The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[IDontPetLalas]

To be clear, I mean "combo" in the classical sense of "any combination of attacks or effects", not specifically combo actions as is common to melee, tanks, RDM, etc.

For instance, the order and pacing in which Black Mage performs its spells is quite particular, despite not being limited by combo actions, and any interruption to its rotation is... jarring... as a result of that careful timing. BLM not being alone in this by a long shot, of course, due to the number of time-management gauges or uninterruptible burst phases available to almost all DPS.
Basically, the simplicity of existing healer rotations is to prevent you from digging yourself so deep into your attack groove that you lose a significant amount of momentum while attacking.

Which to be clear, "not losing momentum by stopping to heal" is an ideal approach to healers, with the majority of the issue being taken towards their current simplicity to the point of homogeneity. Even something as simple as use of procs or more active/engaging DoT management would be able to tackle this without creating a burden of "sorry I couldn't do my job because it was a significant, personal DPS loss."

I suppose you could theoretically play around with, say, setting conditionals for certain healing effects that turn them into a personal DPS gain, however... things like spending Lilies when your target is below a certain health threshold for a bonus, for instance? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯



Hell, for WHM and SGE you could play around with having Freecure proc from Holy/Glare or have a chance to force a Lily pop, or having Dosis/Dyskrasia proc to force your next healing GCD to crit.



Isn't that... literally the point of AST?

No, it isn't. Where is being a buffbot mentioned in the AST job description? AST is interesting (or used to be more interesting) because it allowed for healing, buffing and doing damage- not for being someone's pocket buffer. Even in another game , where that job's primary task was buffing - I was expected to heal and do damage, in varying degrees- or I was considered to be leeching. -