Any other dejected healers?

Sometimes it helps me to think back to why I enjoy being a healer. Sure I do DPS and I like helping killing things. But my favorite part of being a healer is watching the synergy of the group flow better because I keep them alive and buffed so they can do their jobs to the best of their ability. Healing is an integral support type role and I get pleasure from seeing how fast we can run something, or testing myself and seeing how much the tank can pull and I succeed in not only keeping everyone alive but also contributing to the overall DPS of the group.

I recommend finding what made you enjoy being a healer in the first place and rekindling the love you have for the job.

And at the end of the day, remind yourself that Tanks and DPS can't kill things if someone isn't there to keep them alive to do it ;)

but but but we have cure :D

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Originally Posted by Thrivaios

And at the end of the day, remind yourself that Tanks and DPS can't kill things if someone isn't there to keep them alive to do it ;)

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My love is being the healer. Healing people. Not sitting there with nothing to do, so I might as well put on cleric stance, and DPS. It's to the point now that content is so laughably easy, that I can count on one hand how many times I have to throw a cure spell in any given non-savage scenario. What happened to the notion that healers heal people? SE, can you bring this back please?

Look. I get what people are saying here, I do. It's about efficiently using your time. Does that tank REALLY need a heal? No? Then don't just sit there, throw a Stone III or two while in cleric stance. Efficiency. The problem is that the content has been SO bad (in terms of a challenge), and will likely continue to be SO bad (in terms of challenge), that the most efficient thing to do is almost NEVER throw a cure...ever...and just DPS. How in the hell does this make any sense at all? "Well...you are a healer...and I know that insinuates you will be healing people. But honestly, we as devs don't really want to hurt you...we believe in love, and peace. So...yea..you are called a healer, but please just DPS...cause you don't really need that Cure spell."

This really isn't hard to combat...it really isn't. Make the creeps hit harder. Don't up their hp, don't give them resistances. Just make the six or seven hits that DO get off before dying..actually hurt. Make it so it actually makes me want to press that cure button. Because right now? I can literally just DPS all day, and let the tank regen half his hp lost from a regen spell + passive regen from being out of combat. It's pathetic.

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Originally Posted by RuleofThree

My love is being the healer. Healing people. Not sitting there with nothing to do, so I might as well put on cleric stance, and DPS. It's to the point now that content is so laughably easy, that I can count on one hand how many times I have to throw a cure spell in any given non-savage scenario. What happened to the notion that healers heal people? SE, can you bring this back please?

Look. I get what people are saying here, I do. It's about efficiently using your time. Does that tank REALLY need a heal? No? Then don't just sit there, throw a Stone III or two while in cleric stance. Efficiency. The problem is that the content has been SO bad (in terms of a challenge), and will likely continue to be SO bad (in terms of challenge), that the most efficient thing to do is almost NEVER throw a cure...ever...and just DPS. How in the hell does this make any sense at all? "Well...you are a healer...and I know that insinuates you will be healing people. But honestly, we as devs don't really want to hurt you...we believe in love, and peace. So...yea..you are called a healer, but please just DPS...cause you don't really need that Cure spell."

This really isn't hard to combat...it really isn't. Make the creeps hit harder. Don't up their hp, don't give them resistances. Just make the six or seven hits that DO get off before dying..actually hurt. Make it so it actually makes me want to press that cure button. Because right now? I can literally just DPS all day, and let the tank regen half his hp lost from a regen spell + passive regen from being out of combat. It's pathetic.

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The problem with that is, if you make the mobs hit hard enough to require CONSTANT healing even when you gear is significantly higher than the minimum item level for the content, then how will you survive if the tank is at minimum item level? Or if you are? Or, god forbid, both of you are? The only way around that would be to make stat increases so inconsequential that your ability to survive a given amount of time without casting cure doesn't change... and in that case, one has to wonder what the point is in gearing up.

Again, simply making mobs hit harder would not make for more rewarding healer play.

If the goal is to make healers restore HP more often, sure, that works.

However, I think that most people who are wishing for a change in how we heal are looking to feel more challenged, engaged, and entertained when it comes to the healing aspect of their kit.

Unfortunately, because of how this game is designed, there is only so much you can do. New mechanics help, but just as with the DPS and Tank roles, your reward for learning an encounter is being able to steamroll it with virtually no surprises.

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Originally Posted by Transient_Shadow

I'm quite tired of being blamed for every one elses mistakes..

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I feel the same. I learned to ignore unless I was offended.

If a tank dies he doesn't think it is because he did not use proper CDs. Nor if the fight required tank swap but the tanks refused or failed to do so and made it harder on healers. Sometimes low dps kills them too! But nope, blame the healer.
Also, some dps will keep failing mechanics and take vulnerability stacks expecting to live after their 3rd one. Not happening unless you stop making mistakes.

I completely understand. Today I was running WHM, and of all the parties I was in, only one of them bothered to wait for stone skins. I think people look at us as added support, rather than a necessity.

I've been fortunate enough to have had relatively competent players help me out when I first started up. I do think I'm a pretty good healer (Try to keep everyone healed, watch for status, DPS when I can, buff consistently with cards, etc). Having knowledge of what your card buffs can do is SO important for AST.

The only time I get irritated is when the Tank will pull one room, run to another and pull more, etc. Yet still somehow expects me to be able to keep him/her alive while they are taking chunk after chunk after chunk of decent damage because they are overwhelmed. I've had to scold a few Tanks for repeatedly doing that--they eventually get the memo. Don't complain about my healing when YOU are the cause of the problem.

Healers can only do so much. I would advise you learn to work WITH your Healer rather than just acting like it's a solo mission. Sometimes, you just have to be that b*tch. Command respect--if they want revived I'd suggest they learn to cooperate. ;)

I want to bring in some outside perspective to this post. I'm talking about a time when healers really did basically just heal. For a long period of time in Wow and Rift I experience pure healing from most healer roles. Exceptions existed, yeah. There were hybrid healing builds in rift based out of some mage souls and we had atonement healing from disc priests in Wow. But I was a healing officer in a semi hardcore (I think this game calls it "mid core" or some shit) for a long ass time. We raided 3 days a week 4 hours a night and killed all the content of many tiers with time enough to spare to farm drakes and do the achievements. Over that time we never looked at healer dps. Once in a while our disc priest would make a comment like "damn I did a lot of dps". But that was in perspective against the other healers. Looking at his damage compared to the tanks and dps it was still a small amount.

I was chosen to be a healing officer mostly because I parsed well but also understood that parsing well in HPS was basically meaningless. And I still feel that is true. There are many who disagree with that perspective. But in my eyes all that did, in my group and many many others, was create this sense of competition amount healers that was unhealthy. The healers of the raid were meant to work together to heal the fight. Dps roles mostly work independently. They succeed, at least in their class if not also in a fight, on thier own merit. Healers and tanks (more in Wow where there is more co-tanking and less in this game where there are less targets and less tank swaps) need to work cooperatively. And having competitiveness over HPS is not healthy in this role imo. For dps competition is great. I want my dps to be embarrassed about thier percentile compared... I want them to think "damn, my dps is low I need to do something about it" or "damn, my dps is awesome I need to work even harder to be the best". In my experience, the best dps in this game and in most others are often those who are the most competitive. Now, you can absolutely take that over the top. Become so consumed with your dps, that you fuck up mechanics or let the raid down by dying or killing someone else while you strain to hit the boss for 1 more GCD than you should have. But really good dps will always figure out the exact timing so they can optimize thier dps while also doing all the mechanics. So, I feel competitiveness is generally good for dps.

But for healers... it can be an obstacle. Healers who get competitive often get touchy. And when they get touchy, they resist working together with thier team. This is all my experience of 7 years of raiding in WoW. Maybe others have had better experiences than me... but this was mine. Basically people started trying to inflate thier HPS. They wanted to under heal fights. They wanted to use thier healing CD when the most damage was going to occur instead of when they were assigned to. I saw a lot of this with our WW monk. Since his was instant, he'd often just blow it even when I had another healer assigned to use thier CD at a heavy damage part. Then he'd leave us with a wasted healer CD and his also on CD and we'd end up screwed later. But he didn't care because he just blew the shit out of all the other healers. So when when we wipe and idiots look at HPS to see who fucked up, his healing looks the best and they think "damn, this monk is so good, wtf is wrong with these other healers?". The people in the raid that understood healing wouldn't think that. But that was pretty much just the officer core and a few of our best players. So there would be this sense of shame where the low parsing healers thought they were doing something wrong. And they were thinking.. how can I do more hps... then maybe next raid, they are assigned to tank heal a certain part where there is both heavy tank damage and also raid damage... but they think.... well if I just raid heal there then maybe the tank will get enough healing from that and it will be fine and that will also improve my hps. So they ignore thier assignment and that fact that we already have 2 other healers focusing on raid healing. They blow thier heavy healing CD and heal the shit out of the raid. Now, maybe the tank is ok, or maybe he's not and I have to blow LOH (equivalent to bene on WHM in this game) or some other classes that are better at raid healing notice the tank dropping and switch to tank healing fast and save him. Does it work out? Some times. But its fucking a lot easier if the people just do what they are assigned. But that guy doesn't care. Because he's now the "best healer!" cus he just blew the hps out of the water.

So you can see. It is NOT dpsing as a healer that creates bullying and sense of inadequacy. We have literally had that over HPS for YEARS AND YEARS. Now in FFXIV hps isn't really focused on. We focus more on DPS. But it's still the same game. Before it was the pally thinking "I wish this fucking druid would help me heal the tank through this buster instead of rolling HOTs on the whole party to clip healing like an asshole and all they care about is inflating thier hps". Now it's the whm thinking "I wish this scholar would stop fucking dpsing and help me heal this shit because it's going downhill fast and all they care about is their damn dps!" Things haven't changed. This situation isn't a product of FFXIV and thier dps meta. This has ALWAYS been an issue.

So did that help or depress you more?
The best you can do is just to do your best. And if your raid, just keep changing groups until you can find tanks and a co-healer who have the same feelings as you about healing. For me, that has meant that I changed groups until I found an awesome co-healer that also believes in the "no off healer" meta. Which means we basically share healing and dpsing responsibility together. There is no main healer. There is no dps healer. We coordinate our skills to make sure we optimize dps while also keeping everyone alive. Some times we screw up. Some times I screw up. Some times he does. Some times its the tanks. Some times its someone else. And that's okay. Because for the most part, our combined healer dps is way way more than either of us could have done as the "off healer". But is also feels a bit bad because my dps is crap compared to many other scholars who primarily dps. But then I look at thier co-healer's dps and I see, we are actually doing MORE dps. Because thier co-healer's dps is crap. Some groups have both, sure. But that's at a very high level and we are a casual group so I don't feel too bad. My co-healer helps by reminding me that we are doing good. And he reminds me that we are doing more combined than most healers do by themselves so we are actually winning. And I love him for it. So basically, I am having more fun and enjoyment as a hybrid healer in this game than I ever did pure healing in WoW or Rift or the beginning of FFXIV. Because what I've really wanted this whole time is to have a cooperative relationship with my co-healer(s). Where we work together and dont feel this nagging competitiveness and shame. And if there IS a problem, we address it together and make a plan together. We don't push blame off on eachother or cite HPS and say "mine is great why is yours so low?". So basically. I disagree with your post. And I took like 3 pages to explain why. But I know I'm not the only one that feels this way. Many people LOVE the meta in this game. And many people don't. But after years, I think it's safe to say it isn't going to change.

So when bard came out in Heavensward... and it basically changed to a caster. I played it for A1-4S progression. And I hated it. And I made a lot of posts about how dumb it was and how it would be better to change it back. And I was so mad they didn't have beta testing in this game. And I was just mad about it for a long time. That they had "broke bards". And I feel like many people feel this way about healers. People who liked the "heal and nothing else" idea feel like healers in FFXIV are somehow broken. That healing is broken in this game. And that the community or square enix has destroyed what healers are meant to be. But what I realized about bard... eventually.... was that for every player that hated the new bard... there were just as many who loved it. There were people who had hated bard before that changed to it because it felt way more engaging with the tight dot refreshes and precise CD timing now needed to play it really well. That drew a lot of great players to it who previously thought bard was easy and boring. So yeah it's been a while now. And bard is the same. And now I just feel like I wasted a whole tier being mad at something when I could have just said "new bard isn't for me, sorry guys I'm not having fun doing this" and left and changed classes earlier and been playing something I really love. I'm not exactly trying to say, "give up and accept the healing meta". But I am saying, "realize others really like this style". If everyone hated it, or even the majority of people. It would probably change. But there are so so many people that love it. Some times you have to just accept that others are happy about something that you hate. And then you need to decide, can I really give this a shot and see if it can also make me happy? Or you need to decide, this really isn't for me, I need to try something else and see if I like that better. That might be another class, another role, or even another game. But feeling dejected about it and posting on the forums won't change much.

My suggestion to healers is to gain enough trust in your skills, to be able to judge by yourself who fault it really was and don't take criticsm to your heart or even as an insult. Keep reminding yourself why you started playing this class in the first place and keep improving :)

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Originally Posted by DamianFatale

I completely understand. Today I was running WHM, and of all the parties I was in, only one of them bothered to wait for stone skins. I think people look at us as added support, rather than a necessity.

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To be fair, most healers don't even try to cast stone skin anymore, because in casual content this skill isn't really needed. So thats neither on you or the class you play, but more on their experience with other heales like me, who do not care about stone skin in casual content. Additionaly, nobody waits for any class in casual content or do you wait for dd, so they can do their opener?