You're asking alot of a healer with this. It's already stressful enough for most healing classes in XIV, having additional expectations of them is pretty preposterous tbh. If this is how you want to play, and it works for you without stressing you out or burning thru your MP unnecessarily than by all means, but to make this the expectation of all healers in this game is ridiculous and I couldn't disagree more.
this article is 100% correct, it is everybody's job to contribute as much to the party as they can, and standing around with a finger in your ass while everyone is on full hp is not contributing. it's lazy, and lazy players are bad players.
Lol, healers heal, grab a brain. They shouldn t have to worry about dps and healing. On that note, if you think healers generally play with their fingers up their ass, you my friend would be the bad player, or a lazy, crappy dps.
The healer Role is healing, but the Class that happen to have healing skills should not be limited to only healer roles.
here is a crazy idea I don't know maybe devs should make more mmo's that dont have these silly every class can do everything in the game......maybe that would promote needing others even more in an mmo crazy I KNOW!
This depends on the game itself. In Final Fantasy games yes the healers can dps, but they do not have to. If your group is failing by not doing enough dps that is on the dps and tank not the healer. To many times I have seen dps blaming tanks and healers for the fails when it was their own output that is killing the group. No a healer should not be stance dancing in boss fights, for random mob pulls yes I hardly ever run in healing stance as it isn't needed.
Again for normal instances yeah there is no reason for a healer to not be dps spec as tanks should hardly be taking damage, and the dps shouldn't be getting damage at all, if they do it is their fault. But as soon as you step into raid content that changes for the most part, it is a different game where you have to worry about things like running out of mana ect...depending on the group makeup and who is doing what especially if you are the raid healer and not the tank healer.
Overall when dps players learn to not take damage when they shouldn't this would be OK, but 90% of the time you are going to have that one idiot that you let die or have to heal all the time.
Now if we were playing something like WoW and you were running dps spec when you are a healer I would kick you out in a heart beat as that game is setup totally different.
The sort of nonsense found in this article is one of the reasons I quit FXIV. Prescriptive, inflexible yammerings about how so and so or such and such was "doing it wrong." And if they say they can't do that? "Git good."
Honestly I'm really surprised that MMORPG would publish this article. They've always struck me as a site that embraces the fun of games, and understood people's different ability levels and play preferences. (And don't tell me that silly little line at the start counts. It's the equivalent of saying "I don't want to offend, but...")
Get off your high horse and let people do what they want. That goes for the people who kicked you for doing damage too. If it's going fine, who cares?
Completely agree with you! I find it hard to enjoy FFXIV combat as it is, with the long GCD. Clerics Stance is so fkn awkward to use. It's even worse when a dps makes a mistake and I have to drop everything from DPS to save them. I kinda prefer healing and having DPS be something to do if things seem fine. I've noticed this has become more and more a thing in FFXIV. I would see lots of posts complaining that healers are bad because they won't do DPS. Healers heal, DPS is the main job of the DPS. If there's room for a healer to safely DPS, fine, but if they aren't comfortable with healing why add more stress? Do you guys like queue times?
Also I'm pretty sure that using a DPS meter in FFXIV is a potentially bannable offense, no?
I used one a long time ago when trying to learn SMN and the people said it falls under don't ask don't tell. I love the mindset of "if you aren't playing the way I want, you're doing it wrong!". For me this whole mindset falls under something I came to understand a long time ago. Back in like BC WoW I was complaining to a close PvP friend of mine about how annoying it was that people backpeddle. He said something along the lines of this "Who cares what they do? There's nothing you can do about it and if that's how they want to play, let them. They'll never get better but it is what it is, I just don't worry about them, I worry about myself."
I can only speak for myself, as i use a scholar for healing, rather than a white mage, it suits my play style much better, keeping the tank alive is main priority, after that its keeping the dps alive and if by some chance i have the odd second or two to cast something else, i can put a dot on the main target, and thats a big if, the priority is to make sure i can keep the main tank alive, letting dps die is sometimes necessary as they can be sacrificed, better a dps dies than the whole group, which is what would happen if the tank dies, that is why dps have to be careful not to break agro, if they do, then they have to hope that they are in range of the heals i am using, which for a scholar are probably a bit more 'aoe' than a white mages. And that is the order of priority for healing vs dps for a scholar, you also need to make sure that you have the mana to keep the tank alive, you can't just randomly burn through all your mana and hope that things will be okay, because more often than not, everyone dies because of it, there is a strategy to healing, and either you master it, or you remain one of the lesser skilled healers, pro gamers btw, are not interested in how much dps their healer can put out, they are interested in how good their healer is at keeping everyone alive, if the dps aren't on their game, they can be replaced fairly easily, but a good healer, like a good tank, is very hard to replace, if the skills of either one is lacking then everybody dies.
The underlying true point of this article is: If your party setup and the situation allows it then the healer should dps.
However the OP prefered to write that in a condescending tone as you would expect it from a random reddit user creating a clickbait.
I am actually somewhat disappointed in mmorpg.com for supporting this.
My sentiments precisely I have played healers in FFXIV and when you go in with PUGs the tank asks how much to pull to test you and if you say all out I have seldom had time to DPS because the tank may be okay but the DPS screw up and even when people do their job it is still pretty hectic.
this article is 100% correct, it is everybody's job to contribute as much to the party as they can, and standing around with a finger in your ass while everyone is on full hp is not contributing. it's lazy, and lazy players are bad players.
This is where you are wrong. As a healer it is my "job" to keep the party alive. It is the party's "job" to complete the instance. If the party achieves its goal because I did my "job", we're good. This is why the game has roles.
It's the min-maxing control types that ruin games and is why they won't put in a DPS meter.
And for further reference, I do have a job and it is computer programming, not healing. I "play" a healer. If already have a job where my performance is rated and it's not in a *game* that I play for fun.
If you want to go hard-core, go find like minds and stay out of PUGs.
I think healer dps in any environment should be OPTIONAL. If a healer is comfortable enough to do so then any dps they contribute is great.
But encounters where healer dps is REQUIRED is just poorly implemented.
I would argue that the people who feel that healer dps is REQUIRED are actually blaming the wrong people. Maybe your DPS that you are bringing is just bad? (I know this isn't true most of the time).
I think basically FFXIV encounters are generally just poorly designed. The reason I say this is because having more dps allows you to skip phases and so everything just becomes a dps race, which then lends to the requiring healers to dps as much as possible.
I understand that some players enjoy the skill required to both keep the group alive and do as much dps as possible, but that's one of the huge turnoffs of this game. This mentality starts to bleed out from the savage raids into the casual ones as well as indicated by alot of comments people are making here.
Wow. I can't believe someone actually got me to log in.
Everything would've been just fine had it not been for that noise of a last sentence that was just so deafeningly painful that you, OP, managed to make me do what I otherwise wouldn't have done.
You see, I played Aion for years where PvP and PvE (at one moment) had similar high points; Decisions were to be made within a second or less of an occurring stimulus lest a wipe occur. This was most apparent in small (3-man) group, open-world PvP.
I was a healer and I did my best to contribute to DPSing and debuffing even when there was arguably, no perceivable downtime. Why? Because I deemed that a root to a pursuing melee target was going to save my party member -- not any heal that was off cooldown.
Already learned the macro-ing? Fine. But some people find it really hard to grasp the micro-ing that apparently makes for a better healer -- animation cancels, cast/movement juking, preemptive hard CC cleanses, dps assist vs healing, LoSing, you name it.
But you know what? The majority of people I ever played with didn't improve by getting called, "bad." The few that did, refused to give up. They simply let needlessly scalding words like yours roll of their shoulders.
The majority? Well, they stayed in the same place -- "being bad."
Because people don't improve right? You, OP, just assumed that these so-called, "non-DPSing healers" are "bad" without realizing that there are a variety of reasons (which I don't care to discuss for the sake of brevity) for why they aren't DPSing. Have you considered that at the most basic level, that some just -- I don't know -- don't give a damn? That some are even better than you (see what I did there) but can't take their hands off the Cheetos?
Who are you to even declare who's bad or good? Did you even consider that you might have just "L'ed 2 DPS" first and that the healer next to you who's better at everything else (teehee) just plainly didn't think about it? And that if you simply told them, they'd start doing it like all the other self-proclaimed "better/best" healers?
Is this your first post? At this point, I'm surprised that you even lasted a month in the editorial team.
Okay, I'm done and I'm sorry. I'm just appalled that you even dared to go this far.
Someone report this guy for parsing please. FFXIV community is one of the best, and i like to think thats because they had the brains to make stuff like dps meters illegal. People like the OP are the scum of the MMO community in my opinion. If you dont like how other like to play the game then either quit or play with your company.
I really don't want to seem arrogant, but I've played for a while and its a game i love and i feel like many people outside of its more devout community dismiss opinions of healers roles as elitist. I don't agree with the article entirely, but i can see where its coming from.
I've played healers, both WHM and SCH from the start of 2.0 (currently AST main) and yes, healing is the core of your job and dont ever let anyone telling you to dps more stop you from healing if that's what you want. If people aren't surviving then your not doing your job. Healers are Healers.
However, Dps in FF14 is a group effort, and a healers contribution can make the difference between a 15 min run and a 25 minute run. In progression endgame raiding it can be the difference between a clear or a wipe.
The game is designed in a way that healers are not always required to heal, whether it be through instance design or by the opportunities created by your party through use of mechanics or abilities, and during these times dps is more appreciated than over healing your team.
MMO's are all different, with different structures and mechanics. Healing wont always be the same in all of them. In regards to FF14, healing is the bare minimum expected of healers. There are more tools for not just dpsing, but support and control as well. If you really wish to be a great healer in the game, then extending past your role while still maintaining the core of it is only ever a good thing and is greatly appreciated by most people.
People shouldn't force healers to dps if they aren't comfortable. Healing can be hard without gear, fight knowledge or your tank is new or under geared (or silly). At the same time however, players shouldn't be so quick to dismiss healing dps, if you can manage both you are a much greater support to your team than an everlasting hp potion.
(also if you do plan on giving it a go, WHM = Main healer - top priority is healing, SCH = Support healer - emphasis on dps between heals, AST = Can be Main or Support - fill in the role of either whm or sch while also providing team buffs... AST>SCH> WHM, )
I have to agree with the poster who commented that stance dancing is irritating. That's a big part of the annoyance for me. Take out the need for Cleric Stance and a lot more people would be willing to dps. But further to the point for me is that I'd rather spend that time supporting my team in other ways, like buffing their stats, debuffing the boss, using CC, replenishing their resources, etc. It's one of the things I like about Astro but I wish there was more if it. Either way, one or both of those changes would be very welcome to the healer classes. We want to be busy and contributing, we just don't love the way it's implemented right now.
Holy Christ people think stance dancing is hard? If I don't stance dance as a white Mage I'm literally standing around with my thumb up my ass for 95% of dungeon runs. The only time where this was an exception was my first time in a dungeon (can't remember the name) and the tank was so overgeared he would pull multiple rooms at once which was tons of fun lol
Holy Christ people think stance dancing is hard? If I don't stance dance as a white Mage I'm literally standing around with my thumb up my ass for 95% of dungeon runs. The only time where this was an exception was my first time in a dungeon (can't remember the name) and the tank was so overgeared he would pull multiple rooms at once which was tons of fun lol
Both SCH and AST have more to juggle aside from just healing and both have less raw healing power. I mained a WHM (and for a bit SCH) before AST and it's a lot easier.
Sure, we'll focus on DPS, when melee can dodge AOEs, follow mechanics, and do better DPS.
I only DPS when my group is good at tanking/damage-dealing. If my tanks are wearing toilet tissue, or my melees are window-lickers--I'm going to focus on keeping them alive, so I can get out of the event, and drink some shots, continue playing healer.
Sure, I don't mind doing some dots in-between heals, but if you're fussing to healers for DPS-- then maybe YOU should rethink how you're doing your job in the game.
So get good, or stay mad. I did pay for this game, and I'm going to do what I'm comfortable with. I play games for fun, and not some neckbeard's finger-waggling.
Healing/DPSing as a SCH was stressful - it wasn't difficult... but only IF the tank and DPS were decent. But most players of aforementioned classes I played with were impatient and lazy. Tanks would pull too much, not avoid damage, not mitigate enough damage or didn't put out enough DPS themselves. The DPS would be the same - not avoid damage, or not do enough damage - means that having to play more aggressively to keep them alive, you have to make up the damage they're not putting out whilst managing resources efficiently to do both of those.
And that becomes stressful, and not fun. Having to play at 100% because of other people's inadequacy or laziness isn't fun. If I slack - or even fail to keep up with the demand, people die and the run takes much, much longer. Or it's impossible to complete.
I played casually, for fun. But I ended up being pretty hardcore for menial runs... stopped being fun, as I saw a trend.
Somehow as a healer I have quite a lot of time to DPS inbetween heals. However, this DOES depend on the quality of the rest of the party. Getting out of the targetted area etc. So those demanding that healers should dps too could themselves be responsible for why the healer isn't.
Just to clarify, the content in FF14 is NOT designed so that healers are required to dps. They can make life easier but most of the time dps isn't pushing their role hard enough. This is common in MMOs but more noticable in FF14 because of the 4 player party setup.
Just my 2 cents. I do play WHM and know SCH and AST can push more for dps btw.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Comments
The healer Role is healing, but the Class that happen to have healing skills should not be limited to only healer roles.
Again for normal instances yeah there is no reason for a healer to not be dps spec as tanks should hardly be taking damage, and the dps shouldn't be getting damage at all, if they do it is their fault. But as soon as you step into raid content that changes for the most part, it is a different game where you have to worry about things like running out of mana ect...depending on the group makeup and who is doing what especially if you are the raid healer and not the tank healer.
Overall when dps players learn to not take damage when they shouldn't this would be OK, but 90% of the time you are going to have that one idiot that you let die or have to heal all the time.
Now if we were playing something like WoW and you were running dps spec when you are a healer I would kick you out in a heart beat as that game is setup totally different.
Completely agree with you! I find it hard to enjoy FFXIV combat as it is, with the long GCD. Clerics Stance is so fkn awkward to use. It's even worse when a dps makes a mistake and I have to drop everything from DPS to save them. I kinda prefer healing and having DPS be something to do if things seem fine. I've noticed this has become more and more a thing in FFXIV. I would see lots of posts complaining that healers are bad because they won't do DPS. Healers heal, DPS is the main job of the DPS. If there's room for a healer to safely DPS, fine, but if they aren't comfortable with healing why add more stress? Do you guys like queue times?
Also I'm pretty sure that using a DPS meter in FFXIV is a potentially bannable offense, no?
I used one a long time ago when trying to learn SMN and the people said it falls under don't ask don't tell. I love the mindset of "if you aren't playing the way I want, you're doing it wrong!". For me this whole mindset falls under something I came to understand a long time ago. Back in like BC WoW I was complaining to a close PvP friend of mine about how annoying it was that people backpeddle. He said something along the lines of this "Who cares what they do? There's nothing you can do about it and if that's how they want to play, let them. They'll never get better but it is what it is, I just don't worry about them, I worry about myself."
And that is the order of priority for healing vs dps for a scholar, you also need to make sure that you have the mana to keep the tank alive, you can't just randomly burn through all your mana and hope that things will be okay, because more often than not, everyone dies because of it, there is a strategy to healing, and either you master it, or you remain one of the lesser skilled healers, pro gamers btw, are not interested in how much dps their healer can put out, they are interested in how good their healer is at keeping everyone alive, if the dps aren't on their game, they can be replaced fairly easily, but a good healer, like a good tank, is very hard to replace, if the skills of either one is lacking then everybody dies.
If your party setup and the situation allows it then the healer should dps.
However the OP prefered to write that in a condescending tone as you would expect it from a random reddit user creating a clickbait.
I am actually somewhat disappointed in mmorpg.com for supporting this.
This is where you are wrong. As a healer it is my "job" to keep the party alive. It is the party's "job" to complete the instance. If the party achieves its goal because I did my "job", we're good. This is why the game has roles.
It's the min-maxing control types that ruin games and is why they won't put in a DPS meter.
And for further reference, I do have a job and it is computer programming, not healing. I "play" a healer. If already have a job where my performance is rated and it's not in a *game* that I play for fun.
If you want to go hard-core, go find like minds and stay out of PUGs.
I think healer dps in any environment should be OPTIONAL. If a healer is comfortable enough to do so then any dps they contribute is great.
But encounters where healer dps is REQUIRED is just poorly implemented.
I would argue that the people who feel that healer dps is REQUIRED are actually blaming the wrong people. Maybe your DPS that you are bringing is just bad? (I know this isn't true most of the time).
I think basically FFXIV encounters are generally just poorly designed. The reason I say this is because having more dps allows you to skip phases and so everything just becomes a dps race, which then lends to the requiring healers to dps as much as possible.
I understand that some players enjoy the skill required to both keep the group alive and do as much dps as possible, but that's one of the huge turnoffs of this game. This mentality starts to bleed out from the savage raids into the casual ones as well as indicated by alot of comments people are making here.
Everything would've been just fine had it not been for that noise of a last sentence that was just so deafeningly painful that you, OP, managed to make me do what I otherwise wouldn't have done.
You see, I played Aion for years where PvP and PvE (at one moment) had similar high points; Decisions were to be made within a second or less of an occurring stimulus lest a wipe occur. This was most apparent in small (3-man) group, open-world PvP.
I was a healer and I did my best to contribute to DPSing and debuffing even when there was arguably, no perceivable downtime. Why? Because I deemed that a root to a pursuing melee target was going to save my party member -- not any heal that was off cooldown.
Already learned the macro-ing? Fine. But some people find it really hard to grasp the micro-ing that apparently makes for a better healer -- animation cancels, cast/movement juking, preemptive hard CC cleanses, dps assist vs healing, LoSing, you name it.
But you know what? The majority of people I ever played with didn't improve by getting called, "bad." The few that did, refused to give up. They simply let needlessly scalding words like yours roll of their shoulders.
The majority? Well, they stayed in the same place -- "being bad."
Because people don't improve right? You, OP, just assumed that these so-called, "non-DPSing healers" are "bad" without realizing that there are a variety of reasons (which I don't care to discuss for the sake of brevity) for why they aren't DPSing. Have you considered that at the most basic level, that some just -- I don't know -- don't give a damn? That some are even better than you (see what I did there) but can't take their hands off the Cheetos?
Who are you to even declare who's bad or good? Did you even consider that you might have just "L'ed 2 DPS" first and that the healer next to you who's better at everything else (teehee) just plainly didn't think about it? And that if you simply told them, they'd start doing it like all the other self-proclaimed "better/best" healers?
Is this your first post? At this point, I'm surprised that you even lasted a month in the editorial team.
Okay, I'm done and I'm sorry. I'm just appalled that you even dared to go this far.
TL;DR -
I've played healers, both WHM and SCH from the start of 2.0 (currently AST main) and yes, healing is the core of your job and dont ever let anyone telling you to dps more stop you from healing if that's what you want. If people aren't surviving then your not doing your job. Healers are Healers.
However, Dps in FF14 is a group effort, and a healers contribution can make the difference between a 15 min run and a 25 minute run. In progression endgame raiding it can be the difference between a clear or a wipe.
The game is designed in a way that healers are not always required to heal, whether it be through instance design or by the opportunities created by your party through use of mechanics or abilities, and during these times dps is more appreciated than over healing your team.
MMO's are all different, with different structures and mechanics. Healing wont always be the same in all of them. In regards to FF14, healing is the bare minimum expected of healers. There are more tools for not just dpsing, but support and control as well. If you really wish to be a great healer in the game, then extending past your role while still maintaining the core of it is only ever a good thing and is greatly appreciated by most people.
People shouldn't force healers to dps if they aren't comfortable. Healing can be hard without gear, fight knowledge or your tank is new or under geared (or silly). At the same time however, players shouldn't be so quick to dismiss healing dps, if you can manage both you are a much greater support to your team than an everlasting hp potion.
(also if you do plan on giving it a go, WHM = Main healer - top priority is healing, SCH = Support healer - emphasis on dps between heals, AST = Can be Main or Support - fill in the role of either whm or sch while also providing team buffs... AST>SCH> WHM,
I only DPS when my group is good at tanking/damage-dealing. If my tanks are wearing toilet tissue, or my melees are window-lickers--I'm going to focus on keeping them alive, so I can get out of the event, and drink some shots, continue playing healer.
Sure, I don't mind doing some dots in-between heals, but if you're fussing to healers for DPS-- then maybe YOU should rethink how you're doing your job in the game.
So get good, or stay mad. I did pay for this game, and I'm going to do what I'm comfortable with. I play games for fun, and not some neckbeard's finger-waggling.
And that becomes stressful, and not fun. Having to play at 100% because of other people's inadequacy or laziness isn't fun. If I slack - or even fail to keep up with the demand, people die and the run takes much, much longer. Or it's impossible to complete.
I played casually, for fun. But I ended up being pretty hardcore for menial runs... stopped being fun, as I saw a trend.
Ash!!!
Just to clarify, the content in FF14 is NOT designed so that healers are required to dps. They can make life easier but most of the time dps isn't pushing their role hard enough. This is common in MMOs but more noticable in FF14 because of the 4 player party setup.
Just my 2 cents. I do play WHM and know SCH and AST can push more for dps btw.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer