Dear Healers who don't DPS

[Almagnus1]

I don't know what's worse, an actual noob or someone who supposedly knows their job (not class) yet fails to use the toolkit effectively. WHMs excel at large pulls in dungeons, YOU are the problem here. c:

Because the only problem here is the one in your head.

If you're in 4-man content, I fail to see how it's a big deal not knowing what other healer job DoTs look like. You should be concerned about tossing your own DoTs up there as a healer. It's not like any of them overwrite (aside from resistance down debuffs but those aren't really DoTs). If you have to give out advice to another healer and you are not healing, then familiarize yourself with the different DoTs. Again, SB got rid of a lot of them, so it's not that hard to identify them. They all look different. Same thing with DPS. You can hover over the DoTs to see what they're called to help familiarize yourself with them.

You do bring up a good point about knowing DoTs, however, the only time prior to SB that I actually saw other healer DoTs was in 8 and 24 man content, as my PLD alt was something that was getting leveled on the side (like maybe an instance or two every week) for most of HW, and actually something getting played since SB because of the cracked clusters.

You're making healer DPS WAY more complicated that it needs to be. A tank is doing a large pull? As a WHM, you have the perfect mitigation for this: HOLY. Big damage, and a stun that lasts for at least 3 casts before the immunity sets in. The bigger the pull, the better because it's more damage you're dishing out.

Thin Air only buys me 12 seconds of no mana costs, which is about 5 or so Holy (or Aero 3) casts with Presence of Mind before Holy starts eating my mana pool. A lot of what I'm balancing is whether or not I can do enough DPS to the mobs combined with the other party DPS so that we're down to something I can reasonably manage with Cure 2 by the time both Thin Air and PoM fall off or not.

The other thing to keep in mind is that Thin Air + Lucid Dreaming are pretty awesome for mana regeneration, so there's consideration on where we are in the instance prior to the next boss, as having both Thin Air and Lucid Dreaming. Most of the time this isn't an issue with Thin Air, but the cooldown on Presence of Mind needs to be planned around a little bit so that I have it and can chaingun off Stone 4's on the boss at 1.8s cast with PoM up.

There's a lot more that I'm taking into consideration in instance than just "large group of mobs therefore go AoE mode", and that's probably true of almost any good healer.

So you are advocating a "safe space." Sorry, but if someone says mean things to you in DF, get over it. People who are willing to ridicule don't need a discussion on the official forums to fuel their intent. They'll do it regardless.

I'm not trying to fix them per se, just discussing how healing works based on the design in FFXIV. I'll certainly argue they aren't good healers though.

Eh no, I don't want to have to deal with the drama created when some idiot DPSer starts harassing someone else in the party because they aren't up to their "standards" - more out of concern for my fellow player than myself, really.

First and foremost, you can absolutely DPS on a mega pull. Swiftcast Holy into Aero III does a surprising amount. Nevertheless, you are quite mistaken. Take the largest pull we can do currently. Dedicated DPS like Red Mage and Samurai can top 10,000 DPS-- far exceeding the loss of some Holy spam on a smaller pack. I did the huge Ala Mhgian pull with just a Summoner (RDM died to aoes) and they were still melting everything while breaking 8,000 DPS. Those pulls simply put greater onus on the DPS to be competent but they are faster.

The number of DPS that this has been an issue with (from my experience), shows that expecting the DPS to do that is only going to lead to increased healing load on the healer.

You have missed the point of this thread. No one has said kick pure healers en masse. We're simply not defending them when talking about healer design in the same vein we wouldn't defend squishy tanks who don't use CDs.

Then why are you, and several others, calling me a "bad healer" and attempting to tell me stuff I already know about WHM?

Which is a failure in design if the devs want to encourage healing over damage. Having completed White Mage up to 60 story wise, I had precisely one quest where I had to actually dedicate some healing to the NPCs. A friend of mine routinely complained how little emphasis is placed on actually healing.

Again, if all of the WHM quests were healing centric... wouldn't that get kinda boring?

You would be correct, however what the devs prefer and what gameplay allows are two distinctly different things. Yoshida openly dislikes our DPS focus "meta," but until they necessitate more healing, no one will care.

I think that's a bigger issue with SE, as they really don't take a strong stance one way or the other.... thus these threads.

Gameplay allows healers to outdamage tanks in most content, thus it's expected of your after a certain point to get comfortable DPSing. If you're level 70 with decent gear, it doesn't matter what the content is, toss out some DoTs or something.

You know, if you had said something more clever, like:

Follow the ABCs of WHM: Always Be Casting

That remark might have been a bit more to the point....

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Eh no, I don't want to have to deal with the drama created when some idiot DPSer starts harassing someone else in the party because they aren't up to their "standards" - more out of concern for my fellow player than myself, really.

No offense, but welcome to the Internet. You're going to get jerks in your party. Report and/or kick them. Telling an idle healer who is clearly not new to maybe DPS or, you know, not stand still, isn't "harassment" anymore than telling a tank "Could you use something more than Shield Oath?" What irks many people is we'll accept such criticism towards tanks without a second thought yet healers get coddled because their feelings might get hurt. Why isn't any other role afforded that?

The number of DPS that this has been an issue with (from my experience), shows that expecting the DPS to do that is only going to lead to increased healing load on the healer.

Unless the DPS are completely useless, big pulls are still faster. Per my example, I had myself on tank, an Astro and a Summoner and things were still dying extremely fast given the handicap.

Then why are you, and several others, calling me a "bad healer" and attempting to tell me stuff I already know about WHM?

I can't speak for anyone else, however when I said "you" I meant in general terms.

Again, if all of the WHM quests were healing centric... wouldn't that get kinda boring?

Depends on how they were written. You can tell a compelling narrative and have us heal NPCs. Even if a few more quests focused on healing that might help, but one, one White Mage quest actually requires you to keep anyone else. You're basically a DPS otherwise.

You know, if you had said something more clever, like:

Follow the ABCs of WHM: Always Be Casting

That remark might have been a bit more to the point....

Okay? Since you follow that stance, or at least claim to, what's the hold up? Call me crazy but healers at max level should have learned their ABCs ages ago yet you've spent the last several pages trying to give them a pass. Yes, it's Expert Roulette but that doesn't change the debate since a good number of those healers move onto other content. Not very many of us will "call them out" per se. That doesn't mean we won't discuss it on a, well, discussion forum. If someone reads this thread and uses it to justify harassment, they were just looking for an excuse to be a jerk. That has no bearing on us or our opinions.

[Seoulstar]

Because people willing to scream obscenities at you aren't worth your time? I'm not saying take the abuse. Have at it with them and/or report them. I just don't see the purpose behind caring what toxic people like that have to say. Now this differs substantially if said person is trying to offer advice you just don't happen to like.

I should also add I was being a touch sarcastic with my phrasing. "Mean things" is my way of mocking how oversensitive some people get at the slightest remark.

While they're not worth ones time. I can not help but to think they shouldn't be that tilted over something so minor to begin with. Oh well~

[Sebazy]

In fact, one of the things that irks me the most with wall to wall pulling is that the tank completely denies me my ability to DPS, and usually when I am able to DPS everything's basically dead so I'm not able to contribute DPS. Essentially, big pulls are actually slowing down the group rather than pulling like 2 groups, we beat them down, and advance. The other fun things are when undergeared tanks use sword stance and start taking massive damage, so again, I can't DPS because I have to deal with a squishy tank.

I don't know how receptive you'll be to my suggestions, but eh, it was commented earlier that there weren't enough suggestions and solutions being banded around so eh, here goes <3

Simply put, my best DPS runs in dungeons have been with large pulls, it's as simple as that. I'm pretty much experiencing the opposite of what you're saying, if the tank pulls quickly and cleanly, that allows me to really go to town.

Eg: (3.8k DPS on a 21 minute run) vs (3.5k DPS on an 19 minute run)

The first link was with an excellent tank but the DPS wasn't really there at all (In fairness, the BLM also DC'd, so was better than their numbers might suggest). In the second link, the tank was solid but not doing nearly as pristine a job as the first group in stacking up pulls. So despite the DPS being roughly the same and the run actually being quicker due to no DC or such, my DPS actually suffered a little due to wasted potency on fluff pulls.

How do I do this? Probably the most immediate thing I'd suggest is that IMHO, stacking Thin Air and Lucid is the wrong way to go. Stagger them apart with the aim of having one for each pull to avoid the disastrous situation of running on fumes and having a minute to go on all your resource CDs. By comparison, by stacking both together, you're either using them significantly later than you could be, or you're pressing them early and potentially wasting a bunch of Lucid ticks as you promptly hit full MP.

Secondly, have faith in the holy stun and get a good handle on how long that first stun takes to bite. Even if your tank is taking a hammering, holy is incredible CC and with particularly slow groups or poor tanks, that's the purpose I'll use it for rather than it's raw DPS. Throw that first Holy and use the window to get Aeros up if you think you're not going to be able to DPS much more.

Third, don't be afraid to play it safe, but don't feel playing it safe means that you can't DPS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdU4tRrX984

I explained this a few pages back but just incase you missed it, that Benediction look's close @35 seconds right? Look closer, I could have Bene'd 10 seconds later and it would have been fine (If a little nerve wracking). I'm not a huge fan of swift casting the opening Holy if I can avoid it, rather I tend to open with a Cure II on big pulls to gauge the incoming damage and go from there. I always suggest it, but recording and watching back works wonders here for realising how much or little room you're actually leaving on the table without the pressure of the moment skewing your judgement.

As far as PoM on bosses goes, I will use it if it's up at the start of a boss, but if it pops later, I'll save it for the next trash pack.

In closing, even on wall to wall pulls, WHM DPS is incredible. I'm pretty confident that with the tank from the first run I linked and more typical DPS, I could have hit 4k DPS across the run (I was 4168 going into the Coeurlfist). Seeing how hard I can push myself is the main entertainment in roulettes for me. And unlike static raids, it's really not that big a drama when I step over the line.

[Almagnus1]

Okay? Since you follow that stance, or at least claim to, what's the hold up? Call me crazy but healers at max level should have learned their ABCs ages ago yet you've spent the last several pages trying to give them a pass. Yes, it's Expert Roulette but that doesn't change the debate since a good number of those healers move onto other content. Not very many of us will "call them out" per se. That doesn't mean we won't discuss it on a, well, discussion forum. If someone reads this thread and uses it to justify harassment, they were just looking for an excuse to be a jerk. That has no bearing on us or our opinions.

Ok, so this is coming from my PLD perspective (as the overwhelming majority of the time I'm on WHM), but I've had enough issues with healers in the past when I tried pointing stuff out that while it's it's backfired about as often as it's actually helped... most of the time it's been like talking to a wall as the healer in question keeps on with what they're doing and ignores whatever suggestion I may have made.

That also lead back to the point I made earlier with the "bad" in the instance, as it's often a confluence of poor gear without a clear understanding of a class with no motivation to improve that causes these players to barely get through the rous, but do it nonetheless. If they don't want to improve, there is nothing any of us will ever do to make them want get better - that change has to come from within them.

While yes, you could try to help those apathetic few... it's only going to cause you more stress than it's really worth, and have zero impact on the long term. At the end of the day, if I'm running a DF with random people (which is often the case as I'm on the US West Coast with an East Coast FC), is it really worth the additional stress?

[MoroMurasaki]

At the end of the day, if I'm running a DF with random people (which is often the case as I'm on the US West Coast with an East Coast FC), is it really worth the additional stress?

At the very least if you are not willing to put youself out there and advise your PUG healers about little ways they can improve would you at least stop trying to talk others out of it? Just because that specific situation is unduly stressful for you does not make it so for others.

Also I can't urge you enough to read Sebazy's post and take some of that to heart when it comes to DPSing on large pulls. All of the advice is really spot on and this debate about other (imo lazy) healers aside you seem to care about doing the best job you can, that post will only help, specifically the part about keeping Lucid and Thin Air separate.

I do want to tack on that several times you've brought up people who just don't care enough to try more. While talking to those people can certainly proove irritating I wonder what detriment it is causing? If they're already bad or lazy telling them about the DPS side of healing isn't hurting them and if they're just new or inexperienced you might be the catalyst that gets them on the road to being more productive.

[era1Ne]

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.

Personally, i see (almost) every jobquest as an introduction to the skills and of course for healers, dmg skills are part of the tools an healers has and imo should use it. But for me the story was more about the lore behind it and not a way for them to trying to demand from healers to dps. How are they able to cast spells from so many different elements? What is their job/standing in the world? And so on and not an guide. I've done every jobquest to level 60 and personally never felt they wanted to teach me anything other than "there is an new skill you can use and this is what it does". Of course opinions are different and some interpret things differently.

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.

The fact is we don't know why they decided to do this. But imo they just wanted to tell their story first and foremost and ofc thats just an opinion as we all just can guess why they did make those decision. I think besides telling the story, they just wanted to say "Look here are the skills you can use, instead of saying either "ONLY HEAL!!!" or "ONLY DPS!!!" or anything in between. This could be why they decided to make quest for healers in which you heal, dps or do both, as an introduction to your toolkit and the different elements.

The reason, why i don't read to much into solo instance gameplay is that in at least 90% of them imo, wether it be msq, jobquest or so on, tanks don't need to hold aggro, while in 100% of the group content (well low level to an lesser extend, cause the outgoing dmg is so low), tanks need to hold aggro. Don't get me wrong, game design matters, but if we talk about what people have/should do in group content, than imo using dungeons, raids, ... and their design is an much better point to make. The novice arena is better for this reason aswell, because it prepares you for dungeons aka group content.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Ok, so this is coming from my PLD perspective (as the overwhelming majority of the time I'm on WHM), but I've had enough issues with healers in the past when I tried pointing stuff out that while it's it's backfired about as often as it's actually helped... most of the time it's been like talking to a wall as the healer in question keeps on with what they're doing and ignores whatever suggestion I may have made.

It depends on how you go about it. On Paladin, you can type in chat, "I'm going to Hallowed this pull! So you can DPS for a bit." Now they may not take the initiative, but you've encouraged them to try without actually saying it. In regards to stubborn healers who play "their way," I wouldn't bother. I'd just switch into Sword Oath and try to make up for their lack of damage. That all being said, I'm not going to post online pure healers can play however they like. Of course, they can, but players willing to improve won't see a thread like this and recoil. They'll either ask themselves, go to friends or look at other players on Youtube and Twitch.

Personally, i see (almost) every jobquest as an introduction to the skills and of course for healers, dmg skills are part of the tools an healers has and imo should use it. But for me the story was more about the lore behind it and not a way for them to trying to demand from healers to dps. How are they able to cast spells from so many different elements? What is their job/standing in the world? And so on and not an guide. I've done every jobquest to level 60 and personally never felt they wanted to teach me anything other than "there is an new skill you can use and this is what it does". Of course opinions are different and some interpret things differently.

What prevents them from necessitating a few quests where we have to heal NPCs? The level 52 (54?) White Mage quest requires you to heal and deal damage since you'll be overwhelmed if any NPCs die too early. Not every quest needs be like that, but more than one would be nice. None of this changes the lore or potential character development. It simply helps reinforce the healer role instead of making us a hybrid DPS. As for why the don't. Call me cynical, but I suspect because it's easier to program.

[Tridus]

None of this changes the lore or potential character development. It simply helps reinforce the healer role instead of making us a hybrid DPS. As for why the don't. Call me cynical, but I suspect because it's easier to program.

Every single class quest for every single class that isn't a healer and involves combat at all boils down to "kill this stuff, and we'll either give you an NPC that can heal and/or a buff that provides a HoT". You see that pattern constantly throughout the solo duties, class quest or otherwise. Hell, I got *both* on the 65 RDM quest last night, and that job can heal itself just fine.

The healer ones don't tend to get the HoT, but we get another NPC healer more often than you might expect. When we don't, we are still supposed to kill stuff and also heal ourselves (and the NPCs). The pattern is effectively the same. Quests that rely on you healing primarily are exceedingly rare, and it's hard to see a reason why except that it'd require them to do something drastically different than what they're doing for everyone else. This tends to get silliest on WHM, where "heal one NPC" actually means "ignore that NPC and DPS until they're at 5%, then fire Benediction". NPCs have such huge health pools that Benediction heals for astronomical numbers and just negates the whole healing side of it.

It's somewhat disappointing that we don't see the healing aspect played up on healer specific quests, but not surprising. I mean, it took until Stormblood for the MSQ to acknowledge that a WoL healer could exist, FFS. That lead to a lot of ridiculous moments where NPCs are running around frantically calling for healing because someone was just seriously injured, and the WoL, who just *healed 7 other people through the trial that led to the cutscene* stands around and does nothing while everyone gets a case of sudden onset amnesia about how they're a godly healer.

SE's focus is very much on the DPS end of things. When the majority of players are DPS, it's easier to make content that treats everyone like DPS. Tank quests are similar. I'm not sure there is a single PLD job quest that you'd ever leave Sword Oath for, let alone actively trying to tank.

[HyoMinPark]

snip

Like I always tell a friend of mine: why do people care so much over what strangers say to them over the Internet? I was called a trash bard a few days ago by an individual who literally said he was better than me because he supposedly has a job and a college degree. Know what I did? Well, after actually laughing at how ridiculous he sounded, I shrugged it off. Actually, that person has become a joke/meme in my circle of friends because of how utterly ridiculous he acted; people like him crack me up.

If people want to report someone for harassment (which, asking a healer to actually contribute to the group is not the same as harassment), then they are free to do so. And no one is telling people to just take it if someone says truly disgusting things to them (I'm talking thing like hate-speech or to tell someone to go "kill themselves", not "stop being lazy [healer] and please contribute to the group"); that certainly wasn't what Bourne_Endeavor was saying. By all means, report such behavior and don't tolerate it. But someone telling a healer to DPS? A DPS to AOE? A tank to use proper mitigation? Those are not statements that can be considered harassment.

All we're saying is for people to not get so bent out of shape the minute someone says the smallest thing against their playstyle; and to stop taking comments like "can you please contribute to the group" like a sort of personal insult that warrants a "safe space-esque" environment to be implemented into the DF. People act like someone telling them to actively contribute is like the person insulting their ancestors or something. Not the case. Asking for equal and fair contribution =/= harassment or a personal attack.

Thin Air only buys me 12 seconds of no mana costs, which is about 5 or so Holy (or Aero 3) casts with Presence of Mind before Holy starts eating my mana pool. A lot of what I'm balancing is whether or not I can do enough DPS to the mobs combined with the other party DPS so that we're down to something I can reasonably manage with Cure 2 by the time both Thin Air and PoM fall off or not.

The other thing to keep in mind is that Thin Air + Lucid Dreaming are pretty awesome for mana regeneration, so there's consideration on where we are in the instance prior to the next boss, as having both Thin Air and Lucid Dreaming. Most of the time this isn't an issue with Thin Air, but the cooldown on Presence of Mind needs to be planned around a little bit so that I have it and can chaingun off Stone 4's on the boss at 1.8s cast with PoM up.

There's a lot more that I'm taking into consideration in instance than just "large group of mobs therefore go AoE mode", and that's probably true of almost any good healer.

Such planning and balancing is what makes a healer a good healer that can contribute both in healing and DPS to a party. Knowing your limits with regards to MP, watching your cooldowns (Lucid, Thin Air, Aetherflow for SCH, drawing a Ewer for AST, Lightspeed for AST, etc.), and actively contributing to the group is what I think makes a good healer.

I don’t really understand the mindset of “holding off DPS because what if my MP dips below half” in 4–man content. Because there is more than enough time between pulls for natural regen to take place, not to mention Lucid Dreaming is pretty potent (even if I do miss AST’s Luminiferous Aether), and on a pretty short cooldown of 120 seconds. There is not enough outgoing damage in most DF instances to warrant sitting on almost full-MP, and a good healer will know both how to balance DPS and their limits when it comes to a group—something that will change from party to party.

Eh no, I don't want to have to deal with the drama created when some idiot DPSer starts harassing someone else in the party because they aren't up to their "standards" - more out of concern for my fellow player than myself, really.

This hardly qualifies as something one should get super bent out of shape over, or start advocating for “safe spaces”. Someone says something rude to you in real life, you should shrug it off. More so in a video game. If the speech is something along the lines of hate speech (example, racist remarks), then by all means, report them. But someone telling someone that they aren’t up to their “standards” (which, actually, a lot of players that talk like this rarely have the grounds to brag about being the Big Cheese) is something that everyone should learn to laugh off. Not worth your time to worry about what Joe Shmoe said to you in Duty Finder about DPS.

Again, if all of the WHM quests were healing centric... wouldn't that get kinda boring?

To which, I raise you: “Again, if all of Duty Finder were healing centric... wouldn’t that get kinda boring?”

I think that's a bigger issue with SE, as they really don't take a strong stance one way or the other.... thus these threads.

SE is never going to come out and say that they think healers shouldn’t DPS/should DPS, that DPS should AOE/shouldn’t AOE large pulls, and that tanks should/shouldn’t drop tank stance because they are aware that they cannot force a single playstyle onto the playerbase. They can certainly try—I do think they tried in Stormblood to increase healing needs in some of the leveling dungeons, and to try and advocate for tanks to remain in stance (that didn’t work; see: WAR and Beast Gauge penalty). But at the end of the day, the playerbase will decide how they want to play the game. And I feel like SE knows that they can’t really change nor stop that.

You can certainly play how you want to play, but when you enter Duty Finder, Party Finder, or even Raid Finder, and are paired with 3 or 7 or 23 other randoms, everyone should try to at least find a way to cooperate with one another, rather than being like: “Well, I’m a healer; I don’t have to DPS because it’s not my job” or “I’m a RDM; I don’t have to use Verraise because support isn’t my job” or “I’m a BRD; I’m suppose to DPS and providing MP/TP regen isn’t part of my job.”

If you vehemently dislike the way individuals are behaving in DF, or do not want to be a team player, then, like so many anti-healer DPS individuals suggest, you are more than welcome to run with premades—the premade argument goes both ways—or leave. Personally speaking, if someone tried to force me into a heal-only role, I don’t find that fun, so I would remove myself from the duty and let them find someone more suited to their needs. I have better ways to spend my time than deal with something I consider “not fun.”