Dear Healers that don't DPS in dungeons

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Originally Posted by Brahma

Haha, ditto.

I think DPS with a healer is acceptable when appropriate, but it's a dangerous art to mess with. Overall, heals > DPS for a healer. Usually.

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It isn't dangerous in the least. I'll DPS Titan all the way through to P5 (and be at like 25% MP). Then I'll be generally studdly and end the match max MP. Scholar rules.

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Originally Posted by LiadansWhisper

I don't understand why you would play a healer...then complain if people think you are healers. As if healing somehow isn't important.

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Because at some point, your DPS is going to make a serious difference. Turn 4 in Coil, as a potential example. The toolkit and time is there. All you need is the skill and timing.

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Originally Posted by LiadansWhisper

I don't understand why you would play a healer...then complain if people think you are healers. As if healing somehow isn't important.

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You don't understand like 90% of the posters here

Why do i think coming back here I dunno but here we go again


I AM NOT SAYING FOR PEOPLE TO DONT HEAL FFS IM TRYING TO SHOW PEOPLE TO DO OTHER STUFF THEN WATCHING NETFLIX WHEN TANKS AND PARTY ARE FULL HP


Tanks dont need to be 100% HP at all time

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Originally Posted by Vennox

I love you <3

If you're ever looking for a new home and maybe a FC, Come to Valefor, DDE would LOVE to have you. We can negotiate the number of cookies included.

Sincerely
A tank :)

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(Pre-face - I assume by dungeons you mean CM/PR/WP/AK)

I really don't get this attitude. Are you saying you like healers who are lazy?

Healers have a lot of down-time in this game's current content in their most important role: keeping the party alive. During this large amount of down-time, MP willing, they are DPS classes who can contribute a large amount of damage - SCHs in good gear can easily match a lesser geared DPS on single targets and multi-target situations, and WHMs are more or less the kings and queens of burst AoE in the game, right up there with BLMs going all out. Pre-BC and, after enough gearing, Turns 1-4, to happily let a healer neglect this damage output in favor of letting them relax or just keep an eye on the topped off party is a disservice to every other member of the group. The DPS and tanks never stop taking action, and will often throw on debuffs and buffs outside of their given role to help the healer have to heal even less - not so the party can survive better, but so the healer can attack even more - so why should the healer just stop helping? Technically DPS don't need to work as hard as they can to clear pre-T5 content, as you can easily clear content if they stopped every 5 seconds to take a drink; in my eyes, there's no difference from that and a healer doing nothing for 5 seconds. The goal of the group as a whole is to kill every enemy as smoothly, quickly, and efficiently as possible, and if a healer doesn't want to participate in this goal when they easily can, they're holding the group back.

Now, there certainly comes a point in content pre-BC when healers have to heal and only heal, but these situations mainly occur due to inexperience in the content, undergearing, or mishaps from the other player. In those cases, sure, let the healers be watchful hawks who keep every piece of lost HP patched up, every debuff promptly destroyed, every big attack mitigated in some form. However, this should not be the norm, and if this is truly the norm in DF, it's time for the healer to find a FC, or perhaps a NEW FC.

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Originally Posted by Terius

I don't understand.

SCH is a DPS job, Eos is the healer. :)

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YEAH HAHA, try to do that in the coil

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Originally Posted by Whippet

You don't understand like 90% of the posters here

Why do i think coming back here I dunno but here we go again


I AM NOT SAYING FOR PEOPLE TO DONT HEAL FFS IM TRYING TO SHOW PEOPLE TO DO OTHER STUFF THEN WATCHING NETFLIX WHEN TANKS AND PARTY ARE FULL HP


Tanks dont need to be 100% HP at all time

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I dunno, I don't think healers should be pushed to do things they're not comfortable with (especially in the random Duty Finder). And it isn't the healers alt-tabbing to watch Netflix with the tanks at full HP (although for some people, that's how they relax, and I don't see anything wrong with it, either, since they're doing their job - that would be healing, anyway) that this thread is about, if I'm understanding the OP correctly. It's about the healers who, while the tank is at 30% health, they're still spamming Stone II. And they're spamming Stone II because they come here and read that that's what they should be doing. And people keep telling them that if they don't DPS, they're bad and lazy. So there they are, trying to DPS and heal at the same time, but for whatever reason - maybe the tank is undergeared, maybe the DPS don't watch their threat, maybe a pull goes wrong and they get an extra pat, or someone stands in something, maybe they have trouble target swapping, maybe they don't realize they don't have the tank targeted, or whatever, they end up prioritizing the wrong thing at the wrong time. Some healers shouldn't DPS in dungeons. That doesn't make them bad, it makes them new. It takes a while to build up the ability to multitask all the things you're doing in a dungeon (which experienced healers like you may not even realize you're keeping track of, but trust me, you are). It's significantly easier, too, with a pet like Eos, since the only thing she does is heal, and she will generally react correctly even when you do not.

This one-size fits all approach to healing is, quite frankly, bullshit, and I'm going to keep saying it's bullshit for as long as people like you keep pushing it, Whippet. Choosing to DPS or not is, and always should be, the healer's choice. And don't wave raiding in front of my face, because we're not talking about raids. In raids, you do things that you wouldn't ever do otherwise. I have done raid encounters as a healer who does nothing but DPS the entire time except for one particular part of the fight where I heal. I have done raid encounters where doing anything but healing was going to cause a wipe - nevermind concerns about mana. I have done raid encounters where we brought 1 healer - just one. I've seen raids where we stacked 5 of a specific class - to the point of having people bring undergeared alts - for one particular ability we needed to down that particular fight. Raids are very silly places, and they are not 4-man dungeons.

Choosing not to DPS in a dungeon because you don't feel comfortable doing it doesn't make you bad. It doesn't make you wrong. It doesn't make you lazy. It doesn't make you unskilled. But you know what does make you all of those things?

Being so busy DPSing that people die.

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Originally Posted by -Eri-

If i get bored... i tend to nuke.... however i may recosidder.... killed myself a few times by pulling hate due to nukeing -_-

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Yeah if the tank is pulling several groups of mobs at the same time, you have to be careful with that. They will all agro the healer. I just do whatever works for the party.

Oh lord this blew up fast! Allow me to clarify...

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Originally Posted by LiadansWhisper

Choosing not to DPS in a dungeon because you don't feel comfortable doing it doesn't make you bad. It doesn't make you wrong. It doesn't make you lazy. It doesn't make you unskilled. But you know what does make you all of those things?

Being so busy DPSing that people die.

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Pretty much this, based soley on my experience so far.
Yes, I did have a dungeon where the healer was DPSing while doing a ripper job at keeping us alive. This is by far the most sought after healer and with good reason.

My case and point: if I am faced with choosing between a healer that wont DPS and the party lives vs a healer that DPS's and people die and/or the group repeatedly
wipes due to this, I will forever choose the first option.

on my WHM, I have a macro to aero II and thunder while popping me quickly out of cleric stance ( not saying its perfect, sometimes gets stuck in cleric stance then sit there for a sec wondering why the hell i just did a crit heal for 595 xD) but i only use it when the tank can handle the incoming damage the 11 or so seconds it takes for me to toss it out, but i picked WHM to heal...not DPS, if i wanted to DPS my smns would be higher than 44

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Originally Posted by Vennox

Oh lord this blew up fast! Allow me to clarify...



Pretty much this, based soley on my experience so far.
Yes, I did have a dungeon where the healer was DPSing while doing a ripper job at keeping us alive. This is by far the most sought after healer and with good reason.

My case and point: if I am faced with choosing between a healer that wont DPS and the party lives vs a healer that DPS's and people die and/or the group repeatedly
wipes due to this, I will forever choose the first option.

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I can (and do) do both in my dungeons, when I feel like it (generally not "viable" if the tank is pulling everything in three rooms and runs out of CDs, or is a Warrior, but YMMV). But I keep running into healers in lower level dungeons who really, truly can't DPS while healing safely, and the tank is nearly always the one who pays for it by face-planting.

Sadly, my wimpy cross-classed Cure isn't doing jack to keep him alive. -_-

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Originally Posted by Vennox

My case and point: if I am faced with choosing between a healer that wont DPS and the party lives vs a healer that DPS's and people die and/or the group repeatedly
wipes due to this, I will forever choose the first option.

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Anyone would take the first option. But you leave out a very important option of a healer that can keep you alive and DPS on the side like a BAWS. We do exist.

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YEAH HAHA, try to do that in the coil

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Tbh it very much depend of the turn. Turn 1 and 4 I don't really heal until situation clearly demand it (3 stacks on Caduceus, phase 6 in turn 4)

I mean you got dps - Rouse - Whispering Dawn - + heal from Eos and Leeches. Use leeches to toss that heal here and there, use rouse, ask your tank to use convalescence when you need the boost, ask your monk to use mantra ? then the fairy do things for you pretty much :p

All you have to worry about is to mitigate the most damage possible with the tools you got. Like adloquium + virus + eye for an eye + sacred soils is a goddamn good example here, especially when your tank use convalescence, coupled with you usin rouse, why on earth would you even want to heal, dps ! Your fairy is here :D

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Originally Posted by Sygmaelle

Use leeches to toss that heal here and there,

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Leeches is a dispel, not a heal. Is there something you are dispelling for Turn 1? I don't recall anything in there to be dispelled... Or do you mean another ability? o_O

I'm glad that your tanks are far tougher than the ones in my group, but um...I'm already hovering at OOM by the end of Turn 1, so at the moment, I'm going to stick with strictly healing. :)

Gah always mixin up the names haha. Dat 20% instant heal sorry :p

Its not really a question of tanks beein tougher, its how you manage cooldowns that make a true difference !

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Originally Posted by Sygmaelle

Gah always mixin up the names haha. Dat 20% instant heal sorry :p

Its not really a question of tanks beein tougher, its how you manage cooldowns that make a true difference !

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Lustrate!

Curious: You running dual paladins or pally + warr? We are running pally + warr and let's just say it keeps things...interesting.

well if you're gonna die, its gonna be quick, if i can keep you alive vs 5 trash mobs im pretty sure its gonna be boring as hell after 2 of them are dead..

Btw in coil ,titan and garuda and alot of boss fights.

When the boss reaches a certain hp they go into the next phase. So until they reach the last phase healer dps doesn't weigh as much as it would on a fight amdapor keep wall and dragon where the fights have hard enrage timers.

Coil 4 has soft enrage with the the new wave spawning but can be overcome with good play/healing .

Coil 5 has the 13min hard enrage timer but you don't want to rush the fight since you want to build blm limit break to level 3 to nuke snakes and you dont want to have conflag in dive bomb phase, or have badly timed death sentence. As long no dps dies and you level 3 monk limit the Twintania you won't hit enrage unless you purposely delay to much in the earlier phases. A strategy that our group uses is so have people stand in the fire ,boss cleave attacks to they take dmg which me and the sch will heal which builds up limit break. This way we dont have any delay where we wait for limit break.

Sch dps is worth alot more then whm because of how dots work. When the boss disappears or jumps they continue to tick and do dmg. Granting you like a small kind of headstart on the next phase. This is noticeable in titan and garuda.

But for titan pre heart shatter phase it is pointless dps since when he reaches the %hp he will go straight into the next phase. Its when the heart appears and after it shatters that your dps is used to beat the hard and soft enrage. Though the soft enrage tulmults are easy to heal.
For garuda she will go into the next phase when her hp is a certain percentage but unlike titan won't do it straight away so the dps does matters. Smn and sch parse very high on garuda.

I've always felt that DPSing as a healer is situational. I usually test the waters a bit by healing for the first few fights in a dungeon before deciding whether I'll pop into Cleric Stance to do some DPS. Otherwise, I'll refresh DoTs provided everything is running smoothly. I don't always switch into Cleric Stance for it, because I've had some situations where something has gone horribly wrong (accidental pull, DPS walks into the Tonberry Stalker, lag) and, while I can usually easily pull it back, I find it just adds unnecessary stress when you're running with people you don't know.

In an FC group? I have no problem DPSing, since I know what my party can handle and have got used to the encounter. More wiggle room for experimentation. I still feel it should be optional otherwise though.

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Originally Posted by Vennox

Oh lord this blew up fast! Allow me to clarify...

Pretty much this, based soley on my experience so far.
Yes, I did have a dungeon where the healer was DPSing while doing a ripper job at keeping us alive. This is by far the most sought after healer and with good reason.

My case and point: if I am faced with choosing between a healer that wont DPS and the party lives vs a healer that DPS's and people die and/or the group repeatedly
wipes due to this, I will forever choose the first option.

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This was settled in all the previous threads.
No one thinks that DPS has any priority over healing.
No one thinks that a healer that lets people die for the sake of DPS is a good healer.

Your original post just baited people to engage in this "debate".

Please edit your original post to include this opinion so that respondents don't assume you're bashing on healer DPS.

Just my 2 cents:

Presence of Mind = worst buff ever. 5 min recast for 10 seconds of spell speed boost.
Cure 3 = Useless. Too much MP, too little effective radius

Divine Seal, on the other hand, priceless with Medica/Medica 2

MP Regen for Shroud of Saints is also off the chain.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

Just my 2 cents:

Presence of Mind = worst buff ever. 5 min recast for 10 seconds of spell speed boost.
Cure 3 = Useless. Too much MP, too little effective radius

Divine Seal, on the other hand, priceless with Medica/Medica 2

MP Regen for Shroud of Saints is also off the chain.

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Presence of Mind really is useless, especially when THM get an insta-cast ability with only a 1 minute cooldown. I mean honestly why would I use PoM when I can just keep using swiftcast. It's complete BS because PoM maybe helps me cast an additional half a spell before disappearing.

EDIT: Wrong thread, yes. XP But I agree with this post entirely.

Sorry wrong thread lol

As far as a DPS'ng healers go.. I will DPS if the tank has the situation under control and not taking too much damage, at least cast Aero and Aero 2 for some DoT. Just kinda something to do when not healing. Healing always takes priority for me. I've noticed (from tanking) that SCH seems to suffer from DoT syndrome sometimes, should never let tank get to the 100's in HP lol

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Originally Posted by NekoHina

I don't understand either. With this line of reasoning, perhaps WHM should have a cute little moogle pet that can DPS for us while we heal. Seems fair enough. :)

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I can't give this enough likes... SE make the moogle dps pet happen!!!

As for dps vs healing, I do love seeing my dps numbers on demon wall, but in general my priority is always Tanks Health > My Health > DPS's Health > Things Dying. I really hate the black and white, it really depends what's going on, how geared the group is, how fast and large the pulls are. Sometimes holy spamming makes things go fast, sometimes it gets everyone killed. DPS when you're comfortable, otherwise heal that's what you're there for.

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Originally Posted by LiadansWhisper

Lustrate!

Curious: You running dual paladins or pally + warr? We are running pally + warr and let's just say it keeps things...interesting.

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Most of the time 1 war, 1 paladin, 1 monk, 1 dragoon, 1 bard, 1 scholar, 1 white mage, 1 black mage.

I hate class stacking and so far we're doin fine ^^

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Originally Posted by LiadansWhisper

I dunno, I don't think healers should be pushed to do things they're not comfortable with (especially in the random Duty Finder).

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The only way to get comfortable is to push yourself. Nobody is magically able to DPS and heal at optimal efficiency; it takes practice. Once a healer is comfortable with the healing part of WHM/SCH, they should start mixing in DPS when healing is not needed at certain parts of the fight. Similarly, once I was comfortable with the easy skill rotation for DRG I moved to the more difficult but optimal one, because that simply makes me more valuable to the group.

Now if we are talking about someone who can't move to the next step of DPS'ing when healing is not needed because they are not yet comfortable doing just healing, then they should indeed stick to just healing. But we're no longer talking about the cream of the crop WHMs and SCHs in this case.

At this point, I almost exclusively DPS, as a Scholar, in dungeons. On occasion, I will get a group that requires me to drop Cleric Stance for stronger heals, but for the most part, Eos does the job.

I have Embrace set up as my Ctrl+1 hotkey and everything else is macro'd. All of my damaging spells (save Shadow Flare) are set to <target of target> so I always have the tank targeted.

Most fights start with Shadow Flare, then my "All in one" DOT macro, Bane, and Ruin 2. The whole time I spam Ctrl+1 for fairy heals, and toss a Lustrate if needed since the tank is already targeted. I almost never have aggro issues, since all of my attacks are set to hit what the tank is already targeting.

I also have enough sense to stop the damage and drop Cleric Stance when required.

In my opinion, if you aren't brand new to dungeons, you are doing your group a disservice if you are not helping with damage.

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Originally Posted by Nailkita

I can't give this enough likes... SE make the moogle dps pet happen!!!

As for dps vs healing, I do love seeing my dps numbers on demon wall, but in general my priority is always Tanks Health > My Health > DPS's Health > Things Dying. I really hate the black and white, it really depends what's going on, how geared the group is, how fast and large the pulls are. Sometimes holy spamming makes things go fast, sometimes it gets everyone killed. DPS when you're comfortable, otherwise heal that's what you're there for.

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I can't agree more. Heal is always priority and should be our choice. I have a macro for aero and virus to start off the fight and then go into healing. It is not much, but every little helps. If health is well in hand and I have little fear of aggro, I will do more. If I know what my tank prefers, I will do more. Some like sleep, some holy, some heal only. Know your tank. Above all else, heal. It is our job. It is no one else's business to tell us how to do it or spout insults.

And I do vote for a Moogle....campaign for Moogles has begun!

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Originally Posted by YuiSasaki

Huh? Did i miss something? I thought pet commands wont work on macros.

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They do if you use synapse. I have a razor naga mouse.

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Originally Posted by Zaresin

They do if you use synapse. I have a razor naga mouse.

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OMG111!!! EXPLOITS!






k not really

I have been dps'ing as heals since level 30. I know the instances well and know the pulls or tanks that require me to purely heal, but if I can sneak a bane in, I'm helping.

It's been quite good practice.

Honestly, I don't hold back on any tank and the reason for this is that I know what he's going to encounter at 50. The ones "doing it wrong" may cuss at me under their breath, or in party chat, but when they reach 50, they'll owe me a thanks even if they don't realize it. If a tank is having agro problems every pull, i'll shut cleric stance off.

Also, most the tanks that lose hate to my dps agro would lose it to my healing agro too, because hitting overpower or flash more than once is really really hard.

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Originally Posted by Ralemont

The only way to get comfortable is to push yourself. Nobody is magically able to DPS and heal at optimal efficiency; it takes practice. Once a healer is comfortable with the healing part of WHM/SCH, they should start mixing in DPS when healing is not needed at certain parts of the fight. Similarly, once I was comfortable with the easy skill rotation for DRG I moved to the more difficult but optimal one, because that simply makes me more valuable to the group.

Now if we are talking about someone who can't move to the next step of DPS'ing when healing is not needed because they are not yet comfortable doing just healing, then they should indeed stick to just healing. But we're no longer talking about the cream of the crop WHMs and SCHs in this case.

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You get "comfortable" by running with a static group. Which most players don't end up doing until they hit 50.

I am a war 50 and WHM 50.
I haven't used my WHM to much it's from 1.xx

But I understand how helpful Holy is on low HP mobs that spawn in WP.
I was running as DF WP, I ask the WHM Please holy adds on 2nd boss and they said nope.
Then called me elitist.

I'm not sure how asking someone to do something that will help the party elitist.

I don't care if you Full DPS the dungeon but there are times when it really helps.

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Originally Posted by LiadansWhisper

You get "comfortable" by running with a static group. Which most players don't end up doing until they hit 50.

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You do? That's weird, I DFed my entire DL and I sure as hell was "comfortable" with DPSing in WP. I didn't know mobs and bosses didn't follow a set pattern of attacks until after you form a static group, must've missed the memo on that.

I'm a whm and rule number 1 in an engagement is to be prepared to heal your team when needed. Rule number 2 is always DOT on every target that's being engaged. Presence of mind is not that great but I make due with it. In the first 30 sec of a boss fight, I regen and stoneskin tank. Then I DOT and hit presence of mind and spam stone 2 while in cleric stance. It ls the best I can make of POM in this situation.

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Originally Posted by Freakiie

You do? That's weird, I DFed my entire DL and I sure as hell was "comfortable" with DPSing in WP. I didn't know mobs and bosses didn't follow a set pattern of attacks until after you form a static group, must've missed the memo on that.

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Curious. Is this your first MMO as a healer or have you done this before? Did you have other classes to 50 before you leveled a healer class?

Both healer classes are made to be able to dps as well as heal. If the healer isn't doing much healing, because it's not needed, why not let them dps? SCH is always able to use bio, miasma etc and then heal. When I tank dungeons, I ask the healer to dps (especially on bosses) if they aren't busy healing. Can make some fights so much quicker and easier.

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Originally Posted by LiadansWhisper

Curious. Is this your first MMO as a healer or have you done this before? Did you have other classes to 50 before you leveled a healer class?

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While I do have my fair share of experience in MMOs which helps me pick up stuff faster than most people I really don't think it should take people more than a few runs to figure out WP/AK. Those dungeons are so horribly straightforward the only way not to pick up what to do is by paying more attention to your **** than FF. Especially in the DF where you generally aren't speedrunning there's simply a limit to how much damage your tank can receive, unless he makes sure to get hit by every AoE there is, so unless he's severly undergeared there's a massive amount of downtime as a healer.

I'm not expecting a firsttimer to go in there, stancedance around and nuke everything, but even as firsttimer you should realise that if you're standing around scratching your butt because your tank has near full HP that tossing out a few DoTs and perhaps a Stone II might just move things along even that little bit faster. Considering that even as Whm, where mana can be a problem, you already ran multiple instances with Shroud and even improved Shroud by that time you should start realising that, unless you're perma spamming Cure II/Medica (Admittedly some Whms do this *sigh*), mana really shouldn't be the issue it was in the early dungeons anymore.

Basically by the time you hit 50 and start running the dungeons everyone does over and over and you generally want to be done with as soon as possible you should have enough experience as a Healer (assuming it was your first class) that at least healing is already something you do automatic and it doesn't require all your attention just to keep a party alive through something like WP/AK. At that point there are two things you can do. Scratch your butt because there's no healing to be done or start looking for ways to help the party in other ways than healing, which with the tools we got so far leaves you with nothing but DDing. Now you can tell me that you don't like DDing, but last time I checked scratching your butt while staring at a bunch of HP bars that don't move in a dungeon you've already done far too often wasn't all that interesting either.

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Originally Posted by Freakiie

While I do have my fair share of experience in MMOs which helps me pick up stuff faster than most people I really don't think it should take people more than a few runs to figure out WP/AK. Those dungeons are so horribly straightforward the only way not to pick up what to do is by paying more attention to your **** than FF. Especially in the DF where you generally aren't speedrunning there's simply a limit to how much damage your tank can receive, unless he makes sure to get hit by every AoE there is, so unless he's severly undergeared there's a massive amount of downtime as a healer.

I'm not expecting a firsttimer to go in there, stancedance around and nuke everything, but even as firsttimer you should realise that if you're standing around scratching your butt because your tank has near full HP that tossing out a few DoTs and perhaps a Stone II might just move things along even that little bit faster. Considering that even as Whm, where mana can be a problem, you already ran multiple instances with Shroud and even improved Shroud by that time you should start realising that, unless you're perma spamming Cure II/Medica (Admittedly some Whms do this *sigh*), mana really shouldn't be the issue it was in the early dungeons anymore.

Basically by the time you hit 50 and start running the dungeons everyone does over and over and you generally want to be done with as soon as possible you should have enough experience as a Healer (assuming it was your first class) that at least healing is already something you do automatic and it doesn't require all your attention just to keep a party alive through something like WP/AK. At that point there are two things you can do. Scratch your butt because there's no healing to be done or start looking for ways to help the party in other ways than healing, which with the tools we got so far leaves you with nothing but DDing. Now you can tell me that you don't like DDing, but last time I checked scratching your butt while staring at a bunch of HP bars that don't move in a dungeon you've already done far too often wasn't all that interesting either.

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That's great.

I've encountered healers at 50 who don't know what Esuna does. I've encountered healers at 50 who don't know how to target switch at all (literally, they can only heal one person, and if you ask them to do more than that, they don't know what to do). Healers who think that any little bit of damage calls for Medica. Healers who don't know what their CDs do (despite the fact that the tooltips tell you what they do), who don't understand the purpose of Shroud of Saints, who don't know what stats they should be looking for, much less what each stat does. At 50.

I'll also remind you that if you're using the random Duty Finder to run AK or WP, every single run is going to be different. You'll have your clockwork runs where everyone knows what they're doing. Your runs where no one knows what they're doing. You'll run with the tanks in full Coil gear (assuming they even queue >.>), and then you'll run with the tanks who refuse to wear their AF gear because it's "ugly" and insist on using level 40 armor because it's "prettier." You're going to run into the DPS with broken gear who dies every other second from standing in things (that wouldn't one-shot him if his gear wasn't broken, but...). You'll get the people who know what an interrupt is, and those who do not. Those who can follow marked orders, and those who just DPS whatever the hell they feel like. Those who understand what CC is and how to use it, and those who just stand around with their thumbs up their butts while the tank is getting pounded into dust. The random Duty Finder is just that - random. And I hear enough bitching and moaning from other players every single day to know that it's incredibly hit or miss as to what kind of group you'll get.

And into this incredibly chaotic, confusing environment, you expect someone who has never played a healer before in any game, or for whom this may be their very first MMO, to just "get it" in one or two runs.

Okay. Sure.

And therefore, because you have not encountered any of these difficulties, and because "getting it" was easy for you, it should be easy for everyone.

Seriously, I would rather have a healer not DPS at all if they are unsure. I would rather have them do nothing but heal, if that is what they are comfortable with. Because I can live without the DPS - that's what DPS are there for. But I really, really, really need the healer to be healing when the shit hits the fan.

Sure, I'm not the norm. But neither are any of those cases you mention. Like I said, I DFed my entire DL. I DFed quite a bit of Myth tomes after that as well. I've had like 2 complete fails in that time? One run with an Arcanist and another with a tank that was just completely undergeared. Who knows, perhaps it helps that I do WP a lot more than AK, but I'm not gonna write off the DF just because I had 2 bad WP runs out off the nearly 100 I've done by now.

So just because you found a bad healer it doesn't mean every healer is bad. Just because you can mention a few extremes it doesn't change that on your average DF run there's plenty off downtime for a healer and generally there are no firsttimers simple because the pool off experienced players is that much bigger. If you manage to get into 3 WP runs in a row where everyone is undergeared, has no clue and it's absolute panic then I think you won the lottery. It's so much more likely that you'd get 3 parties in a row where the other 3 people got relics and then aside from those people there's another massive pool off people that know what to do, got some DL pieces (thus already outgearing WP) and are simply farming their remaining DL before facing Titan.