The new raiding meta is making me want to quit.

[Miscreant]

Cleric Stance is an excellent example of this. Yours truly simply *could not* learn to stance dance to save her life. If I'm not required to use CS, I kick ass as WHM.

I don't get it, how can you be a kick ass Whm if you can't read the fights well enough to know when there is downtime, kick ass Whm's know the rotation of the fight they are doing. There is always downtime and openings, CS doesn't have to be a 6 hit rotation either, it can literally be DoT or two, you don't even necessarily have to be in Cleric either e.g. using Stone 1 on an Add to slow it's movement down, Fluid Aura to knock an add in place. No one outside of your static should expect you to be dpsing in your downtime as it's really not needed outside of A3-4 progression. Personally I love dpsing as a healer, keeping my GCD moving throughout an encounter helps me keep track of the timing of my own abilities.

I don't get it why people want to do solo heal in a fight, where so much can happen. Especially in the phases after the spear, most mistakes will lead to a wipe if no second heal is available.

If the damage is that bad with 4 DPS players, they should begin to train for it or do content that match their skill level. The DPS checks in this fight are ways easier than faust in A1S.

Because it's fun, It's a challenge, it's not something I would do for sales but it's something I enjoy to try with friends.

It's the same as speed running games etc, no real point to it outside of personal enjoyment.

Just a random thought: Why will you aim to be TOP in your role? I mean, we are playing a game to have FUN, dont we?
There is no highscore, so why forcing savage to be one? If you like to compare your Skills maybe you should consider to play a FPS and not a RPG genre!

If you spend so much time practising and doing something you get enjoyment from progressing at it, people want to be the best they can be at the things they love and enjoy, I think most of us are well aware that we aren't going to be world first players, but that doesn't mean we don't get satisfaction from a perfect run or beating an old parse etc.

[Zojha]

Just a random thought: Why will you aim to be TOP in your role? I mean, we are playing a game to have FUN, dont we?

I'd wager because some people actually enjoy that.

I know I sometimes do when I'm bored. Sometimes I don't, especially after a long day where I just want to get my daily dungeon done and go to bed or listen to some music in peace.

Fun and performance are not mutually exclusive. As a matter of fact, it's a sign of good game design if performing optimally actually is the most fun and satisfying way to play for the majority of people. Majority because let's face it, there are people with preferences who are very far out there.

[Jamein]

Just a random thought: Why will you aim to be TOP in your role? I mean, we are playing a game to have FUN, dont we?
There is no highscore, so why forcing savage to be one? If you like to compare your Skills maybe you should consider to play a FPS and not a RPG genre!

Because I find it fun? I don't enjoy being average at what I do and it just adds an extra layer of fun to the game for me. I like hard content that's where my entertainment in MMO's comes from.

[Starbirth]

A lot of grief may be coming from the lack of the middle tier of alex. It was supposed to happen but got cut due to time constraints.

As for the dps meta it's unbalanced. A trinity system should have clear defined lines on what tanks, healers and dps do and a lot of the reason this game is losing that is because certain jobs deal too much dmg and the raid encounters are half assed.

[Alisa180]

*snip*

A very long story short, nearly every time I try going into CS, it ends in disaster. I do identify downtime, and I *tried*, I really tried but...I just couldn't pull it off and wipes ensured. On multiple occasions. Over the course of several weeks attempted practice.

When I say I kick ass as WHM, I mean I'm the healer keeping the crappy group alive because I'm too nice for my own good. I don't overheal, know not to Regen before the pull, know how to manage my manage my mana and what heals to use in what situations. I don't spam Medica 2 (unlike some), I keep Shroud of Saints on CD during intense periods/fights, and have adopted the habit of popping Divine Seal at the start of large pulls in EX Roulette. As I said, I was mastering pre-casting, healing damage just as it happened, an important skill for an endgame WHM.

When it comes to healing, I do nearly everything right. I've played nothing *but* a healer since my WoW days (SMN is the first DPS class I've played to the point of maining it), and FFXIV is similiar enough on that count that the instincts I developed serve me very well, such as knowing triage.

But the second CS comes into the picture, everything just falls to pieces. :\

[CGMidlander]

Just a random thought: Why will you aim to be TOP in your role? I mean, we are playing a game to have FUN, dont we?
There is no highscore, so why forcing savage to be one? If you like to compare your Skills maybe you should consider to play a FPS and not a RPG genre!

Bettering oneself is fun for some people.

[Archaell]

...

I am sorry to say it, but you kick ass as Sylphie and not WHM then, which is really hard to understand.

If you are able to precast skills, you should also be able to tell when you have enough time to dps and prepare for it accordingly. We are talking about healer's dps being not required, but if you want to be a kick ass WHM, the ability to use cleric stance without falling apart is an important skill and if you can't hadle it, then chances are that your spot would get relegated to a worse "Sylphie" than you, but someone who can manage to throw at least few Aeros here and there.

[KarstenS]

Its not because of dps checks its because there is nothing to do for second healer if nobody is dead and mechanics are done in right order.

Fixed the sentence a little bit.

In the posts before it got called together with "tank lb".

Its hard to believe that these people are performing good.

You know the sentence "If your DPS is bad, bring more DPS"?

In most parties I've seen such combinations within the last two years, its not "try it out" or "challange". Its nothing else than "our DPS is bad, we need a carry".

So there is a healer that need to perform very good, because the other people are performing very bad. Thanks. No.

Maybe with people I know a long time after we farmed out everything we wanted to get and have nothing else to do.

But solo healing this fight in PF group? I would never join such a party.

In general: Many times I've seen PF groups "solo tank, solo heal", they got opened by a DPS. For some fights with the sentence "goin for the kill". I don't need to join that party to know how this guy is performing.

[HorseBoots]

The problem with the current raiding meta in terms of healing and tank DPS isn't the fact that healer and good tank DPS is nice to have and used as proof of mastery over the role and class.

The problem is the fact that this DPS expectation is not a bonus to the raid's overall DPS output and effectiveness, it's currently a requirement if you want to clear the content to begin with. While extra gear does help, it was not enough to help close the power gap.

This is a blunder due to the fact that Alexander Savage is poopybutt.

In Coil, fights were tuned based almost solely on DPS from DPS classes. Some minor tank DPS was thrown in and literally 0 DPS was expected by healers by design at the optimal gear level expected from the developers. This was further confirmed in interviews before 3.0 release. Pushing above expectations for tank and healer DPS was designed as "bonus" damage. This was the most common way for top-tier groups to clear content well below the expected gear level.

The raiding community as we know it is going to live or die by how they handle the next block for Alexander in 3.2. I can only hope they have the foresight not to make the same mistakes again.

[Miscreant]

snip

Damn! Hold your horses, no one is going to be solo healing this fight in PF anytime soon... Its not even that common to solo heal it at the moment, in sales the standard set up is to drop a dps and tank it in dps stance with a Scholar dpsing a lot. The only reason this is getting solo healed at the moment is because the healer them selves wants a challenge, it's not something thats expected in PF or sales.