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?

Ooo, I like this! I'll go first:

1) I have a minimum skill expectation for all players that changes dynamically as we go through the levelling process. By level 100 I expect everyone to have basic knowledge on what AOE markers mean, not to stand in bad, and have a basic understanding of how their job works such as using AOE, defensive cooldowns on mobs not bosses, etc. These type of things can be learned organically if you're merely paying attention to new skills as you unlock them. That doesn't change for healers. I expect healers at level 100 to be able to play the game, and yes, if you choose to take on the role of healer and find the additional responsibility daunting I would suggest not playing healer until you are more comfortable with interpreting and performing mechanics properly. I think that the community should enforce a standard of expectation, but in all likelihood won't really do it officially. Someone is more likely to just eat the 30m penalty. I would very much not recommend someone start as healer that has job skipped or leveled without dungeons at all. The foundation of knowledge of how mechanics work when you have the task of keeping yourself alive as a priority is just far too important. I don't think anyone should job skip or used alternate means to level if they've never played the role before, to be honest, but this is especially true for healers. I am against job skips being available to players who haven't already completed all the relevant max level role quests already, but that's a whole separate discussion.

2) Yes! I always keep in mind that the healer has an additional responsibility that may be tough to keep track of in and amongst everything else which is keeping people alive from passive damage. Some tanks are able to do this and I HAVE been put into situations where I as the tank have to solo, or I as a DPS have to duo with the tank to clear entire encounters on our own due to mechanical failure, but a healer is much more efficient at keeping people alive than even a Warrior is. I will do whatever I can.
A) Yes
B) Yes
C) Yes
D) Kind of? I will leave if I feel like we won't be able to clear the content before the instance timer runs out. If that's the case it's usually pretty obvious that the entire team of players is not ready to complete the content. That being said, if they are responsive to advice or my presence feels effectual in getting us through, I will tough it out and help where I can.
E) Again, kind of. I have enough experience at this point to get a rough idea of whether or not we can actually clear before time runs out. Also, if it's a serious problem and people are just not listening to advice I will just leave immediately.

Questions on the other 2:
1) It's more based on the situation. If you feel your time is being disrespected and that you don't stand a likely chance of clearing the content despite attempting to give advice (if you are able to), then it is not toxic to leave period, arbitrary time limit aside. That's kind of a skillset that's acquired through playing the game a lot though. As a general rule of thumb though, if the players are responsive to criticisms and help, then it is probably better to announce it and hit a 'vote abandon' rather than just leave. Just leaving should be reserved for the people that flat out ignore advice
2) Honestly for me back when I started healing in like... Heavensward? I just reflected on what I needed to do better. I identified my mistakes and practiced in order to resolve them.

On a sidenote here: I talked a lot about offering advice and help. I'm fairly thick skinned so I can do it more easily, but many players don't even bother these days because of highly toxic responses from players just flat out refusing to put in effort like it's some sort of personal insult to receive help from someone more experienced. I can wholly understand players just silently quitting if they want to offer advice but feel like it's not worth the potential 'you don't pay my sub' veined backlash.

edit: To be honest, there are some days where I just don't want the potential hassle either. Everyone has different tolerances for different things at different points of their lives.

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Originally Posted by yoshinoharu

Questions on the other 2:
1) It's more based on the situation. If you feel your time is being disrespected and that you don't stand a likely chance of clearing the content despite attempting to give advice (if you are able to), then it is not toxic to leave period, arbitrary time limit aside. That's kind of a skillset that's acquired through playing the game a lot though. As a general rule of thumb though, if the players are responsive to criticisms and help, then it is probably better to announce it and hit a 'vote abandon' rather than just leave. Just leaving should be reserved for the people that flat out ignore advice
2) Honestly for me back when I started healing in like... Heavensward? I just reflected on what I needed to do better. I identified my mistakes and practiced in order to resolve them.

On a sidenote here: I talked a lot about offering advice and help. I'm fairly thick skinned so I can do it more easily, but many players don't even bother these days because of highly toxic responses from players just flat out refusing to put in effort like it's some sort of personal insult to receive help from someone more experienced. I can wholly understand players just silently quitting if they want to offer advice but feel like it's not worth the potential 'you don't pay my sub' veined backlash.

edit: To be honest, there are some days where I just don't want the potential hassle either. Everyone has different tolerances for different things at different points of their lives.

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I'm half and half depending on the mechanic. Some stuff I'll try to explain if I think it's easy to pick up once you understand how it works. Some mechanics that are tough in an execution sense, I just stay quiet because even after I explain it, if they mess it up in the future several times, I'm still going to be mad, if not not more mad because now that sense of hopelessness/not clearing is more apparent. So either I choose the element of surprise and 50/50 if they get better on their own, or, I give myself hope, and then get massively disappointed. Sprout symbol on the player and whether its a raid, dungeon, or alliance also factors into whether I speak up.

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Originally Posted by VoidsentStatus

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

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?

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1A: Yes if the content also expects a minimum skill level. If the content has an enrage, I expect a minimum contribution from the healer damagewise. If it's content that doesn't require an enrage (eg EX roulettes) I expect the healer to reach the minimum contribution of 'keeps us all alive'.
1B: I expect people's patience might get shorter (EG where we'd disband after 3 wipes, in DT we'd see disbands after 2). I don't think people will stop playing the healer role because of the difficulty, instead I expect that people who are struggling as a healer will simply complain until things get changed
1C: No. But not because of the 'difficulty', but rather because of the myriad issues with the role that have cropped up since SHB's launch (and have been talked about over and over since then)

2A: If I'm on a job that can 'adjust' for a healer, I am very liberal with doing so. Aurora on GNB, Raises on SMN/RDM, any utilities like Addle, Feint, Magick Barrier, even Mantra, get used when they're 'useful' eg raidwides.
2B: I've mained Healer since 5.1, no idea if I'm going to be playing it for the 7.05 Savage (there's a strike on, but I PF, so if the PF is waiting on healers, I'll probably just cave and swap. Week 1 prog is the only time Healer is fun anyway)
2C: I've tried to give advice to struggling healers before. Been Mentor at one point too. But that changed a while back, as I got a warning for kicking a notorious troll from NN. His 'trolling' including things like 'kick newbie for saying Salaam Alaikum, citing 'don't spread your religion here''. After getting the first warning on my account in the 8 years I've played, for that, I decided it's not worth saying anything anymore, because apparently anything can be harmful to someone's feelings. Said troll has been permabanned for scamming someone since then too.
2D: If the healer is the problem, then first point of order is to try and help (EG with whatever tools I have, Addle, Feint, etc.). If that doesn't help, then vote dismissal. If that doesn't go through, I'm never the first to leave
2E: I keep trying at the content until either we clear, or enough people give up to say 'this party is doomed to disband' (EG if both tanks leave, it's gonna be hard to replace them).

Side note, I had a Golbez in Trials Roulette couple of days ago, and I was on RDM. We wiped, people left. We refilled, and tried it again, I must have used Verraise at least 30 times in that pull, but we made it.

1(again): 30mins of not clearing content, when not in a progression scenario, is probably a good point to reassess if the party is capable of clearing.
2(again): Lots of questions. If I'm part of the problem (eg I'm having a bad day and keep making mistakes) I often will just say 'guys I'm just playing like trash, I'll leave' (eg if I'm in EX farm or Savage parties). I don't switch jobs in terms of 'if the healer is bad, I'll swap to healer to make sure it's done right', if that's what you mean. I don't mind using guides/doing blind prog, depends how long the content's been out. If there's a Glaring (ha healer joke) issue, EG we're in content with an enrage timer and someone's not doing enough damage, then I think it's best to address the issue with replacement, rather than just bashing our heads against the wall. I had a party like that in P4S prog, week 1. The RPR was doing like 1000 less damage than they should have been. There was no chance we'd clear with that player, because they simply didn't know their Job enough to clear. But with SE's opinion on 3rd party tools, we should have been blind to that issue, and just gone 'oh the party can't clear because someone, who we cannot discern, was not doing enough damage'. So, what, we disband and throw away a potentially solid team, because we can't work out who the weak link is? Sounds pretty silly to me, but SE's full of silly stances on things. Like letting a troll be openly racist in NN, and giving a warning to players who dare to try to put a stop to them (with a 3 hour temporary kick from NN)

Lastly, a personal opinion: If there's an issue with 'content is so punishing', perhaps SE should reconsider their balance between 'complexity of Job' and 'complexity of Encounter/Content'. We hear time and again from some players that 'oh, if they lower job complexity, they can raise encounter complexity and make the fights more intricate', and I'd argue that this is the end result: stuff gets so unforgiving, and for weaker players there's no escape. With a complex job, you can simply 'do less damage', and still clear, but slower, but with encounter complexity, your options are 'do it right' or 'die'. Did we have people saying 'oh this is too hard' for story dungeons and EX roulette dungeons in Stormblood? The only one that comes to mind was Bardam's Mettle, and that was because of tanks going too hard on the first pull in last expansion's gear. I don't remember all the discussion about how Ghimlyt Dark, or Drowned City of Skalla, were walling casual players

1A) Are you a person that had or has minimum skill expectations for the healer role?
The game definitely has minimum skill expectations for a healer, but me personally, as long as someone is doing their best, that's all I need to stand by them in non-Savage/Extreme content (which is the vast majority of what I play).

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?
I don't think anything will meaningfully change. Some people will do one of these things, some will do the other, some will do neither. That said, I personally don't see a difficulty spike in the content itself; when content is new, it's always harder to be a healer, because people are still learning, which means more getting hit, which means more healing and rezzing, which means juggling more of a cognitive load that makes both learning and doing more difficult.

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.)
Only if someone likes the idea of being a healer. But while they're learning, I'd advise them to let their tanks know that they're learning and to ask for smaller pulls until they have their feet under them.

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
I'm a Black Mage; the healer needs to adjust for me! Only kidding; if I see the healer struggling, I won't change my job, but I'll try to be that much more thoughtful about mitigating damage so that they have less of a workload. Only healers who are bored and have no healing to do are given the chance to adjust for me.

B) play healer yourself
I'm assuming this means we would leave the group and then requeue with new jobs? I queue with automatic matchmaking so that's not possible. So if I'm playing a healer, it's because that's what I felt like playing. That said, yesterday after my Arc3 group disbanded due to a vocally negative healer (they complained that our group wouldn't be able to beat it without better gear and full melds and food, lol), I did make my next queue as a healer to mitigate the chance of being paired with them again. (unsurprisingly, we quickly won)

C) try to train new healers and teach them mechanics
If I'm in a group where we're repeatedly losing, and the only problem is the healing, I will ask the healer if they'd like some tips that have helped me in the past.

D) leave instance as soon as you realize the healer is the problem
In my book, they're only the problem if they have a meaningfully bad attitude. If they're just bad at the game, then I'll stand with them and do what I can to keep the group positive and trying our best.

E) make attempts at the content until x time has passed and then left
I like playing the game, and failure is a part of the game. So yeah, I'll just keep playing with them if the only problem with them is that they're bad.

1) Is that 30min mark acceptable as a non-toxic quit point?
This is a hard question. I think you want to try to strike the balance between giving it a good try and respecting your own energy. When possible, I think it's best to try to stick it out, stay positive, and keep trying. But if you have time commitments or you notice that your energy is flagging, it's important to take care of yourself. All of that said, 30 minutes seems like a reasonable amount of time if things don't seem to be improving at all. And if you do leave, find a way to do it a kind way that wouldn't bring anyone down. If that means telling a white lie, go for it; leave the constructive criticism to those who are sticking around.

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?
I'm trying to remember if I've ever been in such a situation while healing; if I have, it was a long time ago. I think it really depends on exactly how it happens. Like if someone is like, "Sorry, I only had 45 minutes to play before going to bed, and I know I won't be able to stick it out until we beat this, good luck!", and then they leave and everyone else also disbands, that feels perfectly fine. Real life responsibilities are always valid, and sometimes it feels better to just restart after that, so scrapping the group at that point seems reasonable and organic and doesn't feel bad. But if someone was like, "Man, these healers just aren't figuring it out, I'm out of here," then that would feel bad, just because someone is being a jerk about it. There are constructive and non-constructive ways to address problems, and generally it's only the non-constructive stuff that feels bad in my experience.

Do you ever switch jobs? Do you wait for guides after trying to blind run? Do you queue up and try again several times?
I never look at guides, and I always try again. Losing is part of the fun. Learning is part of the fun. Eventually winning is part of the fun. I'll play as whatever job I feel like playing at the moment.

1A) Are you a person that had or has minimum skill expectations for the healer role?

I have 20+ years experience as a healer in mmorpgs. I've had high expectation from a big mmorpg like FFXIV when I started back during ShB.

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?

Everyone has a subjective view on the healer role in FFXIV. People play it because it's relaxing, gets you easy and fast queues, etc. The healers I know have mostly abandoned ship because they don't consider the role engaging enough.

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.)

Absolutely not. Stick to DPS if you want to have fun, or try tank to learn role responsibility.

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

I main tank and have since 6.2 or so, therefore I can't really comment on this.

B) play healer yourself

I play healer in casual dungeon runs only because I've become distraught with it. In ShB I did extremes and tried savage with my old FC as SCH.

C) try to train new healers and teach them mechanics

In my experience so far, new healers are adamant to learn new things and have told me to stop trying to teach them how to play.

D) leave instance as soon as you realize the healer is the problem

I rarely leave instances. If healer is new, I see no reason to leave. I know when a healer knows their thing.

E) make attempts at the content until x time has passed and then left

It doesn't matter, trial and error. If errors outweight the time spent, I'll just leave.

1) Is that 30min mark acceptable as a non-toxic quit point?

Time is like currency. Not eveyone can waste 30 minutes or more because a healer is struggling. More often than not, the healer just isn't paying attention to mechanics. I'm willing to teach the healer what's going on and how to do it, but if the issues repeats continuously, is the healer really paying attention? No.

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?

I've had people get upset at me plenty of times during my healer journey. I like blind/prog runs, they're always the most fun because that's when I learn the most about mechanics happening and because everyone's making mistakes.

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1A) Are you a person that had or has minimum skill expectations for the healer role?

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I mean, I hope everybody does. Healers still need to be able to heal in content, because everyone makes mistakes and I don't think every tank who accidentally trips over a vuln stack would be okay with their healer spamming their DPS ability instead of topping them off.

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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?

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Back when I played World of Warcraft, I thought it was a bit harsh that people could just votekick people from dungeons who weren't pulling the amount of weight expected from them, made doubly as harsh due to the multitude of meters you can easily install. However, after playing FFXIV for years and experiencing all types of players, I do wish the same type of behavior was possible in FFXIV. If you don't know how to play your role, you shouldn't be doing (higher level) duties...

I have experienced a lot of "cruise control" healers who play it because it was a low responsibility role in the past, and I expect many of them to fuss.

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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.)

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Well, I wouldn't really suggest healer for anyone right now, considering how awful the EW-era job design for them is. But compared to other roles, a new person should probably stick to DPS, whether or not healer is easy...

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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

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Yeah, one of the reasons I really like RDM is because you can have that really impactful support role in duties. Dualcast Verraise is one of the most cathartic things in this game.

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B) play healer yourself

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I mained healer for most of ShB and EW, so not a ton of switching needed. They kind of destroyed AST, my healer main, in DT, so I haven't even bothered leveling any of them yet.

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C) try to train new healers and teach them mechanics

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Whenever someone is new to a duty I'm in, I do my best to explain the mechanics to them. Not everyone is receptive to criticism, but I do what I can.

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D) leave instance as soon as you realize the healer is the problem

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Nah.

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E) make attempts at the content until x time has passed and then left

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Usually if we wipe 5 times at a boss, and the culprit is making the same mistakes every time, I feel that there isn't much point in continuing to try. The definition of insanity...

1A) Are you a person that had or has minimum skill expectations for the healer role?

Depends on the content in question. In casual contents, I give more points to 'willingness to try, fail, and try again' than absolute bottom, minimum performance.

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?

I think this has been on-going before DT. If it's going to do anything more, it'll probably make people grow even more impatient. As for the quitters, the ones that I personally know swapped off the role not because of the aforementioned reasons. It's mostly because (a)misplaced responsibility; (b)job design insults the players' intelligence.

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.)

Simple answer? No. Longer answer? I'm rarely the kind of player who specifically recommend certain job or role to play. But let's say I hit my head one of these days and decide to recommend a healer, the reason would've been: 'So you can netflix on 2nd monitor in dungeons.'

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

Combined for the sake of convenience. I'm a healer main for over 15 years and will always be one regardless. I do dabble onto RDM and ShB SMN with fairly decent competency to not be a deadweight, but not once I picked then because of their Raises.

C) try to train new healers and teach them mechanics

This isn't a unique attitude to new healers: I do not try to train or teach something until I'm specifically asked or a wipe happens firsthand. Mainly because I've seen people being less receptive to advices without anything going horribly wrong e.g. "but nobody died!"

Just to give an illustration how far I'm willing to maintain the status quo: I've been known to force a Cure I/Diagnosis Mage to heal me on a W2W as a DRK even in some of the harder dungeons - still got out just fine 9 out of 10 times, and I remain silent throughout the duty.

D) leave instance as soon as you realize the healer is the problem

As per my answers from previous points, once I identify the healer being the problem enough to wall the party's clearing chance, I will start speaking up what went wrong and let them know what can be done. 8 out of 10 times, we pulled through. 2 out of 10 times, the healer usually left by their own accord or somebody VK'd them.

E) make attempts at the content until x time has passed and then left

Similar answer from point D. But I'd like to add that I only have self imposed rule if it's an EX/Savage content. If it's casual content I will stay as long as IRL permits to get the duty clear.

1) Is that 30min mark acceptable as a non-toxic quit point?

I think this sort of threshold differs from each players and there is no right answer to this. IMHO 30m is generous - but also, there is no such as thing as 'non toxic quit point' if the intent of using the door is to take care of oneself, which should be everybody's priority.

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?

I think failure is just part of the package when you choose to play any game, so being the point of failure isn't doing much to me mentally. I do think that the kind of players I've seen in recent years do lack the general resilience and patience that I usually seen from what I like to call as 'MMO Boomer' - they don't quite 'piss me off', but they're surely off putting after some time. There is no wrong being perfectionist, obviously. But just like anything else, too much of one particular aspect just breeds a different sort of toxicity at the end of the road when not kept in check.

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.

1A) - As a healer main, I hold myself to high standards and tend to nitpick (to myself, never typing) when I'm on a DPS. Everyone should be playing at least competently and make a good attempt to make use of the kit you are given.

1B) - Maybe? Healer shouldn't be the AFK role. Anyone playing it because they can mindlessly spam Glare should play something else.

1C) - I don't recommend anyone that job skipped play anything for level 100 content. Everyone should be responsible for learning their role. But yes I recommend healing in Dawntrail - it really is scratching my itch of saving cursed runs and it feels rewarding.

2) - As a healer I'm the person they have to adjust for. I try to minimize that. I watch videos on mechanics before joining things for my first time. I still may die but it's less as I generally know what is happening, but can't control someone stacking on me or just getting confused before I experience it myself live. If I have to I will focus mostly on movement and activity until I'm comfortable. As a Healer, it's more important I'm not dead than finishing a Glare.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VoidsentStatus

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


[snip]

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?

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Before answering your specific questions, I want to comment about healers taking vuln stacks.

It's rare that one or two vuln stacks are going to lead to death even for healers and DPS in normal content. That's part of why some players will intentionally eat mechanics. I have intentionally taken vuln stacks as a healer if it meant I could keep another party member from dying or prevent a wipe by raising a tank or the other healer when things are going badly. Vuln stacks can also mean the healer is still learning the mechanics.

Vuln stacks are not a reason to panic or disband in normal content. Once we get into EX or Savage, it's obviously a different story.

Now for your questions:

1a - Depending on intended difficulty of content, yes.

1b - Part of the community have been doing that all along. Nothing new there. It existed even when I first started healing in WoW 16 years ago. Your experience will vary depending on what players you get matched to. I doubt many will stop playing healer completely. I do expect some to set limits for what content they'll be willing to heal.

1c - No. I wouldn't recommend jumping straight into any of the expansions' content as a fresh healer. It is a learning process.

2 - Yes unless the healer isn't even trying. How I adjust depends on what job I'm playing. Some of your options do not apply because we can't change jobs in the middle of most duties (treasure map dungeons are the only ones I can think of off hand) and never while in combat. If the healer is acting like they're overwhelmed, I'll offer to give them advice if they want it.

Regarding your story time:

1 - 30 minutes is not an acceptable quit point when its the first week of the content's release and most players are going into it blind. If there are problems in the group causing wipes, work as a group to try to fix the problem. Don't just give up. The only time to quit that early is when someone within the group causing problems shows they're not interested in trying to improve and is expecting the rest of the group to give them a hard carry,

2 - Honestly depends on the individual situation. I had one party disband on the 3rd boss Tuesday morning. While I know I was part of the problem, I don't blame the party because the other healer had been constantly mouthing off about how it was getting boring (even though they were dying far more often than I was). I wasn't angry though I do wish players would have more patience on occasion. Not everyone learns at the same rate. I don't switch jobs unless part of a group that is going to requeue together. Instead, I work to identify why I'm failing and correct the problem. I did requeue and the next party did manage to down the boss on the 2nd attempt although it was just the 2 tanks left standing for the last 7%.

Most of the problems I saw when I did the raids Tuesday morning came down to the usual. It was new content and everyone was blind. Most players were going in barely above minimum ilvl which means mechanics are going to hurt more than once they get up to ilvl 710 (or higher). This is going to continue to be a problem for the next few weeks as more players complete MSQ and jump into the raid as soon as they get a couple of pieces of gear that will get them to the minimum ilvl.

Some players expect instant success and can't seem to understand why that's not always going to happen. You just have to learn to shrug them off. You're unlikely to change them and they're not going to change for the sake of others.