Dear Healers who don't DPS

So right now we have people saying that "there are not bad healers, only healers with different play styles, even if some play styles are clearly the better choice". Oh my God I'm laughing so hard.

By the way please stop randomly accusing people of being elitist. This topic has nothing to do with elitism, it's only about healing mechanics and efficiency. Accusing someone of being an elitist is a very poor argument to prove a point and it surely doesn't make you any more convincing.

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Originally Posted by Moogly

Bonus challenge for you : try understanding what I am saying and trying not to make me look like an idiot.

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When you equate a group of trolls deliberately attacking someone to "maybe you shouldn't stand around doing nothing for 75% of the dungeon when you have a way to contribute to the group", you're making yourself look foolish. Don't blame someone else for it.

I'm still waiting for an answer, by the way. Is it acceptable for me to switch to Paladin and tank a dungeon by hitting Flash 6 times, popping Rampart, then grabbing a bucket of popcorn and waiting for everything to die? I'm doing the requirements of the role after all: stuff is hitting me. I'm even using a cooldown as a bonus!

If not, why is a tank being idle 75% of the pull unacceptable while a healer being idle 75% of the same pull is acceptable?

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Originally Posted by GDFletcher

And that is looking at it simplistically like always, with this community.

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At the end of the day, it's pretty simple. If you're standing around doing nothing, you could be doing something helpful. That's it.

Sarcasm incoming...

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1. Tanking

The initial pull will clearly require the use of Flash or equivalent to initially gain control of the mobs that you are present with
The tank will proceed to use the abilities under their toolkit to keep the mob, be that CoS, Flash, TE etc on PLD or whatever WAR/DRK use on their bars.
If on boss the Tank will have a dps rotation, threat rotation and a regen rotation which would be used.~

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Why are tanks required to DPS? I can hold any trash pack in the game with just Flash. I can do it on a lot of bosses in levelling content, too.

If healers are permitted to stand around doing the bare minimum and being idle 3/4 of the time, shouldn't tanks get to play to the same standard? What I've gotten out of this thread is that telling someone to do more than the bare minimum is "elitist", and a DPS rotation on a tank sounds an awful lot like that.

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2. DPS
Attack the mobs in order of annoyance until the pack is killed or the boss is killed
DPS such as MCH and BRD can use their "Support" toolkit to boost damage/regen and help the party output better
RDM can use their Embolden to increase the damage output of Melee

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Spam Jolt until enemy is dead, then move on to the next one. I've done the requirement of the role.

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3. Healer
Depending on the class of healer, obviously keep the party up
AST - utilise cards to increase performance of those DPSing
SCH - utilise the mitigation heal on Tank
WHM - Do what they do best with Regen and Massive heals

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Wait, AST has to heal AND use cards? That seems unfair, WHM and SCH don't have that extra workload. AST must be for elite players only.

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At no point should the healer be forced to DPS but if they can hit out one or two mobs with DOTs then fine, the mana waste on DPS doesn't help when the Tank goes off an massively pulls the entire dungeon

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Of course, if the tank is doing massive pulls and you're spam healing, then you're actually actively doing something to help the party... which is all anyone has been asking for in the last 70 pages. What I get from this is that you should do massive pulls with a pure healer so they don't get bored by having to wait 30 seconds before pressing a button.

I've been catching up to this thread every spare moment at work, it is at this point a bit of a literary Jerry Springer and I can't lie I love it.

Rather than get bogged down in the recent post that looks like it's in response to the OP more than the 75 pages after that... (This one, buddy you missed this getting addressed 74 pages ago)

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Originally Posted by GDFletcher

Here is a novel idea

Tank will Tank
DPS will Damage
Healer will Heal

Mind Blown ....

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Elitism. In the context of this game prior to this discussion I believed this to be when one player or group mocked or belittled another player or group. I remember a time I experienced this during my MSQ - the first time I did the Chrysalis I had a group from an FC make up at least 5/8 people. They were bringing one of their new FC mates through on WHM.

We wipe to the first time to the tear. I knew it needed to be DPS'd down but it was my first time there and one of if not my first time healing 8 people. Looking back I think my coheal was awful but that might just be tge nostalgia glasses, who knows. Either way we reset and the tanks kinda toe the line of 'is this advice or condescending' when explaining what happened.

It happens again and they just get real mean. They outright blame me for not helping with DPS on it. I see how crazy the whole situation is now and I am 100% sure if I got these same jerks I wouldn't be so shaken but long story short we eventually clear after they spend more of the instance being outright rude to me. Now when I think about this I mostly laugh to myself that a group failed the DPS check there but at the time I very nearly quit the game. That is 100% not the kind of treatment I advocate

On the flipside I think the distinction between that interaction and a more positive one where one person or group advise a healer about DPSing is distinct. I've talked to many cohealers about this especially as a WHM pugging or PFing Susano EX. I can solo a lot of the big damage incidents there so if I got a newer cohealer I would have them focus on damage specifically during things like the sword phase, gaols and Ukehi because otherwise we would likely both still try to heal and waste MP.

I've gotten a few healers that had some discomfort with not healing while damage was going out but if I can get everyone up with Medica II into Medica/Cure III into Plenary then why waste the DPS time? I have not belittled anyone even when I helped a SCH figure out that they had more than their spammable or an AST figure out that their single target nuke was not Gravity.

The difference between those conversations (which all center on healer DPS and optimization) is that the first one is disrespectful in tone and focuses more on how wrong someone is instead of how they could improve where as the second is helpful in intent and (while still advising someone on optimal play) phrased as suggestion/requests.

That being said I think the "happy medium' here is to kick or request being kicked. It isn't fair to expect everyone to want to give advice or even wait through the dungeon while the healer performs an eastern greeting on each of the mobs. If you have a differing playstyle it is an acceptable way to resolve the situation before it becomes more like situation #1.

tl;dr - What we have to avoid in order to not be 'elitists' is not the act of giving advice on how to perform your role more optimally but rather the situation that can result from that conversation taking a wrong turn. It is not elitist to encourage a healer to DPS, it is not elitist to recognize and evaluate subpar play/players. Elitism enters the equation at the same time things like mocking, sarcasm and a lack of desire to help do.

Last night, my best friend was tanking on DRK and I was playing RDM. We did a couple of roulettes. This conversation happened on voice chat (just the two of us) in Haukke Manor normal, that shows off differing community views, and the paraphrased version went like this:

BFF: This healer is making me nervous.
Me: Why?
BFF: They keep letting me get to low health.
Me: So?
BFF: I don't like sitting at low health while they're doing DPS.
Me: They've never let you die.
BFF: I liked that last healer more.
Me: The one that didn't do any DPS?
BFF: Yes, they kept me at full.
Me: But I let your health drop and toss rocks when I heal too.
BFF: I trust you.

Both roulettes were entirely clean, smooth runs, aside from me trying to pull aggro as RDM after he made a comment that I couldn't. ;)

He told me later that sitting at lower health like that, even when it's not particularly imminent risk of death makes him nervous and more likely to pop extra/big cooldowns because he doesn't know what a roulette healer is going to do. Will they get a heal off in time to keep him up? He doesn't know, and the uncertainty makes it more stressful than having someone who won't let the bar go below 90%, even if it means they do the "pure healer" thing. He's fine with that.

It was interesting that we were on different ends of that, since I thought the healer in question did an outstanding job and they got my commendation.

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Originally Posted by Tridus

He told me later that sitting at lower health like that, even when it's not particularly imminent risk of death makes him nervous and more likely to pop extra/big cooldowns because he doesn't know what a roulette healer is going to do.

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The issues I have with that mindset is so many tanks don't actively pop their CD's during trash pulls. Doing so would dramatically decrease the incoming damage and would give the healer ample room to dps.

Healers doing some dps, while also healing can comfortably keep a tank around 60-75% reliably encouraging tanks to pop their CD's while not feeling stressed.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

The issues I have with that mindset is so many tanks don't actively pop their CD's during trash pulls. Doing so would dramatically decrease the incoming damage and would give the healer ample room to dps.

Healers doing some dps, while also healing can comfortably keep a tank around 60-75% reliably encouraging tanks to pop their CD's while not feeling stressed.

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Well, he was using CDs. Being in the 40s makes him want to stack them or use stuff like Living Dead (not that he could use that in Haukke Manor), which was the point. There was plenty of time to DPS here and there wasn't any issue in terms of results. Just that he feels a lot more comfortable as a tank being topped up and would rather that over a DPSing healer, which is a perspective I found pretty interesting as it comes from well outside the circle of folks talking here.

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Originally Posted by Tridus

Well, he was using CDs. Being in the 40s makes him want to stack them or use stuff like Living Dead (not that he could use that in Haukke Manor), which was the point. There was plenty of time to DPS here and there wasn't any issue in terms of results. Just that he feels a lot more comfortable as a tank being topped up and would rather that over a DPSing healer, which is a perspective I found pretty interesting as it comes from well outside the circle of folks talking here.

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I get nervous when they want to let me sit in the 30% as well. Depending on the dungeon you're in, that's one bad string of critical strikes from being dead, and given tank cooldowns are most effective -before- crap hits the fan, if you have to add another CD on there, that means the next big pull won't have one. This is generally only the case in Stormblood now, but it still is frustrating when you didn't have the 'siq nasty' healer and end up eating dirt.

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Originally Posted by era1Ne

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You can try as hard as you can but it looks like DPS is the keyword here, and no matter what, be it because you're lazy or just new and unsure of your skill, you will automatically be labeled as non efficient and be encouraged, if not forced, to play by their rules.
Despite my desperate effort to make them see and consider each and every player's reason for "underperforming" by their standards, or make them think about consequences on the community in the long term of imposing standard in healing and gameplay in general, it is like Tom Cruise's Mission:Impossible.

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Originally Posted by Moogly

you will automatically be labeled as non efficient and be encouraged, if not forced, to play by their rules.

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1. Talking about facts in a discussion or debate is different than actually going in-game and calling someone inefficient. Factually not using your whole toolkit on any job is inefficient due to game design. No one in here said they are going to go into DF and tell everyone they come across in-game they are "inefficient" just to put them down if they aren't playing the best they could.

2. Encouraging better play isn't a bad thing despite your effort to claim it so. It is simply encouraging and trying to help others do their best for their groups that rely on them. I mean you do realize human society wouldn't have evolved a single bit if humans didn't encourage learning, encourage growth, and encourage better ideas and fundamentals. I know this is just a game, but it still isn't a bad thing to encourage betterment. If you took a second to take your hands off your ears and stop screaming "elitist elitist elitist elitist" you might actually hear "I'd like to help you succeed so in turn you can actively help others succeed".

3. Forced? No one in here (or that I've seen), at least that have been arguing with you recently, advocates vote kicking people who are simply playing their jobs inefficiently. So how exactly is anyone forcing anyone else? I don't even say anything to healers who don't DPS in-game, I leave them alone and continue the run, but again a discussion about the facts of the game is a very different thing.

4. That tank you had was trying to play how he wanted, and you tried to "encourage" him to play by your "standards/rules." Hypocrisy strikes again.