer spamming high potency AoE healing will contribute more to the party, and increasing the likelihood of said party obtaining the gold reward. This is because boss FATEs are based on enmity generated on the target, rather than the amount of damage dealt to it.

To the OP: The way the FATE credit system works is that it doesn't detect your personal participation until you've actually caused damage to the mob. Changing this would likely require them to rework how FATEs detect participation from non-damage actions without an initial attack. Since the solution is rather easy, by simply throwing out an Aero at any point in the fight, I can't really see them spending resources on this.

I appreciate everyone's feedback but I like this response above the best. And yes, upon reflection it's much easier for me to change my play (which I already have) than for the devs to make changes to the game.

I'll clarify a few points: I was synced and in a small party when we engaged that boss monster fate. This encounter was not prepped for and I was not the first person to engage the boss monster. Additional PCs joined the fate and I healed/raised them as well before inviting them to our party. I continued to heal/support PCs in my party and out of my party. The issue is really an oversight on my part because during normal encounters with dungeons, fates, etc. I usually did contribute some damage amongst my healing. In this situation though, it was the first boss monster fate my small party encountered instead of a normal monster fate as we were expecting. The increased difficulty was apparent right away and things were a bit more chaotic which put me in full (panic) healer mode trying to target/manage all the PCs around me (in and out of my party).

Since then, I have absolutely made sure to contribute damage in all encounters. I adjusted my hotbar setup to make sure I have attack options always available even if my primary hotbar is in full support mode. This is all a work in progress as I learn more about this game.

I hope that others who newly join this community and take on the same healer role read what occurred in this encounter. I don't want them to also feel disappointed by learning (the hard way) that damage is a requirement, not just active participation. My initial response was due to that feeling of disappointment and I wanted to raise awareness of this for others (devs and players alike).

Thanks everyone.