Healing during FATEs = no credit?

[Risky]

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.

Yes, 100% agree on the ABC philosophy and normally do contribute to damage.

Due to the chaos of an unexpectedly higher difficult fate and supporting/managing more PCs who joined the fate, I forgot to at least DOT the boss. I was always casting or avoiding damage during that encounter; we had a ragtag group so we did our best with who was there. Since I did not understand that damage was a requirement, I focused on full heal/support. I understand now (after the encounter) that damage is a requirement and already adjusted. Thanks.

[Superskull85]

Something to also consider when doing FATEs is that you have chance to get full credit if you engage with them when they are nearing completion. And this rule would be per player arriving. If you were one of the last ones to the area, saw that people needed healing or raising, focused on healing first, and did not get the needed damage hits in then you may not have had enough time to get participation credit. (I am not saying this happened though in this case.)

[Risky]

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.

Something to also consider when doing FATEs is that you have chance to get full credit if you engage with them when they are nearing completion. And this rule would be per player arriving. If you were one of the last ones to the area, saw that people needed healing or raising, focused on healing first, and did not get the needed damage hits in then you may not have had enough time to get participation credit. (I am not saying this happened though in this case.)

Someone syncing with a fate near completion, joining a party that dealt the majority of damage, and getting in 1 damage would receive full gold credit, correct?
I have done run-by heals towards strangers as they engaged with a fate while I was passing through but I would sync if I were staying to engage. I recognize that this is exploitable in a more deliberate way which would create an imbalance with fairness. This makes a lot more sense on a technical aspect as to why the devs chose to require damage as part of receiving credit but exploiters will exploit. I wonder if the devs can reduce the effectiveness of heals from unsync'd PCs to sync'd PCs during a fate... This would increase the spirit of fairness with fates throughout the community. If you are participating with the fate, you should have skin in the game.

After the initial surprise and disappointment of not receiving credit, I realized that I did not do any damage and that was the reason (see my initial post). This thread was more for awareness to others and I'm enjoying the clarification. Thanks all.

[Kirika-]

Someone syncing with a fate near completion, joining a party that dealt the majority of damage, and getting in 1 damage would receive full gold credit, correct?
I have done run-by heals towards strangers as they engaged with a fate while I was passing through but I would sync if I were staying to engage. I recognize that this is exploitable in a more deliberate way which would create an imbalance with fairness. This makes a lot more sense on a technical aspect as to why the devs chose to require damage as part of receiving credit but exploiters will exploit. I wonder if the devs can reduce the effectiveness of heals from unsync'd PCs to sync'd PCs during a fate... This would increase the spirit of fairness with fates throughout the community. If you are participating with the fate, you should have skin in the game.

After the initial surprise and disappointment of not receiving credit, I realized that I did not do any damage and that was the reason (see my initial post). This thread was more for awareness to others and I'm enjoying the clarification. Thanks all.

I have joined FATEs late solo, synced, did some damage, but only got a bronze rating if that.... So, I believe you have to get much higher on enmity than you can get by just do a bit of damage in order to get gold rating.
As for joining a party late as above, I think you may get a higher rating, due to the party buff... However, you would still need to jump up on enmity or have a party tank Shirk to you or such, in order to get gold.
One thing to add on this, doing one point of damage and then healing/shielding/regen/etc. does greatly increase your enmity, so hit the FATE mob(s) with a DoT/Damage spell, or wack-um with your stick/book/card/WhatEverSageMeleeIs, and then keep everyone alive, you will get gold rating.

[Alpheus]

You need to at least tag the FATE mobs/boss to get credit. just throwing a DoT and then subsequently pure healing until its dead should work when you're in a party, in 2.0 there were a few hectic FATEs where I had to heal randos and raise and only ever DoT'ed the fate boss at the start, however since I was solo I only got Silver rank. So healing does get you to build credit for FATE rewards but w/e evaluations are run upon your actions expect you to deal damage to the boss or for your party to deal damage in your stead after you've DoT'ed it once.

FATE credit for healing is basically credit via aggro generation but the game will also consider your DPS or lack of it unless you're in a party in which case all evaluations take into account your party's collective effort, but you still need to tag the boss or enemy in question to receive full credit. You're not gonna get full credit via aggro generation only unless you're a PLD spamming clemency and that's due to your tank stance acting as a multiplier but even then you're expected to tag the boss even with a Shield Lob. So regardless of your role you are expected to damage it, and the extent of which you're expected to damage being higher or lower whether you are solo or in a party respectively.

The above has been my understanding of considerations to take, of how to insure one can get Gold credit for FATEs for nearly the last decade, I'm sure adjustments have been made over the years but with this understanding I never had an issue getting Gold medals on FATEs as a healer so take it for what you will.

[Enkidoh]

Part of the reason for only healing not contributing to FATE credit is that it is intentional by design, and it has nothing to do with the "healers should DPS" meta. It's actually a legacy of FFXI's Campaign Battles where similar situations originally did grant credit for healing and buffing only. Human nature being what it is though, players realized they could exploit this and stood away from danger just endlessly healing themselves (or, more accurately, subbing BRD and singing the same song over and over again), and earning themselves tons of EXP and content currency for doing virtually nothing towards the battle.

SE were not impressed and changed how Allied Campaign worked in that healing/buffing no longer really contributed towards credit for the battle (not surprisingly, most players stopped doing Campaign then as they could no longer exploit it), and it's clear Yoshi was mindful of that here in FFXIV when designing the FATE system during ARR's development.

So once again, this is why we cannot have nice things.