Dear Healers who don't DPS

[Taika]

Also, if Word of God literally says "Fights are NOT balanced with healer damage in mind", then fights are not balanced with healers in mind.

The fights are designed to be cleared without healer DPS only (1) after the party is over the item level that is available to them when the fights are added to the game and, even at that point, (2) when all DDs and tanks are doing at least 85-90% of their optimal DPS (while the non-dpsing healers are pulling way less than 50% optimal performance...). So it's extremely misleading to claim the fights are very much clearable without any healer DPS. Even Yoshi directly said that healer DPS is needed when the fights are added to the game.

Yoshida: Yes. Since all DPS jobs will be increasing up through level 60, it makes sense to have the white mage's DPS extend by a proportional amount as well. For development, such as with Bahamut's Coils, the development team assumes what the item level should be for general equipment on players when they clear a raid. They sum up the basic DPS for four DPS and tanks at that assumed item level and cut that by about 10-15% for the minimum clear DPS. Healer DPS is not taken into account when this is set.

Certainly for people who are at world's first level, their goal is to clear it at as low an item level as possible, lower than the one assumed during development. So if you look at the fight and figure out that if it's not numerically possible to clear with four DPS and tanks, you'll need to make up the gap with DPS from healers.

Source: https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/12...-Event-5-19%29

Also, once again, it isn't relevant what is said about the game, it's relevant how the game is actually played (it doesn't matter if someone would say the fights can be cleared without healer DPS when in reality you often do need it, and even if you don't it makes absolutely no sense for the healers not to DPS).

[Kabooa]

No one here disagrees about what Savage demands of players in every role.

And in regards to that, Savage is so far removed from the content where this thread started, I don't even think it's relevant to mention it. Savage Encounters at world first level alone get removed from Casul Savage Runnerz, which alone already gets removed from Casul Duty Finderz.

I'll always say aim to be better. But using Savage as a barometer in any regards to the arguments being made here is not only flawed, but completely contradictory to the overall design of the game.

Savage is there -for the tryhards-. That's where you get to yell at someone for sitting on a GCD. The rest of* Duty Finder isn't supposed to be that.

[Deceptus]

Savage is there -for the tryhards-. That's where you get to yell at someone for sitting on a GCD. The rest of* Duty Finder isn't supposed to be that.

Again, why are healers the only job that this is acceptable for? Sitting on the GCD is sitting on the GCD regardless of job and isn't acceptable.

[Jollyy5]

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Take all my likes!

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As Taika said, you are putting words into people's mouths.

Yes, I did offer some examples on why I think healers generally refuse to heal, because the decision to not to heal stems from somewhere, as in: "A healer is not DPSing while there is literally nothing else for them to do" and the question is "Why not?" Feel free to add to that list.

Anyway, instead of writing a lengthy argument, I'll provide an example:

A tank supports their team by using CDs and by attacking enemies to hold aggro as well as to generate resources to use some of their skills. (i.e. Beast Gauge) They are always doing something.
A DPS supports their team by using their skills and CDs to deal as much damage as possible and to provide buffs. They are always doing something.
A Healer supports their team by using heals and CDs to keep everyone's health up or to mitigate damage, but what to do when no one needs healing? What does a healer do? Because if they do not heal, they are not always doing something.

More often that not, the only reasonable thing is to DPS, and the game makes it quite obvious.

To me it seems like you are writing arguments based on how you -want- the game to be played, while some others are writing arguments based on how the game -should- be played as it currently functions.


Oh, and also:

"Unlike a solo game, playing a multiplayer game isn't the same thing. That's why that constant call on pure healer to do some DPS can be percieved in the end as a selfish request."

FYI, there are no pure healers in FFXIV.

As you said, this is an MMO, where real people are working as a TEAM. In what kind of a team is everyone else but one person constantly doing something, only chiming in when absolutely necessary or when they feel like it?

Not one I'd like to be part of, that's for sure...

[Taika]

Asking a player politely to try doing some DPS is OK. I am for any constructive behaviour in this game.

Again though, no one is advocating for anything but this: if someone is not DPSing as a healer (when they are experienced, know the fight, and have the opportunity to do so, as in there's not much healing to do and they have plenty of MP), ask them nicely. Absolutely no one here is saying that you should start shouting curses at them or immediately kick them without even giving them a chance. So this is an example of you arguing against arguments that don't exist here (if they do, feel free to show them, because I don't remember every single post from the thread).

But the way some people here are belittling others, or automatically making the assumption that pure healer are bad healers will only fuel the hate.

Can you show me some of that belittling? I'm pretty sure at least most, if not all of it, is directed to healers who absolutely refuse to do any DPS at all when they are nicely asked to, even if they could, intentionally pulling their party back and making others work harder than they are. Those healers are considered and called lazy, and for a good reason. Like this one I had in a leveling dungeon, who literally did /follow on tank, went afk ("I'm just drinking coffee here") while the fairy did all the healing. If it's belittling to call a player like this lazy and bad, then ok I admit it. But I'm pretty sure you wouldn't accept this kind of behaviour from a tank or DD either...



It's been said over and over and over again, that for people who ask for their healers to DPS, it is enough to show even a little bit effort. That is all that's being asked, to throw some DoTs every once in a while when you have nothing else to do. What's being opposed (and strangely, defended by some) is absolutely refusing to use your DPS abilities out of some silly principle. Refusing to use a part of your useful abilities does, objectively, make you bad at your job - be it healer, DPS or tank job.

Edit: to show some proof that what people really expect is just seeing some effort, to see healers try to be as active as the rest of their party members...

As for the rest of these posts, the point is that people want to see EFFORT. Nobody's expecting big dicl numbers, especially out of DF of all things. However, you're generally supposed to ASK for a sherpa instead of being lazy and trying to get a free carry.

There's also a thing called context. If you're brand new to an instance, nobody's gonna be mad at you for trying to feel it out. Even if you end up the worst at your role, most will forgive if it looks like you tried. I think that's all anyone's asking

That's the only thing reasonable people are asking, if during an entire fight you need to heal then no problem you don't have the time to do damage but if you only need to heal during 50% of the fight you should do something (not nothing) during the other 50%.

We are not expecting you to contribute the most damage output, nor ask you to abandon your primary role. When there is a wide time-frame in which no healing is needed, instead of reading about Toenail Fungus, or watching the latest episode of Log Horizon, or etc., why not throw in a few skills. . . at least some dots to help things along?

General rule of thumb: you don't have to be a pro MLG high DPS healer for people to be happy with your performance, so long as you have some awareness of when your party is taking damage and when you have downtime. You should learn your toolkit and find the skills which give you downtime (regen, aspects benefic, rouse), and at least weave in some sort of DPS just so you aren't idling, because it's the idling that people notice, not your damage numbers

When we are talking about dps on healer, we're not expecting everyone to do 1000 dps.
If every healer just use dots, the very least, it would be enough to stop yelling at those who "don't want to dps because blabla".

What people are asking for:

- Heal when healing is necessary. If your party is taking too much damage it is okay to not DPS.
- If you find yourself standing around, throw some dots on, cast a few damage skills.
- Use your time wisely. If you aren't comfortable with the dungeon no one is going to get on you, but if you can contribute please do.

[MoroMurasaki]

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Pure healers are less efficent than healers who DPS. Whether or not that makes them "bad" is so subjective there is no way to make a blanket statement about it for the whole community.

In a party of super laid back casual players who just want to clear a dungeon with no thought to how long that might take a healer who does no damage might walk away with 3 commendations. The issue arises when we realize that those incredibly laid back players without a care in the world are no closer to the majority than hardcore Savage raiders.

To illustrate my point lets look at the attitude surrounding pull size for tanks. Multiple threads on the tank forums about it, no 100% consensus... it's basically like their version of our DPS debate. I know personally I hardly ever see a tank single pull or move slowly through a dungeon. Why is that?

Most players want faster clears on the content they repeat several times a week. To facilitate this tanks pull multiple packs, sometimes even wall to wall if they can.

If we can establish from the actions of these tanks that the community wants to go fast (on average) then why do you think those community members should have to put up with a healer who is slowing them down? And make no mistake a healer not doing DPS is slowing things down often considerably, especially on large pulls where our spammable AoE buffed with some CDs can leave us ahead of actual DPS on a damage meter.

You say that healers who don't DPS can't be called bad. Maybe they won't be called bad by everyone but they are certainly playing poorly based on the basic community goal of clearing content as quickly as possible.

At the very least a healer that doesn't want to DPS (just like Tridus not wanting to use more than Flash on PLD, side note remind me not to party with you on Tank buddy loljk) could put up a PF stating that if they don't want to be subjected to the general community's opinion of a slow clear.

If you are going to play in the DF sandbox you are opening yourself up to comments/critiques, expectations of others and potential kicks over that glorious "different playstyle" option. Healers standing around doing nothing are (thankfully) the minority here and as such if they want to be catered to they need to establish that ahead of time.

TL;DR The community has already established it's guidelines irrespective of what Yoshi-P may wish those guidelines to be. Deal with them if you want to play in that community and queue with randoms. Also I am done going in circles about new players or times of huge damage or undergeared tanks or whatever. No matter how good a healer is there will be times they can't afford to Holy spam. No one has made this argument please stop arguing against it. People just aren't okay with carrying you while you press Cure every 10 seconds. That is disrespectful to your party. If you do that then yes I will say it you are bad and I don't want to play with you unless you'll take my advice to heart.

[Sebazy]

I can't find the interview again, but YoshiP explained that to determine the health pool of savage bosses, they would take the mean performance of all tank and dps in the superior tier and lower that by 10-15%. I actually think this was part of his explanation of why healer DPS really wasn't mandatory as it wasn't even taken into account in the tuning of the fight. This also explain why top tier group manage to push bosses and skip phases...

Be a bit more careful with that quote from YoshiP, please understand that that was mentioned during early Gordias as the hardcore raid scene was venting about the absurd DPS checks in A4S (partially due to the exploit strat that all but 2 logged kills required to actually clear the fight) whilst the casuals were struggling to even get past Faust. He later admitted that mistakes had been made in how the encounters had been tested and tuned. It precedes Omega by about 2 years and as such, has no relevance to it as Omega has been tuned very differently to Gordias.

If you consider iLvl 330 to be the top gear tier for people breaking into raiding, O3S should be clearable with little to no healer DPS by a half decent group by that point. O4S isn't unless the DPS already know the encounter inside out, a typical decent team progressing will still need healer DPS, no ifs, no buts. That's just how it is from first hand experience both with my own static, various other statics I've helped tutor as well as all the random PFs I tag along with.

[Kabooa]

Again, why are healers the only job that this is acceptable for? Sitting on the GCD is sitting on the GCD regardless of job and isn't acceptable.

Acceptable, I wouldn't say that. But deserving this thread, or any thread that comes from it?

No, definitely not. I guarantee you that the Tanks/DPS that run in the DF are playing just as suboptimally as a healer.

[LittleSparrow]

You people have been argueing about this for 65 pages.
65 pages of argueing over something you won't ever agree on.

Lel.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Pure healers are less efficent than healers who DPS. Whether or not that makes them "bad" is so subjective there is no way to make a blanket statement about it for the whole community.

I had a rule back in Heavensward. If my co-healer didn't turn on Cleric during the pull, or at some point during the initial 10-15 seconds, I let them solo heal large portions of the fight. Why? Because the opening pull is where little to no damage goes out, allowing ample opportunity for dots, if nothing else. I also wanted to experiment just how good these pure healers were and more often than not, I was forced back into healing because they simply couldn't handle it. One time I actually got called out because "Cassandra's in her PvP gear, DPSing." This was A12N, in 3.5, and my co-healer was 260 with full accuracy melds yet never once touched a DPS spell or switched into Cleric despite my being 235-240 (Garo gear). I should have been the primary healer and intended to be, but they wouldn't DPS. So I let them handle just the first phase of Alex (before tank LB) and hopped in sporadically. He ran out of MP, something the DRK asked how when he complained because she's solo-healed that phase on WHM no problem.

Contrast this to when I met Hyomin in-game, who turned on Cleric quickly. I immediately switched to a cooperative role to allow her to DPS too. We had no issues whatsoever in the exact same fight.

Now I do want to emphasis this experiment of mine only applied to supposedly "experienced" healers. If my co-healer was new, I played more conservative since they're understandably not going to know the fight well. Likewise, if the DPS or Tanks did stupid things, I adapted. It still amused me just how poorly adaptable many pure healers are, or how many get angry if you let them handle healing like they apparently want. When they often cry about making it "stress free," it seems to be more "make it incredibly easy for me so I don't have to do more work." Perhaps I'm just jaded.