Has anyone quit healing?

[Renathras]

95%

How is a little over 5,000 95% of a little over 8,500? DNC being the lowest DPSer. That's 59%. Of the LOWEST DPSer. It's "more than half" only in a really strict sense. It's less than half of anything below NIN. DNC, BRD, RDM, and SMN (barely; it's almost less than half SMN and RDM). It's about 45% of BLM. WHM is about 58% of BLM.

This is also a chart without context; what percentile is this?

But as you say, it's somewhat irrelevant.

Oh, I'm sure you'll keep throwing rocks. After all:

Who, exactly, has argued to remove Healer damage spells?
Who, exactly, has argued that a Healer player should be barred from ever doing damage?

Not I.

So who?

(spells, in fact, they'd aggro sprites in eureka)

...that's...actually mildly hilarious. Regardless, irrelevant to the present, as I said.

I've played Tanks, yes. I actually have had PLD since around 2.5, but Tanking has ever been a side project with me and the only stuff I tanked was "stay in Tank stance the whole time" content anyway. I Tanked most of Omega normal for my FC (which at the time had only one other person that at all Tanked, and was a RDM main). But in most content, I was on either WHM or SCH outside of leveling PLD to 50, 60, and then 70. I started seriously tanking (Extremes and stuff) in ShB, other than a Susano run or three in late SB.

I was a tank main when...

And I would know this...how? It was a general statement, not a condescending one. I wasn't sure how into the Tank community you are, but they aren't particularly thrilled with the "Blue DPS" paradigm, either.

The extra responsibilities are why we were never "Blue DPS".

You guys collectively have this weird paradigm that anything that does damage is a DPS. By that token, almost every Job in this game is a Healer. Every Job has either a heal or mitigation ability, or both. So maybe we shouldn't be talking about "Blue DPS" or "Green DPS" and should be talking about "Red Healers" and "Red Tanks". There's a point where the definitions become so broad that they lose all meaning.

I think the way Tanks feel that way is because they WEREN'T "Blue DPS". Even looking back at old raid numbers, Tanks used to have lower DPS than Healers. Aggro management was actually a team effort, but Tanks had agency besides "Stance + Provoke". You could swap to a Threat combo specifically to generate more Threat, and if you really wanted to go ham, hit Flash a couple times since that generated stupidly ridiculous aggro. Boss positioning mattered a lot more due to cleaves and not re-centering/re-aligning mechanics. Having a boss cock-eyed in the arena could lead to expected safe spots for mechanics not being safe, and a boss turned the wrong way could lead to insta-KO cleaves on unsuspecting party members.

When these things were removed is when Tanks became "Blue DPS", and why players that enjoyed those other things hate it. Not everyone has a big boner for DPS, and I'm not sure why that's hard to grasp.

It's about healers, and how people are quitting en masse.

Do we actually have any hard data that this is happening? And comparative data to the past (e.g. HW era, SB era, ShB era) to see if it's outsized vs historical trend or not?

The only way to stop us is to jack the HPS required so high, most of the playerbase can't keep up.

Nah, they could also simply nerf Healer DPS to the point it's irrelevant. Encounters aren't designed to NOT be cleared, generally speaking; they're only designed to require some level of team effort to do so. If Healer DPS is so much an issue, they could just lower it to the point it no longer is. You throwing 500 stones won't matter if they only do 100 DPS and you're given some kind of ability like BLU Basic Instinct to use when outside of group content. They can also make Healer DPS one button spam and make all their abilities do the same damage to the target (even GCD heals) so there's no DPS gap between low and high skilled Healers.

I highly doubt they'll do either of these, mind you, and I'm not saying any of these are good solutions. But yours is hardly the ONLY one.

because some people, who have no foresight or consideration for the longterm ramifications and consequences of such a change, asked for 'more healing required'

And? Some people, who have no foresight or consideration for the longterm ramifications and consequences of such a change, ask for "more damage required". Hell, we got that with P8S and people hated that, too. More healing required is much more stable in the long-term than more damage requirements on healers. People just have to understand that's the paradigm and adjust to it if it happens, and that is where the breakdown was. People were still trying to clear P5-8S the way they cleared P1-4S. If everyone was told "This is where the game is going, this is how we expect healing to be done", clearly and unambibuously, there wouldn't be as much an issue. Or, again, if they made GCD healing damage neutral. If WHM's got a 1/3rd Blood Lily casting Regen and Medica 2, they wouldn't be as loathe to use those options.

The playerbase wasn't "whiplash'd into the realization that they can't keep up"; people were able to keep up, they just weren't expecting the paradigm shift and so were slow to react to it. The more damage model would produce the exact same result, and 'damage complexity' would likely drive off more Healers in the short term. In the long term, it would be made up for by the DPS players.

...granted, taxing the DPS players more (for once) might not be a bad thing...but we don't need complex Healer rotations (or complex rotations on ALL the Healers - the point I've noted many times before) for any of this.

Something needs to change.

Well, we agree on this. I've even proposed a two (or three) pronged change. As I recall, you shoot it down every time I mention it. We agree that change needs to happen, but not what change.