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

[Zojha]

But I have to ask: What is the root of the problem when it came to heavy expectations that your Healer would DPS and how it leaked into casual content?

It's very simple, really. It's a combination of two facts:
The value of healing is capped.
Healers have a lot of spare time, a lot of spare resources and tools to do something with it.

For the first, just imagine healing would infinitely add overheal to your max HP. In such a case, even healing full HP targets would be useful. However, even then, once you pass the threshold where you can ignore all mechanics because you have more HP than being hit by all of them would subtract, healing more would be useless. The usefulness of healing is hard capped by the incoming damage.

Further, If a healer couldn't spare GCDs for not healing, people wouldn't ask them to do anything else because they can't. This has a lot to do with the power of healing spells - The faster you can get a healthbar from 1 to 100, the more time you have to dilly dally waiting for the next nuke to get them to 1 again.

If a healer didn't have the resources to do anything but healing, people wouldn't ask them to do anything else because they can't. You can probably imagine how hot people would be on Healers DPSing if every of their damage spells was Flare.

If a healer didn't have tools to use in downtime, people also wouldn't ask them to do anything else because it doesn't matter. But combined with the above it would mean excessive time of just doing nothing at all.

In short: Healers are too strong for the given content. That is on purpose, because SE wanted healing to be accessible, but it pretty much means that you'd need to constantly throw heavy hitting nukes at people they cannot avoid to make healers engaged for more than a couple seconds, because that's all it takes to get people back up. That is exactly what more difficult content does by the way - Double Whirlwind, Acid Raid, Double Mega Holy, Triple Cintamani, Akh Morn etc. And as soon as the barrage of spells stops... Healers go back to DPSing. Because they can.

And if that's already a thing in hard content, you can imagine that healers have even more free time and resources to spare on non-healing activities in casual content, as casual content has lower demands. That's what leads to people just jumping around idly. And if one person is jumping around idly and the other 3 are constantly doing stuff, it's not hard to understand why the 3 would like the fourth to do a bit more as well.

The unfortunate thing being that this "bit more" is only DPS, which people choosing a healer role often don't want to do. They often picked healer for the saviour fantasy, the samaritan, the good guardian angel that delivers people from pain, not to deliver pain themselves. That's something to respect, IMO, but if that is to come to pass, game design needs to support it. And getting that right is difficult.
Plus, no matter what you do, downtime will be a thing. You can only balance content for one set item level and one set skill level - people who are above that will experience varying degrees of downtime. So trying to fill the downtime with something that fulfills the healer fantasy is a thing to look into as well. But I'm just repeating myself by now.

[KDSilver]

Feyona, you're the joke of that topic, thank you.
I wanted to react to yours comments several times, but I realised it was useless to talk with you.

Good luck for being a burden for your comrade in the game.

[BaconAurora]

Gotta love healer drama :'3

[Feyona]

Feyona, you're the joke of that topic, thank you.
I wanted to react to yours comments several times, but I realised it was useless to talk with you.

Good luck for being a burden for your comrade in the game.

I wonder what sort of impression of this game people reading these forums. "hmm healers and tanks pressured to dps, roles all confused" " oh yes sounds like a really good game, I will have to try it" C ommunity is hostile they call people a joke for having role preferences" "hmm dont think Ill bother then." "oh its good for dps though cos half the team does your job for you". People with toxicity like that give this community a bad reputation, bear this in mind when you call people a joke

[Judge_Xero]

But I have to ask: What is the root of the problem when it came to heavy expectations that your Healer would DPS and how it leaked into casual content? I really would like to know how this evolved to where we are now since I don't have a good grasp of it.

The simplest answer is that because most healers couldn't keep up with the healing requirement of earlier Raids so SE greatly reduced the healing cap so that more healers would have access to raiding.

Healers DPSing in raids has always been a thing and has always trickled down to casual content in the form of Dungeon Speed Runs. (or at the mentality of Main Heals, Support Heals + DPS)

Because SE lowered the required healing so much in Creator Savage both healers have a ton of opportunity to DPS and this has trickled down into casual content that it is pretty much expected that healers have time to help with DPS not to mention the lowered accuracy required for dungeons re-enforces this idea.

[bounddreamer]

I think most people who visit the thread recognize that this is a very spirited, occasionally heated discussion regarding game meta and optimal/desired play, and not necessarily reflective of how a player treats other people unless they specifically provide examples of how they've handled specific situations in game.

[Feyona]

I think most people who visit the thread recognize that this is a very spirited, occasionally heated discussion regarding game meta and optimal/desired play, and not necessarily reflective of how a player treats other people unless they specifically provide examples of how they've handled specific situations in game.

I was thinking of people outside the game or new people that havent experienced what end game is like. Read Tint's post. Gives you an idea other than mine, being as people think my experiencd isnt valid

[bounddreamer]

So with all your boundless empathy and top tier understanding, you can't get what we're trying to say? For the past 80 pages? And this circular argument is still going on?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

The simplest answer is that because most healers couldn't keep up with the healing requirement of earlier Raids so SE greatly reduced the healing cap so that more healers would have access to raiding.

Healers DPSing in raids has always been a thing and has always trickled down to casual content in the form of Dungeon Speed Runs. (or at the mentality of Main Heals, Support Heals + DPS)

Because SE lowered the required healing so much in Creator Savage both healers have a ton of opportunity to DPS and this has trickled down into casual content that it is pretty much expected that healers have time to help with DPS not to mention the lowered accuracy required for dungeons re-enforces this idea.

This lowered requirement isn't exclusive to Creator either. Even dungeons became progressively easier throughout Heavensward. It's rather telling The Aery/Vault are still harder than virtually everything released thereafter. Xelphatol is practically egregious as you're overgeared just wearing lore gear yet it released with the ilvl 250-270 sets. Unless you have a truly awful tank, you'll inevitably have more downtime than actually healing time. And it's for that reason I feel the devs overshot the weaker requirements. No content should allow 70%+ Cleric Stance when it's brand new imo.

[Lambdafish]

I wonder what sort of impression of this game people reading these forums. "hmm healers and tanks pressured to dps, roles all confused" " oh yes sounds like a really good game

That is necessary for role design. I have experienced first hand through research that isolating roles leads to downtime which is filled with nothing, as Zojha stated. I agree that I would like more to do that is healer or tank centric during that down time (hell, I play a PLD who is told that their class is terrible due to bad DPS - yet I acknowledge that that is the devs fault not the communities)

Community is hostile they call people a joke for having role preferences.

Or maybe they will see the 50-100 pages of ignorance from you (both intentional and unintentional) and side with the large amount of people other than KDSilver who have given thought out, reasonable answers, showing knowledge and understanding of both the community and the game mechanics. Yet again you have cherry picked and pointed fingers saying "the community is hostile" because you got called out on by someone less subtle than the rest of us.

People with toxicity like that give this community a bad reputation, bear this in mind when you call people a joke

Didn't you call me elitist several pages ago for basically no reason? I believe BoundDreamer called it character assassination, I prefer the term defamation of character. I shrugged that off, or would you rather I act the way you are?