Healers Exist for DPS fun only?

[Lyth]

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I think that this is also a reasonable direction to take things. Again, the problem comes down to being valued as a healer. You need a skill differential.

A lot of this comes down to fight design. Tightly scripted fights with unforgiving mechanics will never really be challenging for a healer in the long run. You actually need the opposite: highly variable mechanics where there is some room for recovery (and by variable, I mean variations in mechanic order, not just being randomly assigned to being Healer 1 or Healer 2 on a Gavel mechanic. You need variable damage patterns where the tank is at risk of being burst down to nothing if you blink. You need to have limited resources. It should be possible to bottom out on healing resources, such that you have no choice but to watch your team die in front of your eyes.

There is a downside to this, of course. Some healers just won't be able to clear tougher fights. And they will need to be okay with that fact.

I personally wouldn't mind trying this out. Differentiating healers on the basis of damage output is actually really safe. We know that was done well in ARR and HW, and people liked it. Differentiating healers based on their ability to carry your team through difficult mechanics hasn't really been done here, but it has been done in other games. It's just a question of whether this community would be happy with seeing their clears gated based on healer gear and skill.

I suppose there is a middle ground that I haven't really gone into, and that's if your excess resources from healing more effectively could be turned into extra dps. You'd need fights to force resource attrition, and dps would be a luxury if you healed effectively. But you'd have to be able to wipe your team if you bottom out.

Either way, things can't stay as they are now. The common theme here is that tanking and healing need to be more valuable as roles than they are now, otherwise people will swap off them to DPS. And in the absence of some major changes both to job design and fight design philosophy, I predict that's going to be a big issue in the next expansion.

[Kraniel]

I think that this is also a reasonable direction to take things. Again, the problem comes down to being valued as a healer. You need a skill differential.

A lot of this comes down to fight design. Tightly scripted fights with unforgiving mechanics will never really be challenging for a healer in the long run. You actually need the opposite: highly variable mechanics where there is some room for recovery (and by variable, I mean variations in mechanic order, not just being randomly assigned to being Healer 1 or Healer 2 on a Gavel mechanic. You need variable damage patterns where the tank is at risk of being burst down to nothing if you blink. You need to have limited resources. It should be possible to bottom out on healing resources, such that you have no choice but to watch your team die in front of your eyes.

There is a downside to this, of course. Some healers just won't be able to clear tougher fights. And they will need to be okay with that fact.

I personally wouldn't mind trying this out. Differentiating healers on the basis of damage output is actually really safe. We know that was done well in ARR and HW, and people liked it. Differentiating healers based on their ability to carry your team through difficult mechanics hasn't really been done here, but it has been done in other games. It's just a question of whether this community would be happy with seeing their clears gated based on healer gear and skill.

I suppose there is a middle ground that I haven't really gone into, and that's if your excess resources from healing more effectively could be turned into extra dps. You'd need fights to force resource attrition, and dps would be a luxury if you healed effectively. But you'd have to be able to wipe your team if you bottom out.

Either way, things can't stay as they are now. The common theme here is that tanking and healing need to be more valuable as roles than they are now, otherwise people will swap off them to DPS. And in the absence of some major changes both to job design and fight design philosophy, I predict that's going to be a big issue in the next expansion.

100% with you on this.
To be completely honest as a healer (not sure about DPS or tank here), i had more fun with extreme fights during the ARR era than with anything after SB.
I admit that the current extreme fights are very well designed/refined in their mechanics, with a nice dramatic aspect to them (a bit like an interactive movie), but as you said it just doesn't "scratch that itch" for healers and tanks.
I honestly feel more thrill grinding the current Leviathan Unreal fight with randos, than i did during any of the extreme trials/Eden savage so far. I know there isn't an obvious solution to this, as it's directly related to the vision SE have for their game, but i'm just hoping it will change someday. I want to feel like healers and tanks are more than just "filler roles" that are only required to take aggro at the beginning of the fight and heal through the occasional AoE damage.

I just want to feel alive, Lyth. I just want to feel alive ...