We're all DDs now >.>

[Niyuka]

The entire argument that healers must DPS, over the last 8 years comes from this myth that healers stand around and do nothing, and then trolls step in trying to prove that by posting screenshots out of context, or fabricating a situation just to try and prove heal-only healers are lazy, when all they've proven is they intentionally play that role poorly.

But I am playing healer a LOT, and both me and my guildmates actually DO stand around not doing much but DPSing because there is not much else to do. As soon as you are familiar with any given content, there are no surprises, and thus no need to pre-shield, keep ready for mechanics you dont know about, or do any other kind of support outside AST cards. At that point, especially on my SCH, i would actually not know what to do in order to improve my groups performance. So during the time where nobody is taking any damage, and the Eos/Selene is fine covering it, what do you think we should do instead of DPS that actually contributes?

[KisaiTenshi]

But I am playing healer a LOT, and both me and my guildmates actually DO stand around not doing much but DPSing because there is not much else to do. As soon as you are familiar with any given content, there are no surprises, and thus no need to pre-shield, keep ready for mechanics you dont know about, or do any other kind of support outside AST cards. At that point, especially on my SCH, i would actually not know what to do in order to improve my groups performance. So during the time where nobody is taking any damage, and the Eos/Selene is fine covering it, what do you think we should do instead of DPS that actually contributes?

Nobody is saying NOT to DPS ever. The problem is that some segment of players believe that a non-DPS'ing healer is somehow lazy, when the only way that can be true is by having the Tank play perfectly, every time.

I'll repeat several other things I've said that people appear to have glossed over, maybe not in this thread

1. There is no such thing as a DPS-check or a heal-check. These are established by the minimum ilevel. If you can enter the instance than the instance can be completed in the role assigned at the minimum ilevel. There are points in the game, where you can buy more time if the healer DPS's, but that's about the extent of any benefit to be had by the healer DPS'ing. In all cases, one screw up by the tank or the healer, and it's a wipe if the healer is doing DPS at the expense of healing. It just requires you to not play poorly to get through it at low ilevel's. Once at least one character is over geared (typically the tank) it becomes a faceroll and players who don't want to play properly get carried by those that can. Which inevitably is the Tank or Healer.

2. No, nobody is saying never DPS, otherwise you don't get through the solo content. The fact is that the solo-content never requires you to heal as a healer, and what little there is under the Conjurer/WHM storyline, suffers from "stupid AI" syndrome. There are FATE's where you can actually use your healing to buy more time by healing things like crates or the NPC's, but since you can't party them, and the NPC's just regenerate in ones that don't fail if the NPC dies, it's faster to just DPS the content. The healer is at a disadvantage in all FATE content because their DPS is weak and slow for the big booms. There's been entire FATE's that 20 DPS players can burn down a boss before you even get to switch into or out of healer, and if you try to DPS as healer, unless you were there first, or there is a collectable solution you're not going to be able to kill things enough to count as a large contributor. That is one of those annoying issues prevalent to using FATE's for doing the Zodiac weapon. When that content is new, the FATE's often dead before you even get a chance to do anything.

3. Yoshi-P has made his intentions clear with the WHM. We will still have to wait for what this entails for the SCH and AST. When I play WHM, all I'm doing is healing and watching enmity. There is no time to "netflix" or read things on another screen without playing poorly by overhealing. For SCH, the pet is much smarter than "cast regen" and the SCH role is a hybrid DPS/Healer. Hence the DoT's are worth far more, and correctly timing shields for damage migitation is the name of the play style. A lot of this has to do with how fast mana burns down between WHM and SCH. A WHM will exhaust all their mana quickly by playing poorly, or by throwing out DPS that is inconsequential when a party-flattener is coming up.

Like the strategy on trash is different for the strategy used for single-boss, and different for multi-boss/boss+with+adds as a healer. For a Tank and DPS it isn't. If there is >1 enemy, you should not have time to single-target DPS, at least your tank and one DPS is likely getting their face eaten if you "do nothing", and if you heal before the tank grabs enmity, you become all the adds targets. When there is a single boss, and you've learned it's pattern, it's much easier to get away with DPS on a healer because you know when you're going to have the opening for it.

That said, clearly the game mechanics thus far do not encourage healing enough, let alone properly. The closer the content gets to face-roll territory, the more you get people demanding tanks and healers to DPS, when maybe they don't want to, or don't have the time/mana for it. Not everyone is going to know the content, and the standard fare from the Duty Finder is that on average half the people don't know the content and the other half don't know they can do X as a Y.

Things change over time, as I've stated with the "regen" issue. At the beginning of V2.0 tanks would just outright curse you out for using it, so my play style has been to avoid using regen unless the character has a debuff that can't be cleaned by esuna. Otherwise using it before the tank has taken any damage results in all the monsters heading straight for you, and tanks have stated they will "let the healer tank" if they do this. Apparently the "lazy healer" trope is a result of the healer blowing all their HoT's and then doing effectively nothing. Or in otherwords punishing the tank for your bad play style. I'm sure the good tanks recognize bad healers, and good healers recognize bad tanks because their roles when played correctly are easy, and when one or the other are playing poorly, it's twice as much work for the other.

When the shoe is on the other foot, the tank thinks the healer is lazy, so they quit using tank stance, and thus now the healer has to heal more than would otherwise be necessary.

Like I've said I've been on the forums a long time and the thing that never changes is the insistent that "someone isn't pulling their weight" , some people have families, jobs and other responsibilities that will never allow them the time to play some of the hardest content because this perverted elitist attitude a small but loud section of players have that "someone isn't pulling their weight, so I'm going to make it harder for them". You know instead of maybe being polite.

[Shurrikhan]

The problem is that some segment of players believe that a non-DPS'ing healer is somehow lazy, when the only way that can be true is by having the Tank play perfectly, every time.

Even if a tank were to turn his back on his enemies, out of tank stance, with no CDs used between every tankbuster, and survive each tankbuster by only the smallest margin when including Stoneskin and Shields, you would still have time to DPS. And yes, if you're not using every GCD on each refresh (apart from when when pre-casting would require a delay of less than a global), just as any other role is expected to, you are playing more lazily than you could be.

The issue, if any, is mana.

You're acting like the two are some sort of ultimatum, but as others have said countless times, they are not.
(The only exception would be if you really could make a finishing blow on an enemy whose death would directly save at least as many people as you'd have to let die to do so. I've experienced this exactly one time, in a T7. It is not a norm.)
When healing is needed, you heal. When it is not, you DPS.

Given the option, truly, to do either in a given global, choose the one that's most efficient, be that HoT or DoT. If you're going to need an increased HPS starting in 5 seconds than you could otherwise spam, that is not an option; you use the damn HoT.

The healing requirements in this game are far too short to remotely suggest that a tank must play perfectly to allow you a free global. That's absurd.

[Lambdafish]

Nobody is saying NOT to DPS ever. The problem is that some segment of players believe that a non-DPS'ing healer is somehow lazy, when the only way that can be true is by having the Tank play perfectly, every time.

Is this true though? I'm a tank and I don't need to play perfectly in dungeons in order for the healer to easily DPS. Regen, rouse, aspected benefic are enough to keep me alive even without much mitigation so long as I don't pull too much. I think you need to be very careful with what you think the the pro-dps argument is, and what you think a "non-dps healer" is in our eyes, because you might present yourself as advocating for something that you aren't. A non-dpsing healer IS lazy, we aren't talking about actions so much as we are talking about mentality. They are the people in this thread, and many many other threads who say they won't DPS, no matter what, on principal.

Let me repeat, we ARE NOT advocating that you should still DPS if the tank is struggling and you need to use every GCD to heal, however that is an exception, and in no way a normal run.

The healer is at a disadvantage in all FATE content because their DPS is weak and slow for the big booms. There's been entire FATE's that 20 DPS players can burn down a boss before you even get to switch into or out of healer, and if you try to DPS as healer, unless you were there first, or there is a collectable solution you're not going to be able to kill things enough to count as a large contributor. That is one of those annoying issues prevalent to using FATE's for doing the Zodiac weapon. When that content is new, the FATE's often dead before you even get a chance to do anything.

Also not true, if you cast protect, then regen the entire party, the chances of you getting full credit are quite high, tanks on the other hand have to resort to DPS or fighting with the other tanks for high enmity.

Yoshi-P has made his intentions clear with the WHM... ...There is no time to "netflix" or read things on another screen without playing poorly by overhealing. For SCH, the pet is much smarter than "cast regen" and the SCH role is a hybrid DPS/Healer. Hence the DoT's are worth far more, and correctly timing shields for damage migitation is the name of the play style. A lot of this has to do with how fast mana burns down between WHM and SCH. A WHM will exhaust all their mana quickly by playing poorly, or by throwing out DPS that is inconsequential when a party-flattener is coming up.

WHM has regen, medica II, and powerful heals such as tetra and benediction which serve this purpose.

Like the strategy on trash is different for the strategy used for single-boss, and different for multi-boss/boss+with+adds as a healer. For a Tank and DPS it isn't. If there is >1 enemy, you should not have time to single-target DPS, at least your tank and one DPS is likely getting their face eaten if you "do nothing", and if you heal before the tank grabs enmity, you become all the adds targets. When there is a single boss, and you've learned it's pattern, it's much easier to get away with DPS on a healer because you know when you're going to have the opening for it.

thats why healers have AOE DPS in the form of holy, gravity, and shadowflare/bane. Of course saying "multitarget" is too general to pull any kind of situation from, so it is highly dependant on a case by case basis as to whether DPS is viable.

That said, clearly the game mechanics thus far do not encourage healing enough, let alone properly. The closer the content gets to face-roll territory, the more you get people demanding tanks and healers to DPS, when maybe they don't want to, or don't have the time/mana for it. Not everyone is going to know the content, and the standard fare from the Duty Finder is that on average half the people don't know the content and the other half don't know they can do X as a Y.

That is the point. If you changed the dialogue to "do pro-dps healers think that this should be the way the game is designed?" you might actually get some thought provoking discussion in your favour, however the discussion we are having is "what is the right way to play healer right now?" and regardless of whether you agree with it or not, not holding the mentality of DPSing during downtime is poor practice as a healer.

Things change over time, as I've stated with the "regen" issue. At the beginning of V2.0 tanks would just outright curse you out for using it, so my play style has been to avoid using regen unless the character has a debuff that can't be cleaned by esuna. Otherwise using it before the tank has taken any damage results in all the monsters heading straight for you, and tanks have stated they will "let the healer tank" if they do this. Apparently the "lazy healer" trope is a result of the healer blowing all their HoT's and then doing effectively nothing. Or in otherwords punishing the tank for your bad play style. I'm sure the good tanks recognize bad healers, and good healers recognize bad tanks because their roles when played correctly are easy, and when one or the other are playing poorly, it's twice as much work for the other.

I don't know what you are doing wrong but regen is one of your most powerful spells and should be used often.

[Kaisinel]

The entire argument that healers must DPS, over the last 8 years comes from this myth that healers stand around and do nothing, and then trolls step in trying to prove that by posting screenshots out of context, or fabricating a situation just to try and prove heal-only healers are lazy, when all they've proven is they intentionally play that role poorly.

How exactly is the player in that video playing poorly? (Other then afk'ing like a lot of healers do in DF to prove a point to how much downtime there is to healing easy content.)

How do you play Healer that somehow is better than what was displayed? Do you dps or just instead of afking for 83% of a dungeon, you afk for 70% instead with 13% of the additional uptime being overhealing? (From what I read before, tanks only get regen when they ask for it???)

Heal-only healers that refuse to attempt to contribute more than making the queue pop are stubborn or lazy.

E: Your character is an alt right?

3. Yoshi-P has made his intentions clear with the WHM. We will still have to wait for what this entails for the SCH and AST. When I play WHM, all I'm doing is healing and watching enmity. There is no time to "netflix" or read things on another screen without playing poorly by overhealing.

You have 70% of a 20+ min dungeon run to watch netflix between tossing a few heals here and there.

Things change over time, as I've stated with the "regen" issue. At the beginning of V2.0 tanks would just outright curse you out for using it, so my play style has been to avoid using regen unless the character has a debuff that can't be cleaned by esuna. Otherwise using it before the tank has taken any damage results in all the monsters heading straight for you, and tanks have stated they will "let the healer tank" if they do this. Apparently the "lazy healer" trope is a result of the healer blowing all their HoT's and then doing effectively nothing. Or in otherwords punishing the tank for your bad play style. I'm sure the good tanks recognize bad healers, and good healers recognize bad tanks because their roles when played correctly are easy, and when one or the other are playing poorly, it's twice as much work for the other.

This statement right here is enough to get a estimation of your healing ability. Not using Regens is very, very bad healing. Not using regen is what is considered a poor healer. A healer that doesn't know when to use Regen is poor play. It's very simple, dont regen tank before they pull every mob, and regen once they do. Regens heal for more damage overtime and more healing overall. Tanks are not carrying healers that actually use their toolkit.

[Shurrikhan]

The entire argument that healers must DPS, over the last 8 years comes from this myth that healers stand around and do nothing, and then trolls step in trying to prove that by posting screenshots out of context, or fabricating a situation just to try and prove heal-only healers are lazy, when all they've proven is they intentionally play that role poorly.

This idea seems to originate in people who come from other games where the healer role is literately rubbish, and the healing goes either under-used or people would rather just create all-DPS parties and spam pots for healing because there's no penalty to it. So they are suddenly annoyed that they can't play poorly and still finish content. I've played other games, either during beta or initial release and find the same thing happens over and over. You either play DPS, or you don't get to play any party content.

Does that sound familiar yet?

Using Cleric Stance and DPSing as as healer isn't some sort of concept transfer from another MMO. The "pure healer" concept is. The rest in common sense. You enter the MMO and realize that fights end when the enemy dies. You level via Cleric Stance. You realize that one can only continue to DPS while alive, so you heal between dealing damage. You enter your first dungeon and find that more than half of your globals would be wasted if not DPSing, with no fewer than 3 globals between necessary healers, and that you (gasp) still have Cleric Stance. So you DPS. How is this some sort of migrant ideology?

In most MMOs, healing requirements and/or mana limitations are much higher from the start. One of the core defining features of XIV, in leveling or endgame, is just how much free time healers have. You can blame the concept that "healers must DPS during their free globals" on this game, FFXIV. Few other MMOs, nor any of their healers (outside of damage-to-healing class mechanics), stands as good an example.

But of course it should sound familiar. People are expected to be active throughout a fight. Why would it be any different for healers in particular? Just because the healing requirements are met doesn't mean one should stand around doing nothing when they have a handful of abilities dedicated to filling exactly that situation. We can consider "saving mana" an real action by which to consume a given global, but that's rarely the case here, especially late into Heavensward. So if it's not to save mana, for what possible reason would you be doing nothing?

Because JRPG's are all gear-grinds. So people want to min-max how much damage they do, forget playing the game well, so any tool that doesn't contribute to DPS is abandoned.

More casual players hate elitist "farmer" type players because they suck the fun and ability to learn out of the game. Either you play it their way, or you get kicked from parties.

The fact that the DF exists is a boon to "casual" type players because that means they don't have to deal with only "(SAVAGE CONTENT) iLEVEL XXX ONLY" type parties drowning out all other parties. I actually re-arranged the chat screen so that all spammable chat was put in another chat screen.

I don't understand how you don't find that paradoxical. EVERYTHING is DPS, directly or indirectly. Min-maxing therefore includes EVERYTHING. Healing creates damage over time; tanking create damage over time. How much more quickly they cause the fight to be won is the ONLY means by which we can truly measure their efficiency. If it did not contribute to the clear time in any way, then the healing was wasted. Where another option at the time would have, then the heal there was an inferior choice.

There is no point at which the pursuit of min-maxing causes people to unlearn how to play. They may become less familiar with tools that were purposely removed from anything the game calls real "content", but anything that can increase the speed of success, whether it's a slow, a well timed heal to gather mobs, a knock-back, or literally ANYTHING else, factors into min-maxing. What does not fall into these calculations is not due to a failing on the community's part, but rather SE choice to purposely remove from the game as SE actually perceives it, the "content" (e.g. current raids) among the looser sea of 'content'.

[Rasylia]

I honestly don't understand how everyone goes on saying: "I only want effort, not high dps" - which completely denies the arguement that OUT THERE enough healer get harrassed for not doing enough dps.

Yes, you people here might be reasonable enough to understand the ins and outs from other healers, and appreciate when someone tries to help out with group dps, but that doesnt mean everyone is as ... compliant(?) as you are.

It really feels like some people argue for the arguements sake. And this goes both ways.

Anyways, i am not sure if i look forward to the official parse. I don't really know much about it yet, and i can see it go horribly wrong in open groups, while doing incredibly well in private ones.

[Sylvain]

heal and tank dps in this game is quite strong compared to their relative dpsers.

This is why, as we get more gear we're always more required to contribute with dmg since party take less dmg and we heal more.


If healer damage was so insignificant that a SCH dpsing the essential part of a fight would bring down the boss by 1%, we wouldn't have this debate as any dps slightly improving their dps would equal that constant dps.

Also, the fact that heal is never constantly required doesn't help. Tank, especially in Creator, took very little damage. Raid damage tend to be heartpulse function. Nothing happens for 20sec and then boom, everyone is at 10%. Which again, doesn't promote constant heal. You don't need to heal for 20sec, you need to heal for 3sec every 20sec.

I remember Healing in WoW cataclysm, I was often assigned to maintank heal, let me tell you that the tank wouldn't survive long without heal on most fight. And my Holy Priest dps was so poor that there's no way you would have made me waste a single cast time on a spell doing 5% of a fireball dmg. The only thing that I was putting was a DoT and that was usually on pull for the funzzyz. Same for tank, only the offtank was aiming for more "dps oriented gear", the maintank was geared toward being the toughest wall. If you've ever played as a Tank in WotLK or Cata heroic(savage), you'd know how quick your health can drop. And with WoW having much faster gameplay (1.5sec GCD, often reduced to 1.2-1.3 through haste), let me tell ya that the bosses weren't hitting you for 10% of your absurdly high HP pool every 2sec. 30-40% was more like it. I mean... I can't recall a single class surviving a boss hit but the tank, even druids turning to bear form were being oneshotted in most cases. In FF14, even a BLM can face tank most boss AA as long as enough heal is provided. How many time did I see that Dragoon pull the aggro and Wonder "why does the dragoon is taking dmg?... Omg he got the boss aggro". In WoW it would have been more like " Eh? What happened? You died instantly."

This is somewhat the core of the "healer and tank should dps" issue. If healer dps was extremely low or that loosing a few heal cast could easily result in someone dying (or you spamming costy spell to catch up the heal you didn't do to cast your 2 dots, which would run you oom by the end of a fight) we wouldn't have that talk since everyone would agree that heal dps is a luxury you get when you highly overgear the place.

The healer and tank dealing less dmg will not happen in SB, for obvious reason, we need to be able to solo content as we don't have alternative spec (except SCH SMN). However, if they reworked the overall raid damage to match more WoW-savage standard, don't expect healers to have much time to dps.
And this would actually be the best case scenario, for instance, if your tank incoming damage globally result in his death in 3-4 GCD, and that getting the top gear raises this number to 5-6GCD, you effectively made him 60% stronger, but this would still be lightyears away from what we have now. in the 5-6 GCD scenario that mean that if you spend 4 GCD dpsing, (so basically, 2 dots 2 spells), your tank is at the verge of death, 1-2 more hit and he's dead. Add some unexpected dmg burst in most fight and this behavior would be very risky (and rewarding at the same time if you manage to do it!). You'd still be able to squeeze some dps, but it would look more like "cure,cure,cureII, Dot, heal, heal, Dot, cure2,cure,cure, stoneIV,cureII,cure... " instead of the "dot,dot,stoneIVx6, cureIIx2, stoneIVx5".

Anyway, let's wait and see what SB will offer us
We know that Yoshida isn't really happy about this heal/tank seeking for dps issue. We'll see if they'll have adressed that in a smart maner (like making fight require you to do more heal/mitigation)

[Bourne_Endeavor]

The entire argument that healers must DPS, over the last 8 years comes from this myth that healers stand around and do nothing, and then trolls step in trying to prove that by posting screenshots out of context, or fabricating a situation just to try and prove heal-only healers are lazy, when all they've proven is they intentionally play that role poorly.

I suppose I cannot help myself. Since you seem determined healer downtime is a myth, I decided to experiment by queuing into Solm Al Hard wearing all Garo gear on my left said; with a Sophic Cane and Proto-Alexandrian Belt and Ring. My total ilvl was 250; only fifteen ilvls above the minimal requirement. Let's review!

- My overheal was 20% for the entirety of the dungeon
- I had 85 casts dedicated to healing and 242 towards DPS; Stone III had nearly five times more usage than Cure II
- I still pulled nearly 1,000 DPS overall

Before you ask about the tank. He was roughly the same ilvl and did small pulls as I suspect he was fairly new to tanking. Still, I literally did not heal him once for the first two packs of mobs. Not even Regen. He simply didn't need it. So... you want to explain to me again how healers have no downtime?

Keep in mind, this has nothing whatsoever to do with my expectations on other less experienced healers. I am merely asserting you should not speak on subjects you clearly don't know yourself. Healers have downtime-- a significant amount.

[autumn]

It is supposed to focus a little attention on how 'dps centered' the game has become, in my mind to it's detriment. I've been playing since beta, and I never have seen such a focus on personal dps. Tanks were never expected to be out of tank stance as much as possible...

I guess you have erased from memory when Tanks were expected to stack strength gear and push hard back then? I don't think it's particularly any worse now than it's ever been.

Generally in DF all people want to see is effort and a healer standing around doing nothing for half the fight looks like a lack of effort. I don't like to judge though and give them the benefit of the doubt as you never know who's sitting behind the screen on the other side.