Harassing Healers - or: Please allow Parsers

[ErryK]

You don't need a parser to tell that someone isn't good. Regardless of whether you're a tank, healer or DPS, it is easy to tell if you're bad at your job. Healers who only heal aren't really bad, but to bring parsers into the mix? I mean... you don't need to have a degree in rocket science to know that a Bard is bad when they don't sing Foe for a DPSing healer and a BLM/SMN.

[SakurazukaSeishirou]

Being a WHM main I find the idea of NOT dpsing absolutely unacceptable. This comes from the notion that everyone in th party should do their best to make any given run as fast and smooth as possible. For that any job is required to use all of their skills as well as they possibility can. It's ok to learn, to be unsure of how or when to use some skills, not to be optimal all the time as long as you strive to better yourself and always do your best.
For healers it means dpsing when there is no immediate healing is required. For tanks is also adding to the dps and making healers life easier by using cooldowns. DPS have their buffs and debuffs to speed up the run, staying alive also helps alot with their and healers dps.
That said the parser in general would only bring even more hate. But it would be nice to see your personal numbers that you could compare with some official norm to at least judge your own performance for people who are learning and testing their job limits.

[Lunafreya]

This will surely go well.

[Edewen]

All the kids with their safe spaces think "hey healer, how about you actually dps instead of picking your nose" is harassment? Seems bullies these days are slacking that you people got your definition wrong.

You job in a group
*To perform to the best of your ability in order to ensure your group as a whole has a good experience.

Failure to complete the above can be defined as:
Sitting around afk waiting for damage to happen
Using an ability every 5 seconds as a dps sitting at full resource and doing half the damage you are capable of
Not using your defensive cooldowns expecting the healer to simply heal harder

An in game parser may lead to harassment. But there needs to be some incentive for the slackers to actually improve.
An activity monitor in combat that disqualifies a person for loot for low active time. There is ALWAYS something to cast, a button to hit. A monitor showing less than 75% activity would be a good way to filter these leeches out.

[KarstenS]

Depends what you define as harassing. if i see a healer standing around doing nothing (i've even some /dance) then i'll ask them to use that time to dps. that is not harassing.

Whats the difference to a DPS role player that is staying around an doing nothing usefull.

I've seen so many groups in the last month, where I did more damage (up to the double amount) then the other members of the party together.

The worst party was one, where I was the top DPS as a Paladin in Shield Oath.

I agree with the OP:

- Make the damage of all party members transparent

OR

- Let everybody play as he/she want.

Let DPS players play horrible but on the other side request healers to deal damage... I would call this harassment too.

[Seredeelfer]

snip
An in game parser may lead to harassment. But there needs to be some incentive for the slackers to actually improve.
An activity monitor in combat that disqualifies a person for loot for low active time. There is ALWAYS something to cast, a button to hit. A monitor showing less than 75% activity would be a good way to filter these leeches out.

First let me say I WANT an in-game parser that I can use as a reference for self improvement. While the ability to analyze my performance after the encounter remains invaluable, real time data also has benefit in making adjustments during the encounter. That said, from what I've read on these forums recommending the use of parsers to allow vote kicks or loot disqualifications only reinforces to SE that parsers are bad. While I'm no expert on Japanese culture, I do know that as a culture they value reward over punishment when raising a family - a practice I do attempt to emmulate.

[Knahli]

Allowing parsing merely trades one problem for another without solving the core issue.

I'm of the completely irrelevant opinion that everyone in a group should be expected to make their best effort at contributing to the group's success.
Parsing breaks the group's total effort into individual contributions - and that's just a recipe for one person to call out another for 'not doing enough' based on arbitrary comparisons.

"Best effort" means different things to different people; and the Twelve knows that the spectrum of players in endgame is incredibly wide, ranging from people fresh to the highest level, still feeling their way around their skills, to jaded veterans that have done it all a thousand times to people just logging in to have some fun to hardcore speedrunners.

When you play on DF you can get any of these, and often get a mix of them.
Of course we ought to poke people obviously slacking to put in a bit more - but pushing them far outside their comfort zone isn't a solution either ... perhaps we all ought to take a step back, take a deep breath and instead of focusing so hard on performance in (effectively) social content, accept the run will take a few extra minutes and try to guide and help people instead.

Of course, if they don't want to be helped, then you can start thinking about other, more dramatic solutions -- but that's on a case by case basis, not a blanket solution.

Hit the nail on the head, the emboldened part especially.

You don't need a parser to tell that someone isn't good. Regardless of whether you're a tank, healer or DPS, it is easy to tell if you're bad at your job. Healers who only heal aren't really bad, but to bring parsers into the mix? I mean... you don't need to have a degree in rocket science to know that a Bard is bad when they don't sing Foe for a DPSing healer and a BLM/SMN.

That's an extremely inaccurate and sweeping statement when considering the points referenced by Storm, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you were being very liberal with your choice of words to get your basic point across.

[LalaRu]

...everyone in th party should do their best to make any given run as fast and smooth as possible....

If you intend that everyone needs play its best to go ahead the duty, I can agree, after all if I go into a duty, it is because I want it done for a reason or another.

But, asking the players to play the advanced ninja technique to save 0,1s of duty time, or have the perfect rotation what reaches 99% of max theoretical damage output, you are asking too much. And expecting them with you into a duty, way too much.

Another thread shown how many people cleared creator savage, there you can see the players you want in your duty are on average the 10% of active players, and just 1% on some servers.

Now, what's the most effective way to clear a duty? Running it once with whatever the DF gave to you, or kicking out the bad until party fills with whom you judged worthy? (and waiting joins in progress, that are not always instant)

Parsers exists only to help the top raiders able to maximize their rotations/skills but are absolutely no use on the average duty, worse, them will only add reasons for more harassment and it is better leave them to who knows how to use them, that is not the average player.

[loreleidiangelo]

Or how about: don't harass anyone, but encourage everyone to play well and effectively and be as good team members as possible.

The OP itself is a stupid false equivalence on how people shouldn't bully healers for not DPSing in instances, but in an attempt to make this a serious conversation I will point out that it's kind of hard to tell whether a DPS is "playing well and effectively" without either a.) constantly staring at the party list to see who is using buffs and keeping stack-type mechanics up, and/or b.) staring at the mobs to see if pertinent DoTs are being used or if the DPS are using proper AOE rotation via animations.

A problem I actually have in 24-mans like Dun Scaith is that I try to comm DPS who go above and beyond the usual levels of afk there, but it's impossible for me to do without something like ACT because of all the spell effects and mechanics that I have to watch out for. Sadly, most comms will go to the tank (cooldown usage is easy to watch on them if they're MT) or the other healer (again, easy for me to tell if they're contributing and Cleric Stance has decent visibility as a buff icon so I can see if they're DPSing during downtime). DPS classes just have too much crap to look out for in general, and I feel bad because in larger group content I think their contributions go largely unnoticed for me without a parser.

In 4-man content it's pretty easy to see who is doing "okay", but I also don't have the positionals of every DPS memorized and all that jazz. It LOOKS like that MNK is doing normal MNK things, but if they're hitting their positionals incorrectly every time that's going to be a pretty big DPS loss, no? I just wish that people could be trusted not to be huge buttholes and I could actually use ACT to give recognition to DPS who dodge mechanics and put out solid numbers.

[Tremara]

Could we please stop beating the dead horse?

Everyone can play like they want but have to live with the consequences if half the group doesn't agree with their playstyle ... be it the healer who doesn't DPS, be it the DPS that can't move out of shit, be it the tank who isn't able to use CDs