Dear Healers who don't DPS

[MoroMurasaki]

IMO, anyone that's citing Sylphie (of all characters) about whether or not WHMs should DPS is missing the point that her arc in ARR was about not letting pride in raw talent destroy you. Having her acknowledge and then adhere to the Conjurer's Guild rules was a huge turning point because it showed she was better understanding exactly how her powers worked, so instead of literally killing herself, she was pulling from the PROPER source.

To say it was about healers DPSing of all things really sells the entire quest line short.

The quests taught Sylphie to use all of her magic to her benefit, yeah? Almost like reinforcing that not doing that is bad for you. She needed to tap into her connection to nature to literally make her a better healer and you are trying to argue that this does not have relavence here. Either way this is the last I'll go back and forth on anyone with it, it is just too simple to argue about.


The other half of that arc (when we weren't watching cutscenes of or about Sylphie and her journey) we were participating in instanced battles (in a healer questline) that required us to kill enemies.

I have yet to see anyone from the pure healer camp refute the simple fact that all the training new healers get involves an element of balancing healing (either themselves or others) while also killing enemies. There is no solo content where you are just standing there spamhealing an NPC.

Like Tridus said this does not necessarily resonate with some players and that is fine. If you would like to kill your hunt marks by summoning your chocobo and healing him by all means be my guest. The point still remains that this game is not solo and it indeed forces grouped content to progress through the main story where you will have to rely on other players and vice versa.

When healers DPSing is built into all their training (and in my opinion and that of many others even their storyline) and is clearly the best thing for their group what is left to say?

Yes, you clear things with a healer only healing. You clear stuff with a RDM using Scatter in single target as well. You clear things with tanks who never leave tank stance. Why is it that we can call those first two things suboptimal and below average but when we say the same about healers standing around doing nothing these people are ready to jump to their defense?

Stop it. Just stop it. Its nonsensical and frustrating and it's coddling other players just like us who could be doing more for their groups but instead think a viable option for them is to hit Cure every 10 seconds or so. If those people are so sensitive to a passing comment about how they can improve they should probably not be playing an MMO.

[Almagnus1]

The quests taught Sylphie to use all of her magic to her benefit, yeah? Almost like reinforcing that not doing that is bad for you. She needed to tap into her connection to nature to literally make her a better healer and you are trying to argue that this does not have relavence here. Either way this is the last I'll go back and forth on anyone with it, it is just too simple to argue about.

No, what she was taught was to pull from NATURE and not HERSELF as her source of healing. What killed her mom was using her own life force to heal with, and doing the exact same thing almost killed Sylphie, which is why we were able to make her see that by properly communing with the elements, she too can use her gifts to go heal people without putting herself in danger. While the SB arc does involve us being in combat with Sylphie, but it's more a lore dump on what the padjal are, and why it is paramount for them to it's more because we were attacked and needed to defend ourselves than actively attacking.

The source of spells =/= which ones to use in combat

The other half of that arc (when we weren't watching cutscenes of or about Sylphie and her journey) we were participating in instanced battles (in a healer questline) that required us to kill enemies.

I have yet to see anyone from the pure healer camp refute the simple fact that all the training new healers get involves an element of balancing healing (either themselves or others) while also killing enemies. There is no solo content where you are just standing there spamhealing an NPC.

Like Tridus said this does not necessarily resonate with some players and that is fine. If you would like to kill your hunt marks by summoning your chocobo and healing him by all means be my guest. The point still remains that this game is not solo and it indeed forces grouped content to progress through the main story where you will have to rely on other players and vice versa.

While I'm not in the pure healer camp (tbh honest this entire thread is quite asinine because it's a bunch of complaining about a symptom without actually trying to solve the problem), but did it ever occur to you that the DPS skills were given to WHMs so a player could level as a WHM without needing to be grouped all the time?

A very strong case can be made that the DPS skills were granted to WHMs so they wouldn't need WHM specific duties to progress through the MSQ.

When healers DPSing is built into all their training (and in my opinion and that of many others even their storyline) and is clearly the best thing for their group what is left to say?

None of the training a healer has to go through is mandatory.

If they had a scenario that every healer was REQUIRED to go through before they were cleared for combat that required you healing a tank that's taking aggro while having to DPS down a target that's current inducting and will oneshot the tank when the induction goes off, while the tank gathers mobs - I can guarantee you that this would be a very different thread because that type of instance would show that SE wants healers to contribute DPS when they can.

Instead, all we get are suggestions (at best).

Yes, you clear things with a healer only healing. You clear stuff with a RDM using Scatter in single target as well. You clear things with tanks who never leave tank stance. Why is it that we can call those first two things suboptimal and below average but when we say the same about healers standing around doing nothing these people are ready to jump to their defense?

I actually had to go through that tonight with an AST on my PLD in leveling rou. The AST was having a ton of problems, and yet, I don't know enough about AST to mentor them. Which leaves me with the option of calling them out (especially since everyone knows damned well that there's a problem) without providing them some way to improve, thus quite possibly making them perform even worse because now they're tilting while under performing - or say nothing and play down to their level so we can complete the run with as few issues as possible and get the experience over with. Later in the run we found out that the AST claimed to have not played AST in a long time, so I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and suspect that they're likely just playing the class to see the story. While we could have booted the AST because they weren't performing optimally, frankly, the time it takes to reacquire a healer basically outweighs any additional time we'd have added, especially if the DPS are on par in a leveling instance.

I mean, what's the right call there?

As far as Shield Oath goes... I figure that by staying in Shield Oath, it gives the healers more breathing room to DPS, and allows the DPS to really push the limits as far as DPS goes. My reasoning is that their increase in DPS is going to speed an Ex roul more than swapping into Sword Oath ever will, so I will stay in Shield Oath and only go into Sword Oath for Request Kitty => Holy Spirit spam. I keep aggro, things die quickly, instances gets completed, and I haven't heard any complaints about staying in Shield Oath yet from the DPS or healers yet so I'm gonna assume that it's basically a non-issue if you're (again) using all of your other skills and cooldowns.

Stop it. Just stop it. Its nonsensical and frustrating and it's coddling other players just like us who could be doing more for their groups but instead think a viable option for them is to hit Cure every 10 seconds or so. If those people are so sensitive to a passing comment about how they can improve they should probably not be playing an MMO.

Or maybe if I don't know their class (like SCH or AST), I'm not going to try to explain how to improve in a class I don't know, and just grin and bear it. If they're WHM, I'll try to at least get them to Aero if they aren't, but again, I know WHM well enough to mentor it. I'm not gonna try to mentor someone in a class like SCH or AST because all calling someone out who's not doing well in that class really boils down to is epeen stroking - and that's something that belongs in the WoW community, not here.

Maybe you're the one that's in the wrong here.

[Tridus]

While I'm not in the pure healer camp (tbh honest this entire thread is quite asinine because it's a bunch of complaining about a symptom without actually trying to solve the problem), but did it ever occur to you that the DPS skills were given to WHMs so a player could level as a WHM without needing to be grouped all the time?

A very strong case can be made that the DPS skills were granted to WHMs so they wouldn't need WHM specific duties to progress through the MSQ.

Game design wise, the primary method of interacting with the world is via killing things. Levelling to the point that you get group content requires killing things. There isn't a whole lot of healing going on at level 4. (At level 1, the only spell you have is Stone, so you *can't* heal until level 2.) Every class needs DPS spells because too much of the game (ie: nearly all outdoor content and the MSQ trials) only works if you meet the basic premise of being able to attack.

Which doesn't really have anything to do with anything, though. It's not like they turn off your DPS skills once you get in a group, and with Cleric Stance gone you don't have to disable your healing to use them effectively.

None of the training a healer has to go through is mandatory.

But it is training, is in the game, and does say "hey, you can toss DPS now".

As opposed to using a partial quote from YoshiP, which we have seen how many times now?

You know what the game never tells you to do at any point? Stand around doing nothing while the rest of the group clears the content. People came up with that particular idea entirely on their own based on another thing the game never tells you: that your DPS buttons are not meant to be used outside of solo content.

If they had a scenario that every healer was REQUIRED to go through before they were cleared for combat that required you healing a tank that's taking aggro while having to DPS down a target that's current inducting and will oneshot the tank when the induction goes off, while the tank gathers mobs - I can guarantee you that this would be a very different thread because that type of instance would show that SE wants healers to contribute DPS when they can.

Instead, all we get are suggestions (at best).

There's also no mandatory training that tells tanks to use cooldowns or DPS to use AOE, because there's no mandatory training in the game whatsoever. That's just what happens when such things are added on to an existing game years after release.

[Almagnus1]

You know what the game never tells you to do at any point? Stand around doing nothing while the rest of the group clears the content. People came up with that particular idea entirely on their own based on another thing the game never tells you: that your DPS buttons are not meant to be used outside of solo content.

But therein lies the problem, especially for players coming from another MMO where healers just heal (like WoW). I would suspect that's a large chunk of the issue, as many people - ESPECIALLY FROM WOW - generally assume that healers just heal and don't really get it unless it's explicitly spelled out to them.

So unless all players are explicitly told to do something by SE (through mandatory content like training sessions or otherwise), this issue will always be here and it will never go away - and threads like this one will continue to be exist.

There is no right position in this thread unless it's one backed by SE.

[Tridus]

But therein lies the problem, especially for players coming from another MMO where healers just heal (like WoW). I would suspect that's a large chunk of the issue, as many people - ESPECIALLY FROM WOW - generally assume that healers just heal and don't really get it unless it's explicitly spelled out to them.

Which tends to happen when they get to Savage, if they haven't figured it out earlier and also didn't do the Hall of the Novice. Such is life. That people new to the game do that isn't really a factor in this thread, because nobody is picking on people new to the game. Also, they're not in here arguing why doing 20% of the effort of everyone else in the party is okay if you've got a Green icon.

There's a massive difference between people who came from another game and don't know that XIV is odd in terms of how healing works, and people who do know better but prefer to argue why standing around doing nothing is okay.

So unless all players are explicitly told to do something by SE (through mandatory content like training sessions or otherwise), this issue will always be here and it will never go away - and threads like this one will continue to be exist.

There is no right position in this thread unless it's one backed by SE.

See, by that logic, my "Flash Only" tank is also not wrong. SE doesn't have any mandatory stuff from 1-70 that explicitly says don't do that, which is the standard you're trying to uphold here. Cooldowns? Never heard of em. AoE? Nah. Getting out of red circles? Hey, if they don't kill you outright, the game doesn't say not to do it (and even in Expert, stuff that will kill you outright is rare). As a bonus, that shifts the workload to the otherwise idle pure healer and is a DPS boost for the DPSer standing in it.

The whole problem with your argument is that you're trying to blame SE for not explicitly forcing people to go through training that tells them they should contribute to the success of the group. At some point, that's just a basic rule of group interaction. If you're in a group, you should do what's within your ability to help the group be successful. That means tanks should hit things and use cooldowns (to help the healer), DPS should get out of bad (to help the healer), and the healer should use their free time to toss rocks (to help everyone, including themselves, since faster death = less stuff to heal).

Standing around doing nothing is not helping. Arguing that it should be okay to stand around doing nothing because SE didn't force you to do Hall of the Novice where they tell you not to do that is a highly entitled and frankly absurd position to take. That kind of attitude is why I hated group projects in University: there's always someone looking to get carried.

[Tridus]

So now it's no one knows what the majority thinks despite the fact that someone basically said that the majority in PF and DF believes that a healer should dps and that was liked multiple times? Now it's contradicting because suddenly when we see that it's not seen often that people complain, now it's nobody knows what the majority thinks.

In a 91 page thread, "someone" has said a lot of things at some point. "Someone" also said SE doesn't want healers to DPS and when pointed to the Hall of the Novice's healer training saying that healers should DPS in idle time (which was made by SE), "someone" then shifted to "well they don't force you to do that so it doesn't count."

Unless its the same person saying contradictory things, it doesn't mean a whole lot, because lots of people have lots of unique positions. Whoever spoke for the majority of players on any position is wrong, because there's no way to know it. There is a way to know what the majority of people using the "like" button in this thread think, but that's about it (and that doesn't really mean a whole lot of anything).

[Chevronone]

The squadron healer in the live letter DPSes when there is no need to heal. I think that pretty much put the nail in the coffin of this debate.

[Sebazy]

A very strong case can be made that the DPS skills were granted to WHMs so they wouldn't need WHM specific duties to progress through the MSQ.

I’m not really convinced about that one TBH, healers have very modest single target DPS, less so than Tanks infact, but all 3 healers can out AoE any Tank and by a significant margin at that.

There is little to no need for potent healer AoE in the MSQ and we would be perfectly fine without it, yet there it is.

It’s also worth noting that SE have a history of being happy to make job’s utterly reliant on others in FFXI, I was one of the best geared Bards in Europe, yet it’d take me 10-15+ minutes to kill anything that gave any EXP solo. And on the flipside, also note that FFXIV 1.0’s healers were both effectively caster DPS hybrids.

As far as a solution to the problem goes. The issue is that a lot of people simply arent receptive to suggestions or advice no matter how tactful and sugar coated it is. I’ve never had issues in my statics and most PF co-healers havent been a problem either. But trying to offer advice in DF is rarely productive at the best of times.

[Ilyrian]

I’ve never had issues in my statics and most PF co-healers havent been a problem either. But trying to offer advice in DF is rarely productive at the best of times.

Very true. I just hold my tongue when leveling a dps and watching other healers performance in 4 mans - unless they are new and clearly struggling with the basics. Whether the healer is dpsing or not is clear in the speed of the dungeon clear but ultimately not worth disrupting the flow of the run.
I did have a fist-in-mouth experience with a healer in a Darkhold run recently. Mentor WHT with the Lux weapon cast nothing but cure 1/regen and /danced during excruciatingly long pulls. I didn't say anything but had to question if they were either playing on a friend's account or had bought it. I'm too busy trying to get to grips with the Bard rotation but it really doesn't set a good example for people looking to this player as a guide to successful healing imo.

[Miste]

In a 91 page thread, "someone" has said a lot of things at some point.

Seoul is probably trying to pin that one on me or HyoMin since a few pages back she asked me a question about my post about compromising and then HyoMin and eraNe1 answered clarifying what I said

Problem is Seoul doesn't understand what I was saying even though they tried to clarify it; so she thinks me or HyoMin said what the majority in the entire game thinks when we didn't. /shrug

There is a difference between majority opinion of the entire game and just the majority opinion of the 3-7 other people you get put with in DF or PF. One is impossible to know, the other you can easily ask them or they might even tell you.