Just realized something: FFXIV is a terrible DPS player's DREAM come true...

[Cenerae]

I have never seen anyone blame the healer if the run is going slowly, unless that healer was flat out not doing their job and people were dying.

I have seen DPS that are intentionally slacking off get called out and kicked for that kind of behaviour.

I'm not entirely sure where you get the idea that healers are villified for most everything. On the forums the eternal debate of 'should a healer be expected to dps' rages, but in game nobody cares enough to make a fuss over it.

And I don't need a parser to tell who's doing good damage. All you need is a basic understanding of class mechanics and a little spare attention to spot people who aren't DPSing properly. IE, Dragoons not using Heavy Thrust or Blood of the Dragon. Red mages that don't use their OGCDs or melee combo ever. Samurai who aren't using any of their kenki moves. And so on.

[Sylvina]

Every dps wants to get better. It does not help one bit to kick from dungeons becuase of low dps, unless that dps is so low its literally preventing the run from succeeding.

When you kick someone from a dungeon thats just that much less actual practice that person will be getting, on the road to improving, so you're actively contributing to their being bad by preventing them from getting real practice.

Savage raids and extreme trials are a different matter since a player can usually practice enough in dungeons and normal trials to get good, and high dps is required to beat the trial or raid before enrage hits.

[RichardButte]

Yes, yes, of course. How will those players ever know they are playing badly and therefor should not be enjoying themselves or the game at all?

You mean the same way healers and tanks are made to feel when they mess up?

[LunarEmerald]

Since I play dps, in 4 man content, I immediately know when the other dps is awful.

[RichardButte]

I have seen DPS that are intentionally slacking off get called out and kicked for that kind of behaviour.

Unless you mean they were standing in the bad all the time, then you kicked them on suspicion and conjecture and nothing else.

I'm not entirely sure where you get the idea that healers are villified for most everything.

There is LITERALLY a thread (several, actually) in the healer forum right now asking where all the healers are, and it's filled with many former healers saying they quit healing for exactly the reasons you're saying they're not being vilified.

[Destatiredux]

Every dps wants to get better.

But not every dps wants to get better. Some have horrible rotations that they refuse to fix, and brush you off or spit poison when you offer advice. Some aren't even aware they're bad. So the OP is concerned about how to identify and deal with bad dps in situations where healers are blamed for a lack of dps (in a game where all dungeons and instances are tuned for dps to be able to clear dps checks by themselves). If an identified dps refuses to accept advice to the point where it makes things difficult for others or the dps points fingers at other players? My opinion is that dps needs to be kicked. If you're concerned about how the kicked player will improve, sometimes the road to improvement starts with realizing that you're wrong.

[Hitsuzen]

You're actually far from correct. As a tank I could tell 100% of the time which dps didn't carry the lightning to the other platform or which one lined the cloud up with the party in susano ex. In my mind those were the bad dps. I would rather have dps who had sustained damage and didn't cause party wipes then insane dpsers that died to boss fire.

[MoroMurasaki]

This is really weird for me to say but... I agree with the OP.

I do think ingame damage meters should be a thing to mitigate this specific issue.

[RichardButte]

As a tank I could tell 100% of the time which dps didn't carry the lightning to the other platform or which one lined the cloud up with the party in susano ex. In my mind those were the bad dps. I would rather have dps who had sustained damage and didn't cause party wipes then insane dpsers that died to boss fire.

But we're not talking about situations where it's apparent whether or not DPS know mechanics.

We're talking about situations where you have no idea if any of the DPS are ACTUALLY doing their jobs by doing a decent amount of damage, because the game basically does everything it can to conceal that information from you.

If a healer does only 25-50% of their potential healing, the tank will die and everyone will know the healer was bad.

If a tank holds the aggro of only 50% of the mobs in the dungeon, the healer will die and everyone will know the tank was bad.

If a DPS does only 50% of the damage they could be doing for their level/gear/job, no one will ever know without a 3rd party program that can possibly get you banned if you talk about using it (at least that's what I've heard, not about to start using it to find out...).

Seems fair, right?

But not every dps wants to get better. Some have horrible rotations that they refuse to fix, and brush you off or spit poison when you offer advice. Some aren't even aware they're bad. So the OP is concerned about how to identify and deal with bad dps in situations where healers are blamed for a lack of dps (in a game where all dungeons and instances are tuned for dps to be able to clear dps checks by themselves). If an identified dps refuses to accept advice to the point where it makes things difficult for others or the dps points fingers at other players? My opinion is that dps needs to be kicked. If you're concerned about how the kicked player will improve, sometimes the road to improvement starts with realizing that you're wrong.

A hundred million times, THIS...

I'm not sure where this gentle pat on the head for DPS players is coming from.

It's basically like saying, "Oh, I'm sure every DPS is trying their hardest!" when the actual problem is that we simply lack tools to KNOW if this is the case or not.

[Kazrah]

If you play long enough, you can usually get a feel for how long it takes for mobs and bosses to die in most content. No numbers required, just a feeling for how long it takes. You can sense roughly how long it takes for something to die, and you can usually get a good gauge on damage output if it takes too long to kill something.

Then there are the threat meters. Yes, it's not an exact gauge, but it can still give you an idea on player activity given the first rule of enmity generation: All offensive actions generate enmity, and dealing damage is definitely an offensive action. Of course the tank should be at the top of that list, otherwise damage out is the least of your concerns. An active healer (meaning they're doing both damage and healing) is usually second on threat because because they're doing two types of actions that generate threat, with healing (especially periodic healing) generating higher amounts of enmity. In the case of a active healer, DPS are usually closer behind unless in the event of popping a threat reduction cooldown (which is never enough to skew consistent results) or they died for some reason or another, which still justifies kicking them for constantly standing in bad because dead DPS means no DPS. Beyond those two reasons, if a DPS is miles behind the other non-tank players on enmity in the middle of a fight, that would indicate low activity, which would indicate low DPS output. If a healer is miles behind everyone else in threat, that would indicate the lower activity of just healing, which is fine as long as people aren't dying left and right.

And then there's another thing worth factoring in on these forums: voices on these forums are the -minority- of the player population. No matter how often you cite threads about healers whining about why they stopped healing, there are still healers healing and there are still people who want to play healers and keep playing healers because they find the playstyle fun.