Will Healers Still be Forced to DPS in 4.0 Due to Lax Content?

[Shurrikhan]

Clerics in EverQuest say hi

Heavens forbid they use Hammer, Vow of Valor spells, or start Warding/Turning undead... As healers, those clearly aren't really part of their toolkit! Also, that's a game with enough classes to pick and choose certain ones for certain dungeons only. As Cleric was...

did you actually play the same world of warcraft i did because what?

Take a look at the Mistwalker Monk healer. Apart from one minor CD, Mana Tea, its mana recovery IS melee DPS. Holy Priest healing partly benefits burst damage as well. In WoD, Holy Paladin's filler damage also prevented targets from critting. Since Vanilla, its damaging debuffs supplied raid healing. Healer design has always had some expectation that direct damage will outweigh healing for certain globals.

That said, I'll agree that highest difficulty raids, both through mana concerns and far more consistent damage output make DPSing where not directly converted to healing (as per Legion Discipline priest) a relatively rare event, such as when burning particular adds between raid damage spikes. It and XIV are day and night.

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The sad thing is, as long as we continue to have incompetent healers who can't keep the party up even when refusing to DPS (and when they are properly avoiding and mitigating damage), the only way left to extend from the lowest denominator is through DPS. You could obscure that by allowing downtime to be spent instead of short-term or capped buffs to increase someone else's damage instead, which depending on the balance point and your and their skill and gear levels will either be inferior or obligatory, but short of actually forcing all healers to meet a certain margin of "got good", there's always going to be excessive downtime for the average to skilled player.

That... or start adding difficult tiers. >.>

[MarinaShore]

Healer DPS is still NOT going to be a requirement in Stormblood. I know people have already cited the interview question Yoshi-P answered on the matter, but to reiterate his last line:

"That being said, and I want you to really reinforce this to your viewers, I firmly believe it shouldn't be mandatory and we DO NOT have the expectation of [healers] to DPS."

I understand why people want healers to contribute to DPS, and I understand sometimes it's frustrating in especially low level content to see a healer set to follow doing nothing. However it's not your job to dictate how they play their class. Kicking a healer for not DPSing can still get you reported for abuse.

Also, as a healer who plays top DPS in MOST dungeons runs: Maybe instead of blaming healers not DPSing for why your runs take so long, you should fix your tank/DPS rotations so they actually do something and speed things up that way.

[HappyHubris]

did you actually play the same world of warcraft i did because what?

I think he's saying that certain WoW classes work damaging abilities into their rotations for buffs (e.g. the old shadowfiend) or added miniscule damage during certain phases (e.g. wanding Onyxia), but he's bending the truth if he implies that WoW healers run into the same I'm-so-underutilized-that-I-should-DPS scenario. I played at a decently high level in classic and four expansion packs, and healers we're quite busy with healing! (Note that this might have changed with specific builds or abilities in the latest xpac, but again that would be by design and not by underutilizing healers).

Again, this thread is about undertuning incoming damage, not some sort of allergy to casting damaging spells.

[Cyrocco]

Honestly though, healing is cake, it's gonna be more cake after SB release. I don't know why people don't want to DPS. The only reason it's not "mandatory" is to spare their feelings.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I understand why people want healers to contribute to DPS, and I understand sometimes it's frustrating in especially low level content to see a healer set to follow doing nothing. However it's not your job to dictate how they play their class. Kicking a healer for not DPSing can still get you reported for abuse.

Also, as a healer who plays top DPS in MOST dungeons runs: Maybe instead of blaming healers not DPSing for why your runs take so long, you should fix your tank/DPS rotations so they actually do something and speed things up that way.

A report with no basis as we have GMs who have outright said you may kick players for "different play styles."

There is a limit to what DPS can accomplish. A Dragoon cannot make up for potentially 1,000 extra DPS no matter how good they are. Shifting blame to the damage dealers, when they are performing their jobs correctly, only highlights the double standard. Why is it okay to demand more from the DPS yet not okay to demand something from the zero damaging healer?

[LegoTechnic]

Healer DPS is still NOT going to be a requirement in Stormblood. I know people have already cited the interview question Yoshi-P answered on the matter, but to reiterate his last line:

"That being said, and I want you to really reinforce this to your viewers, I firmly believe it shouldn't be mandatory and we DO NOT have the expectation of [healers] to DPS."

I understand why people want healers to contribute to DPS, and I understand sometimes it's frustrating in especially low level content to see a healer set to follow doing nothing. However it's not your job to dictate how they play their class. Kicking a healer for not DPSing can still get you reported for abuse.

Also, as a healer who plays top DPS in MOST dungeons runs: Maybe instead of blaming healers not DPSing for why your runs take so long, you should fix your tank/DPS rotations so they actually do something and speed things up that way.

There's two sides to this coin. If you have a tank that takes a minute between each pull and uses AoE aggro generation once or twice a fight or is incapable of picking up enemies that have aggro'ed to the DPS, then you criticize them for being bad. Similarly if you have a DPS that obviously doesn't know what to do like a BLM that uses convert instead of Bliz3 or a NIN that mudras only once in a blue moon, then their inability further drags down the group. It would be one thing if you could offer criticism, but that's not how our internet culture works and if you happen to, say, type out the standard BLM rotation you will often get a sulky "don't tell me what to doooooooo <explitive> <insult> <arrogant remark>". And I'm not speaking of just a single instance, here, because I've seen this happen many times throughout the past few years of duty roulette.

As for healers, both DPS and tank jobs are near constant attention, and if they hang back for a moment that's a direct issue to the role. Obviously the mobs are going to take longer and they're letting themselves be "carried" by their inactivity, and while everyone understands temporary aways and stuff that comes up unexpectedly, when you have a "follow" DPS it's frustrating, especially in 24-man content where they show up and stand around for every boss but you can't kick them because people blitz the chests. Regardless this "active" mentality is a stress for these roles, and healing in dungeons especially is not always "active". One of the reasons speed runs are so popular for healers is because massive mobs gives them a reason to actually heal, whereas in standard runs they may be hard-pressed to do so. But how the community reacts upon seeing this is the paramount issue.

If you are a healer and you're asked to DPS, don't immediately respond with snarky, offended comments. Just state that you're not comfortable switching into cleric at the moment (though this will no longer be an option come SB), and maybe confirm the tank is using mitigation. And for DPS/Tanks, don't let the first words out of your mouth be "healer is bad, votekick", because there isn't a player alive who will appreciate your assumptive disrespect. The problem starts with the content, but the continuance is the community, and it will continue to be crap as long as that's the only thing we're capable of typing to each other.

And healers? Especially now in SB since cleric is gone don't be afraid to spam direct damage while you're idling unless your tank is absolute paper. You can interrupt a cast with very little effort, but keep your wits about you. Any help you can offer in clearing the dungeon saves not only the party's time, but yours as well.

[aqskerorokero]

I agree with healers have to do dps as they're able to....but only if the dpsies are actually doing their job honestly so the tank takes less overall damage, if not I won't do a single damage spell from start to the end. Everyone should do their own performance skillfully before telling other party members to do more.

[MarinaShore]

A Dragoon cannot make up for potentially 1,000 extra DPS no matter how good they are. Shifting blame to the damage dealers, when they are performing their jobs correctly, only highlights the double standard. Why is it okay to demand more from the DPS yet not okay to demand something from the zero damaging healer?

Thank you for this intelligent response, ignoring my point entirely to blame healers some more is one of the biggest issues I have with this games player base

Im saying I often pull TOP DPS as a healer. As in, my 1500 DPS is the top DPS in the team. True I don't expect a DRG to pull an extra 1k DPS, but as I don't see many DRGs in casual content even pulling 1k DPS, why does it then become the healers job to carry abysmal DPS?

Also I fail to see where kicking a healer out for not carrying poor DPS saves you any time, but if you want to wait around for in progress joins it's your free time not mine to waste.

[Deheuty]

Healer DPS is still NOT going to be a requirement in Stormblood. I know people have already cited the interview question Yoshi-P answered on the matter...

The point is - what he thinks is really quite irrelevant as long as:

(i) There are periods when healers do not need to heal, and
(ii) Healers can dps.

As long as these two conditions exist, the pressure on healers to dps (i.e., those reluctant to do so) or healers themselves wanting to dps (i.e., those desiring to do so) will always exist. It really doesn't matter what YoshiP thinks.

If he wants to develop a pure healing class (e.g., whm), he has to create the situation(s) that requires one (i.e., create a demand for it). At present, as many have pointed out, there just isn't such a demand.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Thank you for this intelligent response, ignoring my point entirely to blame healers some more is one of the biggest issues I have with this games player base

Im saying I often pull TOP DPS as a healer. As in, my 1500 DPS is the top DPS in the team. True I don't expect a DRG to pull an extra 1k DPS, but as I don't see many DRGs in casual content even pulling 1k DPS, why does it then become the healers job to carry abysmal DPS?

Also I fail to see where kicking a healer out for not carrying poor DPS saves you any time, but if you want to wait around for in progress joins it's your free time not mine to waste.

And thank you for completely missing mine.

I couldn't care less what you pull nor did I indicate otherwise. My focus is your shifting of blame towards the DPS, who already take fair criticism for bad play. Just so we're clear. Even a subpar Dragoon is still contributing whereas a heal only healers is effectively useless upwards of 80%. I'll roll my eyes at both, however at least one is going something. It should also be noted healers pulling ahead of melee DPS on trash pulls is not necessarily a slight against them. Healers have incredibly burst potential where melee DPS require a bit of setup to push out higher numbers. If stuff dies fast enough, they simply won't have time. If it happens during bosses... they have no excuse.

I seldom kick anyone. The one exception is healers who hop around the map when they have nothing to heal.