For those who main/semi-main a DPS (e.g. DNC, RDM) but like Healers...

[Shurrikhan]

Given how OGCD-focused healing has been these last two expansions particularly, but Stormblood as well, this idea obviously wouldn't work out very well.

I mean, this thread as a whole isn't going to be particularly relevant to healers as they are now, so I don't really get the point of that bit of feedback / what you're looking for me to do with this? (That is, unless people somehow really would be satisfied with just hitting 3 buttons' worth of Glare in cycles, but that would be baffling to me.)

But let me expand on what I mean by liking usually-sequential actions that naturally rearrange that sequence rotationally and macrorotationally and only come back together after sort of looping their de-sync all the way around. Let's call this, idk, "polyrhythm" for now:

Let's say we have an AST that focuses hugely on Cards and Time-Space Magic. It has no barriers: instead, it (A) seeds healing preemptively to go off after a set amount of time (allowing it to place a heal 5s before, 2.5s before, and immediately to all line up against a tankbuster, etc.), and (B) grants "Borrowed Time," such that the fatal portion of damage is delayed by a second or two. Opposite of that, it can accelerate to increasingly burn through its resources quickly in emergencies. How it interacts a bit uniquely with MP would be a bit much to go into right now, but let's just say this sets it up to frequently chain sequences of actions as it pushes towards a more Diurnal (Hasted/Emergency) or Noctural (Slowed/Conserving&Preparatory) state, but those chains of actions vary in length and in terms of how deep within the chain a given other action might occur, such as in order to cause a DoT to tick faster in Diurnal (same damage dealt in less time) or to be able to last longer as to advantage its ramping secondary/synergetic effects in Nocturnal.

Ideal to me then was that you have sense of being pushed by this sort of internal rhythm that already shifts on its own a bit, but you make intelligent variations based around short, mid-length, and long-term goals according to the context. In this particular case, your MP-spending oGCDs would take up much of the incidental slack from party mistakes, allowing your rhythm's nuances to be added to without being overwhelmed by incidental factors for all but significantly messy runs. That's the sort of thing I'd like to see on at least one healer: dynamics and undermechanics useful to both damage and healing, with priority conflicts between which to spend those advantages on (b/t damage, healing, and utilities).

Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100 and inflicts Counter Spell.
Counter Spell Effect: Damage over time with a potency of 100.
Counter Spell is removed when the target is struck by your next offensive spell.

In other words, you have a DoT that ticks away at enemies while you're healing, but is removed once you return to attacking. Naturally, this would be fairly useless the way the game flows currently, and at worst could be considered a "noob trap." But if we rerouted back to an environment where GCD healing was necessary very often, I wonder if it would create an interesting choice for a healer to make while approaching a challenging fight.

I feel like the advantages of so likely a self-sabotaging DoT as this would be too small compared to the annoyances it'd create, especially as --as you put it-- a "noob trap".

Consider the optimization: You want to place the DoT just before healing would be needed. So either you need to have the cast complete at so perfect a time that you can already start immediately casting your heal, or its existence will seem to oblige that healer towards lower healing responsiveness in order to get their full value of simultaneous DPS+HPS. That's a case where ~98% of skill's the ceiling (since it has zero use cases outside of offensive-downtime)... is the floor (i.e., feels like someone one truly has to engage with just to get by in regard to --make basic but functional use of-- the given tool).

Even healers spent the majority of their time GCD healing, I don't see this design as offering enough the much softer risk-reward of typical offensive DoT maintenance / immediacy of CD use to be worth its hurdle.