Dengeki Interview

[Rymi64]

"Yoshi P: Up until Patch 5.3 we heard from a lot of players that healers had a fair amount of downtime on their hands. So, from Patch 5.4, we’ve planned for the more difficult content to put out a lot more damage more often. For speed clears we are planning for it to be harder to do with just pure healers or just shield healers."

Seems like a case of 'hearing from a lot of players' but 'not actually understanding the issue'. Yes healers have a fair amount of downtime - in almost any kind of content, even more so in lower level and 'easy' content. Changing it for 'hardcore' content going forwards will not fix the issue, its a band-aid at most that ignores the main bulk of the game where it actually matters.

It's more a disconnect between the healer playerbase. A portion of the healer playerbase wants to be green dps and another portion the opposite. And since its smarter to appeal to the more casual of the two they make it so healers have less dps spells and lots of downtime, but since the more casual side is more unlikely to do the harder content they make the harder content hit harder and such.

[ForteNightshade]

It's more a disconnect between the healer playerbase. A portion of the healer playerbase wants to be green dps and another portion the opposite. And since its smarter to appeal to the more casual of the two they make it so healers have less dps spells and lots of downtime, but since the more casual side is more unlikely to do the harder content they make the harder content hit harder and such.

Except it isn't quite that simple. Even players who aren't interested in Savage are complaining because they're bored. Likewise, the higher skilled players don't necessarily want to be green DPS, they play that way because they literally have nothing else to do. What most healers who at least have some understanding of how to properly heal want is something else to focus on besides spamming Glare. Even if you play extremely safe, your Glare/Malefic/Broil casts will vastly outnumber anything else you do. People are bored of spamming a single button upwards of 90% of the time.

If healers were given a myriad of buffs and debuffs, you wouldn't hear many complaints from the green DPS crowd despite it taking away from their damage numbers. Why? Because they actually have something to do now. They're asking for a damage rotation primarily because it's the only thing they think SE will actually do since higher healing requirements aren't likely to happen.

[Ultimatecalibur]

If healers were given a myriad of buffs and debuffs, you wouldn't hear many complaints from the green DPS crowd despite it taking away from their damage numbers. Why? Because they actually have something to do now. They're asking for a damage rotation primarily because it's the only thing they think SE will actually do since higher healing requirements aren't likely to happen.

Even regularly needing to cast Esuna on random party members would likely make them happier (would likely also make Bards happier as well).

[EaMett]

It's more a disconnect between the healer playerbase. A portion of the healer playerbase wants to be green dps and another portion the opposite. And since its smarter to appeal to the more casual of the two they make it so healers have less dps spells and lots of downtime, but since the more casual side is more unlikely to do the harder content they make the harder content hit harder and such.

Let me add that it's not necessarily smarter to appeal to the more casual of the two. MMOs have a long history of that going wrong.
It can definitely be a good thing but it's all about where you draw the line.

E12s is the only encounter in the entire patch to come close to their intended goal and you still have a fair bit of pressing 1, 1, 1, 1. But it's a good start.

The catch is that they have a hard limit to how much damage output they can realistically add. They'll never take it up to ultimate levels and ultimates are still a lot of pressing 1, 1, 1, 1. So yeah, like you say. The problem is that they're running on theory.

[Rilifane]

The catch is that they have a hard limit to how much damage output they can realistically add. They'll never take it up to ultimate levels and ultimates are still a lot of pressing 1, 1, 1, 1. So yeah, like you say. The problem is that they're running on theory.

But that "hard limit" currently in place is arbitrary.
How high the healing requirement can be isn't just defined by a % of GCDs spent on healing vs dpsing; fights with a more lenient dps check or lower amount of healer mechanics can have a higher healing requirement. Saying that because in ultimate you spent x% of your GCDs on healing and anything else cannot go beyond that isn't really a good argument on their part. You definitely can without making it equally or more difficult than ultimate itselt.
Right now we have a lot of downtime between having to heal and playing mechanics. There is a lot of wiggle room for higher healing requirement without raising the difficulty to unrealistic levels. That goes for casual content aswell; only few mechanics exist and all of them are forgiving.

But with how many Sylphe-style healers go about healing when things get messy, it's perhaps for the best that they don't raise the healing requirement. I'm starting to think that that ship has long sailed with the frequent healer changes that make healing itself easier and easier. It's hard to go back to old difficulties once people got comfortable with the current state of things.