How is it like being a DPS?

[subteraneanbird]

I disagree with the assertion that DPS is the hardest role, for multiple reasons. While I agree with you on the part that healers generally focus on the tank, that doesn't mean "not getting hurt" is specific to DPS. Healers can't get hurt either and unlike yall I have way less methods of avoiding this. I have zero positionals like Jumps or Shoulder Tackle or Repelling Shot or Aetherial Manipulation. I don't have any off-GCD ways to recover from a mistake like Life Surge or Second Wind or Featherfoot or Foresight, except for Benediction which is on a 5 minute cooldown and has a delay more significant than most other skills. Additionally, as you yourself helped demonstrate, my vitality and defenses are the worst across the board. I have much less room for error and much fewer ways to fix those errors than any other role. And I can't necessarily just heal myself after, because that also pulls heals away. I think your understanding of triage (a skill that only incredible healers master, and one that takes a long time) boils down to "tank first, DPS last" which is frankly incredibly ignorant. There are times when it ISN'T safe to get off the tank, but I HAVE to heal other people. I have to make that sort of decision a lot, and trust that my tank is competent enough to understand my situation and act accordingly. And surprise, not many of them do because they don't play healers.

Another point is this: DPS can coast, healers can't. Unless there's a Big Ass DPS Check in your face at that very moment, you can be doing the most inane ineffective shit nearly constantly, and because of your low visibility (there are many more DPS than healers, it is harder to notice+easier to explain away low damage vs low heals or low threat) you're not likely to ever get called out. I've seen DPS who stand around and spam singular moves over and over, or not even that. Sometimes they don't even bother to auto attack. Does that mean they're good? Absolutely not. But with how fights in this game are tuned, many fights are still handily won despite that setback. If I perform an equivalent action (like using medica 2, waiting for it to tick out, using it again) in most cases the run is already over because that is ridiculously useless. Both groups have lulls and spikes in activity, but my lulls are shorter and even during them I'm expected to do more. I have more responsibility and less people to carry me through them.

I also hold contention with "rotations are hard" because there's a lot in your favor with them. Maybe I'd believe you if you had to scour through Eorzea, fighting beings most foul to get your hands on a Tomestone that says "After Impulse Drive, follow up with Disembowel!" but that's not the case. Even if you're incapable of putting rotations together yourself given the info the game gives you, other people have already and once you verify their numbers are right and it is a good rotation, it entirely becomes rote memorization and pushing a sequence of buttons with very little to interrupt you. The major interruptions I can think of (ie, not avoidable damage because that usually stops you for a few seconds at most) are adds (in which case the response is "do your rotation" or "do your other rotation, you know, the one that hits more things") or the boss just leaves for a bit (in which case the response is to come onto S-E Forums and yell about fix levi ex pls because my numberz). Healers don't have the advantage of a rotation. We have to play the entire fight by ear, having a vague knowledge of what happens next. Maybe I'm expecting a fairly weak hit on the tank and take that moment to heal the party. But whoops. Critical! Shieldbro Mcmeatwall suffered a whole lot of extra damage! Now I have to, at that moment, re-evaluate my actions. I have to do this constantly. I don't get the privilege of knowing my next action most of the time, like rotation users do. I can't plan ahead nearly as easily. Even the non-rotation based DPS (bard and summoner) use a priority system that amounts to what I do as a healer, but with less punishment for making a mistake (a lower DPS vs a player death or even a wipe).

Even socially healers are at the bottom. DPS have their DPS Solidarity. Due to the high numbers of them, bad ones can easily congregate together and stick up for each other. I've seen runs where multiple DPS played and behaved horribly and when called out defended each other. Even though the DPS population means they're fairly expendable, it also means that any baddie can yell about how they're the victim and have a whole chorus to back them up. Tanks on the other hand, enjoy enormous social power. They have near instant queues. They have the most say in parties, because "tanking is hard" (even though several of us here know that isn't the case), and also due to their relative rarity. Healers get none of that. We have decent queue times, yes, but people aren't afraid to pick fights with us because we're easier to find and because there's more people who think they understand healing without actually doing it than any other role. Hell, even when we act out we're treated differently. Tanks and DPS are often seen as masculine, either being a tough strong guy by standing up to people, or at least given the dignity of being acknowledged as assholes. What do healers get? We get to be called princesses (a very popular word on this very forum) or drama queens. We're not given any sort of respect. Everyone thinks they know our job. Everyone thinks that our complaints, valid or not, are us being drama queens.

Am I saying DPS is easy? Nope. What I'm saying is everything you claim makes DPS hard is either 1) actually not or 2) harder on healers. Just like a DpS, I have to keep my output at a good consistent level, except with less room for execution errors, bigger punishments for making mistakes, less tools to help me perform my job, less longevity ( a DPS who runs out of MP/TP will lose a lot of output, but a lower DPS output is recoverable, hence partly why summoners are first in line for raise. A stark drop in healing output is often a slow agonizing wipe), less social power, less understanding from other people. I acknowledge that playing as a top DPS is challenging. So is playing a top healer. Maybe you're thinking I sound a bit bitter. I am a bit bitter! I have every right to be! I have spent my entire time playing this game, taking on an incredibly challenging role. I've learned a lot, practiced a lot, become legitimately good. I've worked my ass off to get where I am. I'm not a top healer. I'd rate myself in the "pretty good" area at best. And the amount of effort it took to get me this far is astronomical. So, excuse me for being a bit tired of hearing the same trite shit over and over. About how I'm an over-glorified tank babysitter. About how hard it is to learn a rotation QQ. About how "I can't eat damage" when I ALSO can't but at the same time am expected to pick up after you when you do mess up. About how I'm frequently expected to help pass DPS checks because someone's AFK or just spamming Full Thrust. About how i'm playing what I genuinely think is an incredibly challenging (but rewarding) role, and getting nothing but shit for it. I'm sick and tired of people thinking they know the challenges I and other healers face without once having been in our shoes. Healing is legitimately tough. You have pressures equal to or greater than the other roles, with none of the fringe benefits. Frankly I'd state that healing is by far the toughest role, and people who pretend otherwise either don't know better or are intentionally being dishonest for whatever reason.

But, beyond that big ass rant, here is what being a DPS is like: It's pretty alright. It can be boring sometimes (bigger waits, often a simplistic sequence to push where Yoshida pops out of the screen and tells you to hit C for double damage, not a whole lot of investment in what's happening unless there's a big glowing Kill This Now event happening) but it'll push you in certain ways that the other roles won't. What it isn't is incredibly difficult. There's a fair amount of challenge yes, but a lot of it is negated by knowing all the tools at your disposal, which is graciously provided by plenty of online resources, including this very forum. "Not being a dummy" could be a second part to that, but many DPS do their role at an acceptable level while failing that, so maybe not. I've said my piece on this matter.

[Huntington]

Shieldbro Mcmeatwall.

Best tank nickname ever, mind if I use this for the bad tanks I run across from now on? lol


On the rest of your rather impressive and containing matter I'd mostly agree with wall, running across a DPS that does nothing but Full Thrust over and over is annoying in the case of DRGs. Me personally, having 6/8 battle classes to 50, will point out those things to other people. Is that DRG not doing Heavy Thrust before going into Impulse Drive? I'm gonna point it out. Is that SMN not using Fester or Shadow Flare at all? Gonna point it out. But Healers aren't absolved of everything either. If you've used a healing class a general amount, you understand what they have to deal with. Does the DPS keep standing in AoEs and eating them then not attempt to learn from the mistakes? Tell them what they need to do. If they continue to fail, let them die and panic to stay alive. Being nice and helpful is good at first, if people don't show you the same, then don't be kind or helpful to that person anymore.

A week ago in Stone Vigil, I had a healer who was using some pretty lackluster gear. Saw some Strength and Vitality gear in there. Then their weapon...Level 40 dungeon and they were using a level 15 staff. I don't need to be a qualified healer to know they're mucking some **** up. I pointed it out, their gear was about as awful as it could get for what class they were using. I wasn't rude about it though, I simply told them it was very unhelpful for their role. The other DPS since I was a BLM at the time, laughed at it pretty hard himself. Our tank at the time didn't do his class quest for Shield Oath, so he was holding aggro about as well as a training dummy. I told him after trying to struggle through it that it just wouldn't be possible if we were pulling off him constantly. He was understanding and accepting of it, and I respected the guy for it. The healer? They started giving me attitude that I'm a DPS that doesn't know what they're talking about. I pointed out the weapon, they changed to a level 40 staff, then gave a smart remark and rage-quit. Basically to get out a remark to a run the rest of us were going to abandon soon anyways. It was uncalled for and I hoped I wouldn't see that healer again.

Of course healers have a lot of responsibility, you should be on a tier of party coordination with the tanks. How many enemies can be pulled before it's too much? Things like that. But if the DPS is good and playing perfectly, you're probably going to be getting bored. So at that point you can DPS, which should liven it up more since Regen can do all the healing by itself in a lot of cases. My only point to you is that griping about being a healer and dealing with the DPS and others shouldn't come up, if you know something that can make someone play better, tell them. You can try and come off as kind and honest, or just be straight and serious with them. If it's something they should seriously be doing, just remind them: "Hey, I'm trying to help you play better so you have more fun with your class later on, can you just accept my advice and not make problems over it?" Something simple like that should hopefully make things go better.

[Karilyn]

I decided to fully address the rest of your post, the social elements, in an entire separate post, because I feel you deserve to be listened to and this is a wildly different subject than what I addressed in my other post.

DPS have their DPS Solidarity. Due to the high numbers of them, bad ones can easily congregate together and stick up for each other. I've seen runs where multiple DPS played and behaved horribly and when called out defended each other. Even though the DPS population means they're fairly expendable, it also means that any baddie can yell about how they're the victim and have a whole chorus to back them up.

Honestly I just chose not to play with those people. It's a fairly simple solution. If you perform truly unforgivably badly and don't listen to my advice and attempts to guide you through how to play better, I'll just blacklist them and never invite them to a raid again. If a person play really well, OR listens to my advice as I work with them to help make them a better player without getting angry or defensive, and is open-minded to improvement, they get Whitelisted and priority invites back to my raids.

I'm not elitist or anything though, cause folks who perform to at least 80% of what I would consider "theoretical perfect execution" (a pretty generous number TBH), or are willing to learn and show improvement, and are not otherwise toxic (like you describe), get graylisted. They don't get priority invites back to my raids, but they also aren't banned and are welcome to come back anytime.

I've had immense success with this technique in every MMO I've played. It is not quite as good as GDKP for producing extremely high end skilled pugs, but I do not feel I have a reputation on my FF14 server strong enough yet to attempt to convert people over to glory that is GDKP pugging, as people are often initially very hostile to the idea before they realize it works, and then they beg for more. But without first forming a spine in the local community, I cannot ask people to trust me as a GDKP leader.

So until then, the Blacklist, Whitelist, Graylist system is my best bet.

Even socially healers are at the bottom. Tanks and DPS are often seen as masculine, either being a tough strong guy by standing up to people, or at least given the dignity of being acknowledged as assholes. What do healers get? We get to be called princesses (a very popular word on this very forum) or drama queens. We're not given any sort of respect. Everyone thinks they know our job. Everyone thinks that our complaints, valid or not, are us being drama queens.

I'm female, and I usually view Tanking as a nurturing mother-bear sorta role protecting my cubs, as opposed to a tough-guy standing up to folks role. I've also had a long history of tanking alongside other women in raids (nearly 5 times as many as males), and almost always have male healers. (Both of my boyfriends play healers, one girlfriend is ranged DPS, and a random female friend who also plays with me is a tank. Hi poly person here)

So from my perspective, tanks are women and healers are male. To me those stereotypes fall on deaf ears with me. Don't know if that changes your opinion of me. But I do have intense respect for healers, and respect for you based on your posts. Because this is a specific hot topic for you, I've made a conscious decision to suppress my standard Karilynisms that I traditionally use for everyone, and not to address you as "darling" or "sweetie" out of respect for your feeling that such feminine terms of endearment are patronizing.

Just like a DpS, I have to keep my output at a good consistent level, except with less room for execution errors, bigger punishments for making mistakes, less tools to help me perform my job, less longevity.
[...]
I acknowledge that playing as a top DPS is challenging. So is playing a top healer. Maybe you're thinking I sound a bit bitter. I am a bit bitter! I have every right to be! I have spent my entire time playing this game, taking on an incredibly challenging role. I've learned a lot, practiced a lot, become legitimately good. I've worked my ass off to get where I am. I'm not a top healer. I'd rate myself in the "pretty good" area at best. And the amount of effort it took to get me this far is astronomical.

Since I generally expect all my players to perform at the same level, IE as close to perfect execution as I can reasonably expect without being a jerk (mistakes happen, all is forgiven, as long as we admit them and work together towards a common goal), I'm not exceptionally accustomed to tolerating an environment where DPS are being carried by healers. However, it seems like you're accustomed to this being the norm. You're bitter, and you are 100% right, you have ever single right to be. That's shouldn't be the norm, but for you, it is the norm. And that's not right. You shouldn't be subjected to that.

That's been the core of my entire argument.

If DPSers are playing well, it takes this incredibly unfair stress which has been put on you as the accepted norm, and removes it from you. It reduces the pressure. It gives you more room for smaller spell-choice mistakes without wiping the whole raid. I wish you were on my server so I could see about whitelisting you, and bring you along with me for a few times, and learn what it's like to not be carrying this ridiculous unfair burden that you've been carrying. And maybe, with time, help ease the bitterness, so that you can have more fun. You deserve to have DPSers who put in the same amount of effort as you do.

The burden of performance is on all of us. A raid should be a team. We fight and live and die together. We conquer together. And we all have a common goal. Nobody should be carrying the weight of others. We cover each others' mistakes, we help and support one another, but we do NOT demand others account for our laziness. We cover for each other because nobody's perfect, not because someone isn't trying their hardest.

And if in every raid, all 4 DPSers were performing even 80-90% of what you're describe yourself as performing, I can't imagine the burden on you would be anything less than halved.

So, excuse me for being a bit tired of hearing the same trite shit over and over. About how I'm an over-glorified tank babysitter. About how hard it is to learn a rotation QQ. About how "I can't eat damage" when I ALSO can't but at the same time am expected to pick up after you when you do mess up.

I don't think I ever said that, and I'm truly sorry it came off that way. It tears at my heart that I said something that upset you so greatly, through my own poor choice of words. Please forgive me.

My address was intended to largely one of saying that Well-Performing DPSers and Well-Performing Healers are in a similar boat, and that Well-Performing Tanking is a laughing stock in this game compared to what DPS and healers have to deal with. It is not you who is the over-glorified tank babysitter, it is the tank who is the over-glorified baby that needs to be taken care of (This coming from a 12 year tank). Neither Healers or DPS can eat damage, that was a huge part of the purpose of including the Healers in my Titan's Earthen Fury chart.

In the sorta situation you describe, with Horrible-Performing DPSers, of course your job is astronomically harder than it has any right to be, and without a slightest doubt by an extremely extremely wide margin the hardest job you can have in a game.

And it should not be that way.

About how I'm frequently expected to help pass DPS checks because someone's AFK or just spamming Full Thrust.

This is 100% unacceptable in every way shape or form. In a raid with well-performing DPS, the burden on you should be lifted enough that you are no longer as stressed as you are. Healers generally chose to DPS, not because DPS can't beat DPS checks, but because, you're no longer under this ridiculous pressure and burden of carrying others, and have more free time to stand around because you aren't constantly having to pull DPSers asses out of the fire, and can DPS for fun because there's nothing better for you to do.

That's how it should work. That is the only situation I find acceptable.

About how i'm playing what I genuinely think is an incredibly challenging (but rewarding) role, and getting nothing but shit for it.

I know, that's the same way I feel about playing a Black Mage. A lot of people toss shit around about how easy it is, because the basic rotation is the simplest of any DPSer in the game (though not nearly as loleasy as Paladin, ugh.). But if you truly try to min-max it out, and achieve the highest theoretical maximum that's humanly possible, the payoff is incredibly rewarding, and the challenge is deeply satisfying in a way I haven't felt in an MMO in many years. I'm starting to enjoy the difficulty of being the second most fragile class in the game (After White Mages of course; we're otherwise identical, but I have Mana Wall, Mana Ward, and Aetherial Manipulation to give me a slight edge), cause it forces me, like you, to play almost perfectly in order to not die. I'm coming to enjoy the difficulty that comes from Black Mages absurdly and borderline obnoxiously nailed to the ground, a trait we both share, so I'm sure you can appreciate the forethought that goes into timing your spellcasts to minimize interruption during heavy movement fights.

Healing is legitimately tough. You have pressures equal to or greater than the other roles, with none of the fringe benefits.

Those fringe benefits are bullshit, and don't pass mustard around me. I don't tolerate tanks who swagger anymore than I tolerate DPSers who cluster-fuck defend their under-performance. In my ideal raid, every player has pressures equal to every other role, and everybody pulls their weight. (That's why I wish Square would make tanking more difficult in this game; there's virtually no current in-game situation where a tank will EVER be under the same pressures as the rest of the raid.)

Does the DPS keep standing in AoEs and eating them then not attempt to learn from the mistakes? Tell them what they need to do.[...]Being nice and helpful is good at first, if people don't show you the same, then don't be kind or helpful to that person anymore.
[...]
A week ago in Stone Vigil, I had a healer who was [in a] Level 40 dungeon and they were using a level 15 staff. [...]I pointed it out, their gear was about as awful as it could get for what class they were using. I wasn't rude about it though, I simply told them it was very unhelpful for their role.[...] Our tank at the time didn't do his class quest for Shield Oath[...]. I told him after trying to struggle through it that it just wouldn't be possible if we were pulling off him constantly. He was understanding and accepting of it, and I respected the guy for it. The healer? They started giving me attitude that I'm a DPS that doesn't know what they're talking about.
[...]
Of course healers have a lot of responsibility[...]. But if the DPS is good and playing perfectly, you're probably going to be getting bored. So at that point you can DPS, which should liven it up more since Regen can do all the healing by itself in a lot of cases.
[...]
If you know something that can make someone play better, tell them. You can try and come off as kind and honest, or just be straight and serious with them. If it's something they should seriously be doing, just remind them: "Hey, I'm trying to help you play better so you have more fun with your class later on, can you just accept my advice and not make problems over it?" Something simple like that should hopefully make things go better.

+1 for respect, polite communication and education, and helping people learn from their mistakes. I often try to add in things like "We all make mistakes [playername] darling, no anger is here to be found today," or "Hey there [playername] darling. This is probably your first time on this fight, because I noticed that you didn't seem to know about [insert obvious mechanic here]. Don't worry, nobody's angry, we all went through learning at some point. Here's what you should to do next time. I believe in you! Good luck sweetie, you can do it! <3"

A positive response to something like that, gets a whitelist. A negative, defensive, angry, or toxic response get's a blacklist.

Optimism, encouragement, and positive communication and acknowledgement of specific things performed well, as well as specific advice addressing specific problems, fosters more success than anything else. I also enjoy addressing people as individuals, it makes them feel more valued and encourages them to try harder.

Nobody performs well in a pessimistic, angry, bitter, negative environment. I try to give a reason and a belief and a hope that the party can fight together towards victory, a reminder that we're all allies on the same team, not enemies of one another, and through this I can get most players to give me 110%.

[Huntington]

+1 for respect, polite communication and education, and helping people learn from their mistakes. I often try to add in things like "We all make mistakes [playername] darling, no anger is here to be found today," or "Hey there [playername] darling. This is probably your first time on this fight, because I noticed that you didn't seem to know about [insert obvious mechanic here]. Don't worry, nobody's angry, we all went through learning at some point. Here's what you should to do next time. I believe in you! Good luck sweetie, you can do it! <3"


A positive response to something like that, gets a whitelist. A negative, defensive, angry, or toxic response get's a blacklist.

Optimism, encouragement, and positive communication and acknowledgement of specific things performed well, as well as specific advice addressing specific problems, fosters more success than anything else. I also enjoy addressing people as individuals, it makes them feel more valued and encourages them to try harder.

Nobody performs well in a pessimistic, angry, bitter, negative environment. I try to give a reason and a belief and a hope that the party can fight together towards victory, a reminder that we're all allies on the same team, not enemies of one another, and through this I can get most players to give me 110%.

Why can't you be on my server?!~ *cries*
I do it most of the time, I have a strong smartass side though as well so if someone assumes me to be dumb about something, negotiations are pretty much done after that point.

I should start trying to make a list like that. If I find someone that was enjoyable in the time I spent playing with them, I should add them to a list in the hopes I'll remember their name or see them again. For all else pretty much the blacklist.

Couldn't say it better myself.

+1 to you as well, I haven't seen your posts around here before but I'll look forward to them now.

[givemeraptors]

(or can at least read tooltips!)

omg, I can't overstate how much I agree with this. I see so many people who don't seem to know what their ability actually does. Sometimes though the tooltips are just confusing. If I had a nickel for every pre-50 (and sometimes level 50) tank that didn't know what provoke actually does...

I decided to fully address the rest of your post, the social elements, in an entire separate post, because I feel you deserve to be listened to and this is a wildly different subject than what I addressed in my other post...

I definitely agree with this. I main a SMN but also play my SCH frequently for faster queues and needed spots in raids. I feel as though Titan Ex really sums up a healer's role for the majority of FFXIV, "can your party dodge?" This has an inordinate (sometimes completely unfair) amount of power over a healer.