Quote Originally Posted by Snow_Princess View Post
So in the end I need ask this, why should healing be the thing that changes because of big skill gaps of DPS and tanks?
A fair question, with what I feel is a reasonable answer: because the way healing is structured is currently creates a massive chasm in the balancing of raid encounters in XIV.

And I don't say this JUST because of how fast they get cleared, but because of the devs' admission that healer DPS isn't being factored into raid balancing.

Unless they're outright lying about that (which I doubt they'd do), the difficulty curve of raid encounters is going to continue to plummet right at the point where everyone in the raid can dodge the avoidable damage, because right THERE is where the amount of healing healers need to do drops to bare minimum and they can instead turn all that extra mana into DPS.

This is why the developers have themselves in a catch-22: if they design raids with the idea that healers will be DPSing, healers in raids where people are still occasionally taking avoidable damage will suffer horribly. If they continue designing them without the expectation of healer DPS, groups that can avoid all of the avoidable damage will steamroll the encounter because they can meet the DPS checks THAT much quicker.

It all centers around how players take damage in raid encounters. Most damage is either AA to the tank, unavoidable AoE to the whole raid, or avoidable telegraphs.

I respect their decision to add a skill check in that some damage is avoidable, but the flipside of that is that groups who can avoid this damage can essentially trivialize DPS checks, which creates the aforementioned chasm.