Toxic WHM Glare spammers

[MPK]

But did you die?!

[RajNish]

But did you die?!

When? When did the other group deploy their boss on us? Or when I resurrected our group?

[SweetestLily]

The problem is that you are not reading exactly what I am talking about. I'm talking about people who don't heal at all. No way. Nowhere. Savage PF group. Heal is dead, tank is dead, WHM spamming their Glare while RDM and SMN resing ppl. And no, I'm not against off-dps optimization. Unless it's when half of your group is dead and the rest are 5% HP, because lack of healing.

I read EXACTLY what you said and quite frankly I think you are being hyperbolic. You already admitted to prejudging every white mage you get based off of experiences with other white mages being bad. What is there to argue about? And I refuse to believe 80% of the white mages you get don't heal at all. I have played this game for years and that percentage is ridiculously exaggerated. That leads me to believe you are one of the people who don't know what optimal white mage play is.

[Packetdancer]

I *tend* to be a responsible healer, but if I have a co-healer who on their own accord isn't doing much offensive output and tends to overheal, I do lighten up on the healing. There's no sense in overhealing the overheal. At the same time, I am also an aggressive WHM. I absolutely will DPS, and I will not play the game of keeping everyone at 100%, as overheal is a waste of MP, a waste of effort, and in end slows things down for everyone.

This.

I mean, every healer can have an afternoon where they get tunnel vision—honestly, any job can—and get focused on "I WILL KILL THIS THING" to the point that they don't notice the DPS has just eaten an AoE and is now staggering around bleeding from basically everywhere. Tanks can get tunnel vision and miss that there's one late-arriving mob not on their aggro table who they don't have aggro on. DPS can get tunnel vision and... well, eat an AoE and stagger around bleeding from basically everywhere.

But a good healer will judge the party within a couple of pulls. If you're in an 8-man or 24-man instance and your co-healer is going nuts with healing everyone to full, why heal atop their healing? Sure, try it for a bit, because sometimes they'll go "oh, good, my co-healer knows what they're doing, we'll be fine" and chill out, but most often they won't; at that point, the party benefits more if you swap to focusing on damage. If mister Angry Spinning Eyeball dies faster, we're all on to the next thing that much more quickly. Obviously keep an eye on things while you DPS; if the co-healer runs out of MP or is struggling/dead, yes, you should switch your focus.

And sure, if I see a tank who's clearly nervous and freaking out when I let their health drop a bit low, then I'll shift gears and keep them closer to topped-off even when I know it's overkill. Because "read the room" is a skill most MMO players should have.

In general, though, good healers are going to know when to heal and when not to; "the tank is at 70% health" is (generally) not when to heal, unless there's an incoming tankbuster or you've got a tank who legitimately isn't using any mitigations at all but has pulled eleventy-hundred mobs all at once. After all, if a tank is at 90% health and I hit them with a heal that would heal them to 110% health, I've wasted 10% of that. If I do it every time the tank drops to 90% health, then after three heals I've wasted 30% of my healing, nearly a full third. Whereas if I let them drop lower and hit them with those same heals I've done the same number of casts, yet countered more incoming damage.

Plus, some abilities literally heal more depending on how low the target's health is. As an AST, I'll happily let a tank drop to 40-50% if I'm about to hit them with an Essential Dignity due to the way it scales. As a WHM, I'll let a tank drop to ~20% if I'm planning to use Benediction to heal them, because no one will ever convince me that Benediction should be only an "oh shit" button; it's one of the best parts of a WHM's healing arsenal and should not be left in a glass "In Case of Emergency" box. (Though going much below 15% makes me nervous about server ticks, because we've all seen the 'whups, Benediction went off the second AFTER the tank dropped' moments...)

When folks ask "did you die?" with regards to a healer's performance, it comes across as snarky, I grant. And it's hardly a perfect question; you might not have died, but that might've been because you had an inept healer but a really good RDM who could judge exactly when Vercure was needed and compensate. But there's some truth to it nonetheless; if your complaint is "I got below 50% health", but the healer still had the situation fully under control... well, did you die? No? Then the healer probably knew what they were doing.

Situations differ, of course, because a WHM at 80 and a WHM level-synced to 50 are very different healing kits; the former has several excellent OGCD tools (Tetra, Benediction, Benison, Plenary, Assize... though really, that last one is a DPS skill with a convenient healing side-effect) as well as three good instant-cast GCD tools (Regen, Solace, and Rapture), which means I can basically drop a heal-nuke incredibly quickly. While the latter has... well, Benediction and Regen, and then a bunch of GCD tools subject to cast time. So a WHM at 50 probably SHOULD be spending more time focused on healing than one at 80 will, yes.

[MomomiMomi]

Look if you're a WHM I would assume part of doing your job would be to keep a regen on the tank.

Then you assume wrong. Regen when needed, yes. But if it's not needed it's a wasted cast when the tank would have been healed by your assize or Asylum or what have you that's coming up.

[Gothicshark]

I know this situation is not new at all, but it is quite annoying and ruins the fun of the game.

Every time I see a WHM in my party, I expect that this player may not heal, instead there will be Glare/Stones spam. No regen, no bubble, no res, not the slightest effort. Sometimes just Cure I/II on 5-10% HP, or healing only themselves.

In 80% of cases, everything turns out to be exactly that toxic way, and either I have to heal the entire raid alone as a healer, losing a huge amount of mana. Or I have to think only about my own survival instead of wall-to-wall pulls and uptime playing as a tank or dps.

It's not a big problem if I'm playing PLD or WAR, but I'm not having fun at all, compensating for someone's laziness. The joke about green DPS is no longer funny. Cause I come to have fun and not to heal for them or try to survive while they are throwing stones.

Disclaimer: Not all WHM's behave this way. There are excellent players to whom I am very grateful, but due to subjective experience, I have met spammers of stones much more often.

You, sir, are an example of why I don't heal random dungeons. I refuse to queue as a healer in any 4 party dungeon. As a person who enjoys healing, and playing 2 out of 3 healing classes, I have found the toxic expectations towards a healer to be bothersome. "DPS, don't DPS, Heal this way not that way, You Heal too much, you heal too little." it's always the same story.

As a Healer player, I love actually healing, I love keeping my team alive and being able to help them, but the attitudes healers get from Tanks mostly has forced me to only heal friends, or Raids and Trials. So remember this while you wait 30minutes for a queue to pop on a random dungeon, and think, is the lack of healers caused by something you said?

p.s. White Mage and Astrologian, not a fan of fairy healing, as it all feels to automated.

[Squig]

I’m not going to suggest that you’re lying 100% but in my years of playing since 2.x, I have literally never run into a healer like this. At least, not in any situation where it’s caused a problem. Far, FAR more often do I see curebots who never bother to use Holy/Gravity/Art of War, their single target DPS spells, constantly use the garbage skill each healer gets as their first basic heal or Medica/Succor/Helios, etc. In my mind, for this to be a problem worth making a forum post about suggests that you are either being hyperbolic or are otherwise conflating DPS optimization with literally only casting Glare.

[sleepy-bear]

You, sir, are an example of why I don't heal random dungeons. I refuse to queue as a healer in any 4 party dungeon. As a person who enjoys healing, and playing 2 out of 3 healing classes, I have found the toxic expectations towards a healer to be bothersome. "DPS, don't DPS, Heal this way not that way, You Heal too much, you heal too little." it's always the same story.

As a Healer player, I love actually healing, I love keeping my team alive and being able to help them, but the attitudes healers get from Tanks mostly has forced me to only heal friends, or Raids and Trials. So remember this while you wait 30minutes for a queue to pop on a random dungeon, and think, is the lack of healers caused by something you said?

We'd get along at least. My attitude towards random healers in dungeons is simple "no wipe, no problem". I could (and often do) notice when healers aren't making full use of their moveset as the OP describes, but when tanking I'm simply too concerned with keeping the pain train moving to stop and offer a critique. It's only when wipes start happening that I consider giving my feedback.

[Coletergeist]

We'd get along at least. My attitude towards random healers in dungeons is simple "no wipe, no problem". I could (and often do) notice when healers aren't making full use of their moveset as the OP describes, but when tanking I'm simply too concerned with keeping the pain train moving to stop and offer a critique. It's only when wipes start happening that I consider giving my feedback.

Typically same; you never know when someone is having an off day, as it happens to everyone. I give the benefit of the doubt and only start saying something if it /really/ starts to affect the whole party in a way it becomes bothersome.

I try to be nice about it too (at least as much as I can; everyone takes things differently). Because again, you'll never know how the person on the other side of the screen is fairing.

[Ilyrian]

The skill of healing in this game - outside of the actually challenging rote learned content - is being able to always be casting your main dps spell but playing the GCD so you're covering the healing.