TOP cleared with no healers

[Boblawblah]

You don't partake in high end content, which is what this discussion centers around. I recall you not even having a character at 90 for months into Endwalker's life cycle. Which is fine... until you want to comment on the healing requirements (or lack thereof) in Savage and Ultimate. You don't know what you're talking about because you literally don't do the content. That is an entirely fair rebuttal in this context.

Now I will agree tank's have an absurd amount of healing, which is a factor. However, nerfing all of it to the ground won't make healer gameplay in high end content any better. You'll still be spamming a single button more than your entire kit combined. All it does is maybe force the occasional Cure II/E.Diag/Adlo/Benefic II. Trading a Glare cast for one of those isn't exactly riveting gameplay.

So are you arguing that you want the high end content more difficult to force people to use healers? Or at least that healers are much more important in high end content?

If not that, how do you want high end content to change?

[Stormpeaks]

So are you arguing that you want the high end content more difficult to force people to use healers? Or at least that healers are much more important in high end content?

If not that, how do you want high end content to change?

it's almost like you are supposed to need healers in high end content

[ForteNightshade]

So are you arguing that you want the high end content more difficult to force people to use healers? Or at least that healers are much more important in high end content?

If not that, how do you want high end content to change?

Others have provided far better examples of healer changes on the Healer forums but to keep it simple, I either want more outgoing damage to actually necessitate healers or an overhaul on their DPS kit to give them something to do in downtime. The latter wouldn't impact casual players who simply won't press these new buttons anyway just like they don't use Battle Litany, Arcane Circle or other buffs properly. This is why the removal of Kaiten baffled and upset so many players. It achieved almost nothing due to bad players never pressing it to begin with and average and above players never asking for its removal in the first place. All it accomplished is watering down Samurai's gauge to be a "spam this whenever you feel like." Unless you're optimizing, of course.

For a specific example, take Barbarriccia. What I love about that fight is the fast pace nature of her damage. She's constantly keeps hitting you with incremental triage that leads up to a bigger burst. If her damage output was actually high, she's been one of the better fights in the entire game because you'd actually have to heal. The issue is since Shadowbringers, the devs keep introducing more healing, be it on the Healers themselves or on other roles but haven't adjusted the content to account for it. That mindset also contributes to why we absolutely destroy synced content. Their balance is all about accessibility. Which is great, in theory, but not when it's to this extreme.

We've essentially hit the opposite end of Gordias and Midas where everything hit far too hard for what was available at the time. Now nothing hits hard enough even at the higher difficulty levels. I mean, look at Rubicante. Yes, it's an EX but do you really think it should be clearable with 22 deaths on release? Or that we can drop tanks or healers entirely because literally nothing he does, even the tank buster, actually hurts.

[Somnolence]

Others have provided far better examples of healer changes on the Healer forums but to keep it simple, I either want more outgoing damage to actually necessitate healers or an overhaul on their DPS kit to give them something to do in downtime.

Once again, going to remind everyone, that there is already a healer in the game that can clear savage and has more than few buttons for DPS - blue mage. Their existing strong specialized heals might be enough that I would not be surprised if BLU does not get new heal spells in upcoming update.

All existing content is already clearable for this kind of healer so reworking existing healers to be more DPS focused will not require any content rework. And having few strong heals instead of existing fluff would allow to design new content to actually hurt.

[Sebazy]

So are you arguing that you want the high end content more difficult to force people to use healers? Or at least that healers are much more important in high end content?

If not that, how do you want high end content to change?

I missed this one sorry, it's an interesting question and I'll merrily expand on it.

Personally, if Uncle Yoshi came down and hired me overnight, I'd make a few changes. Some being quick fixes, some being more long term changes in design direction.

Literally the first thing I'd do before I took my jacket off would be to allow bosses to continue to auto attack through some means whilst casting. The main goal of this is to prevent situations like RubiEX where the fight literally goes well over a minute at a time between attacks. This also almost instantly course corrects the current lack of tank damage and brings value to once key abilities like Regen again.

Secondly, I'd have try to ensure that physically larger or multi sectioned bosses would be able to have multiple auto attacks with various different ways of deciding how those attacks are directed. Remember how large FFXI monsters were able to not only bite and claw, but could kick and spike flail (Tail cleave) as well? Think that, but all at the same time. Remember Rampage targets in Everquest? The goal is something similar to that but ideally more erratic and obviously scaled appropriately for the content. The idea isn't to one shot people randomly, but rather the idea is to actually force healers to need to pay attention to the groups HP bars again even when content is on farm.

Third, I'd scale overall HP and single target heals upwards moderately, but keep AoE heals where they are or maybe even nerf them lightly. Right now you can comfortably heal most pre Savage end game content by doing little more than maintaining Medica II. You won't run out of MP and the healing is depressingly sufficient. That's not a situation I'm happy with. Mixing up the full party raidwides with the occasional need for actual somewhat unpredictable single target triage healing due to the usual Assize/Asylum/Soil/Star/WD spam not being able to cover it would do wonders to break up the current monotony IMO.

Fourth and probably not last, I'd look to drastically expand both the job and content design team's views on healing engagement. Healers need to stop being treated like green DPS in raid content when their kits just don't support that play style.

And yet almost no "casuals" do this. The people doing this tend to be high end players with their Static buddies wanting to farm faster clears. Casuals are just using DF.

https://youtu.be/T6MvwQWBMVg?t=471

Here's some pug casuals continuing on merrily on then peak endgame content after both healers went pop. The casuals might not be queuing up in this way but it doesn't mean they aren't finishing it long after the healers checked out.

[Coatl]

Designing a role around babysitting players doesn't make for compelling gameplay when the party you have doesn't require it.

Hence the majority of the complaints around the role is how absolutely mind-numbingly boring it is to play.

Healing just isn't fun anymore, hasn't been for a long time for me. Those who felt the same got shut down or ignored and moved on to different classes or games. Over the past decade the healing role and fight design has just changed so much and I'd be lying if I said it didn't sting.

Honestly feels like the the bosses are just throwing out damage out of pity sometimes.

Literally the first thing I'd do before I took my jacket off would be to allow bosses to continue to auto attack through some means whilst casting. The main goal of this is to prevent situations like RubiEX where the fight literally goes well over a minute at a time between attacks. This also almost instantly course corrects the current lack of tank damage and brings value to once key abilities like Regen again.

These are some good ideas. Making boss autos actually do something again would be a start.

[RyuDragnier]

I'd like to see more Seat of Sacrifice EX levels of random yet organized mechanics, but change where raidwides are. Like having a raidwide at the beginning of two of the mechanics, and a raidwide at the end of the other two. Guess what happens if a raidwide end of mechanic is followed by a raidwide beginning of mechanic...the amount of healing needed, the amount of damage tanks and the party would be unable to mitigate, the amount of PURE CHAOS WORTHY OF A HEALER'S TIME! Then have it repeat for the next 2 mechanics...GLORIOUS GLORIOUS CHAOS! But that's just me wanting more chaotic healing moments that make you feel alive as a healer.