Predict the endwalker healing meta!

[Sebazy]

I know you hate it when we say it but this is unfortunately going to be a...now wait for it... WAIT AND SEE kind of thing.

I've been sat waiting at this table since the Stormblood media preview!

[Laphicet]

Oh no i can't believe he got you too!

I know you hate it when we say it but this is unfortunately going to be a...now wait for it... WAIT AND SEE kind of thing. And even if the most optimized groups don't run healers that doesn't mean healers have no value outside of that. Not everyone playing this game is going to be playing at that level, for those people having a healer or two will be welcome.

You missed the point of what I was saying. Right now you can easily solo heal any hard content so long as there is no healer-targeting mechs that place stack markers or such the like on two healers. Even then you can still do it but the mechanical complexity increases to such a point it would invalidate the DPS gain for most parties. A big thing though is that you can't do a zero-healer party for most hard content, even with iLVL bloat, the outgoing damage is just too much.

The reason I say zero-healers or solo heal is my prediction is that they are buffing both Healer kits on the healing side AND tank self-heal abilities for all tanks outside of DRK. And with this bloat to these support kits, plus increases in RDMs healing kit and SMN having more ready access to shields, I think you would be able to cut the healer out of things completely provided there's no role bucketing via forced healer target, at least during farm. And with the increase to healer potencies and just more bloating of healer kits I do think you could easily solo-heal during prog with anything but WHM, and WHM could do it with a high-piety build and some ethers. This does assume they won't be increasing outgoing damage, though... but historical record shows that if anything they'll be reducing outgoing damage, so I'm pretty confident in my predictions.

EDIT:
However, there is one big thing keeping solo heal from becoming a thing for higher-end stuff. And that's FFlogs. You see, FFlogs puts anything that's not 2tanks2heals4dps in a category called "non-standard". Non-standard parses don't get added to overall ratings and are basically nonexistent when it comes to your personal records IIRC. This makes it so that a good chunk of people running end-game stuff, parse chaser types, are actively disincentivized from using these non-standard comps as these don't carry as much weight as standard comp parses. If this were to be changed then you'd see a lot more solo-heal parties and maybe even some attempts at no-heal parties even in current content. But for now it's a niche thing that can speed things up greatly in some content.

And like I said before, there is the issue of healer-targeting mechanics going random if there is no healer to target. So all they would need to do is put one very-punishing healer-focused mech in every hard fight and solo heal becomes much more scarce due to the increased coordination required.

It could also be made so that you have to have one shield and one regen healer to get the full "different party members" damage and LB bonus, but such would be a bit vindictive to do and also doesn't matter to people just looking to farm things and get clears... such is moreso a thing for parsers.

[Rolder50]

EDIT:
However, there is one big thing keeping solo heal from becoming a thing for higher-end stuff. And that's FFlogs. You see, FFlogs puts anything that's not 2tanks2heals4dps in a category called "non-standard". Non-standard parses don't get added to overall ratings and are basically nonexistent when it comes to your personal records IIRC. This makes it so that a good chunk of people running end-game stuff, parse chaser types, are actively disincentivized from using these non-standard comps as these don't carry as much weight as standard comp parses. If this were to be changed then you'd see a lot more solo-heal parties and maybe even some attempts at no-heal parties even in current content. But for now it's a niche thing that can speed things up greatly in some content.

I feel that if such a meta became common place, the developer of FF Logs would adjust the website such that those parses counted or had their own category or something of the sort.

[CrimsonGunner]

tbh the ast/sge meta will be more prominent due to how whm and sch gameplay will feel most of all.

with whm mp economy plummets to the ground making basically ast 5.0 and whm level 50 mp issues will now hunts him at level 90 only worse , he won't be anymore prog friendly healer(aka new player friendly) and has way more downside in progging compare to ast in terms of recovery in case of failure(especially personal failure cause they can restore their mp faster now) ,in pure healer category ast is the clear winner;

sch while have util is still one of the clunkiest and have contradictive kit that wont reward for said contradiction so while being able to do content ,its has the worst gameplay compare to sge who not only dont suffer from ghost and delays on his skiils due to fairy AI but he does not have any parts of the kit that actually lock him from using his other skills when they are used and since it was proven that sge has the same stuff sch has except niche util and he is more dps focused and actually heal people when he dps, so in the barrier healer category its sge that wins.

ast can also stack his shields with either of the barrier healers so most chances are we will see ast/sge or the niche of ast/sch as meta more even though ast has more rng.

[Lastelli]

All it takes to change the meta is a 10 potency buff to a nuke, so I'd say it's a little bit to early to tell.

I did notice though that SCH's shield potential is quite higher than SGE, so SCH might be meta in some fights if some mechanics can be cheesed with shield stacking.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I want to joke and say PAL/WAR - what are healers.....

A slot that has to be filled just to commence a DF.

[BaconBits]

Oh no i can't believe he got you too!

I know you hate it when we say it but this is unfortunately going to be a...now wait for it... WAIT AND SEE kind of thing. And even if the most optimized groups don't run healers that doesn't mean healers have no value outside of that. Not everyone playing this game is going to be playing at that level, for those people having a healer or two will be welcome.

People were saying "wait and see" years ago and I bet my left knee they'll be saying it again 2 years from now when 7.0 is on the cusp of release.

I think it's fair to say folks are more than tired of being told to wait and see.

[QooEr]

I feel that if such a meta became common place, the developer of FF Logs would adjust the website such that those parses counted or had their own category or something of the sort.

nonstandard comps actually used to count in rankings, but they forced standard comps for rankings bevause ppl were complaining about being forced off healing roles.

kind of funny that fflogs does more to make ppl play two healers than the fights themselves do

[AFuzzyMu11in]

Ast is incredibly difficult. It won't be meta over whm.

[Risvertasashi]

It won't be meta over whm.

In line with what Tanya said, I want to stress that meta isn't the same as popularity.

History has shown us time and again white mage is the most popular healer even when it is the worst healer. For other healers to exceed WHM's population, it needs to not just be the worst performing, it needs to be severely far behind the next lowest. So, if the balance is remotely close, I have no doubt WHM will be the most popular even if it is the bottom performer.

Sage theoretically could change this, but overcoming the iconic-ness of WHM, and that it's the only healer we can start the game as, and so on is a tall order and I personally doubt that will happen. SCH and AST can't do it despite SCH+AST being the speedkill meta this entire expansion and white mage, once more, having the lowest DPS contribution at the tail end. Last expac, it only happened when WHM was really far behind and there was a particularly tough-to-heal raid (O12S).

So to be sure: It's pretty likely WHM will have the highest population unless certain thresholds are crossed. But "meta" is far less likely and personally, I don't think it will happen.