The Case for the Spear

[NocturniaUzuki]

I agree that blowing all of your cooldowns within 20 seconds leaves you vulnerable - just like tanks. But unlike tanks, healers needing their cooldowns depends on how well the party plays, not on a strictly timed, scripted fight. That's why I use Spear to reduce the cooldowns. True, I'm left vulnerable, but if it was the only way to save the party, then I had to do it. And I'll just have to hope that the reduced cooldown is enough that my party won't mess up badly again within the reduced cooldown time. Having them on reduced cooldown makes it more likely that I will have them off cooldown for the next disaster. As you say, if a group is messing up that badly, it will likely happen again. Where we differ there, though, is that I believe the run can still realistically clear. It's what I like about being the healer: we can push a group through to a clear, even in some of the darkest moments. I don't believe in "just wiping" a run because it is going badly, and because of that philosophy, I've had many miracle comebacks. It feels great when that happens, and I usually have to challenge myself to the extreme to pull it off. Of course, I've had tons of wipes too. Sometimes I can't fix that many mistakes. But when that happens, I don't just sit back and think "Well, there was nothing I could have done, the party just sucked." Instead, I share the blame. I look back at the run and think "Yeah, you know, I actually could have saved the party there if I hadn't used Lightspeed back there," or "If I had used that Bole instead of rerolling it to try to get Balance, the tank would have survived." And, of course, if the party is messing up this badly, I'm already at the point where I'm constantly looking for Spear to hold for my next Lucid Dreaming + Celestial Opposition combo, at the very least. And sometimes if I can wait 10 seconds on Lucid and throw in a couple extra cooldowns to get the reduced cooldown too, I'll do it.

There's a phenomenon I've noticed too, which is quite remarkable:

If you refuse to give and keep trying, you encourage others to do the same.

In a lot of the miracle comeback runs I've had, it hasn't ended up in a clear just because I managed to pull us back from a situation where 6/8 players were dead. It's because in doing that - in refusing to give up and giving those players a second chance - I encouraged them to try harder. When players get back up after dying, they tend to play better, due to reflecting on their mistake. This is especially true if they feel like they just got a second chance they didn't expect. They'll pull out all the stops to not mess up again, because they suddenly believe that they can actually win.