How MUCH healing can non-Healers do?

[Renathras]

Okay, group project time. Because some of you are better with numbers than me and because there's some weird stuff some of you might have a far better idea of how to calculate.

Tank/DPS and Healer cure potencies may not all be the same (in fact, I believe everything I've read and seen says they are not), but given a discussion got me thinking: How much healing would be needed in a 4 man encounter to make Healers "necessary".

Here I'm going to try and quantify this concept. For the sake of argument, "necessary" at its LOWEST should be defined something like this: Damage to the party that exceeds non-Healer party configuration maximum possible healing; damage to Tank that exceeds said healing + Tank self-sustain modified by mitigation.

In other words, where if you stack a 1T/3DPS party with maximum healing and the DPS use their heals on CD, the party collectively is taking more damage than they can keep up with, and likewise, that if the Tanks are doing their rotation perfectly, they are taking at least 1 HP damage MORE than that such that they are slowly losing health over the course of the fight without outside healing.

If this was the level of incoming damage for a 4 man, then it's the level that would necessitate a Healer be present in order to output greater healing than this amount of incoming damage.

Make sense? Clear as mud? Alrighty, let's begin by trying to quantify how much healing non-Healer Jobs can produce, then we'll pick the highest Tank and three highest DPSers (or the highest one 3 times?) and see what that total ends up being. Fair starting point?

EDIT: Oh, right!

I'm normalizing to 2 minutes (we're talking 4 mans here, though this COULD be extrapolated to 8 man encounters as well...for 8 man normal content, anyway), and for the sake of this argument, consider single target boss fights. We can also do data for trash packs, but those are more variable, so we'd have to pick something like 8 targets (for the Bloodbath AOE type stuff), though I think it's fair to say Bloodbath/Bloodwhetting are just going to generate a fullcure for their duration in high AOE situations anyway, whatever potency that would evaluate to.

Also, 500 Potency for a Healer in BIS-ish gear (630 + upgraded Mander weapon) is ~7-8k healing off a Cure 1, as a base reference point. 600 potency would be somewhere around 10k.

[Renathras]

Here's what I have so far for all the DPS Jobs. And the Melee immediately present a problem: Bloodbath. How much HP should this be rated for? Maintenance is going on right now, so I can't go in and try to test this (and am not BIS anyway on any Melee), so perhaps some of you have some insight into how to calculate this? Likewise, DRG has 3 Life Surges per 2 minute window (what I'm normalizing to), that would add another tick of HP regeneration for them which is also based on the damage dealt. Anyway, here's the preliminary stuff I have for them:

Also note I'm probably overestimating the barriers here, but I'm assuming 10% HP is ~10k. This is...probably going to overestimate rather than underestimate and is based on me not having any of those Jobs BIS to test (and also maintenance...). I think my 630 + Mando weapon WHM has just below 60k health (assuming no buff foods for 4 mans), and I typically see people in 52-54k range when they pop on Healer in Hunt Trains (probably not BIS, but maybe more indicative of the average ilevel party?), so I may be overestimating barriers by around a factor of 2. But then Melee have more health, so...yeah, if anyone has a good idea on how to deal with THAT, please let me know.

Melee:

Bloodbath: 90 second CD, converts a portion of physical damage dealt into HP, 20 sec duration (exact potency variable, but normalized to ~8 GCDs worth of partial damage, 4/3rds uses per 2 minutes)
Feint: Lowers target’s physical damage dealt by 10% and magic by 5%, 10 sec duration

Melee + Ranged:

Second Wind: 2 min CD, Self-heal only, 500 potency

Ranged:

Various names, all have one: 90 sec CD, reduces damage taken by party by 10%, 15 sec duration (4/3rds uses per 2 minutes)

Caster:
Addle: Lowers target’s physical damage dealt by 5% and magic by 10%, 10 sec duration

MNK:
Riddle of Earth: 2 min CD, HoT for 100 potency over 15 sec (500 total?)
Mantra: Increases healing via actions for self + party by 10%, 15 sec duration
MNK Total: 1,100 self + various self, +10% party (15 sec), 10% physical and 5% magic damage reduction (10 sec) party

DRG:
Life Surge: 40 sec CD, 2 charges, absorbs a portion of damage dealt as HP. (3 uses per 2 min, various potency)
DRG Total: 500 self + various self (Bloodbath) + various self (Life Surge) x3, 10% physical and 5% magic damage reduction (10 sec) party

NIN:
Shade Shift: 2 min CD, nullify damage up to 20% of maximum HP, 20 sec duration (potency ~= 10k HP, or roughly 500-600 potency?)
NIN Total: 500 self + various self + ~10k HP (~500 more potency?) “barrier” self, 10% physical and 5% magic damage reduction (10 sec) party

SAM:
Third Eye: 15 sec CD, Reduces damage taken by the next attack by 10%, 4 sec duration
SAM Total: 500 self + various self + 10% reduced damage every 15 sec (x8 per 2 min) , 10% physical and 5% magic damage reduction (10 sec) party

RPR:
Arcane Crest: 30 sec CD, nullify damage up to 10% max HP [barrier] (5 sec duration; ~10k HP, or roughly 500-600 potency?), if completely absorbed, HoT for 50 potency over 15 sec (250 total?) – will assume maximum for this calculation.
RPR Total: 250 party x 4, ~10k HP (500 potency?) barrier party x 4, 500 potency self: 1,000 + 2,000 barrier party, 500 self, 10% physical and 5% magic damage reduction (10 sec) party

BRD:
BRD Total: 500 self, 10% damage reduction party (15 sec) x4/3

MCH:
Dismantle: 2 min CD, Lowers target’s damage dealt by 10%, 10 sec duration
MCH Total: 500 self, 10% damage reduction party (15 sec) x4/3, 10% damage reduction party (10 sec)

DNC:
Curing Waltz: 1 min CD, Potency 300, Dance partner echoes, total potency 600
DNC Total: 1,200 party, 1,700 self, 10% damage reduction party (15 sec) x4/3

BLM:
Manaward: 2 min CD, nullify damage up to 30% max HP [barrier] (20 sec duration, ~30k HP, or roughly 1500 potency)
BLM Total: ~30k HP (1500 potency?) barrier self, 5% physical and 10% magic damage reduction (10 sec) party

SMN:
Radiant Aegis: 1 min CD, 2 charges, nullify up to 20% max HP [barrier], (20 sec duration, ~20k HP, or roughly 1000 potency) - (2 per 2 minutes)
Physic: lol…! No. Just no. (400 potency based on MIND, ~600 HP heal even at level 90. Just no.)
Everlasting Flight: 2 min CD [effective], 100 potency HoT over 21 sec (700 potency)
Rekindle: 2 min CD [effective], 400 potency party heal + 200 potency HoT over 15 sec (2,000 potency)
SMN Total: 700 party, 2,400 one target, ~40k HP (2,000 potency) barrier self, 5% physical and 10% magic damage reduction (10 sec) party

RDM:
Vercure: 2.5 sec CD, 2 sec cast, 500 MP cost, 350 potency cure to a single target (can be cast ~48 times in 2 mins, though MP won’t generally allow for that)
Magick Barrier: 120 sec CD, reduces MAGIC damage ONLY taken by party by 10%, increases HP recovered by healing ACTIONS by 5%, 10 sec duration
RDM Total: 16,800 (theoretical maximum at 0 spell speed) potency single target, +5% party, 10% magic damage reduction (10 sec), 5% physical and 10% magic damage reduction (10 sec) party
NOTE: RDM’s real total will be FAR LESS than this due to going OOM, and this would also be if they gave up on doing all non-oGCD damage for the entire 2 minutes. Will do some testing later to determine how many casts can be done before going OOM.

[AmiableApkallu]

What about including Hyper-potions?

I've certainly run into scenarios where fumbling/clipping/dropping a damage GCD to use a potion was well worth it because I needed the HP from the potion to survive a raid wide, and that damage GCD I lost wouldn't have prevented it.

[Renathras]

What about including Hyper-potions?

I've certainly run into scenarios where fumbling/clipping/dropping a damage GCD to use a potion was well worth it because I needed the HP from the potion to survive a raid wide, and that damage GCD I lost wouldn't have prevented it.

Sure, I guess you can include those.

I'm just trying to figure out, mathematically, how much damage would need to occur in a given 2 minute window (total) for 4 man parties to need a Healer to survive them. Then, I want to look at the Healer toolkits and see if they COULD solo all that healing (that is, if the Tank was inept and all your DPS refused to use healing or mitigation abilities as well) and what that would look like.

[Sebazy]

Do not forget natural HP regen, it's a surprisingly big factor, more-so than a lot of people realise especially given how slowly paced most fights are now.

I'm not sure of the exact specific numbers, but it's somewhere in the region of 1% total HP per tick in combat (and 10% per tick out of combat which is a big factor in no healer dungeon runs).

Some rough napkin math: As an iLvl 625 DNC with ~66k hp solo with no food... In combat I get 660 hp every tick aka 13200 hp a minute aka 26400 hp every 2 minutes.

Curing Waltz is ~5.7k - 11.4k a minute or ~11.4k to 22.8k every 2 minutes in a 3y radius.

Second Wind is ~10k every 2 minutes self only.

Improvisation is ~10k over 15 seconds/5 ticks every 2 minutes + a 5% shield (3.3k on myself) with an 8y radius if you can double tap it rather than just tapping and cancelling. It can be extended in downtime up to as much as ~18k over 9 ticks/27 seconds with a 10% HP shield (6.6k hp on myself). Channeling it for it's full duration and potency is only really something you'll do on longer downtime sequences such as Cagnazzo's Tsunami post nails or in absolute emergencies in 24 mans where both healers have checked out.

So assuming you're able to stack yourself with your dance partner for Curing Waltz, I've got a theoretical 22.8k (AoE)+10k (AoE)+10k (Self) ability based healing that can crit, 26.4k of self regen that can't crit and an additional 5% AoE shield (3.3k) that also cannot crit.

In my current gear my crit chance is 20.5% so if we factor that in by increasing the ability healing by that percentage we end up with a total average of 51.3k.

Add in the natural regen and shield and we're at a total average throughput of ~81k of self healing+shielding every 2 minutes, ~42.6k of which is AoE.

Also worth noting is Shield Samba which is a further 10% mitigation for 15 seconds. Used on the right AoE, that's a significant amount of effective HP.

Edit: To add some comparison here, if I grab the first Nophica kill in my list on DNC, it was a 4:30 kill and dealt 172k damage to me through unavoidable AoEs. If we average that damage down into 2 minutes, we get roughly 76.4k taken.

The Halone clear in the same run comes to 104.3k taken over the same theoretical 2 minute period.

[Deceptus]

It doesn't matter the exact number. What really matters, and the answer to the question, is:

Enough to survive mechanics so much that healers aren't necessary in certain content, or only 1 is necessary in others.

[ForsakenRoe]

Older dungeons had a sort of solution to this, like in Snowcloak, the frigid winds of the area cause you to take damage over time if you're standing in the wrong place. So I don't see why, eg Lapis Manalis, couldn't have had 'you are in a bloody cold area, your natural HP regeneration is paused', or the first boss of Aldazaal (octopus you fight while standing IN WATER) having permanent-but-weak Dropsy debuff for the duration of the fight.

[Renathras]

One thing to note about natural regeneration: Because it's always active, and because the rate is roughly constant for a given gear level range (which dungeons are rated for), that amount of regeneration can be factored in as a "constant". Which is to say, damage taking that into account either way since it's always going to be happening.

So a given amount of damage is X (whatever X is) + C/sec (where C is natural regeneration). That piece is just tacked onto the end of whatever the calculation is.

Though, Sebazy, looking at your numbers reinforces that part of the problem isn't Healer design, it's non-Healer design. Ignoring Second Wind, that's still around 40k of healing from a single DPSer. That'd be 120k for 3 (T/3D) or 160k (2T/2H/4D) or 200k (T/2H/5D) for various party configurations. Which is quite a lot. Granted, not every DPS Job has the same amount of healing, but those aren't insignificant numbers. And the more healing (and mitigation) given to non-Healer Jobs, the more it breaks things down.

But, in theory, then it's not a problem for Healers SPECIFICALLY as those amounts are...what's the best way to say this...? If an encounter is tuned based on having one Tank, two DPSers with a lot of healing, and STILL require more healing that is greater than a third DPSer could provide, then it would necessitate the presence of Healers. Moreover, outside of Paladin and Red Mage, no other Job has spamable healing potential other than Healers, meaning once they've used up their CDs, they have nothing but natural healing (and a single use potion), whereas Healers could continue to output healing.

So in a nutshell, the trick is determining how much healing one Tank + two DPS can provide, using that as your baseline, figuring out how much a third DPS could provide, and then setting incoming damage to be more than WHATEVER that happens to be. Then looking at the "most healing" 1T/2D (since the last slot will be Healer) vs the "least healing" 1T/2D, to see what the best and worst case scenario would be (how much healing the Healer will have to pick up between the two extremes in addition to carrying the "third DPS + 1" extra healing that was added to require them in the first place), and then making sure that Healers have the ability to output AT LEAST that much healing so that they're still needed in the best case scenario, but still able to step in and fill the gap in the worst case. Probably with the double-worst case of "if no one else in the party used any healing ability whatsoever".

Granted, Healing Jobs have pretty insane amounts of healing, so this might not be as high a bar to cross as it might initially seem. And Healers aren't limited by CD heals (of which they already have many and powerful ones) since they also can fairly extensively spam GCD MP costing backup heals. Even in combat, it takes a bit to run out of MP doing so, and that would be after using everything else.

I'm just curious what those numbers (best and worst case) would be so what Healers would need to be tuned to. It doesn't have to be all at once since this is all normalized over 2 mins.

[Sebazy]

I had a rather convenient Experto last night which reminded me of this topic

The healer died 30 seconds into Cagnazzo and we were double DNC+Warrior so the damage wasn't great. Normally as a DPS I'd see Cag dead in ~2:30, this kill was nearly 5 minutes.

Here's the log

It wasn't perfect, I kind of dropped the ball but at least had the warrior partner'd, I think the other DNC switched partner to me at some point. I died to an outright mistake as I misjudged the safespot on the Hydraulic Ram charge mechanic and ate 2 hits. Amusing the Warrior stacked with me also eating 2 vulns but was fine. The other DNC died to the last AoE but I'm fairly certain that if I'd not have died, we would have been fine as my CDs were due.

All told, I think Cagnazzo is a pretty good baseline of what's comfortable to heal without a healer. It's not trivial, but it's manageable.

Just normalising to that as a baseline isn't the simple option though, this was a group with a warrior and 2 DNC's that immediately picked up the slack when the healer died so we had it covered. If the group wasn't on the ball, the load on the healer would be significantly higher.

*edit* This is an interesting reference point. The healer did as much healing in 30 seconds as I did across ~5 minutes via 4 GCDs with 4 casts and no cooldowns. Just Medica II, Regen and 2 Lilies. If that isn't a stark example of how overtuned healers are vs undertuned content. I don't know what is.

[NobleWinter]

*edit* This is an interesting reference point. The healer did as much healing in 30 seconds as I did across ~5 minutes via 4 GCDs with 4 casts and no cooldowns. Just Medica II, Regen and 2 Lilies. If that isn't a stark example of how overtuned healers are vs undertuned content. I don't know what is.

This really underlines how little outgoing damage there is. If DPS and Tanks are only able to output a pitiful amount of healing compared to a single healer and yet can clear content without them it definitely points to a critical error in encounter design that "requires" healers. It doesn't take very long to realize as a healer that you aren't using most of your kit to clear regular content.