2 tanks and 4 dps can beat P9?

[Ianmaru]

It's only in Endwalker that at-level content has been sustainably survivable with dead healers. And what the intent is, only the devs can say. But in previous expansions, your group wasn't going to survive for long with downed healers in at-level content.

which is an improvement, no? they seem to be moving toward the equality of the roles in terms of importance. you would rather have a game where a certain role has more importance than the other? despite it being inequal? each to their own I guess. but again I personally think it's just fair that a content that can be cleared without dps / tank, can also be cleared without healer.

[LilimoLimomo]

you would rather have a game where a certain role has more importance than the other?

I'm questioning whether you actually read what I wrote, because I explicitly stated my opinion on this and my reasons.

[Ianmaru]

I'm questioning whether you actually read what I wrote, because I explicitly stated my opinion on this and my reasons.

oh yea I did read all of them. what about you though, did you read my first reply completely? everything you said on your reply to me are already answered on my first reply.

actually lemme just answer them one by one

[Ianmaru]

In a fight without enrage, outgoing damage only determines when a fight is completed, not if. Because as long as you're alive, every class is capable of doing at least a tiny amount of damage, and over time even a mild amount of DPS will eventually lead to the death of the boss. However, you cannot take this same approach to healing, because below a certain rate of healing your group dies and you literally fail.

yes, correct. but then the game gives tank & dps the capability of healing, to avoid getting to that 'below a certain rate of healing your group dies' in casual content, even when you have no healer. the same way the game gives the tank & healer the capability of dealing damage so the party can also clear it without dps in casual content. which is fair.

Because of the previous point, DPS roles have a lower level of responsibility than Healers. If a DPS role slips up their rotation or even dies, their reduced DPS does not put the party at risk.* Reduced healing can put the party at risk of death and wipes. Thus, healers not only have the responsibility of preventing failure, but additionally share in the lesser responsibility that DPS roles have, since a Healer that allows a DPS role to die has played a part in reducing the DPS of the party.

In my opinion, I think it's a good thing that different roles have different levels of responsibility. Some players want more responsibility, some want less, and this lets them all play together.

having different level of responsibility is fine. but making one role more important than the other simply because of their responsibility is something that FFXIV seems to be moving away from, again, to make all the roles equally unimportant for casual content, and equally important for hardcore content.

Realistically speaking, you cannot design a fight where DPS roles don't have a job to do; you would have to bend over backwards to do so. Because as long as there's an enemy — which is the whole point of every encounter — there is an HP pool that needs to be drained. By definition, until an encounter ends, there is a need to deal damage.

The same can't be said for Healers. A Healer's job is to keep the party alive. Any time the party isn't at risk of eventual death is a moment when Healers do not have a job to do. Put another way, the need for Healers is relative to the magnitude of harm the encounter deals to the party. Below a certain threshold, Healers will spend a significant amount of each encounter without a job to do. And below an even lower threshold, Healers won't even be needed to do what little job there is to do.

firstly theres no casual content (except the old ones) where the party can survive when the healers dont heal at all. (when they dont heal, the tank/dps do the healers job to heal for them). and when they dont have to heal, their job is help killing the enemy faster by using the raid buff & the offensive skills.

[Sebazy]

i think a casual duty getting cleared while the dps is gone the whole fight is a common scenario. now another question is: why do ppl get bothered when a casual duty is cleared without healer, but not so much when its cleared without dps?

In my eyes at least, it cheapens and devalues the healer role because of how commonplace these sort of occurrences are and at least until Extremes, how low the bar is to pull this sort of stuff off.

Two ways to think about this:

Lets take a fairly typical dungeon boss, now lets assume 1 role just checks out on pull but the other 2 continue on. If we think about what issues the group will face with the loss of each role, for the tanks we're going to have a pingponging boss with little to no control over agro unless one of the DPS handily outstrips the other AND is doing enough DPS to keep the boss off the healer. If the boss has big cleaves or tank busters hard enough to be a real threat for the healer, that's a genuine issue. Meanwhile if we lose the DPS, sure it'll likely still be a clean and smooth kill, but it'll also be significantly slower assuming everyones playing to a similar standard since we're losing ~60% of the group's damage. Now if we lose the healer, what are we actually giving up? ~20% of the groups damage and a comfort blanket when it comes to mistakes by my estimates. If people play decently the comfort blanket amounts to just about nothing.

IMHO if you've been a long time MMO healer, it only feels worse too.

In Everquest, my Shaman was an absolute monster, if it didn't Death Touch and couldn't flurry me down in a single round, it couldn't kill me. I started PoG raids solo including managing and parking the Warders (Gogo VP snare stick), I soloed other Shaman's Rak tokens for them, I was an AA farm in a box, could add just about any combination of people and classes from the guild and could make it work. I felt powerful, I felt impactful and above all, I felt like I was the foundational rock that a solid group or raid could be built upon.

In FFXI, my bard was a 400hp/400mp support bag of tricks, by myself I was useless for just about anything other than running past/away from stuff, but I took average groups and turned them into merit farming machines and I turned annoying evasive or tanky mobs into squishy punchbags ripe for the picking. Whilst I didn't feel powerful in myself, my impact on the group was immeasurable, my contribution undeniable and the demand for my services was ceaseless.

In WoW, my shaman was an nigh unstoppable war machine, at some point or another, if you looked behind every single last High Warlord Warrior on my server, you'd see me keeping them alive, protecting them and buffing their damage. Even if the Alliance rarely caught sight of me as I was generally hiding in a ditch, around a building or behind a tree, I was there and whilst I was still standing, we weren't ever going to lose.

In FFXIV, there's not enough to heal, my damage sucks and is boring and if I keel over and die, the group barely bats an eye lid. I have a huge amount of raw healing potential and it just feels... wasted outside of those first few weeks of prog. Outside of that, what else do I bring to the table? I lost my virus chains, I lost my stellar aoe dps, I lost my impactful buffs. All I have left is a bloated bag of heals and oh so many naff nukes.

Why can't I have a big bag of genuinely useful tricks and debuffs like my EQ and WoW Shaman? Why can't I have genuinely impactful buffs like my FFXI Bard and WoW Shaman?

The trinity is fine. It's just that FFXIV's execution of it is absolutely terrible at this stage. This is an MMO, we are supposed to be beholden to other players, that's the whole point of the genre IMHO. The true magic of this genre are when you come together with others and pull of something special, be it your first EX/Savage/Ultimate clear or simply having fun with a few friends spamming chests.

[Denji]

It's not even that the tanks need less heals.

It's just we asked for increased difficulty and they responded by making any small mistake essentially a death if not an outright wipe this expansion. Which isn't what we asked for either, tbh. What's the point of healing if a single hit is essentially a wipe or a death?

[Ianmaru]

In my eyes at least, it cheapens and devalues the healer role because of how commonplace these sort of occurrences are and at least until Extremes, how low the bar is to pull this sort of stuff off.

disclaimer: this is a reply to your whole message, only quoting the first part of it to save space

Oh yes of course you feel powerful as a healer on those games you mentioned. because not only you are powerful, but you are also more powerful than the others, to the point that as long as you're standing, your party wouldn't lose, and you felt like you're the foundational rock of the party. which means, you are the most important part of the party, or at the very least, you're more important than the other roles in the party. which proves that there's an imbalance in the importance of the roles, which is FFXIV is trying to avoid.
Because when a role is more important than the other, there's another role that is less important than the other.

I don't know what makes you think that in FFXIV, when you die as a healer, the group barely bats an eye lid. Even in casual content the healer is the top priority to be raised when they die. And in hardcore content the healer is very important since when both healers die it can be guaranteed a wipe. For casual content though, its more possible to push through when the healers die, because it is the easier content.

What I see from this whole discussion is, healers complain because they feel they are less important than the other roles, when the fact is healer is just as important as every other roles already. And I think asking to be made more important than the other role is simply not fair.

I play every roles btw. I cleared the current savage firstly as healer, and recleared as tank & dps. so I can assure you that my opinion is not biased toward the non healers.

[Ianmaru]

It's not even that the tanks need less heals.

It's just we asked for increased difficulty and they responded by making any small mistake essentially a death if not an outright wipe this expansion. Which isn't what we asked for either, tbh. What's the point of healing if a single hit is essentially a wipe or a death?

honestly I agree with this. the whole party gets punished when someone makes an oopsie is a bit much. Also I think healers need more damage neutral GCD heals (like WHM's lilies), so that the game can force them to use GCD heals without compromising their DPS output.

[Ianmaru]

Personally, the problem with healers unlike dps and tanks, is that their entire kits are mostly healing/shield spells, so when you never have to use said kit, and are left spamming 1 button, the feeling of uselessness is way eaiser to notice. If healers had more of a dps rotation, and took more of a support role, I think we would see way less complaining about this

hmmm actually looking how the tanks increasingly get more ability to heal, its just fair if the healers also increasingly gets more ability to deal damage. hopefully healer's dps rotation is improved in dawntrail. also maybe improve the self damage mitigations tools for the DPS too to make it fair, so all three of the roles are improved in terms of doing the other role's job.

[Supersnow845]

hmmm actually looking how the tanks increasingly get more ability to heal, its just fair if the healers also increasingly gets more ability to deal dps. hopefully their DPS is improved in dawntrail. also maybe improve the self damage mitigations tools for the DPS too to make it fair, so all three of the roles are improved in terms of doing the other role's job.

Healers don’t need to do more DPS, they need more interesting ways to do the level of DPS they do

Think healers do 60% of a true DPS pressing 2.5 buttons and 95% of a tanks damage pressing the same

The ratio of simplicity to damage output the healers are right up there with SMN for “so far ahead of every other class it’s an actual joke”