What's up with healers not healing?

[Tlamila]

This is exactly why old threads need to be locked.

This thread was over 3.5 YEARS old and someone necro'd it, adding nothing to the conversation that hasn't already been said.

It's forum abuse and shouldn't be tolerated.

This to be honest. Why are people answering to what others said 4 years ago, in a completely different state of the game, balance, skillsets and all?
Apples and oranges.

[Avatre]

This to be honest. Why are people answering to what others said 4 years ago, in a completely different state of the game, balance, skillsets and all?
Apples and oranges.

This is one reason I would advocate the locking(not deleting or archiving, but just locking from responses) threads that are from a previous expansion, especially when the topic of the thread has VASTLY changed.

[SnowVix]

As someone who is trying to learn WHM now (I healed for 15 years in other games) I can tell you that for me anyways DPS wise the best I can do many times is get a few DOTS out. The rest of the time I am healing. Between people standing in bad. Me trying to dodge bad myself while healing. Tanks pulling huge and running off. My poor level 29 healing kit just does not afford me much time to DPS if everyone is going to stay alive. I am learning. I will get better. Right now I am focused on keeping people alive 1st and foremost.

Most people have been very nice to me as I learn. There are unfortunately always exceptions and those can be pretty off putting. If I didn't have so much experience healing in other games with far worse communities than this one I probably would have given up after my first dungeon when a very nasty person linked parses and screamed at me for bad DPS. I was like um dude its Sastasha and I have never healed in this game before. I did what I felt I could do safely and no one died. Thanks for reminding me why I left those other games. LOL

this is the actual problem, is that people treat early game content like it's end game content and assume that everyone has enough of a kit for mass pulls. healers are very unequal throughout the leveling curve, they even out at expansion end. SCH is just a green DPS who lets the fairy do 99% of the work until Cutter's Cry/Stone Vigil, where they take a massive hit as the Fairy can't keep up but they also don't have the tools they need for mass pulls, and don't get those tools until 50. WHM is actually pretty weak at healing until about Halatali, then it stays strong through 50, and AST has Essential Dignity which is just ridiculously OP in early levels but evens out as incoming damage accelerates.

and anyone who gives you crap about DPS in Sastasha and links parses in game deserves a Report Harassment

[HyoMinPark]

This to be honest. Why are people answering to what others said 4 years ago, in a completely different state of the game, balance, skillsets and all?
Apples and oranges.

I mean. With regards to healers DPSing during downtime, that was very much still a thing 3.5 years ago when this thread was made. That didn’t change at all between then and now. They’re still expected to deal damage when healing isn’t required because no piece of content requires 100% healing uptime. Not even Ultimate. It doesn’t even require 50% healing uptime.

[Shofie]

I was in raid recently where someone died and both healers (and a red mage) just...completely ignored the dead person in favor of spamming Glare. Like...I don't care how good your DPS is as a healer, it's not better than that dead DPS just lying there.

I have noticed an outbreak of healers who just tunnel vision real bad and let people die more lately. I feel like it's the eventual product of "healers who don't dps are bad healers", tbh.

[Packetdancer]

As someone who is trying to learn WHM now (I healed for 15 years in other games) I can tell you that for me anyways DPS wise the best I can do many times is get a few DOTS out. The rest of the time I am healing. Between people standing in bad. Me trying to dodge bad myself while healing. Tanks pulling huge and running off. My poor level 29 healing kit just does not afford me much time to DPS if everyone is going to stay alive. I am learning. I will get better. Right now I am focused on keeping people alive 1st and foremost.

Honestly, this doesn't mean you're a bad healer, and anyone who criticizes you for focusing on healing at that level is being a jerk. Up to a certain level, WHM honestly doesn't even possess the versatility in healing to do as much damage as the other healers; SCH can let the fairy handle some healing and use oGCD abilities like Lustrate, AST's Essential Dignity is wildly overpowered in low-level content, etc. At level 29? Yeah, your options are severely limited. (At level 29, most healers' options are severely limited.)

Where healers DPS'ing tends to be most relevant is later in the game. By level 80 content, I have various things I can weave in between casts to mitigate damage, set up healing for folks, etc.

I can throw Dia (level 80 DoT) on a mob, weave Divine Benison (a shield) to mitigate damage on the tank as they keep pulling, continue tossing Dia on mobs as the tank collects them and I follow. When I reach the tank, I can throw Regen (an instant-cast GCD heal-over-time) on them, double-weave Assize (400 potency damage to all mobs nearby, 400 potency heal to party members nearby, refill a good chunk of my MP) and Presence of Mind (speeds up my cast times), and then just go ham on Holy (140 potency damage to all mobs nearby, plus a stun effect). The first couple of Holy blasts will stun the mobs until they build up stun immunity, too, so the tank isn't taking damage while the mobs are stunned; damage not dealt is damage I don't have to heal, and I'm doing a fair chunk of damage simultaneously. And I have options (lily heals, weaving Tetragrammaton, dropping my Asylum 'safety bubble', popping wings with Temperance to add damage mitigation) to rapidly address any damage that people are taking, and I have the freedom to let the tank drop as low as 20% health (or even lower) and hit them with Benediction (single-target heal that restores full health instantly).

So if I'm not doing the damage at level 80... I am going to be standing around doing absolutely nothing for probably 85% of the time in the dungeon, because it simply won't take me that much effort or time to top people back up (unless things have gone catastrophically wrong and the situation has become truly dire).

But at level 29? Healing's going to be your main focus. That's not so much a lack of skill on your part as just a lack of kit.

[Shanst]

I think there are just good healers and bad healers. Good healers know when they can dps, and know when they need to heal. Bad healers don't. Tank buster incoming, heal, then dps. Nothing going on but autos and mechanics? Regen and dps.

[Shanst]

I was in raid recently where someone died and both healers (and a red mage) just...completely ignored the dead person in favor of spamming Glare. Like...I don't care how good your DPS is as a healer, it's not better than that dead DPS just lying there.

I have noticed an outbreak of healers who just tunnel vision real bad and let people die more lately. I feel like it's the eventual product of "healers who don't dps are bad healers", tbh.

Without being there I wouldn't know, but I can tell you if someone is a repeat offender of standing in bad they don't deserve my mana to raise and are better off dead and saving a swiftcast raise for someone more useful.

[Granyala]

I was in raid recently where someone died and both healers (and a red mage) just...completely ignored the dead person in favor of spamming Glare. Like...I don't care how good your DPS is as a healer, it's not better than that dead DPS just lying there.

Umm if it's a dude that dies in every 3rd mechanic and has maximum weakness, there is no way he will out DPS me.
So yeah: at some point I will stop rezzing. I figure it's of more educational use when he can lie there and take the time to observe how others handle the mechanics.

This to be honest. Why are people answering to what others said 4 years ago, in a completely different state of the game, balance, skillsets and all?
Apples and oranges.

Except it only got worse. Back then you had to make the conscious decision to go into "DPS stance" and assess whether the tank will survive the ~7-9 seconds until you would be able to heal again, depending on CD availability.

These days, the content requires even less healing (savage excluded) on top of SE simplifying the damage to a point that even a seasoned healer like me has a hard time from keeping the mind from wandering and thus the problem of healers tunnel visioning is just as relevant today as it was 3.5yrs ago.

Tank buster incoming, heal, then dps.

Correction (outside of savage): "Tankbuster" incoming, chuckle and keep DPSing.

Seriously, my tank buddy and I always mock the so called tank busters in non raid content.

[Liam_Harper]

I was in raid recently where someone died and both healers (and a red mage) just...completely ignored the dead person in favor of spamming Glare. Like...I don't care how good your DPS is as a healer, it's not better than that dead DPS just lying there.

If both healers Swiftcasts were down, blame the RDM. If I'm healing and my Swift is, let's say 12 sec away and I have a co-heal and RDM in the group it's silly for me to hardcast. There's also the question of whether a window is open, even on Normal you sometimes don't get 8 sec windows for a while in-between healing and dodging mechanics. Sure, Glare-> Glare-> dodge mechanic -> Glare -> Glare -> heal raidwide might look lazy but stick a Raise anywhere in there and I'm getting either getting hit by the mechanic or the raidwide isn't being healed. Headless chicken Medica II -> Raise -> get hit by mechanic -> panic Bene myself -> Panic spam Cure III -> Medica II the raidwide -> headless chicken a bit more, would probably earn 4 comms though :l