Healer Mechanics You Want to See Become Common

[Shurrikhan]

Traditional CC does not fit in this type of game, that's true. This is CC like what the Blue Mage has--optional effects that make up for the loss in damage you take in order to make an enemy less threatening (meaning you have to heal less), and/or speeding up the time needed to defeat that enemy by a greater amount of time than simply attacking the enemy. This wasn't always the case in older Final Fantasies which either had enemies that could be defeated very quickly (thus the benefits of your debuffs not being realized), or the accuracy on those debuff spells was too unreliable, and the loss of damage or healing you took from missing the debuff hurt you more than you stood to gain.

That said, if you have mechanics that demand specific CC, then you can fit that into a game like Final Fantasy XIV.

Seems the opposite to me. It just depends on how you make those CC. For instance, if you reduce an enemy's stat by X amount, the value is the same on a boss or on a mob. The % effect will vary hugely (perhaps halving a weak mob's damage while only taking 5% off a boss's damage) but the actual mitigation thereby provided would be equal. That can fit and offer choice because it can be easily balanced around: Do I want to sacrifice a GCD to reduce future healing by potentially 2 GCDs, or just more than deal with it via a hyperefficient GCD like Regen? The answer will typically depend on whether you needed the added maximum eHP on your tank.

On the other hand, if you have mechanics that can only be solved by a specific type of CC, there's little choice permitted. It's just a "Hit X to counter mechanic" timing check. The moment you have to change what different CCs do specifically for a fight, they've kind of failed as a system. You should just be outright able to Sleep, Shove, Silence, Stun, Snare, Slow, Heavy, etc., any and all non-bosses, albeit to varying (roughly equal real effect, so long as the mob is of relevant type, e.g. Heavy only making sense on a melee mob) and make due use of that. And those should be baked into job kits diversely, rather than just, say, one CC type per role.