Quote Originally Posted by Gun-Cat View Post
I habe yet to encounter and healer who "derps just around" and doesn't do their best to keep everyone alive. In cases where people die it is a usually a judegement call by the healer, seeing they have to keep someone more important alive in that moment.
When I say "derps around" I'm not just referring to the common usage of healers who stand around not healing at all, trying to DPS instead. I'm also referring to healers who are too busy buffing the party or using cooldowns for DPS, then cause a party wipe because they didn't have the right defensive spells available at the right times. These sorts of healers can even be found at high levels of play. Generally, these healers blame the party for wipes. "That tank though; he just kept eating AoEs and getting vuln stacks. But it's not MY fault! I was still throwing out great DPS cards/speeding up the add phase with Holy spam." But here's the question: why was the healer so busy throwing DPS/offensive buffs out when the tank got wrecked? They could have saved the tank if they'd had, say, a Bole held. Or maybe if they hadn't blown Largesse/PoM earlier to save MP/create DPS uptime. Maybe the healer made the judgment call that the tank wasn't likely to get wrecked, so they focused on offense. But that judgment call ended up being wrong, the healer didn't have the spells available when needed, and the tank died. That is at least as much the healer's fault as the tank's.

Quote Originally Posted by Gun-Cat View Post
Cases where people can be kept alive by using cooldowns can be entirely avoided by healing smart and preventive, relying on The Spear to have CDs avaiable sounds like a crutch to me.
Example 1 (which I gave earlier): DPS is the target of Shinryu's Akh Morn. This will require cooldowns if you want them to survive.
Example 2: Any situation in which the healer is being put under more pressure than most people consider it "intended" to handle.

You seem to be under the impression, like others, that anything that isn't a full 8-man party (or even a full party with a couple critical members down) is somehow an "irrelevant" situation. What happens if the party is taking more damage than you're able to heal without using cooldowns? Even if your party is at 100% topped off at all times with shields, party members can take more damage than you can prepare for, if they make mistakes and get hit by avoidable damage. Or even if it's unavoidable, if you're doing undersized content, etc. If your perspective is only being based on farming parties, then yes, this kind of situation isn't likely to show up very often. And if it does, people will cry "I thought this was a farm party!?" and disband.

Heck though, if the use of cooldowns was entirely avoidable, then they wouldn't be in the game in the first place.



Quote Originally Posted by Gun-Cat View Post
Furthermore, if you really wanted to get the best out of the old Spear, you would need to use it on DPS, not yourself. Shaving off a few seconds of Essential Dignity hinders the whole groups progress. The only time you'd really want to spear yourself was when you were facing very mana intensive encounters and you want to lower both LD and CO cds.
...

So only DPS matters? This is such a classic DPS-centric post.

Here, if you want to think about things from a pure DPS perspective, consider this:

You are going through a fight as an aggressive healer, focused on speeding up the fight as much as you can. You're 8 minutes into a raid that usually lasts 10 minutes, but will only last 9 because of your DPS-centric approach. But then, because your cooldowns weren't up when necessary, the party wipes. How much time have you just lost? How many runs will you need to do to make up that time loss?

If you have to restart due to a wipe at the 8-minute mark, you just caused an 8 minute delay. That's 8 runs worth of the 1-minute clear time reductions you were getting from playing pure offense.

Now, if you're only playing in farm parties 24/7, this isn't so much of an issue. A good farm party doesn't cause enough mistakes to put any real pressure on the healer. But then, the game doesn't revolve around farming end-game content. Maybe it does for you. Maybe it does for the majority of players using the Party Finder these days. But that isn't actually representative of the entire playerbase. Generally, the DPS-first approach is centered around these farming parties, and they claim it's not only way "everyone wants", but also what "is best for the game". That's really only coming from a very vocal part of the playerbase though, that makes up... maybe 25% of the playerbase tops? We'd have to survey the entire playerbase to find out for sure, I suppose.

Perhaps the clearest way to outline the difference of opinions here is this:

"There shouldn't be any stress on the healer, and if there is, it's the fault of players getting hit by avoidable attacks. Any stress on the healer detracts from their ability to contribute to the party's DPS."

DPS-centric players feel this is a reasonable expectation. Players that make mistakes are holding the party back and deserve to be kicked. They should get better before they join public parties.
I do not believe this is a reasonable expectation. Players that make mistakes are only human, and everyone has different skill plateaus. Players with a lower skill plateau shouldn't be disallowed from joining parties if it is within the healer's power to manage the extra load.