Originally Posted by
Kes13a
since I am not very "leet" I dont do a lot of savages to be honest. and generally, it seems that most of the people I randomly get grouped with are far below the level of play that you and the OP operate at since they do tend to need healing. some runs I have even heard "I hope you know how to heal" so I am guessing that you have a static group of elite min/maxxers that you run with, in which case your attitude makes a lot of sense. for the average gamer though, reality is a bit different.
just so you are aware.
Not exactly, people that want healers who 'know how to heal' means they know how the basic priority of their role should function.
I guess if you really want to think about it, the healer priority is:
Preventative Action -> Reduction Measures -> Active healing
The players who want a healer to know how to heal expects the healer to be able to focus on Reduction Measures rather than just active healing once they enter Stormblood. A common Reduction Measure is for healers to do some DPS rather than wait for damage to come out before healing.
People tell healers to DPS because it's more efficient as a healer to heal and DPS to help with MP upkeep - which translates to being a better healer since you can have more resources to maximize your healing potential in case things go wrong. This is especially true for pugs rather than statics because you can't trust your party members in pugs. The rationale goes as following:
1. You can spend 400 MP for Cure I and continue using Cure 1 until the enemy dies. Let's say this enemy takes around 25 seconds for your group to kill the enemy. That means you should have around 10 casts of Cure 1, which eats up 4000 MP over that duration.
2. Alternatively, you can spend 400 MP for Stone and alternate between Cure and Stone. Assuming the enemy dies in ~18 seconds as a result, you have spent a total of 7 casts of Stone / Cure 1, which eats up 2800 MP. In this manner, you save up 1200 MP. That 1200 MP saved can now be used for Cure II or more Medica IIs and such. Plus, factoring in the time saved, Base MP restores around 200 MP every 3 seconds in combat, so you also have a net gain of 400 MP from finishing the battle with that enemy early (which can be more depending on how much piety you have), resulting in a total of 1600 MP saved.
This would be considered a "Reduction measure" since you're reducing your MP expenditure and increasing the party's overall survivalibility by reducing the time at which the enemy can inflict damage to the party.
In a more broader scale (boss fights even for regular content at higher levels), the bosses will use unavoidable raidwide damage, tankbusters, and avoidable damage. Some bosses even have a soft enrage which will potentially overwhelm the party once too much time has passed (Nidhogg being a prime example with Akh Morn). If you include the number of mistakes people can make in mechanics, we would have to start spending more MP to heal through them once we go through our free healing tools if people continue to develop vulnerability stacks or end up dying, which prolongs the fight and drains the healer's MP faster. In this scenario, adding DPS will mean the boss dies faster / transition to the next phase faster, which translates into less raidwides, less tankbusters, less chances to accrue vulnerability stacks, less chances of needing to raise, and overall less incoming damage from the enemy -- which turns into less MP expensive spells spent on healing and more MP for situations where things spiral out of control. This problem is largely mitigated when people get better gear & know the fight because they have that ability to push out more DPS, take less damage, and have more potent heals, but for content when everyone is roughly at the same ilvl and new (Patch 5.5 Tower at Paradigm's Breach), this is basic healer fundamentals for succeeding or wiping a run.
Of course, healers can just meld more piety and call it a day since they have more MP, but it still doesn't prevent people from making mistakes and still risk a potential wipe. That's why a healer who adds DPS spells when they feel everyone's HP is a comfortable level will be reducing the potential for the emergency from happening in the first place and is said to be doing well. It's just that as people get better at healing, they won't panic healing as much when player's HP starts to drop, which lets them DPS more before healing. Ultimately this just falls in line with the primary preventative action - enemies can't do damage if they're dead. This is also why White Mages use Holy, because enemies can't do damage if they're stunned, which reduces potential casts from adds and incoming damage. Take this a step further and if the healer can spam holy, they start prioritizing the preventative measure.
Just like how a DPS improves by having a better rotation to maximize damage, healers improve by doing a balancing act between DPS and healing.
The "leet" optimization for min/maxers is figuring out how much less healing they can get away with to increase the speed at which something dies without endangering their party (which comes from knowledge and experience + trust that their party members can dodge mechanics), as well as having every party member be contributing to the mitigation effort. Most people don't expect the average player to know this though.
However, the idea of the preventative measure is also why people can dog farm Jade Stoa EX Unsynced without a healer - we just do enough DPS that we can melt the boss before facing enough mechanics that would have to be healed through if we trade a healer for more DPS. In this manner, we can 'prevent' a wipe from happening in the first place with sufficient DPS rather than bring a healer to 'reduce' the potential chance of wiping by healing through the mechanics.
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