Should healers be designed like tanks?

[AmiableApkallu]

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In all this talk of DPS, healers are the only role who get zero credit for doing their job and maintaining a Damage Up buff on the party — that Damage Up buff otherwise being known as HP Greater Than Zero.

This needs to change. Otherwise, the design discussion inevitably devolves into homogenizing the healers into some other role. In the OP, that's tanks. In other proposals, it's essentially Magical Ranged DPS.

A ten button damage rotation is no more engaging than a one button rotation. Both are busywork to distract from the fact that the healing demand in this game consists of:

• Occasionally doing something about an unavoidable raid-wide,
• Occasionally doing something about a tank buster,
• Occasionally giving the tank a hand during a trash pull, and
• Waiting for people to make mistakes.

Combat and encounters should be designed to make the healing demand more interesting. A party playing well instead of poorly shouldn't have such a large impact on how interesting the actual healing aspect of being a healer plays out. For sure, a few more traditional DPS buttons for variety would be welcome, but I do find it dispiriting how little talk there is about making healing itself interesting.

[Jovakim]

This needs to change. Otherwise, the design discussion inevitably devolves into homogenizing the healers into some other role.

That's the thing though. Why do you think healers here on these forums think somewhat like me and want their role to play more like tanks and/or dps?
The answer lies in the fight design. The only players that are truly having fun with the current fight design are tanks and dps. There's bearly any healing to be done, and all of the healer's kits just don't match with the fights themselves.

Combat and encounters should be designed to make the healing demand more interesting. A party playing well instead of poorly shouldn't have such a large impact on how interesting the actual healing aspect of being a healer plays out.

I 100% agree. I already said in another thread that increasing healing requirements would also please me.
There are two ways the devs could go with healer design, and I'm honestly fine with either, as long as they put some effort into that.

If they're going to keep incoming damage as low as is, there is no better way than making healers as I've explained before. That is, for them to be more like tanks.

Now, if they're going to increase incoming damage, they better get to it already!
I remember Yoshida doing a Q&A with Mizzteq (from MTQcapture) and telling her that they would increase healing requirements for EW fights. But... did that ever happen? No, it didn't. So far the only fight that seems more demanding to me is P3S. But that's just one fight!

And if they do somehow increase the healing requirements from 6.2 and onwards, what will they do with every other fight before that? Are we supposed to only have fun with the newest content? That would be stupid, and I would come back here to protest for healers to be more like tanks.