Dear Healers who don't DPS

[Ghishlain]

If there's a healer (or tank!) who refuses to do any DPS, a BRD who refuses to use any of their support abilities, a BLM who refuses to use their fire spells - after being asked to by their party members, the party has every right to remove the party member who refuses to co-operate. I don't think there's anything extreme about removing a player from a group if the player is refusing to be helpful to their party (I do think the post you quoted was offensively worded though). And surely even you will expect these things from your tanks, BRDs and BLMs (just not from your healers...)?

If a discussion was made and people refused to change, I could see the argument go either way with my vote going towards the person who is more respectful. I can appreciate there will be differing opinions and am a person who would encourage walking away from the problem if it's clear it can't be solved in a civilized way.

For me, if a DPS is doing basic DPS things, I wouldn't care less if they used their support abilities. Sure it would be nice, but my expectation is pretty low from the overall community. I also tend to commend those players who I can see are being more active and making use of the full depth of their kit compared to the normal PuG player and just ignore those players that are performing at the baseline of success.

The comment I quoted gave me the impression that they would kick a healer by the first boss if said healer contributed no DPS to the group. To me that's an extreme decision to make.

We're not talking about some ridiculously high standard for expectation, though. All that's being asked (and, again, feel free to point out if I seem to be wrong with this) is for party members to try to be active and use all of their helpful abilities instead of refusing to be helpful. What's being asked from healers specifically is that they would try to be as active as their DD and tank team members instead of choosing to stand there doing nothing (or spamming useless abilities = overhealing). There's nothing "entitled" about asking each party member to try and be useful to their team. If anything, refusing to be helpful when you could, for no reason whatsoever other than you don't want to, and asking your party members to work harder than you seems much more "entitled" to me.

I'm not talking about some ridiculously high standard either actually. Just expecting someone to play at a standard dramatically different from your own which can apply to both ends of the spectrum (ie, someone who tells a DPS healer to stop DPSing despite the healer keeping everyone above 50% health all the time). It just so happens that because the Healer bar is so low that there's such a huge spectrum of skill and comfort levels that this discussion comes into play much more often than for tanks and DPS.

I believe each role has a different level of activity necessary to complete the content and I'm not going to expect healer's to match that level of activity knowing full well their activity floor is significantly lower than their DPS and tank counterparts. However to quote both your points below:

If anything, refusing to be helpful when you could, for no reason whatsoever other than you don't want to, and asking your party members to work harder than you seems much more "entitled" to me.

I really don't get this. I expect my healers to DPS (when they can) just like I expect my bards to sing requiem, ranged DPS in general provide MP and TP, melees to goad and so on. All jobs should be expected, not just encouraged, to use their helpful abilities, although it doesn't hurt to present this expectation to them in an encouraging manner.

I find both of these types of people to be quite entitled because you're enforcing your expectations onto others.

What's funny is I actually get madder at "raid healers" who believe they are the best things since sliced bread and actively refuse to help heal with their healing partner versus healer's that provide little to no DPS to the group.

I always do feel its important for players to continually strive for improvement but I'm not going to go out of my way to point out the flaws of your play unless you ask me for advice. There's not really a lot of time for that in a DR, unfortunately.