Quote Originally Posted by Reynhart View Post
Sure, healers would still be able to heal all content...but not for the same duration. Technicaly, fights like these are a race, to see who kills the other first. Healer jobs who focus heavily on healing would be like slowing down the boss, while healers with more offensive buffs or personal DPS would take a bigger part in the party's side of the race. The thing is that, again, by healing more, you can't extend the duration of the fight, so a "healing focused" healer is kind of a liability. If there was no hard enrage, apart from speedrunning with DPS that can perfecty hold their own on a very short duration, you could take any type of healer you want.
This sounds a lot like the current meta now, you even used the phrase "a healing focused healer is kind of a liability" which is very much the overarching concept which defines the meta right now. I see your idea of replacing healer DPS with buffs but the one other MMO I've played (eso) does this and while I'm sure it could be more fun in FFXIV this kind of play stagnates quickly in pug content.

Right now on WHM if I get a group with slow DPS I can turn on the afterburners (PoM, Cleric) and in an AoE situation I can outdps most other classes anyways. Even single target I can do reasonable dps. The issue with swapping that for buffs is that there are a ton of really poor players out there in almost all content who would basically invalidate any benefit those buffs conferred. Almost everyone AST main has a story of throwing Balance on themselves or a WAR because the actual DPSers in a dungeon were so bad there was no point buffing them. Imagine that but without tank and healer DPS being impressive enough to pick up the slack.

I don't mean to play devil's advocate with your idea its just as a healer main I can't see enjoying this playstyle. Its taking away healer utility but not giving anything back.