Suggestions for addressing Healer Balance

[Seraphor]

Some good points. I definitely didn't address enough with WHM with this.

I'll agree with the idea than Magical vs Physical damage can be tricky, but if the game itself addresses it, I think that's alright (making it obvious, like physical damage figures are red and magical damage are yellow). Especially if Shell was the Magical version of Protect (Magical vuln up 10%), both sharing a recast timer would be quite flexible. Most of the time, the big loser is Physical damage because most damage tends to be magical.

I think balancing Magic and Physical damage reduction would be very tricky to balance.
The way I've set it out means that not hitting the right damage type doesn't impact your ability to heal and mitigate that damage, it only affects your job mechanic, so it won't negatively impact your party if you mes up, it's just about job optimisation.

The way I've set it up, Protect is more tailored towards trash pulls, not only is the damage mostly physical, but the damage reduction is more likely to be effective. Whereas Shell’s shield will be consumed by sufficient damage and so it suits bigger boss attacks more, which are more likely to be magic.

I'am not sure it address the situation at all.
You buff SCH while he doesn't need it. Noct AST is still largely inferior to SCH.

These changes don't really buff SCH at all, they buff Selene as an alternative to Eos, but if she's still not superior to Eos (and without all of Eos's AoE healing that's definitely a concern) then SCH as a whole isn't buffed. But it does mean that a WHM/SCH combo is more effective in terms of buffs/debuffs, as the WHMs superior regens will make Eos's healing less crucial.
Throw an AST into the mix and Eos becomes the better choice due to buff/debuff overlap, and then SCH is no better than it currently is.

WHM seems to still be getting the (very short) end of the stick here. Most jobs aren't big fans of speed buffs and some outright dislike them because of how they can mess up timings or make it hard to weave. With the game consolidating to only mp I doubt MP economy is going to be a huge focus either, seems like 2 bits of utility that are the least needed or requested. WHM would definitely still be losing out to DiAST here by a huge margin.

Arguable.
While some jobs, really only NIN, are negatively effected by speed buffs, extra speed unequivocally results in extra DPS. MCH and SMN may also have their rotations affected by speed, but this can be adjusted to.
The reason why a lot of jobs don't like melding speed is because it doesn't compare to Crit or Det which you're trading it against, but free speed is still a bonus.
For example, if increasing your speed by 10% means you clip your GCDs by 10%... then that's just no net gain, it's not a hindrance at all, you're just back to square one. It's only a loss in the context where you could have had a flat potency boost instead of that superfluous speed increase. But there are many cases where that speed increase won't be negated by clipping, and plenty of jobs or even portions of jobs that will benefit from it.

Completely disagree with MP. With MP and TP merging, MP management is likely to become more important, and important for a lot more jobs.
Speed and MP buffs should go hand in hand, because the main drawback for extra speed is consuming more resources, which is why WHM gets the speed and MP buffs, which also symbolically mesh well with wind and water elements.

Putting aside your changes to the 3 healers, you said the next healer would be a buffer/debuffer.
That just creates a brand new dichotemy of pick one shield/regen healer and the new buffer/debuffer class. It breaks everything once again (ignoring that these changes continue to make WHM the worst healer).

I don't think so.
You're always going to have to have something to differentiate healers, and due to the nature of simply having differences, perfect balance can never be achieved.
Tanks have OT/MT. DPS have varying degrees of selfishness or utility.
Healers currently have shields and regens, which is too restrictive, but my suggestions puts shields and regens on the backburner (as all healers will have access to both) and puts buffs/debuffs at the forefront.
There are a much wider range of ways to differentiate and balance buffs and debuffs, much like DPS and their utility.
This is the main paradigm shift I've aimed fro with these suggestions, regardless of nuance. This overarching philosophy is what I've tried to use to achieve a better system to balance.

But everyone saying WHM still gets the short end of the stick in this, absolutely right. I've tried to give it more, and giving it more mitigation (and oGCD at than) and some buffs is definitely a step in the right direct I think, but perhaps not enough.

But anyway, this is entirely theoretical, because recent leaks suggest that they've simplified lilies considerably, turning them into a flat potency increase kinda like Greased Lightning.

[Veis_Alveare]

Arguable.
While some jobs, really only NIN, are negatively effected by speed buffs, extra speed unequivocally results in extra DPS. MCH and SMN may also have their rotations affected by speed, but this can be adjusted to.
The reason why a lot of jobs don't like melding speed is because it doesn't compare to Crit or Det which you're trading it against, but free speed is still a bonus.
For example, if increasing your speed by 10% means you clip your GCDs by 10%... then that's just no net gain, it's not a hindrance at all, you're just back to square one. It's only a loss in the context where you could have had a flat potency boost instead of that superfluous speed increase. But there are many cases where that speed increase won't be negated by clipping, and plenty of jobs or even portions of jobs that will benefit from it.

Completely disagree with MP. With MP and TP merging, MP management is likely to become more important, and important for a lot more jobs.
Speed and MP buffs should go hand in hand, because the main drawback for extra speed is consuming more resources, which is why WHM gets the speed and MP buffs, which also symbolically mesh well with wind and water elements.

Speed buffs can cripple NIN and MCH but they can also negatively impact SMN, RDM, DRG, MNK, PLD and DRK all to varying degrees and for different reasons while also requiring a much larger change in order to equate to similar dps gains that would been seen by outright dps or crit buffs. This is why Arrow is at its very best a low-rent spread card for when there is nothing else. It's true more GCD means more damage but once you factor in things like buff misalignment, resource loss and clipping you mitigate the negligible dps gains.

You'd get more tossing an Arrow on a BLM directly or on a WAR as their IR window approaches to give them a sixth fell cleave.

I get what you're going for thematically but unless the majority of jobs receive major overhauls which cause them to lean into speed buffs more this is still without a doubt the worst of the proposed reworks and still definitely leaves it as the leftover healer.