Healer DPS - enjoyable or a chore?

[Maeka]

The problem with rebalancing so that normal dungeon bosses are hard and hit like a truck, is that a lot of lesser-skilled healers are suddenly unable to clear 4man dungeons.

I mean, look at Bardam's Mettle, or Aurum Vale. I still see healers in there failing to keep people alive, especially when people multipull.

I don't know about you guys, but I don't relish the idea of wipefests in MSQ dungeons. If you want hard/engaging challenge and 4mans aren't good enough for you, then do some Ex Primals or go to Savage Raids instead. No need to insist the bar be raised just because it isn't challenging enough for you when there are other options.

It's healthy for a game to have the main base content be a bit easier as long as there is harder content for those who want it.

[Risvertasashi]

The problem with rebalancing so that normal dungeon bosses are hard and hit like a truck, is that a lot of lesser-skilled healers are suddenly unable to clear 4man dungeons.

There's a little more to it than this. Although you use 4 man dungeons as an example, this problem exists even in the most difficult savage raids.

It essentially comes down to damage in FFXIV being all burst oriented. So it doesn't really matter if you're in that 4 man roulette dungeon, or trying to kill Kefka. In a Savage raid you'll maybe need a shield to survive the hit, but in both cases: you heal up the tank/party after damage, and then there's nothing to do but DPS.

Even if dungeons were tuned to hit like a truck, this facet of FFXIV's design would still exist.

IttyBitty pretty much nailed it:

Healing is at its most fun when you have to juggle tasks. Current content doesn't really give you much to juggle. Debuff removal is practically non existent since cleanses were thrown into cross role and practically all debuffs can't be removed anyway. Heals are immensely powerful and incoming damage is relatively low outside of spikes. So we're left with optimal "rotations" that boil down to "maintain dots, spam nuke, throw out a heal when necessary", which don't really help things. So they either need to change up the way they make content, or change up how healers do DPS.

But it's worth emphasizing this is true even in savage content.