HP based buffs/debuffs

Currently the idea of “if they ain’t dead or dying on the next attack, they don’t need to be healed. 100% HP is the same as 1HP in technical standpoint” is actually hurting Barrier healers and mitigation type play. I think a very solid way to make healing over all more important, especially barriers/mitigation, would be to add HP dependent buffs and debuffs.

All roles will be affected.

Full HP = 2%dps gain.
<60% HP = -3% dps debuff
<30% HP =-5% dps debuff

Tank mitigation:

PLD: full heal on self and person affected by skill Cover upon activating Hallowed Ground

WAR, reflect % damage taken back to enemy while Holmgang is active

DRK: upon successfully triggering Living Dead, gain 5% dps buff until the end of Living Dead. Effect persists even after receiving healing.

GNB: upon activation of Superbolide, accumulate damage similar to Wildfire to a maximum potency, that can be triggered by pressing the skill again. New ability will be held for 15 seconds after Superbolide ends, else it will disappear.

Dps:

Give certain dps more mitigation per role type, like aoe mitigation for RDM and BRD, and self mitigation for maybe DRG (and tether partner)

No needing to top anyone is not hurting barrier healers by any means, as in the way we see it shields are basically hp that can go beyond the max hp so something like succor is treated like a 405 potency heal instead of an 180 + shield one.

That idea you propose would hurt gameplay a lot and actually would make barrier healers less valuable when high hitting mechanics happen because shields are not considered hp so in the terms of dps where a medica 2 would provide you with 300 straight hp a succor would only give you 180, a dps wise less valuable heal, not only that but in terms of quickly topping the party regen healers tend to be stronger than shield healers diminishing the value of these even further.

In general it would also be kinda bad because it would reward wasting resources, curebots and overhealing, in search of the 100% hp a lot of healing would be wasted which by deffinition goes against what efficiency and healing always are: being able to treat a situation in the most efficient way to make sure the max amount of people is healthy, in fact irl healthy=/=having 100% hp, there is always something you can improve but thats not what doctors search. You can guess how a system that rewards dumping resources unneficiently, not assesing the true value of your heals and overhealing goes against that idea and would create weird scenarios where some people wanting to pad themselves or their logs could be searching for low skilled healspam healers to have the topped even if the overall contribution to the party is worse than someone who is actually efficient.

What if we remove the buff but keep the debuffs?

You'd only solve the padding but the fact that shield healers would have a harder time (imagine living dead situation, now apply it to everything) would remain as well as that now the goalpost would be 60%, no one would bother healing much past that because there is no real benefit (unless mechanics hit that hard ofc)

The problem is that you're seeing healing as something gradual when healing no matter how many spins you give it is a binary thing "either you're in the optimal range or not, either you'll live or die", adding buffs or debuffs only move the optimal point, if before it was 1% hp now its 60% if you add a buff it may be 80% but the fact that healers dont bother healing more as long as you're past the optimal threshold wont change because there is no real benefit past there, more dps will always be good but more hp is not

Yep! That’s exactly the point I wanna reach! So many tools to heal, but all I’m doing is Glare every day and waiting for someone to go down to critical HP. I wanted to find a way to make HP management more interesting. Make healing more important a little. I’m not asking for a drastic overhaul…

What’s the point of barriers if majority of hits are survivable? WHM and AST being pure healers will have a field day, while SCH’s whole lot of preventing damage is moot. If there was a certain HP point we wanna maintain them we could at least have “oh if he has additional HP then he won’t go down 60% HP and he can keep his dps.” I’m looking for incentives to actually using the healing abilities over just “he’s not dead here’s a regen you’ll be fine” and spam my 1 dps button.

The problem with barriers is the following (taking current sch and noct ast cause we dont know how sge will turn out in the end), before the hit as every shield those throw have hp heal that is simply unnecesary so you're wasting potency there, after that the shield would becom a hindrance as you can't get the hp back to the optimal point that fast, no matter what you do you there is no way with that system to get 100% of the heal you throw, you may say, that there may be a point like around 50% where 180/200 potency is enough as you'll heal to 60% and the shield would keep the hp there for a while and while that is true under that scope is better to just throw a regen heal like medica 2 as they have more initial hp potency and as the total potency is higher would keep the party above the threshold easier. (I'm not talking with ogcds cause those have a whole lot of things to discuss between dps potency costs and such)

Hp management in the end matters when keeping it up is hard and the devs dont seem to want that for that game (there is also the problem that hp management alone is situational so only working with that would leave you with dull content when the damage isnt that high), personally I think what the devs should do is embrace the healer dps thing, increase the dps actions, make heals that interact with the dps kit and dps spells that interact with the heals, blurring a bit the line between both so we can get to enjoy the whole kit no matter the content but for that the devs would have to listen us and looking at the LL doesnt seem likely to happen

At least they met halfway with Sage being dps priority. All other healers have some trade off, with WHM having some burst, and AST giving dps buff, but according to the Live Letter, all the SCH has are mitigation and move speed and like even now in end game savage content, it’s not fully appreciated.

Basically ideas like these boil down to "can we somehow make immediately healbotting every scratch a valid playstyle?".

No. No we can't, nor should we.

Forced but unnecessary healing isn't going to make gameplay more interesting. Threatening damage and mechanics makes things more interesting, being forced to push that Medica II for more rdeeps doesn't.

I have absolutely no interest in being forced to heal more than actually necessary just so dps players look better. And that's what it will boil down to: healbotting so others get a nice parse.

I think the intent behind this is laudable; healers don't feel like healers at the moment. It's just that this won't cut the mustard, either.

As Rilifane said, we need a sense of danger to feel like healers. Danger requires uncertainty, and being good at this game involves minimizing uncertainty. It's this contradiction in these dance fights that FFXIV hasn't addressed, but it really should, one way or another.