How about we change the "dps check" a little?

[Hezzlocks]

DPS check is a requirement, without it you may as well not bring any DPS, especially to progression.

Just stack up on tanks and healers and slowly but surely brute force your way through the mechanics.

You are correct that there absolutely should be a DPS requirement to prevent that kind of situation, but that doesn't mean the fight should be built entirely around a DPS check. Hard enrages are the DPS requirement, the point where if you don't have the dps to kill it before this time, it's an instant wipe. This doesn't need to be strict however, merely just something that is in place to prevent people stacking tanks and healers.

Soft enrages, meanwhile, are the intended end point of the fight, where a mechanic becomes gradually stronger over the course of the fight, and eventually becomes an overwhelming resource drain. Could that mechanic be cheesed through with excessive healing and mitigation? Yes, but then you'd be hard pressed to beat the hard enrage. Soft enrages are intended to be a skill check for healers and tanks. The better they are, the further they can push the soft enrage.

We don't have that. We have DPS checks galore, but not so much healing and tanking checks. Or even mechanical skill checks, really, at least not beyond "Don't stand in the things we don't want you to stand in" and "Stand in the things we want you to stand in"

[CorbinDallas]

We don't have that. We have DPS checks galore, but not so much healing and tanking checks. Or even mechanical skill checks, really, at least not beyond "Don't stand in the things we don't want you to stand in" and "Stand in the things we want you to stand in"

E2S, E3S, and E4S all have soft enrages. As did Neo Exdeath, God Kefka, Final Omega, Chaos to a degree (you could survive the 4 sets of debuff before the hard enrage), Tsukuyomi's enrage was an increasing stack damage mechanic, back in the day Shiva and Phoenix had increasing damage stacks throughout the fight, resulting in a soft enrage. There are loads more and are more common than you believe.

[Rilifane]

You are correct that there absolutely should be a DPS requirement to prevent that kind of situation, but that doesn't mean the fight should be built entirely around a DPS check. Hard enrages are the DPS requirement, the point where if you don't have the dps to kill it before this time, it's an instant wipe. This doesn't need to be strict however, merely just something that is in place to prevent people stacking tanks and healers.

Soft enrages, meanwhile, are the intended end point of the fight, where a mechanic becomes gradually stronger over the course of the fight, and eventually becomes an overwhelming resource drain. Could that mechanic be cheesed through with excessive healing and mitigation? Yes, but then you'd be hard pressed to beat the hard enrage. Soft enrages are intended to be a skill check for healers and tanks. The better they are, the further they can push the soft enrage.

We don't have that. We have DPS checks galore, but not so much healing and tanking checks. Or even mechanical skill checks, really, at least not beyond "Don't stand in the things we don't want you to stand in" and "Stand in the things we want you to stand in"

Soft enrages are also a way for tanks and healers to contribute towards passing the check without having to be a pseudo-dps. At least in WoW soft enrages were also designed in a way where stacking healers wasn't an option at all. It was a choice between 2 or 3 healers for 10man and 4 or 5 healers in 20/25man. I can't remember ever seeing a raid running 6 healers in 25man even if the raidwide damage was heavy and the soft enrage added to that.
If the dps is the weakest link (lack of gear, suboptimal raid comp, learning the fight etc), a good healer team can make up for quite a bit. On the other hand if the healers are the weakest link, good dps can make up for that by not letting it come to the point where the healers get overwhelmed. Tanks always contribute either way. They help with correct positioning and minimizing running and mitigation to take of pressure.
A decently designed soft enrage is enough of a dps check.
I'm good with some hard enrages, that's okay. But it's definitely not the only way to desihn encounters.

[IttyBitty]

not so much healing and tanking checks.

Siri, what are tankbusters in general?
How about Aggro resets?
Almagest?
White Hole?
Charybdis?
Photon especially when combined with Eternal Darkness?
Missile?
Allagan Field?
Shinryu's dragon heads?
Akh Morn?
Death Sentence + Plummet?
Heartless Angel/Heartless Archangel?
Practically every single Prey mechanic?

How many more examples do you want?

[Hezzlocks]

Siri, what are tankbusters in general?
How about Aggro resets?
Almagest?
White Hole?
Charybdis?
Photon especially when combined with Eternal Darkness?
Missile?
Allagan Field?
Shinryu's dragon heads?
Akh Morn?
Death Sentence + Plummet?
Heartless Angel/Heartless Archangel?
Practically every single Prey mechanic?

How many more examples do you want?

None of those are soft enrages. They're basic mechanics you deal with in the fight, and for the most part someone dieing to them is not a raid wipe, at least not an assured wipe. You seem to be confusing this with mechanical understanding. A soft enrage is something that builds up in intensity to the point where it becomes overwhelming, requiring the tanks and healers, and even the DPS if they had defensive cooldowns in FF14, to give it their everything to last as long as possible until either the phase ends, the boss dies, or the raid wipes. Susano's sword is one of the closest things to this for a tank, yet even that is still, in the end, just another DPS check.

Really, there are generally only two things that wipes groups. Either people not dodging things and being killed off, or the DPS check failing. Because of this, healers only ever heal as much as they need to, and tanks always gear for maximum DPS. If there were more fights that had more unpredictable unavoidable damage, or much higher constant damage, while also having an ever so slightly looser hard enrage time, then this wouldn't be the case.

You can often separate fights into a few different categories. DPS check, where the enrage timer is extremely tight and/or there are things that must die *immediately*, endurance fights, where incoming damage is usually wild and random and trying to survive is more important than dealing damage, and mechanical understanding, where the fight is more about performing mechanics correctly than anything else, but may be combined with a moderate version of dps or endurance fights. FF14 has plenty of the DPS checks, nearly every fight is tight enough that DPS needs to be on point to clear. There are some mechanical understanding fights. There's not many endurance fights.