Just remove healers.

[UkcsAlias]

To make healers required they can do a few things:

Scale values on difficulties! Mitigations on normal mode could be 10, 20% on hard. etc. This automaticly also makes the skill required for good timing on them higher on more difficult duties. A good example where this works is for example in borderlands. Slag in that game gets boosted on UVHM (normaly it adds 100% damage, then its 200% for any non slag weapon. With a bonus of 50% for overapplying of slag). It realy brings the focus to having a dedicated slagger in the team, or spread this aspect since in UVHM it essentialy is mandatory. In that game there is no dedicated healer though, but most classes can talent into slagging at some point.

Add more consistent waves of damage from bosses. The current spikes with long delays between them make self sustain too effective. By making the enemies do more consistent damage, jobs wont be able to sustain themselve anymore. It gives the healer more teammates to target, and by that reduce the need for constant DPS.

And adding to that: Give healers boosts when the team is at full/high health. This makes an efficient team boost the healer, while a less effective team can get healed. This can be done by extra abilities, or just dynamic potency values. If for example broil would deal bonus damage equal to the total health of the team (as percentage), you can create a more dynamic state for the healer in which they are effective.
For example: 200+(totalteamhp% / 4), which can be worded as: 200 potency + 1 for each 4% of health a player in the party has. Which enables a potency value of 600 in trials. And these values can also be scaled on lvl.
It might not work for the most optimized teams on that (which is still less than 1% of the players), but in turn, balance generaly breaks with such teams anyway.

Adding a button to the healer dps rotation on that could add more variety in button presses, which is a diffirent solution for the more effective teams, or lower difficulty dungeons. Giving some rotation here can even enable a few more effects (ie. 2 dps buttons allow a 3rd ability which allows you to heal a teammate, and apply bonus damage towards his next attack).

But in the end, if teams can simply dodge most damage, healing is generaly going to be reduced anyway. Something that in trials and later dungeons to some degree has been improved, but is still a key aspect in balancing healers. If all damage is avoidable, the need for a healer is also avoidable. This is still the main issue.

[Silverbane]

To make healers required they can do a few things:
... If all damage is avoidable, the need for a healer is also avoidable. This is still the main issue.

Sorry to break this to you, but for most of the content, there is no class that is required to finish it.
Not healers, not tanks, not DPS.

I've finished a SB dungeon after the tank DC'd, no problem.
I've finished dungeons after a healer DC'd too.
And you can usually lose a DPS without it being much trouble.

I've even watched as a tank took a final ShB boss from 43% to dead, no problem. Having DPS and/or healers just would have made it faster.

Any three people who know what they are doing can do the vast majority of the content, regardless of their classes. And this is intentional on SE's part, to make it easier to carry "sprouts" through the story.

I remember the old days, when healers used to brag that they held the power of life and death: any party members who pissed them off would die from their neglect. I'm sure SE saw those boasts too. Well, they fixed the "dick healer" problem, by lowering the amount of unavoidable damage in most content and giving most classes decent self-heals.

So for most content, healers will never be necessary again.
Useful, sure, especially in the all-important Duty Roulette where the sprouts are.
But not necessary.

The days when healers had "the power of god" are over. Get used to it.

[QooEr]

So for most content, healers will never be necessary again.

ok well in that case can we get our dps buttons back if we're never going to have stuff to heal outside of literally ultimate (and even then, not really)

[Irenia]

Reading through this, I wonder if healers should drop party in roulettes if they aren't having fun because the party is too skilled...

[Nizzi]

ok well in that case can we get our dps buttons back if we're never going to have stuff to heal outside of literally ultimate (and even then, not really)

No that'd be impossible, we just have SO much to heal while simultaneously not being necessary, so it's of the utmost imperative that we remain at this cookie-clicker gameplay forever because bad players exist but also we aren't needed to clear nor deserve to have fun ourselves

[Elesh]

The current state of healers is outright unplayable. I cannot convince anyone I know to play them. They are so incredibly mind-numbingly painful to play that finding someone who both has sufficient experience with the role to be capable of clearing the content, and does not outright refuse to play the role, is impossible.
Just remove healers and give Tanks/DPS enough defensive tools to manage without in Extreme and harder content. Stop making us suffer.

None of the statics I've tried to form have struggled to find healers... and healer is almost never the 'in demand' role on my server.

Maybe the problem is the way you treat your healers and THAT is why you can't find anyone to play healer for you.

(Not to say there's nothing for them to improve about healers... just if you're struggling that much to find a healer, maybe it's you?)

[Martynek]

None of the statics I've tried to form have struggled to find healers... and healer is almost never the 'in demand' role on my server.

Maybe the problem is the way you treat your healers and THAT is why you can't find anyone to play healer for you.

(Not to say there's nothing for them to improve about healers... just if you're struggling that much to find a healer, maybe it's you?)

I'm not the one mistreating healers. Really, I don't communicate that much in-game at all, and I try to avoid playing greedy unless I can cover it myself.
But you are right about the problem - Healers are mistreated. But it's not by the players. It's SE. It's blatantly obvious that they have such a burning hatred of anyone who wants to play the role that not even the most vile, disgusting abuse humanity is capable of could match it.

[Silver-Strider]

So for most content, healers will never be necessary again.

So in your own words, we could remove all the unnecessary healing skills they've been giving Healers, replace them with DPS skills and it would really matter because Healers aren't needed. If Healers were reverted back to their HW or SB iterations, would content suddenly be impossible to complete? No, because Healers aren't needed for most content.

[Silverbane]

So in your own words, we could remove all the unnecessary healing skills they've been giving Healers, replace them with DPS skills and it would really matter because Healers aren't needed. If Healers were reverted back to their HW or SB iterations, would content suddenly be impossible to complete? No, because Healers aren't needed for most content.

Gotta love this desperate attempt at cherry-picking and out-of-context quoting, it shows how pathetic the "healers need an overhaul/to be eliminated" crowd's arguments are.

Did I not write that no role is necessary to clear most of the content? Not healer, not tank, not DPS? Did I not provide examples of any two roles being enough?
Yes, I did. So why isn't Silver-strider proposing removing all unnecessary tanking and DPS skills?

And did I not write the healers are still useful? Yes, I did. Just like tanks and DPS are.

So in most content, healers are in the same boat as every other role: useful but not necessary. And this is not an accident, it's by design.

I often wonder why people who protest so vehemently about FFXIV healing can't be happy playing a healer, like I am. I think they doth protest too much, as the saying goes. Is their real motive that they miss having the old "I am your god now" capability of letting people die by not healing them, a capability rooted in them being necessary instead of just useful? Or do they really want to be a damage dealer, but are spoiled by the fast queue pops that healers get?

Well too bad for them. You queue as a healer, then just like a real combat medic, you're not as important as the guys with the belt-feds until something goes wrong. But when things do go wrong -- as they often do, in Duty Roulette -- you are priceless.

[Semirhage]

Gotta love this desperate attempt at cherry-picking and out-of-context quoting, it shows how pathetic the "healers need an overhaul/to be eliminated" crowd's arguments are.

Did I not write that no role is necessary to clear most of the content? Not healer, not tank, not DPS? Did I not provide examples of any two roles being enough?
Yes, I did. So why isn't Silver-strider proposing removing all unnecessary tanking and DPS skills?

And did I not write the healers are still useful? Yes, I did. Just like tanks and DPS are.

So in most content, healers are in the same boat as every other role: useful but not necessary. And this is not an accident, it's by design.

I often wonder why people who protest so vehemently about FFXIV healing can't be happy playing a healer, like I am. I think they doth protest too much, as the saying goes. Is their real motive that they miss having the old "I am your god now" capability of letting people die by not healing them, a capability rooted in them being necessary instead of just useful? Or do they really want to be a damage dealer, but are spoiled by the fast queue pops that healers get?

Well too bad for them. You queue as a healer, then just like a real combat medic, you're not as important as the guys with the belt-feds until something goes wrong. But when things do go wrong -- as they often do, in Duty Roulette -- you are priceless.

You keep enjoying Dosis Dosis Dosis Dosis Dosis Dosis Dosis Dosis Dosis Dosis Dosis Dosis.

I'll keep arguing that my brain deserves more than that.