Dear Healers who don't DPS

[Cynfael]

I don't know if it's a new trend among youngsters nowadays, but the problem is that people will most of the time yell on pure healers because :
- that make them look like pro gaming masters
- there's that stupid "linux-like" habit that hackers have of yelling, because according to their guru, dissaproval is better "understood" this way
- as you said, some pro-DPS healer tend to put DPS before healing, which is WRONG
- anonymity just transform innocent kids into the worst form of troll that our world can produce

In fact, it's not a problem about gameplay at all : it's a problem about attitudes.
And from my experience, in most group where I had those "elite" players yell on noobs after many wipe, once the "elite" finally ragequited and we got replacement, dungeon/raid surprisingly ran smoother to completion.

This tangent about offensive youngsters strikes me as being out of place. Sure, there are rude people out there, thanks in no small part to anonymous internet toxicity, but I look at this issue specifically from a gameplay perspective. You can't control anyone's attitude, but you can try to show them that there may be better ways to play the game. The choice is ultimately up to the individual player, of course.

There is a fairly huge difference between discussing on these forums how healers who refuse to DPS as a personal choice are not playing well (objectively they just aren't) and calling out individual players in an abusive manner. While some posters here are clearly exasperated beyond the point of being tactful or polite, there are at least as many posters who jump in specifically take offense at the notion that anyone should dare suggest that they aren't doing an amazing job by amputating part of their kit. Just recently we have this gem:

Let me expand this with: party is dying? You're there to HEAL them, stop bitching at them because you wanted to do more DPS.
You wanna do damage, roll a DPS.

Clearly someone either hasn't actually followed this thread, is cherry-picking it for the parts that offend them the most, or doesn't care to have an actual discussion about gameplay. These kinds of arguments go straight back to healer entitlement, which is just as toxic as this "DPS-or-kick" elitism that is allegedly rampant. It's the debate equivalent of picking up one's ball and going home.

[Heliantheae]

Something tells me this debate will go on until the XIV servers are shut down..maybe even after that.

Tales from the DF: XXIII Edition

User 1: OMG I was in a dungeon and this WHM started casting Aero!

User 2: LOL scrub healer thinking its XIV.

U1: What's that mean?

U3: Healers DPSed all the time XIV.

U1: But they're healer, why didn't they play a DPS.

*Collective groaning from everyone from the XIV days

[Bourne_Endeavor]

But honestly, that is the general feeling you get from most of the pro-DPS in this thread..

Only for those looking to justify their perceived confirmation bias. Every single one of us who has actively posted in this thread has advocated repeatedly we don't condone belittling someone. What usually happens that starts this whole debate up again is somebody trying to snark about how "DPSing isn't my job!" I raided with a healer who flat out believed asking her to DPS meant the actual DPS couldn't meet the checks and "at 270, you shouldn't need my help." Likewise, someone made a failed troll thread reveling over joining a PF group demanding healer DPS and refusing to anything but DPS (i.e. no healing). Those are the types of strawmen and healers we're talking about. It's very common from the pure healer side to argue in extremes, where asking them to DPS means they can't or won't heal as if to prove a point-- one we aren't arguing.

Like Miste, I will rarely comment whenever I come across a pure healer in dungeons, but in forum discussions, I'm not going to say it's okay just to spare feelings. We're talking about how best to play healers in FFXIV. That involves DPSing whether they want to hear it or not. It's no different than trying to insist Skill Speed is the best stat for Dragoon or Ninja. You can certainly made a build around it, however when people talk about either objectively, you'll be told that isn't a good set up. It isn't meant as an insult.

First, as it has been said many times, the game content was tuned without healer dps in mind. Here's an interview of yoship by Mr Happy dating from SB release : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5la_...utu.be&t=3m36s
Yoship even insisted on that particular detail, and made Mr Happy reinforce that point.

I'll be blunt. What Yoshida wants is wholly irrelevant. Players of any game will always gravitate to whatever is functionally allowed. If we played to the devs' preference, Tanks would never drop tank stance, pull only one pack at a time and Healers would scarcely DPS. That just doesn't happen because nothing enforces it. When they attempted to force tank stance onto Warrior with the stance swapping penalty, people stopped playing it until said penalty was removed. This attitude is neither unique to FFXIV nor MMOs in general. Higher end players are generally far better at the game than the devs since they dedicate time to learning everything they can about each job whereas the devs are only concerned about it working "good enough" at a base level. It's why back in 2.4, the devs were baffled people used Huton pre-pull. This inevitably leads to the community determining group preferences not the devs.

Just because content isn't designed around healer DPS doesn't mean the community will care. People dislike one role contributing half the effort to the overall group, especially at higher end levels. Another factor is it wouldn't make sense to balance content around everyone doing DPS since that diminishes the role of actual damage dealers and was among the many complaints with Gordias.

It isn't an elitist mentality to expect effort from all players involved. That word gets tossed around so much these days, it's lost all meaning. Asking a healer to DPS a little when there is no high outgoing damage isn't elitist. It's asking them to contribute in lieu of standing idle or spamming a useless Cure II on a Dark Knight with 95% HP. As someone mentioned above, if healers don't DPS in V2N, you may as well sub them out for two Red Mages to use Vercure occasionally. That is how low the healing requirements are. Some of the old Heavensward dungeons were so easy, I played games with how long I could go without using even Regen. Until this changes, the debate will rage on because healing in FFXIV simply isn't demanding except on one or two fights. Does that mean people should have free reign to harass or publicly ridicule? Of course not. No good comes from openly mocking someone in party chat. But expecting healers to DPS and berating them for not doing so aren't the same thing.

[Sebazy]

Objectively speaking, any thing that isn't extreme or savage is doable with the bare minimum. That's kind of how they designed almost all of their game.

Depressingly true. I can't help but wonder if the lack of solid gatekeeper content like we had at the start of ARR is responsible for the low standard of play that is often seen.

He said that during the Gordias days, the ONLY time in this game where healer DPS was actually needed.

And yet, the majority of groups still need a good amount of healer DPS to kill O4S.

Do appreciate that Omega has the widest difficulty curve I've seen in any raid tier so far. O1S is barely worthy of being Savage content and is easier than many primals. On the flipside, O4S is a pretty hefty DPS check yet is mechanically no more complex than A12S imho. I still routinely see pugs failing to make the enrage on a clean run.

even in progress they're much less likely to take avoidable damage than most midcore AND hardcore statics, giving healers a much larger window to do damage.

It's not that world progression teams dodge more stuff, but rather they get themselves up to the required mechanical level much much quicker than a more casual team.

[Moogly]

But Cynfael,
even from a gameplay perspective, you can't really say DPSing as a healer is the "good way" of playing as the game wasn't tuned with that in mind (check my previous post with Mr Happy's video). DPSing as a healer is what is accepted by part (most) of the community as the "best way" of playing. But maintaining that idea in the community that healer DPS is mandatory, when the game devs clearly stated it isn't, is what is bothering me the most.
So objectively, no, they are not bad players : this is your point of view.

As said above :

Or until people just accept that not everyone is going to play the exact way they want them to.

Healer DPS is by game design optional.
Healer DPS has been made more accessible with SB, but it still remains optional.
The community making it some kind of mandatory skill is just straight conflicting with the game's design, and will infinitely lead to problems.
The community should accept the dev team choice, and stop trying to enforce some kind of underground rules, as some will never ever accept them.

When I say it is not a gameplay problem, I mean gameplay is not the source of the problem I'm pointing out. Healer using half of their kit will be a problem for certain players, not all.
But behavior problems steaming from that community "rule" of healer DPSing will always happen because it directly conflicts with the game internal design of healer DPS being optional.
And since both side have valid arguments :
- pro-DPS : be efficient
- anti-DPS : I'm playing the role I'm supposed to play
It will never end !!!

We've been playing FF a lot, so it's natural for most of us to DPS as a healer.
But we also must understand that for others, a healer heals, and only heals - that's what the role implies. And if the dev team say they're doing it right, they won't accept that people are telling them they're not.
And the circle just goes on and on...

Bourne,
See, exactly what I'm talking about.
Community creating rules that goes against the original dev team choice.
Taking your example, why would people stop playing war because of the stance change penalty ? Because top tier didn't like it, and people emulate the best (some do it because they know they will always be right that way...). But did that stance change penalty really made the WAR that bad, so that it was totally unplayable and definitely not suited for any high level content ? I highly doubt so.
But still, some people will kick WAR from raids : "your class is not OP". But 99% of the time, the kicker isn't at top tier level. And 50% of the time, he doesn't even understand why the WAR is bad to begin with... the community just said so...
Understand that what devs are trying to prevent, is not bad gameplay or anything.
It is that kind of community driven behaviour that sometimes lead to harassement that they're trying to prevent.

And that debate will go on forever anytime the community's choice will conflict with the developer's choice. That is because player's objective is to clear content, when developer's objective is to make the game social interactions as friendly as possible by making the game more accessible (healer DPS being considered as a high skill level playstyle).

[Cynfael]

But Cynfael,
even from a gameplay perspective, you can't really say DPSing as a healer is the "good way" of playing as the game wasn't tuned with that in mind (check my previous post with Mr Happy's video). DPSing as a healer is what is accepted by part (most) of the community as the "best way" of playing. But maintaining that idea in the community that healer DPS is mandatory, when the game devs clearly stated it isn't, is what is bothering me the most.
So objectively, no, they are not bad players : this is your point of view.

Moogly, a few brief counterpoints:

1. Yoshida's opinion isn't relevant to this discussion. The players will do as they will within the framework provided by the developers, and the way the game is currently designed very clearly favors healers attacking things in a group setting. Besides, Yoshi-P is in charge of attracting and retaining subs in a mostly casual MMO; even if lazy healers irritated him, he wouldn't be undiplomatic enough to go there. Also, pretty much everything is optional, so let's not go down that line of reasoning; it invariably turns into a discussion with comparisons to flash-only tanks and Ice Mages, and I think we've already been there in this thread and others.

2. Following from point #1, it doesn't make a lot of sense to assume that healers are "supposed to" only heal. While we can all be accused of projecting our own assumptions of how the role ought to work, the "healing only" model makes the least sense in my mind. Each healer is given, in addition to a powerful and versatile healing kit, simple, effective, and practical DPS options in a game that runs on a base 2.5s GCD with heavily choreographed fights, almost entirely telegraphed major attacks, and many ways to mitigate damage. I'm not sure what part of this scenario implies to anyone that the FFXIV healer is intended exclusively to heal.

3. There's a fine but important distinction between "not playing well" and "are bad players," so please don't label that as my expressed opinion. When a healer stands around waiting to heal when they could safely do other things to help, that is pretty objectively "not playing well." They may not be a categorically "bad player," but there's obviously room for improvement.

4. Healer DPS does not require a high skill level, especially now that old CS has been abolished. Does every healer need to be perfectly efficient and maximizing DPS in all content in order to get a pass? No. If this were the case, Savage content would instead be the baseline. Is it reasonable to expect that healers default to DPS whenever there are obvious lulls in incoming damage? I don't see why not.

[Deceptus]

Or until they change how healing works to be like some other MMOs where it's wholly impractical to do any real DPS in group content as a healer. One of the two.

And then leveling becomes an absolute pain in the butt. Cleric Stance was put in for leveling purposes, when it was removed they had to compensate somehow.

[era1Ne]

Something tells me this debate will go on until the XIV servers are shut down..maybe even after that.

This debate will go on forever, because everyone seems to have a strong opinion about healers, only about 23% play them and only 10% probably actually are good at their job. No offense to anyone and yes i still am learning myself ofc

Should healer try to dps? Ofc, why not. But the issue with the discussion is the mindset people get and that you get both extremes. Healers only healing or only doing dps, because of reasons. But there is nothing you can do about it. People have their opinions and rightly so, but sometimes those "non-healers" (*) need to take a step back and give healers time to improve and get the confidence needed to do (a lot) of dmg.*No you are not an (experienced) healer, if you leveled the class to 70 and never did harder content then sastasha.

Or until they change how healing works to be like some other MMOs where it's wholly impractical to do any real DPS in group content as a healer. One of the two.

I love how healing works compared to others games. The system is amazing, despite me missing cleric stance as it was in arr and hw.

[Seoulstar]

snip

You get it. I understand people have opinions but the way many handle it here is poor. What I mainly see is arguing, insulting, and people generalizing. There are healers that are just not comfortable with dpsing..and instead of people understanding that. It's just generalizing them by grouping them up with the worst possible people (Yes, I know there are those people with the whole "You don't pay my sub" mentality. But that doesn't mean every healer that doesn't dps is that). It's absurd and childish.

I used to be a healer that didn't dps, I was simply uncomfortable with it. That is until some people in my party told me to just ease my way into it. I told them I may try it eventually and that was it..no complaining, no trying to kick, no insulting, just simple understanding. Fast forward to now, I heal and dps. Now I advise people to try it. If they don't, that is ok. But you're right there is nothing I can do and I'm done with the topic lol

[Beatrice]

Reasons why I DPS as a Healer: GETS ME ALL THEM COMMENDATIONS! HOHOHOHOHO~

On a more serious business note, screaming at "pure" healers that they're garbage for not doing DPS is only going to make them want to DPS even less. Human beings are funny that way. The more you try to change someone's viewpoint the more they're going to stick to the viewpoint you want to change. And it's especially ineffective to try to change someones mind by using hostile and loaded language, for obvious reasons.

If I get stuck with DPS/tank who are bad, I just grin and bear it. That's the price of playing with pick-ups/in duty roulette. I can't think of a way to say this without sounding like a jerk but if people can't or don't want to deal with bad players of ANY class, find a group of buds to run your content with who you trust. It sucks, but that's the way it is and everyone needs to get over it.