Current EX trial completed without Healers

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

The sad part is they don't really. You can get hit by lots of the mechanics. Getting hit by Snakes or taking a cone aoe or green laser to the face just gives you a slap on the wrist and a Vuln stack, which your bored healers will probably be grateful for as they leap forward and barrage you with all the oGCD's they had sitting there unused. Getting hit is fine as long as you don't do it too often.

My very first clear and first few farms of EX1 was basically throwing bodies at the boss till we made it. Failed mechanics here & there but damages are so spaced in between, DPS check is hilariously forgiving, dying for most part doesn't guarantee a wipe because of missing players for upcoming mechanics. Heck if somebody knew the fight like the back of their hand, they can just mark this player to glue themselves for the entire encounter.

I've gotten the accessories I wanted from that trial & I'm not looking forward to do more of those, much lesser extent to 'optimize' it.

[Thoosa]

I have some questions

Was this clear in a group of organised players, for example a static? I’d find it hard to believe a random pug could clear without healers.

Also it seems that ex trials have been getting easier and easier since Stormblood with the only exception being the WoL trial - I’ve not done any of the ex trials - are they easy?

The step from Ex to Savage is usually quite big so if you will be able to clear the new savages comfortably without healers then that will be a big worry and possibly an indication that SE may want to remove the role entirely in the future.

[Hysterior]

If everybody does mechanics perfectly, there is very little healing needed in trial 1.
I think there are only 3 times where healing is required and these can definitely be soloed.

I don't think you could do a no healer in trial 2 though.... but some groups might still be able to surprise me XD

[Brandedblade]

An entire role shouldn't be able to be disregarded in any content period, especially current content.

The only thing I'm seeing from this is that dps healer utility is too powerful for those specific two jobs, the fact highly skilled players can negate the need for healing by stacking specific jobs and thus killing their LB generation does not mean "Omg healers are useless". YOu got to keep in mind a majority of players aren't playing at your gigachad level of skill.

[Semirhage]

I wonder just how low healing requirements would have to get before current healer design white knights would actually admit that healing gameplay is designed poorly?

Because apparently five whole unavoidable raidwides in an entire "extreme" encounter you can cover with dancer heals isn't down there yet.

Enjoy casting one spell over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, I can't imagine calling this slop "good design".

[Saefinn]

The only thing I'm seeing from this is that dps healer utility is too powerful for those specific two jobs, the fact highly skilled players can negate the need for healing by stacking specific jobs and thus killing their LB generation does not mean "Omg healers are useless". YOu got to keep in mind a majority of players aren't playing at your gigachad level of skill.

Whilst feats like the one in the thread are nothing new and I agree that a job's core purpose shouldn't be negated, but this is one of those scenarios where it's not a regular group. Though I think it does draw attention to how crazy tanks changes can be. For sure having done that EX fight, I didn't feel useless as a healer, and I think it worked well with my kit. Though admittedly a fairly easy EX as we cleared early on in our second lockout and that may be a contributing factor to why those WAR could do it.

What did raise some red flags for me was doing the level 89 dungeon, I died early on during the second boss because I misread a mechanic. I wasn't needed for the whole fight. I've seen it happen 3 or 4 more times in general where the healer has died in EW. It used to be a thing in ShB too, we ran one of the late dungeons and the healer DC'd at the start and we made it all the way to the final boss before another showed up. And in each of these cases it wasn't that they were exceptional. But I think it ends up raising the question for the healer: was I really needed?
And I think it shows that for a chunk of this game's content that healers are just green DPS. And honestly, I think it'd be less of a complaint if there were the tools to compensate. Whilst I am happy with how SGE has turned out, I do feel this remains a bigger issue for the other healing jobs.

I wouldn't want to see them take it away from the tanks because it's another element to their job to make it interesting, but it inevitably will contribute to healer down time, so give healers more interesting stuff in their downtime. It seems a fair trade IMO.

[Ayche]

Did you guys count the snakes as unavoidable damage? As they truly are.
You can join my prog parties, I can prove it too.

[BrokentoothMarch]

Ex-Healer turned DPS and now I have new perspective:

If I'm doing well, the healer is completely unnecessary. I'm usually practicing to be doing well. Which means my practice comes with the ultimate goal of excising a healer from me short of a DNC which, as a SAM, I am always chosen as a dance partner. Healers are borderline outdated by now and I regularly think to myself "Please don't heal me. I have Bloodbath. Just do more DPS or help the tank".

Essentially, healers are clinging to relevance while both tanks and DPS' are stomping on those clinging fingers with their boots as we practice to no longer need them. A corrosive take, I realize, but it's mine. n' I realize a likely response is "Then you don't deserve any heals". That's fine. That's my point. The fact that that's fine isn't okay, but that's the state of things and that's where SE drove your class.

Now I'm off to play a job that requires more than three buttons.

[HappyHubris]

I've said it before, but if they won't change encounter design then healers need to become fully fledged support DPS with only resurrection and a couple party heals. The job design and the encounter design are just so incredibly at odds with each other and it's only getting worse over time. I suspect they couldn't fix the encounters any longer even if they wanted to, it might just be a too much of an overhaul this point in the game's lifecycle.

I agree, but current content requires 2 full healers for sloppy groups. If you dialed back the healing throughput, then many people couldn't finish content as currently tuned, which is apparently Square's primary concern. Optimized healers are just not a concern.

[HappyHubris]

I wouldn't want to see them take it away from the tanks because it's another element to their job to make it interesting, but it inevitably will contribute to healer down time, so give healers more interesting stuff in their downtime. It seems a fair trade IMO.

YoshiP has already said that healers will never get more involved damage rotations, as poor players could be criticized for not doing enough damage on what is supposed to be a healing role.

I don't know that healing is very interesting for tanks; a lot of it is incidental to their play.