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

[Thalen]

I don't post on the forums very often, but since this discussion seems to be pretty constructive..

I understand what you mean by your original post, since you are healer, you want to heal and the obligation to DPS is not what you asked for. Sadly, the game is designed the way that healer has to, if he wants to be considered as useful as he can be. Its the same way with Tanks, who signed up for tanking to soak damage, and suddenly they are expected to stance dance and do whole lot of damage (thats why Warrior is so mandatory in HW). I am not saying its great design, but thats how things are.

As a raid leader in FC that does community raiding (NaCl, you might have heard about us, since Zodiark is pretty small), meaning raiding with every FC member who wants to, I deal with all sorts of people. We have tanks that do 600 DPS, and healers that do zero, and we have cleared A12S with plenty of those, around 20 people in total, so it is not completely unviable. It just took some time, clears and gear to make up for the DPS loss. So while our healers that do DPS cleared Creator during late October, since the ilvl needed to do so (on our skill level) was lower, others had to wait for late November / December, until we got gear and experience to make up for the discrepancy. It depends on what you as a player prefer. You certainly can find places to raid where DPS won't be required at all and people will be happy just for your presence.

For me and my FC, the viability of healer that does not do DPS starts literally at zero on the patch day, and increases as ilvl of people rises. At this point in patch cycle, I don't care if healer does DPS, as long as he can keep us alive during weekly reclears. =) This is mostly caused by us not caring about logs / speed kills or any other hardcore endgame activity, we care about clearing the content asap, and then farming it with as wide array of FC people as possible. anybody who cares about llogs / raid DPS / speedkills would probably not be as content with it.

[Moonfox]

I have to agree with what Thalen says. I have raided savage as a whm and for the early phases (learning the fight learning how much damage the tanks and party are taking) i have solohealed for 90% of the time - letting the sch/astro dps. After gearing up and understanding the fight i´d dps too. Why? Because i choose to be a healer to help my team mates - make life as easy as possible for them. That includes helping the party to bring the boss down faster - even if its just 2% - if i can contribute by working a bit harder why wouldn´t i?

For regular content - yes you can easily do it with just healing. Honestly i´d be bored out of my mind. Waiting around.I´ve never insulted nor kicked another healer for doing it the easy way. I´ve seriously wondered though what do they do with the spare time until I was playing summoner during duty roulette expert last week and we had a whm literally painting her nails during our run.

[IttyBitty]

we had a whm literally painting her nails during our run.

...Yet you still wouldn't kick for this? That is a blatant lack of respect for you and the rest of your party.

I have kicked and will continue to kick healers who spend their time knitting while using /follow on SCH, Netflix watching AST/WHMs, or those who join dungeons as a healer so they can get free tomes while socialising via Linkshells with zero regrets.

[Feyona]

I don't post on the forums very often, but since this discussion seems to be pretty constructive..

I understand what you mean by your original post, since you are healer, you want to heal and the obligation to DPS is not what you asked for. Sadly, the game is designed the way that healer has to, if he wants to be considered as useful as he can be.

That is a very nice post, Thank you. It shows your views in a very helpful and positive way. That there is help for people wanting to raid and perhaps being afraid to even try because the raidng community sometime are intolerant of not just players that 'cant' play , but playstyles as well. This may have been the sort of response I was looking for keep up the good work! Btw I would always try to follow my teams instruction, sometimes it takes time.

[technole]

For me and my FC, the viability of healer that does not do DPS starts literally at zero on the patch day, and increases as ilvl of people rises. At this point in patch cycle, I don't care if healer does DPS, as long as he can keep us alive during weekly reclears. =) This is mostly caused by us not caring about logs / speed kills or any other hardcore endgame activity, we care about clearing the content asap, and then farming it with as wide array of FC people as possible. anybody who cares about llogs / raid DPS / speedkills would probably not be as content with it.

Yep, and absolutely true back even more so in early Gordias Savage days. If both healers didn't find a way to contribute to DPS you'd just to get Faust enrage and even Oppressor if you made it that far. Ideally anytime you get a 1% wipe or or short of raid DPS, the first people that should be looked at are the tanks and healers. A3S was one of those places where you needed the dump every ounce of DPS you had available.

Some don't realize with under-geared progression that it requires getting the most from every job to clear savage floors in the first weeks. From the crafted gear and melds brought to the table, along with skill. Look at today, A11S is a wall for some even with DPS at or near 270 ilvl. It shouldn't be, but the cost of not bringing any healer DPS to the table ends up being a strain to the entire raid. This tier you can get away with nimble healer DPS, but you'd see more mechanics than the average group does and also require other players to play more finesse.

[Feyona]

...Yet you still wouldn't kick for this? That is a blatant lack of respect for you and the rest of your party.

I have kicked and will continue to kick healers who spend their time knitting while using /follow on SCH, Netflix watching AST/WHMs, or those who join dungeons as a healer so they can get free tomes while socialising via Linkshells with zero regrets.

Sometimes I think this game more about friends, people,and having fun to some people and not always about watching numbers and seeing what other people are doing. Im sure that most people are doing their best to clear and some like having fun while they do it. Doesnt mean they arnt going to clear and some dont see it as a job, like being at work. If my team needs a bit of dps Im more than happy to do it for them If I can. Think you will get a better performance from people with patience rather than threats and orders anyway

[TaleraRistain]

At the moment, no. Healers are not allowed to only heal. This is because current content design offers far too many windows in which to DPS and doesn't give a healer enough to focus on in regards to healing. This leads to large amounts of no activity from healers if they don't delve into secondary roles in the party.

SE needs to address this. There is too much of a focus on DPS in current content. They need to make adjustments so both healers and tanks have enough to keep them busy in their main roles. Then those windows to DPS will become windows again instead of consisting of the entire fight.

If SE does re-balance this, then it will be viable to focus more on healing, since the content will keep us busy enough in it and other team members won't be able to complain about our inactivity.

[IttyBitty]

Sometimes I think this game more about friends, people,and having fun to some people and not always about watching numbers and seeing what other people are doing. Im sure that most people are doing their best to clear and some like having fun while they do it. Doesnt mean they arnt going to clear and some dont see it as a job, like being at work. If my team needs a bit of dps Im more than happy to do it for them If I can. Think you will get a better performance from people with patience rather than threats and orders anyway

...Are you seriously attempting to defend healers not even paying attention to the game now?. You are okay with someone using /follow on a tank or DPS and just going AFK? Joining a duty and painting their nails? The heck?

[Feyona]

...Are you seriously attempting to defend healers not even paying attention to the game now?. You are okay with someone using /follow on a tank or DPS and just going AFK? Joining a duty and painting their nails? The heck?

Not at all but Ive raided with people that are a little more casual about things, and in friendship groups thats sometimes how it is. Some of you here seem to always take my points to the extreme, like eg's of ice mage or the three button argument, and even if a fight only required 3 buttons spammed repeatedly then they are still 'active'. I guess I just dont get this resentment of 'Im working harder than you' bit about it because there's physical, activity and mental activity plus different types of pressure, I would say that healing has its own responsibility and its different from tanks responsibility. Not saying its more or less but some things cant be measured

[Lambdafish]

For me and my FC, the viability of healer that does not do DPS starts literally at zero on the patch day, and increases as ilvl of people rises. At this point in patch cycle, I don't care if healer does DPS, as long as he can keep us alive during weekly reclears.

I agree that viability rises, however you do also have to factor in the fact that tank ilvl also increases, meaning that healers have an easier job in general. Healers come in all shapes and sizes and some may need this cushion, however there does come a point on a lot of fights where tank ilvls are high enough to allow solo healing, at which point, if the other healer isn't DPSing, they are useless (this is more a phase by phase thing, rather than a fight by fight, as not many fights allow solo healing throughout, however almost every fight has phases which can be solo healed).

Raid healing is also a lot different from Dungeon healing in that the two healers co-ordinate their heals and often split themselves into main healer and offhealer, and if you aren't DPSing as an off healer then you should probably be the main healer.