FFXIV: Why Are Healers So Grouchy?
Disclaimer: I’ve played as a healer quite a bit the past month or so. This isn’t an article about getting down on healers, cuz I know they don’t have an easy job. This is just an observation piece.
Okay, I’ve had some pretty rough tanks in the past. Some were learning, some didn’t care as long as they finished the dungeon and leveled from it.
I’ve also had my share of DPS that didn’t carry their weight, or did some incredibly dumb things.
But I noticed very often, if there’s going to be a job that gets annoyed over petty little things, it seems to be the healer. So I’m wondering, why so many grouchy healers?
I had an experience last night during roulette. At first, I wasn’t going to blog about it because this healer was a real killjoy. But then I thought back on all the experiences I’ve had in dungeon running, and I saw a theme. Many times, if someone is going to be over serious, condescending or just plain rude, it’s been a healer.
Brayflox NoFun
I’m working on leveling Zuri’s Dragoon to 50 right now. Seeing she just hit 44 last night, almost every single time I run roulette, I’ve gotten Brayflox this week. There was one random Titan, but mostly Brayflox. So that’s the first meh.
Last night’s group was interesting because it was all folks who appeared to be leveling their HW classes. We had a Dark Knight, Machinist and Astrologian. I didn’t know how this was going to roll, but we were doing fine. The run was smooth, I was putting out good DPS, interrupting AOEs for the party, and felt like I was performing pretty darn good.
So, on the third boss, Hellbender the salamander thing, you get him down to a certain point and the dragon, Aiatar, drops down and takes him out. Then you tangle with Aiatar for a short while before he flies away.
The fight went fine, and when Aiatar dropped down, I noticed we had a full limit break bar. Because we were blowing through the content pretty quickly, and I was just curious what would happen, I popped the limit break on Aiatar. And boom! The dragon fled to the skies instantly, leaving me feeling kinda cool about that FOR SCIENCE! moment.
Yes, I know, the scenario with Aiatar is scripted part of the fight. I know we didn’t have to do massive damage to it to make it fly away. But I also knew this tank was doing a full run of the dungeon, including all the chests and sub-bosses, and we were moving through it without much issue. So we’d have most of the LB back by the time we reached the final boss (and we did).
Out of nowhere, the healer sneered at me, “Dude? Really? You LB the dragon?”
I was thinking… Whoa? Really? Serious much?
Then I calmly responded, “It finished the fight faster and we’ll earn the limit break back.”
He didn’t say anything else, but man, that little snark really put a damper on the rest of the run for me. Note: We did just fine on the final boss. There was a limit break to pop. So there was no danger at all in messing around a little bit. And I even got a commendation at the end, so someone didn’t think I did too poorly.
Now, if this team had been struggling, there’d be no way I’d have done that. But we weren’t. It was all good fun. And the healer was all grouchy and nasty for nothing.
Past Runs
Thinking back, I remember a number of times when it was the healer who really grouched during dungeons and made the run rough.
My first Brayflox Hard Mode. My first ever try at a hard mode. I was scared to death, running it as a fresh level 50 Bard. I tell the team, “Hey, I’m new, but I watched the video.”
Healer groans, “Oh, just kill me now.”
The tank adjusts, and takes pulls slowly because he has a new player on board. The healer blows up at him for not doing a speed run, “I’m not here for sightseeing!”
When the tank doesn’t respond and doesn’t give desired speed run, the healer drops dungeon in the middle of a pull and lets the party wipe on purpose. Then the other DPS also dropped. That was it, I thought, my first hard mode run shattered just because I happened to be a new person to the dungeon. 🙁
I expected the tank to drop, too, and even thanked him for being patient with me, but he didn’t! In fact, he stayed there with me and waited for the party to reform, and we finished the dungeon without issue. That unexpected kindness from the tank was something I didn’t forget, and the nastiness from the healer was also something I didn’t forget.
My first run of Snowcloak, because I needed it for story progression. Again, on Zuri’s Bard. It was me and a Ninja as DPS. And the healer did nothing but chide, “LOL! You call this DPS?” “Man, where’s the deeps? So slow!”
He berated us all the way through, though neither of us said anything to him. I could tell the Ninja was getting annoyed, and at the end, even the tank said, “Man, what a jerk!” after the healer left.
So What’s Up With This?
I don’t expect healers to have infinite patience, and respect the job they do, but wow. My most memorable bad moments in this game have been when I was a DPS who was berated by healers. Granted, in the past two and a half years, bad moments are much more rare than good. So this doesn’t represent healers, nor even the community, as a whole.
Maybe they’ve just forgotten how to have fun? It’s a game. People don’t have to play absolutely perfectly 100% of the time. If I did something that caused a wipe or made the run awful for the rest of the party, that’s a time I’d expect to hear a little lip from someone.
But when I’m performing to the best of my ability, have proven to be a somewhat decent DPS… come on. Lighten up a bit! Have fun!