Suggestion as to how to get people to become healers.

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Originally Posted by RopeDrink

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To be honest, I blame dps for a slow run. Not tanks and healers.

When dps are going their jobs properly (burring everything to the ground) I find it hard to dps as a healer. I'll do few casts and ads are gone..
As SCH I sometimes can't even Bane cus the ads are dead. As AST or WHM I cannot AoE (Holy, Gravity) more than 1-2 times..

So next time you have a slow run check your dps first.

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Originally Posted by RopeDrink

You're missing the point - it's on everyone. DPS will never always be at 100% efficiency, though it can be helped by everyone. You'll always tell when DPS is sub-par, and my post does not imply they get a get-out-of-criticism card. This is a topic about Healers - DPS not being up to scratch is an entirely different topic. Related (same as bad tanking), but not the main focus.

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I understood your point. But according to many replies to this topic. The reason players are not playing healer role is because they don't want to dps. Which I disagree with.

Just trying to clear this point out.

You're missing the point - it's on everyone. DPS will never always be at 100% efficiency, though it can be helped by everyone. You'll always tell when DPS is sub-par, and my post does not imply they get a get-out-of-criticism card. This is a topic about Healers - DPS not being up to scratch is an entirely different topic. Related (same as bad tanking), but not the main focus.

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Originally Posted by RopeDrink

The whole 'it's not my responsibility' spiel is a lazy defence mechanism. Even in all the older, classic MMORPG's, just being a Healer doesn't mean you stand there picking your nose when you have nothing to do (and they had a lot more healing gibberish clustering up their archetypes and convoluting the process compared to FFXIV, which is quite simple - at least for some classes).

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On the contrary. Back in the Original to around the expansions after Planes of Power, life as an Everquest cleric was pretty much "SIT THAT A$$ DOWN AND MEDITATE! I DON'T WANNA SEE YOU STANDIN' UNLESS YER HEALIN OR BUFFIN MEH!" And raiding as a healer was sitting on your ass till it was your turn in the Complete Heal rotation =p

Hell, even in FFXI with no red mage there was a loooooooot of sittin' and medding as a white mage. At least up till Wings of the Goddess which was around the time I stopped playing.

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Originally Posted by Reiryuu

On the contrary. Back in the Original to around the expansions after Planes of Power, life as an Everquest cleric was pretty much "SIT THAT A$$ DOWN AND MEDITATE! I DON'T WANNA SEE YOU STANDIN' UNLESS YER HEALIN OR BUFFIN MEH!" And raiding as a healer was sitting on your ass till it was your turn in the Complete Heal rotation =p

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**** CH CHAIN #5 - 4s IMBRI UNDINARE NEXT! ****

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Originally Posted by RopeDrink

You're missing the point - it's on everyone. DPS will never always be at 100% efficiency, though it can be helped by everyone. You'll always tell when DPS is sub-par, and my post does not imply they get a get-out-of-criticism card. This is a topic about Healers - DPS not being up to scratch is an entirely different topic. Related (same as bad tanking), but not the main focus.

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Here's how I read this: "Every healer should be up to MY standards because things just can't die fast enough".

It's statements like these that make you part of the problem. By saying that healers HAVE to do damage, you're creating a standard for them well above the other two roles. Fortunately other MMORPGs these days don't have this requirement because healers are simply expected to heal. That's it. I know, it hurts so much to think about those healers sitting on their thumbs, but when they get bored, they might do some damage--not enough to really make a difference, but something to pass the time. And yes, healers should get praise for being able to juggle healing with dealing damage, and good for you for being able to do that (maybe, idk). The issue is that it's because of players mandating that healers aren't allowed that breathing room that is why we are truly lacking in healers.

I play healers because I want to heal. The majority of my friends who play healers in other games play them because they want to heal, which is pretty much why they tried this game, got griped at for not doing damage, said "this game sucks", and moved back to whatever game they were playing before.

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Originally Posted by RopeDrink

The whole 'it's not my responsibility' spiel is a lazy defence mechanism. Even in all the older, classic MMORPG's, just being a Healer doesn't mean you stand there picking your nose when you have nothing to do (and they had a lot more healing gibberish clustering up their archetypes and convoluting the process compared to FFXIV, which is quite simple - at least for some classes).

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In TERA, healers are encouraged to remain "out of combat" for as long as humanly possible for better mana regen and faster movement speed (healing someone in that game does not place you into combat, only damaging an enemy does). In WoW, the only healers that actively contribute DPS are Disc Priest (a class that is literally designed around that concept), and Mistweaver Monks (if they take the talent spread that lets them maximize "fistweaving" - a process the devs have also nerfed considerably since Warlords of Draenor). To say nothing of the borderline sleep-inducing gameplay of original EQ's Cleric, which has already been lovingly derided a bit by others in this thread for its tedious "Meditate" concept.

In the interests of fairness though, Spiritshaper in Revelation Online has a huge DPS focus, and most healers in Wildstar are expected to use at least one support move in a raid that has a secondary DPS effect (though I'd hardly call that "healers dpsing", it pretty solidly falls under support). Aion (a close relative of TERA) also had one or two healing classes that were more offense-oriented in general, though I've only played the game cursorily so I can't say to what degree that DPS is used in their endgame.

You could always make the argument that "standing around" for the purposes of resource regen is dull gameplay (I'd agree, within reason), but I think having enough mana tools to completely self-sustain in a dungeon/raid environment COUPLED with a very powerful mana battery class (BRD/MCH) takes all the thought out of careful ability usage and conservation planning...and leads to why healers have such insane DPS output even at the Savage level. The game can't be designed around having a BRD or MCH to get through content, but virtually no one raids without them and that's part of the problem we're seeing in regards to healer DPS.

It's kind of funny, the weird perfect storm of overpowered healing throughput, controlled scripted raid damage and relatively negligible mana concerns that came together to make "Cleric Stance or Bust: The MMORPG" lol.

Some good points! Warhammer online also had some very inventive healer mechanics with both ranged and melee 'dps' healer types as well as more typical cleric/priest gameplay being present.

It's also rather ironic that as I'm getting stuck into these healer DPS threads, I just had a melee in expert tilting on me because I was DPSing!

No pleasing everybody =(

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Originally Posted by Kazrah

By saying that healers HAVE to do damage, you're creating a standard for them well above the other two roles.

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Incorrect, because you are not taking into account how complex and demanding the roles are. Have you ever played with a Summoner that's playing to the standards of a healer in a dungeon? He'll throw Bio on the target, then jump around until it's halfway done, throw a Ruin after and get back to jumping around. Or, in healer terms, throw a Regen on the target and use a Cure a few seconds later. The difference? If it wasn't a mass-pull, the healer will already have done overhealing casting cure so early.

My apologies, but when people ask tanks and healers to DPS, they don't put some exceptional standard on them. You can have 80% cleric stance uptime in a dungeon. Or 80% of not doing anything productive. Please take just one moment to imagine how dungeons would play if everyone was playing to that standard. I'm not even sure you'd make it within the time limit. That isn't breathing room anymore, that's just being a leech - regardless of role. Which means at that point you're no longer arguing about whether DPS is appropriate, but only "How much?".

And yes, people play healers to heal - that is fine. I hear that a lot from friends who main healers. But the game currently doesn't really support that, because healers don't need to heal often and just poke their nose over vast lengths. Even in Savage, there is a lot of downtime - The content can even be solo-healed while it is relevant, despite being designed as challenge for 2 healers. And in the one content where healers really do need to heal most of the time, PvP, people can die within seconds. It's far too stressful for most.
And tanks that are able to do Savage content without healers at all come Echo just put the crown on top, because they synergize with healing - You heal more effective HP per nominal HP the more the target mitigates.

Fixing that isn't easy and requires some major reworks, with the end result in all cases being that healing becomes less accessible.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

Incorrect, because you are not taking into account how complex and demanding the roles are. Have you ever played with a Summoner that's playing to the standards of a healer in a dungeon? He'll throw Bio on the target, then jump around until it's halfway done, throw a Ruin after and get back to jumping around. Or, in healer terms, throw a Regen on the target and use a Cure a few seconds later. The difference? If it wasn't a mass-pull, the healer will already have done overhealing casting cure so early.

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Demanding? Complex? What game are you playing? There is nothing complex or complicated at all about the three roles presented in FFXIV. The problem with the healer downtime is a couple things:

1) Tanks are overgeared for current endgame dungeons making them take considerably less damage. It's a much different story when you were leveling in HW and the tanks weren't overgeared for the content you were doing. Do you remember the vault leveling up as a healer? I sure do. That last fight was quite demanding on healers.


2) The content doesn't demand enough healing. That's a problem in the design, not a complex demand on healers. That, again, comes from the community. Most healers will DPS just for something to do in the meantime if they have the resources to spare.

3) Random people in dungeons do different things, have different gear, etc. You have to adjust to the situation and some people do that better than others. Expect the tank to pull a small group, hit cleric stance only to see his HP plummet as he pulls 3 more groups without popping a cooldown... Well, he's probably not going to make it unless you got Benediction up.

4) Yes, yes I have grouped with just such a summoner in ARF. The other DPS was a dragoon. It was a long run.

5) Healers can cast other things besides cure. Stoneskin comes to mind. I use stoneskin quite often especially on the second boss of Sohm Al Hard mode when the tank gets hit with infirmary. The problem is, WHM especially doesn't *HAVE* anything besides cures, stoneskin, and regen. That's a class/job design flaw. There should be other things that healers can do/cast besides DPS spells, IMHO.

I don't think anyone will argue that the current content is quite easy and not demanding enough on healers who just heal. But it should be up to the devs to give the healers more to do or more things to do in that time, it shouldn't be something demanded/enforced by the players... if that makes sense. Of course, this is just my opinion.

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Originally Posted by Reiryuu

1) Tanks are overgeared for current endgame dungeons making them take considerably less damage. It's a much different story when you were leveling in HW and the tanks weren't overgeared for the content you were doing. Do you remember the vault leveling up as a healer? I sure do. That last fight was quite demanding on healers.

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TBH, that's not really the case, I just had a tank in 60 roulette with 13k HP (We had 17k after sync), he was making up the ilvl requirement with slaying gear and as such was about as massively undergeared for the instance as you can get. I still had a 77% CS uptime and did a little shy of 1k dps average across the run. Don't get me wrong, I played carefully, but it certainly wasn't demanding on healing at any stage.

Vault stands out because it had 2 bosses with mechanics that would near on kill you if you failed them and the last boss coupled that with a nice helping of aoes throughout. The rest of the instance was a faceroll like any other end game HW dungeon though =/

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Originally Posted by Reiryuu

5) Healers can cast other things besides cure. Stoneskin comes to mind. I use stoneskin quite often especially on the second boss of Sohm Al Hard mode when the tank gets hit with infirmary. The problem is, WHM especially doesn't *HAVE* anything besides cures, stoneskin, and regen. That's a class/job design flaw. There should be other things that healers can do/cast besides DPS spells, IMHO.

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Absolutely agreed here, this is my point if and when I get moaned at because I am DPSing in a dungeon. What do they expect me to do? =(