Would tanks be okay if SE swapped the damage between tank and healers?

[Ayan_Calvesse]

I have no idea why the tanks arbitrarily do 30% more damage than the healers when it’s entirely feasible the tank will get their best parse ever on their first clear because they functionally never have to optimise their damage because tank is designed as a melee a class with no positionals with inbuilt 100% uptime

The damage balance they had in ShB where on your average first clear or PF reclear the tank would out damage the healer while organised statics could push it he healer 5-10% higher than as perfect. Now the best healer on the strongest healer class is still 15% weaker than the worst tank on the worst tank class for literally zero reason

Likely because Tanks often are required to deal with additional gameplay elements in raid encounters such as tank swaps and what have you - however having a tank exclusively because they HAVE to be there creates a bit of a problem (not having a 2nd tank for that 1-2 tankbusters means death for others) but so the other tank otherwise sitting around with even less to do then healers I "suspect" is why they have somewhat better damage then healers - that said I've seen White mages passing tanks these days due to glare.

[natis1]

I don't think this is a good way to solve the problem, but I would be okay with it.

That said, it's worth considering that in normal difficulty content, healers are the most prone to lethargic play (never/rarely using damage buttons). So I think overall this change would greatly slow down dungeons and trials even if the damage output ought to be the same. I think it would need to be paired with a redesign of healers (or the way healer is taught to players) that encourages/makes easier doing damage, and punishes just healing.

[Kabooa]

Likely because Tanks often are required to deal with additional gameplay elements in raid encounters such as tank swaps and what have you.

No, it's because tanks !@#%#ed in Shadowbringers that in optimized runs, the Healers were dealing about 5% more. And keep in mind this was in the RDPS tab, which meant the only real outlier was Astrologian, a class based around buffing the entire team. The only healer who was keeping up with them in the metric that mattered* was White Mage.

*Being ADPS because tanks do not bring buffs.

[Videra]

Simple solution:

Equalize healer and tank DPS in the latter's direction. Done. Band-aid fix.

The Solution Nobody Wants But Is The Only Way This Small Indie Company Might Willingly Make The Game Harder:

BYE BYE, BLOODWHETTING! FAREWELL, EXCOG OF CORUNDUM! SHAKE IT OFF (OVER TIME)? NEVER HEARD OF HER!

I need a drink.

[ZUZ]

Every standard piece of content I can think of has a tank-buster, something that practically screams we should have a tank for this, and yet we have nothing like that for healers. Raidwides? Those are literally non-threatening because every role has a button to mitigate the damage. Now what if those raidwides applied doom or true walking dead?

We could have the following in our day to day standard content (e.g dungeons, trials, etc):

• dispellable de-buffs being applied to the party (e.g. throttle and doom)
• mobs that heavily auto and demand single-target healing on non-tank party members and NPCS
• shields preventing deadly/annoying de-buffs from applying to the party (e.g. smileton last boss mines)
• enemy casts that set the party's HP to 1 and follows up with heavy raidwides
• using the action "rescue" on immobilized players to resolve mechanics.
• utilizing certain death mechanics like:
• white hole (certain death if below 50% HP)
• terror unleashed (certain death if not full HP)
  

Why are these things not common place in our regular dungeons? Our savage raids? Why not add complexity to the healer role, for example, create a hazardous and deadly de-buff and apply it onto players which requires a new healer-only buff to survive and live through.

If people really want to advocate solely for the nerf/removal of tank self-sustain instead of engaging with every available point of healer interaction, then the healer role will continue to be boring to me (specifically in dungeons).

[Alice_Rivers]

Would that we could have such nice things. I suggested increasing damage, having more interrupts and esuna effects and such in the WAR thread, I also suggested we could have all of these things and curb the extremes of tank self-sustain to reintroduce the tank-healer interdependence but all I got for it was "no, I won't permit WAR being nerfed".

[Vinter]

Every standard piece of content I can think of has a tank-buster, something that practically screams we should have a tank for this, and yet we have nothing like that for healers. Raidwides? Those are literally non-threatening because every role has a button to mitigate the damage. Now what if those raidwides applied doom or true walking dead?

We could have the following in our day to day standard content (e.g dungeons, trials, etc):

• dispellable de-buffs being applied to the party (e.g. throttle and doom)
• mobs that heavily auto and demand single-target healing on non-tank party members and NPCS
• shields preventing deadly/annoying de-buffs from applying to the party (e.g. smileton last boss mines)
• enemy casts that set the party's HP to 1 and follows up with heavy raidwides
• using the action "rescue" on immobilized players to resolve mechanics.
• utilizing certain death mechanics like:
• white hole (certain death if below 50% HP)
• terror unleashed (certain death if not full HP)
  

Why are these things not common place in our regular dungeons? Our savage raids? Why not add complexity to the healer role, for example, create a hazardous and deadly de-buff and apply it onto players which requires a new healer-only buff to survive and live through.

If people really want to advocate solely for the nerf/removal of tank self-sustain instead of engaging with every available point of healer interaction, then the healer role will continue to be boring to me (specifically in dungeons).

This is the real solution. Give healers something to do besides healing physical damage, namely healing afflictions. These can affect more than just the tank, so there's more to do. Think about what the role actually is representing. Imagine a fantasy world where you have magical healers like priests or clerics or whatever you want to call them. What are they probably doing most of the time, stitching up wounds or dealing with things like illnesses, curses, all things unholy etc.? If a healer only ever fills the same role as a potion, what's even the point of having the class?

[MikoRemi]

• dispellable de-buffs being applied to the party (e.g. throttle and doom)
• mobs that heavily auto and demand single-target healing on non-tank party members and NPCS
• shields preventing deadly/annoying de-buffs from applying to the party (e.g. smileton last boss mines)
• enemy casts that set the party's HP to 1 and follows up with heavy raidwides
• using the action "rescue" on immobilized players to resolve mechanics.
• utilizing certain death mechanics like:
• white hole (certain death if below 50% HP)
• terror unleashed (certain death if not full HP)
  

Now this is more like it. They've also done stuff like this in certain dungeons like the Fell Court of Troia for example where despite how the minority insist on it, Bloodwhetting may be a very useful tool but it won't prevent a doom that requires Esuna, which healers conveniently have. That being said, the only thing that makes me sad is that they wouldn't add too many of these to dungeons because apparently "Dawntrail is too hard", and it's been like that since years prior. Even though personally with how hard the autos and bosses can hit in the current Experts(week 1 of that was rather terrifying actually), I wouldn't mind seeing more but the more you add, the more we get into meme situations where parties die repeatedly on content that's meant to be pretty repeatable and not anything too taxing.

Still, I'd rather see more discussions along this line than the simple braindead nerfs that keep getting asked for. Those definitely ain't coming no matter how much people cry about it, we already got more self sustain than before so that should already say something. Nerfs suck, interesting mechanics though sign me up. And again, some dungeons already do things like that, they just need more of that. I just pray to the general public that they can handle something as simple as White Hole when they fail to cleanse the Doom you randomly receive in Dun Scaith...or you know, the RP battles in the story in general.

[Ramiee]

Likely because Tanks often are required to deal with additional gameplay elements in raid encounters such as tank swaps and what have you

It's really funny that healers are meant to have exclusive gameplay elements like healing/regening the tank during big damage and generally healing the party. But because the job design team is so bad at their job this now doesn't exist anymore lmao

[Nezerius]

Now this is more like it. They've also done stuff like this in certain dungeons like the Fell Court of Troia for example where despite how the minority insist on it, Bloodwhetting may be a very useful tool but it won't prevent a doom that requires Esuna, which healers conveniently have. That being said, the only thing that makes me sad is that they wouldn't add too many of these to dungeons because apparently "Dawntrail is too hard", and it's been like that since years prior. Even though personally with how hard the autos and bosses can hit in the current Experts(week 1 of that was rather terrifying actually), I wouldn't mind seeing more but the more you add, the more we get into meme situations where parties die repeatedly on content that's meant to be pretty repeatable and not anything too taxing.

Still, I'd rather see more discussions along this line than the simple braindead nerfs that keep getting asked for. Those definitely ain't coming no matter how much people cry about it, we already got more self sustain than before so that should already say something. Nerfs suck, interesting mechanics though sign me up. And again, some dungeons already do things like that, they just need more of that. I just pray to the general public that they can handle something as simple as White Hole when they fail to cleanse the Doom you randomly receive in Dun Scaith...or you know, the RP battles in the story in general.

Gotta say that's a pretty bad example, considering the application of Doom in this situation is only when failing a mechanic. But you're right in that the version of Doom that has to be removed through Esuna is something Tanks can't handle (yet). Other things on the list that you're praising can definitely be dealt with by tanks, like shields to prevent debuffs, HP reduction to 1 -> raidwide, white hole, or terror unleashed. Meanwhile, you keep on hammering down on how "simple braindead nerfs" suck, and that they should just make healers interesting without touching tanks for the simple fact that "those nerfs aren't coming". Otherwise known as the mentality of "Sure, make healers more fun but don't you dare touching tanks!". You're going to have to face the fact that for SE to make most of that list of suggestions work, they're going to have to take a good look at party sustain provided by tanks.

I'd like to point out again that these discussions you're asking for likely were more prevalent years ago, when a lot of healers were still hopeful that SE could take the game into the direction of having healers deal with more situations like the suggested list. With how the game has been developed over the past few expansions, it became clear that this wouldn't be the case, and it shouldn't come as a surprise that a lot of healers probably just gave up on this.