How many times...

[Saefinn]

There's a few things to unpackage here. However, I find it very rare to have a healer who /refuses/ to heal. Healers who make mistakes, for sure, healers who try to squeeze as much efficiency as they can for sure, but your tanks do it and your DPS do it, it's just noticeable on a healer because they make a mistake, it's a dead person. And arguably what they've done to healers makes this problem WORSE not BETTER. Why? To quote my co-healer friend running Diamond yesterday "oh shit I forgot I was a healer for a second". And to quote myself healing Diamond weapon yesterday on SCH, "broil, broil, broil, broil, broil, broil, broil". Healers probably do 70 or 80% of a run DPSing. This is a problem wev'e been complaining about, especially as that 70 or 80% is dull AF.

Is this a product of us /wanting/ to DPS more than heal? No. This is a product of the lower heal requirement. At least, in the context of the above situation. It's easy to get caught up in repetition when you have so much repetition that it's easy to slip from your healing focus. A good healing requirement if anything keeps your healers more on edge to heal and avoids them getting tunnel visioned.

The second issue is that this game effectively judges performance based on your rDPS regardless of whether you're DPS, tank or healer. This contribution helps avoid enrage timers, it can help avoid certain mechanics repeating, it can be skipping certain mechanics, it can do much to smooth out a run, it can make runs quicker, it can help DPS checks (and in some normal content, like Titania, this is something some people still fail). So healers often will try to keep in good practice, this means trying to be efficient with their healing to maximise their DPS contribution. Efficiency also means if they make a mistake, there's bigger problems. Even if they're not efficient or being good at it, the product of this design is that people expect healers to DPS, so healers will try to do what they can to contribute DPS.

One thing I do on AST is purposefully let people's health drop when I have Earthly Star up, because it's the strongest AoE heal in the game and I'm going to make use of it properly - and I need to use it because it contributes DPS too so it's not sensible to wait to wait to put it down, but I'm not going to waste its heal either. If the tank then stands outside of it just before I detonate it or people stand in an easy to avoid AoE then IMO that's more on them. Healers plan their heals, if you see a ground heal, it's there for a reason most of the time. Don't stand out of it unless you're full health (or you need to dodge)


The third issue is that certain healing abilities work better at low health and are more efficient, encounters are scripted meaning there's no benefit to healing somebody who doesn't have incoming damage. Taking Diamond Weapon last night, I put Excogitation on my tank, so I stopped healing my tank until Excogitation went off. Essential Dignity works better at low health. Benediction is better at low health. Earthly Star is a waste until people's health has dropped enough. Given the game's scripted nature, you end up planning these abilities. With randomisation, however, some of these abilities would more like be reserved for emergencies.

I think the knock on effect is this perception that healers refuse to heal. When most of the time its your healers trying to be efficient because that's what's expected of them. There's an expectation to DPS.


Healers who stand around doing nothing and keep people at 100% all the time aren't efficient healers, they're safe healers, which is fine for most content and I'm not going to begrudge people with that approach, but it's more of a problem in higher end content. And I use lower content and dungeons to get into get into good practice of balancing heals and DPS. Plus, the more DPS I do, the quicker the run can be. So I expect it's the same for other healers.


And then there's just the simple reality people forget. Even if we take away any arguments about trying to be more efficient & squeeze out more DPS:
People make mistakes.
They're human.

You might misjudge a tank buster, you might misjudge an AoE, you might misjudge how well your tank is geared, you might misjudge how well your tank is using their cooldowns, you might misjudge how suicidal your DPS are, you might misjudge whether that BLM refusing to get out of their leylines can take that AoE or not, you might misjudge whether that person can avoid that AoE, you might misjudge whether we'll fail a certain mechanic your heals can pull people through, we might misjudge the mechanic itself. You might misjudge whether you can get away with 1 more Broil or not.

When healers make their mistakes, it's more noticeable.

But what's not so noticeable? When you have a good healer covering your mistakes. I get more commendations for mediocre healing when the group doesn't really do anything to test my healing ability because they've all done a good job than when I have a suicidal group I have to carry.