Dear Healers who don't DPS

[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.

[Deceptus]

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.

The only people doing the insulting is the Pro-healing only folks calling the DPS healing folks various things.

For example:

This entire post is toxic. . .For starters, the more you pull, the less likely a Healer is going to be able to DPS they're too busy keeping an idiot like yourself topped off.

Also,

I don't see much more important threads like "Dear Damage Dealers who don't deal acceptable Damage". Their amount should be a tripple or quadruple compared to healer DPS threads. The gain for all would be much higher than the always repeating completely stupid healer DPS discussuions.

And those discussions should take place on the DPS boards, go start one.

[Kabooa]

This is just turning into a semantics argument so I'm sorry but I am not interested in it.

The content can not only be cleared, but cleared comfortably, by people not toeing outside the narrow scope of healing, tanking, and damage dealing. That's how the majority of the game is designed. I'm not going to pretend I don't get annoyed when the 'bare minimum' crowd comes in. Sometimes I get angry. But at the end of the day, you throw some advice, leave the party, and move on. The only time you should be harping on someone for not going for 80, 90, or 100% potential output is in the content that demands it.

A bare minimum that somehow doesn't lead to success is a terrible baseline. Technically the bare minimum in any game is booting it up. You need the criteria "for success" because, at the end of line, there is a goal that needs to be achieved, and putting 'bare minimum' at any point -before that goal- makes no sense whatsoever.

[Miste]

The only time you should be harping on someone for not going for 80, 90, or 100% potential output is in the content that demands it.

Uh..are you just speaking in general? Because I don't harp on anyone at all. So I am not sure why you have directed this at me?

I do the exact same as you, maybe offer advice, and move on. So...?

A bare minimum that somehow doesn't lead to success is a terrible baseline.

Yeah it is terrible, but one problem.... if you really want my opinion on this even though I never said anything about "bare minimum for success". Some people can and do play at a bare minimum that won't lead to success if everyone in the party played the same way.

The thing is that usually when you get these players there are enough other players in the group doing high percentile performance which ends up back packing the failure of the other teammate. Sometimes you get a group unable to pick up the slack of a very underperforming player and they just fail until the group disbands.

Also again you still don't get it that I was using "bare minimum" for a role, not a bare minimum for success of the content or a baseline for the content. So if you still don't understand what I was saying then I'm sorry, but this convo isn't going anywhere. You are just throwing stuff at me that has nothing to do with what I posted and possibly accusing me of stuff I don't even do.

Did you read this response?

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.

She explains the problem quite well with what you are saying.

[Ftail]

I always output as much DPS as I can during savage attempts or while I'm in a dungeon. So please take that into account before judging me. Most healers who say they can't or won't contribute DPS to the run aren't used to playing a healing class where you spend the majority of your time casting the same DPS spell. Ignoring the wall to wall pulls while being under geared which cause you to heal spam or die, in savage raids the majority of the time you are mindlessly casting the same DPS spell, which contribute a significant portion of the groups damage (which lets you beat the enrage timer).

Saying just to cast your DOTS is never satisfactory for groups trying to beat the enrage timer. Personally, I can never get over 1k DPS as a healer by just casting my dots, and with casting Broil II I can pull over 2.5k DPS easily. This isn't a complaint about casting DPS as a healer, because that's not my issue. Casting DPS as a healer wouldn't be so bad, as long as they built the play style to support it. Maybe they should make Broil II have a 10% chance of lowering the cost of Adloquium, maybe not. My point is they should design healers with the same caring and love that DPS and their rotations get.

[Kabooa]

She explains the problem quite well with what you are saying.

I am addressing you as you addressed me.

I don't disagree that people should strive to be better. I concede that bare minimum is a poor term that I misused. I defined what I meant by it earlier however, and I will stick with that.

Regarding Tridus, for the reason above (I already stated what my view on bare minimum is), I didn't consider it relevant for the matter that anyone playing at basic competence (bare minimum) is going to be more than capable of clearing everything in Normal content.

[Raqrie_Tohka]

Wow this is a very long thread XD

I'm a fledgling tank and fledgling healer but not a fledgling gamer, so hear me out ... what I would recommend, if you don't already do it, is "communication". Tanks ask if party wants larger pulls. Ask heals if they want to have fun doing damage and see how much you can take with only self heal. Healers tell tank when it's ok for them to pull more. Ask and maybe even politely apologize if you don't feel like dpsing that run, we all have those days. Use a bit of humour and always be polite. A good and enjoyable dungeon run is infinitely more worth it than a fast but tedious, or even Hydaelyn forbid, toxic run. And typing a sentence or two will only cause you a few seconds.

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.

[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.