What if, instead of busting the tank, bosses executed healers?

[BasicBlake]

Actually after being on these forums I would love for things to execute the healer player base.

[Ilenya]

Actually after being on these forums I would love for things to execute the healer player base.

Why? Honestly curious.

[Gemina]

Busters are there to render your tank ineffective at soaking up more damage. They either put them in crit health, slap a vuln stack on them, or both; depends on the content. The healer buster would have to do something similar to a healer, and basically compromise their ability to heal. A great example of this was the Cleric Stance penalty of old. For those who weren't around, or can't recall; Cleric Stance used to greatly increase a healer's offense while handicapping their healing potency. Similar to engaging a tank stance now, if you turned on Cleric Stance, you could not turn it off for five seconds. So, if you turned it on right as the tank receives a big hit, or the party is taking damage; chances are someone's hitting the floor next. This is why it was basically a really good idea to have it on by default.

While this is interesting to have a boss do this to a healer in an 8-man, there are several issues with this: One is the game already compromises a healer's ability to heal in several ways; they just typically aren't mechanics that affect the healer directly like a tank buster does to a tank. The next is it forces a healer into a situation where all they can do is dodge and DPS, which is kind of already the situation for them.

An issue for healers is that it is typically the players that push their healing capability and not the content. It is quite the conundrum because it is that very same reason why SE has to be careful about how far they go to design content that intentionally stretches a healer's resources.

In short, the enemy is already trying to kill everyone, so a mechanic intended to take away a healer is basically what they deal with throughout the entire encounter. Especially fresh content where an AoE will usually one-shot them. Exploring and finding good mechanics for healers, will likely involve their kits. Those who currently enjoy a job like AST will likely feel like they have plenty to do to keep them busy, and feel it is rewarding. Whether or not you like the card mechanic, the point is giving healers interesting ways to build and use their resources. This is something the devs vastly need to improve on.

[Quintessa]

I think when bosses like Sturg try to out damage healing by spamming powerful AOEs back to back, this functions as a healer buster..

[Yeol]

It would be nice to have more mechanics that target healers only. Just like how tank busters are meant for the 1st and 2nd person in enmity list which are usually the tanks.

Few mechanics come to mind:
- Healer cage in Alexander 7 (Savage)
- Healer portal in Alexander 12 (Savage)

I think there are few more but you get the idea

We have some mechanics that target the furthest player which is usually the physical ranged job to take care of. But there are hardly any mechanics that mainly target healers.

[Gemina]

We have some mechanics that target the furthest player which is usually the physical ranged job to take care of. But there are hardly any mechanics that mainly target healers.

There are plenty of mechanics that exclusively target healers: Geols, Nisi, Prey, tethers, anything that needs to be cleansed (particularly paralyze and doom); most tank invul abilities require healer support, among others.

I am really not sure where this is coming from. Healers are most certainly not exempt from mechanics.

[Ilenya]

At the very least we can go back to Ifrit Ex for something directly aimed at healers. Levi Ex had something as well, so it's not as if there weren't things even back then aimed at healers.

[Lucy_Pyre]

They get used for self-mitigation/self-healing and not protection of others. If things were properly designed NF would be on cooldown, more often than not, because of Raw Intuition use rather than because a warrior wants self healing.

Things are properly designed currently, and Nascent Flash is used over Raw Intuition in almost all situations because it's simply the superior mitigation skill. But yes, let's just take away WAR's self-healing and turn Nascent into a purely party-regulated cooldown. Because it's not like WAR didn't already lose its place as the high-damage tank with ShB, why not take its other gimmick away too.

[Jennah]

An experiment: queue for A4 normal. Watch Nisi go out. Watch both healers and several dps die, without fail. (And the run succeed anyway.)

... no, mechanics like that shouldn't be in anything in DF.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Things are properly designed currently, and Nascent Flash is used over Raw Intuition in almost all situations because it's simply the superior mitigation skill.

Which is why it is not properly designed. When the self-heal half (i.e. Nascent Flash) of the shared cooldown is being used for tank busters more than the mitigation half (Raw Intuition) something is wrong.

But yes, let's just take away WAR's self-healing and turn Nascent into a purely party-regulated cooldown. Because it's not like WAR didn't already lose its place as the high-damage tank with ShB, why not take its other gimmick away too.

Self-healing is fine to include. In fact, I would like to see Inner Beast/Steel Cyclone split away from Fell Cleave/Decimate, have their self-healing effects restored and then have Nascent Flash partially mirror the heals from Inner Beast/Steel Cyclone on it's target.