Where are all the healers?

[miraidensetsu]

-snip-

If the DPS enters at the dungeon/trial/raid undergeared, it's HIS problem. The lack of damage is DPS' fault, not healer's. It's the DPS that must upgrade their equips to meet that limit, because it will also put more pressure on the healer. Not just he can being obligated to suplement the damage that DPS is not doing, but also he will have to spend more effort to heal him because he will be more squishy. Therefore, again is on the DPS. Or will you suggest that healers should give equips to DPS as well?

One more time: Deliver damage is DPS' job. The healer's job is to keep everyone alive. And do your best to support the team is very different from carrying lazy DPS on the back. I can - and often do - DPS as healer. But what I cannot accept is to have to carry lazy DPS on my back and be blamed for that failed DPS check because of that DPS that don't even had the effort to equip himself with proper ilvl or do proper rotation.

[Sebazy]

If the DPS enters at the dungeon/trial/raid undergeared, it's HIS problem. The lack of damage is DPS' fault, not healer's. It's the DPS that must upgrade their equips to meet that limit

It's not mathematically possible for a DPS to meet the bar for O4S yet if they aren't already getting kills and gear through meeting low ilvl checks via healer DPS (See my math on the previous page if you haven't already). I really don't know how I can make this any clearer. Dungeons and trials are irrelevant, the freebie relic stuff is sufficient for those. Wearing anything less is just a sign of idiocy.

Or will you suggest that healers should give equips to DPS as well?

Amusingly, that's pretty much what a significant proportion of early progression teams have done since Gordias. Ensuring the DPS got the first few rounds of Coats/Twines/Dips helped the following progression significantly and is generally considered to be the most efficient path towards early clears.

[Destatiredux]

It's the situations where almost no healing is required, and the healer chooses to stay idle instead of helping their party, that people are calling out.

I have to disagree that that's all healers are being called out on concerning their dps. For example, I've been kicked in a EX Susan PF group because someone used a parser and broadcasted I did the least dps, despite having to basically solo heal because the other healer was going full ham on dps. Even if I was essentially doing my job, and that other healer was arguably bad for not sharing the core job role, I was considered the "bad healer" because "dem deeps" was all that mattered to those who formed that party. I do agree with your viewpoint on down time for healers however. It's dull to sit there doing nothing at a point when no one is taking damage, but I also find single button rock chucking equally boring- hence why I don't play White Mage.

[Taika]

If the DPS enters at the dungeon/trial/raid undergeared, it's HIS problem.

I'm sorry, but you aren't understanding what me, Sebazy and Yoshi P are saying, despite repeating it over and over. Please read the posts again. It's not about being undergeared for duty, as in not meeting the required item level for the duty. It's about it being mathematically impossible to beat the fights without healer DPS despite all party members having the best possible gear available for them. The party could have the 4 best DPS players in the whole world and they wouldn't be able to beat it, and you could scream and shout at them as much as you'd like, there's nothing they could possibly do to push enough DPS. Now there are two options: either the whole group waits for (at least) many weeks before even trying, and then the DDs and tanks will push that super performance and carry the healers through (or just wait until the echo and carrying may not be required), or all party members share their weight of the effort, all working evenly, and the party is able to clear the content right away. You are free to ask your groups to go with the first option, but the latter is the one that makes any sense.

I have to disagree that that's all healers are being called out on concerning their dps.

Oh yes I was referring to this discussion (and generally these types of discussions on the forums) particularly. Of course some people sometimes require absurd things from other players in game (like all party finder recruitments looking for "exceptional DPS" ). Luckily most people I've met seem to have at least some common sense.

Actually just today when I was doing a leveling roulette with my PLD, I encountered a non-DPS healer in Shisui of the Violet Tides. It wasn't 0 DPS healer, but they were using very little damage spells and overhealing a lot (I was doing the biggest possible pulls but we had good DDs, I seemed to be ok with cooldowns and I never got very low and even didn't have to use Hallowed on the pulls I had planned to use it for). In any case, I didn't say anything about the healer, since they were still leveling the job and used at least the occacional Holy, but another player did. We had this discussion (or close to it at least) in party chat:

<DD> You don't have to heal so much, use Holy, it's awesome!
<WHM> I'm a healer not a DD. (He literally used those words. )
<Me> Well, in this game it is the healer's job too to do some DPS. It also helps with your healing to stun the enemies with Holy.
<WHM> I only play this for fun. (That too. )
<DD> Sure, but makes no sense to just keep spamming heals when the tank is full HP.
<Me> Yeah, and no one here is expecting you to pull some super numbers, just do something when healing isn't needed!

We dropped it at that and, in the end, the WHM ended throwing some Stones and Holys. Hopefully they'll also learn to enjoy it as part of healer play.

[Vyriah]

And it was solo healed in the first or second week...this really gives a nice idea of how healing intensive this game is. Honestly, this looks more and more like a thread where bad healers try to justify other bad healers' shortcomings rather than a serious discussion about healers balance.

O4S is healing intensive yes. O2S really isn't...

How not surprising.

Everything O2S is something that'll get everyone to less than 50% hp no matter what. And it often does this in quick sequence, often asking to move in between them. The way the wave > quake > wave or long drop > eyes > wave are designed arround making healers panic and do mistakes, not any interesting mechanic. Same for thigh enrage and constant need of DPS spreading all over added with ponctual gaze. O4S is extrem bullshit territory, that doesn't mean O2S, or even O1S for what matters, arn't just "press the big damage boutton" fight.
I cleared O2S week 2 (and less than a week after I actually started raiding since I was waiting for a friend) with something that was at that time a 95% performance run as SCH, it doesn't make it less shitty.

If seeing a fight is hard is really what bother you all so damn much, try to look at those said raid without keeping in mind how not difficult they could be but how they're oriented in global. That raid tier is very especially center arround doing a lot of raid damage :
- Every already damaging O1S mechanic is followed by either roar or stack marker and have no DPS check outside its (extremly generous) enrage. Get in your position, heal everything.
- O2S mechanic imply twice to healer and tanks and once to DPS, in the most simple pattern (first long drop have a wave 5 sec before, last one have eye > wave cast while healer are spread out), everything does raid damage, still not DPS check outside enrage. Get in your positin, heal everything.
- O3S have the first DPS check with some add phase but they bring nothing : white flame pummel the tank whil nothing happens, dragon pummel the tank through heavy hitting and there's one AoE (that do something else than damage, this fight really is the only one that gets it in the tier) to dodge, Apanda is more damage in an already damage heavy phase that was made artificially difficult to heal and is the first one to enrage and every one LB the last because, surprise, it happens in the middle of insane raid damage. Also, spell holy, wave of lazyness and 3 queen's waltz out of 4 are alll raid damage it's what you'll see most in te fight. Book phase end and last reaper spawn can sometime kill player on properly done mechanic just because of damage and mega haste is just stupid. Get in your position, heal everything.
- Let's not talk about O4S who's grand cross, a significant non-damage ability in FF, now it's just "every thing does damage in one way or another and try not to get pushed off the platform". The only interactive mechanic in this is litterally out of 24 man raid. I guess every one should get in their position and then we will heal everything.

This is dull, this is taxing and this isn't fun.
And if you dare say it, you're that bad healer. And it makes it even more tiring. So they burn down they healing because screw you, your petty and your overall arrogance. This raid is significantly harder for healers and it's the hardest part of the game. You just mistakes bland for easy, and yes they're bland to no end.

Being able to process, understand and handle both positive and negative criticism is a very important skill in life. One that's more often than not lacking in today's coddled society.

Meh, beautiful little words.

There's nothing to learn about all those "you n00bad healer OMG why am ded ?", the only thing I've learned from other people the most in this game, is that a really, extremly signifiant portion fo the player base have absolutly no idea about what you're doing but are still always to tell how you should do it better. I had better improvement just looking at the game by myself and I got called bad from doing it every time, even though it lead to eventual success.

Most of what you read here is pointless ranting about "those bad healers" and some vague theory about "how every one should play". Most of what other player have to say about the way you play, especially as a healer, doesn't worth listening. The experience anyone will got by just handling the game is were you want to learn.

[Lastelli]

Dude...did you even try midas and gordias when they were relevant? Is this your first raid experience? This is savage content, of course it's meant to be challenging, even though it's way easier than midas and gordias. And still people already solohealed the most difficult fight. So...I'm sorry to say this, but your whining sounds really childish, this is literally the only content in the game where healing isn't a totally braindead job and you're complaining that it's stressful and not fun? Really? What did you expect from savage, precisely?

[ViolaCrossfire]

There's nothing to learn about all those "you n00bad healer OMG why am ded ?", the only thing I've learned from other people the most in this game, is that a really, extremly signifiant portion fo the player base have absolutly no idea about what you're doing but are still always to tell how you should do it better. I had better improvement just looking at the game by myself and I got called bad from doing it every time, even though it lead to eventual success.

That reminds me of the time I helped out an O3S progression static group on a whim.
I made a comment along the lines of: Tell (black mage) he needs to improve his dps.
So he responded: "Well tell me what I should do then smart ass, you don't even play black mage".
So I hit him where it hurts: Why don't you ask that other black mage in your group for help, he seems to be doing fine. You're on voice chat with him aren't you?
He forgot I wasn't even there to clear and that I only pointed out his dps as a limitation to group progression to help them.

There's only one rule for savage that counts double for healers and sometimes tanks too: You snooze, you lose
Call it natural selection or whatever, European and American servers are terrible at it.

[Destatiredux]

Snip

I do agree with you, but I also offer a counterpoint. Yoshi P has gone on record in interviews during media tour stating that healer dps is not considered in current tuning algorithms in content and should not be expected or mandatory. Yes, if you join a savage party knowing it's below the recommended ilvl and that just the dps jobs aren't going to cut it, that's a decision you make that probably will require you to dps as a healer. But that's a decision the healer makes when they join, not the party. In your example of having all dps geared at or above ilvl not being able to clear due to lack of dps, that doesn't mean healer dps is mandatory. That means something is wrong with the dps. Maybe they're dying too much, or not doing their rotations properly, and in that case crying out for Moar Healer Deeps is asking for a carry that should ultimately be up to the healer to supply or deny without repercussion. Shifting the blame for something the dps should be able to do but are inept at providing is rather reprehensible, don't you think?

[Lastelli]

Shifting the blame for something the dps should be able to do but are inept at providing is rather reprehensible, don't you think?

No, because dps checks for o3s and o4s are impossible to pass if your healers aren't dpsing with the gear available in the first 2-3 weeks after they were released. Therefore healers dps was mandatory to clear o3s and o4s in the first weeks. This proves that:
1) healers can dps because healing checks in savage content are quite easy to pass as damage comes in fixed and predictable waves that can be healed with a correct use of your abilities and cooldowns, even at relatively low ilvls;
2) healing requirements are much lower than dps requirements in this game in general. A healer that refuses to dps but is able to use its toolkit efficiently will be active for around 50% of the time, while a dps is normally active for 95+% of the time. This means that a healer refusing to dps is just asking to be carried.
Now let's think about o4s soloheal for a second. Those healers proved that the healing requirement for o4s is so low that only one healer is actually necessary. Now, this clearly means that at the very least one healer should be enough to handle the majority of that fight...and what should the other healer do during that time? Should he wait for that one mechanic that might or might not require him to do something doing nothing while the other playeras try their best to avoid the enrage?

[Taika]

I do agree with you, but I do offer a counterpoint. Yoshi P has gone on record in interviews during media tour stating that healer dps is not considered in current tuning algorithms in content and should not be expected or mandatory. Yes, if you join a savage party knowing it's below the recommended ilvl and that just the dps jobs aren't going to cut it, that's a decision you make that probably will require you to dps as a healer. But that's a decision the healer makes when they join, not the party. In your specific example of having four dps geared at or above ilvl not being able to clear due to lack of dps, that doesn't mean healer dps is mandatory. That means something is wrong with the dps. Maybe they're dying too much, or not doing their rotations properly, and in that case crying out for Moar Healer Deeps is asking for a carry that should ultimately be up to the healer to supply or deny. Shifting the blame for something the dps should be able to do but are inept at providing is rather reprehensible, don't you think?

I think you too should reread both my previous reply to this and Yoshi's original comment... It's not a situation where anyone is joining the content under the recommended item level, the content is balanced for higher item level that is available for the players. So if you're joining Savage content as a healer, at any item level before overgearing/echo, your DPS contribution will be needed, no matter how good the rest of your party is. Because the DPS checks are set so high they are impossible to beat without healer DPS, it's also the healers' responsibility. And even if they wouldn't be (which might be the case with at least OS1 and OS2, which seem to be balanced lower than the raids have usually been), if you're leaving it for your DDs and tanks alone it means you're asking close to optimal maximum performance from them just so you yourself could perform far below the average of your optimal performance.

I do recommend you to check the party DPS required for these fights, then divide it between DDs and tanks alone, then check from logs how good you would ask your DDs and tanks to be to reach those numbers. For example, since OS4 apparently requires 24k party DPS, if your tanks do 6K combined and LBs do 700, it leaves 17,3K DPS for your DDs alone. That is 4325 DPS for each DD.

A PLD doing 3k DPS would currently rank 87%, a WAR 97%, and a DRK 92%. So your tanks would have to be in the top 3-13% of all the players for that job in the whole world.

For DDs, 4325 DPS would mean 98% for BRD, 97% for MCH, 95% for NIN, 94% for RDM, 93% for DRG, 77% for BLM and 75% for SMN. So for any of these jobs, they would have to be in up to the top 2% in their job. Of all the players in the world. (It would only require 56% for MNK and 31% for SAM though! )

Now tell me with a straight face that it's completely fine to expect that kind of performance level from your DDs and tanks (particularly if you don't happen to have PLD, MNK or SAM in your raid team), to literally expect them to be some of the very best players in the whole world, all 6 of your other party members, while you and your healing partner would take no responsibility whatsoever for DPS. Please tell me how it would be a reasonable expectation for the tanks and DDs and if they wouldn't somehow happen to succeed to be the world's best and wanted their healers to contibute, they would be "shifting the blame".