The death of savage raiding and SE's lack of action

[Havenchild]

Except the statement is wrong.

PF Healers don't have issues with heal checks, they have issues with mitigation checks disguised as heal checks.

This is largely gibberish as PF perceives any high hitting attack as a "heal check". This is why when the parties are faltering DESPITE any present mitigation, healers are blamed. We could define something more like doom mechanics as heal checks but again that's not only what PF perceives as healer responsibility.

Harrowing Hell was foremost a mitigation check. The reason why Tank LB was used on HH was because trying to get both tanks and all four DPS to press their mitigation tools, and god forbid spread them out, between taking bites of their elmer's gluesticks was too much to ask of PF tanks and dps.

In a normal PF party comp, you are not surviving Harrowing Hell or Cross Slash without healing. That's a hard fact. I'll disagree that tank LB is used for anything else besides the path of least resistance to clear. PF first and foremost, prioritizes clearability and odds to that in everything from LB usage to overall strategy handling mechs. Nothing else generally matters. Hell, I'd be surprised if PF Healers even expect mitigation from anyone on average for specific hits because if you are a PF healer then on average you know something is going to be missing / overlapped etc.

When the boss two-taps the tank and annihilates the party because three people were also standing in front of the tanks as well, it wasn't the mitigation-less tanks and dps who manned up to their mistakes... they blamed the healer for not having AoE Benediction on a 0 second GCD.

This is a real extreme example that rarely happens in PF. If it's obvious someone died to being in the wrong place, no one is sitting there blaming healers for their death on average.

PF Healers quit because of trash players blaming them, or found a static to end their suffering.

To your first point, this is why you need to shift responsibility AWAY from healer role. That's exactly my point so you change the perception of others. As for the second point, most players engage with PF for raiding so take of that what you will.

No idea where the idea that PF Healers quit because of an increased DPS requirement. That was pulled right out of their rectum. It's quite the opposite, Healers are quitting because of a lack of interesting DPS rotation.

I said Healers do not want more responsibility. If that comes in the form of more DPS with the current setup, MORE PF Healers will leave the role. This is proven in every single tier that adds even a modicum of challenge with current healers.

Healers already have the following and they have to play better than every other role when it comes to mechanics specifically as a healer death is far more compromising than DPS or Tank deaths.

-Mitigation
-Healing
-DPS
-Mechanics

With the current setup, if you force much more DPS buttons, you will create an issue where people eventually are like "hey I already have to do all of this and now I have to do a more complex DPS rotation as well?? Forget it, I'll just DPS or Tank." I imagine SE has data that showcased the exact thing occurring to when they reduced DPS kits from HW -> SB -> SHB. If the correlation of Healer having more DPS options on average also lead to more people playing Healer outright, I'd imagine Healers would look very different gameplay wise right now. I think SE reducing DPS buttons off the role is a proof of concept and testament to likely the feedback metrics they are seeing on their end. However, this is also because at current encounter and class design, Healer has to do all of the above.

AoEs + DoTs were mitigation checks, not heal checks. If a pf group (tanks and dps) treated those mechanics like a heal check (not using their mitigations) and had healers adjust, they were the biggest issue with PF.

Proper mitigation and those mechanics were a non-factor.

Lets stop spreading the idea that this game has heal checks when 99% of them are realistically mitigation checks first and foremost.

Actually, I'm not spreading around anything, just saying how PF see's these mechanics as healer responsibility.

Also I found this ironic, but Link
You don't even heal in PF raids. Not a single log in three expansions.

Well then, how do we reduce responsibility? Do we take away damage, therefore making it more tedious for solo and msq quests while making deep dungeons harder, if not impossible? Do we reduce the stress of mp, which they've done heavily since Shb? Do we reduce mitigations that the healers have and then just give everyone else a super mit that they need would need to press for harder hitting stuff?

Of these options, if we are considering all levels of gameplay (MSQ, Solo Quests, PF Savage, Hunts etc), then for us to maintain job identity, while also fixing perception of the role etc

I personally would say, with current design, remove mitigation responsibility from Healers, giving that to DPS and Tanks and reduce some of the healing potential on tank (but not all of it). It does not need to be "super mit". Content like Deep Dungeons are kinda removed from class balance. Case in point, people who do deep dungeons on generally ALL roles, tend to avoid fighting monsters anyway especially on higher floors if possible. Even then, you can design content around what's missing, ala Bozja.

For other things like solo duties, you can simply add a duty option for healing/ shielding as needed (if) it's even needed. Most MSQ scripted fights already incorporate some sort of healing (usually passive) so that all classes can do the content with just not getting hit with things you shouldn't.

Overall, what the game should be balanced around the most is PF Savage as that is the most engaging content in the game that actually utilizes all class tools, but especially Healer. It is where most of the Healers have complaints centered around, and also where Healer role showcases the most issues.

Is this some Abyssos revisionism? Are you working for SE, to take all the wrong lessons from this? What primarily happened in Abyssos is that a lot of the mitigation checks were not on the healers hands, especially in the early weeks. So if dumbass tanks/dps didn't mit the bleed or hard hitting raidwides and bleed tbs, they'd melt no matter what you pressed as a healer. I still remember week 1 Hephaistos and people not mitigating the stupid jumps on dog 1 with Feint+Rep+Addle and healers/casters would freaking explode and there was nothing I could do. I tried single targetting Adlo, but I just didn't have time. And ofc, then everyone dogpiles on the healer. Do you know how crap that feels? I press 1 very hard, then oops, my tanks and melee are asleep on the wheel, half the party dies, "can you heal?!?!" in chat and I leave and join another pf as BLM cause I'm not dealing with that garbage.

Skill issue from you probably. Usually can just do Critlospread and maybe a sacred soil and that was fine Week 1. For SGE, you have Panhaima, + party shield and Pnuema which is enough. Granted I also actually GCD heal as needed. 9/10 times I'd consider myself lucky to have even Reprisal.

Your solution literally exacerbates this problem- as has been mentioned, healing in this game is 80% mits. Have you ever seen logs and compared the healing output of a shield healer VS a pure healer? Shield always has like 30/40% more healing done in competent parties because the log accounts for the mitigation as healing. If a raidwide hits for 120k with a 40k tick bleed, then no amount of healing is gonna save you. It makes perfect sense that the tools to deal with that should primarily be in the hands of the people who are playing a job that should counteract these heavy raidwide hits. Do you really wanna put part of that responsibility in the hands of the busiest role, dps? Dps tunnel vision exists for a reason, it's a more complicated role which is fighting its own minigame.

I actually don't specifically disagree with your rational here just to be clear. It would make sense, in theory, for Healers to be where the central Heal and mitigation responsibility comes from. However for current, with heavy emphasis on the current, game encounter and overall job design, it doesn't work. Please elaborate on the encounter that would have to exist that warrants Healers to be the all healing / all mitigation beast you desire while also does not create a situation where LESS people show up to heal on PF.

..I'll wait, but it just doesn't exist. You would literally have to design a fight that has nonstop healer and mitigation checks and that is exactly the amount of stress people do not show up for on PF. We have literal examples of this already with EW raids. I'm not sure why anyone believes doing more of the same is the solution to the PF Healer shortage.

Why must we cater healer design to an hypothetical lowest common denominator?

If we are talking about the lowest common denominator, I would consider that Expert dungeons, and I am indeed not saying we should balance Healers around Expert dungeon difficulty.
I am however saying, we should balance around how the average pf healer in savage operates. We should balance all job balance (specifically party heal/mit utility) around this. Because it is a necessary focus to preserve the raiding community as a whole.