Healers and Debuffs. Should they be taken care of Pre- 50?

[Packetdancer]

It is extremely rare to find circumstances where you can remove Doom, to be fair. I can think of, maybe, two. Doom is usually punishment for lack of mechanics or, more commonly, a forceful push to do mechanics in the first place. As a result, very unlikely to be Esuna'd.

Honestly, I think it's one you can cleanse more often than you think.

Doom comes in four variants, so far as I can tell. (Sometimes under different names.)

1. Doom which you can cleanse via Esuna. This can be actual Doom (as in Dun Scaith or the fight with the Queen in Delubrum Reginae, where the tankbuster also inflicts Doom) or the same mechanic under a different name (as with the first boss of the Dead Ends). Healers can cleanse this one, obviously.

2. Doom which you can cleanse via heal-to-full. Arguably the most common, and also one healers can deal with. Seat of Sacrifice, Orbonne Monastery (T.G Cid), final boss of the Dead Ends, etc. (Bonus points to the Dead Ends for being the only mainstream duty I can think of with two different variants of Doom, and the only duty I can think of at all that has two versions of Doom which can be cleansed.)

3. Doom which you can cleanse via environmental mechanics. Sunken Temple of Qarn, mister angry eyeball (Anghra Mainyu in World of Darkness), etc. Can also occur under different names, like Mortal Flame in the Grand Cosmos. Can sort of be cleansed by healers using Rescue, in the mechanic that I refer to as "the piano of gentle correction". (Because when rescuing those who didn't recognize Mortal Flame in the Grand Cosmos as an environmental Doom variant, the piano was a convenient piece of furniture to rescue them across.)

4. Doom which has no cure or counter, and where the healer's only option is to prepare to spend 2400 MP and pray Swiftcast is off cooldown. Sometimes it's just flat out "you have Doom, bye", but it often appears as stacks where you get one when you fail a mechanic. In that case it'll usually be Twice-Come Ruin (two stacks converts to Doom and kills you), or Thrice-Come Ruin (three stacks converts to Doom and kills you). Sometimes content will give you one stack of one of those to start with, or the way in which you resolve the mechanic requires you to take one stack. As with the others, it can appear under other names but functionally identical mechanics. Occasionally it'll be a variant meant to enforce a tank swap, as in the EX version of the Ultima Weapon fight, or the current Unreal.

So, three out of the four variants are ones a healer can cleanse in some way, though I grant the third one is kind of iffy at best since Rescue is janky and terrible.

That said, you're not wrong that we have seen a lot more of the fourth one in Shadowbringers and Endwalker. Twice-Come Ruin (with a timer) in Delubrum Reginae, and Thrice-Come Ruin (with no timer) in Delubrum savage... a number of mechanics in the 8-man savage fights that used Twice-Come or Thrice-Come Ruin, even a few instances in normal content.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Personally, I do my best to do Esuna all I can, especially the more dangerous ones. What do you do?

Bolded part, in general.

I do however have a pet peeve on certain portion of encounter where I'd selectively NOT Esuna certain individuals, i.e.:

• Tanks and Physical Rangeds who do not Interject/Head Graze Chimera's Dragon's Voice & Puppet Bunker's adds after first boss.
• Whoever that decides to glue themselves to tanks in LotA Zombie Dragon and inflicted Disease via their breath attack.

Other than that, I'll still try to not let them die.

[ASkellington]

If you have anything that stops your dps (sleep, paralyze, petrification/slow) or is going to kill you (doom, doom, doom or the occassional heavy dot) I'll esuna if it allows me.

Otherwise have a HoT or an Essential Dignity. There's no reason to press esuna, really.

[Veranolth]

I don't play healer very often but I will try and cleanse debuffs such as Paralysis, Doom, Silence, and Slow.

[Silver-Strider]

Does it kill or hinder you (Doom/Paralysis/Sleep/etc) from performing your job? Esuna
Is it a negligible DoT (Poison/Burn)? Glare.

[Allegor]

Paralysis debuffs, sleep, old pacification, doom, throttle style stuff, absolutely gets Esuna'd. Even if it isn't always dangerous, it's annoying and sucks. I'll cleanse all of this out of habit.

Poison dots will depend, usually on the level of the content, early game dots can be pretty nasty relative to our healing kit at that point and are often worth dispelling, whereas a poison dot in an end game expert generally can be covered entirely by incidental healing from the likes of Asylum and Assize and thus really aren't worth worrying about.

Hot take(?) - I'd like debuffs to come back/actually matter. A dot in ARR hurts because our hp bars are low and they tick off for like 10% of hp or more, a dot in higher levels - which are already few and far between - ticks for a pixel of hp and isn't even worth worrying about.

It's rather ironic that ARR, where healers are at their bare minimum, has more engaging/involved mechanics to watch out for, but as we level up and gain a whole arsenal of ogcds and cds to prepare for any mechanics... they're no longer there, or are applied exclusively if someone failed a mechanic, rather than just something the enemy does from time to time.

[TabrisOmbrelame]

Actually true, the most nasty debuffs, even in low level dungeon are what we call Crowd Control. Paralysis, Slow, Heavy or anything that alter either your dps or survivability should be cleansed.

A strong Poison debuff must be cleansed too, if it's possible to do so. If the dot is light, I don't think it matters to dispel it or not

[Sebazy]

Hot take(?) - I'd like debuffs to come back/actually matter. A dot in ARR hurts because our hp bars are low and they tick off for like 10% of hp or more, a dot in higher levels - which are already few and far between - ticks for a pixel of hp and isn't even worth worrying about.

It's rather ironic that ARR, where healers are at their bare minimum, has more engaging/involved mechanics to watch out for, but as we level up and gain a whole arsenal of ogcds and cds to prepare for any mechanics... they're no longer there, or are applied exclusively if someone failed a mechanic, rather than just something the enemy does from time to time.

Hardly a hot take imho. It's an avenue of healer engagement that SE simply seem to have forgotten about =(

[RayneBoemir]

I Esuna mostly everything though some things such as poison is mostly pointless I remember Tam Tara mini bosses do a poison debuff, but they used it so often that if you used Esuna they would just debuff repeatedly, so it was pointless to remove the debuff and just heal once the players got low on health not that it really mattered since those things die fast enough anyways.

My priorities for debuffing are always removing things such as paralyze since if the dps can’t dps well things aren’t dying, as well as movement slowing debuffs as it’s very irritating for anyone to be in that situation. Of course any debuff that automatically if not cured would kill a player get immediate attention.

[RayneBoemir]

I would say more than Esuna what I see in high levels is a lack of healers shielding players when they have made a mistake and get a dot debuff. Yea I know they made a mistake but it’s your job to keep them alive.