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

[ForsakenRoe]

How that necessarily draws from DPS, or which... /shrug.

I'd look at BLM for that kind of stuff, especially for 'decision making' part. The first thing that comes to mind is 'what does a healer have to solve the classic healer issue of 'I need to move'?' As a WHM right now, our mobility is to blow a Lily on a heal we potentially don't need. That's 'good' in that the lily heal has multiple uses, that being healing, and mobility. But it's also not so ideal, in that parse-obsessed types might use the heal for the mobility aspect, not have it at a time when the healing aspect is needed, and then their cohealer is left to pick up the slack. That's a separate issue though. What I'm looking at would be, for example, if you had an instantcast GCD as part of your rotation (wonder where I got that idea from), balanced in such a way that the potency of it is a gain over Glare (so you actually want to use the skill), but the difference is low enough that you don't feel massively screwed over damage-wise if you were to hold it for mobility. IE, if Glare is 310, a skill that has 320-350 potency (depending on it's CD). Alternatively, by lowering Dia's duration, and making it's upfront damage higher, it would make clipping it less punishing, and that could be said skill. You'd want to avoid clipping it's duration as much as possible, because Glare is better damage if Dia's already on the boss, but if for example, 12s duration Dia did 250p, plus 20 per tick, that's 330 total, a gain over Glare's 310, but if you clip the DOT, you lose only 20p per 3s it has left on it. In fact, if you were to refresh it with one tick left in it's buffer, in this situation it'd actually be neutral to Glare, both being 310.

So back to the BLM thing, the reason I brought it up: BLM can use it's Thunder refreshes as damage, but also hold onto them to use it for a GCD of mobility. Triplecast is a DPS increase but is also used for mobility, and Firestarter procs can be used for mobility too. Holding these things can often be a damage loss, but the gained damage by keeping uptime during a high-mobility requiring section of the fight makes it worth it. Similar logic can be applied to healer damage skills. If we have to run for 4 straight GCDs without stopping, it's better to Ruin 2 as SCH than to do 'literally nothing'. Of course we'd rather slidecast Broils, but sometimes we're just not allowed to

I don't know what other 'more work = improve team performance' you can have, other than 'more complexity in DPS rotation, for a minimal gain in potency'. IE, playing 'spam Glare/refresh Dia' is 8000p per min, but going whole hog on the rotation with everything available gets you 8200p per min (spitball numbers). We can't really do 'you heal more' cos... well, you either live or you don't. We can't do 'everyone has a raidbuff' because then 'homogenization!!!!', so then the only solution I can see feasibly working, which we always come back to in the end, is to have a more involved DPS rotation that is balanced in such a way that you can partially ignore aspects of it, ie if you're doing Harrowing Hell and you don't have time to be doing your damage exactly on CD. Or if you're not 100% solid on doing a 3rd button in the rotation yet. If there's another way to reward 'more effort' than this I'd love to hear them though

edit: as for Counter Spell, imagine the following: server DOT ticks at 3min 6sec into the fight. You apply CounterSpell 0.1s later, at 3min, 6.1sec. You then find out you don't need to heal after all because you're with a very Succor/Medica2/etc happy cohealer. You then, at 3min 8.6sec into the fight on your next GCD, use some kind of instantcast damage skill (for the sake of argument lets say you used a Toxicon, you're a SGE and you need to move). You have now removed Counterspell before it got a single tick off. Yes, this is me being very picky and using an exceptionally specific set of circumstances to demonstrate, but the fact that it'd be possible at all for this kind of thing to occur is kinda funny to me