Healer design is still terrible and I'm tired of apologizing for it.

[Risvertasashi]

Nerfing tank sustain will do almost nothing. Tanks having some heals aren't why healers are designed terribly, nor will bosses suddenly start spamming raidwides and dishing out real damage if we take Nascent Flash and Holy Sheltron away. If anything SE would panic and start making bosses even weaker or buff our heals more to compensate.

There are fundamental issues with healer design that has nothing to do with tanks. We're getting distracted by minor things on the side.

While it's not the only issue, sure, I think you underestimate just how strong tank sustain is right now. ex trials can be done without healers, dungeons are being done without healers - and we're still stuck with the tier's crappy gear. When the high end gear comes out, all that tank self healing will just be stronger. FF logs encourages standard comps to an extent, but that only applies so much pressure.

There's already solo tank, solo heal groups in PF (more casually accessible than dropping healers entirely). You get to see less mechanics - so faster and more consistent kills.

I think it may take a bit of time to really get going - for inertia to overtake the 2/2/4 comp that everyone has become so used to - but I think we're going to see a healer slot get dropped a lot more, except where absolutely required by mechanics (eg party split stacks on healers).

Now, is this the only factor? No, of course not. But it's a big one. Yes, there are longer term and more foundational healer issues, but if you want to get healer slots out of the PF in the short run, this seems to be the recipe to do it.

[Liam_Harper]

While it's not the only issue, sure, I think you underestimate just how strong tank sustain is right now. ex trials can be done without healers, dungeons are being done without healers

EX Trials can be done without healers because the first EX has a pathetic 5 total cases of unavoidable raid damage. The 1HP at the start, a stack, a bleed, 2 more stacks ...and there's another bleed but the boss doesn't even live that long. That's it.
Dungeons could be done without healers in the past too because they're also a joke. I used to do Expert in ShB with a tank and 3 dps. Several Experts were fully soloed by tanks too even while current content.

Tank sustain at 95th percentile ranges from 500-1500hps. Which sounds like a lot (and is quite decent) but in reality an amazing WAR fully utilizing their sustain barely does half of a 10th percentile healer who is barely even uses their toolkit. Not to mention GNB's or DRK's who are much less.

The reason healers have nothing to heal is because there's nothing to heal. Enemies just aren't dealing damage unless the party makes constant mistakes. If a healer was dropped in EX, it's not because the tank stole their job. It's because they have no job to do, so the measly 1k hps on the side can easily fill in for them.

Also for that EX solo, all 6 dps have raid heals.

[currentlemon]

EX Trials can be done without healers because the first EX has a pathetic 5 total cases of unavoidable raid damage. The 1HP at the start, a stack, a bleed, 2 more stacks ...and there's another bleed but the boss doesn't even live that long. That's it.
Dungeons could be done without healers in the past too because they're also a joke. I used to do Expert in ShB with a tank and 3 dps. Several Experts were fully soloed by tanks too even while current content.

That's depressing.

I've always been in favor of a huge item level nerf across the board, but if we continue to get fights like this, the nerf won't matter. We still need more mechanics that force healers to heal.

[Risvertasashi]

-snip-

Edit: So I thought of a better way to explain this so here's a post overhaul

I think what's missing here is how easily war+pld especially can trivialize tankbusters.
Your FF logs comparison is utterly flawed because, much like healer that goes "Look how much the parser says I'm healing!" after their cohealer complains - aoes and espescialy aoe regens pad that number a lot. Secondly, when the healing happens matters a lot.

Now, you say your concern is with incoming damage being low. I 100% agree, but we've been asking for more damage for half a decade now and, well. This is what we have.

But lots of self healing makes the effective incoming damage even lower. So we got, effectively, the opposite of our requests.

People solo healed trials and even savages before, and did healerless dungeons before - but Endwalker marks the start of an era where it's easier than ever before. Maybe SE will force dual healers with split-stack mechanics or other things that require 2 healers to resolve - but for those of us that feel too much time is spent pressing 1 and too little healing, this is a pretty marked step in a worse direction.

-

Lastly, since people mostly focus on WAR, I want to say it's really not a WAR-specific problem. Their self heal is powerful in dungeons, but similar to the others' in raids/trials. Take a look at the new heals PLD and GNB have and you'll maybe understand a bit better where these concerns come from.

[ForteNightshade]

Maybe SE will force dual healers with split-stack mechanics or other things that require 2 healers to resolve - but for those of us that feel too much time is spent pressing 1 and too little healing, this is a pretty marked step in a worse direction.

That is precisely what they'll do, and have been doing throughout Shadowbringers. You absolutely didn't need two healers in E9 or E10. Even E11 would be manageable but a lot more risky early on with cycles. Promise and Oracle may have pushed it but could be solo healed with a skilled player. Instead of making both healers required, each fight had at least one mechanic that ensures deaths if you dropped a trinity role. Anti-Air/Wide Valley could, in theory, be two stacked but ran into issues. Orbs could get incredibly finnicky without two healers while Fire cycle was impossible not to kill two DPS.

Unfortunately, this seems to be the direction the dev team is going. They've essentially thrown up their hands and said: "You're taking two healers or we'll make mechanics incredibly annoying if you don't." Now the one "saving grace" that may open their eyes to how poorly this approach is would be Endwalker being exceptionally easy due to the sheer amount of tools tanks were given on top of healers already having far too many oGCDs. If damage scaling remains relatively similar to Shadowbringers, Savage is going to be laughable in terms of outgoing damage. We'll know in two weeks but I will say, the first EX is arguably the easiest we've ever had. I'd struggle to even label it as such. He just... falls over once you realize his gimmick.

On the other hand, if this results in more Savage participation. They may actually be happy... It's more than a little concerning to say the least...