Dear Healers who don't DPS

[Cynfael]

Stop thinking of my argument as a means of belittling the higher skilled players - start thinking of my argument as me giving a universal condemnation to players who openly belittle other players for not playing at their level.

Do I believe that the Healer role has a special entitlement that empowers its players to do the bare minimum and be exempt from any further expectation? Obviously not. We expect tanks at least to execute their combos even when additional enmity isn't needed, and we expect DPS to perform their effective rotations at least somewhat consistently, so I don't see the issue with expecting healers to find something useful to do beyond the most aggressively literal interpretation of their role, even if they aren't maximizing their GCDs to the utmost or perfectly maintaining their DoTs.

However, I don't believe in telling every low-to-non-DPS healer I meet that they happen to be underskilled and/or lazy. Even if the healer is very obviously getting carried by their party, there are tactful and productive ways to suggest that they could feel free to attack since everyone is doing okay. In my mind, belittling someone for not playing at a higher skill level is something more like complaining at a DPS for not using an optimal opener when they're otherwise doing what's expected of them, or perhaps berating a skittish tank for spending an excessive amount of time in defensive stance. The healer DPS issue is just trying to get players to fully participate, never mind actually doing it well.

I would also suggest that these forums are exactly the place to call a spade a spade. A healer is not very good if they don't even care to know how to use their full kit. Do we need to abuse them? No. Could they benefit from reading a frank discussion of what may or may not constitute a skilled healer (one that isn't directed personally at them)? Quite possibly.

[Ghishlain]

Now we have circled back to coddling healers while showing no such leniency to the other roles. It's another form of entitlement only healers are allotted. "Don't stress out the poor healer! They might not be as skilled!" Where is this sentiment for tanks or DPS? It's nonsense. By level 50, you should be learning how to efficiency use your entire toolkit. No one is expecting top tier parses and 3,000 DPS runs. We're asking for a little effort. Look no further than the person I quoted, who immediately chastised the notion people might not like a healer standing around. Once again, why is one role given a built in excuse to play sub-par? And yes, it's playing sub-par. Sugarcoating it won't change the fact you can't call yourself good at any job if you aren't utilizing half its abilities. I couldn't care less if you parse 90% on Red Mage. You're a sub-par Red Mage if you let the party die because you can't be arsed to use Verraise.

And now we're back to this. It applies both ways. If you only want to heal and not deal with the potential stress(!), queue with mates or form a PF. I, personally, don't care to avoid them. I'll just pull more or drop stance to make up as much as I can. I only use tank stance because it's a DPS loss for the group if a White Mage to spam Cure II on me instead of Holy. Pure healers aren't going to use Holy, thus I don't need the extra mitigation.

The developers have set the healing requirements for certain content that low, but it doesn't mean they're encouraging that level of play. That is why the hall of the novice encourages healers to move to DPSing when there's nothing to heal. And, on the other hand, in some content the developers have also set the DPS requirements so high that, by their own admission, healer DPS is required to beat them. The healer jobs and content in this game are designed with low healing requirements and strong DPS abilities, some of which also directly support their healing activity.

The logical conclusion to make from these facts is that healers in this game are designed to DPS, not that they're designed to be active for only 17% of the time. You can't really watch that video of me doing /mandervilledance and /icam throughout the dungeon and say "that's how healers are meant to be played in FFXIV!"


I am not belittling players who are below my personal skill and experience level, that's definitely the kind of behaviour I aim to avoid. But I am against players who, once again, are intentionally playing way below their own level, who are refusing to work as hard as the rest of their team, who are intentionally playing lazily and badly just because they think they should get away with it because their job icon is green instead of blue or red (and of course, I am also against intentional lazy and bad play and making your team work harder than you are on any other job as well). Intentionally throwing yourself there to be carried by your team mates, only giving the minimum effort is a very selfish, inconsiderate play style that should never be promoted as acceptable in team content.

I'm just going to blanket my response to both of these because I feel there's a disconnect because both of you believe I'm just here to defend low-DPS healers when I'm not. And as they say, plain talk is plainly understood.

In short, I'm asking for players to not be rude or disrespectful to said players because it just cultivates negativity. As they say, you get a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Also, my comment is less about the people I'm responding too directly and more about getting people to treat others with respect. Seriously, stop treating my comments as personal attacks towards you. They're not. My comments are made to shine light towards situations where healers feel antagonized by other players because there is so many ranges of play while still being successful which leads to heavy rifts being made and I want to try to ensure those rifts happen less.

@Bourne - You can be firm with someone without being rude and disrespectful. At no point did I mention to coddle the healers - only to show both empathy and respect. If I did indicate I wanted to coddle healers, then I apologize as that was not my intent at all. And yes, I do agree it's a two way street. A zero-DPS healer should also use PF if they wish to avoid those sort of negative interactions, similar to how a DPS-healer would if they don't want to face the same negativity in the opposite direction. If I'm going to advocate for one side, then it's only fair I advocate for the other as well. If you're going into DF / DR, you're silently agreeing to play with any type of player to get in the process. If the player wants to avoid that, they should get a PF and/or friends.

@Taika - I never mentioned you, as a player, were belittling people, but I will say I dislike your approach at times. But we can agree to disagree because in the end we both want the same thing too - for the player base to grow. We just have different tactics behind it. Again, my point is I want players, overall, to try to maintain respect for each other. We can have differences in playstyle, but we don't need to be rude to each other about it either.

Do I believe that the Healer role has a special entitlement that empowers its players to do the bare minimum and be exempt from any further expectation? Obviously not. We expect tanks at least to execute their combos even when additional enmity isn't needed, and we expect DPS to perform their effective rotations at least somewhat consistently, so I don't see the issue with expecting healers to find something useful to do beyond the most aggressively literal interpretation of their role, even if they aren't maximizing their GCDs to the utmost or perfectly maintaining their DoTs.

However, I don't believe in telling every low-to-non-DPS healer I meet that they happen to be underskilled and/or lazy. Even if the healer is very obviously getting carried by their party, there are tactful and productive ways to suggest that they could feel free to attack since everyone is doing okay. In my mind, belittling someone for not playing at a higher skill level is something more like complaining at a DPS for not using an optimal opener when they're otherwise doing what's expected of them, or perhaps berating a skittish tank for spending an excessive amount of time in defensive stance. The healer DPS issue is just trying to get players to fully participate, never mind actually doing it well.

I would also suggest that these forums are exactly the place to call a spade a spade. A healer is not very good if they don't even care to know how to use their full kit. Do we need to abuse them? No. Could they benefit from reading a frank discussion of what may or may not constitute a skilled healer (one that isn't directed personally at them)? Quite possibly.

For your first paragraph, I don't like it but at the same time healer's who play below the 50th percentile have the right to it based on content design. It sucks and I hope they find ways to make healer's more complicated so the necessary skill floor will raise. Then maybe we'll have less of these discussions too.

I agree with your second and third paragraph. Players who are playing well below the 50th percentile need to be shown how they can improve - just don't do it in a condescending and disrespectful way, as you've correctly identified.

I don't think we've ever seen eye to eye on this issue, lol. But I'm glad you get it from my perspective too and understand what I'm aiming for.

Funny enough, I'm reminded of a time back a long time ago when we were both trying to tell healers there are always opportunities to DPS even in the harshest of everything going south at around the final two patches of AAR. And the amount of resistances we got speaking that, lol. Man how time flies >>;....


[edit] And just to reiterate. There's nothing wrong with advising someone how they can improve. Just don't be rude and disrespectful about it.

[Taika]

In short, I'm asking for players to not be rude or disrespectful to said players because it just cultivates negativity. As they say, you get a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Also, my comment is less about the people I'm responding too directly and more about getting people to treat others with respect. Seriously, stop treating my comments as personal attacks towards you. They're not.

Just a short reply, I have not interpreted any of your comments as personal attacks towards me at any stage, don't worry. Also, I agree that all players should be treated with respect and friendliness and that we should all do our part in building a friendly, encouraging player culture in FFXIV. This is what I personally always aim for both on these forums and in game (even though based on the quoted message you may have received a different image of my behaviour).

[Cynfael]

Snip

I always enjoy our discussions, Ghish, and I do remember those threads from so long ago

I appreciate where you're coming from on this topic. I'm not sure if you would agree or not, but it seems to me that one difference in our perspectives is that I, for the most part, don't factor content design into my stance. I agree that the skill floor for healing is extremely low and that this contributes to a sort of dissonance between players who were under the impression that they were doing just fine not letting people die and those who see simply healing as a bare minimum for which one should not settle.

However, I have a very difficult time excusing players like some of those on these forums who flat out refuse to use their kits based on some misguided principle. Then we have those who are aggressively ignorant in the face of any reasonable discussion, swearing up and down that their job isn't to "make up for bad DPS." The battlefield is littered with straw man corpses. A moment of silence, please.

In the end I agree that being combative and abusive with players over the way they choose to play rarely promotes actual improvement either in gameplay or in the quality of the community. It's just that the forum population is already so polarized on certain recurring issues that we run the risk of sparking a cascade of angry responses over even the most detached observation. My hope is that most of us are keeping the blunt opinions to these forums and not being actively negative in-game.

[Miste]

In short, I'm asking for players to not be rude or disrespectful to said players because it just cultivates negativity. As they say, you get a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Players who are playing well below the 50th percentile need to be shown how they can improve - just don't do it in a condescending and disrespectful way

The problem people have with all of this and maybe part of the reason these kinds of threads keep happening is that people don't take advice. You've seen some of it in this thread alone of people saying "just leave them alone" or even the "it's my sub so I don't care about your advice". People aren't willing to at least try sometimes and this is what gets people irritiated. Most of us don't care if you cannot play to a really high skill we just want to know you are trying if asked to do something that would help the group.

In this game generally if you ever ask anything of another player (of any role) or give them advice in DF (no matter how much honey and sweetness and generally casual and politely you phrase it)....

The answer you get back is usually not "Thanks, I'll try" or "Oh I am new, sorry about that, but hey I will try, thanks for info"...you know the polite and simple way to show the others you are willing to just even put a bit of effort into trying to improve at least.

The answers you get back are "It's my sub I play how I want" style answers and/or you get verbally harassed for even daring to ask anything of them or speak to them.

Now this is my personal experience so it probably won't be the same as others, but I have seen more of "it's my sub" and/or seeing myself or someone else get swore at all because we tried to help someone. I mean I can write some of the things I've seen people say to me or to others when myself or someone else tried to help them, but they would all need a lot of censorship.

So yeah, I am a bit jaded on this and I know it is only my personal experience, but in my experience these sub 50th percentile players are usually the ones who will immediately respond with rude and disrespectful words as soon as you say anything to them no matter if what you said was 100% polite and neutral. I've seen this happen a lot...basically if I say anything or anyone else does it is close to 80-90% chance this is the kind of response I'll get.

I've played this game for 4 years and I've rarely ever see the opposite (a high performance player being immediately rude to a new or underperforming player simply for not playing to their standard). Normally I only see the higher performing player get rude after the other player is rude to them for no reason. I guess it is hard not to get mad when you are polite and someone is rude as a response for no reason whatsoever.

Yeah, only my experience but it still sucks that that is my experience and I am pretty sure I am not the only one who has seen some of this so that is probably why these threads happen, because in-game you get harassed for daring to question another person's playstyle even if you were simply trying to help.

If people were more cooperative, willing to work as a team, willing to accept advice or at least say they'll "try" (Keyword: TRY) and not get immediately defensive, mad, and rude if a fellow teammate tries to help them improve then I think the frequencies of these threads would be a lot lower if not gone. Most of us just want people to answer like my examples "Okay I'll try". A simple answer that will satisfy most of us because you've said you'll at least try. Sadly in my experience that kind of simple polite response is really really rare.

So you are missing one side of this problem. It isn't always the high performers who are rude and disrespectful. I know it happens, but the opposite seems to happen just as frequently and in my personal case it happens more.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

In short, I'm asking for players to not be rude or disrespectful to said players because it just cultivates negativity. As they say, you get a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Also, my comment is less about the people I'm responding too directly and more about getting people to treat others with respect. Seriously, stop treating my comments as personal attacks towards you.

o.O

I... haven't? Like Taika, I haven't take your responses as a personal attack nor would I advocate publicly belittle others. I just have a fairly direct way of articulating when it comes to debates, but I'm not taking your arguments, personally, I assure you.

As for coddles, it's the implication your post presented that makes it sound like healers need to be encased in a bubble to protect their feelings. Fair enough if that wasn't the intent. Otherwise, we agree. Although, please don't assume I would be outright hostile to random players. I may not mince works here but forum discussions aren't the same as actual practice.

[Ghishlain]

I'm glad we got that discussion resolved xD

Just to iterate - because of how healer's are designed at this moment there is a wide range of skill levels that are all successful so you're bound to run into someone you'll disagree with given that range. Just please be respectful to each other even if you disagree with them. Negativity just leads to a divided community and it's important to understand that not everyone will have the ability to play on the same level.

So you are missing one side of this problem. It isn't always the high performers who are rude and disrespectful. I know it happens, but the opposite seems to happen just as frequently and in my personal case it happens more.

Oh, it is definitely a two way road. If you want to be shown respect, you have to also be respectful as well. It's just the conversation train happened to lean more towards the comments made by DPS healer players towards no-DPS players than the other direction but it is indeed applicable to both.

It's not really fair to advocate for one side when the other side of the coin is equally as liable to make rude and disparaging comments as well.

[ZephyStar]

I don't see what the issue is. If one is able to DPS while confidently keeping the party alive (which you should be able to do in most content without issue as long as you and the tank know your roles) they should do so. So what if healers don't need to DPS to pass content. Doing so help gets through it faster. Over healing doesn't actually help things along, but DPS does.

[MoroMurasaki]

I started a thread in the tank forum asking their opinions on this and it almost unanimously came out in favor of healer DPS, even more so when you filter out comments from healer mains.

It isn't starteling when you think about it, either a tank has someone hovering over him spamming cure no matter what he does or he and the healer are working together to rotate cooldowns and mitigation tactics. One is vastly more interesting than the other.

The one thing that stood out to me as distinctly different between tanks and healers is that tanks kind of gave us more credit overall. They mentioned several times over the course of that thread that if they had a healer who was not DPSing their answer would be to pull larger/drop stance/ etc in an effort to make up the lost DPS. They (like a few of us here) seem to consider a healer who doesn't DPS as more choosing not to than not being able to.

I think everyone here can agree it is easier to heal and DPS on a small pull than it is to just heal a tank who is pulling big and not mitigating. Ironically these poor "less skilled" healers might be making their own problems by refusing to DPS, especially in higher level content.

I understand it is hard to change the way you play but without the potential barrier offered by Cleric Stance there really is no reason for this debate anymore. I think if anyone has a comparable level of insight into overall healer capability than healer mains it's tank mains because they are most often the ones dying when we screw up. They think it is generally always possible but we are still here going back and forth about how this is 'elitism'.

I'll also credit those tanks responding to my thread with being very courteous and respectful overall. Many said they would never kick for this even though it bothered them, some even said they wouldn't bring it up for fear of offending their party members.

[Xiun]

I'm still new to the game (and even newer to healing) but I actually got complimented today for "not being a dps hungry AST" from the tank. I find even casting one DPS spell on big pulls the tank drops to pretty dangerous levels if not dead.

Maybe not being in end game/ big boy dungeons might change things, but I find most tanks just pull massive packs and there isn't a moment to dps until the pack is down to only a few mobs left. Where is all the dps time coming in?

And im not trying to be snarky or anything, just horribly curious on how this thread is and what to expect as I continue on