Dear Healers who don't DPS

[Bourne_Endeavor]

This what I find hilarious about this thread.

If a healer dares to suggest that maybe the roulettes aren't the place to mentor people, and that perhaps we should just leave healers in the roulettes alone, they get called below average and treated as such.

It's as if you're just virtue signaling...

They are called below average based on gameplay design. You can't be considered a good player if you're ignoring a third of your abilities. Neither tanks nor DPS get the privilege of ignoring their cooldowns or aoe abilities while still claiming themselves good DPS. It's nothing personal, but a pragmatic evaluation. Furthermore, no one has suggested mentoring in the middle of a roulette necessarily. We're simply discussing healer design on a forum. Should we just cultivate a safe space and say how amazing every healer is because they're trying? More often than not, the healers being criticised in this thread aren't trying, let alone put forth an effort to improve. Which is what the majority of us take umbrage with. The simple fact remains, FFXIV is a game where everyone role can actively contribute to damage. Anyone who doesn't will be criticised unless they are inexperienced. That exception, however, is not resolved exclusively for healers.

Basically, pure healers need stop thinking they're special. If everyone else has to contribute to the extent their abilities allow. So do you.

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.

There is no solution except for people to accept FFXIV embraces a more hybrid philosophy amongst both tanks and healers. In fact, most recent MMOs have abandoned the trinity or its variant altogether.

Actually, there isn't. Holy and Gravity are two of the most potent AoE abilities in the entire game-- far exceeding what is required for any MSQ. Furthermore, if healers were only meant to heal, why does nearly every single White Mage, Astro and Scholar quest involve dealing damage? Now the devs may prefer us to predominantly heal, but gameplay design simply doesn't necessitate it.

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.

Yet you have multiple career healers saying to DPS whom you're arguing against. Regardless, it doesn't take advance knowledge of healer jobs to know standing completely idle is a waste of everyone's time.

[HyoMinPark]

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.

There is a difference between the “majority” you’re thinking, and the “majority” that is actually being discussed. With regards to my personal definition, I apply “majority” to the people you are grouped with when you enter DF/PF/RF. If the “majority” of this party doesn’t care if a healer DPSes or stand around idle spamming /dance, then that’s fine. That’s what the “majority” of that group is okay with. If, on the other hand, the “majority” is NOT okay with a healer standing around doing nothing, then they are allowed to take action, be it kindly asking the person to contribute or rid themselves of the extra weight.

With regards to this thread, I think the “majority” of the posters advocating for healers to contribute just dislike seeing someone getting away with standing around doing nothing because they think they can. It’s unfair when others are called out on lazy play (and I see this frequently: tanks called out on not using proper cooldown, tanks called out on failing to maintain aggro, DPS called out for subpar play—and no, parsers are not involved here; they are usually just calling them out on single-targeting a pack of 7-8 mobs), but that healers think they can get away with standing around 80% tossing out a heal here and there because they have a green icon.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Like if I was a MNK who only used one of my combo sets and not the other, didn't do positionals properly, and didn't know how to use AoE for big pulls...

Off topic but you reminded me of my horror PUG story. I found that Monk! In V2S, she never used Bootshine, True Strike or Snap Punch, but did use Rockbreaker 30+ times and even One Ilm Punch. I would have said something... if I wasn't in disbelief.

[Miste]

Off topic but you reminded me of my horror PUG story. I found that Monk! In V2S, she never used Bootshine, True Strike or Snap Punch, but did use Rockbreaker 30+ times and even One Ilm Punch. I would have said something... if I wasn't in disbelief.

This was painful to read, can't imagine to experience it first hand :/

I mean low level new person okay, but level 70 and savage? No excuse for that ><

Although back when Hullbreaker Isle was an expert dungeon I had a MNK that only spammed Dragon Kick and absolutely nothing else (this was in 2.0 even and before jump potions existed so don't ask me how this happens). That's where I got that example from lol

[Indefiinable]

I just don't get the argument at all. Healers should be utilising their full tool kit, dps should be utilising their full tool kit and.....wait for it...tanks should be utilising their full tool kit. Period.

[MoroMurasaki]

Yet you have multiple career healers saying to DPS whom you're arguing against. Regardless, it doesn't take advance knowledge of healer jobs to know standing completely idle is a waste of everyone's time.

This says it way better and more concisely than I could have. I'd also like to point out that it does not require a class at 70 to be able to advise a new or inexperienced healer that they have an instant cast DoT which they can apply in almost complete safety.

These people from WoW or otherwise might just need to be told about the potential of their class. I don't think there are as many lazy/careless players out there as there are zero DPS healers but you will never know if you don't try.

Also @Almagnus1 I would still like your perspective on why instanced battles in healer questlines require DPS from healers and not just some sort of healing check. You keep going to MSQ and the idea of not having the devs make two fights but that doesn't fly for actual healer job quests which can only be undertaken by healers.

You can ignore the training (be that class quests, hall of the novice or doing even the most basic level of internet research into your class) but in the end it is still there. You typed up that nice long post and didn't refute or disprove anything that I said.

The idea that there won't be an answer to this thread until SE says one way or another is also a little crazy. The only facts you need to come to a conclusion are that healer DPS is more productive than standing idle/overheal and that it is basic courtesy in group content to do your best for your group. Barring the odd player with a disability any player can contribute healer DPS outside of Savage.

[era1Ne]

What.

As others have pointed out, NPC AI and dialog are implemented by SE.

Further, yet again, the opinion of any SE employee, up to and including Yoshi-P, is irrelevant to any gameplay discussion. What they actually code into the game is what affects how we play.

Of course those dialog are implemented by Square Enix, but this doesn't mean it is their opinion or this is what they demand of their player base. Further more, the quest story was not about an healer journey to dps, so using this questline as an point to proof anything is a stretch. At one point the master tells her to never attempt to cast raise for instance. Do you think this it what square wants from healers or do you think this statement of an npc is an good reason for healers not to cast raise anymore? I don't think it is, because those are just part of an story square wanted to tell for reasons we don't know. Those jobquest are imo just an introduction to the lore behind the class, some characters, some skills and not an 101 guides. Imo "but the npc said" (no quote btw), is not a good argument for those reasons.

Edit: Game design matters of course and saying something like "Those dmg skills are there for a reason" is already better than using an sentence of an npc in an jobquest. We could even use the design of the fights, which have very low auto attack dmg, paired with spike dmg every now and then, to make a point, that those fights are designed so healer can dps and the "downtime" is indeed there to dps. Much, much better arguments imo than an dialog of an npc.

[Seoulstar]

snip

Ah..I see, my apologizes for the misunderstanding then.

[MoroMurasaki]

Of course those dialog are implemented by Square Enix, but this doesn't mean it is their opinion or this is what they demand of their player base. Further more, the quest story was not about an healer journey to dps, so using this questline as an point to proof anything is a stretch. At one point the master tells her to never attempt to cast raise for instance. Do you think this it what square wants from healers or do you think this statement of an npc is an good reason for healers not to cast raise anymore? I don't think it is, because those are just part of an story square wanted to tell for reasons we don't know and the quests aren't an 101 heal guide. Those jobquest are imo just an introduction to the lore behind the class, some characters and some skills. Nothing else, for better or worse in this game. Imo "but the npc said", is not a good argument for those reasons.


This is an issue i got with ff14 btw, because those quest, while fun, don't really teach people how to play the class even at an slightly above basic level. Don't get me wrong, i would be against jobquest, that teach you everything (opener, rotation, ...), since the community does already an good job and if the developer would release an opener, then many would treat this as gospel more than some are treating openers from the community as gopsel now. An developer should imo not interfere like that with the community and gladly they don't.

As I think at least part of this most recent conversation about Sylphie came from me I would like to say you have the wrong interpretation of why it was brought up. If this is in any way due to me not fully explaining something I apologize.

I don't mean to use Sylphie and her story to say "Square says DPS",rather as a lore-based realization of the CNJ connection to nature magic. In the quest Sylphie has to reconnect with that part of her magic and I think (in an artistic sense) that does fit the pro-DPS narrative. She is being told that to grow and progress she has to open herself up to this aspect of her magic in the same way that a baby healer (either from WoW or otherwise) might have to expand their horizons to go further in the game. It is by no means a direct parallel but the similaraties exist. Whether this was the intention of SE or not with that questline is irrelevent, as are all dev opinions unless they exact some kind of meaningful change on how the game is actually played. Video games are like any other kind of art in that once released they are open to interperettation.

If the Sylphie storyline has any bearing on healer DPS directly it is to give an in-character reason for healers to DPS.

None of that changes the fact that many people do interpret Sylphie's story as direction to embrace their kit just like people learn relavent things from other job quests even when they aren't tutorials. In my opinion it is rather shortsighted to not leave yourself open to this sort of learning.

I also challenge you to describe why healer job quest instanced battles are designed primarily around combat if not to encourage healers to use their entire toolkit. They could have easily made each one basically a big healcheck with some dodging/mechanics but they did not. You may heal NPC's in those quests but you also mow down a whole bunch of enemies.

[Cynfael]

Snip.

I'm on mobile and can't tackle all of that yet, but one thing...

Where do you see me mentioning that CNJ quest NPC in my argument? Besides, no one actually needs her to prove a point; her dialog is just humorous in the context of threads like these. When it comes to "why it makes sense for healers generally to DPS," there is no shortage of points in favor.