How MUCH healing can non-Healers do?

[Post]

No man, WHM was half the healers in ARR. I'm sure you coulda guessed out by my description of Cleric Stance, but I joined in 2.1 as a CNJ, it took me one dungeon to realize that I could heal my tank to full HP with 2 Cures and that I only needed them to be able to survive 2 GCDs for the 5 seconds of Cleric Stance's lockout for the group to benefit from me using it.

And again, it wasn't a pitiful amount of damage. I don't have any screenshots or numbers or anything, but Cleric Stance would straight triple your damage output at least. In that way, it absolutely was 'part of the rotation.'

As you approached the 40s you absolutely would be in Cleric Stance more often, as you get Regen at 35 (not as important nowadays but it lasted longer and was stronger relatively to other heals in your kit then, especially with MP as a concern), as PLD got Sentinel at 38, Shield Oath at 40 and Bulwark at like... 44? WAR actually got Vengeance at 38 and Holmgang at 42. WAR generated tons of HP back then when they had TP and Bloodbath, which was 50% of the time. Actions like Flash and Shield Swipe played a large component in reducing damage incoming due to the Blind and Pacify, when PLD didn't have any aoe damage rotation. Holy trivialized dungeon trash even moreso then than it does now (waaaay higher relative damage compared with the group overall and a 6 second stun). For bosses, Rage of Halone and Storm's Path also straight reduced incoming damage by 10%.

If a healer didn't use Cleric it's not because they were consciously dealing damage without it and recognizing it as an alternative or near equivalent to Cleric, it's because they were horribly misinformed or intimidated by the prospect. The difference is that most of the dps check tuning wasn't such that you NEEDED a healer to be dpsing for most fights. That's an important distinction. Read: I'm not saying WHM stayed in Cleric all the time, I'm saying if there was ever a point where they had 2 GCDs available to deal damage, then they should have done it in Cleric Stance, because it would be hugely wasteful of their MP and the opportunity cost of missing damage otherwise.

Gordias in HW was the first time that dps tuning was extraordinarily tight, but that also didn't occur in a vacuum. Players were also contending with the fact that all Jobs across the board became much more difficult to play with the new expansion, so the more healers could put out the better. BLM as a quick example went from the easy dps job to probably the most punishing with the advent Enochian being required to cast your basic nuke, Fire IV not refreshing Astral Fire and needing timely Blizzards IV to refresh Enochian.

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Regarding group survival without a healer, it's important to consider the other half of the equation.

One of the major differences with all content from ShB onwards is that incoming tank damage is much lower and more predictable. Crits are gone. Most normal enemies in dungeons and bosses do not have the 'midbuster' type of attacks anymore, the ones that just have a special name and animation and just deal extra damage on the tank, like a weaponskill between auto attacks. These attacks also did not have cast bars, so they would just come out and whack your tank who probably wouldn't have mitigation up unless they were familiar with an encounter and knew it was coming.

Additionally, bosses usually stop auto attacking during casted actions now, which is a huge amount of damage reduction overall, especially as bosses have tended to gain more mechanics relative to fight durations. This was probably done to prevent the old tankbuster-auto-> tank's dead combo, but seeing as tankbusters on the whole do much less damage it was a multi-faceted problem that they attacked from two directions and thus over-corrected.

How often do tanks die, really? Mostly in trash pulls in my experience, because that's the most damage that they take. Nothing else really can contend. But, seeing as that's the most common place that players died from damage that wasn't avoidable, and it's by and large reduced from bosses in all parts of the game, more of the game's damage is avoidable so the healer's role is less important.

I think they could make more damage unavoidable if they let every job rez, too. Maybe at least like BLU's rez, or just like how Criterion does it. This would be less of a burden for newer healers to shoulder as their death wouldn't immediately mean the group is doomed, and it would also mean that they couldn't just clear the fight anyways when that new healer dies early because they're superfluous when tanks can heal as well as they can. I think that you can recover from death is a good thing that they should lean into in this game, not away from.