As a healer, is it my job to DPS? A new perspective.

[LucyDaernos]

As already mentioned though, the problem with healing intensive fights is that they cease to be that healing intensive once you get better gear. Progression healing is probably the most fun but then you get more experience/better gear making it easier and leaving you more time to dps. You can't really keep it healing intensive unless you sync ilvl so low that it's gonna feel like progression healing (minus the lack of experience) which is probably less fun or feels less rewarding for some while it's still mad fun for others. You will never be able to please everyone when balancing fights.

And this "hey there's not much dmg going on and/or we overgear the content so much I might as well throw in some dps" happens in every game at some point. Probably more/faster in this one but it happens everywhere at some point. Here they at least gave healers a good toolset for dealing decent dps while in other games some healers may be bored to death.

[LadyKairi]

snip.

Yoshi P has already stated that RDM will be a pure DPS. It may have some buffs/debuffs, but I can garuntee it will not be anywhere close to a healer.

[xJimmehx]

I keep seeing the word lazy. Why is that even thrown around on a game? Why is it bad to be lazy when playing a game? Do you think people should pay to play a real-life-like-"job", that they have to work hard on? People play to have fun. Thats all that matters to me. I dont care how my healer heals as long as i am not dying while they take a nap.

[Taika]

I keep seeing the word lazy. Why is that even thrown around on a game? Why is it bad to be lazy when playing a game?

Because certain level of effort is required from each party member for the group to be able to beat the content they're trying to do. If someone in the group is making less effort than others, the others have to carry their weight, and it's not fair. It's being lazy at the expense of others, and that's the issue.

For example, in an expert dungeon run where I was only healing as WHM, I was active 17% of the whole dungeon while the rest of my group members were active 72-77% of the dungeon - while my overheal was still at 35.90%! If everyone else had been contributing at the same level than me as a non-DPSing WHM, we either wouldn't have been able to clear the content or it would have been significantly harder and/or slower.

The issue is that some people are promoting this as a valid play style for haler jobs, while it would not be accepted from anyone else (or how would one look at a tank or a DD who would be only doing something for 17% of a dungeon?).

[Rivxkobe]

I keep seeing the word lazy. Why is that even thrown around on a game? Why is it bad to be lazy when playing a game? Do you think people should pay to play a real-life-like-"job", that they have to work hard on? People play to have fun. Thats all that matters to me. I dont care how my healer heals as long as i am not dying while they take a nap.

You see the word lazy but you don't read the context of why we are saying it? Interesting. That's like a few other people around here.

[LucyDaernos]

snip

I agree games should be fun and not become a second job. Some have an easier time learning stuff about their class etc and enjoy that learning/practising part while others may have a hard time and may not want to invest as much time/effort into it due to various reasons.

But the ones that do try hard to get the best out of their characters resulting in runs possibly going faster/smoother for every party member may be a bit upset/frustrated when someone in their team doesnt try as hard as they do for the sake of the group and this may lead to thoughts like "I'm busting my arse off here for the group, why arent they as well?! This isnt fair!"

As Taika mentioned though, it's the same for every other role. A dps that puts in 120% effort/work may be upset seeing another dps putting in 70 or 50%.

In the end and this goes for both sides, nobody can change the way you play the game. Play with like-minded people and have fun.

[xJimmehx]

...

I just did a dungeon on AST and I mainly healed. I did dps whenever i could do so comfortably. I could not always dps though. If i felt over-stressed things would go south and so i chose to gimp out on dps until I knew my party was ok. Just healing alone and no dpsing, I know for certain i was active more than 70% of that dungeon. If you include dots and my single target attack spam.. id say i was active more than 95% of time my party was in combat.

"Because certain level of effort is required from each party member for the group to be able to beat the content they're trying to do." That is not always true. If it were, nobody would ever complete duties unless they were preformed. There is room for slack and for good reason. Imagine if every dungeon were as hard as relevant tier raids on release. If the healer isnt causing the group to wipe, you should let them have fun as they want. Most dungeons in this game are so easy it makes me sleepy. If a healer wants to help get it over with fast, yay. If not, well, i dont own them and its not right to make them. If they refuse to do what they need to to beat the content(like heal lol -- ive seen healers OH and never heal forcing a wipe on the whole group), thats different. Kick em.

[xJimmehx]

A dps that puts in 120% effort/work may be upset seeing another dps putting in 70 or 50%.

They may get upset but they still have no right to tell others what to do. You cant go to work and tell your co-worker you dont like how slow they are and that they have to work faster. Not unless you provide the paycheck. I get what you are saying but in the end nobody has the right to decide the rights of another. "In the end and this goes for both sides, nobody can change the way you play the game. Play with like-minded people and have fun." So this is something i agree with entirely. If you dont like dutyfinder healers, make a click and stick to it. Arguing and bossing people around over a game seems silly. xD

[loreleidiangelo]

I wouldn't. I've seen bards who refused to play Peon and Mana songs in the name of keeping their DPS top. I wouldn't see any healer tolerating this when they get low from healing so much.


How about we switch it up a bit? What if said healer was a SCH and he said the same thing, but you see his fairy is doing all the work while he is just walking. Would you still emphasize to this "Role playing behavior"?

You completely and utterly missed the point of my statement to a degree that I am honestly surprised you even read enough of my post to try to formulate a counter-argument. It's like you literally just saw the words "empathize" and "role-play" together and assumed that I was saying it's okay to play an ice-only BLM so long as it's in an RP context, which is not even remotely close to what I was saying at all. Please actually read it, not just skim. I know it's long, but brevity is the dearth of discourse, in my humble opinion.

A better analogy using the same setup you gave would be a BRD wishing for a pure physical ranged DPS class with none of the DPS-lowering support nonsense attached to it. Is there a problem with wanting something like that? Is there a problem with that BRD currently playing their role using their songs correctly, but wishing that they had a DPS option where that wasn't required? That's basically how I feel about healer DPS. I do it, but wish that the developers would start nudging the role more towards what people are traditionally expecting it to be when they sign up to play a healer in an MMORPG.

Now, as I ALSO admitted, the devs don't actually have to change squat. If the devs change BRD to remove their support songs and make them purely DPS-oriented, that might make the BRD in my example happy, but it would make the BRDs who actually enjoy that aspect of the job patently UNHAPPY, and I acknowledge that's the real issue with the devs trying to adjust the meta at this point. I'm just one sub, and I have no way of knowing if there are more of "me" than there are of "you". But I'm trying to debunk the endless mudslinging I see on here (your post being a primary case in point) about healers who want the role to be more traditional, and less DPS-oriented. We're not "lazy". Many of us are currently playing the role optimally in the current design schematic. That doesn't mean we're not allowed to want it to change.

To elaborate further, when I say "change", I don't just mean something as banal as "remove Cleric Stance so that way it's a non-issue!". The way healing is set up in this game, it's DESIGNED to be boring to be friendly to newer players. It's the reason the global is set up the way it is too, with it being super-long at the beginning while people are getting used to playing an MMO, with more stuff added to keep you "busy" as your levels advance. The only problem is, healers have to default to a function that isn't their PRIMARY function in order to keep "busy", because strictly healing at endgame isn't engaging enough to require full throughput from two experienced, global cooldown-efficient healers. So if healing is going to be changed to the point where healers aren't DPSing unless they seriously overgear the content (like how it is in TERA, WoW, SWTOR, Revelation Online, Wildstar, basically any other MMO that has healers at this point except like The Secret World etc.), major design aspects of the game are going to have to change.

It's okay to not want change. It's not okay to make blanket statements about the types of people who might, though. I don't want to twiddle my thumbs in between globals, or casually stroll taking in the scenery while mashing my Embrace macro. I just want my globals to be occupied with using my healing spells, for the most part, not my DPSing ones. (I get that DPSing in content I seriously overgear will always be a thing - it is in those other games I listed, too. But I don't think I've played an MMO yet where you mass pull all the mobs up to a boss in a dungeon with the tank dropping their mitigative stance partway through and the healer primarily DPSing rather than healing...when that content is still relevant.)

[Taika]

I just did a dungeon on AST and I mainly healed. I did dps whenever i could do so comfortably. I could not always dps though. If i felt over-stressed things would go south and so i chose to gimp out on dps until I knew my party was ok. Just healing alone and no dpsing, I know for certain i was active more than 70% of that dungeon. If you include dots and my single target attack spam.. id say i was active more than 95% of time my party was in combat.

Sure there may be cases in which the required healing is enough to keep the healer active, and that's of course alright, no one is objecting that. What people are objecting is exactly what I did in that dungeon: I healed enough to keep people alive but was afk for everything else, resulting in 83% of inactivity (was parsed by someone so it's a fact, not my own estimation). It's not ok to afk over 80% of the dungeon, and because of the low healing requirements and major overgearing, that is exactly what a healer will do in many cases if they don't DPS (or do ridiculous overhealing, which doesn't help the group any more).

In short, the argument is: a healer should be as active as their other group members and they should contribute in a meaninful manner. If the healing requirement in a situation isn't enough to keep them active, they should be contributing with DPS.