Quote Originally Posted by Halfgeeek View Post
It's because of this:

Enrage mechanics exist to be a barrier on skill, or group performance.

If healers had a complex DPS kit, during the prog or early phase, the vast majority of healer players will not be able to perform well in their DPS checks, with their focus undoubtedly shifted to healing & saving allies from their mistake. This we both understand.

Most grps would fail the prog and it would very likely be the fault of those avg healer players.

But devs want a higher clear rate. They would have to lower the enrage barrier to compensate for healers under-performing.

What is the outcome of that? If you think it through, with the pov that devs view the pressures placed on healers as already being "enough".

That's why personally, I think 1 out of the 4 healers, being SGE as its new, should have been devoted to a complex DPS healer job by the devs, to cater to players who seek that, while the other 3 healers remain "viable and fun" for the masses who play healers. Rather than having all 4 healers with a complex DPS kit and then changing their entire encounter balance around the lowest common denominator.
Trying to balance 1 Healer with a complex DPS rotation vs 3 healers with a basic toolkit would probably be a nightmare though. You either have a complex healer that does no more than the other 3 healers, making it feel needlessly weak when played at a low skill floor, or it would eclipse the other 3 and would result in being mandatory for serious raid progression while excluding the other 3 by default. It doesn't really sound like it would be easy to balance.

As for how to solve the problem with low DPS healers causing groups to fail, I feel like this could be solved by having more skills like Macrocosmos and Pneuma in the mix, offensive skills that are more useful for healing purpose since they're DPS neutral. WHM has lilies but Misery needs to be made DPS neutral in some way for that to work properly while SCH just needs a way to offer its old Virus status effect back and we'd have a decent starting point to work with.