Quote Originally Posted by Semirhage View Post
Whatever changes they make to the tier 1 cure spells or the Freecure passive, my (vain) hope is that they make said changes with skillful gameplay in mind. A question to ask when designing something is, "what gameplay is this ability encouraging?" There are generally two good answers to this question: you either guide the player toward skill expression or your provide a safety net against poor skill expression. Stormblood lilies were horrible for a lot of reasons. One major factor here was that they provided a terrible answer to that question: they encouraged spamming GCD heals. In FFXIV's combat system, this is incredibly poor skill expression. It's a mark of someone who's not using their abilities to the fullest. Furthermore, rather than providing a safety net, they attempted (ineffectively) to put good skill expression behind said poor skill expression. That is, you were encouraged to play badly in order to (presumably) play well. Even though number crunching showed it wasn't worth it, but that's a different matter.

I'm against changing Freecure in any way that doesn't change its answer to the above question. Spamming GCD heals is not a habit to encourage.
How about making it encourage the use of DPS spells instead?

I posted this elsewhere, but I'll put it up here:

Cure: Restores Target’s HP. Cure Potency: 450. 1.5s Cast Time. 400 MP.
Additional Effect: Cleric Stance: Increases the potency of the next Stone, Glare, or Holy you cast by 50% while reducing its cast time by 2.5s. Duration: 15s.

The intent here was to get you to use Cure for movement and a touch of healing while offsetting the DPS tax of said movement. I'd give this in ARR where it's most needed as well as has its most interesting ramifications. Effectively it's a pre-cursor to Lilies. It's part of a larger rework I've posted elsewhere, and in that it does get phased out, but the gist is there. Compare its use cases to the rest of WHM's kit as it is currently before looking for my rework and you'll see what I mean. It's probably too busted at a guaranteed rate, but it doesn't discourage pure DPS, just excessive healing without forethought.