Just some brainstorm ideas for healing

I don't have the innovative mind to come up with a whole job rework. It's also difficult to place my attention into something like that for the time it takes to really come up with something creative, so I thought I'd just toss some ideas out there and see if any sound good.

The first is I wonder why it is being left to other roles other than healers to use abilities like stuns, virus, feint, and silence. Were over smashing one to two buttons, I think it would be fair to let healers handle this.

Next came to me while crafting which is what i spend most of my time doing, and trying to find a happy medium between our two factions of healers. It was all the procs, and I started thinking how interesting a DPS could be if there wasn't a set combo string, but rather a system of procs based on other actions (I don't play all the dps jobs so not sure if any already use a system like this). That would basically eliminate any and all scripted openers for jobs, so then I started thinking why not for healers instead?

We would need another offensive skill or two, but I actually think SE needs to give a little here. The one button smash can't remain. It just can't.

I still want a good healing requirement, but I think getting skills to interact with each other would go a long way to improving healing encounters. There also has to be a way to accommodate ilv bloat, so healers also have more to do once the healing requirement drops to negligible levels.

Thoughts?

I guess we could start by trying to figure out what we don't want in a healing job. (Though that kind of thinking might supress any type of innovation or interesting design in favour of a rather flavourless concensus.)

We don't want a repetitive one button filler rotation during healing downtime.
>We could get some healing benefit out of casting damage spells.

We don't want copy-pasted homogenized tools for each healer.
>We could get defined sub roles for each healer to balance their dps contribution to the party i. e. WHM as a Nuker, SCH as a debuffer and AST as a buffer. (If a basic set of homogenized tools is required for balance, then lets have the uniqueness come from the gameplay"filler" aspect of the jobs during healing downtime.)

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Originally Posted by Gemina

The first is I wonder why it is being left to other roles other than healers to use abilities like stuns, virus, feint, and silence. Were over smashing one to two buttons, I think it would be fair to let healers handle this.

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The biggest downside to this is healers are already very high responsibility. Mistime one heal and the tank dies, or the raid dies, etc. If you do this, you're adding yet more responsibility to the role - one more thing healers have to learn, and in high end content, not mess up lest the party wipe. One more thing to juggle, which might be particularly hard on ASTs since they've got cards already.

That doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't be done, though. One advantage would be being able to plan heals around the mitigation more directly, not having to worry about someone else missing it.

But... just be careful with this one... this is definitely a two edged sword kind of thing.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Next came to me while crafting which is what i spend most of my time doing, and trying to find a happy medium between our two factions of healers. It was all the procs, and I started thinking how interesting a DPS could be if there wasn't a set combo string, but rather a system of procs based on other actions (I don't play all the dps jobs so not sure if any already use a system like this).

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Physical ranged jobs are like this. They have some traditional rotation elements, but a lot of it is watching for procs and priority based.

My biggest concern with a rotation like this is it would lead to slashing healing abilities. So healing would be even more simplified. I don't want that.

Adding just, for example, a second dot back should be fine though.

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As I think on this a bit more... well, I'm going to be bluntly honest: A lot of healers out there I've seen tunnelvision and kind of suck at multitasking, even just at watching health bars while DPSing. The level of attention that a proc-based rotation requires... well, I think it would make it a lot worse.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

I still want a good healing requirement, but I think getting skills to interact with each other would go a long way to improving healing encounters. There also has to be a way to accommodate ilv bloat, so healers also have more to do once the healing requirement drops to negligible levels.

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Here's where I agree the most. When I'm playing a healer, I want to, you know, actually heal more.

It's a difficult problem to address not just because of stuff like ilvl bloat, but because of the way battle encounters are designed on a fundamental level.

Sadly I don't have a magic bullet solution. Simply nerfing heal potencies won't do it either - SE seems to have dabbled in that slightly with ShB and well, yeah. It's really hard to think of a way to do this without suggesting a total overhaul of battles, which of course won't happen...

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

That doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't be done, though. One advantage would be being able to plan heals around the mitigation more directly, not having to worry about someone else missing it.

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If the goal is to add something to the healer's responsibilities, I'd go the way of debuff removal on party members (which doesn't happen enough and is almost never crucial to clearing a fight) and dispelling enemy buffs (which doesn't exist in this game for anyone that's not BLU). Interrupting/Stunning and the like should be absolute last resort for healers, because there should be other roles covering that in a group.

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As I think on this a bit more... well, I'm going to be bluntly honest: A lot of healers out there I've seen tunnelvision and kind of suck at multitasking, even just at watching health bars while DPSing. The level of attention that a proc-based rotation requires... well, I think it would make it a lot worse.

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Procs I think should be tied to the healer role rather than being damage-oriented as the OP suggests. The problem is that a good number of the possible procs are already in use (Cure's proc that removes Cure II's MP cost, Benefic's procs that ensure Benefic II will crit). One I have not seen is "upon crit, get back x% of MP spent".

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Here's where I agree the most. When I'm playing a healer, I want to, you know, actually heal more.

It's a difficult problem to address not just because of stuff like ilvl bloat, but because of the way battle encounters are designed on a fundamental level.

Sadly I don't have a magic bullet solution. Simply nerfing heal potencies won't do it either - SE seems to have dabbled in that slightly with ShB and well, yeah. It's really hard to think of a way to do this without suggesting a total overhaul of battles, which of course won't happen...

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It'd take a couple of things. Increase damage taken by everyone or nerf healing slightly, possibly nerf MP regen, limit sources of in-combat rez (this is tied to the MP changes; healers can't blow a big chunk of their MP on rezzing if they can't hardcast rez in combat *taps head*), add aforementioned duties like cleansing and dispelling, and redesign dungeon mobs so that you can teach leveling players how to play within this new paradigm we're introducing.

The one word of caution in all of this is that if the goal is to make healing more challenging, there's always the risk of pushing things too far and scaring away the laymen that level healers for the storyline or who dabble but don't main a healer (like me).

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Originally Posted by Duelle

(Cure's proc that removes Cure II's MP cost, Benefic's procs that ensure Benefic II will crit).

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'Benefic I' is virtually worthless beyond low level dungeons, so the trait that gives it a chance to boost Benefic II is kinda wasted.

I wouldn't be mad if there was more inter-mingling of DPS and heals, e.g. every cast of your primary heal had a chance to convert your primary DPS spell into an enhanced version for its next cast.

With regards to the first. I think if anything they could embrace more types of status effects, they don't have to be healer exclusive either, but they could be given to a healer. It seems with each expansion they shy further away from applying status effects, but it's an element that can add a dimension of enjoyment. And it'd be something healers can do as part of their support role. Or heck, it could be 1 healer's gimmick, AST gets to buff, SCH could enfeeble (which would make sense for them to).

With regards to procs, I play DNC, which is proc heavy. So I'd say, "why not?" That said, my openers are still scripted, but then it's not wholly proc-based. I wouldn't necessarily say give it to everybody, but I think it's one of those approaches that could make one job feel unique versus the next. White Mage is essentially the counterpart to Black Mage, Black Mage has a proc system already available (most heavy in the level 50 rotation). But I feel White Mage should /feel/ powerful. So in a way, hitting stronger procs as part of its own rotation I guess could be interesting. Though not as a WHM player, not really for me to say how it'd worked as an improvement on the current DPS rotation, but level 50 was where I started to enjoy BLM, so a similar rotation for WHM with procs would be fine for me at least.

But either way, with whatever brainstorming people can put together, ultimately you are right, there's more offensive skills needed. Just something to plug in the gap to avoid long periods of feeling like you're not doing much. I know "bloat" can sometimes be concern, but I think there's still more room for DPS skills than we currently have. Though IMO there is bloat in our healing side.

However, for what we get, I'm actually pretty flexible in what I want, because ultimately, I want it to be fun and engaging and for each healer to provide a unique experience and there are many ways of achieving that.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

The biggest downside to this is healers are already very high responsibility. Mistime one heal and the tank dies, or the raid dies, etc. If you do this, you're adding yet more responsibility to the role - one more thing healers have to learn, and in high end content, not mess up lest the party wipe. One more thing to juggle, which might be particularly hard on ASTs since they've got cards already.

That doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't be done, though. One advantage would be being able to plan heals around the mitigation more directly, not having to worry about someone else missing it.

But... just be careful with this one... this is definitely a two edged sword kind of thing...

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I think everyone has a large responsibility. However, our roles in the holy trinity is defined by those responsibilities, and a triangle cannot be formed without three sides. I think in order to address healing properly, we also have to look at what the other roles are doing and how they are contributing. Where is the overlap, and are secondary responsibilities being assigned properly?

What I know is that I play all three roles and out of all the jobs I play, no kit is as underutilized in both solo and party play as my healers. Solo I can accept because the nature of my role requires others to be with me to take advantage of my powerful heals, but if I am only using the skills in party play as I do when I solo, it's a big problem for me.

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As I think on this a bit more... well, I'm going to be bluntly honest: A lot of healers out there I've seen tunnelvision and kind of suck at multitasking, even just at watching health bars while DPSing. The level of attention that a proc-based rotation requires... well, I think it would make it a lot worse.

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This issue isn't a result of an ineptness to multitask. Tunnelvision happens because the healer is not engaged, and the healer isn't engaged because they are bored out of their minds smashing one button to contribute DPS. Now if a healer doesn't heal a party member because they are dealing with multiple situations all at once, that's a little different. If the healing requirement is raised, so will the attention level of our healers. If we show the same lack of faith in the general healing community, I see no reason for the devs to change their thought process either. We need to escape that.

I also think that too intricate of a DPS skillset can cause a healer to become too engaged in the DPS and tunnelvision this way as well. That's why I was thinking more about a proc system than actual combo strings, and using it as means to get healing and offensive skills to interact with each other.

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Here's where I agree the most. When I'm playing a healer, I want to, you know, actually heal more.

It's a difficult problem to address not just because of stuff like ilvl bloat, but because of the way battle encounters are designed on a fundamental level.

Sadly I don't have a magic bullet solution. Simply nerfing heal potencies won't do it either - SE seems to have dabbled in that slightly with ShB and well, yeah. It's really hard to think of a way to do this without suggesting a total overhaul of battles, which of course won't happen...

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Ultimately it's about making and keeping content engaging for healers. I think if it was an easy fix, we wouldn't be here talking about it. But again, this is more about brainstorming ideas, and I totally get if something like giving interruptions to healers is a no-go.

I have a hard time thinking up ideas that wouldn't immediately force players to use things a specific way.

Ideas i've had
-lillies give temp buff that next dmg spell cast is 1.4x potency whenever you consume one, would immediately force whm to use them on cd rather than for movement.
-give sch some Dot gameplay back, immediately forces schs to have to upkeep multiple Dots
-make sch capstone abilities synergies like Dissipation no longer removes fairy but doubles gauge fills whenever you use an aetherflow stack, which then allows to tether early with an additional effect for every 10 gauge used while tethered increase seraph summon time by 2s. But all this would just force uses on cd as they would allow more dps as you have less likely need to hard cast heals.

None are these are game breaking or anything, sch still be a powerhouse hlr with or without these just brain dead, whm would have a small increase in pDPS but still be too low compared to Ast rDPS and any changes I can think for Ast is just going to annoy those that like it currently and i'very given plenty over all the threads.

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Originally Posted by Side-Eye

'Benefic I' is virtually worthless beyond low level dungeons, so the trait that gives it a chance to boost Benefic II is kinda wasted.

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That I see as a sign that heal scaling is in need of help. Either that or remove the trait and add another that makes Benefic I appealing to use at higher levels.

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I wouldn't be mad if there was more inter-mingling of DPS and heals, e.g. every cast of your primary heal had a chance to convert your primary DPS spell into an enhanced version for its next cast.

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On the one hand, that sounds like something you could build a new job around. On the other, I can't shake the thought of "Green DPS with non-shit heals".

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Originally Posted by Gemina

I think everyone has a large responsibility. However, our roles in the holy trinity is defined by those responsibilities, and a triangle cannot be formed without three sides. I think in order to address healing properly, we also have to look at what the other roles are doing and how they are contributing. Where is the overlap, and are secondary responsibilities being assigned properly?

What I know is that I play all three roles and out of all the jobs I play, no kit is as underutilized in both solo and party play as my healers. Solo I can accept because the nature of my role requires others to be with me to take advantage of my powerful heals, but if I am only using the skills in party play as I do when I solo, it's a big problem for me.

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So here's the problem.

Adding something reprisal/addle-like to the healers' kit doesn't fix the problem.

It's a button that will get pushed in high end content (and probably ignored by most healers in low end content), but the healing kit will still be exactly as underutilized as before.

I do agree with you - I want the healing parts specifically to be more engaging. But this does not do that.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

Procs I think should be tied to the healer role rather than being damage-oriented as the OP suggests. The problem is that a good number of the possible procs are already in use (Cure's proc that removes Cure II's MP cost, Benefic's procs that ensure Benefic II will crit). One I have not seen is "upon crit, get back x% of MP spent".
It'd take a couple of things. Increase damage taken by everyone or nerf healing slightly, possibly nerf MP regen, limit sources of in-combat rez (this is tied to the MP changes; healers can't blow a big chunk of their MP on rezzing if they can't hardcast rez in combat *taps head*), add aforementioned duties like cleansing and dispelling, and redesign dungeon mobs so that you can teach leveling players how to play within this new paradigm we're introducing.

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So on the first part about MP refunds and the like - SCH already has this, except it's a cooldown instead of a proc. And that's the way it should probably be. RNG + highly scripted burst damage in fights don't work very well. You need to be able to reliably plan what to use at a given mechanic for a fight.

The only reason it sort of works for AST is because DPS buffing is entirely optional, even if highly sought after, and even then people still complain a lot. It's also why the old AST's bole was considered mostly useless even after SE buffed it to be on par with tank CDs. You could never rely on having it.

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Now let's talk about limiting resources. Yes, this would be one way to do it. Even better, it's proven to work in other games. But mostly older MMOs.

Now here's the problem. You move away from the ABC (always be casting) model, people will kick and scream like nothing this forum has seen yet. People won't accept it. SE knows this, and will never do it.

And quite a few of the changes over the FF14's years have been to make ABC more of a thing, not less of a thing.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

The one word of caution in all of this is that if the goal is to make healing more challenging, there's always the risk of pushing things too far and scaring away the laymen that level healers for the storyline or who dabble but don't main a healer (like me).

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This is something that often doesn't get talked about on the forums, but I suspect it is a big factor.

Especially when I play non-healing roles, I see it a lot. Healers that fold under even low to moderate amounts of pressure. Healers that cannot heal while doing any kind of movements or mechanics. Healers that stop paying attention to the party frame while DPSing. And so on.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

On the one hand, that sounds like something you could build a new job around. On the other, I can't shake the thought of "Green DPS with non-shit heals".

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On a side note: I'm gonna be really pissed if they build a new job with a "time mage" flavor, because that's what they stole from AST in 5.0.

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Originally Posted by Side-Eye

On a side note: I'm gonna be really pissed if they build a new job with a "time mage" flavor, because that's what they stole from AST in 5.0.

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"Pls look forward to it"

NO NO I WILL NOT IF THAT HAPPENS :/

Since this is a brainstorm thread...

How about a healer that would have GCD heals be more efficient than OGCD ones? For its entire kit?
It could be something like this (I know my skill names are bad):

Harm, 0 MP, 2.5s cast, 2.5s recast
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100.
Additional Effect: Restores MP
Refresh Potency: 20

Heal, 100 MP, instant cast, 2.5s recast
Restores target's HP
Cure Potency: 300

Area Heal, 250 MP, instant cast, 2.5s recast
Restores own HP and the HP of all nearby party members.
Cure Potency: 200

Blast, 1000 MP, 3s CD
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 300.

Flash Heal, 1000 MP, 10s CD
Restores target's HP
Cure Potency: 600

Area Flash Heal, 1500 MP, 10s CD
Restores own HP and the HP of all nearby party members.
Cure Potency: 300

Of course this is just a lame proof of concept, but such a healer would only use its OGCD heals in emergencies, because GCD heals would be more efficient.
This one uses MP as a resource to add some decision-making, but it could be aetherflow, cards, lilies, etc. The idea would be that using an OGCD heal over a GCD would be a DPS loss.

Thoughts?

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

So on the first part about MP refunds and the like - SCH already has this, except it's a cooldown instead of a proc. And that's the way it should probably be. RNG + highly scripted burst damage in fights don't work very well. You need to be able to reliably plan what to use at a given mechanic for a fight.

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Indeed, but the proc mentioned affected MP rather than heal potency. Adding something like "heals cast has X% chance of making the next heal instant" doesn't affect overall healing so much as it does ease of use. The MP refund thing would be more notable in an environment where MP conservation is important.

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Now let's talk about limiting resources. Yes, this would be one way to do it. Even better, it's proven to work in other games. But mostly older MMOs.

Now here's the problem. You move away from the ABC (always be casting) model, people will kick and scream like nothing this forum has seen yet. People won't accept it. SE knows this, and will never do it.

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I wouldn't move away from that model. What I would do is create scenarios where the multiple healing spells in a healer's kit are useful. There should be situations where Benefic is useful and preferable over just spamming Benefic II, and by the same token careless use of Benefic II should drain your MP quickly. You'd still always be casting; you'd just be spending most of your time casting heals. Toss in cleanse/dispel duties if you feel the healers aren't doing enough.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

You'd still always be casting; you'd just be spending most of your time casting heals.

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Personally I'd welcome this, but it still has its own challenges. The game's designed around burst damage (and healing) rather than sustained, so SE would have to change that. The other thing is... a number of others on this forum have said that they don't want to see cure/benefic/physick spam, so... well, you know.

An idea could be making our DoT more important to maintain and have it be a source proc that improves Dmg from our next Offensive Spell, and have other effects to our healing spells like make Cure 2 Instant Cast, Medica 2's Regen Last 4 seconds longer, etc...

Another idea would be fusing our Low Level heal into our Upgraded version, Physick/Cure/Benefic become the 2 Version so that removes one button and add a proc onto the 2 version that boosts another heal/cd for the proc. Cure 1 only sits on my bar and is only ever used for low level dungeons where I can't use Cure 2 so it sits and wastes space. If they upped the Potency of Cure 1 to even be 100 less potency of Cure 2, made Cure 2 Instant and upped its cost to 1500 so it became the Oh Crap button GCD heal then having the procs on Cure 1 to make Cure 2 free would be great, same idea also applied to Physick and Benefic as well.

Having Esuna act as a Buff removal from enemies would be another idea that gives healers the chance to help the group by making enemies less likely to rip someone's head off with Haste / Dmg increase buffs or make Burns/Poisons do more so it becomes vital to remove those debuffs from friendlies ASAP so they don't die to those.

Those are the only Ideas I can think off currently.

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Originally Posted by Side-Eye

On a side note: I'm gonna be really pissed if they build a new job with a "time mage" flavor, because that's what they stole from AST in 5.0.

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Sounds like WHM in SB with half its level 50 kit going to role actions. Cleric Stance (now gone), Ensua (okay, SCH and AST lost theirs too), Shroud of Saints (Lucid Dreaming), Protect (now gone too) and Divine Seal (Largess, now gone too) on top of completely losing stoneskin, stoneskin 2, and access to BLM skills like Ice 2 for a nice bind and move aoe around yourself if you grabbed aggro. Okay, all healers lost access to Ice 2 but it was worse for WHM as they couldn't even have all their old kit in role skills in SB when limited to just 5 of the 10 if you wanted that quickcast raise.

I see some saying too much button bloat on healers, but on a controller you don't even have two hotbars worth of skills anymore as whm. Even dancer's "small kit" has more buttons.

Wether people repeatedly press Glare/ Broil/ Malefic or Cure/ Physick/ Benefic doesn't make a difference. Both versions are boring.
Dps have rotations/ priorities, procs and timers to watch, resources to manage.
We have.. uhmm... that one button we press over and over, one 30sec dot to watch and otherwise we have specific mechanics when we press a specific button with 30sec or 60sec cooldown. Usually 60sec.

Healers are not engaged. Not one bit. Having to press more Cure/ Physick/ Benefic won't change that.
We need synergies, procs, timers, special resources. SCH and WHM have a secondary resource though there's little (in case of SCH) and none (in case of WHM) meaningful choice tied to it. The worst you can do is greed one ED too many and be out of AF stacks when that huge aoe you completely forgot about hits. Though with Recitation, Seraph, Dissipation and Whispering Dawn you still have options aside from Succor.

I would welcome more actual healing responsibility, but please, for the love of all that's holy, make it engaging. And simply having to occasionally trade one fire-and-forget-cast for another is not the way to go about it.
Other MMOs have shown that it's easily possible to make healing more engaging and upping the healing responsibility while still making it accessible.
There are only very few skills across all healer's toolkits that are not simply a fire and forget version of either "hugeass ST heal" or "hugeass aoe heal": Earthly Star, as you need to plan a bit to get the bigger heal at the right time/ place and Horoscope, as it requires an additional skill for more benefit plus must be triggered seperately and can be wasted by not triggering it manually at all.


I know they want WHM to be the straightforward healer but that apparently means that they shouldn't get any interesting mechanics at all. Because anything interesting would be too complicated and not straightforward and beginner-friendly enough.

I have seen so many mechanics in different games that made healing interesting and engaging but never so complicated as to drive new players away. You didn't need to master the timers and synergies to get through dungeons though with how the skills and passives were learned and the content steadily increased in difficulty, you had a smooth learning curve and a good grasp on it by the time you reached max level.

• Passives refunding a certain amount of mana if you overhealed - not enough to promote mindless overheal spam but enough to encourage to find the sweet spot where the heal would overheal just a tiny bit.
• A dps skill giving you a short-time buff to healing-relevant stats - not strong enough to keep up at all times but fantastic for hugeass dmg incoming preparation.
• Dps skills shorting the remaining CD on a good healing CD by a few sec.
• Healing skills stacking a buff that reduces mana cost and casttime of certain healing skills and consumed upon use of one of them.
• Passives giving a % bonus to healing, reducing mana costs or cast time if a certain buff is active on x amount of players.
• Dps skills stacking a buff that can be consumed for resources and enhanced healing or even transformed healing skills into something different. Cataclysm's Archangel disc imo had some of the most interesting mechanics and varied gameplay with a nice flow.
• Healing spells having an additional effect if a certain buff is on the target, target has is above/ below a HP treshold etc. like increased crit, increased healing, transforming overheal into a shield and so on.
• Backloaded/ frontloaded hots, hots that could be consumed for burst healing/ buffs/ resources, hots that are stronger if another one is also on the target (snapshotting possible).
• "Shields" that transformed the next hit taken into a dot effect that deals the same amount the original hit would've dealt. Obviously not working on certain boss mechanics to avoid cheesing kill-mechanics.
• AoE heals that healed for more the closer or farther you are from the targets.
• "Self-service" heals you can place on the ground which people trigger by clicking or walking over them.
• Ground-target hot bubbles on cd that healed for less per target the more people stand inside - less efficient in terms of healing per mana if placed so only the tank stands inside but strong single-target hot. Your choice wether you wanted strong single-target heal of even party/ raid heal.
• Buff that transfered a percentage of your own HP to the target with every tick. Great for additional tank healing (1% tank HP >> 1% healer HP) or to "even out" the HP pool before an aoe, even stronger paired with passives that also heal you for a small amount when using specific skills or free self-heal. Obviously a double-edged sword if you kind of forgot it and then a huge aoe hits...
• Totem that redistributed the health of everyone standing inside with every tick so that everyone has the same % of HP which is imo one of the most interesting things. It evened out healing rng through crits, made situational heals suddenly much stronger and efficient and signifcantly increased the value of self-heal as it made overhealing basically impossible.

You don't need to have 30 buttons to make something interesting. They just need to synergise, encourage to use your whole toolkit and alternate between skills. If a good skill is either spammable or on signifcant cooldown, it becomes boring because you either spam it because it's so good or only use for very specific situations.

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Originally Posted by Rosa_Frandlia

Sounds like WHM in SB with half its level 50 kit going to role actions. Cleric Stance (now gone), Ensua (okay, SCH and AST lost theirs too), Shroud of Saints (Lucid Dreaming), Protect (now gone too) and Divine Seal (Largess, now gone too) on top of completely losing stoneskin, stoneskin 2, and access to BLM skills like Ice 2 for a nice bind and move aoe around yourself if you grabbed aggro. Okay, all healers lost access to Ice 2 but it was worse for WHM as they couldn't even have all their old kit in role skills in SB when limited to just 5 of the 10 if you wanted that quickcast raise.

I see some saying too much button bloat on healers, but on a controller you don't even have two hotbars worth of skills anymore as whm. Even dancer's "small kit" has more buttons.

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And yet we still kept Fluid Aura! NERFED TWICE FLUID AURA.

I've seen making esuna/gaining dispel and making it useful appear a bit and that seems to be an interesting idea. There's obviously the more basic 'here's a dot on the entire party' -> spam esuna 4-8x. It's not really interesting, but it gives you something different to do for the next 8-16s. A couple (probably terrible) ideas that I had were basically trying to make the debuffs themselves more interesting/meaningful to the fight.

So 1 idea was to have maybe a debuff that causes a pulsing aoe around the person. You then might need to use this aoe to interact with the environment for part of the fight (thus having to actually think about the timing at least a little bit before using esuna). You could also use it kinda like virus in the guardian fight from sigmascape savage except it might clone the debuff so you esuna the first person after they've passed it, etc., etc., etc. But the point is to pass it to keep the debuff alive until slightly later into the fight or something (i'm not suggesting keeping virus for like minutes or anything, don't worry XD).
Another idea was a debuff that would basically be a large DOT on the party however maybe you don't take damage from other sources during that time. The idea would be for other mechanics to be happening at the same time and then you'd have to esuna based on what the mechanics are doing and who's dealing with them. Or you could fight through the stinging pain i guess but that's a numbers thing as to whether it'd be worth esunaing people to deal with the pain of the mechanics. This debuff is probably the worse of the two ideas here. The issue with simply adding debuffs in any of these ways is that it doesn't change the healer jobs themselves so dungeons and probably other content as well would still have the same issues we have now with healing.

This means that you'd have to change the classes themselves instead/ as well. Now, just to be clear, we don't need all the healers to be complex or whatever. It's good to have a variety of difficulty/complexity in the role as people do have varying skill levels or maybe they'd just prefer something simpler. I'd probably suggest white mage for the "simple healer" (sorry white mages) as that has typically been the easy/newbie friendly healer in the past. I'd also probably re-introduce aero 3 and OG fluid aura (like, did it ever need nerfing?) as people in general seem to be missing those. I'd probably give scholar some more DOT action (with timers that don't just sync up every 30s or minute). And for astro i'd prefer a revert of the card system, however i know that SE doesn't and that the current card system does keep people busy (even if it is a different type of busy to the old version).

I haven't really touched on healing itself as we have 5 billion healing spells/abilities. Although, i'd maybe suggest a bit of a cut back of the OGCDs so we have to rely on our GCDs at least a little more. Again, it wouldn't change much except maybe mixing it up every so often as I understand that SE wants to keep healing easy.

P.S. I'm not a game dev or anything so these ideas may or may not be terrible