Quote Originally Posted by cjbeagle View Post
Perhaps my personal experience has just been drastically different than the norm, but as far as reading the same forums, I've only recently joined the forums to decry the 6.1 changes, so I haven't seen much - the post about healers that I originally replied to was the first I'd seen along those lines since joining, and since thrashing bad healers aligned with what I've seen in-game, I presumed that was par for the course. If I'm mistaken, then by all means, disregard what I said.
It's not about trashing low-skill players. Something that's largely understood not rarely spoken is that if you're a struggling healer who's trying to salvage a messy run, then yes you should be focusing on healing and trying to learn the fight you're in to make it out alright. It's okay to be in that learning stage, and as long as you're trying your best, then you're fine. People may want to give you tips and advice, but it's largely with the desire to help, not to belittle. Sometimes there are exceptions, but the game does a poor job of teaching players how to prioritize their healing, and thus skilled healers want to help new players understand what the game refuses to teach them.

Where the frustration comes into play is that there is a minor subset of players who choose to not DPS regardless of whether healing is needed or not because they want to pretend they're playing a different game where healing is performed 100% of the time and DPS is not performed at all. They believe they are justified in roleplaying this healbot fantasy when in practice it's griefing. This game is foundationally built with the mindset that healers will contribute to DPS one way or another as much as they feasibly can. Not contributing has a massive negative impact on the experience of other players, and in more challenging content, can make clearing fights literally impossible. This is not them trying their hardest. This is them being selfish and entitled, wasting other player's time because they want to try and enforce a gameplay system that does not exist in this game. It's comparable to the age-old example of "Ice Mage" BLM. Imagine a BLM player refusing to use any and all fire spells because "I want to be an ice mage," and telling you that it's their right to play this way, and you have no right to report them for griefing even when they're intentionally underperforming.

It's just a part of good sportsmanship in multiplayer environments regardless of genre that you should respect the time and dedication the other players around you are investing into the game by playing your best. That doesn't mean play perfectly or get screwed; it means try, be open to polite feedback, and don't take advantage of other players' time.