Dear Paladins

[TheForce]

paladin attracts the biggest babies, i swear. you're not gonna die because you scraped your knee.

i play drk which has very little self sustain now and i've seldom died because the healer let me drop to 20%, even 10% to dps more and bring me back up with an ogcd heal. it doesn't matter how much hp you have as long as it doesn't hit zero

no, it's the healers who do nonsense like spam heal with cure 1 in akademia that make me wary

So, aside from your gross over-simplification of why most PLDs tend to frequently clemency, I need to address this quote:

"It doesn't matter how much hp you have as long as it doesn't hit zero"

Yeah no. It's not dare as black and white as you're trying to make it seem. I'm a bit concerned that I need to even say this in a discussion that (I'm assuming) end-game players are participating in, but it DOES matter how much HP one has. Why you ask? Because the Tank dying is something that needs to be avoided at all costs; it is a grave failure that carries dire consequences. Tanking (or doing any role in this game for that matter) on a low HP bar allows much less room for error/mistakes from yourself AND party-members and GREATLY increases your risk of dying (again, can't believe I have to say this). You want to minimize this risk as much as you can, because like I said earlier, a Tank's death is something that NEEDS to be avoided. It's not something that a skilled player would toy around with and try to chance.

You bragging about Tanking while being at ~20% HP is nothing to proud of; this isn't a good thing at all, it's the opposite. What you're describing is very reckless behavior, you're unnecessarily increasing your risk of death for what? So adds can die a second or two faster? Give me a break. And you say you've "seldom died" as a result of this so it must be fine, that's just silly. Dying at all from this type of play is a huge problem, because it's a situation that can, and should be avoided.

Then you even go as far as to insult healers that actually try to keep you healed and well off to ensure that death isn't even an option for you. You say they make you "wary", lol. You want to know the difference between being stuck at 20% HP and stuck at 100%? With the latter, there's no possibility of you dying if the Healer looks away for a few seconds, with the former, there is.

As a Tank main (PLD/DRK main too, by the way), I'm disappointed in your reply, DRK.

[Anne-]

I will never get those kind of healers.

You are a healer, first and for most, so you are to keep the group alive and going, THAT is your main job. And yes, when everyone is looking good on health and you have the time to DPS, then do it, but only then. If you can't grasp that, you failed at your job. It's that plain and simple.

[Sancho_Nyanta]

To be honest though if you are able to Shirk people at this point in the game I would have to question how the heck you would be able to. Tank threat is stupid strong now. If you both walk up to a mob they can go hog wild on it and you can keep hate with just auto attacks unless you died or just didn't have your stance on.

Just to test it, I've tried to Shirk my static healer and haven't been able to give him enough hate to take it unless I died, he got me back up, I voked and then immediately shirked him. This was the only way when we were testing it that I could actually shirk them to give them hate.

[Makeda]

Wasn’t this standard to do early in a huge trash pull in 4.x to generate silly threat so they could spend the rest of the pull in DPS stance? As such maybe aone folks just haven’t read their patch notes or prefer not using their AOE rotation because whatever (I switch to single on GNB often to get my self heal/shield and to speed down damage on a mob that casting effects I have to keep moving out of... so I get not always using the AoE rotation).

[phantomr23]

I really fail to see the issue with letting a tank drop below 50% health. Damage in this game comes at incredibly predictable intervals and healing is based entirely around oGCD heals that often benefit immensely from allowing the tank to drop to lower health (Excog, Benediction, etc.) Sure, if we die on the first wall to wall pull because the healer doesn't know what they're doing, then that sucks - but I've seen that happen maybe once in the past 100 dungeon runs, whereas me trusting the healer has let everything go much more smoothly the other 99.

Healers doing DPS isn't them playing badly or messing around with your life, it's just them taking full advantage of their kit and playing in the way that the game is clearly intended to be played.

(That said, clemency can and should be used if the healer is dying, if you're familiar with the healer's kit and you can clearly tell that they're out of oGCD options, or you mess up and take needless damage.)

[Fluffernuff]

Healers doing DPS isn't them playing badly or messing around with your life, it's just them taking full advantage of their kit and playing in the way that the game is clearly intended to be played.

i pretty much said my peace on this matter a couple pages back, but this line has me kinda... split. I much prefer a healer using their kit, and is comfortable enough to let me drop and speed up the dungeon as a whole and whatnot; i generally advocate for it... so dont take this as disagreeing, but...

given the statements yoshi-p has given in the past, and this general mentality being mostly localized to NA... well i dont think how we push healers in this way is intended in the slightest. THAT said... it's clear that the intention is very much at odds with the current design we have.

[phantomr23]

i pretty much said my peace on this matter a couple pages back, but this line has me kinda... split. I much prefer a healer using their kit, and is comfortable enough to let me drop and speed up the dungeon as a whole and whatnot; i generally advocate for it... so dont take this as disagreeing, but...

given the statements yoshi-p has given in the past, and this general mentality being mostly localized to NA... well i dont think how we push healers in this way is intended in the slightest. THAT said... it's clear that the intention is very much at odds with the current design we have.

It's hard to say, honestly, but I definitely lean towards feeling like it's absolutely intentional. Given that a lot of things have been lost in translation (the infamous "pure healer" line, for one) I've been unable to actually find direct evidence of Yoshi-P outright saying healers are mostly meant to heal. More than that though, I think the fact that you outright cannot complete Savage or Ultimate in the first weeks without copious healer DPS and the re-addition of Energy Drain in 5.05 - alongside just how many healing skills are oGCD - seems like it definitely implies that maximising damage output is intended.

[Fluffernuff]

snip

what im mostly referring to was statements he made before stormblood came out, and how he said point blank that healer dps wasnt factored into the fight design. or something along those lines. also, i dont remember/have a source for this but "pure healer" wasnt so much lost in translation so much as we as the NA community slapped a completely different notion of what that means than what yoshi did.

also, i dont think its fair to say that SCH *needed* ED to clear savage. it rounds out their kit, and not having an aetherflow dump on damage was very awkward. but if you listen to someone like momo, it wasnt the absolute end of the world.

But that really just brings it back to what i was saying; regardless of if they intend for healers to DPS or not doesnt really matter, because whats we actually get, the actual design pushes it regardless. it's kind of the nature of the beast we get. ff14 just isnt constantly pressuring healing often enough- its innately spikey on both the tank and healer ends. leaving enough downtime for dps to begin with.

not to mention enrage timers. but im chocking that up to NA again simply because.... "if we dont pass enrage, it clearly wasnt ME, how dare you. I'M a MNK, i couldnt possibly be the problem. No, the AST needs to pick up the pace." we also have the unfortunate habit of excluding roles entirely based on this. im not sure EU or JP is just auto-locking DNC, NIN, or RDM out of things, and i highly doubt they dont have those jobs clearing every week

[phantomr23]

also, i dont think its fair to say that SCH *needed* ED to clear savage. it rounds out their kit, and not having an aetherflow dump on damage was very awkward. but if you listen to someone like momo, it wasnt the absolute end of the world.

Yeah, that was bad comma usage and phrasing on my part - they were meant to be separate thoughts. So "healer DPS is basically required for early Savage kills unless everyone else is pulling basically 99th percentile" and "they very quickly returned Energy Drain, one of the core parts of Scholar's damage kit.

As for the rest though, we honestly agree on most levels. It's inarguable that as the game is right now healer DPS is not just a necessity but something that is actively encouraged. Only difference is I think it's intentional, regardless of a few quotes by Yoshi-P, and you probably don't. Either way yeah, end result is that FFXIV's design does not encourage pure healing.

(Out of interest, does anybody know if there has ever been a tier of Savage in which, with the healers doing 0 DPS, a group of tanks and DPS with average damage could have cleared all the fights in the first week? I could be wrong, but I don't think one has ever existed.)

[Alexan]

Listen.. PLDs heal themselves in dungeons so healers can do more damage. PLDs heal themselves in raids and trials because their healers suck.. or are too busy healing DRGs or MNKs. End Discussion