Dear Healers who don't DPS

[Cynfael]

Healing done well is absolutely proactive. Occasionally it may be necessary to "react" to player error, but even those errors are in the larger context of scripted scenarios.

I view healing (and combat in general) as a flow chart. You know what sorts of errors are most likely and what tools are appropriate for recovery; you also know which errors are unavoidably fatal.

Healers who play reactively are the ones who sit on their CDs and contribute little or no DPS because they are constantly waiting for emergencies, ironically making everything take longer. They also tend to be worse at recovering from problems because they aren't in the habit of planning ahead.

[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]

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.

[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.

[Cynfael]

Snip

I think I understand what you're saying, but I do think that you're overstating the case for caution.

Maintaining the tank's health at a very comfortable level while weaving DPS actions between healing actions is easily doable, and I think it does up-and-coming healers a disservice to suggest that sitting on their hands is the correct choice.

Rather, they should learn to think ahead, be mindful of how their party members perform, and keep track of what's ready to use in their toolbox at any given time. You're a WHM and have every oGCD available at the start of a pull? Awesome, get busy with your AoE. Pull is dragging on, everyone out of healing and defensive CDs? Dial back the aggression if necessary.

[Kabooa]

I think I understand what you're saying, but I do think that you're overstating the case for caution.

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.

[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.

[Taika]

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 don't think anyone here is suggesting that you should yell at them, I certainly won't and don't condone anyone else in my party doing that either. Also, I'm very happy with a healer who throws out that single Aero III and maybe an occacional Holy when their swiftcast is up. Really, the only healers people have trouble with are the ones that refuse to do any damage in any situation (no matter how little healing there is to do: even if none). Those are the ones I encourage (nicely) to contribute.

[Kabooa]

I don't think anyone here is suggesting that you should yell at them, I certainly won't and don't condone anyone else in my party doing that either. Also, I'm very happy with a healer who throws out that single Aero III and maybe an occacional Holy when their swiftcast is up. Really, the only healers people have trouble with are the ones that refuse to do any damage in any situation (no matter how little healing there is to do: even if none). Those are the ones I encourage (nicely) to contribute.

Oh, well. Then that's blatantly wrong and I can't offer any defense there, though I've rarely run into these with current content.

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.

A) I think I could challenge that pretty easily, even when not actively avoiding CDs on my tank. >:3
B) I pretty much assume every pug I run with already does that.

[Darkobra]

I'm pretty sure the people this is aimed at won't read the thread, take on board what you're saying or are more comfortable rather learning a dungeon's flow before trying throw damage into the mix.

It's Final Fantasy 14! It's a game that says "I'm going to hit THAT AREA in five seconds! You better get ready to dodge!" It's the equivalent in a skill level of colouring in the lines. If THIS is your biggest issue, you should probably stick to MMOs and avoid other games.