Dear Healers who don't DPS

[Kabooa]

Super Clever.

The issue with ABC and Healer roles is that healing is by its nature a reactive playstyle, while the 'ABC' is proactive. It isn't impossible for the two to work together, given the OGCD system, but the process of stringing the two together is the first step when moving into optimal play, which normal content, the content this thread started around, isn't required. If a healer, -in normal content-, feels more comfortable just keeping people alive, that's fine. That's all they need to do.

At no point did I say it's the best course of action, only that it's acceptable, and it's only acceptable in normal. Nothing wrong with encouraging them to get better, but this entire thread isn't that. It's just a circle jerk, just like 'Lol all these bad dps' or 'Tanks who don't do this'.

[Taika]

The issue with ABC and Healer roles is that healing is by its nature a reactive playstyle, while the 'ABC' is proactive

Since all fights in this game are heavily scripted and it's not difficult for a healer to judge the amount of damage their tank is taking, healing in this game is far from reactive. As a healer, you will pretty much be casting the same thing at same time every time you do a fight. Of course sometimes mistakes happen and you'll have to do your best to adjust, but in most cases that's only a small, temporary change in your fixed pattern. You saying healing is reactive makes me wonder if you've even played a healer in this game?

[Kabooa]

You saying healing is reactive makes me wonder if you've even played a healer in this game?

Yes, quite often.

And the content this thread started around is normal, which is mostly dungeons. While the dungeon bosses themselves easily allow ABCing, the meta of big pulls does not. A lot of your ability to deal damage in those settings rests on the shoulders of others. In that regard, healing is very reactive, and an instant cast at the wrong time that locks up your GCD suddenly means many of your OGCDs may be required to adjust, and that leaves you more vulnerable moving forward. Not in small pulls, not on most normal bosses, but wall-to-wall pulls, it's much less cut and dry than its being presented.

[Taika]

And the content this thread started around is normal, which is mostly dungeons. While the dungeon bosses themselves easily allow ABCing, the meta of big pulls does not. A lot of your ability to deal damage in those settings rests on the shoulders of others. In that regard, healing is very reactive, and an instant cast at the wrong time that locks up your GCD suddenly means many of your OGCDs may be required to adjust, and that leaves you more vulnerable moving forward. Not in small pulls, not on most normal bosses, but wall-to-wall pulls, it's much less cut and dry than its being presented.

I don't agree. Well, I agree that you can't follow as strict a pattern for dungeon pulls than you do for bosses and harder content, but you're still using pretty much the same cooldowns and abilities for certain pulls every time, and you're definitely always casting something and never just standing there waiting for stuff to react to.

[Kabooa]

I don't agree. Well, I agree that you can't follow as strict a pattern for dungeon pulls than you do for bosses and harder content, but you're still using pretty much the same cooldowns and abilities for certain pulls every time, and you're definitely always casting something and never just standing there waiting for stuff to react to.

I'm just saying the playstyle is acceptable. It is the safer option in the more volatile situation, especially given that most of the time, you're running with randos. Speaking as a rando tank or damage dealer, I'd rather my Rando healer prefer to keep me/the tank above 50% than below, because I have no idea if they know their timers, the Mob pack abilities, or they're just hitting buttons. I either risk a cooldown being wasted in the case that they're 'good', or eat dirt in the case that they're not. And that affects moving forward as I won't have something available.

Trust in a pug is easily given but also easily lost, and in the event of any wipe, whatever time you gain from the Healer dealing damage, you already lost. All it takes is a bad RNG string, and that 2.5s GCD from Aero 2 is suddenly the longest timer in existence. More so if for some reason it happened earlier and an important fallback is already gone.

I feel I have to say this again. I always encourage people to strive to be better. I do it myself. I've let people die by mistake in the process. But I'm not going to give them !@#% in my party if I have to shoulder more of the weight. It isn't that much weight to begin with, and if someone is more comfortable just watching health bars, that's fine by me. An 18 minute run isn't all that different from 15.

[MoroMurasaki]

Yes, quite often.


And the content this thread started around is normal, which is mostly dungeons. While the dungeon bosses themselves easily allow ABCing, the meta of big pulls does not. A lot of your ability to deal damage in those settings rests on the shoulders of others. In that regard, healing is very reactive, and an instant cast at the wrong time that locks up your GCD suddenly means many of your OGCDs may be required to adjust, and that leaves you more vulnerable moving forward. Not in small pulls, not on most normal bosses, but wall-to-wall pulls, it's much less cut and dry than its being presented.

I think maybe we hold more or less the same opinion at this point, semantics aside. I admit to not reading every one of the last 55 pages completely so I'm sorry if I've made you restate things.

I completely agree that there are instances of wall to wall pulls where DPS becomes all but impossible for everyone who isn't amazingly skilled. I also agree that this is the most (or at least should be the most) reactive time for a healer. This also depends largely on your group. I've had some tanks do the full pull between the first and second bosses of Ala Mhigo where the only DPS I could do was a Swiftcasted Holy (more for the stun than the damage) and Assize for the MP. I don't think that makes me a bad healer even though I'm sure others out there could have done better because I pushed myself as hard as I could.

The issue is on bosses and small pulls when there is so little damage out there that your choices become DPSing, massive overhealing or doing nothing. Only one of those has literally any benefit. I don't know of any normal pulls of trash and very few bosses that can kill a player in one GCD without some other serious mistakes syncing up like a tank losing threat before a tankbuster. In that situation I believe it is perfectly acceptable to DPS.

Before we get into 'not everyone knows that about every fight' that is an excuse I don't accept because we are all playing on internet enabled computers and PS4s where YouTube is easily accessible.

Personally I just can't get past the double standard that we have for healing versus tanking and DPS in this game. It's been stated over and over in this thread but we just coddle healers like they didn't just subscribe to the same game. No one in the tank or DPS forums would try to justify this kind of lax playstyle amd it boggles my mind that people in the healer one have kept this thread going for nearly 60 pages.

[Kabooa]

Personally I just can't get past the double standard that we have for healing versus tanking and DPS in this game. It's been stated over and over in this thread but we just coddle healers like they didn't just subscribe to the same game. No one in the tank or DPS forums would try to justify this kind of lax playstyle amd it boggles my mind that people in the healer one have kept this thread going for nearly 60 pages.

Eh...

I think the pass/fail when it comes to healers is just more obvious. There almost no hard-enrages in Normal content, so the opportunity to point out bad DPS isn't nearly as common as a corpse on the floor, or when the giant attention getting monster turns around and munches the healer's face.

[MoroMurasaki]

Eh...

I think the pass/fail when it comes to healers is just more obvious. There almost no hard-enrages in Normal content, so the opportunity to point out bad DPS isn't nearly as common as a corpse on the floor, or when the giant attention getting monster turns around and munches the healer's face.

I see what you're saying about hard enrages in normal content but I think the level of play required by healers to keep people standing while contributing no DPS is equivalent to a DPS playing so poorly people would notice.

It was stated earlier in this thread by several people that they needed to be active 17% of the time to heal a dungeon with no DPS contribution. Let's be generous and raise that all the way up to 50%. If you had a DPS doing nothing for a GCD of time between every GCD do you think you would notice? I certainly would.

In terms of tanks they have a clear indicator of whether or not they're pushing damage in most content - is tank stance on? Is DPS stance on once they have it? That is also super noticable and not hard to evaluate, kind of like Cleric Stance was for healers before 4.0.

I will concede none of these things are as obvious as someone in the group dying but I will add that if you can't DPS as a healer or someone is going to die then you have much larger problems than this debate.

Also I very much agree with Cynfael; encouraging this kind of poor play on the basis of someone being new to the role is just encouraging new healers to develop bad habits.

That's fair. The safe playstyle is fine, is all I advocate. At least for normal. If you have eyes to start punching above your weight, then Normal is also the best place to start to learn.

But speaking as a voice in this community, I personally won't yell at them if they dared to be happy with Aero 3 and monitoring health bars in Ala Mhigo.

I think this is the closest I've come to agreeing with someone in this thread, thank you.

[era1Ne]

The issue is on bosses and small pulls when there is so little damage out there that your choices become DPSing, massive overhealing or doing nothing. Only one of those has literally any benefit. I don't know of any normal pulls of trash and very few bosses that can kill a player in one GCD without some other serious mistakes syncing up like a tank losing threat before a tankbuster. In that situation I believe it is perfectly acceptable to DPS.

The windows are there to dps of course and most of the time good healers will cast dps spells then having to heal the party. In order to do this you have to use everything and know what skills can do. For example, you can use Collective Unconscious, another hot + TD on the tank, then use lightspeed (mostly for mana reasons) before using Opposition to extend every buff. Even in big pulls, if the tanks is decent you can dps a lot with this strategy without having to thinking about the tank. Throw in an instant heal or place an earthly later on, if needed and you are good to go.

Before we get into 'not everyone knows that about every fight' that is an excuse I don't accept because we are all playing on internet enabled computers and PS4s where YouTube is easily accessible.

i'd recommend reducing your dmg, if you are new to a fight and try to learn it before going all out and even start keeping people at low health to push yourself further. Especially in ex or savage fights, since normal mode usually can't kill people if they don't make (a lot) mistakes. Therefore i wouldn't really call it an excuse, if you are new to a fight better be save then sorry. You can push yourself early enough. Also i wouldn't expect people watching an guide fo dungeons like sastasha. Of course you should read your tooltips, ask questions and read/watch guides for ex or savage fights, usually. With that said, i prefer going into those fights with friends/static and try them blind and learning the mechanics ourself.

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.

Well, some don't even know about them and most of the time you don't have these kind of options in an console game. I don't blame them and this reminds me that i have to use one of the Q&A in the future to ask yoshi, if they ever will consider making an not skippable 5 min video to explain that these options exist. That said, if you use those option, then there shouldn't be any issue. If you are playing on ps4 and can't play with gamepad, you can youse mouse+keyboard aswell, anyway.

[QT_Melon]

I don't blame them and this reminds me that i have to use one of the Q&A in the future to ask yoshi, if they ever will consider making an not skippable 5 min video to explain that these options exist. That said, if you use those option, then there shouldn't be any issue. If you are playing on ps4 and can't play with gamepad, you can youse mouse+keyboard aswell, anyway.

Yuck. I'm sorry but trying to force someone to watch a five minute video on how to play the game isn't going to help. I know we'd like to teach people these options exist, but I kinda figured that's what us veterans are here for. I don't want to Clockwork Orange a player. I don't mind pointing them to a video if need be though if an official one was made.