What are the most common reasons people don't dps?

[Claire_Pendragon]

And yet, here you are, with multiple posts supporting one side. Go figure.

That's not how it works.

You can make an observation, and point something out.
That doesnt mean you're taking a side.

If everyone is of the same mind, and not understanding another side, its not picking their side, explaining their rational.

The "Side" they are taking, is the opinion people arent understanding the situation enough to give an argument they feel is reflective of the situation.

Not if the person they are explaining is right or wrong.
(Of course, they can still be wrong, and leaning w/o knowing it, as not everyone has "absolute truth".)

They can still not actually think either is more right or wrong, and still play devils advocate as well.

So on, so forth.

[Miste]

Tridus, only problem is you just don't seem to understand how you and Cynfael can feel aggressive, and in the end, make me feel like you're full of yourselves.

Tridus....and Cynfael feel aggressive and you think they are full of themselves?

I don't know about that. Tridus and Cynfael anytime I've seen them post they've always been pretty calm as far as I have seen. They display strong opinions as do a lot of us on here...you know including you too, but that isn't inherently aggressive.

Also just because they have a different opinion or you are misunderstanding their point you think they are "full of themselves"? I don't know... isn't that kind of rude and pointless to say? What bearing does that have on anything? I mean I see nothing about that that relates to the topic only a snide remark about them as a person. I mean in my opinion you are the one who is coming off aggressive with that sort of comment.

Honestly after this ramble about freedoms and stuff I think you might be taking this a tad bit too seriously. Comparing this to irl issues of intolerance is going into something more serious than just conflicts over video game play styles. It's unrelated.

Also in the end tolerance goes both ways and both sides have PF and premades as options to them if they are unwilling to accept that some healers may not DPS and that some players may ask for healer DPS.

[miraidensetsu]

So you'd be supportive of a zero DPS, no cooldown using tank, right? After all, you shouldn't infringe on their playstyle choice, and so long as the mob is hitting them, which is what they're here for after all.

Interested in see why a no DPS healer equals a tank who don't do DPS and even use their Cooldowns.

But I totally prefer a no DPS tank than a tank who thinks himself as a Blue DPS. And that means: no reduction cooldown, almost no hate-generating combo (just a provoke spam) and 0% uptime on tank stance. And also no DPS from me because my uptime will be healing all the time.

And that is one of the reasons that sometimes I don't DPS: If i do so, that Blue DPS Tank will die and the party will wipe.

[Tridus]

Interested in see why a no DPS healer equals a tank who don't do DPS and even use their Cooldowns.

Both of them are doing lots of standing around doing nothing when they could be doing something useful. Said tank has enmity, so by the bare minimum they're doing what the role requires. PLD can do this by hitting only Flash, and hitting it lots and lots of times. You'd be surprised just how much content it can work on.

The only difference between the two is that said tank is universally considered bad and absolutely nobody defends that behavior, to the point that I can use it in this example. The same standard doesn't apply to healers, where some people consider being idle 80% of encounters to be acceptable.

But I totally prefer a no DPS tank than a tank who thinks himself as a Blue DPS. And that means: no reduction cooldown, almost no hate-generating combo (just a provoke spam) and 0% uptime on tank stance. And also no DPS from me because my uptime will be healing all the time.

Blue DPS annoys me too. I'm pretty conservative when I tank, in that I rarely leave Shield Oath (although I will be hitting things the entire time). I've seen some really awesome tanks that can stance dance to amazing effect while also being easy to heal, but I don't do it often enough to get that good so I just err on the side of defense.

And that is one of the reasons that sometimes I don't DPS: If i do so, that Blue DPS Tank will die and the party will wipe.

That's fine. If you can't do DPS because you need to spam heal to keep the group alive, you're active and helping the group. Absolutely nobody wants you to let people die to sneak in a Stone. The issue is when someone stands around doing nothing for 80% of the run (not an exaggerated number, it's been timed) when they could be making everything die faster.

[Fyce]

[...]

If saying "when you work together with other people, you should not be slacking" is pushing ideals and being intolerent, then I wish good luck to the human society as a whole.

[Cynfael]

Interesting that I check the forums today and find that I've somehow become a sort of sub-topic for discussion.

Yes, I do have strong opinions and am happy to share them; I also like to think that I am generally successful at staying on message and not initiating personal attacks against other posters. In other words, I aim to argue for and against points, not argue specifically on behalf of or against other posters.

Moogly has a history of avoiding gameplay-specific debate and attempting to change the conversation to appeal to players' emotions by repeatedly hammering away with the needs and opportunities of newer players (well after we'd established a general consensus that players new to the healer role were not being criticized), drawing comparisons to RL situations, and even by outright attacking those who disagree with him. I'm positive that he or she doesn't view or intend those actions in that way, but if I'm not the only one calling this out, maybe there's a nugget of truth to consider?

As for my comment that kicked off this exchange, I think I understand the issue. I rather imagine that Moogly read the bit about pure healers (and DPS-before-all-else healers, for the record) and immediately interpreted it as a personal attack. However, my position is this: if we can't speak frankly about the positives and negatives of in-game behaviors and strategies for fear of offending people who currently play a certain way, what kind of discussion can we expect to have? I don't see an issue with calling out a plainly bad behavior for what it is, and neither does anyone else around here as far as I've noticed.

At this point, and after the many previous exchanges, I'm resigned to the idea that disagreeing with Moogly makes me a mean poster because I refuse to go down the rabbit hole of social injustice and whatnot. For me this has always been a fairly simple issue: learning to DPS appropriately as a healer is part of the role, and players who choose to ignore that part are doing themselves and their parties a disservice. No, new players aren't expected to be instant experts. No, it is not appropriate to harass players. Yes, it is appropriate to utilize discussion forums like these to speak frankly about gameplay. I think that covers most of it for my part.

[Rilifane]

Now stop thinking about progress, high end play, top tier, efficiency for a couple seconds.

You are needlessly demonizing the people who expect some manner of engagement from the healer as elitists.
I'd like to hear a good, convincing reason from you, why one needs to be a top tier player to not stand around for more than half the time? And what's so appealing in standing around? Because if your tank does his job even remotely right, you will be standing around half the time.
And half the time is generous and probably applies only if you're pushing active healing time by only using CureI instead of the more efficient spells.
Hells, even when Nidhogg was fresh out and everyone barely met minimum requirement let alone perfected the tactics, I had plenty of time to dps between healing and corpse fluffing. And he was definitely one of the more difficult MSQ trials with hard-hitting aoes all over the place and a tight dps check.
Again: players new to healing get a free pass.

Wether through roulette or PF, you are brought together with other people to work with them. The less you do, the more they inevitably have to do.
Appealing to morale and values yet completely ignoring that deliberately slacking is just plain disrespectful, inconsiderate and lazy.
And healers are not delicate little flowers who deserve a special treatment.

[Estelle9lives]

What about, I don't know, having fun only healing people ?
Yea, people can actually have fun only doing that, believe me.

What if I'm playing a DPS and I only have fun by never using any AOE skills? Or if I only like spamming Thunder IV as a BLM because it has a flashy animation? I'm having fun and doing damage (which is what I'm here for), so it's okay, right?

No. It isn't.

DPS is a team effort and healers can contribute a massive chunk of damage in both dungeons and raids. A healer who intentionally doesn't DPS isn't any better than a DPS who only press buttons 20% of the time and doesn't use half their kit.

[Deceptus]

Tanks who don't know how to properly use their CD's or self sustain.

Otherwise, I'm leading the damage on pack pulls.

[RopeDrink]

Why would anyone be tolerant of people who randomly decide that they're going to ignore 50% of their abilities for no discernable reason? As others have said, if Tanks decided to remove half of their kit from their bar because they 'enjoy pure tanking' (no mitigation), Healers would be quick to complain (and rightly so), just as much as DPS removing half the abilities from their rotation causes its own hell.

Again, the only time I won't be DPS'ing is if I'm forced into situations where I simply can't. For example, did that new dungeon earlier and a squishy DRK was tri-pulling, crushing almost all my DPS potential outside of Swiftcast Holy and the occasional AeroII - and this was worsened by the fact that we clearly had a new RDM (either to the class or the dungeon seeing as the guy couldn't dodge a mechanic to save their life), yet I still created DPS windows using my own CD's seeing as the faster those packs die, the less healing required. If you 'enjoy' playing at half-effectiveness, that's fine, good for you, but don't be shocked if some people inquire as to why you're deciding to do that given it is a detriment to the team you are in.