What are the most common reasons people don't dps?

[Capriana]

I started a post on General forums, 'Remove cleric stance and people will dps more' a lot of people agreed with me and also a lot disagreed.
I, my self, do NOT dps, simply because I don't like cleric stance and stance dancing. Remove it and have damage scale of MND, and I will dps the hell out of it. Keep in mind that my healer is a SCH, which is by far a lot easier to stance dance than other healers, but I still don't want to do it, it feels weird and makes me feel awkward having my heals do crap when accidentally stuck in cleric.

[Tiva]

Hi guys!
Thanks so much for all the great responses. I hope we continue to get more!

I made sure I read them all now that I have some time. I found several of them very interesting. Since some of you might know, as I've mentioned it before, I also started MMOs in WoW. I did this exercise a while back and have been kind of interested to share it. Maybe you guys are curious.
First, I see people say different things about healers dpsing in WoW all the time. Some people claim that healers do dps in WoW. And some claim they don't and it's never been expected. To me, it is really both answers.

In the past, healers have done dps that was related to thier healing roles. I am not currently raiding in WoW and I will disclose the last tier I raided hardcore in that game was Throne of Thunder. I have played since then, but not seriously (I get to grad school to become an ecologist at that time and it has made me focus more on RL, personally since then so I raid pretty casually now). What I mean, when I say healers dpsed in a way that was related to healing is ... I belive most of the time the goal of the dps was something that would increase thier healing.... as a holy paladin, for example, i could use crusader strike (a dps ability that doesn't do any atonement healing) to generate combo points faster and then use those combo points to heal. THe faster I generated combo points, the more I could cast healing "finishers" and increase my healing. Same was similar with shadow priest back then, the dps they did was really do to healing through atonement. WW monk I can't speak that much about because it's the only healer I never played in that game.

So I was curious a few weeks back.. the question was "are things the same? Or have healers in WOW also been pushed to do more dps now?"
So I compared logs (my favorite game LOL).





So as far as I'm concerned, I've looked at some of the better groups in both games, it seems to me, if healers were really under more pressure to dps in WOW, we'd see that most in speed kill groups and we'd also see these groups bringing the healers we know can output more dps (disc and WW I think). But instead what I see from logs is many healers still ending fights at 0 dps and many groups bringing the high hps healers like resto druid.

And I personally feel that is because in WoW, the 20 man (and previously 25 man) raiding environments makes it so, when you want to push dps.. instead of encouraging healers to dps, you drop healers from the group (bench them or have them change to a dps spec) and just bring more dps. THis also pushes the remaining healers to do more healing. Now I'd be curious actually what the MAX DPS healers can do is in that game. If they would just smack a dummy or something what most of them can do. Would it be higher than this? If anyone would like to test I'd be curious. I'd guess, personally, that is still much less percentage wise than comparing what a healer can do in FFXIV to an actual dps. If that's true, then there you have your second reason. First reason is- you can drop healers from fights in Wow pretty easily (which is much more risky in FFXIV but yeah ppl still do solo heals for fun). Second reason- most healers can't do as much dps (percent comparison to an actual dps class) in Wow as healers can do in FFXIV.

I realize this is only a comparison to one game. But it is a massive MMO and many players have come here to FF from WoW and still persist in that culture where healer dps in seen (in my opinion and the opinions of ppl I knew when I raided seriously) to be pretty worthless. It can take some time to realize just how much dpsing in FFXIV can accomplish and escape from that stigma.

Sorry for my long post, maybe it might be interesting to someone If you guys have logs from WOW that show the opposite, by all means I'd love to see some!

ETA- I hope I don't get in trouble for posting numbers from parses on here.... I guess if I do I'll have a friend post my regrets to you guys. Mods please note, these are not MY parses. I'm not saying I parse. I'm just sharing info from parses available online.... for the like betterment of the community and whatnot. I like these forums please don't ban me. ....

[Tiva]

I started a post on General forums, 'Remove cleric stance and people will dps more' a lot of people agreed with me and also a lot disagreed.
I, my self, do NOT dps, simply because I don't like cleric stance and stance dancing. Remove it and have damage scale of MND, and I will dps the hell out of it. Keep in mind that my healer is a SCH, which is by far a lot easier to stance dance than other healers, but I still don't want to do it, it feels weird and makes me feel awkward having my heals do crap when accidentally stuck in cleric.

This is something I also think about a lot. I feel like cleric is almost necessary in this game, because healers CAN do so much dps. Like there is no option to just change specs and quest as a dps. Unless you are sch I guess. So they needed to design something to make it so that healers could get through the story quests almost as well as a dps/tank class. So cleric is pretty strong. I feel almost like if they get rid of cleric stance that is fine, but they would need to nerf healer damage. I feel like there needs to be a trade off for healers having the ability to do so much damage. There has to be a negative. Maybe it would work anyway... but idk. I think ppl who are used to cleric would cry about it if we got rid of cleric and nerfed healers dps a bit to make up for it. But it may be better for the community in the long run. All I know is that just removing the ability to access cleric outside of quests ( see this mentioned frequently as a "solution" to healers who tunnelvision dps too aggressively) would be bad I think. Like I get really frustrated in PVP when there is not much to heal but I cant even cleric. Idk. I'll check out the thread should be interesting!

[Tiva]

Another post about what others have said, not going to go back and quote them sorry it's too much effort right now. I think we may frequently discount how much some players are affected by thier system or how they chose to play. The first thing I'd thinking of is the lag/not a great computer issue. WHen I first raided in WoW I remember I used to run at about 13 fps and I thought this was just how the game looked. It wasn't until I saw videos or saw how the game ran on my friend's computer that I realized how bad my game was running. When I got a new computer, I got pretty good REALLY fast. And now I can't deny part of that was putting more research in, but a huge part of it as well was not being held back by my system. I could actually see mechanics and react to them quickly and heal all at the same time. It was a game changer. I wonder how many healers are dealing with lag or framerate issues although they can do the content like this ( I cleared 25 man HM LK at that framerate btw LOL) it is really holding them back in performance and they aren't even that aware of it. The second thing is what someone mentioned about cleric stance changing thier bars with a macro. This is NOT an attack on this person. But for reasons that many of us probably understand, this is not a good way to play and I do feel it may hold them back. I know I have a warrior that does this with defiance in my raid group and we have talked to him about it a few times. But he just can't let it go.This person parses very low during prog (he had some 9th and 11th percentile clears with us this tier while doing complete off tanking ) and I wonder how much of that is related to how he chooses to play with all these macros. To make the most out of cleric, I usually keep it on till the last second, then literally as a click it off I'm casting my heal. The way cleric comes off makes this possible to do. If I had to wait for the macro to change my bars I think there would be more delay involved and that would scare me tbh. The person who posted this feel free to respond about it if you wish or not if you don't. I find it very interesting to play this way and curious how you started (if someone told you to do this or you came up with it yourself). Thanks .

[Fernosaur]

- Bad examples. Cases when healer is too involved in dps to heal are quite noticable and nobody is happy in those runs. Seeing how tank's hp drops to 1-3% because healer turn off cleric too late and went to use regular heals is the prime example not to try switching into dps at all.

If the tank didn't die I wouldn't call this a bad example! I usually let tank HP drop to 20% or below before tossing ED or Lustrate (though with Lustrate it's almost never necessary cause lol Eos). This isn't because I'm tunnel-vision'd, it's because I'm 100% confident about the healing timing and the rhythm of incoming damage. You can also gauge this at the start of every pull depending on how fast the tank's HP is going down, etc. It's a form of efficiency to not let your heals do unnecessary overhealing!

[Arynne]

...The person who posted this feel free to respond about it if you wish or not if you don't. I find it very interesting to play this way and curious how you started (if someone told you to do this or you came up with it yourself). Thanks .

I was the person who mentioned using the macro. Oh and that's pretty much the only macro I play with, so I assure you I'm not trying to do *everything* with macros. ^^

I think when I made the macro I was looking for an easy way to put my DPS spells in easy reach (the 1, 2, and 3 keys) for when I switched to Cleric Stance. This also (ideally) would serve as another indication of when I was cleric stance. Look at my bars and if it's my DPS spells I'm in cleric, if it's my healing spells then I'm not. I can't remember exactly where I saw the idea to create a macro like that. It may have been on here, it was a while ago. The thing that always strikes me as odd about it is that the command to change the bars is after the command to trigger Cleric Stance, so I would think that if something would be skipped it would be the changing bars.

Would you mind explaining why it's an inefficient way to play? Is it that there are issues with lag and commands not going through? I'm more of a casual player and don't tend to push progression too much, but I still like to play as well as I can.

[Okamimaru]

Here's one I don't think anyone has touched on.... playing on console using a controller can be a pain in the ass trying to swap between targeting someone needing healed and having to stance dance and retarget the enemy and swap back again...

[Okamimaru]

Here's one I don't think anyone has touched on.... playing on console using a controller can be a pain in the ass trying to swap between targeting someone needing healed and having to stance dance and retarget the enemy and swap back again...

[Skye_]

These threads drive me nuts. There can be any number of reasons. Maybe they don't want to, maybe they aren't that good, maybe the tank on chain pulls doesn't use CDs, maybe the DPS does dumb things.

How about the fact that 90% of the DPS I do duties with are so poor at their class that it equals a healer not playing their class to its fullest? It's so subjective.

[Skye_]

Here's one I don't think anyone has touched on.... playing on console using a controller can be a pain in the ass trying to swap between targeting someone needing healed and having to stance dance and retarget the enemy and swap back again...

This is the one post that is spot on. Controllers do complicated it when switching between the party list and enemy list. They need to set filters and if they dont or don't know how. It hinders them.