The arrogance of some people

[Zojha]

No DPS who plays with you should ever be expected to dodge AOEs then, because reducing the amount of healing you have to do isn't DPSing.

True, it's not DPSing. It's not tanking nor healing either. As such, it can't be attributed to any role in particular. Which begs the question who is responsible for something nobody is explicitly responsible for? Clearly, we need a "dodger" role that pulls all the AoEs to itself and is responsible for dodging them.

[Launched]

Thing is a DRG is required to do that because it's their job, healer DPS is and always will be optional. you just have to live with it.

DRGs aren't required to do any more than a basic combo, or even more than True Thrust spam. Good ones use their entire skillset, like any good healer should do, which includes Cleric Stance and DPS abilities.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Okay buddy. You can take 45 minutes to finish a dungeon to get your tomes, while I run the dungeon twice and get double the tome/time spent ratio.

...45 minutes? If the DPS are halfway decent a dungeon doesn't take more then 20.

[Lexia]

Okay buddy. You can take 45 minutes to finish a dungeon to get your tomes, while I run the dungeon twice and get double the tome/time spent ratio.

It doesn't take 45 minutes to run a dungeon, if it does there more wrong with the group then a healer not wanting to dps. Even with below average dps should be able to get it done in 30 minutes.

[Draxxion]

I am going to sum this up from both a DPS and a Healer stand point. I happen to have done both in my time as SMN and SCH. As a dps if I see a healer standing around twiddling their thumbs when nothing needs to be healed and is not dpsing then they are not using their class to its fullest potential and is a waste of space to the group. You have dps spells too. Use them. The point of group play is to support the group, period. If things are needing healing then as a dps we shouldn't complain. They are doing their job. Now on the flip side if I am healer and I am having to heal my butt off because dps can't get out of aoe or tanks aren't using their rotations properly or a dps is taking longer to kill something because they are undergeared or don't know how to perform a proper rotation leading to possible mana issues for the healer then equally they are ruining the experience for the healer (me) and the group as a whole. They should be ok with constructive civil feedback on how to perform better. The moral of the story is yes a healer is meant to heal, a dps is meant to dps, a tank is meant to tank, but there are times that do come up where you can break the mold as it were and help out. The point is that you learn to play your class on a different level by doing so and this in turn makes for a more fun experience for everyone in your party/group. Just please keep your feedback to your fellow player constructive and civil. We are all in this together after all and the last thing we need is a toxic community.

[Andrea]

Am I reading this right or are people actually saying finishing a dungeon quicker isn't more efficient?

The game clearly rewards speed.

Im also curious how many defending healers not DPSing are the ones that stand around for 30seconds between spells or if they're still learning to heal. Learning to heal is fine, constantly healing because of big pulls is also fine. Standing around for 20-30 seconds between cast is lazy no matter how you try to defend it. No other class in the game stands around doing nothing, why should us healers?

[Bixillarla]

Am I reading this right or are people actually saying finishing a dungeon quicker isn't more efficient?

The game clearly rewards speed.

Im also curious how many defending healers not DPSing are the ones that stand around for 30seconds between spells or if they're still learning to heal. Learning to heal is fine, constantly healing because of big pulls is also fine. Standing around for 20-30 seconds between cast is lazy no matter how you try to defend it. No other class in the game stands around doing nothing, why should us healers?

I do. I took up healing to heal not DPS. If I want to DPS I will play a DPS class not a healer. My job is to heal and keep everyone alive period.

Anyone who doesn't like it is free to kick me and I will jsut que again. Most people don't have a problem with it, I get plenty of comments and commendations.

[Whiteroom]

I do. I took up healing to heal not DPS. If I want to DPS I will play a DPS class not a healer. My job is to heal and keep everyone alive period.

Anyone who doesn't like it is free to kick me and I will jsut que again. Most people don't have a problem with it, I get plenty of comments and commendations.

Well, not quite period. Period is doing the bare minimum to get by. You can pass it of as more, but really, you are just doing the minimum you can. And thats fine, some may kick you, some may not, you have said you are ok with that, so the world shall keep turning.

But you are still doing the bare minimum, and will not ever go beyond a "passable" healer, with that attitude.

[Andrea]

I do. I took up healing to heal not DPS. If I want to DPS I will play a DPS class not a healer. My job is to heal and keep everyone alive period.

Anyone who doesn't like it is free to kick me and I will jsut que again. Most people don't have a problem with it, I get plenty of comments and commendations.

Im not saying you can't do it lol you're free to play healer how you want.

Also I wouldn't say commendations are a good way to judge anything really. Hell I give mine out randomly to get the challenge every week lol.

I just personally don't understand how someone could just heal if its normal sized pulls. I would be watching netflix just tapping cure/physick every now and again. Again tho thats just my opinion and you can heal how you so wish to.

EDIT: also I agree with Whiteroom, If a healer is only healing you're at the bare minimum of what is a passable healer, in my opinion. A good Healer knows when to DPS and when to heal.

[Niwashi]

If you log in for 2 hours, and you complete 5 dungeons - you get 5 dungeons worth of rewards. If you log in for 2 hours and complete 6 dungeons you get 6 dungeons worth of rewards.

If you log in for 2 hours, and you complete 5 dungeons - you get 5 dungeons worth of rewards.
If you log in for 3 hours, and you complete 5 dungeons - you get 5 dungeons worth of rewards.

The only difference is that in one case you only received 2 hours worth of entertainment from those runs, and in the second, you got 3. This is a game, where the time you can spend enjoying it should be giving value to you. (If it didn't, you wouldn't be enjoying the game enough to be here.) Failing to appreciate this fact just leads to people running out of content and leaving the game because they're bored. Go through everything too fast and its entertainment won't last you very long.

Everything in our capitalist economy is based of productivity. That is, the effectiveness of productive effort, especially in industry, as measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input. In this sense the rate of output is tomes and input is time spent.

Tomes/hour (or rewards/time) are just ways of looking at the income/expense ratio I was talking about myself. The problem is that you're treating it like the real world, where time would go on the expense side of that ratio. But the reason it's an expense in real-world scenarios is based on the recurrence patterns of real-world expenses, which keep coming up again and again in time-based intervals. In-game expenses don't follow that pattern, which makes for a very different sort of economy, especially where time is concerned.

There is no scaling whether you succeed it or not, yes/no cannot be scaled.

But it's not the result itself that we're trying to scale. We were trying to scale the effectiveness of actions at being able to lead to that result. If action A will likely lead to success, and action B could possibly lead to success but probably not, then action A is more effective than action B. (It even works if both actions are likely to lead to success, but one slightly more likely to.) In the end you still have a binary success or failure result either way, but that doesn't prevent comparing effectiveness between the two approaches.

I will accept that time is significantly easier to measure than likelihood, though. (In fact, I strongly suspect that's the main reason speed is so popular as a personal goal.)

Long story short, most people prefer faster runs, faster runs provide more reward to someone in the same time-frame, and therefore it can be considered better. Whether you consider it better or not doesn't really matter, what matters is that most people you are playing with consider it better.

Arguing from a false premise doesn't get you anywhere. All we know for sure on this is that there are a lot of players who prefer runs to go faster, a lot of players who prefer runs to go slower, and a lot of players who couldn't care less about how fast they go so long as they end up with their completion rewards and loot by the end and have a fun time along the way. With nothing but anecdotal evidence to go by, I suspect the first group may indeed be somewhat larger than the second, but it's that third group which almost certainly makes up the majority. (The group I myself am in varies with my mood, so it could be any of the three.)

Out of curiosity, why are you trying to promote/advocate people to play terribly?

I'm not really advocating any particular style of play. I'm advocating that if people are going to talk about what makes players "good" or "bad", they should do so more accurately.

You can, on an individual level, be very good at achieving the result you like regardless of whether it's a result other people like or not. For instance, given the goals you yourself have expressed, if you're in fact skilled at achieving them, that would make you a very effective speedrunner. That takes skill and effort, and it's something you can be proud of being good at.

But what makes you good (or bad) at your goals might not make someone else good (or bad) if they have different goals. Finding the absolute optimum skill pattern for ensuring your runs all go smoothly (regardless of time) also takes skill and effort, and is also something that people can be good at.

When you look beyond yourself, and switch from deciding what you personally would like to be good at to what makes players in general (or for the context of this thread, healers in general) good at playing, then you should either base that on the standard goals that the game itself gives us, since those are the ones we have in common, or else accept the fact that there are a wide variety of playstyles that people can be good at.

Most of the toxicity in the game (and all the toxicity in this thread) comes from people saying, essentially: "The ONLY way to be good at the game is if you're good specifically at what I myself want. Having different goals than I do automatically makes you a bad player." That's the attitude I'm arguing against. And the reason I'm arguing against it (and at such length) is because of that toxicity it creates.

There are as many ways to be good as there are goals that people can have. If you're playing in the way that best meets the standard goals of the game, your own personal goals, and your teammates' goals, then you're a good player. If you're playing in a way that doesn't best meet the standard goals of the game, your own personal goals, or your teammates' goals, then you're a bad player.

It's great that they are working in skill, but I would be all for them lowering the DPS meta. I'd prefer to have healers actually be focused on healing the party and providing support. I'd like DPS to be using things like CC/Utility more often, and I'd like to see tanks not worrying more about DPS than staying alive and/or holding hate.

It's nice to see there are at least some things we agree on.