TOP cleared with no healers

[Renathras]

Trying to suggest that one facet of the issue is entirely responsible is just plain false. The problem is that these two pillars of game design are wildly misaligned.

I disagree with the first - one side of the argument IS entirely to blame; encounter designs are simply not what they used to be, and not at all for the better. The puzzle is fun for people that like to solve it, but the problem with encounters that are puzzles and nothing more is when the puzzle gets solved, people get bored. There are no interesting choices anymore once it's "doing it this way is right, working towards this is 'improvement', and doing anything else is wrong". Moreover, it means people NEED the extensive healing kits...but only until they solve the puzzle, at which point they no longer do.

I do agree with the second quoted sentence, though. There very much is a big misalignment. It's not even just Healers, it's just most noticeable with Healers.

Isn't this more of an issue with the battle design than healer design? You could have a healer job with 1 button that was Cure I and you could still design a fight that would require that one button to clear

I still don't see how changing healers would suddenly make these parties not able to clear content without those said healers? You would have to design the battle differently or hit the other jobs that dip their toes into healers job

Exactly, it doesn't.

Encounter design is the problem, and must be addressed first, otherwise nothing else mattes. "give healers more dps buttons"; okay, that makes players that enjoy DPSing happy (but we already have 11 Jobs exclusively for that...), while making those who play Healers because they don't enjoy dps very unhappy (which is a problem), but still ends up with 1/0 Healer clears, doesn't it? How does that fix the problem?

It doesn't.

Suppose WHM had 3 DPS buttons. Would that have prevented this TOP clear? No, it would not have, since the issue wasn't that this party was able to make the DPS check, it was that they were able to make the DPS check while also healing without a Healer and cheesing mechanics. No amount of DPS buttons on a Healer would change that unless you made Healers do 10x the damage of DPSers and tuned enrages for that. But at that point, no one would bring DPSers.

Its not about them clearing without healers. The issue is not that content can be cleared without healers (not entirely)...

...but that's the entire argument happening now. "TOP cleared with no healers", not "TOP unclearable with healers having kits without depth". People can complain Healer Jobs are currently boring, but that's irrelevant to whether or not TOP can be cleared without Healers.

The most logical answer to this issue is to just remove Ultimates they cater to a small Community and only cause issues

At this point...this may actually be the correct answer.

Of the last several Ultimates/Ultimate related topics, which DIDN'T have controversy or throw people into a tizzy?

TOP has - 0 Healer clear, people found it either too hard or boring, people using zoom hacks
Prior one did - 1 Healer clear
Prior to that did - in the sense of the "dropped/missing" Ultimate from ShB

Several have had people "uncongratulated" for cheating or doing funny business for clears, etc.

They seem to drive a lot of strife and controversy, all to please an extremely small portion of the population...that gets endlessly pissed off and triggered by them in various ways.

We're getting to the point Yoshi P may just throw his hands in the air and say "Forget the whole thing."

...

Efficiency is an argument, but not this one.

This argument is "what roles are not needed for content" (usually "Healers aren't even needed for 4 mans, much less harder content!"), but we've had all Tank clears of Pandaemonium raids, all Tank clears of Ultimates (not on patch, but still synced), no Healer, no DPS, and no Tank clears of 4 man Experts, and both no Healer AND no Tank clears of Extremes.

The no Healer clear of TOP here was most definitely NOT efficient. <_<