Why you should play a healer!

[MoroMurasaki]

Yeah, you're Savage players and you seem to know each other a bit from this forum. Then let a bit of a room to breath to that one person who is saying something different. I mean, you do seem to make a point in not belittleling others but you don't have a problem asking for their creditencial to state what they think.

Also, wasn't it supposed to be something along the lines of floor level vs ceiling level ? I'm not sure what gaming creditentials have to do. You're doing savage, good for you. But exactly because you're seasonned player doing savage tier encounter for years your opinion on floor level gameplay is slightly off. Sure, it look super simple to you but that's not what entry level means.

I've a lot of long time MNK or DRG players say the same thing "it looks more difficult than it actually is, you just use same skills in the same order everytime. By the time you get to lv70, anyone can do that". You think it's simple because you're used to it, everyone will tell you there job is simple. Everytime i say to a PLD that I can't arround that job, I get same answer "no way, it's super easy I'm mostly just using the same spell blablabla".
And the again : SCH is execution monster team. I'm not even sure how anyone playing it can say otherwise. The clear DoT management VS burst healer of HW was about awareness, but the current one is all about weaving all those OGCD in your only two instant cast. This exactly melee DPS gameplay, miasma 2 being point blank AoE even look like caster made postional.

Also, it case that's what you wanted to know : yes, you get insulted and told you're getting carried by parse worshipping DPS and such. Already told it, my single first best performance on SCH (wich I did just because we saw enrage multiple time and tried my best to step up as much as I could, I only saw how it turned out the next day because some else made a log of it) was welcomed by "OMG YOU'RE SO BAD WE CARRIED YOU THROUGH THIS" by a pretty under performing DPS. Most player greatly undervalue healer input into the fight and greatly overestimate DPS. It's not something you should see in static play, but it happens in PU. Not everytime, but enough for anyone to have some horror story about it.
And the idea that healers only have to press the heal and everything is fine is the reason why everyone thing they can be arrogant toward them no matter what happen. Even in this raid where bosses are mostly AoE firing striking dummies with huge down phases (except O3S, again).

I know, you're not responsible for shitty behavior of everyone. But what you're saying right is the exact reason why an extremly average DPS will look down on a average healer, even when they have no clue about what you're doing (some one actually told "but you're bad, I barely ever saw you cast a healing spell" while I was playing as SCH).
So yeah, healing and DPSing asks different type of qualities, but there's no reason to even begin on the "this one is more simple", especially on something as broad as healer vs DPS, as it brings nothing but trouble. And ultimatly, yes, it does downplay healers. You're just not the one getting it.

I think the reason mediocre DPS (and tanks) will look down on similarly skilled healers is that healers have a much more noticable detriment to their comparatively less frequent mistakes - people die or the group wipes.

You seem to be pretty set in framing this conversation around more casual content. I'm not sure if it's because you think it suits your narrative better or because you're realizing Sebazy is basically a god when it comes to Savage, either way I can indulge this because I certainly play a fair bit of casual content.

In an early dungeon if a tank is doing normal pulls a SCH can summon their fairy and follow the tank, essentially AFKing the first 3 dungeons. A WHM/AST will need to cast their basic cure sometimes but still have ample time to dance or explore or spam emotes (or even DPS) is they so choose. I think it was Taika who gave the number 17% representing the amount of time they had to be actively casting during a dungeon on healer with no contibuted DPS. 17% of the time active. That's 83% of the time inactive.

That is so much time.

Imagine a tank or a DPS being idle for two GCD's between each GCD. Imagine how long it would take for things to die. A healer can do that in the most casual content in the game and everything will be fine. If that isn't easy gameplay I don't know what is.

Let's go more midcore, at least keep things at max level - Omega Normal. This is, at this point, faceroll content but it certainly requres more than 17% activity (well, maybe not O2N but that's a discussion for another day) so at least healers are doing something even if they aren't DPSing. Chrybdis and all that.

Most of the 'diffculty' at this level of gameplay is caused by basic movement mechanics (dodging fireballs, spreading levinbolts, stacking for stack markers, etc.) which effect every person in the party at most points. What do you lose as a healer for performing these mechanics? A single cast of your nuke, maybe having to double up on your cures to the MT because you had to interrupt a cast. Or just burn an oGCD heal and call it a day.

What does a SMN lose? Well, if the boss goes untargetable during Dreadwyrm Trance (or god forbid Bahamut) you are looking at a significant DPS loss. If you're on a melee (especially one with lots of positionals) you might lose some of your primary source of damage like the Jinpu or Shifu buffs to SAM (10% damage up/action time reduction) or if you're a MNK you could drop Greased Lightning.

These roles (and indeed all DPS roles) work for a length of time to build up to their maximum effectiveness and when you interrupt the buildup or the end result (like Bahamut for SMN) they actually have something to lose.

This is why they are technically more complicated - it takes actual time and effort to get to those burst phases, to those big hits that make it all worthwhile. Having Jinpu up for a Kaiten-boosted Midare Setsugekka takes planning and forethought. Casting a nuke until you need to reapply your Dots (or DoT, looking at you AST) just can't compare.

Yes healers have to focus on different things. Yes healing can be challenging. Yes healers are ultimately responsible for the lives of their party members unless a hard enrage is involved.

None of these things make them technically complicated.

I am convinced anyone who tries to compare the technical proficency required to heal with the proficency required to put out top tier dps simply hasn't done both of those things. I'm sorry if this offends someone, it isnt my intention, but this is a black and white argument where one side is objectively correct.

[Sebazy]

because you're realizing Sebazy is basically a god when it comes to Savage

The sentiment is appreciated, but I'm definitely not a god of Savage =P

There's better healers than me here on these forums, I'm just old and opinionated, I'll leave the God status to the Elias and Ayessas out there. They deserve it far more than I do.

[Vyriah]

Well I'm a savage player too. Why does it always fall back to that us vs them rethorics, that's not the point.

I'm talking about playing a class for something like... 4 years ? I pretty sure I saw both Cyn and Sebazy talking about ARR raiding and they way they talk about the game is close the friend that introduced me to this game. I didn't said that to say they're elitist pricks, I do understand where they come from and why they're saying that and I said, talk about job complexity to DPS playing since ARR and they will tell you that it's nothing and that healer/tanks are worse.

Having years long exeprience in playing your, strating by it's most barebone incarnation, make easier to get than it is that would look by its lv70 standard. I'm talking about a more recent point of vue, not conflicting against "savage players" whatever that could mean.

It may not look like it, but I'm doing all possible effort to not turn that into a semantic nitpicking but having rotation and such works as guidelines that make the job more clear and intuitive into what you're required to do. Everything that you need to use to be efficient is told you little by little through the game. Rotation, placement, burst phases, ressources management aren't hurdle that you have overcome but the actual main attraction of the job, the thing that'll allow to step your efficiency.
The reason why heal doesn't have combo is pretty obvious : if you would to cast cure to cast medica, precasting medica for an AoE would require you to use a wasted spell to get what you need to do. On the other hand, their MP cost is much higher. They don't do the same thing so the way they're limited is different but going into "this as a whole is simple and this as a whole is complex" is a very slippery slope.

I'm glad for you that you didn't have to go through those other player that will monitor your cast bar and search trough your logs an occasion to tell you you're that bad healer. Commend is another matter entirely, people commend healer and tank because less player are playing those roles. And the main reason is because they won't have to cross those "you only have to use a single skill and you can't even do that".
So they play DPS, like most of the player of the game that don't seem to be that impressed by DPS's kits.

Eh, pretty funny that everytime I try step in to defend lower skilled player my own achievement are instantly downplayed. I killed NeoExdeath (recently, but still) and had a regular ~85% on SCH before I chose to drop it in this patch. I think I'm a reasonnably fair player too.
Also I have done Savage content on DPS, even if only a few and will surely do more later on.

[Cynfael]

Well I'm a savage player too. Why does it always fall back to that us vs them rethorics, that's not the point.

You’re right; that’s not the point. However, no one is suggesting that.

Savage only came up in context of a tangent about how important correct DPS play can be, and for my part, I called out someone for making assumptions about something with which I suspected that s/he had little or no personal experience.

If someone wants to use Savage to make judgments about roles, they ought to know Savage at least somewhat, no?

To use a different example, would I get away with arguing high-end theorycraft in the DoH forums? No, because I have no first-hand experience with end-game crafting. That doesn’t mean I’m a garbage player or that I lack valuable opinions, but I’m not well-informed in every area.

[Vyriah]

Uh... Yeah but I did all savage ?

That comment about savage player was directed at me in particular, and it doesn't change anything I'm saying at all.

[MoroMurasaki]

Uh... Yeah but I did all savage ?

That comment about savage player was directed at me in particular, and it doesn't change anything I'm saying at all.

I'm not sure if this is aimed at me or not for my 'Sebazy is a god of savage' comment but if it was I certainly don't mean to take away from any of your accomplishments. I don't know you personally, to my knowledge I've never played with you and the only things I have to go off of are your posts in this theread.

Whether or not I happen to agree with you on this I genuinely don't mean to hurt your feelings or offend you I only looped the conversation around to casual comment because the "healers are technically complicated" camp (of which you seem to be a member) seemed to dismiss a bit of Sebazy's points based on the idea that 'Savage isn't the only content', a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree.

Jerichai was talking about there being a lack of content that requires perfect DPS, you were saying that it was cool people had done Savage but it seemed to detatch them from their understanding of 'floor level gameplay' and so I wanted to move things in the direction of what you guys were talking about.

All that aside I think the sentiment expressed by the tail end of your last post is awful - someone searching through your logs to call you bad is just plain slimey. Not to play the mom here but that doesn't sound like someone you should group up with anyways. None of what I'm saying is in defense of that. All I want understood is that if you stand back and take your own personal experiences out of it healers have less technical complexity than classes with rotations and buffs to manage. The freedom granted by the necessity for healer adaptation makes it so that we are not as bound to a specific way of doing things.

A SAM needs to keep up their buffs, a RDM needs to keep following their procs while maintaining balance but as a healer (especially when you have a cohealer) there are so many ways to make the hp bars go back up and none of them are locked behind performing a rotation to build up a resource which can be subsequently crippled by an untargetable boss/status effect/death.

I hope this makes sense. Congrats on your Neo victory. Please, no matter how you take the rest of the posts on this forum, know that I was not trying to insult you or take away your accomplishments.

The sentiment is appreciated, but I'm definitely not a god of Savage =P

There's better healers than me here on these forums, I'm just old and opinionated, I'll leave the God status to the Elias and Ayessas out there. They deserve it far more than I do.

You're very humble. A demigod then. Still a ton closer to those people than most of us are or will get.

Not sucking up, just stating facts! Be proud!

[MintnHoney]

To be honest, this thread, and the various rolling hills of entitlement throughout, is a compilation of why one should reconsider playing a healer. For a role that is either supposed to be the easiest to play, with little to no skill requirement, or supposed to be the most complicated to play, requiring a level of skill that could only be replicated by a specific set of shining elite or some sort of mouth-breathing basement dweller, the pressure to find a comfortable metaphorical place to sit and just play is too high.

At least, this is true if you actually give a damn about why someone else thinks you should play a healer.

[tinythinker]

So anyway, why should people play a healer?

To add a little more to my earlier reply:

- you like helping people, even just in overland/non-instanced stuff outside of a party you can heal and rez strangers (and even get achievements for it!)
- shortest queues other than tanks
- likely to get a comm for being halfway competent and making an effort in an instanced piece of content
- very fun challenge in PvP, especially The Feast
- self-healing in content that might be too hard to solo otherwise
- cool animations (at least in FFXIV)

[Cynfael]

Uh... Yeah but I did all savage ?

That comment about savage player was directed at me in particular, and it doesn't change anything I'm saying at all.

Maybe I missed something, then. If you're referencing my comment, it was directed at Jerichai for continuing to debate DPS and Savage requirements, and I thought it was fair to question whether or not s/he actually had Savage experience on which to base their arguments.

Someone doesn't need to have done Savage to talk about the Healer role, but Savage experience does help when talking about...well, Savage.

[Vyriah]

That's the problem when talking to a crowd, there's a moment when it's difficult to be sure what answer to what and I don't really like quote war, it often heavily change what was originally said.

I said I was doing savage because of this :

Also, this entire conversation going on between a few of you is completely pointless. It's just one big misunderstanding. The "savage players" are merely pointing out that the lack of positionals, timers and rotations mean that the healer kit is the easiest in the game. THE KIT. They're not saying that the role itself is easy. Our difficulty comes from content design and our party, more so than the other roles. I don't really see why this needs to be repeated another hundred times for the not so "savage players" to understand.

Wich ironically exactly illustrated what I was talking about just before.
You should be carefull of that piling effect when you're multiple person talking to only one, something written may be directed at something you didn't say, but some else did.

I'm sorry to insist on one thing or two but I really dislike not going all the way in some idea if I feel it was understood in a bad light. I'm not saying healer is technical or whatever. It's the exact idea that "this as a whole is more complicated than that as a whole". I get what you're saying by that, because I do play healer myself, but it's not a matter of healer player but player that could want to play healer and don't have the experience you have with it and will just see "it's easy to play". And by no means I advice someone to starting healing because it's easy to play as they will irremediably trip at somepoint (Stone Vigil or Aurum Val are really sprout killers) and sometimes player in this game can get ugly enough to be discouraging, DPS in general have a way stronger pick-up and play feels to them (BRD and DRG in particular), because of their steady progression curves. It's a shame RDM is unlocked that late, because it's clearly the single best pick-up and play job of the game and teach a lot of thing about FFXIV as a whole, especially how to play arroung GCD.

Also, entry level of play isn't exactly casual, it's more beginner. You don't mind boring dungeon at first because they're new, and you sure don't mind those super huge DPS loss because you don't even know they exist yet. That's exactly the kind of dissonance that experience can create. And when you could something simple, someone else will find the one where you press the thing that is shining much, much simpler.
I think there's mostly two type of player, those that understand how thing works by doing it and those that get it by reading the instructions. Both of those player won't say the same thing is simple. One will say it's the sophisticate press to fire spell, the other will say it's the sequenced straightforward one. That's the reason why all DPS play that different, BRD opportunistic support also value awareness a lot for exemple. Off course it's not anything that clearcut and reality is more about nuance and tendancies. I'm not too "it's black or white" type of person, especially when it comes discussion. Different point of view often complement each other more than they conflict.

To add more to the actual thread, I think healing in FF XIV really require to be able to play without clear guidelines, it's something one should consider if they don't like straighforward approach and doesn't play but the same rules as everyone but in the end have the most important decision making. Instead of having one solid and coherent class kit, you have huge array of tools that pretty much all work on their own insteand of being clearly linked to each other.
But if scattered gameplay and lack of more engaging routine is a drawback, ranged DPS like BRD or MCH, or maybe tanks can be a better choice. They have great supportive abilities that can really shine in difficult situations.