The Tank, The Healer, The DPS

If you’ve ever felt weirdly proud of being the one who saves a wipe, or secretly stressed that everyone’s counting on you, you already understand the psychology behind the tank, healer, and DPS trinity. Tonight Doritos and I go deep on the “holy trinity” of MMORPG roles and why it instantly makes raids, dungeons, and even some shooter-style games make sense. We pull examples from Star Wars: The Old Republic and Final Fantasy XIV, from daily login hooks and guild camaraderie to the moments where a group becomes a real community.

We break down what each role is actually doing under the surface. DPS is not just button-mashing, it’s a race against boss enrage timers, a numbers game shaped by damage parses, and a constant battle to stay alive long enough to matter. We unpack burst damage versus damage over time (DOTs), why some players love stacking effects and others chase big casts, and how progression attempts train you like an athlete studying film.

Then we move into the social mechanics that hold everything together: tanks managing threat tables and taunts to keep the boss focused, healers juggling predictable mechanics plus unpredictable teammates, and battle resurrection as the ultimate “second chance” tool. We also talk role identity, leadership, and flow state, and we end by asking you to reflect on why you pick the role you pick.

Subscribe for more conversations on gaming, mental health, and the real meaning behind how we play, then share this with a friend and leave a review so more players and non-players can find the show. What role do you always choose when the group needs you most?

Transcript

Workshop Spark For RPG Roles

SPEAKER_00 0:14

So, Doritos, I had the most brilliant idea of what we're going to talk about today, and you can choose if we're going to do it, but you also have only one option in your list of choices, and that's yes.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

I can choose, but I don't have a choice. Got it.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

I like those kind of choices.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Keeps it simple for me.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Yes, this is a uh authoritarian dictatorship for our conversation. Actually, there's a backstory to this. I was at an all-day workshop for the Delaware Council on Problem Gambling last year, and I got to talk about all kinds of gamification concepts for them. I was there to take what they knew about problem gambling and use that as my starting point to educate them on how video games work. And there was a specific segment in the middle of the day that ended up being a really big hit and intrigue for so many people in the room because it was a concept they'd never heard before. They didn't know it was inside video games, and it just really made games click and become a fascinating activity for them. And would you like to know what that topic was? Tell us what was that topic? That topic was my discussion of the holy trinity of role-playing games, the tank role, the healer role, and the DPS, the damage per second role. And when I was talking about it, it just really lit up the room. And I think that we could have a great discussion since we're both veterans of so many different online games, role-playing games, and games that use these character roles. And I'm excited to do that with you if you're down for the topic. Let's go into it then. And before we start, I think it's important to note that our Trinity is missing the tank tonight. So, Marcus, we are going to have to absorb so much damage that we're not used to. But, you know, for me, I have been the healer and the damage dealer for raid groups with Marcus for years of my life. And so it's really interesting that we're talking about this on a night where he's absent from the show. But I'm sure that he would call himself an idiot one time, and then I would challenge it, reframe it to bonehead, and then we'd move on, and then he'd remind me that I wrote a book. So there, we've got all of the tropes for our show out of the way. Did I miss any?

SPEAKER_01 2:51

No, no, so have the books behind you, so we're good there. Trophy. Where's your award? Didn't it did something about an award there too? Yeah, it's right. It's directly behind you. There it is. There's the a there's the award for the book.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Yeah, psychology impact book award for the gamers journey. That's right. And there is a section in the gamer's journey that talks a little bit about this, but not nearly to the effect that I wanted to. It's it's really interesting,

Guild Life And Real Friendships

SPEAKER_00 3:20

all the little pieces of our characters that we create that become anchor points for why we want to play. And so, Doritos, you are playing at least one MMO pretty frequently right now, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Yes, I still I still play Star Wars Old Republic online. So, yes, I still play that on the regular, uh, at least daily, because I need to get my daily login rewards like any good MMO player does. Because everybody does. Yeah, most of them have a a daily login something, and then so that way you can collect your your all man brain. Just went numb on the concept. The game company has you hooked on engagement. Uh absolutely. Yeah. That and and I'm I'm in a a good guild, so there's there's plenty of of uh camaraderie with uh with the folks I play with. What's the name of the right now? So in Swotor, Star Wars Old Republic, I am in New Outriders, Nor for short. They are actually a kind of a game multi-gaming community. Is that Intisar's Guild? That is Intisar's Guild.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Hi, Intisar, miss you. There we go. Everyone's gonna be like, who is that? But that is called friendship in video games, everybody.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

And again, actually, so and it can lead to more. Actually, there's a couple that met through through this game that has been married now, even you know, through the guild, and they actually had their first child uh this past November. And they actually met through the game through the guild. That's a real that's a real human child, right? Yes, yes, they are they they've they are married in real life now, through the they met through the game. They they found out they actually lived, I think like three miles from each other, one of those things in the same town. Wow. They met in real life, they got along, they ultimately got married, and now they have a created a small human for themselves.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Those must have been some really good heels being thrown out for that to work so well. So

What Your Character Choice Reveals

SPEAKER_00 5:45

okay. So we've already touched on some of the connective social tissue that's created by playing games, but I think when we open it up to talk about the roles of the characters we create, it really becomes clear once we've learned about it and shared it with our audience, how that makes you depend on each other. And I want to just kind of break out an awareness here of who is this conversation for? So obviously, the gaming persona has a lot of people listening that play video games themselves. So you might know this already, but hopefully we can elevate it and make you think about how important it is the choices you've made with your characters and why you enjoy being that. I get questions in my chat when I'm streaming all the time about what does it mean if I create such and such style of character and I have this kind of job in real life? And when I do take the time to answer that question, more times than not, people are like, Oh my gosh, you literally knew everything about me just because of how I created my character. And that kind of is true. That's my thesis for everything that I do, actually, is that we can learn a lot about each other by looking at the characters we create. Yes, we can.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

That's interesting. I've never actually thought about about about what what it says about me as far as my my career positions in real life for for these things. Because again, I've just been doing what I I enjoy doing for a career, and I've been playing games for many, many a year.

DPS And The Enrage Timer

SPEAKER_00 7:25

Yeah. Well, the last time I saw you play Photor, you were playing a sniper in a raid group, and the raid group was learning, there were a lot of new people for this fight, and you had star parse up, and you were running circles around everyone. It wasn't working because there were people that were barely doing any damage on the boss, and every boss fight in a eight-person raid is really a race against time in Swotor, because the boss will enrage at a certain point and start doing moves that you cannot live through.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Right. But there are a lot of times because I've I've again I was that way as well at one point in time. You know, I was that new guy. And as over as you know, I progressed through learning the mechanics of the fight, the the sequencing, how the AI and the programming generated the responses and moves to what people were doing. Groups grew, fell apart, new groups were formed, and ultimately I ended up being a raid leader, which is very similar to the captain of a ball team or a coach, player coach type thing. Where I've done it enough times where I see what and I know what the next four things are going to happen are, so I can go in and now coach people on here's what we need to do to be successful eliminating this fight, and that's doing it as a damage dealer or DPS damage per second, which sometimes you lose focus because you're trying to really hone in on what you're doing because you want the group to ultimately be successful. So as a veteran, as a veteran player, you're going to put forth that extra effort because you know a lot of the little tricks and tweaks of how can I eat a little more out here and a little more out there, versus if you are the tank, the guy who tries to keep the enemy focused on them so that everybody can do so that the damage can do their job and the healers can keep everybody alive. I've done that many, many times. That was actually in Sword. That's how a majority of my major progression groups have been. Is I have been that tank role. And over time, you end up kind of leading the groups, the various groups, first-time people, people who've left and come back after multiple years. Because, like, wow, SoulTor has been around for over a decade now, decade and a half, actually. And so people are coming back. It's like, oh, I haven't played this in 10 years, five years, eight years, whatever it is. And yes, these games tweak, change, and adjust through the years, and being able to communicate that to people who haven't seen it in forever is very handy in understanding how to do it. It's like, oh, I don't because we have several guys like that now that I'm running with in various groups. I remember when this first came out and we did it, had to do it blah blah blah way. It's like, yep, that's kind of changed because we're over leveled. So in most most MMOs, since we're kind of on that topic at the moment, but most MMOs, you don't get to these multi-group encounter activities until you are at the highest max level before that current expansion pack. Expansion expansion or just sequence wherever it is, release current current release phase. Yeah. So then, like so in a lot of games, when the new game comes out or a new major expansion comes out, or major story increment comes out, they will ratchet up, go from say uh a 5.0 series to a 6.0 series to seven, and each time the level maximum level will increase a fixed quantity to 5 to 10, depending on what game you're playing. Yeah, so so it's fun. It's like I remember when this was a level 55 raid in Splotor. Like we're all level cap currently is level 80 until 8.0 comes out at some point in the nearish future where they're gonna raise level cap to 85.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

Right. And so those 35 levels would make the game skewed very weirdly if you're playing level 50 content. So don't they don't they sync the levels so make make things match a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Well they did so they did a so well since we're kind of focused, so we're talking. They did a raid level syncing for the a portion of the 6.0 expansion series, but then they changed that when they when 7.0 dropped out, dropped in, and it's now all of those operations that the multi- those are now level 80 only.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Even Caracas Palace and Eternity Vault, you have to be level 80. Yes, you do. That's to be wild.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

So so and and this is and Marcus has said this on multiple occasions. Swotor is a free has a free-to-play model. Yeah. And we can we can we can circle back to that concept here in a little bit, but that it has primarily a free-to-play model, and but the one way to actually do these raids, multi typically eight, sixteen-man operations, is that you have to go in, you have to be a subscriber to be able to have access to those now.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Yeah. Okay. So that there's there is a lot to unpack there. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

So we we've kind of we've kind of kind of the conversation is skewed in a different direction, but we can bring it back to where we want it to go here.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Yeah, so when you're in a group and you're a damage dealer, that damage per second, I had mentioned that you're in a race against time, and I'd mentioned programs like Star Parse. A lot of MMOs I've played have some kind of program you can run in the background that will put a little rectangular box on your screen, and it will actually tell you the math of how much damage you're doing and sometimes tell you the math everybody else in your group is doing so that you can tell if your group is powerful enough to take down the toughest bosses in the game. Because you'll have a boss and they'll have a timer. You don't see this timer. But let's say that this boss is set to eight minutes for their timer. If you do not kill them in the first eight minutes, at eight minutes and one second, their abilities and powers hit a bigger part of the screen or do five hundred percent more damage, basically the match becomes unwinnable at that point, and the boss will take the entire group out quickly. And so the damage player's job is to do a certain number of damage per second, depending on what game you're playing, you know, a certain number of thousand, like you would be able to tell a player is very good at their role. Fake numbers here. You could tell that a player is very good at their role if they do 25,000 damage per second. If you have someone in your group that's doing 16,000 damage per second, you know they're more of a novice, and someone's gonna have to pick up that missing 9,000. Maybe three of the players in the group do an extra three, and you can still be successful with that person underperforming. But because of that, think about it like a sports team, maybe basketball, where you might have one dominant scorer, but you still want other players on the team to score points throughout the game, because a team approach is generally one of the best ways to be successful. And in an MMO game, you really do rely on each other to all stay alive because you cannot do damage if your character is laying on the ground dead, which will lead us to our next role in a second. You can't do any damage if your character is dead, so you must stay alive, and you must keep doing your moves, hitting that boss, doing damage, getting those big numbers, and then bringing the boss down to zero before the boss gets powerful enough to take out all eight members of the group. And that's really the challenge, and the damage dealers take a great amount of pride practicing the way to layer their moves together to do the maximum amount of damage

Burst Versus Damage Over Time

SPEAKER_00 16:55

possible. And before we jump to the next role that I hinted at, I think we should talk about the difference between burst and dots. Because so dots.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

What is dot what is dots? I know dots are candy, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:13

No, they're damage over time. But I love that because now everyone will think that you can eat your damage, and then that becomes uh a memorable way to remember this conversation. But what is a damage over time, Doritos? Because I'm legally only allowed to describe burst damage.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Oh, okay. Well, as I typically so in a lot of games, a a dot damage over time is like a poison effect. You hit a target with a poison effect, and the poison sits there, it doesn't just splash and go away, it splashes and sticks to them. So a poison will then do a percentage of damage uh over the next you know five seconds. Yeah, five five fifty, it depends on what it is. So it in so you know if we bring this to games, true turn-based games, or in things like uh Baldur's Gate, where okay, you put poison, you you put poison on somebody, it lasts for ten turns. Same concept, even in an MMO, it's just this not a true, it's not turn-based, it's it's live, but it's still the same amount of damage is happening over the same amount of time.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

Yes. And this is really important to understand because DPS classes really are just people that enjoy doing math. They they really are, and I'm not even joking. So if you know someone who plays a game and they play a damage class, they are exercising their ability to do clever math to achieve victory in their battles. When you're doing a dot style damage approach, and you're you're casting that poison, or my favorite was in Star Wars you could play the madness sorcerer, and those dot effects were more like putting madness or insanity on the person. So you're hitting them with lightning spells and things like that, but you're also making sure that they lose their mind. And for someone who does the kind of work I do, that's just that tickles me in a way that might cause ethical issues. So you you have five seconds, and you might put two of these different kinds of dots and then do one hit, and that hit might be weaker than other damage classes, like let's say it hits at a potency of 50, but the two dots you put on add seven and eight. So that fifty hit is actually a sixty-five. And so that makes them do sometimes more damage than the people who don't do dots. And that's the allure, is you choose to do the type of damage that makes you feel excited to play the role. And the other version doesn't have as much of that math where you layer things together. It's burst, and with burst DPS, you don't put three moves together and package them together to get that 65. You might just get a 70 by taking an extra two seconds to stand still and cast a big boom. So in in DD or Baldur's Gate, I like to think that you're casting fireball instead of you know using cantrips and bonus actions to do three hits and putting poison vial on the floor. That's that's that's a lot of it. Yeah. And so in the sorcerer class for Star Wars, I had periods of time where I played all three styles of sorcerer: the healer and the madness, which is a dot damage, and the lightning, which is a burst damage. And my my claim to fame in Votor is really that for six weeks I had the the highest star parse for the for the smallest dummy. And then people are like, it only matters if you do the big dummy. But I was like, no, if this is burst, I want to be able to be the best at the smallest dummy. So the the idea there is that you keep putting moves out as fast as possible to do the biggest damage you possibly can. And it's still the same logic. You want the boss's health bar to hit zero before it wipes out the group. Uh what do they call it? TPK total like total party kills. Yeah, okay. That's where the whole party is wiped out.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

Total party kills. In in in D D, yes, that'd be uh total party kill. Uh and Sotorb. Be a raid wipe. A wipe, yep.

SPEAKER_00 22:02

Okay. And then you gotta run it back and do the fight again.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

So walks walks of shame and get back and try it again. Call progression.

unknown 22:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

It's called progression for a reason because you're trying to get incrementally better at knowing the fights, the mechanics, the the sequence of events, what abilities you have from an attacking side of things and then a defensive side of things so that you do eke out that the most amount of damage possible. Because sometimes, as a damage dealer, you have to stand in an effect that can cause your character a lot of harm, but you need to know what armor adjustments, you know, force bubble for assassin style. I play assassins a lot in in SOTOR. So for Shroud damage negating abilities, that can't enable you to survive those type of activities.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

And you know, depending on how we use this video, maybe I can overlay some of that action. But I had all new boss fights for me in Final Fantasy XIV. And so while I'm talking about geek therapy and mental health overlaps with video games, I'm also trying to win these fights for the first time. And there were several fights. I think all of them I was unsuccessful on the first attempt. And you know, you just have to wake back up at the beginning of the dungeon, run through that portal, teleport to the boss that just defeated you, try to remember what outsmarted you, and do it better this time. And I know one of the boss fights was a griffin. And yes, I was watching you do that today. Oh, wonderful. So you saw the griffin. You know, at the end of the stream, I use a mount roulette. So what that means is all of the mounts I've collected that I've put a favorite star on, when I click to use a mount, it'll give me a random one, so I'm not using the same ride every time. And would you like to know that Final Fantasy XIV has such a sense of humor that the final mount that I got before I logged off my stream was my rideable griffin after all that I went through an hour earlier with the oh just very rude, insufferable Griffin, giant griffin monster. So the first time I fought it, I think I only took it down to 80% of its health bar. It just hit me with a move. It's a new move to me. I haven't seen it before. It outsmarted me and it took me out completely in one hit. Right. And so then the second time I got to around 10%, and I really thought I was gonna do it. There was no thing in my mind that thought I'm about to lose. And then out of nowhere, same move got me. I just wasn't ready to run, and the safe zone was too far away by the time I realized what was happening. And then the third time I did clear it.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

You know, that's oh that's really good for a for a new to you new to you encounter.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Yeah, and there are fights where the the margin for error and the way the health and the damage math is tuned in the game. You could have a group of eight people working on a fight for months just to beat it one time. Yes, you can. Yeah, these are these are very difficult fights, and if you can take them out, it's a nice thing to do to be impressed with the person in your life who plays games and put enough dedication in their leisure time to be able to do it. It's similar to if you have an athlete and they're getting ready for a game, it's similar to them winning the game. And so there's a lot of people that just don't have the knowledge and language of what we're talking about to understand how these games work, and they're incredibly complex. I'm sure it sounds sometimes like we're speaking jargon if you don't play these yourself. And like I said, we have many types of people in the audience. We have the game players, we have the mental health professionals, we have the the loved ones or parents, even maybe non-gamers, but no a gamer in their life that matters to them very much. And we've talked about damage

Tanking Basics And Threat Control

SPEAKER_00 27:00

so far a lot. There's two other roles though.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

So I've played I've played I've played the other two. I'm not sure how much of the tanking you have done.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

Ah, so my original raid group in Swotor, which featured Evie Lovegood, the artist known as Jenny LeBron, I was the tank, and we were a republic side raid team, because I just had so many people that wanted to fight for the light side. I don't get it, but I was a Jedi Guardian, and I was a Sith race female, her name was Kayeksa, and I I was the tank for the longest time, and I think the only raids we completed in that iteration of our raid group was Eternity Vault and Karaga's Palace, and then I convinced them that my main character is a Sith sorcerer and we need to be playing on the Sith Empire side, and I eventually wore them down, and and so as far as raiding, that is the extent of my organized raiding as a tank, but I have been willing to jump into casual level difficulty and tank because that's the hole that we have. You know, I've out of the original ten raids in Star Wars The Old Republic, I've tanked all of them on story difficulty and all of the raids in Final Fantasy before you get into Savage Raiding. I've I've tanked those as well, just casually. Yeah, let's talk about should we go with tanks or healers first, Doritos?

SPEAKER_01 28:52

We've already started down the tank conversation, so let's kind of keep it there.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

Okay. So in a nutshell, what is important to know about the tank roll?

SPEAKER_01 29:06

The tank roll needs to be able to quote an older commercial, take a lickin' and keep on ticking. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

They want all they want all the painful things to hit them and only them. How do they do that?

SPEAKER_01 29:23

So there typically there is what's called an aggro table or an aggression table.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

Yeah, it's how much the enemies are ticked off at which party member.

SPEAKER_01 29:35

The one exactly. So the goal of the tank is to be the top of that table so that whatever is the group is encountered attacks them with the majority of the hits. So there are your normal abilities, and it ranges from all kinds of things. Most in most games, the tank has high abilities that do damage, not as much as the the date DPS, but does damage, but that also generates aggression towards that tank. Now, sometimes you have people like the two of us that are very high output damage dealers and can pull that aggression away from the tank. So, what we'll do that what the tank then also has is a set of taunts. So it is, and that is what the ability is called. It's called taunt. So the the tank can cast the taunt on whatever it is, whatever boss it is, and typically that will increase the amount of aggression towards the tank above everybody else for a small amount of time, typically 10 to 15 seconds, and it's usually like 20% more than the top person has. So that way the tank has the opportunity to, in addition to his taunt, now go through his rotation, if you will, yeah, to to uh to acquire as much aggression from the boss or encounter enemy as possible.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

This is all happening under the surface of what the game looks like, right? There is no actual table that you see unless you're using an extra program to see it in a numerical way. And and so if you want to use your imagination because you don't understand aggression tables or damage charts or things like that, and you're just looking at what the video game is and you see the tank. Basically, when the boss looks at one of their friends, the tank just says, Your mother smells of elderberries and your father was a hamster, and then the boss is like, What? How dare you? And then turns to them and starts hitting them instead. So it really is just a distraction, right? You're you're trying to distract the boss and keep their attention on you, and that frees up the other six people in the group to be able to do their roles, which will lead to the boss going down. And we didn't mention composition, but in both MMOs that we play, when you're doing an eight-person team, there are two tanks, four DPS, and two healers. And you don't usually see situations where that breakdown is different. And the the aggro table expresses how much threat every character in the group individually is displaying to that boss, and the boss will decide who to target based on that threat number total. Right.

SPEAKER_01 33:11

And and again, like I said, that's you know, even in non-MMO games, you're still gonna have a similar type of mechanism in place to to manage that that type of aggro.

SPEAKER_00 33:28

Yeah, for sure. You know, there's uh there's probably something like that in Baldur's Gate, but there's any real thing.

SPEAKER_01 33:37

So if you're if you're a fighter and something and you've got action surge and you have the ability to get goading attack, that is for the enemy to attack whoever whoever goaded it. Yeah. Goad goaded, not goated.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

Yeah. Yeah. But if you're really good at the game, then you're a goaded goaded. That's right. You're good, you're really goaded. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

But then you have games, you know, so then you have games like Destiny, where you actually don't have a defined tank heal DPS role, but you have different classifications of avatars that you can play, and you can kit them out or set up their gear such that you can act as one of those roles.

SPEAKER_00 34:31

Sure, yeah. So it comes down to gear or abilities or or things like that. You have to situationally make yourself serve the role, but maybe all classes have the ability to do certain things from the different roles. Indeed. That's that's one of the things, too, that really confused me about Marvel Rivals when I tried to play it, is some of the characters that I really like in Marvel Comics were classified as tanks. But in a game like Marvel Rivals, where you're running around shooting and trying to claim areas of the map and things, I just don't understand how a tank role works in that kind of game. That's something where I need to get more educated if I want to play those characters. So in games like that, I usually choose to play a healer or what they call support. And this might be a good segue back into MMOs of what a healer is, but that's the one role we haven't

What Healers Actually Manage

SPEAKER_00 35:35

tackled so far. I know you can play all of the roles, Doritos, but have you been a permanent healer member for any groups that you've been in?

SPEAKER_01 35:46

No, I'm usually a substitute healer, so I have not maimed a healer in a raid group or multi-encounter group before.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

I'm usually the backup guy's like, hey, you can do it too. Yeah. I was Marcus's permanent healer for several months in Death Star Troopers, and all the way through all the raids on story mode, and we got to the point where no matter which one we picked, we would clear it very easily. And eventually I convinced him that we should work on hard mode, and that's when things in the group really started to change, and I had to become a DPS. And maybe that story can be a different podcast episode. But the healer role is something I really enjoyed. It was a huge part of my connection to Swotor for the first eight years of me being in the game, is I just was a healer, and people in random groups would always comment about things I would do. You know, just predicting exactly where to put the AoE circles was my favorite thing. I loved casting the two moves that would cause the the bouncing force light to just fast bounce all over the room. That was like my favorite move ever. Yeah, roaming mend, affliction roaming mend combo. Just so much fun to put a dot heal and then massive burst heal together. Yes, healers have dots and bursts as well. Yep. But what is the role of the healer, Doritos, that makes it different than the other classes?

SPEAKER_01 37:31

It is intended to keep well in most games, the health bars are typically red. That's typically synonymous with a health bar is a red bar, so as to keep the red bars full.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

Or at least not empty. Not empty, not to zero, because like we've said, uh uh floor tanking and dead DPS do no DPS. There's all kinds of different entertaining ways to address that situation. But the healer is intended to keep the party alive. And depending on how it is, if you have a good tank that knows their gear is kitted out, kitted out well, then they can absorb more damage so the healer can focus more on the DPS. If there are abilities, if there are area effective abilities that go out that do damage to all party members, that allows the DPS to now not lose a damage ability turn to hit a med pack or healing potion or a cleansing ability to keep that maximum amount of damage going.

Healing, Power, And Real Life

SPEAKER_00 38:40

You just said a phrase that made me so happy because as a healer, that's the role I was playing when I started my private practice. And I really wanted a phrase that would tell people that are gamers it's safe to talk to me, and I'd love to hear what you have to say. And so I named my practice Area of Effect Counseling because I really believed that the energy that we have around ourselves in life can either build people up and do healing or tear them down and do damage. And so it was a MMO term or phrase that I felt really explained what it is I find the most fascinating about video games is AoEs, area of effect. So my professional life has been deeply rooted in the philosophy of healing psychology in video games. As as nerdy as that is, I just want people to hear that in this conversation because the role of being a healer in a game has been deeply integrated into my role of helping people to heal in their therapy sessions since I started doing this. It's always been about video games, even if it wasn't as clear then as it is now. If you have a person who's power hungry as a healer, they might get frustrated with players who are taking more damage than they should or messing up where they run doing the dance. And I've heard healers say things like, I don't heal stupid, or I decide if you die.

SPEAKER_01 40:25

So you oh yeah, they're mugs and t-shirts for that kind of stuff, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 40:29

Yeah, but I think I think it's important too that it is stressful to play healer because you're not reacting just to what the boss is doing, which you can predict that. You're reacting to what the rest of your team decides to do, and some of them are crazy fools who don't know what's going on, and you have to build up other people who often are making your job harder than it needs to be. It's kind of like being a grad school professor. I'll have to take your word on it. I'll take your word on that one. Alright, well, I'm sure you would be a great one, Doritos, just based on what I know about you and MMOs. There's also another cool thing that healers can do that I think is important because it's kind of like giving someone forgiveness

Battle Res And Clever Workarounds

SPEAKER_00 41:20

for a mistake. It's called a battle res or resurrection. When a character's health bar gets to zero and they are laying on the ground, which you called floor tanking, which is a silly insult, but you're saying you're not attacking anyone because you're just hugging the floor. You can give them another chance to have health and contribute to the group, and that's a battle res. It's a resurrection that occurs in the middle of a battle, and you bring them back to life. And some games limit how many times you can do that, other games make it so you can do it, but the more you do it, the longer time it's gonna take, and you're eventually gonna run out of time. And so the the first version where it's limited, I think, is or was Swotor's version, if I'm not mistaken, right? Or Battle Res Unlimited in SWOTOR.

SPEAKER_01 42:18

Well, it has it has a cooldown, so you use the ability, then it goes on a countdown timer to be able to be activated again, and they have the the development team has throughout the years the timer on that, how often you can do it, and who can do it. Because for a long time, since I play an assassin or a shadow class in Swotor a lot, that used I used to be able to go in and do a battle res by kind of gaming the system, stealthing out of combat, so then I can use my out of combat resurrection and get away with being able to do that on a shorter cooldown, and in addition, in addition to the healers being able to do it, so there's some gamesmanship within the system that you get to do or used to be able to do. Now they have since uh Broadsword has acquired the the game again, that only healers can do reses and assassins can't. Assassins can't, so it's it's it's made people have to relearn some of the here's a term that's used a lot in the in in the MMO or in most games. People have to relearn the cheeses involved with doing their classes and abilities.

SPEAKER_00 43:53

I see. Yeah. You know, when I'm playing Baldur's Gate with you though. Your character that's with the party that you control is a starian, and I see you all the time disengage from combat and then do the thing you're gonna do, which allows you to use stealth or get advantage a lot easier than me, who is not disengaging from the battle at all. So I'm bringing that up because I've never played Swator in a raid capacity since I played Baldur's Gate or DD. And so there's always been cheeses with disengaging from battle, is basically what I'm saying. Right? This is not just a Star Wars, the old thing.

SPEAKER_01 44:41

It's in it's in most games. Anyway you have a stealthing class that has the ability to disengage, that is always going to be a thing.

SPEAKER_00 44:51

Yeah. So in Final Fantasy XIV, there is no cooldown, which means a cooldown is where you can't use a move after you've used it for a certain amount of time. Think about it like it's a break in between your reps at the gym. There isn't that. But you do have to use your magic points on your character to send out a resurrection spell, and you have 10,000 of those magic points, and you rebuild them over time, but the battle res spell costs the most out of every spell on your bar. And so you will run out of points faster the more that you shoot those out, and they have a longer cast timer. So you usually have to wait until you have an auto cast. Because if you don't have an auto cast to send it out immediately, you'll have to stand completely still for six seconds or longer. And that is very dangerous to do if you're in a fight that is so lethal that your party is dying. So there's there's just a lot of psychology going on and quick micro decision situation management, and there's also the emotion of the player, too. They just got taken out of the fight, and you're sending them back in. I've had fights where I'm so ineffective that I'm just telling the healers, don't bring me back, save your points for somebody else. It's not worth it. Right. You know, so you bring in someone who's morally decimated back into the fight, and you're expecting them to jump right back in and do the right damage and not die the same way. So healers are very important because they help players that are taking damage to stay up on their feet, and when they fall down to get back up on their feet, and if you have enough people alive long enough, you will win the battle. And the tanks open up the chance for those damage dealers to do their damage because they're keeping the boss looking at them, and the boss might take ten hits to kill them, but only one or two hits to kill the others, and so you have to keep the boss hitting you, and then the healers focus their heals on the tank so that those those ten those two hits never become ten, and then the damage dealers aren't taking damage, and they

Why We Pick Each Role

SPEAKER_00 47:30

do all of their damage, and the boss goes down, and that's how you have victory. It is a rock, paper, scissors dynamic, and you need all three to be doing their role reasonably well, and these fights go up to the highest level of difficulty you can possibly imagine, and they go from easy, casual, relaxed, fun group activity you're supposed to win to you better be studying up and getting the best gear and learning your moves because you're gonna be working on this one boss for six months or longer if you're not good.

SPEAKER_01 48:08

Well, and so and I've started thinking about this as we've been talking that we've been pretty heavily focusing on MMOs and and things that are turn-based, but you know, even within games like Rivals and Overwatch and even the Call of Duties and Modern Warfares, that you still have a lot of these same roles prevalent in in those games too. Uh maybe not to the same effect, but you still have them as part of the norm of the game.

SPEAKER_00 48:48

Doritos, you play all three, and I just want to ask you how do you feel about being a person that can play all three? Like just tell us what you feel like in you, knowing that that's a thing you bring to the table.

SPEAKER_01 49:06

I feel like that utility player in baseball who can kind of play just about any position. You know, I'm I'm proficient. I may not be the the the the best of the best, but I am proficient enough that I can do very well in any of the roles.

SPEAKER_00 49:26

And that helps for groups to be able to complete, because if there's a a hole and you find a person who can play, but they can only play DPS, well, you can slide over to being the tank, and that gets you to eight people. So you're very useful that way. Exactly. I am going to answer the question too. In my healer and DPS role, I always wanted to feel like any pull, every attempt that we make on the boss, I can do the best at that role in the group. Right? And sometimes you don't. If you're playing with really good players on your team, they're gonna bring better numbers sometimes. But if they can do better numbers than me, that's I want to feel like I'm still good, so that's great for the group. Right? I wanted to be really, really good. And I always wanted to feel as a healer like I can be the difference between us winning or losing this fight. And as the DPS, same thing. I wanted to feel like I can be the difference between winning and losing this fight. So these were really important for understanding my psychology of why I wanted to play the game. And I think that you're gonna find players with all kinds of different feedback on that question, but usually there's a reason inside the player that made them choose that this is the style of character they want to play. Whether it's I want to be a DPS, so I don't have the responsibility of being a tank. I don't want to lead, I don't want to create the strategy, I don't want to be the healer, I don't want the stress of having to keep other people alive and feeling like I let people down. So I'll play DPS, right? Or I'm gonna be the healer, like I wanna I want to be able to, you know, keep the group alive, be that difference maker, I want to save us from the brink of defeat. Tanks tend to be leaders, you know. It's I haven't been in any groups where the tank outsourced that, you know, because they control the direction the fight is facing in the room, they control the pacing of the whole evening. Anything you want to add to that? Kind of a three-part breakdown of why people feel the way they do about their

Flow State In Raids And Beyond

SPEAKER_00 51:50

roles.

SPEAKER_01 51:51

Yeah, I was now I was thinking about this, and and because one of the things that happened to me when I was a healer in a 16-man encounter, it was which one was it? Dread Fortress. Ooh. And I was I was playing a scoundrel healer on the Republic side just as a pickup group, pug group, and I hit a massive flow state where of the three healers, I was the only one left keeping two tanks and thir 12 other DPS or 11 other DPS uh from not dying, kind of standing in the middle of the plus sign in the room, the cross section of the room, just throwing heals and and in in all directions, and I just hit that flow state. So, one of the things that is important is play playing a role where you hit that flow state and it just happens.

SPEAKER_00 52:52

That's a whole other topic that is near and dear to my heart, and some of my favorite research that I've presented and published on is on psychological flow, and those ideas come from for me being a healer or being a DPS for sure. I don't know if tanks can even fathom feeling what this feels like, but maybe they can too.

SPEAKER_01 53:21

Sure, they can. It's a little differently. I mean, I've had flow states as a tank where you you get in the in the taunt move this, that boss needs to move over here for this ability, over there for the next ability, and it just it just happens as a smooth transition.

SPEAKER_00 53:42

I think with the depth of information we've provided on the trinity of roles and how they relate to each other and how they create that reliance, that camaraderie, and maybe even friendship in a group. I think that we've also created avenues for future topics to link directly into this one. Psychological flow for sure, maybe avatar creation as well. And so many others. It starts with MMO games, not necessarily just MMO RPGs, but MMO Games, which is just an online game that thousands or millions of people can play at the same time. And there's so many of those, and they use these dynamics as something that we recognize game to game, and it ties us to the

Reflection Questions And How To Respond

SPEAKER_00 54:40

things we enjoy, and it gives us a way to relate easily to players that we're just meeting for the first time. So I want everyone who listened to this to maybe think about if you are playing a game, why did you pick the role that you're playing and how does that help you connect with the other players in the game? Also, what stress points are there when you try to connect with other players in the game, trying to do that role the best you can. If you don't play these games, think about what you would want to be based on this conversation and what you know about it that you didn't know an hour ago. I think it's really interesting to see how the things you value socially yourself, what you bring to the table to solve problems, which style of problem solving would you want to be? Build other people up so they can do the work without being exhausted, take on all the heavy stuff so that people can do what they do best, and you carry more than your responsibility just to make it possible for the whole group to succeed, or just chip away at the things you're good at and hope that at the end of the day the project gets done. I don't know. I don't know all of you, but I'd be fascinated to know what you have to say. So if you want to send me messages in Discord or going to my website, there's a contact me form at drgamology.com and let me know. Or comments. You know, you can comment message directly us through the podcast on your favorite platform. And once you did that, uh you can give us a review on the show, get entered in to win a book, and also continue the journey.