Healer & Tank DPS (WoW vs FFXIV)

[YitharV2]

is there a need to say more?

Oh yeah, an actual correction : Idiots like to blame dps checks not being met on healers or tanks rather than acknowledging that their dps as dps roles is low-tier (to not say laughable tier).

But since in FFXIV using a parser to show them they are trash players is a one-way ticket to ban-city, they can act however high and mighty as they want and the GMs don't care.

Yeah, it's a really weird double standard I've found in FFXIV. Healers and tanks can be called out easily because it's obvious that they're underperforming but DPS can just fly under the radar.

[Teranuh]

First, encounters are all designed to be downed without healers DPSing. It just really, really helps because DPS can't always play optimally due to AOEs, etc (I'm being really polite here....Some just aren't good).

Generally speaking, there is downtime in almost every fight for healers to DPS. As for tanks, they're always DPSing to tank anyways and simply stance dance when not actively tanking to do a bit more. It's all about efficiency - If a healer is casting nothing, there is no major damage incoming, and the healer isn't out of mana, why wouldn't they deal some damage? As a healer myself, I kind of find it annoying because it adds one more thing I have to keep track of on top of mechanics and keeping everyone alive but at the same time, this is how encounters are designed. There's no real reason I can't DPS, for example, at the start of Susano EX or right after Susy's transition - nothing's really happening at those moments to keep me from doing so.

[miraidensetsu]

1

Sorry, but I disagree. At least healers must plan their GCD to meet healing checks, make sure that everyone is well and needs to do what everyone is doing. Even the enemy (to, for instance, know when to precast a heal because the boss is preparing a tank buster). And all of this while doing mechanics. And only if everything is fine he can DPS.

To do all those things, the healer must pay much atention on what he's doing or he can commit an error that can cause a wipe.

2

While it wasn't developed to specifically need DPS from healers. And that wouldn't be needed if the party's DPS sucks less. In general, a WHM (the greater damage from non-DPS jobs) does 2/3 of the damage made by an MCH (the lesser damage in DPS jobs).

3

If a WHM makes more damage than a job that is actually made to deliver damage, that DPS is making at least 1/3 less damage than he can and must work on it.

[eschaton]

I love how throwing a few stones and… ehm... blowing a few winds… can save new end-game raids.

Seriously though; saying end-game raids are designed for tank and healer dps just means you have no clue how gearing scales these encounters, for everyone. Everything changes if you and your party are well or over-geared for the content you are playing... max-dps away then. If this is not the case, focus on keeping the real dps dps-ing, tonks tonking. Any downtime is 100x worse than you missing a low-geared wind or stone tick... but sure, tickle the boss with your stone and wind if you like.

[Taika]

Sorry, but I disagree. At least healers must plan their GCD to meet healing checks, make sure that everyone is well and needs to do what everyone is doing. Even the enemy (to, for instance, know when to precast a heal because the boss is preparing a tank buster). And all of this while doing mechanics. And only if everything is fine he can DPS.

I've been maining healers in this game since 1.0 until the beginning of SB, so I know how much attention it requires, and that is not all that much. Since all damage is scripted, once you know the fight, you will know exactly when you will have to heal and with exactly which ability, and you only have to differ from that if something goes wrong (which is also more easily done now even while you're DPSing since you can simply cancel your DPS spell cast and heal instead). Meanwhile, DDs will have to maintain much more complex rotations, while also handling the mechanics the same way healers do. Healing and DPSing as a healer requires similar level of activity and focus than playing a DD job properly does, only healing doesn't (in 99% of situations).

If a WHM makes more damage than a job that is actually made to deliver damage, that DPS is making at least 1/3 less damage than he can and must work on it.

Holy + Aero III are still huge potency abilities. Holy is 100-200 potency on each target wheras BRD's Quick Nock is 110, for example.

[AriaFairchild]

I love how throwing a few stones and… ehm... blowing a few winds… can save new end-game raids.

Seriously though; saying end-game raids are designed for tank and healer dps just means you have no clue how gearing scales these encounters, for everyone. Everything changes if you and your party are well or over-geared for the content you are playing... max-dps away then. If this is not the case, focus on keeping the real dps dps-ing, tonks tonking. Any downtime is 100x worse than you missing a low-geared wind or stone tick... but sure, tickle the boss with your stone and wind if you like.

A healer does more than 1/3 of a DPS' damage and a Tank does 2/3 of a DPS' damage. That is really significant lol. Whether you are over-geared or not, maximizing dps should always be the thing to aim for, because doing so ends fight faster and reducing stress for the entire party. Maximizing damage is not just simply for saving time, but also for skipping (or finishing early) deadly mechanics, and let's face it...you can't honestly say you wanna stay in instakill/high damage phases for a long tiime.

[Shurrikhan]

Keep your elipses to yourself. They've obviously come around since then, since the Smith quests now actively encourage healers to throw out some damage, but if you seriously thought they ever intended from the start for statics to use it to cheese savage, then you're crazy.

That still makes about as much sense as not expecting a wheeled chair to be moved with someone in it. It might not be the first thing that comes to mind, and rolling about the office might not be "intended behavior", but so long as the wheels are halfway decent...

If you're considering responding with a sarcastic rejoinder rebuking me for saying healers shouldn't dps, please look at my prior posts saying that Healers SHOULD dps (only lazy ones don't), and super-savage is clearly Square acknowleding that the player base is right re: support dps.

My response was to the first part only, which is why I quoted the first part only. It seems ridiculous to me that anyone could be that bad at tuning as to think that healer DPS would never be a thing. I can understand underestimating its emphasis. But to think that any toolkit would ever be "single-player only" when nonetheless efficient is absolutely ridiculous. Even while something like Vercure, when you would otherwise have a healer with sufficient time and mana, may be far too inefficient to see general group use, it is still not "single player only", and it would take a near blinding amount of drinks to expect that it'd be. So how could they ignore what was at that time 5+ out of 21 skills by that rationale?

[zipzo]

If a healer is casting nothing, there is no major damage incoming, and the healer isn't out of mana, why wouldn't they deal some damage?

So, my first instinctual healer-based reflex response to this question I think is a rather obvious one...but what if things don't go perfectly smoothly and you need that extra mana later to fix a catastrophic healing demand?

That's mana you expended for damage earlier that you could have had in the chamber in order to execute your actual role to fix a tight situation. So wouldn't this logic only accurately apply in a world where the healer has infinite mana?

[Teranuh]

...

Kind of. As I said in another part of my post, I'm a healer myself and I don't necessarily like DPSing almost precisely for this reason. That being said, there are some parts of fights where someone has to drastically screw up to make that mana spent DPSing matter. Between built-in mana refreshes each healer has and a second healer, they should be able to cast something at all times. As long as you don't have to expend droves of mana rezzing a lot of people, that is. A lot of it has to do with adjusting to the situation - if the group you have is taking more damage than necessary, you might save more of your GCDs and add some downtime to prevent deaths. Healing is easily the most social role in that a lot of the job is down to knowing how people will react and reacting accordingly yourself.

If you know your DPS are good at not taking damage but lacking dps, your first reaction should be to supplement their damage with yours where possible. If you know your DPS have good DPS but screw up mechanics and take extra damage, you should dedicate your mana/time to keeping them alive. It all boils down to what effectively increases raid DPS. Dead DPS = bad for raid DPS. Stationary healer with mana to spare = bad for raid DPS.

[SaitoHikari]

So, my first instinctual healer-based reflex response to this question I think is a rather obvious one...but what if things don't go perfectly smoothly and you need that extra mana later to fix a catastrophic healing demand?

That's mana you expended for damage earlier that you could have had in the chamber in order to execute your actual role to fix a tight situation. So wouldn't this logic only accurately apply in a world where the healer has infinite mana?

Wipes in this game tend to be rather explosive and unsalvageable. The situation you describe (lack of MP being the primary reason you wipe rather than a mechanic being failed/lack of recovery time afterwards) won't happen period unless the tank isn't holding aggro and both DPS end up dying before the tank does (or conversely, the tank dies with enough mobs still alive to chew through everyone else before you can get them back up on their feet). Plus you have Lucid Dreaming to fall back on, and even failing that, a ranged/caster DPS worth their salt will have Refresh/Mana Shift for you.

The main reason why DPSing healers are a thing is because powerful oGCD heals exist, and this is especially why it has become so prevalent for level 60+. Many healers have the mentality to save them as emergency heals, but the top tier healers will use them to blow open windows for them to DPS afterwards. That's pretty much the difference between a standard healer and one that knows how to abuse everything to the fullest.

People aren't expecting healers to balls to the wall DPS 24/7, but to exercise judgment and contribute a little extra instead of standing around with massive amounts of downtime. That said, I am in agreement that it is really on the DPS to push out as much damage as they can rather than forcing a healer to DPS, but as long as an official parser isn't a thing, DPS players will never be held accountable to that. And I find that any healer arguing that DPS players should just get better while simultaneously arguing against the existence of basically anything that outright tells them that they aren't performing up to par is quite frankly contradictory.

(And also as someone that has been openly parsing for close to a year now - healer DPS seems to matter less in SB compared to the situation in HW. It was fairly common for me to see healers push out 1.3k+ DPS in HW when most tanks pushed out 800+ and actual competent DPS pushed out 1.8k+, in terms of expert roulette. But these days, I don't see even DPSing healers doing much higher than they did during HW, while competent DPS can easily break 3k+ now, and I see tanks average out at 1.7k+.)