Heals, DPS, and comms

[PetiteMalFleur]

My friend would go in on his leveling black mage, accidently cause wipes or tunnel and die, but make funny comments and be very interactive. He'd always get the commendations.

[Adrasteia]

My friend would go in on his leveling black mage, accidently cause wipes or tunnel and die, but make funny comments and be very interactive. He'd always get the commendations.

That's been my experience. The times where I actually end up getting 2-3 comms (and I'm reasonably sure it's not just a group of friends queuing together) are where I crack jokes, keep up morale, or provide explanations of boss tactics. People tend to reward commendations to someone trying to make it a pleasant experience beyond just silently plowing through.

[Amiaze]

Interesting thread here. In my experience, having been each of the three roles at some point, there isn't a huge difference in player commendations. DPS tend to get lower, but I'm currently a MCH, and I usually get a commendation even during an 8-man run.

I think people who DPS are more likely to pay attention to the DPS and give them a commendation. When I was only a healer, Lord knows I gave most my attention to the tank. I only really gave a DPS a commendation if they did something outstanding or I noticed that they took advantage of positioning and knew the mechanics/quickly learned the mechanics. While tanking, it normally goes to my healer.

None of this takes into account how friendly the players are, of course.

[416to305]

This isn't overly valid, he did one way 2 months then another 2 months, things change, I didn't read it all but if it was 2 months before HW and 2 months after that would change a LOT. I think commendations are random and that most DPS are not paying attention to what healers are doing. That's based on me playing with my DPS friends, they never have any idea, even when they take a huge AoE and are 1 hit from death and I Benediction them back to 100%, it's like "See that!?!?!" and they are like "See what???".

[Aika_Nakamura]

Honestly, I don't particularly care for commendations. They're pretty useless, except for when I'm not familiar with a class.. maybe. I look at them as a "you're doing good, nice job", which is what they are. If people like my play-style that's awesome, I'm glad I can satisfy. However, if I don't get any, then I just kind of brush it off. Usually when I'm actually doing something weird or wrong people kind of say so.

Anyway, on-topic. I DPS as a WHM regardless of what my party might think. It makes the runs faster and I don't feel like I'm about to pass out by doing that. Seriously, it's boring to not DPS.

I'd just say forget the commendations, DPS it out. I hate healers who just stand around when they could be speeding up the fight (though I do it sometimes myself). If it's something like a heavy fight where the tank needs to get immediate attention at a moment's notice (like T9 when it was relevant), then I can understand entirely. Otherwise, DPS.

[winsock]

This isnt enough to say that full healing = more commendations.

Some problems with this:

* First and Foremost: Was there an overlying global pattern of players giving more or less commendations throughout the months this experiment was conducted?
* pool of WHMs was not large enough.
* The time of the runs was never taken into consideration i.e. was there an overall correlation between runtime and number of commendations awarded?
* Would the cleric stance runs have received more commendations had the healing threshold been higher?
* The timing of this seems weird. The experiment lasted 4 months and the results were posted just a few days ago. Was this all of this done prior to the release of HW? if so, why did it take ~2 months to post results? The data is also possibly irrelevant now because the dungeons being used for testing are substantially easier to be over-geared for.

[Waterdeep]

As AST I usually end up with 2 comms. Sometimes 1, sometimes 3. I do my best to spam Gravity, dot singeltarget mobs and keep a good distribution of buffs depending on the others rotation. Sometimes a tank dies because I cut it too close but even then I usually end up getting some commendations.

So maybe people:
a) Give me pity AST comms
b) enjoy their buffs
c) AST dps spells are a lote more flashy than other healers spells

But in all honesty, it is pretty random. Just do your job the way you want and not for some arbitrary number value at the end.

[Mutemutt]

I thought it was a pretty interesting experiment, even if there is a problem or two with how it was conducted. Honestly, it makes sense to me because I do get a little nervous when the healer plays lifebar limbo when I'm tanking, even though I do the same sort of thing when I go as a healer too.

[Sodamachine]

Well, for me as a SCH, playing with DF Tanks can result in 2 ways
1: The tank does small pulls, and Selene can heal everything, so I DPS.
2: The tank does big pulls, so he obviously want's this to go by quickly, so I DPS. (aka, dot up and bane + Swiftcast Shadow Flare, then heals up the tank)
To stand out, I just make sure to time Stone Skin so it gets applied the second the last mob dies, and then I cast Adlo as he runs, then catch up with sprint.
That way, I show the tank that I am keeping a sharp eye at his health at all time, and don't need to worry even if it dips low.

And then we have the rare occasions where the tank is just... weird. But that is something completely different to this.

[Dante_V]

If you understand why this "survey" means very little in the nature of objective understanding I congratulate you on your understanding of science.