Should healers now be allowed to play how they choose to play?

[vigioX-Sun]

I'm afraid of healers that use the job potion in 4.0 now.
if you don't get your job by now idk, maybe you should play another class .
If you do like healing why not push yourself to learn how to stance dance. You need practice & is not hard at all with a CD of 5sec...

[Gemina]

I hear this often from healers. They blame themselves for a party wipe even when they know someone else was responsible. Usually it's "if only i'd done this instead of that, we would have survived". Just because someone is wearing a mentor icon, doesn't mean they're good at the role they're playing - the WAR should have known better. We have no active mitigation in tank stance and even though we have a large health pool; that doesn't justify pulling 6+ mobs w/o mitigation. I have SCH and WHM at level 60 and I refuse to heal. Healing is way too stressful and even minor mistakes are glaring mistakes both in your own eyes and in the eyes of your party members. At some point though, you have to stop blaming yourself and realize that when trying to play to your full potential; you're going to make mistakes (in ANY role) and that you should try to shrug it off and keep going.

I hear you, and also believe healer is the most difficult role in this game if you are trying to optimize it. It is put in your face as early as Hall of Novice, where if you are caught off your toes DPSing, you fail the duty. The video showcases how one, very tiny mistake results in wipe. I do have 20/20 hindsight. I know and see what the tank did wrong, or didn't do to help me, and just left everything on my shoulders. I like that burden though, and when I fail the opportunity to save something, it takes me a long time to get over it. I am one of the most passionate healers you'll ever group with.

That said, as much as I wanted to give up as I always do when I feel like I failed, I carried on because I don't want to inconvenience my group further by having to wait for another healer and pull mobs one at a time while doing so. My performance after that point was pretty bad. A lot of over-healing, not hitting everyone with Medica 2; one of the party members was new, and I typically give new players hawkeye treatment, which may take my focus off of where it should be. The sync was just gone after the wipe, and when I feel that way, my threshold goes from 50% HP to 90%.

I take all videos though where wipes happen, and study the hell out of it to see what I could have done better to prevent further mistakes. So trust me when I say I can at least dust myself off and try again. Feel sorry for the next boss that has to face me!

[Llus]

I hear you, and also believe healer is the most difficult role in this game if you are trying to optimize it. It is put in your face as early as Hall of Novice, where if you are caught off your toes DPSing, you fail the duty. The video showcases how one, very tiny mistake results in wipe. I do have 20/20 hindsight. I know and see what the tank did wrong, or didn't do to help me, and just left everything on my shoulders. I like that burden though, and when I fail the opportunity to save something, it takes me a long time to get over it. I am one of the most passionate healers you'll ever group with.

That said, as much as I wanted to give up as I always do when I feel like I failed, I carried on because I don't want to inconvenience my group further by having to wait for another healer and pull mobs one at a time while doing so. My performance after that point was pretty bad. A lot of over-healing, not hitting everyone with Medica 2; one of the party members was new, and I typically give new players hawkeye treatment, which may take my focus off of where it should be. The sync was just gone after the wipe, and when I feel that way, my threshold goes from 50% HP to 90%.

I take all videos though where wipes happen, and study the hell out of it to see what I could have done better to prevent further mistakes. So trust me when I say I can at least dust myself off and try again. Feel sorry for the next boss that has to face me!

This is exactly the type of player attitude that makes this game and the majority of the community great.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

snip

Having no idea how the group will perform isn't an excuse to not DPS though. I have made similar mistakes myself through the expectation of proper cooldown management from tanks or my co-healer being capable of handling a fight where they insist on staying out of Cleric. Each and every time I'll apologize or the tank will and no one cares. Although anecdotal, I find people far more tolerant of wipes where the healer stance danced and messed up along the way. On the other hand, I have heard that is more an Aether mentality. To your example specifically, fault lies with the tank first. Yes, you should have had Regen up but his lack of cool downs caused the death not your second Holy. No big deal though. I'll take a healer who tries to DPS over one who won't even if it causes a wipe. What I want is effort. You at least showed that whereas the OP seems to only approve on posts where people agree with her wholeheartedly.

[Gemina]

Having no idea how the group will perform isn't an excuse to not DPS though.

Oh, please don't get me wrong. I am not trying to make excuses for not DPSing, but I am trying to enlighten a reason to it. Basically, I totally get both sides of this argument. I will never say that a heals-only healer is optimizing the role, or even playing close to their own potential. But I will defend them from posters that I feel are being belligerent.

I have made similar mistakes myself through the expectation of proper cooldown management from tanks or my co-healer being capable of handling a fight where they insist on staying out of Cleric. Each and every time I'll apologize or the tank will and no one cares. Although anecdotal, I find people far more tolerant of wipes where the healer stance danced and messed up along the way. On the other hand, I have heard that is more an Aether mentality.

I agree completely, and more often than not the tank takes responsibility for the wipe before I can, but either way, it's usually a shrug, and lets carry on mentality. Multiple wipes is where someone finally says, "Alright. We have to talk about this."

The tolerance though can go both way though, can't it? It has been spoken that some people definitely prefer the healer to DPS during downtime, and simply tolerate it when they don't. But how about the DPSing healer? If a wipe happens when the healer is DPSing, is it not tolerated as well? Perhaps less so since this is what leads to healers being vote kicked opposed to a healer who only heals?

This meta confuses my brain :/

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Oh, please don't get me wrong. I am not trying to make excuses for not DPSing, but I am trying to enlighten a reason to it. Basically, I totally get both sides of this argument. I will never say that a heals-only healer is optimizing the role, or even playing close to their own potential. But I will defend them from posters that I feel are being belligerent.

To be fair though, I wouldn't say anyone here has been belligerent. Most aren't speaking to healers who panic out of Cleric or aren't yet entirely comfortable bouncing between stances the way others are. It's the ones who refuse to DPS on a principle basis most take umbrage with. They are fully capable but simply choose not to play better because it doesn't suit their style. A friend of mine flat out admits she'll turn on Netflix while healing sometimes and even calls it her "lazy mode." Now I don't mind because she still manages to DPS pretty well and we usually run content together only a handful of times with other friends and fool around. If she did that often, I'd be less inclined since I know why she's distracted.

People have jumped on the OP because this is her second (third?) attempt to defend the "heal-only" stance and ignores any dissenting opinion.

I agree completely, and more often than not the tank takes responsibility for the wipe before I can, but either way, it's usually a shrug, and lets carry on mentality. Multiple wipes is where someone finally says, "Alright. We have to talk about this."

The tolerance though can go both way though, can't it? It has been spoken that some people definitely prefer the healer to DPS during downtime, and simply tolerate it when they don't. But how about the DPSing healer? If a wipe happens when the healer is DPSing, is it not tolerated as well? Perhaps less so since this is what leads to healers being vote kicked opposed to a healer who only heals?

This meta confuses my brain :/

It depends on the group. I had a healer yell at me after a single wipe because I went full DPS and they couldn't handle healing the first phase of A12N whereas other times it's never an issue. Speaking only for myself, I tend to get annoyed at the healers who stand or jump around the map-- like the Xelphatol video linked. People like that are lazy because they can absolutely see how little damage is going out but still choose not to DPS. It's those healers that make me wish we had a Black Mage or Summoner using Physic/Cure since that's be able as useful.

Well, seeing I suspect Cleric will be removed entirely in Stormblood and healer DPS will be funneled through Mind. It's only going to get worse, xD

[Lauren]

I like how people have misinterpreted Yoshi-P's statement about healers being healers so literally. He doesn't mean for healers to act as they are now, and so he plans on increasing the amount of damage being put out so healers aren't stood around semi-afk in content. Though from various statements it sounds like he plans to do this change during more difficult content (aka raid/ex primals).

This means that you will most likely be DPSing less but you will be active healing way more. Which literally no-one has a problem with. People don't mind you healing if it's active healing. People literally only get annoyed when healers are afk.


This is what arguing back and forth between the anti and the pro-dps healers becomes silly.

It's nothing to do with how much damage you put it. It's about how much time you waste standing there doing literally nothing. And instead of jumping around and casting adlo, spamming regen, or shoving stoneskin on everyone. You could just throw a couple of spells out.

And the reason people are upset is because there's a double standard in what you expect. If any tank or DPS just popped out the odd skill and jumped around in a dungeon, people would get annoyed but healers get away with this constantly. And it annoys people. It's not asking too much. It's asking you to join in and be active.

If a tank is constantly taking tons of damage and you can't DPS because you will need to heal often, that's okay. Because you're ACTIVE healing.

You can keep denying it until your face is red, but if you are doing quarter of the button pressing that any other class is doing: you are making it unfun for others. You're making it longer for others. You're making it frustrating for others and I pay my sub too. Stop wasting my time with playing "how you want". Or I'll start wasting yours by jumping around and being semi afk.

[Spiroglyph]

Well, seeing I suspect Cleric will be removed entirely in Stormblood and healer DPS will be funneled through Mind. It's only going to get worse, xD

Oh dear lord, I really hope this does not happen.

[Spiroglyph]

I feel like everything in this thread, both constructive criticism or insults, has been repeated over and over again and OP counters with the same arguments over and over again... I don't even know what the point of this thread is anymore

[DuskTS]

I thought this would have been about people wanting to do more actual healing in content. Spamming holy all day because a regen tick suffices for healing expert dungeons starts to get a little stale. Final boss of The Vault during Early Access, now that was some fun healing.
I think they tried this with a couple of mobs in the latest experts (random targeted dmg, unavoidable aoe, mini-tankbusters) but we're too overgeared for it to matter.