TOP cleared with no healers

[Sebazy]

The reason Cleric Stance was removed was because people in normal content were getting in fights over Healers not using it (or sometimes using it and people dying and getting blamed for them greeding in Cleric). If you, for example, gave Healers more DPS kit, there would absolutely be people in 4 man MSQ dungeon witching out Healers not using those extra buttons or badmouthing them in forums and "Tales from the Duty Finder" if they're worried about bans, neither of which is good for the community or the game. That's the very reason Cleric was removed in the first place.

I disagree. That's baseless speculation and paranoia. You can test this right now if you're so inclined. If not, it's all good because I already have. Remember when I did that Lapis dungeon spam with no oGCDs and still nearly parsed orange? I also dabbled around with completely excluding bits of my kit. Single button DPSing ignoring my dots, assize etc. I still parsed high green/low blue and more importantly. At no point did anyone bat an eyelid. No one mentioned it, I got a few comms, people said gg.

No one cared because no one died.

Cleric Stance was a very special case, basically split healers right down the middle and those that weren't making effective use of it functionally did zero DPS. You couldn't ignore it and still get a good log, your DPS literally fell clean off a cliff and straight down into the burning pits. But more importantly, misuse of Cleric Stance combined with many level cap dungeons being notably more dangerous in early ARR had the very real risk of either getting stuck in Cleric and being unable to toggle it off in time or even simply failing to realise it was on and having your group slowly die around you whilst your healing did little to nothing.

Remember, Cleric Stance wasn't a buff, it was a punishment mechanic. A price healers had to pay to deal DPS. If it was a buff, you'd have been able to click it off in a pinch. Thus it was a massively contentious ability because of how it could cause wipes in the hands of someone who wasn't ontop of their game.

I truely don't think you are stupid enough to believe that adding some proc, rotation or other complexity fluff to healer DPS is going to somehow cause wipes to anything like the same degree as Cleric Stance did. Having a feathers style proc on a healer isn't going to cause your heals to land for 0. It's not going to cause little Timmy to flail around mindlessly like Cleric routinely could. It's just going to be yet another part of the kit that some people choose to ignore and overlook which frankly is nothing new in casual end game content these days. How is this going to be a problem when it really isn't already?

More encounter design and non-Healer Jobs (considering the clear was without a single Healer Job, the problem isn't with the Healer Jobs, it's with the encounter design and the non-Healer Jobs).

Lets try putting this in a different way so maybe you can understand.

FFXIV healer design is here *

Meanwhile FFXIV content design has wandered off down into the edit box

Neither of these things are intrinsically wrong in isolation. If FFXIV raids were dishing damage out like King Tormax, I suspect we wouldn't be having this discussion. So it's a content problem right?

But then, if ARR had have launched with healers playing akin to early BnS Summoner, aka a fully fleshed out DPS job with a finite amount of healing CDs. It would also likely be a very different landscape now.

Trying to suggest that one facet of the issue is entirely responsible is just plain false. The problem is that these two pillars of game design are wildly misaligned. So much so at this stage that expecting to entirely solve the problem by simply shifting one of the pillars isn't going to work in the long term. Both sides need to be adjusted to find a compromise in the middle IMO.

Having every fight be a clone of BarbEX and TitanEX going forward isn't a viable solution. This game needs encounter diversity and healers need some adjustment to make fights like E8S and RubiEX non soul destroying.