Paired Threads: What would it take to make Heaker kits "complex/interesting"?

[ASkellington]

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Okay... and nothing that hasn't already been expressed by the healing community since Shb:

Damage is too low, oGCDs are too powerful, encounter design doesn't make use of the healing tool kit, too much focus on mitigation checks and little to no proper heal checks, kits feeling same-y across FOUR SUPPOSIVELY DIFFERENT healers.

What I want to know are these questions:

1. SE seems to be refusing the request for higher amounts of healing even in EX and savage content where they belong. They keep saying that they will and haven't, only giving mitigation checks instead of outright heal checks. If they aren't going to make our bloated healing kits more worth while (by giving us more to heal) consistently in even endgame content, what else other than extra damage buttons can they do to improve the quality of healers in this game?
   
2. When we have down time (nothing to heal), what can be added to healers to make it less boring?

If the answers to both of those isn't extra damage buttons, what is your alternative then, because I haven't seen a good one yet. I would also like to add that there is no way to make down time 0. Easier content is going to have higher amounts of it for more experienced players and even in EX and Savage, if you don't have it at the start, you're going to have it by the time everyone else is geared.

Down time play is apart of the healing experience. It isn't going anywhere especially as FFXIV isn't WoW and doesn't have anywhere near close the amount of healing uptime that WoW has currently or even in the past. Large amounts of down time is tied to the encounter design sure, but our down time is still boring for mid to hardcore players and should equally be addressed.