Dear Healers who don't DPS

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Originally Posted by Moogly

To make it short, healer DPS is good, but don't make it look like mandatory by saying things like : "a pure healer is a bad healer..."

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They are average healers at best. I'm not going to give someone a participation trophy because they need their feelings sated. Learning is an entirely different argument and you'll find the vast majority of us are quite tolerant of inexperienced healers trying. When I get annoyed is seeing level 50-60-70 healers making no effort whatsoever to DPS. I had an AST in Sirensong pulling only 430ish DPS, and that's fine. He kept me alive, handled the big pulls and put forth an effort to at least dot things. No one is suggesting we mass kick healers or belittle them. It's hugely overstated how much that actually happens. But at the same time, I'm not going to say how great a healer you are when you're not using half your toolkit. What the devs think or want matters little. They don't tune jobs and/or content enough to where pure healing is ever required. So this will be an ongoing debate until that happens.

And I think you guys should stop saying that dealing damage is a healer PRERROGATIVE. It's not, and healers are not designed with that in mind. It's something the COMMUNITY made up by imitating top statics who used it as a tactic to push DPS checks while undergeared.

It is by no means something mandatory by design, it's akin to using a cheat (as in subverting/exploiting a FLAW in design - healers need damage skills to be able to do solo content - for extra performance), and it's just wrong to try an impose that on people.

If anyone wants to do it, fine. but if they don't, well, they have a right not to.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

A summary of this whole 49 page thread. Yes, exactly this.

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It's a perfect summary of about half the thread. The other half goes something like this:

"But my ability to stand around doing nothing is important because strawman strawman strawman!"

That's all that is being asked here. If you are doing nothing, do something useful. That's it. How people take that into "you shouldn't raise people because zomg DPS!" is beyond me.

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Originally Posted by Tridus

It's a perfect summary of about half the thread. The other half goes something like this:

"But my ability to stand around doing nothing is important because strawman strawman strawman!"

That's all that is being asked here. If you are doing nothing, do something useful. That's it. How people take that into "you shouldn't raise people because zomg DPS!" is beyond me.

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I'm loving how you pick the most negative reason..then label the other side as saying that. If you are going to do that, then you mind as well say the pro dps side is saying this "DPS or be ridiculed, insulted, generalized and or kicked".

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Originally Posted by Seoulstar

I'm loving how you pick the most negative reason..then label the other side as saying that. If you are going to do that, then you mind as well say the pro dps side is saying this "DPS or be ridiculed, insulted, generalized and or kicked".

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Except that what we've got is one group saying "if you're idle, toss some DPS", and another group twisting that into absurd nonsense that nobody is saying just so they have something to argue against. Nobody has actually responded directly to the idle issue, aside from healing newbies, who everyone has said get a free pass.

Nowhere in this 50 pages has anybody actually explained why being idle is actually good. We do have "oh I can't res you because I need to DPS", which is BS.

A "pure healer" will spend more than 50% of O2N doing absolutely nothing. If you can explain why that's acceptable for healers but not for any other role in the game, you can end this thread right now.

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Originally Posted by AlexionSkylark

It is by no means something mandatory by design, it's akin to using a cheat (as in subverting/exploiting a FLAW in design - healers need damage skills to be able to do solo content - for extra performance), and it's just wrong to try an impose that on people.

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Except that Yoshi P himself has said that the raids (Savage level) have been balanced in a way that they cannot be beaten without healer DPS when they are added in the game, and that healers need to DPS because of that:

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Yoshida: Yes. Since all DPS jobs will be increasing up through level 60, it makes sense to have the white mage's DPS extend by a proportional amount as well. For development, such as with Bahamut's Coils, the development team assumes what the item level should be for general equipment on players when they clear a raid. They sum up the basic DPS for four DPS and tanks at that assumed item level and cut that by about 10-15% for the minimum clear DPS. Healer DPS is not taken into account when this is set.

Certainly for people who are at world's first level, their goal is to clear it at as low an item level as possible, lower than the one assumed during development. So if you look at the fight and figure out that if it's not numerically possible to clear with four DPS and tanks, you'll need to make up the gap with DPS from healers.

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Source: https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/12...-Event-5-19%29

Of course you may call Yoshi P a cheater and exploiter and his design as flawed if you'd like.

And the Hall of the Novice for healers encourages healers to DPS when there's nothing to heal (which is all that people in this thread are asking too). Healer jobs in this game are clearly designed to heal and DPS: they have extremely strong DPS abilities (some of them bypassing actual DPS classes), and plenty of time to use them in all levels of content, and some of the DPS abilities even support their healing.

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Originally Posted by Tridus

snip.

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That is that one group. That does not mean everyone is saying that. That is my point, why pick the most negative response and label everyone on the other side as those same people. I personally don't care, the fact that yoshi himself said it's not mandatory should have ended it along time ago, but here we are. So honestly, what could I possibly say that would end this if even the game director himself couldn't.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

No one is suggesting we (mass kick healers or) belittle them.

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But honestly, that is the general feeling you get from most of the pro-DPS in this thread. Although as you said, non DPSing healers kicked rarely happens in game, you feel like many, but not all, pro-DPS healers are looking down on pure healers, because they are "just" better at playing their class. And that is 1.ridiculous, 2.totally unnacceptable.
As I said, if everybody was constructive, it wouldn't even be an issue to begin with : it's all about that "unforgiving bad boy" attitude.
I believe it is one of the starting point for creating a toxic player - and that is why I don't like it.

In fact, it is the internet and its anonymity that is turning such a pointless "problem" into some kind of harrassement issue - that's actually the point I'm trying to get to.
People will often talk about it like it's related to gameplay, mechanics, etc.... But those are just cheap excuses : it is actually all about interaction between players and in game behaviour.

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Originally Posted by Moogly

But honestly, that is the general feeling you get from most of the pro-DPS in this thread. Although as you said, non DPSing healers kicked rarely happens in game, you feel like many, but not all, pro-DPS healers are looking down on pure healers, because they are "just" better at playing their class. And that is 1.ridiculous, 2.totally unnacceptable.
As I said, if everybody was constructive, it wouldn't even be an issue to begin with : it's all about that "unforgiving bad boy" attitude.

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First of all, absolutely no one is against healers who focus on healing when they need to. This is, when the tank and party are taking ridiculous amounts of damage for whatever reason, when the healer's MP is low, or when the healer is just new to the content or healing in general. You don't see people here saying anything against these healers (or at least I haven't noticed).

But there's a difference between this and the healers who could DPS (they're comfortable with their job and the content, they have plenty of MP and no one is taking much damage at all). These healers could DPS but they choose not to, without any reason other than "I don't want to." These healers would have the opportunity to play their job fully (and yes, playing a healer job fully in this game includes DPSing, that's just the way the healer jobs and the content are designed), but they choose not to. They are intentionally playing less effectively than they could. If you bring this same attitude to any other job, no one would defend it (a tank who can't be bothered to DPS after they've gained enough enmity, a BRD who refuses to give their group MP and TP, a BLM who doesn't like using fire spells). But for some weird reason some people are defending healers who are choosing this sub-par (and it's not sub-optimal, it really is sub-standard) "play style".

All jobs in this game are expected to utilise all of their useful abilities. There's no reason why healers should be an exception to this.

That said, I do not condone harassment or bad behaviour towards any players. If I encounter a player who is playing really badly (such as a healer who's spamming heals or doing nothing when there's nothing to heal), I will politely and nicely give them advice on how to play better. If they're trying, even a little bit, I will be happy. If they refuse to cooperate at all, even after being explained why they should DPS / use cooldowns / adjust their rotation, that's when I'll probably initiate the vote kick.

All the really good healers are either banned from this forum or rather not argue with players who do not understand their paradigms.

To be frank, the truly exceptional healers damage-deal a lot because they have ingrained all the possible damage scenarios in their mind. Encounters are very scripted in this game. They know how much damage is going to happen, when it is going to happen, and how they use their cooldowns and anticipate the timings of raid damage. They are very efficient with every action they do. They are never late with healing nor do they heal too much (although overhealing is not necessarily bad). Since they know how much to heal, they know how much they do not need to heal. You fill in those sections of non-healing with damage-dealing moves.

I find the best healers have experience with tanking or damage-dealing jobs. Tanking requires a macro understanding of the game and how to extract the best play from your team. You also have to think in advance to map all your cooldowns out for every phase of the fight. Damage dealing jobs require GCD efficiency and managing multiple buffs and cooldowns for each phase of the fight and more micromanaging. Healers need to be able to approach the game from both a macro and micro perspective.

If you mess up while DPS-ing, everyone makes mistakes. Gauge your mentality and how you react to setbacks. Pick yourself off the ground, dust yourself off, and try again. Keep trying to get better and persevere. Have fun too.