(2/2)
Finally, I'd like to understand what is the highest level of content completed as a healer by any of the individuals calling for the strike. I ask this because it feels awkward to call for dungeons to be the strongest showcase of healer need. Dungeons, specifically story dungeons, are meant to be accessed by the community as a whole. Anyone who has purchased Dawntrail will have to go through the story and complete the dungeons. As is common knowledge, there is a skill bell curve and that content has to be at a threshold that would allow for successful completion, even by those that skew to the left side of it. For example, I still get healers that are incapable of esuna-ing a debuff in a dungeon (Dead Ends). Following that logic, it tracks that because of the lower threshold of difficulty, the content can be completed without a healer. So, to me, dungeons should not be how we assess healer need. If there are healers feeling like they aren't being challenged enough, but they also refuse to engage with content that centers the role more prominently (extremes, savage, ultimate), then they should assess whether they are architect of their own dismay.

I want to stay on this point for just a bit because I suspect the response will be something that alludes to content that has been completed without a healer, specifically ultimate content. UCOB being cleared without a healer is no large feat to me. Power creep has enabled all sorts of wild things to happen in that fight. And before the healer-less TOP clear is mentioned, that one clear (which undoubtedly required a great deal of effort to pull off along with some luck) is not the norm for the community. To date, I have not seen a single PF for The Omega Protocol that is seeking to complete it with less than 2 healers. In other words, it is unfair to blow up these edge cases when the reality is that the community will always opt for the path of least resistance when completing content - and that path will mostly entail having 2 healers for most 8-man content.

Final piece on this point is that I get the impression that the state of healers is being assessed in a vacuum based on healer design showcased in the job action trailer information. As such, it seems premature for us to assess the state of healers in Dawntrail without having seen what end-game content will look like. In other words, job design is meant to be complementary to fight design (see 2 minute meta for a very specific example). The addition of more mitigation and healing throughput suggests that there will be more healing-intensive mechanics that are on the horizon in Dawntrail (specifically content that is outside the range of just dungeons or even extremes). It may be more productive to assess the goals of a strike after having all the information if we are really seeking to call out for a change.