P4S cleared without healers

[Magikazam]

This again begs the question, why is damage so low in FFXIV raids and parties.

Imo. 2 reasons. First, Tank just got WAY to much mitigation. Aside from their vast ammount of damage reduction all tank got either a 25 sec strong defensive CD or A strong defensive CD that use their ressources. So tank got tons of hp and just loss less hp overall than a dps would if they were to get hit.

And that the second part. The rest of the party is like, comically weak and made out of paper. And that lead to situation where a dps die in one hit cause he had his left foot inside 2 orange puddle, all while the tank is running around with 5 vulne stack and still can live just fine, provided they use their cd correctly and the healer throw them a small heal between rez.

It just hard to design sustained damage to the party when Tank are self propelled immortal god in term of survivability and the rest of the party can't afford to make 2 mistake in the same minutes, even in casual content like dungeon.

[Carighan]

It just hard to design sustained damage to the party when Tank are self propelled immortal god in term of survivability and the rest of the party can't afford to make 2 mistake in the same minutes, even in casual content like dungeon.

Eh, I dunno. I don't find it difficult to design at all, in particular because other MMOs did this >20 years ago casually, without much thought.

And to be fair, sure, maybe tanks need to be slightly less durable, but it would still not be difficult to say, design Honey B Lovely like this:

1. Her cloth bands with the stinger ends are now independently moving.
2. Shortly after every auto-attack, they each fire a bolt onto a random different partymember. It cannot be the main emnity target, but it can be the offtank (in which case you get a bit lucky).
3. One stinger deals ~50k-70k in damage.
4. The other deals ~40k in damage.

This would not even be that much, considering how infrequently she AAs. But it would be enough to not be ignored, as people hit by this would be dead come the next raidwide, and during the beats it can drop people dangerously low if they're not topped off. But also, this would just happen too often (in particular during beats again, where she has extended stretches of AAing) to cover with just Essential Dignitiy et al. You'd have to actually heal it as the next raidwide that'd use a group healing oGCD could already be killing somebody if not individually healed before. It also happens often enough so that many (if not most) of your GCDs would be busy with Aspected Benefic, or job equivalents. Maybe even Benefic (GASP!).

Really, there are 3 main mechanics to this. Every single boss should be doing either of these, or a combination of them but then at reduced value:

1. Fire random attacks into the non-tanking party, as above.
2. Deal a portion of their melee damage in 360° around them (enough to threaten melee DPS but not outright kill them, similar to (1) but focused on melee DPS in particular).
3. Have random AoEs or line attacks that have 0 forewarning but again don't deal lethal damage. In this case the amount of players hit is up to chance, too. You can spread out to minimize the chance, but you cannot fully prevent sometimes 2+ people getting hit. This also reduces the doomstacking of parties.

And it's not like these mechanics need variance. Program them once, then apply to bosses with a scaling factor: If two are used, each is 50% as strong. If all three are used, each is 33% as strong. Done.

[Magikazam]

Eh, I dunno. I don't find it difficult to design at all, in particular because other MMOs did this >20 years ago casually, without much thought.

Other MMO are also designed with healer being Healbots and encounter having tons of mechanics going out all at once.

3. One stinger deals ~50k-70k in damage. 4. The other deals ~40k in damage.

In Honey B that enought to randomly kill people during her hearth phase and when she drop honey. She love to AA a lot during those and you would EASILY end up killing DPS while they did nothing wrong. You know during her hearth phase there a Meteor part right. Healer would need to premtively time their healing so they can heal in between the small frames where the meteor damage them and they could receive a stinger. You would then need to full heal said person cause there like 6 other meteor going down and you can't afford to not heal 5 of those, and even too you just healed the first dude, there a non 0 chance he just get targetted by 2 stingers while you deal with other meteor.

[Carighan]

In Honey B that enought to randomly kill people during her hearth phase and when she drop honey. She love to AA a lot during those and you would EASILY end up killing DPS while they did nothing wrong. You know during her hearth phase there a Meteor part right. Healer would need to premtively time their healing so they can heal in between the small frames where the meteor damage them and they could receive a stinger. You would then need to full heal said person cause there like 6 other meteor going down and you can't afford to not heal 5 of those, and even too you just healed the first dude, there a non 0 chance he just get targetted by 2 stingers while you deal with other meteor.

That's the thing, these raidwide effects would no longer hit for 80%+, but for 40%-50%. The idea is to make the infrequent raidwide attacks weaker, but instead add constant low~medium damage pressure onto non-tanks. Forcing in turn a constant healing output stream, which is more than even very heal-heavy DPS or Tanks can provide with their limited toolset.

That's how, well, everyone else gets it done. :P

[Magikazam]

That's the thing, these raidwide effects would no longer hit for 80%+, but for 40%-50%. The idea is to make the infrequent raidwide attacks weaker, but instead add constant low~medium damage pressure onto non-tanks. Forcing in turn a constant healing output stream, which is more than even very heal-heavy DPS or Tanks can provide with their limited toolset.

That's how, well, everyone else gets it done. :P

Except with the exemple I just given and the number you gave me, those effect don't deal 80% of someone hp. In normal Honey B meteor deal like 35k ish damage. Phys dps have around 150k hp with BIS and magical/healer got 120k hp. You're asking for random occurence of 70k damage, that hit more than the actual mechanic, and that even whitout considering minim Ilevel or vulne stacks.