Any support utility ideas other than heal & shields?

[Absurdity]

We even saw an example of this in P3S and Death's Toll. PF started locking Astro due to Macrocosmos invalidating the mechanic. The irony is it wasn't the high end raid community who cared but the more casual raiders. Which is precisely who SE appeals to.

Funnily enough it was exactly the opposite for us. We had to pug a 2nd healer every week and Astros in party finder were, to be frank, not very good. The kind that does an octaweave every burst window, manages to misalign raid buffs immediately, do bad dps and somehow still manage to be less effective at healing the party than our Sage.

So we gladly took a WHM pug over an AST pug for P3S every time because it could completely invalidate a mechanic just like AST, the bell made a mockery out of Fountain of Fire, and the usually better dps allowed us to simply skip Death's Toll.

[Deceptus]

Funnily enough it was exactly the opposite for us. We had to pug a 2nd healer every week and Astros in party finder were, to be frank, not very good. The kind that does an octaweave every burst window, manages to misalign raid buffs immediately, do bad dps and somehow still manage to be less effective at healing the party than our Sage. .

You gave a great example of why AST are one of the most demanding healers to play. It's intricate as F* and if not played optimally in what is essentially mid core / upper midcore content, is shelved for a different job.

People need to start accepting that a clear is a clear and just be happy for that.

[ForsakenRoe]

People need to start accepting that a clear is a clear and just be happy for that.

Nooo we can't take a MCH for my P5S weekly run, it's baaaad! Never mind the fact there were week 1 clears of P8S (pre-nerf) that included a MCH, and that we are 20-30 ILVL over the recommendation for P5S, I'm going to lock out a class because I heard it's trash from [internet place]! /s

People need to learn that if they want to meta-slave that hard, they need to stick to logruns where that meta actually matters, because at this point you could probably clear P5S with one of the healers going full curebot

[Absurdity]

You gave a great example of why AST are one of the most demanding healers to play. It's intricate as F* and if not played optimally in what is essentially mid core / upper midcore content, is shelved for a different job.

People need to start accepting that a clear is a clear and just be happy for that.

Oh, I never claimed otherwise. It is overly demanding for the average pug healer and really only a benefit at the high end.
I simply gave an example of our group not wanting an AST for that fight despite it being the meta job for P3S.

[Latandris]

Here's some basic ideas that are probably unbalanced, unrealistic and would need to be further developed to work in this game (idk if those could even be considered as a utility):
-Skill range manipulation would be interesting to see (insead of huge hitboxes maybe)
-Healing radius increasing skills
-Self-preservation buttons/traits/whatever to allow people to make some mistakes and not wipe everyone maybe (self reraise, taking damage to mp instead of hp if it kills you, healer invuln lol, etc)
-Reset your own/your party's cds (once jobs are inevitably butchered yet again)

[ty_taurus]

Here's some basic ideas that are probably unbalanced, unrealistic and would need to be further developed to work in this game (idk if those could even be considered as a utility):
-Skill range manipulation would be interesting to see (insead of huge hitboxes maybe)
-Healing radius increasing skills
-Self-preservation buttons/traits/whatever to allow people to make some mistakes and not wipe everyone maybe (self reraise, taking damage to mp instead of hp if it kills you, healer invuln lol, etc)
-Reset your own/your party's cds (once jobs are inevitably butchered yet again)

The problem with some of those suggestions is inconsistency. For example, we used to have AST have the ability to reduce cooldowns, but it was seen as a throw-away card because it had to be used before a cooldown went off, and nowerdays it'd be seen as annoying for throwing off rotations. Here are the types of things we have to work with:

1. Damage - Ultimately, you can always sacrifice a job's access to utility for a notable bump up in damage.
2. Instant Raise - Having access to instant raises is a very strong form of utility that is not just good for prog, but also great for most reclear parties since most parties are going to make mistakes during tricky mechanics. There are many examples of mechanics where the healers could easily die, or half the party can wipe if one player makes a mistake, and getting everyone back up quickly can save a run. Famine's Harvest is one such mechanic that comes to mind.
3. Combat Sprint - As Expedient has shown, combat sprint can significantly increase a party's margin of error for many different types of position-focused mechanics.
4. Mitigation - Mitigation is something that's become essential for unavoidable damage in raids at this point, and all healers need to have a baseline amount of mitigation, but you could always add more than that to add more utility to a job.
5. Esuna - Being able to apply Esuna to the party and/or have OGCD Esuna could theoretically be a very helpful form of utility if the combat designers could remember that Esuna exists. As it stands, it's basically worthless, but the tools are there to make Esuna something that actually matters in the future.
6. MP restoration - Something that used to be a solid form of utility but has been erased over the years, both in the mechanics being gutted from every job that could, but also in the fact that healer MP management has become automatic. There is no decision-making involved, you just naturally restore your MP at preset rates as a consequence of performing actions. That said, this can always change in a future expansion, and even if it doesn't, helping a revived healer get back on their feet does still hold some value, even if not much.
7. Mechanic-specific utility - We could also introduce new forms of utility built to counter specific reoccurring mechanics in some capacity. For example, I made the suggestion of adding float, which is something Semihrage mentioned as well, which could allow your party to ignore floor mechanics like puddles. Perhaps in a fight like P2S, it would let you run across the water without eating the DoT, for example, allowing certain mechanics like Limit Cut to be significantly easier to position for.

[ForsakenRoe]

Playing a certain other game has made me realise there's a lot of things that could be done on the 'fight design' side of things too. Purgeable buffs on enemies needing Dispel (a healer role action maybe?), more reliance on cleansable debuffs on allies (last time we had a mechanic in a raid that needed Esuna was E8S iirc), interrupts oh lord the frequency interrupts are needed, but one that stood out to me was yesterday, when I did one of the raidbosses. Healing Absorbs. That is, an 'anti-shield' on allies, which has to be HPS-pumped to remove. Any damage to that ally goes through like normal, any healing instead reduces the anti-shield. This would mean, for example, if someone got a 100% healing absorb on them, and then they were slapped from full health to 1hp (conveniently), Macrocosmos would not heal them to full. It'd only remove 50% of the healing absorb. It wouldn't have to be 100% though that's quite a lot, but even things like 25% would mean throwing out an extra something onto people, at least more than the standard 'oh there goes a raidwide, time to press PI Rapture again'. It'd also be one of the few times a WHM would be better than an AST, as Benediction would completely heal their HP and also remove the full absorb. Lastly, it's the PERFECT mechanic to throw at the 'I play healer to heal!' players. Well, up to the point where it turns out they actually can't keep up with the HPS required and it kills someone, because they don't 'play healer to heal', they 'play healer to get an easy ride through content'

edit: some bosses in 'other game' apply a shield to themselves, and keep pulsing increasing raidwide damage until that shield is broken. Perhaps having a certain role have a role skill (or just use Dispel for it) that does bonus damage to shields, maybe Casters, this would allow for bosses to be designed to have a 'mini DPS phase'. Like Diabolos in Dun Scaith has that barrier at the start, where he's also guaranteed to crit. Imagine if he pulsed raidwide damage that ramped in potency, or his autoattacks got stronger over time necessitating tankswaps, etc (assuming it was a Savage encounter to justify the complexity)

[Espon]

Rescue based healer, except you can target where you want someone to move instead of only pulling them to you.

[Absurdity]

or his autoattacks got stronger over time necessitating tankswaps, etc (assuming it was a Savage encounter to justify the complexity)

That is another mechanic that was apparently completely abandoned. We had bosses that actually applied a stacking debuff to tanks, dealing increased damage with every stack until it became lethal. But when was the last time SE used it, Alexander?

[Kele_Star]

It would be nice to get movement support as a healer so far aside from sprint sage is the only healer with a movement skill. Scholar has there level 90 but its basically just another sprint. A dash for all the healers would be nice. A cool one would be to give a support ability thats something like fury bound from FF7 where the healer can restore 1 party members longest cooldown actions, you would probably need to put it on a long cooldown itself or make it a complex side mechanic to get though to balance it out.