Quote Originally Posted by Luin View Post
I don't want monsters with ridiculously high stats with swapped movesets, repetitive textures and maps.
Truth be told, I think that it's this notion where the whole "strain on the healer" idea comes from.

You can make completely brutal and unforgiving content where a healer isn't even needed, much less pressured. Easily in fact, by simply bombarding people with insta-wipe mechanics that either kill everyone or deal no damage at all - As a bonus, in a standard group, the healer is exempt from them all. An extreme example, naturally, but it's meant to emphasize one simple fact:

The strain put on someone is proportional to the impact they have.

In the above example, there is nothing to heal, nor res, so heals and res are virtually powerless and healers don't even participate in the mechanics, so they have a very low impact on the fight as a whole. They're just a bit of bonus DPS and can do whatever they like. As a consequence, there's little to no pressure on them.
The other party members however have a huge impact on the fight, because they have the power to prevent an instant group wipe. And they need to use it, every time, without fail. Each of them has a large impact on the group, which puts a large amount of pressure on them. And even if you include healers in the mechanics, the pressure on them would never exceed that of the other party members.

As such, it doesn't necessarily follow that the stress on a healer is automatically disproportionate to that of other party members. It is entirely dependent on how much impact on the outcome you are giving the jobs and roles. If one has no power and no impact, they can do whatever they like, it doesn't have any effect and therefore pressure is low. If one person dwarfs everyone in power and impact, every decision they do weighs heavy and the pressure is high.

Simply upping the damage people take (as they do in PotD) makes the power of heals more impactful, as less of it becomes wasteful overheal. As a result, strain on the healer goes up. By limiting the impact heals (and res) can have however, you also limit the pressure on healers. And the same goes for all other roles - The higher their impact, the higher their strain. Look no further than enrages, which makes DPS far more impactful (it suddenly impacts whether you clear at all, not just when), thereby increasing the pressure on DPS. And if the healer has a disproportionate strain on them, that just means you gave them a disproportionate amount of impact.

So... you can simply design the content to match. It "is" pretty hard to do with healers nowadays simply because they have such truckloads of power in their spells and limiting their impact usually comes at the cost of highly frustrating mechanics. Bad design begets bad design. But it's quite possible if you go out of your way.