Where are all the healers?

[Shalan]

Setting aside the "should healers DPS" debate for a moment...

While I never had the chance to touch "true" endgame content due to IRL time constraints I enjoyed maining a healer in ARR and HW content but put it on the back burner for SB. Having to constantly be watching my teammates and their actions made me more hyper-aware of any mistakes or shortcomings in their play which rapidly gave way to despair the more experienced I became in the game (and worsened by playing AST and deciding optimal card usage). Constantly seeing my teammates eating AoEs, being all over the place with targeting (nothing like the tank and each DPS attacking different mobs!), and some people not knowing any sort of rotations (some people don't seem to read tooltips?) is very damaging to the morale.

God forbid anything goes wrong, because if it does you're to blame. Tank pulled wall to wall and DPS can't kill things fast enough so you burn through your MP? DPS and tank all standing on opposite ends of the room so you can't heal everyone properly? Too bad, all of that's your fault. Why didn't you adjust to your NIN eating all those AoEs or transcend the limitations of the global cooldown? Hope you're ready for a cursing out from your teammates informing you that you suck. It might not seem like much or it's just something that you can shrug off, but it builds up over time.

Nowadays I'll log in and look my WHM, my once and still favorite job, that's been sitting at 63 for almost a month now. I'll do my daily beast tribe quests before sitting and staring at the duty finder for five minutes thinking, "What's the point. It's going to be a slog/suck anyways." And then I log off or play something else.

I really want to hit level 70 as a healer and do endgame content, find a static and do EX and all that fun stuff, but right now it just feels too depressing to do it and I know I'm not alone in this boat. A number of my friends wont touch their healing jobs unless they're playing in a group with friends they can trust to perform well which means they either aren't reaching end game static content or if they are they're already in a dedicated group by the time they do.

[Alisi]

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make in your second paragraph either...especially when you contradict yourself like this.

I'm not. There is a difference between when I can and EVERY available moment. I do my best but there are times in fight when I want to precast, even if the group is topped up. I'll stop dpsing for things like pre-casting or upcoming mechanics or waiting for a DPS to do the same thing he's done on every pull and nearly kill himself. In other words, I'm judging the situation via the group dynamic. But people don't understand that. They just see me being idle for a couple seconds and think I'm being lazy.

I don't know why people keep saying this, no one is arguing against this! Even the people saying healers should dps are saying their first priority is to heal.

People will stop saying this when other people stop making 'dear healers who don't dps' or 'when your healer doesn't dps' threads. Obviously just keeping the party alive isn't good enough.

[Cynfael]

Obviously just keeping the party alive isn't good enough.

Considering the minimum of actions required to keep most parties alive in most situations, simply doing so really isn't enough.

If you're running a dungeon with a tank who pulls way beyond their ability to handle, that's an issue. However, in the majority of other situations, having little or no room to DPS is the exception rather than the norm.

[QT_Melon]

To be frank, I have a bigger issue with how the community has been treating healers, than how SE has been designing healers in this content. The community is divided on how a healer's role should be and can clash playstyles. SE at least tried to make middle ground for allowing healers to dps with less stance dancing even at the cost of a nerf to emphasize that DPS should...be well dealing damage more.

SE is trying to listen to player feedback and has tried to do what it can in patch cycles. However, there's a lot of voices popping up. Some of them are downright rude and hostile, not only to the company but how they should feel a healer should work and downright shaming classes for minor differences (ie who has more HPS or DD).

Then this thread asks where are all the healers. (Specially in raid content). The problem is people have taken encouraging someone to DPS as a healer to discourage them to play healer. That is not healthy and has effects on the available pool. New people are coming in, and there's way to do positive reinforcement to help healers grow.

[Destatiredux]

What should I do while the rest of the party is trying to kill the boss? Watch netflix?

Of course not. If it's your choice to dps then by all means go ahead. I went into expert last night myself and did just the same thing. That's our preference. What I'm trying to say is that Taika's italicised "should" in the post above this one is indicative of the very expectations that Yoshi P and the devs have taken a stance against. It's one thing to expect something of yourself, it's the expectations of others that fuels this conflict.

[Seoulstar]

Oh dear it's turning into one of those threads again..

[Sebazy]

What I'm trying to say is that Taika's italicised "should" in the post above this one is indicative of the very expectations that Yoshi P and the devs have taken a stance against.

God forbid people try to encourage others to up their standard of play in a team game.

'The nasty man used an italicised "should" against me!'

Where does it end? Seriously.

How is this any different to stating that a tank "should" use cooldowns?

Are they required for the bulk of content in this game? Nope. Is it sub par play to completely ignore them? Absolutely. Would you take offence if I politely nudged you to keep Assize on cooldown, or use Asylum more?

On the one hand, people would do well to remember that there's a real person behind the character. But on the other hand, it's wrong to expect people to tread on eggshells all the time for fear of putting some delicate little wallflower's nose out of joint. It's legitimate advice, it's inoffensively worded. What's the problem?

[Vyriah]

It's diffrent because so much people are writing pages, and pages, and pages, and pages about it.

[miraidensetsu]

How is this any different to stating that a tank "should" use cooldowns?

Those cooldowns will help tankers to do their work. What's the tanker's work? Tank monsters. And what he must do? Keep the agro and survive as much as possible.

But DPS skills - besides Assize, Energy Drain or Earthly Star - is not intended to help healers to heal. Gravity will keep tank from dying? No. Aero III will also cast Regen on the party, like Medica II does? No. And the side effects of some skills, I'm sure that some DPS can pull something that do the same.

[Taika]

Those cooldowns will help tankers to do their work. What's the tanker's work? Tank monsters. And what he must do? Keep the agro and survive as much as possible.
But DPS skills - besides Assize, Energy Drain or Earthly Star - is not intended to help healers to heal. Gravity will keep tank from dying? No. Aero III will also cast Regen on the party, like Medica II does? No. And the side effects of some skills, I'm sure that some DPS can pull something that do the same.

DPS is the most effective form of damage mitigation, which is a healer's primary responsibility on the side of filling HP bars. The monsters can't hurt anyone when they're dead. Holy especially is extremely powerful in this regard, because it's not only extremely powerful DPS ability, but it also prevents the monsters from hurting anyone.

And how about DDs' non-DPS abilities then? A ranged DD giving out MP or TP is certainly not directly needed to beat any content in this game right now (well I haven't done OS4 yet so can't say for sure about that), but certainly they should use them, right? And also their Silence, Stun, Goad, Virus, Apocatastasis...? As a BRD (my current main job), whether I enter raid or dungeon content, I certainly think I'm expected to use Requiem, TP/MP refresh, Palisade, the healing received buff thing the name of which I can never remember, Stun/Silence as needed - and occasionally the ability that removes a debuff from a party member. None of these things are direct DPS, but they can bring a huge benefit to my party, which is why I should use them, and others are right to expect me to do just that. And if they ask me to give MP to a healer, use Requiem to boost the DPS of the casters or healers in my party, throw defensive buffs at the tank, Silence or Stun a nasty enemy move, or help a TP-starved fellow DPS after a huge AoE pull, I will not say "lol no my job is to DPS". And if I did, they would have every right to move me from the party.

In the end it's all very simple. Ask yourself: can I be helpful to my party by using this skill, and do I have the opportunity to do it in this situation? If the answer is yes, use it. There's really no sensible reason not to.