Healer Numbers in Mythic Raiding

[Kylista6]

I'm curious to see if anyone else out there agrees with my observations/standpoints on this topic. Obviously, the below post is based on my experience with my guild during Mythic progression.

Back a few years ago (Sorry, I can't find the post), blizzard mentioned that they were moving away from encounters that required more than 2 tanks, due to the need to have a 3rd off-tank ready for raiding, because they didn't think it was a good decision to vary the amounts of tanks needed by fight.

In Nighthold Mythic, the healing requirements vary so widely from fight to fight that it's kind of ridiculous. 5 healing Spellblade, to 2/3 healing Augur is a wide, crazy margin of healing requirements, and the very difficult dps checks make it a requirement to bring as few healers as possible to make fights easier.

We're encountering situations where during progression, extra healers are not asked to go dps (because our dps is so much lower thanks to having to prioritize healing artifact weapon, gear, and trinkets) and instead are asked to sit out so they can bring in strong dps to push progress.

How many people out there think that this is a bad thing? Because we are so incredibly locked to dumping our AP into a primary weapon for healing, it severely hinders dps for those of us required to change specs to see content/bosses. Either that, or we have to play uber AP farm to keep 2 weapons up to par. I love healing, and the fact that it's "dps or gimp your raid" on quite a few bosses makes me quite sad.

[KaPe]

This was always the case, Legion simply made it more obvious due to two very hard bosses *in a row* requiring two healers. Not only that, but it wasn't "only world first guilds do that, the rest will gear up and three heal it." The way gearing works, there wasn't much room for such growth, meaning that bosses had to be changed in order to allow different tactics. Maybe you'd eventually reach such point, but it would take far too long and make Nighthold progress even more annoying for people who cannot afford to have a large bench.

What's even worse is that "two healing" pretty much means "Paladin and Shaman" (maybe a Druid if you need raw hps over cooldowns). Again, this was (almost) always the case, but it became even worse in Legion. Healers could keep up a decent dps offspec without too much effort. It would be inferior to "real" dpsers, sure, but it wasn't that bad. Nowadays, it required an extra amount of AP/legendary grinding or you'll be even further behind than normal. I guess it will even out a bit after 52 traits, but still.

It's pretty damn annoying. Not only are the healers encouraged to pass gear to dpsers, we're also the first to be benched. It's even worse if you're not one of the Chosen Specs, as even your best play cannot replace their utility and justify a raid spot in such tightly tuned scenarios. And it keeps happening again and again. Is Blizzard really not aware that if something can be underhealed, it will be? If cooldowns can be used to drop a healer, it will happen?

[Probably]

Pretty much what KaPe said. As a MW monk main since MoP I can tell you I regret dropping my paladin just about every raid tier. It's a slightly different topic, but whatever.

I'm one of those weird healers who actually reccomends dropping a healer for an extra dps because it makes healing more stressful and fun, but also increases the likelihood of success for the guild (in these high dps demand encounters). However, as a MW monk I'm the one who will surely get sat for our paladin, shaman, and Druid. While I can almost always keep up with them hps wise (maybe besides the Druid hps machines) it doesn't matter because that's all I can compete with. Having practically zero utility and 1 weak cd doesn't cut it.

TL;DR hps doesn't mean as much in mythic raiding, it matters but all healers can turn out good numbers. It's the unique utility and niches of certain healers that set them apart. I'd love it if I was still a holy pally, but as a MW...not so much.

[Deleted]

I have to agree that the diffrence in needed amount of healers is a pain in the ass, i often start our raid off with an extra healer for tough encounters just to give people
a better chance to learn the fight then proceed to drop a healer after we are getting some progress.

This leads to me using 5 healers all in all on our roster and then having to search under every rock to find a decent player that have the time to manage an DPS main specc with decent healing OS.

[Marrilaife]

Back a few years ago (Sorry, I can't find the post), blizzard mentioned that they were moving away from encounters that required more than 2 tanks, due to the need to have a 3rd off-tank ready for raiding, because they didn't think it was a good decision to vary the amounts of tanks needed by fight.

Lololol, welcome to Legion where Elerethe and especially Cenarius progression was done majorly with 3 tanks (and then Guarm and Star Augur were mostly solo tanked, Guarm was nerfed / changed to break this strat, Star Augur wasn't).

Well, I agree with you, it's retarded design. My guild for a long time in early mythic NH couldn't even attempt spellblade due to lack of 5th healer on the roster, we first went for Krosus, didn't have traits, went Botanist, then back to Krosus, only after to spellblade when worse guilds that us were doing it before Krosus / Bota.

Also I have sympathy for my guild healers being constantly rotated in and out because of the wild swings in healer number a setup requires for each boss. At least they nerfed / changed Star Augur and Elisande to not be balanced around 2 healer setup.

No mythic raid boss should require 1 or 3 tanks, 2 or 5 healers. Let's see how Tomb fares in that aspect...

[Viriel]

No mythic raid boss should require 1 or 3 tanks, 2 or 5 healers. Let's see how Tomb fares in that aspect...

I strongly disagree. Mythic should be the pinnacle of raiding. That means that not just you, but also your roster's adaptability should be tested.

Implying it's worse now than it was in the past implies you never did 25 man content in MoP, where underhealing was the norm, and you would have your hybrids for the raidcooldowns. Remember bosses like Stone Guards, the whole of ToT, Garrosh? Bosses that could be solo, 3 tanked, or underhealed. It's always been like this, and it is just a different way to test your roster.

You can 4 heal Spellblade on progress. You can 3 heal Tichondrius, and now even 4 heal Krosus and Star Augur. The fights are lenient enough.

The only reason people complain now is because it means people now need to spend resources(AP) for their offspecs.

TL: DR You dont have the roster to 4 heal spellblade, or to have an offspec with 35(Or since 7.2 36) traits? You dont run a 4 man healing roster and 2 tanks with capable offspecs? Then, imo, youre not good enough as a guild to kill the boss.

[Marrilaife]

I strongly disagree. Mythic should be the pinnacle of raiding. That means that not just you, but also your roster's adaptability should be tested.

Well then we have to agree to disagree, "roster adaptability" should never be a thing except world top 20 maybe, where class stacking and other shenanigans are inevitable. You shouldn't be "not good enough" to kill the boss because you don't have 5 mainspec healers or 3 of each class / spec at least and so on. This requires either split runs and using alts, or having a roster of 40 people and regularly benching them in and out. Do you even raid mythic at a non world top level? Majority of these guilds have 24-28 players on the roster tops, and no split runs / raiding alts.

Mythic should not be optimized around world top 20, neither it should try to deplete the players' fun by telling them optimally they'll be spending 50% of their time on the bench. Some benching is inevitable, but it's a point of contention in many guilds and officers always try to think of ways to minimize drama from benching.

Implying it's worse now than it was in the past implies you never did 25 man content in MoP, where underhealing was the norm, and you would have your hybrids for the raidcooldowns. Remember bosses like Stone Guards, the whole of ToT, Garrosh? Bosses that could be solo, 3 tanked, or underhealed. It's always been like this, and it is just a different way to test your roster.

It wasn't "always" like that, it was just retarded in MOP with the amount of fights that were solo tanked by monks, things like disc priests spamming smite for smart heals whole fight and such, but that was a problem with MOP.

In before you dig another prime example of abomination of an encounter like vanilla Naxx.

You can 4 heal Spellblade on progress.

You mean after 3 waves of nerfs to her, sure. Before all the nerfs and before 7.2 and while Blizzard still claimed NH isn't balanced around 54 traits pre-Augur, I'd like to see that.

and now even 4 heal Krosus and Star Augur

After the initial change to Star Augur after world top guilds killed him with 2 healers, 4 healers at Star Augur wasn't anything special, you just cut a tank as long as you had a bear / monk to solo. 2 tanks 3 healers was considered harder than the other way around.

3-4 healers is not that big of a disparity anyway, 2-5 is way worse.

And upkeeping offspecs was easier from halfway wotlk when dual spec was implemented, to wod. TBC and earlier it was bad because you literally needed completely separate sets of gear due to +healing and +spelldamage being separate, which got merged in wotlk pre-patch. There was case of spirit, but in several expansions Blizzard did different attempts to alleviate it, from trying to give partial buff to dps specs from the spirit, then converting spirit to hit, and in the end removing it completely.

7.2 and new AK levels were a godsend for people who wanted to develop offspecs, before that it required heavy grind to keep more than 1 spec at relevant and effective level, to the point there was a plague of "AP burnout", and it's not just figment of imagination, there are tons of videos and statements from top guilds and many of them called it quits, because sustaining offspecs and raiding alts was such a grind. And now you say this should be imposed on every mythic guild...

[Dilemma90]

i like the idea of needing to compensate for raid comp but it sucks if you have 4-5 healers in your guild and only 2 are progression on a boss =\

[Arainie]

I strongly disagree. Mythic should be the pinnacle of raiding. That means that not just you, but also your roster's adaptability should be tested.

Implying it's worse now than it was in the past implies you never did 25 man content in MoP, where underhealing was the norm, and you would have your hybrids for the raidcooldowns. Remember bosses like Stone Guards, the whole of ToT, Garrosh? Bosses that could be solo, 3 tanked, or underhealed. It's always been like this, and it is just a different way to test your roster.

You can 4 heal Spellblade on progress. You can 3 heal Tichondrius, and now even 4 heal Krosus and Star Augur. The fights are lenient enough.

The only reason people complain now is because it means people now need to spend resources(AP) for their offspecs.

TL: DR You dont have the roster to 4 heal spellblade, or to have an offspec with 35(Or since 7.2 36) traits? You dont run a 4 man healing roster and 2 tanks with capable offspecs? Then, imo, youre not good enough as a guild to kill the boss.

You don't seem to grasp that you don't bring offspec players when you can have mainspec players with more traits and better optimized gear. No guild worth their salt has 20 raiders and offspecs when needed, you simply have a larger roster and end up benching people based on the needs. This gets significantly frustrating for a healing team (normal mythic roster size 5 possibly 6 or 4 if you have great attendance/offspec healers) when half of the team has to bench for certain bosses, whereas you can run a capable DPS roster with 16-17 DPS forcing at most 4-5 to bench on a bad day (spellblade progress for example). And not to be a douche but MoP was hardly more relevant than any other expansion, in TBC, WotLK and Cata there were few bosses that required you to heavily underheal (HC Ragnaros 3-healing is the only boss that comes to mind).

[ScrubRouge]

I do agree that before 7.2 putting AP into your offspec sucked for progression raiding since you couldnt pushing that max 15% increase to your artifact weapon (assuming you didnt have lots of free time to farm M+ and WQ for AP). Now its actually not hard at all to get that huge 15% dmg / healing buff, and getting all gold is super fast too. They made having an offspec really doable. I'd say in ToS having your healers have a strong offspec wont be a huge ask anymore. I'd say if your guild only has exactly 20 raiders, your healers wouldn't have to sit out but instead get to switch to their offspec and actually deal dmg (assuming they actually know how to dps)

I actually like the way artifact weapon is progressing now. Getting 1 weapon into concordance before ToS is pretty much guaranteed even if you only log on to do the daily Ems and raid nights. with a little more extra AP farming you could get 2 or even 3 weapons up to Concordance before ToS releases too. Its nice that you can dump ap into your offspec without feeling like you are missing out on some massive dps gain from your mainspec.

[Better]

Underhealing will always be a thing at the highest level. There's no real way of fixing it without shoehorning in some bad mechanic that specifically requires healers to stand in a place to soak something. The objective of any DPS check fight is to use the least number of non-DPS roles possible, luckily for tanks the requirement of 2 is usually just done with a stacking debuff, which is just considered the norm for tanks at this point. For healers there's not many ways to REQUIRE a certain number of healers, unless you took away mass dispel, and made 4 debuffs go out every 8 sec, and if any overlapped ever you wipe?

[Tiberria]

I strongly disagree. Mythic should be the pinnacle of raiding. That means that not just you, but also your roster's adaptability should be tested.

Implying it's worse now than it was in the past implies you never did 25 man content in MoP, where underhealing was the norm, and you would have your hybrids for the raidcooldowns. Remember bosses like Stone Guards, the whole of ToT, Garrosh? Bosses that could be solo, 3 tanked, or underhealed. It's always been like this, and it is just a different way to test your roster.

You can 4 heal Spellblade on progress. You can 3 heal Tichondrius, and now even 4 heal Krosus and Star Augur. The fights are lenient enough.

The only reason people complain now is because it means people now need to spend resources(AP) for their offspecs.

TL: DR You dont have the roster to 4 heal spellblade, or to have an offspec with 35(Or since 7.2 36) traits? You dont run a 4 man healing roster and 2 tanks with capable offspecs? Then, imo, youre not good enough as a guild to kill the boss.

I agree with you that varying healer number requirements on boss fights has been an issue going back to at least TBC and not a new Mythic raiding thing, but disagree with you on most everything else.

The issue with having vastly varying healing requirements - and this expansion literally had some fights that were 2 healed in early progression, and others that were often 6 healed (6 heal, 3 tank Mythic Cenarius was one of the most common strategies) - is that the burden of this so called "adaptability" pretty much 100% falls on a small portion of your roster.

You basically have two options when it comes to running a healing roster.
1. Run with a very small base roster of 3-4 healers, with the expectation that you then can fill in the necessary gaps on fights that require more healers with offspec DPS.
2. Have a large enough healing roster (generally 5-7 healers) to cover having enough in for each fight plus enough for absences.

The issue with option 1 is that using offspec healers can be very sketchy if you aren't lucky enough to have people that are proficient enough to play a healing offspec at 90%+ of the proficiency of a main spec healer. That's not a given, and is not all that reasonable to expect of people given all of the barriers around playing an offspec in Legion (it's not just gear and trinkets this time, it's also AP, relics, legendaries, etc.). Plus, it gets even more sketchy if you say run with 3 main healers on your roster and 1 is absent, and you are now using 2 offspecs on a 4 healer progression fight. From my experience, it's rarely all that viable to run with <5 main spec healers on your roster. And, if you are able to make it viable because you have those players that can gear and play their offspecs well enough to swing both roles, the entire burden of "adapatability" is basically falling on those handful of players. It's hardly some skill test for Mythic raiding like you are positioning it as.

The issue with option 2 is that the entire burden of varying roster requirements or "adaptability" falls on the healing team. The average Legion fight probably requires about 2 tanks, 3.5 healers and 14.5 DPS. Let's say you run a 26 player roster with 2 tanks, 6 healers and 18 DPS. Your healers are only going to average 58% play time, while your DPS will average 81% play time. Even if you go with 2 tanks, 5 healers and 19 DPS, you're still at 70% healer play time, 76% DPS play time. That's totally unfair to people that choose to play a healer as their main spec in raids. Even if you try to make the argument that "well the extra healers can just go DPS" - that doesn't really fly either. You have all the same problems playing DPS as an offspec as listed above (and the problems are even higher since DPS is such a gear intensive role), plus why would you ever use a healer as an offspec DPS if you have main spec DPS available? Given the legendary/AP/relic situation, they are going to do significantly less DPS, and you are highly likely to have extra DPS available unless you are trying to flirt with disaster and run a 21-22 man roster or something. The net result just means healers get less play time than everyone else just because of their role, which is piss poor game design.

So no, I categorically reject the notion that some form of adaptability is some hallmark of Mythic raiding. That's just an excuse to marginalize the concerns of 25% of your roster. Frankly, I wouldn't be opposed to just having healer counts hard locked to at least 4, either through mechanics (make it so 4 dispels are needed, or there are 4 healer bubbles needed like on M Gul'dan) or through flat out hard locking the roster (code it so you can't pull the boss without X tank specs and Y healer specs in the raid). Sure, there are issues with both of those solutions, but I think both are better than the current situation.

[Yunaqt]

The crazy low healers are used by world first guilds in order to beat DPS checks with the minimum amount of gear.

Once other guilds get it it they don't do this as it wont go well, as to run this low healers it requires strong player from the ENTIRE raid to minimize the amount of damage they're taking which accounts for the loss of the extra healer. Unless of course we're at the point we're in now where we over gear the content and can brute force it down.

You can 4 heal everything in M NH just fine without issue, except maybe 3 for Augur.

Putting enough AP into 1 more weapon to use for DPS is a joke with the fact we're now at over 1m% AP gains, most will hit concordance soon as the more hardcore players already have and the amount of AP you need per level skyrockets so spending a couple of weeks just getting 46-47 on another weapon is really not hard at all - Which will give you all the traits you need usually leaving the average one's that don't give a whole lot of benefit.

Yeah you're not going to be getting rank 1s with your OS but you'll be more than fine as long as you know how to play your class.

[Tiberria]

I do agree that before 7.2 putting AP into your offspec sucked for progression raiding since you couldnt pushing that max 15% increase to your artifact weapon (assuming you didnt have lots of free time to farm M+ and WQ for AP). Now its actually not hard at all to get that huge 15% dmg / healing buff, and getting all gold is super fast too. They made having an offspec really doable. I'd say in ToS having your healers have a strong offspec wont be a huge ask anymore. I'd say if your guild only has exactly 20 raiders, your healers wouldn't have to sit out but instead get to switch to their offspec and actually deal dmg (assuming they actually know how to dps)

I actually like the way artifact weapon is progressing now. Getting 1 weapon into concordance before ToS is pretty much guaranteed even if you only log on to do the daily Ems and raid nights. with a little more extra AP farming you could get 2 or even 3 weapons up to Concordance before ToS releases too. Its nice that you can dump ap into your offspec without feeling like you are missing out on some massive dps gain from your mainspec.

Except, how many stable guilds actually run with only 20 players, or even only 21 or 22 players? In general, doing so is a hallmark for a disaster or implosion. If anyone has to miss raid, you can't raid. If you lose a couple players for whatever reason, you're probably done unless you can recruit new ones immediately. I think most stable roster probably have to run with at least ~25 players. In that situation, you're almost always going to have an extra main spec DPS available to put in over a less optimized/geared healer playing an offspec.

And, sure, the artifact trait situation is better for offspecs than it was. However, relics are a huge problem. It's difficult to get offspec relics, because relics are one of the things that remains in high demand even late into farm (and rarely go offspec), and what you need is often a different relic type from your main spec relics, making getting them difficult. For example, my highest DPS artifact weapon is 16 ilvl behind my healing artifact, despite doing normal and heroic offnight clears every week since Nighthold launched, and literally every world quest. That's a huge DPS loss. Trinkets are problematic too, because they can contribute huge DPS swings, and rarely go offspec until well after progression is over. You still can't really be on the same playing field on an offspec even with the improvements.

- - - Updated - - -

The crazy low healers are used by world first guilds in order to beat DPS checks with the minimum amount of gear.

Once other guilds get it it they don't do this as it wont go well, as to run this low healers it requires strong player from the ENTIRE raid to minimize the amount of damage they're taking which accounts for the loss of the extra healer. Unless of course we're at the point we're in now where we over gear the content and can brute force it down.

You can 4 heal everything in M NH just fine without issue, except maybe 3 for Augur.

This is not really true. Even Krosus for example still typically had to be 3 healed like 2+ months into Nighthold for most guilds, because you couldn't hit the DPS check with 4 healers, or at least couldn't without 100% perfect play. It only really started to be 4 healed after 7.2 and the new traits effectively nerfed it. The only reason Star Augar and Elisande are being 3/4 healed now instead of still being 2 healed like they were initially is because Blizzard retuned those fights several weeks after release to force them to require more healers. Had they not done that, they would still be 2 healed.

Plus, you also had Spellblade, where the most common strategy before they nerfed it severely about a month or two in was to 5 heal. Therefore, even for a guild at say the US 100-150 level, you would still be dealing with a 3 healer fight and a 5 healer fight, both at about the same progression time. It absolutely isn't a world first only problem.

[ScrubRouge]

Except, how many stable guilds actually run with only 20 players, or even only 21 or 22 players? In general, doing so is a hallmark for a disaster or implosion. If anyone has to miss raid, you can't raid. If you lose a couple players for whatever reason, you're probably done unless you can recruit new ones immediately. I think most stable roster probably have to run with at least ~25 players. In that situation, you're almost always going to have an extra main spec DPS available to put in over a less optimized/geared healer playing an offspec.

And, sure, the artifact trait situation is better for offspecs than it was. However, relics are a huge problem. It's difficult to get offspec relics, because relics are one of the things that remains in high demand even late into farm (and rarely go offspec), and what you need is often a different relic type from your main spec relics, making getting them difficult. For example, my highest DPS artifact weapon is 16 ilvl behind my healing artifact, despite doing normal and heroic offnight clears every week since Nighthold launched, and literally every world quest. That's a huge DPS loss. Trinkets are problematic too, because they can contribute huge DPS swings, and rarely go offspec until well after progression is over. You still can't really be on the same playing field on an offspec even with the improvements.

I do agree with what you are saying. but if dps are having to sit out, why must healers be exempt from this? I meant it more like if say on a raid night only exactly 20 are on and you are doing krosus. now your 4th healer can actually do the same dps as the rest of the raid due to artifact level catch up. Kinda get what I mean? makes it less punishing for those moments. also works for the opposite for any 5 heal boss fights or a tank can't make it. People's offpsec wont be so terrible compared to their main spec now in 7.2. I like that it makes the raid more flexible.

As for relics, its true. if you are pushing for early progression trying to push say top 200 clears or whatever, then yes. it will be harder to get nice ilvl relics for your offspec. but for us, after the first month we were DEing WF relics and what not since people didnt need them even for OS.

I guess i was looking at it more for the point of view for lower pop servers where having 25+ people being on and willing to rotate out are hard to come by if you are not like the top 3 on that server.

[BananaHandsB]

I have no problem with needing different numbers of healers to optimize a fight. The problem I have, as the OP stated, is it's very difficult for healers to pull competitive numbers in their dps off-specs and thus healers are getting sat disproportionally during progression to facilitate the raid. Healer OS DPS was always a little less than their main spec dps counterparts, but with the advent of AP, legendaries, relics, and titanforging, the problem has become much more severe to the point where you severely gimp your raid not bringing in a main spec dps instead of a healer in OS, no matter how good that healer is at playing their OS. It's really an unfortunate situation for healers having to be sat and also puts guilds who don't have the numbers to bring in main spec dps to replace their healers when underhealing fights at a significant disadvantage, as if having less numbers wasn't already a disadvantage enough.

[Yunaqt]

This is not really true. Even Krosus for example still typically had to be 3 healed like 2+ months into Nighthold for most guilds, because you couldn't hit the DPS check with 4 healers, or at least couldn't without 100% perfect play. It only really started to be 4 healed after 7.2 and the new traits effectively nerfed it. The only reason Star Augar and Elisande are being 3/4 healed now instead of still being 2 healed like they were initially is because Blizzard retuned those fights several weeks after release to force them to require more healers. Had they not done that, they would still be 2 healed.

Plus, you also had Spellblade, where the most common strategy before they nerfed it severely about a month or two in was to 5 heal. Therefore, even for a guild at say the US 100-150 level, you would still be dealing with a 3 healer fight and a 5 healer fight, both at about the same progression time. It absolutely isn't a world first only problem.

I said you're able to 4 heal everything without issue which is more in the direction of less progress focused guilds within that top 100 - 150 bracket and above. Which in that case under healing etc. has always been a thing and usually you have at least 1 healer with a decent offspec if the fight requires it "H Rag 25man says hello" if they don't they're just shooting themselves in the foot, as you're pushing for progress not whether or not John gets hurt feelings because he has to be subbed for a more optimal comp for a progression fight.

You can run 4 healers in your roster just fine if you don't want to sub healers but due to the fact you're dealing with real people you want either 1 competent OS healer in your roster or a fifth which will cover every boss fine even if you decide to 5 heal spellblade which TBH was just as easily 4 healed.

Then you've also got DPS that get subbed on mechanic heavy encounters where you need to run classes that are superior for dealing with mechanics to give yourself an edge on killing the boss asap and moving onto the next one.

[Tiberria]

I do agree with what you are saying. but if dps are having to sit out, why must healers be exempt from this? I meant it more like if say on a raid night only exactly 20 are on and you are doing krosus. now your 4th healer can actually do the same dps as the rest of the raid due to artifact level catch up. Kinda get what I mean? makes it less punishing for those moments. also works for the opposite for any 5 heal boss fights or a tank can't make it. People's offpsec wont be so terrible compared to their main spec now in 7.2. I like that it makes the raid more flexible.

As for relics, its true. if you are pushing for early progression trying to push say top 200 clears or whatever, then yes. it will be harder to get nice ilvl relics for your offspec. but for us, after the first month we were DEing WF relics and what not since people didnt need them even for OS.

I guess i was looking at it more for the point of view for lower pop servers where having 25+ people being on and willing to rotate out are hard to come by if you are not like the top 3 on that server.

I'm not saying healers should be exempt from sitting out. What I'm saying is that healers should not have to sit out something like twice as often as DPS, which is exactly what happens in a typical roster because of the variance in healer requirements across fights and the need to have a roster that can cover the requirements for all fights.

A healer with a DPS offspec is absolutely not going to do "the same DPS as the rest of the raid". Their weapon ilvl will be way behind due to relics, they probably won't have proper trinkets, and aren't likely to have BiS legendaries for an offspec either. Can they do it? Sure, if they took the time to master the spec, but you're still likely going to pay something like a 20% DPS penalty over a similarly skilled main spec DPS player. The first few weeks of Krosus, or the first few weeks Mythic Guarm was up, that DPS variance would easily be enough to prevent you from hitting the enrage timer. Also, I wouldn't call US top 200 level guilds a hardcore progression level. Several guilds do that on very casual 2 night/week schedules, etc.

It doesn't change the fact that the entire burden of the variance in healer requirement is borne by a small subsection of the raid, either the healers that have to put up with 30-50% bench time, or have to be able to be viably skilled and geared in their offspec (thus putting in more time and effort than everyone else), or DPS offspecs filling in as healers to allow a smaller healer roster (same restrictions). The other 17-18 players in the raid have no negative impact from this. I find it interesting that you apparently main a rogue, a class that will never feel any impact in terms of having to fill an offspec role, etc. Don't you think it's pretty selfish of you to like these flexibility requirements when they will impact people other than yourself?

[Tiberria]

I said you're able to 4 heal everything without issue which is more in the direction of less progress focused guilds within that top 100 - 150 bracket and above. Which in that case under healing etc. has always been a thing and usually you have at least 1 healer with a decent offspec if the fight requires it "H Rag 25man says hello" if they don't they're just shooting themselves in the foot, as you're pushing for progress not whether or not John gets hurt feelings because he has to be subbed for a more optimal comp for a progression fight.

You can run 4 healers in your roster just fine if you don't want to sub healers but due to the fact you're dealing with real people you want either 1 competent OS healer in your roster or a fifth which will cover every boss fine even if you decide to 5 heal spellblade which TBH was just as easily 4 healed.

Then you've also got DPS that get subbed on mechanic heavy encounters where you need to run classes that are superior for dealing with mechanics to give yourself an edge on killing the boss asap and moving onto the next one.

Considering the 150th US Krosus kill was done 2 weeks after Mythic NH released, it still wasn't really possible for guilds even at the US 150 level to 4 heal that fight and make the DPS check unless they just had amazing overall DPS. And, even if you can physically complete a fight just fine with a static 4 healer setup, you're still likely to take longer to kill it if you're running a suboptimal setup (i.e. 4 healing a 3 healer fight or 4 healing a 5 healer fight). Guilds that want to progress faster (not just in the top 10, but even going to US 200, 300, 400) are still going to have an incentive to try and maximize their raid comp. And, the reality is, most guilds have to run a 25+ player roster to cover absences, etc. When you have a large enough roster, outside of those nights where you have really bad attendance, you're able to set up your best comp for fights, and that most often means healers get the shaft in terms of play time, largely because of incompetent encounter design.

It ultimately doesn't matter worth a damn that it's "possible" to do a fight with 4 healers when it's more optimal to do it with 3. Guilds won't do that if they have a choice, and if you're asking them to do it as a healer, you're asking 19 other people to deal with a suboptimal setup for your own benefit. The better solution is to fix this problem from an encounter design perspective.

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just buff the boss dmg output on the raid so hard that you need 4 allways, something like elisande adds who deal alltime ticking dmg

That doesn't work, because if the fight is killable for world first guilds with 4 healers, by the time people get higher ilvl (meaning both higher healing throughput and faster kill times), they will still likely be dropping healers. Plus, you risk making the fight virtually unkillable at the top end if you are going to wipe to the damage week 1 without having 5 healers, but can not mathematically meet the enrage timer with 5 healers in.

The way to resolve it is through forcing a minimum healer comp through either mechanics or hard coding it.

[Notdev]

DPS sit some fights
Healers can sit fights too.

I'd say 4 healers with 2 DPS having decent healing offspecs is ideal.