How can we really define Healers?

[Risvertasashi]

In that scenario, they would always go for option A unless there was some really specific fight mechanic that just happened to be perfect for B. At least in high level play.

As for options 1 & 2. Well that would go to the Secret World example mentioned before. "White shift for this one boss that has higher healing requirements, black shift for everything else" or similar.

Divorcing specs from affecting damage would help. But I'm still pretty skeptical of it overall.

[Rithy255]

In that scenario, they would always go for option A unless there was some really specific fight mechanic that just happened to be perfect for B. At least in high level play.

As for options 1 & 2. Well that would go to the Secret World example mentioned before. "White shift for this one boss that has higher healing requirements, black shift for everything else" or similar.

Divorcing specs from affecting damage would help. But I'm still pretty skeptical of it overall.

Well you couldn't really heal in black shift (lets say black shift would give you current RDM without raise) do you think that would even be healable? vercure alone wouldn't make a lot of content healable (Obviously you could give it slight healing and support but only to the extension of current DPS Jobs),It really wouldn't be able to replace a really healer even in casual content, I guess casual with like a warrior tank could be? (War would be the healer?) but the point is one build would heavily lean into healing elements the other would lean into a DPS element

Warrior is generally a big problem with healer design in content like dugeons, I know people enjoy being op but it doesn't feel good as a healer, they also would in theory need to increase boss damage, as dugeon bosses don't even hit hard.

Stronger healing output vs mitigation and barriers both have their uses, that was a general example obviously they can have a strong heal to compete with a barrier/mit effect, hence me leaving out potencies in general, Obviously you need a certain degree of mitigation for fights but you also really want a certain amount of healing output, that's OCGD so you do have time for attacking spells, Would make bringing certain spells depending on gear and the fight more important.

Speccing different DPS stuff might be more harder I think theirs a few examples like you could give a job a "Dot" or a outright hard hitting move, but that would generally be harder to even balance.