In all content, the damage taken by party members scales pretty heavily with gear. It's noticeable in savage raiding, where damage dealt by bosses is quite intense, but once optimal gear is acquired the damage taken decreases to a point where certain mitigation that was necessary before becomes superfluous at best.
This isn't only seen in high-end raiding, though. In fact, one of the most obvious places gear scaling is seen is in dungeons, where at least moderately threatening raidwide damage from bosses becomes laughably mediocre as gear scaling approaches the dungeons cap.
But that should be part of the point of getting better gear; to take less damage and deal more. However, the point of the healer role is to heal. DPS dealing more damage with better gear is good, while healers having less and less to actually heal is... somewhat counterintuitive to the job of healing.
This isn't an argument against gear scaling, but that gear scaling might be a bit too strong in terms of reducing damage taken, and could be a contributing factor to the un-funning of healing. Gear scaling may or may not be too high in general, making DPS deal far more damage than necessary at each item level cap, but that's not an argument to be made in healer discussion.
My argument is for a tweak to enemy damage calculations: Have a portion of damage dealt by enemies be dealt as absolute damage in proportion to a players max health. It would ignore gear and base stats, but would still factor in active mitigation and shields. The rest of the damage would calculate normally in respect to gear and stats. It also doesn't have to be in proportion to max health, the portion could simply ignore player gear and stats. The calculation should be made in such a way that, at minimum item level, there would be no discernable change in the amount of damage taken (except for maybe tanks who might take a little more damage from raidwides if it's %-of-max-health with their higher health pools). Hopefully, though, at higher item levels, the damage would still be enough that healers feel rewarded for healing and mitigating.
In this way, damage taken would still scale down as item level increases, but not at such a dramatic pace as it does now. This would also work retroactively, and older content could hit a little bit harder at item level caps, giving healers something to heal, and maybe giving DPS/tanks more reason to play with their own raidwide mitigation tools in content other than high-end raiding.
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This isn't only seen in high-end raiding, though. In fact, one of the most obvious places gear scaling is seen is in dungeons, where at least moderately threatening raidwide damage from bosses becomes laughably mediocre as gear scaling approaches the dungeons cap.
But that should be part of the point of getting better gear; to take less damage and deal more. However, the point of the healer role is to heal. DPS dealing more damage with better gear is good, while healers having less and less to actually heal is... somewhat counterintuitive to the job of healing.
This isn't an argument against gear scaling, but that gear scaling might be a bit too strong in terms of reducing damage taken, and could be a contributing factor to the un-funning of healing. Gear scaling may or may not be too high in general, making DPS deal far more damage than necessary at each item level cap, but that's not an argument to be made in healer discussion.
My argument is for a tweak to enemy damage calculations: Have a portion of damage dealt by enemies be dealt as absolute damage in proportion to a players max health. It would ignore gear and base stats, but would still factor in active mitigation and shields. The rest of the damage would calculate normally in respect to gear and stats. It also doesn't have to be in proportion to max health, the portion could simply ignore player gear and stats. The calculation should be made in such a way that, at minimum item level, there would be no discernable change in the amount of damage taken (except for maybe tanks who might take a little more damage from raidwides if it's %-of-max-health with their higher health pools). Hopefully, though, at higher item levels, the damage would still be enough that healers feel rewarded for healing and mitigating.
In this way, damage taken would still scale down as item level increases, but not at such a dramatic pace as it does now. This would also work retroactively, and older content could hit a little bit harder at item level caps, giving healers something to heal, and maybe giving DPS/tanks more reason to play with their own raidwide mitigation tools in content other than high-end raiding.
Continue reading...