Dear Healers who don't DPS

[Miste]

Miste,
lots of misunderstanding here, maybe I didn't make myself clear enough.

First, as it has been said many times, the game content was tuned without healer dps in mind.

No matter what he says unless the game design that is currently enforced for healers changes in some way then his statement means nothing because objectively the game leaves way too many opportunities for healers to DPS and objectively if you aren't using those opportunities you could be playing better and contributing more.

Just because content isn't tuned with healer DPS in mind doesn't somehow make healer DPS useless that's the whole problem. He is simply stating a fact about how they designed the amount of HP of enemies in encounters, but the healer DPS capability is still very strong, and there are many places to use it. So it adds to contribution if you are skilled enough to do it and speed up runs and of course avoid being the only player in the group idling. DPS roles always have to be pressing buttons to do high DPS in an encounter, tank's also have to keep pressing buttons to hold hate and mitigate and do DPS, why do healers get a pass to stand around idle watching netflix and only pressing some buttons once in awhile?

Equal effort and all that.

I never said that !
What I find ridiculous is using one's position as a better player to belittle another player, which isn't the same thing at all !!!

If I misunderstood I apologize, but...I think the reason I misunderstood is that most of us debating in here are not doing ^that so....

But now lately, all that elite harassement has began to become more and more common. And young people will often emulate what they find "cool". And how youngsters look the "coolest" nowadays on the internet is sadly through harassement... So if more and more people give the impression that healer DPS is mandatory, it will more and more become a reason for those little toxic players to yell at any healer that isn't DPSing.

You cannot blame every pro-healer DPS person for the rude actions of other people. We are basically having a discussion about how the healer role in this game functions and why healers should be actively putting effort in to DPSing when they can, if others go out and harass healers over it how is that my fault for example?

It is also our job as better players to be constructive and not just take the "git gud" shortcut.

I am always constructive in-game. You know what I get told back at me for my polite constructive advice?

"it's my sub I play how I want", "mind your own business", "insert nasty swears and harassment", and it goes on.

You are another person not seeing the other side of things that it is not only the "better" players that harass others. So if you are going to campaign for people not to harass others you should also campaign the other side of it as well.

I have an earlier post I made about this problem as well if you missed it maybe.

click on the blue >> near my name to go see this post if you care to read it

The bare minimum for success

I never said "for success" anywhere in either of my previous posts?

What I was saying in my previous post about not going into DF doing bare minimum "for your role" was that you shouldn't go in and only spam one button just because you can. A MNK spamming Dragon Kick over and over is technically fulfilling the bare minimum of his role. On a basic level as long as a DPS job is doing more than 0 DPS then they are still fulfilling the basic requirement... albeit badly and very minimalist.

This is just turning into a semantics argument so I'm sorry but I am not interested in it. You are simply trying to nitpick one singular sentence in my previous post to try to prove some kind of point, but it isn't even the main point of that post at all and you misinterpreted what I meant by bare minimum and tacked on something that I didn't even say.

[era1Ne]

DPS roles always have to be pressing buttons to do high DPS in an encounter, tank's also have to keep pressing buttons to hold hate and mitigate and do DPS, why do healers get a pass to stand around idle watching netflix and only pressing some buttons once in awhile?

Healer getting a pass? Pls this community can be very toxic about healers and some even get kicked, because they don't do or do dmg or get insulted, blamed for others mistakes and stuff like that. You want to know imo the reason only about 23% play healers, because many ex healer main have enough of this and this is sad to see in my opinion.

While i get that everyone wants equal effort from everyone, many people can't grasp that their is an emotional part to this all for healers. Instead of some saying those healers are lazy or every healer who does no or very little dps is doing it for the reason "i am a healer, you don't pay my sub", should try to ask them in an friendly manner why they don't do dmg. I ask healers who ask me for help, why they don't do dps and they say that they don't want to let people die, because of their own mistakes. We don't need to talk about the game design or how much time you have to do dmg, we need to at least start trying to understand why they don't dps and imo this is in most cases an confident issue or they don't know a lot about their class.

For instance, how can you kill people in an dungeon as a melee when you mess up your rotation? Not possible, since most of the time you don't have dmg check there. This means ofc you can push yourself further without thinking "If i don't react fast enough, people will die and blame/kick me sometimes". Don't get me wrong, i tell every healer i've helped that they should try to do dps, because it helps the group clear content faster or even at all, if you are close to the enrage in some harder fights. But, we need to understand as an community people are playing for different reasons and have different skill-/confident level. Instead of telling them what to do, blaming them for everything, maybe try to ease them the idea of healing and dps, because ofc it is possible. Totally, but those guys need to get more confident to do it and less toxic people.

[Miste]

Healer getting a pass? Pls this community can be very toxic about healers and some even get kicked, because they don't do or do dmg or get insulted, blamed for others mistakes and stuff like that. You want to know imo the reason only about 23% play healers, because many ex healer main have enough of this and this is sad to see in my opinion.

I don't think you understood what I was saying. I was basically saying that the reason these threads pop up is that some healers do make excuses for not DPSing and usually those excuses are really extreme. So some people literally are asking for a pass to purposefully idle while the rest of the team actually has to keep actively playing. The excuses are the problem. If a player just cannot play properly due to a disability or unskilled or new then okay, but that isn't the dominant reasons I come across.

Also in my 4 years of playing I haven't seen a healer get kicked for doing no DPS in content outside of savage. In my opinion it is questionable how frequent it occurs. People try to make it into a rampant problem, but unless you can prove it is a rampant problem without just personal experience then that line of reasoning falls flat.

As for the rest of your post. If any of that is directed towards me then I suggest you read my previous posts in this thread (like the one I linked in the post you just quoted), because I do ask healers politely or make suggestions. The issue comes into play with the responses I've gotten just from simply asking anything of them or trying to help them.

Also your whole argument about confidence is kind of not pertinent to what most of us are talking about. Most of us discussing here agree that if a healer is obviously new or even newish and less skilled then we aren't going to be irked they aren't DPSing. We would try to help them maybe, offer advice, etc. It is the healers who make illogical excuses for not DPSing or the "it's my sub I play how I want" healers that are the problem. I never said that all healers are in that category and neither did most of the people currently posting.

[era1Ne]

I don't think you understood what I was saying. I was basically saying that the reason these threads pop up is that some healers do make excuses for not DPSing and usually those excuses are really extreme

I understand better now what you wanted to say and i do agree with some of the stuff you said, but i can't agree with this quote really, since some people from both sides create an heated discussion in here or on others sites with their extrem arguments, comparisons and so on. Of course, healers who don't dps because of rp reasons or what not, should reconsider what they are doing, because imo everyone should try to their best for the group. On the other hand, there are valid reasons some people don't want to understand imo. Additionally, the issue here is you'll never know why an healer is standing around and not "hitting buttons". Is he lazy, inexperienced, afraid to let people die? You never know, if you don't ask polite and ofc sometimes they don't answer.

Edit: Also goes the other way too. If there's someone in the party who's performance is ... questionable, ask first. Maybe they are playing with high latency, or on console. If a run is turning sour, apply humour and try to see if you can do your part in lessening the burden. If you are smarter, or wiser, or better mannered ... all the more reason to contribute. You will be surprised how eager people are often willing to learn and communicate if you are nice.

What has the console to do with this? xD

[QT_Melon]

What has the console to do with this? xD

There are people on Console that start off as healer (using controller) that don't understand how it works. Directional Pad is for the party, and using X confirms a hard target, while you can soft target other members.

Then there's those that don't understand how to implement Cross Hotbar actions instead of using the Shoulder and Number to filter through hotbars.
Cross Hotbar enables a player to access the second hotbar, as well as configuring WXHB.

I've had to teach people how to utilize XHB and hud layouts to get the most out of controller. Like pulling out other hotbars to help with CD management to know when a skill on a secondary hotbar is up.

Yeah it's a long explanation but there is a lot more to configuring the controller beyond defaults which can scare off newbies if you aren't patient enough to help them utilize their HUD and configuration.

[MoroMurasaki]

Everyone doing the bare minimum certainly wasn't enough to clear Steps of Faith before they nerfed it, although if people handle the dragonkillers correctly it might be post nerf.

I've seen first hand what the bare minimum on Royal Meangerie from DPS looks like, with groups that couldn't manage to kill the tail before it retracts. While it might be technically still possible to beat it in that case, it makes the fight so much longer that I've never seen it done without inevitable errors and wipes as you can only res so many people and it gets pretty tough when you run low on places to stand.

The fun thing about the bare minimum for success is that it's definition changes depending on how many people are performing down there. An entire party at the bare minimum has a much higher "minimum" that one with seven people playing well and one carry.

Which goes back to the core point - ignoring large parts of your kit by doing the least you can get away with is making everyone else work that much harder to carry you. That's not behavior that should be encouraged in team play. That lots of content is forgiving enough for carrying you to be possible isn't a justification for doing that, because it won't work if everyone behaves the same way.

I don't think that this post from Tridus is being fully understood which is a shame since she framed her points so well. Let me try to elaborate.

I have solo healed RM (literally, like I had a coheal who would not do anything and kept dying, I stopped rezzing her when I realized she was never casting) and gotten the group through it, thanks in large part to wonderful tanks that run but still. If we had wiped I would have kicked her but since we didn't she got her clear.

In that instance we cleared and her performance was literally zero. Did nothing. I don't know why and don't care to find out but since we cleared the bare minimum was met.

The bare minimum for that same cohealer turns into something very different when they don't have someone to solo heal the fight. If they got a first time cohealer instead of me the group would have never survived the encounter. Bare minimum in this understanding changes on the overall group's abilities and player skill because (as we all know) somethibg as simple as a tank with good CD understanding can make any fight a lot easier for us as healers.

The bare minimum is a basic DPS rotation for DPS, holding threat as a tank, and keeping people alive as a healer.

You can clear everything outside savage and extreme content like that. The bare minimum for success, for obvious reasons, can't lead to -losing- because then it's not a bare minimum for success.

The problem with your interpretations of bare minimum here is that it intrinsically relies incredibly heavily on healers. You can clear absolutely any content in the game if your healers keep everyone alive all the time, literally the only thing that could ever kill you is a hard enrage which would be hard to hit on most fights if every player is always alive.

Also to take it one step further this could mean people ignoring mechanics and avoidable AoE because, as we established, it's the healer's job to keep them standing.

The problem here is in the astronomical difference in difficulty that can be presented by some players or groups. We have all had some sprout run off with the stack marker or a tank who plays disco boss and cleves the group. Keeping everyone alive in these situations is impossible sometimes and that's okay.

In it's fully simplified version the bare minimum for every player is killing the enemies while staying alive. This means tanks become responsible for aiming cleves away, DPS need to dodge AoE and healers need to do damage where appropriate. We all help each other with a variety of support abilities that are not relavent to our primary roles because it just doesn't make sense not to. As a healer's primary role is support the way we help tanks and DPS is by helping them kill the thing. That is our 'extra', our 'proper positioning' or 'Refresh/Tactician' or even just 'moving out of the bad'. Our utility is our damage, it may not be baked into our basic responsibility like tanks or DPS but it is certainly something that should be expected of us within reason.

[Tridus]

I don't think that this post from Tridus is being fully understood which is a shame since she framed her points so well.

You covered it pretty well. I'm glad that post is getting some eyeballs on it.

The problem with your interpretations of bare minimum here is that it intrinsically relies incredibly heavily on healers. You can clear absolutely any content in the game if your healers keep everyone alive all the time, literally the only thing that could ever kill you is a hard enrage which would be hard to hit on most fights if every player is always alive.

Also to take it one step further this could mean people ignoring mechanics and avoidable AoE because, as we established, it's the healer's job to keep them standing.

The problem here is in the astronomical difference in difficulty that can be presented by some players or groups. We have all had some sprout run off with the stack marker or a tank who plays disco boss and cleves the group. Keeping everyone alive in these situations is impossible sometimes and that's okay.

In it's fully simplified version the bare minimum for every player is killing the enemies while staying alive. This means tanks become responsible for aiming cleves away, DPS need to dodge AoE and healers need to do damage where appropriate. We all help each other with a variety of support abilities that are not relavent to our primary roles because it just doesn't make sense not to. As a healer's primary role is support the way we help tanks and DPS is by helping them kill the thing. That is our 'extra', our 'proper positioning' or 'Refresh/Tactician' or even just 'moving out of the bad'. Our utility is our damage, it may not be baked into our basic responsibility like tanks or DPS but it is certainly something that should be expected of us within reason.

Absolutely agreed. The Susano Ex kill I've brought up a coupe of times (my first one, after a very, very large pile of wipes) made it look easy. One of the reasons why was better handling of mechanics, in that group did it perfectly. But the other reason was that he died SO MUCH FASTER than the previous attempts that it avoided stuff. One of the worst problems my previous groups had was close to the enrage when there's some really unfavorable combinations of things happening at once. The kill group never even saw that, because he was already dead by then.

Faster killing isn't just showing off your DPS. It's less things to dodge and less chances for a mistake to happen while doing so. In an ideal world mistakes wouldn't happen, but we're dealing with humans (including ourselves!). If you can bring a part of that as a healer, you're not only helping the group save 30 seconds. You're also helping it to have fewer chances for a mistake to cause a wipe, which is extremely helpful.

I certainly didn't do world shattering DPS. Nobody cared. They cared that I contributed as best I could instead of standing around waiting for something to heal. I don't find that a particularly onerous burden, since I expect the same of everyone else.

[Kabooa]

The problem with your interpretations of bare minimum here is that it intrinsically relies incredibly heavily on healers.

It's a terrible state of the game we live in if basic spatial awareness isn't included in basic competence, but fair enough.

We can add "And avoiding as much damage as they can" to the list.

[MoroMurasaki]

It's a terrible state of the game we live in if basic spatial awareness isn't included in basic competence, but fair enough.

We can add "And avoiding as much damage as they can" to the list.

I genuinely don't understand your issue.

You're okay with saying 'of course don't stand in the bad' but something as simple as 'of course, ABC' is a step too far for you?

Tridus puts up a great point about Susie EX, I had similar experiences myself with him. Towards the end of the fight he will give you some really annoying combos. I know personally what killed people for me bunches of times was just the whirlpool -> churning -> whirlpool thing where you had to pause then run back in. Now I hardly ever see that happen thanks to gearing up but strong healer DPS could provide that same advantage earlier.

I mean ABC is such a common and widespread part of gameplay it has an acronym and is widely recognizable by people who play MMOs. Saying "but wait! These extra casts will only help kill the enemies and won't heal my party!" just seems like arguing semantics.

[Kabooa]

I genuinely don't understand your issue.

You're okay with saying 'of course don't stand in the bad' but something as simple as 'of course, ABC' is a step too far for you.

The standards I have for basic competence are clearly much higher than what I'm being presented with as 'Oh but this is wrong about what you're saying.'

It is assumed that after 70 levels of content and dungeons that a player understands how to avoid avoidable damage (not even accounting for any outside experience with Real Time RPG systems). Not optimize around it to minimize downtime, but at least avoid it. I should not have to state that "Don't !@#%ing die" is part of someone's 'role'. It's everyone's. It shouldn't need clarification, but here we are.

The extreme and savage comparisons are irrelevant. I already stated that this mindset is fine only for normal content, and anyone moving into harder content should be prepared to adjust to what that demands of them, regardless of the game, role, or prior encounter experience.