Dawntrail - Healer Expectation Discussion/Survey
So, I woke up today and saw Arthars' video about another post on the forums speaking about the difficulty of content with Dawntrail and the first thing that actually popped into my head was something that I noticed regularly while running Dawntrail content that rarely happened in previous expansions:
Healers being a hard anchor inside of content.
From the amount of disbands and or heavy wipes I've seen, Dawntrail is starting to semi-/consistently punish:
- Healers that can't avoid getting 2 Vul Stacks
- Healers that can't heal while dodging mechanics
- Healers that try to heal the minimum
I used to look at Healers as a mini-Tank role where as long as you kept yourself and or others topped up on health, it was actually pretty decent as a learning content job, but now that seems flipped.
That being said, how does everyone else feel?
1A) Are you a person that had or has minimum skill expectations for the healer role?
1B) Do you think with Dawntrail that the community will start to force expectations in content (leaving/disbanding becoming more frequent) **or** that people will stop playing healer and switch to a different role after noticing the difficulty and responsibility spike?
1C) Would you recommend playing healer in DT content for someone that is newer to the role? (either job skipped, leveled using pvp job switch, etc.)
2) Are you a person that adjusts for the healer? If you adjusted, which of the following did you do:
A) play a revive job in content
B) play healer yourself
C) try to train new healers and teach them mechanics
D) leave instance as soon as you realize the healer is the problem
E) make attempts at the content until x time has passed and then left
Small story time as background (non-spoiler) to why these questions are popping up to me now:
I ran the new 4 raids yesterday.
We had a healer that was dying consistently. Anywhere between 2-4 deaths by the time the boss is halfway on health, no revive alt jobs in the party, and this is happening every single attempt for 30min straight. The healer is venting in chat saying how they hate the boss, and after that 30min mark of not getting past half health, there was a person that started a vote to disband (it passed), but the healer typed in chat "if you want to leave, just leave" as soon as the vote came up. And it left me with 2 questions:
1) Is that 30min mark acceptable as a non-toxic quit point?
2) What goes through the mind of healers if you were in a disband and felt part of the problem? Are you pissed off and wish people were more patient? Do you ever switch jobs? Do you wait for guides after trying to blind run? Do you queue up and try again several times?
My Reponse to: Dawntrail - Healer Expectation Discussion/Survey
1A) I have the same expectations for healers that I have for every role. Healers need to rez, keep the party topped up, and mitigate party damage. DPS need to do their rotation and use their personal/party mit. Tanks need to do their rotation and mit properly
1B) The expecations for healers to heal has been and continues to increase since EW. It continues to filter bad/greed healers in high-end content and I think it is a good thing.
1C) Sage is the best starting healer imo. It has one of if not the best kits among all the healers and since its a barrier healer you have a better chance of keeping the party alive through party-wide damage vs playing WHM which can only really keep people at full HP when temperance is down.
2) I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "adjusts for the healer"
A) If im playing a caster with a rez I don't hesitate to rez people
B) I main SGE along with SAM/BLM/GNB for high-end content and I basically heal like im playing solo because I don't trust co-healers in PF.
C) I give anyone advice for any job or for mechanics in learning parties or duty roulettes if they're willing to listen unless its supposed to be a farm party. In a farm party, they either get kicked or I just drop party, blacklist, and move on.
D) I will call out a healer for being a problem every time it happens the same way I would call out someone that wipes the party and doesn't speak up to be accountable for their actions.
E) If I'm in a learning party I will stick to the lockout time as long as we're meeting the prog point or pushing past it consistently. I have very low patience for getting trapped in groups with people who can't do the mechanics prior or the prog point listed in a PF. If its a completely fresh party and someone is playing really bad I would probably leave and find a better group.
Answer to two questions:
1) There's no "toxic" quit point in PF imo. If you feel like someone is wasting your time and you're not the party leader you can leave as soon as you feel like its no longer acceptable. If you are the party leader, you maybe give them a second pull and then kick them if its still super scuffed.
2) I have never been part of the problem of a disband for healing personally. I've definitely had situations where I've made a mistake in a pull and it was the straw that broke the camels back for someone, but I prioritize healing when I play a healer in content. Healer, SGE more specifically, is the job I switch to when I just want a chill time progging or clearing content. I have a ton of control over clearing or progging content when I am playing a barrier healer. A lot of PF healers wait to long to rez, or don't look out for people about to fail a mechanic and try to mit them for the incoming damage, or the follow-up damage from a subsequent mechanic.