Why you should play a healer!

[Clouse_Cleyra]

You leave that impression because you're complacent. You're complacent because you think it's OK to give new healers bad advice because the content is just a dungeon.

The only one comparing a dungeon to a savage raid is you. And when you make such comparisons and are also dismissive towards how a healer might feel despite the content being casual, you also leave the impression of being an elitist.

Spamming your biggest cures is not only an inefficient use of you MP, it's also the least optimal way to play the job and role. Any healer worth their salt knows this. Especially if they have savage clears under their belt.

Ok I give up

[Magnedeus]

I mostly tank and i only have one thing to say to healers. If you wanna just heal, just heal. If you just wanna heal and throw in some dps that's fine too. I don't judge. You do your thing, i do mine.

[Saraphin]

I mostly tank and i only have one thing to say to healers. If you wanna just heal, just heal. If you just wanna heal and throw in some dps that's fine too. I don't judge. You do your thing, i do mine.

hear hear. it's a comfort zone thing for each healer, mostly and understanding tanks are a good start.

[tinythinker]

I mostly tank and i only have one thing to say to healers. If you wanna just heal, just heal. If you just wanna heal and throw in some dps that's fine too. I don't judge. You do your thing, i do mine.

I usually do damage to help me heal or because I've got nothing else to do.

A lot of the healer/tank drama comes from people having different levels of experience/skill/commitment to the game and different ideas of what makes group content fun. Maybe a "mellow/casual" vs. "intense/serious" toggle in the DF UI would help?

[Jerichai]

I’m not sure why you’re so intent on splitting hairs with this; what exactly in my original statement merited your response? Did you truly believe I (or pretty much anyone) was about to argue that paying attention to mechanics was unimportant?

No, healers do not observe buff timers or positional attack requirements to maintain their functionality. The difficulty of the role comes from factors other than inherent mechanical complexity. That was my point.

Kinda hilarious you say I'm splitting hairs when you're the one intent on creating unnecessary hierarchies of timed encounter mechanics....

[Cynfael]

Kinda hilarious you say I'm splitting hairs when you're the one intent on creating unnecessary hierarchies of timed encounter mechanics....

You took a statement about timers (is there anyone else here who read that in the context of this discussion and thought I was alleging that healers didn’t need to pay attention to mechanics? Just wondering...) and made an argument out of it.

In the immortal words of every grade-schooler ever, “You started it.”

[Ghishlain]

You took a statement about timers (is there anyone else here who read that in the context of this discussion and thought I was alleging that healers didn’t need to pay attention to mechanics? Just wondering...) and made an argument out of it.

In the immortal words of every grade-schooler ever, “You started it.”

I knew you were talking about class timers and not mechanics based around individual fights.

I wouldn't even count mechanics of a fight as timers. I just count them as... well, mechanics.

[Jerichai]

You took a statement about timers (is there anyone else here who read that in the context of this discussion and thought I was alleging that healers didn’t need to pay attention to mechanics? Just wondering...) and made an argument out of it.

In the immortal words of every grade-schooler ever, “You started it.”

So please, do enlighten me on what exactly is different to your vague statement of "timers" and reacting to any other condition in an encounter. You're the one stating there's some significant difference in your original post.

[Ghishlain]

So please, do enlighten me on what exactly is different to your vague statement of "timers" and reacting to any other condition in an encounter. You're the one stating there's some significant difference in your original post.

I believe Cynfael is talking about unique job timers such as Greased Lightning, Hot Shot, Straight Shot, Huton, Heavy Thrust, etc.

AKA, things that a DPS class need to maintain to increase their effectiveness. Healer's don't really have any buff up time to maintain or rotation for optimal DPS / HPS.

The type of timers you're talking about are mechanics, IE:









Every single member of the party has to respond to these mechanics. They will respond differently, but it doesn't change that every single person has to respond to them and are not unique to an individual job.

[Cynfael]

So please, do enlighten me on what exactly is different to your vague statement of "timers" and reacting to any other condition in an encounter. You're the one stating there's some significant difference in your original post.

I'm probably going to regret this, but let me attempt to explain (once more) in good faith:

Encounter conditions, as you call them, are not unique to the Healer role; every combat Job in the game deals with boss mechanics and such, and I think most would recognize that this goes without saying. The discussion about how other players' ability or inability to successfully execute mechanics affects the healer role is a valid one, but clearly not the point I was making. I think I've made my opinion very clear that the healer role is fairly uncomplicated as far as Job (emphasis: Job, not encounter) mechanics go, and that the main challenge of playing healer is in planning encounters and knowing how to adapt when necessary.

As for timers, I truly don't understand how you interpreted that to mean encounter mechanics, especially in context of the ongoing discussion. There was even a series of posts where someone else got weird about my statement, which prompted me to further clarify. There was a mini-discussion about the difference between "timers" and "timing." I suppose you stopped at my post, took offense at what you thought I was suggesting, and went straight to reply?

Kabzy framed it nicely:

He said timers, not timing. Timing is something every job has to deal with, so it can't really be applied to healers specifically. As for positioning, not sure I agree with you there. I stand close enough to the boss/middle and that's about it. Literally only have to move for mechanics (again, like every other job) and nothing else. DPS jobs have actual positionals and tanks do whatever tanks do.

I agree with the point that healing in execution is far easier than the other roles. We literally have 3 DPS buttons, don't even have to worry about Cleric anymore and our heals are ...heals. In the case that we make a mistake, we often have emergencies to rectify them, no other role can do that. In execution it's easy, in everything else you can argue that it's one of the more tougher roles.

TL;DR: Every Job is concerned with encounter mechanics. Healer is the only role that is not specifically concerned with executing combos, watching to make sure that their timers aren't falling off and restricting access to their abilities, and/or attacking a target specifically from the flank or rear to activate the secondary benefit of an attack or continue a combo.

You could continue to argue against what you wrongly assumed I said some pages back, or just maybe you could admit that you jumped to conclusions and had nothing to be concerned about in the first place...?