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

[LilimoLimomo]

I guess what I'm trying to figure out (and the purpose of this and the BLU thread) is:

1) What is FUN about them.
2) What can then be incorporated in the Healers.

I don't find them FUN, so I'm trying to figure out what other people see in them. People say "fun" or "engaging", but I don't find them either. So I'm wondering WHAT is fun or engaging about them, though I think part of this is just in one's mindset and focus.

I mean, if you don't find DPS classes fun, that's valid. Different strokes for different folks. But if that's the case, I don't understand why you would want to add mechanics you don't find fun to healers?

It's a problem combining both encounter design and that Healers have far too many buttons, at least in terms of oGCDs and the power of their heals relative to damage. Though there are some other things that contribute, such as natural gear progression reducing healing needs, natural improvement of player skill in fights reducing damage taken, and so on; I think those first two are more the core.

I don't enjoy BLU so I'm not very familiar with a lot of what you're talking about there and am probably poorly suited to speak to it. But looking over your suggestions for reducing the kit of healers, I'll say the following: at the times when I do heal a boss fight (non-Savage/Extreme), I'm using a meager fraction of my kit. An AoE happens? I cast Medica 2, the problem is solved, and there won't be another AoE for 1 minute. Tankbuster coming? I'll cast Divine Benison, and maybe a Cure 1 or Cure 2 afterwards if needed. It's not even necessary to cast Regen on the tank. I cast Assize sometimes if there's more group healing needed.

Which is to say, while I do agree that healers have too many buttons, I don't think it's the immediate issue because I already don't need the bulk of my kit. I think if a rebalance occurred, at that point it would be important to consider the broader kit, as that certainly does affect balance. But at present, I genuinely believe you could reduce my kit to only Cure and Medica and I think things would generally be fine.

And while that might actually be more engaging, I don't feel like that's a reasonable way to create engagement at level 90 (not saying you're saying this!). Healers should have fun toys to play with that feel cool to use, they just need a problem worth using them on.

Also, I wouldn't want an AoE Esuna because I personally think removing debuffs from each party member individually is one of if not the most enjoyable parts of playing a healer. I love triaging who gets prioritized for removal because it's engaging. I would not want to take one of the best problems healers get to solve and reduce it to something trivial. I do not want to have even less to do!

[Renathras]

long

1) RDM is more a mix of THM and WHM, strangely enough. It neither uses Void Magic nor does it draw on the surrounding Aether (the defining differences between the BLMs of Mhach and THMs, and the latter is still a distinction with modern, non-Void wielding BLMs), it also doesn't use the Golemancy of WHM's, and it's kind of questionable how it's using Conjury/White Magic in general since it's unlikely RDM's have the Elementals blessing. Indeed, RDM's White Magic is probably more akin to that of Geomancers than to Conjurers since it doesn't use Elementals as an intermediary. There's some odd lore gaps in there that haven't exactly been filled.

2) I wasn't making a false equivalence. The opposite. I was saying that just because one Job has a thing doesn't mean another Job cannot. Healers all copied large portions of ARR WHM's GCD and HW SCH's oGCD homework. I wasn't the one making that argument. I was COUNTERING that argument. Read my post again.

3) I'm not sure "elements" is an "aspect" in this regard with exclusivity. Especially since past titles have had both White Mages and Geomancers in them. GEO has always been about the natural elements. That's kind of its thing.

4) I suspect it won't matter what the new Job is, there are people out there who will be excited to see it. Not you, perhaps, but I wasn't excited about RPR, DNC, SAM, DRK, or AST. They were all added to the game, all generated hype and excitement, and all have dedicated players and enthusiasts.

5) There are a lot of people that have argued for Necromancer to be a "blood mage" type healer like...Vanguard? Not sure the original game with the concept, but one existed that a lot of people apparently liked. Balancing health bars and draining HP from enemies, that sort of thing. Even if it's mostly aesthetic - one could call Kardia "Drain" and make the animation it sucking red glowy stuff from the boss to the caster, and then the caster sending a pulse of it into their Kardia target and it would effectively be the same thing. I'm not saying everyone is and not saying people wouldn't complain about Necro (or something similar) being a healer...but some people have argued for just that.

6) I do agree with you on Geo's ability/identity. Though I'll contest this a bit by pointing out SGE: Exists. Further:

"Geomancers (GEO) are arcane spellcasters that harness the power of geomancy to strengthen their allies, enervate their enemies, and provide much-needed support to the party. They assume many of the same support roles corsairs and bards do, and while they may not pack as much offensive firepower as black mages, they can employ elemental magic with ease. Unlocked by completing the Dances with Luopans quest." -FFXI

...something akin to a RDM or SMN or DNC might be in order, depending on how they wanted to implement it. A part of me wonders if GEO could work as a Ranged Physical Job of sorts, sort of like how NIN is a Melee (physical) Job, but flings around quite a bit of magic as part of its rotation. It could also simply be a Melee Job with magic like NIN, and share the Scouting gearset. The devs COULD "compromise" on that effect, just as they did with SGE. Just as they did with RDM - our RDM doesn't have Cure 2 or Cure 3 or Esuna or Regen or Protect or Shell, despite pretty much ever RDM in FF history having those spells and the ability to be a full on healer in most respects as part of its identity that also often engages in consistent melee combat (not just bursts of it). They "compromised" on that.

7) On BLU - Agree to a point. I've said for a while now oGCDs are killing this game, particularly when it comes to healers. Though I would also note MANY (not all, but many) BLU groups are also quite a bit more...chill...than the Savage community more generally. But they also have essentially the same DPS rotation existing Healers do, more or less.

[Shurrikhan]

...what do you like about those Jobs?

Sure sure, "more damage buttons/rotation", but is that it, or is there something more that could be incorporated into Healers? Mobility? Utility? Buffs? Melee attacks?

What are the things you like about your main(ish) DPS Job aside from rotation?

MONK:

So, it is still the rotation that makes me so like Monk, but, probably not in the way you're thinking. What I like about it is that...

• the "rotation" (in the sense useful to other jobs) itself isn't a perfect loop,
• the macrorotation (how your GCDs sync up to your big CDs / raidbuff cycles) isn't a perfect loop, either (if using Optimal Drift and/or, especially, very high SkS),
• it has active opportunities for resync and for gambles, and
• the best rotational string (i.e., the actions to be taken between one Demolish and the next) isn't always obvious from over that period's time alone (you may have to think both contextually and well into the future).

In healer terms, I honestly believe you could still do that even with minimal (purely) offensive actions, though... (A) it'd take a good 5000+ characters to do a proper mock-up, and (B) the less damage-capable options you have, the more reliant the kit would be on fine balancing of content vs. gear vs. average player skill and on the relative value of soft utility on allies, etc., etc., which is a huge undertaking to find value from (though I do think it'd ultimately be worth it).



SAMURAI:

• That it has a capitalizing action that takes has multiple tiers of usability,
• that each of those tiers can take, especially in short-spending, fewer actions than average (In single-target, 2-3 GCDs for Higan, 4-5 for Tenka; and though each full-spender [Midare] still takes exactly 8, Hagakure to re-sync can again allow for that GCD of flexibility),
• that it has a macrorotational anchor and that the kit allows one to overclock or underclock it (more so back during Shadowbringer's single-charge Tsubame-Gaeshi), and
• that it can do something usefully multi-purpose with some fun / cool-looking utility (especially, Yaten-Enpi-Gyoten).

BLACK MAGE:

• That it has cycling action states of variable length with certain disproportionately useful swapping points, and
• that there's a lot of gap still in minor optimizations possible between job's output floor and ceiling.

Similarly, these two wouldn't necessarily require all that many more offensive actions, but they would need a sense of preparatory or longer-term actions actually being needed here and there, and burstier/capitalizing actions being needed elsewhere, so an already satisfying number of non-healer actions, you'd need to heavily reform healing requirements and its balance of power (e.g., away from rigid CDs).

[ty_taurus]

So, it is still the rotation that makes me so like Monk, but, probably not in the way you're thinking. What I like about it is that...

• the "rotation" (in the sense useful to other jobs) itself isn't a perfect loop,
• the macrorotation (how your GCDs sync up to your big CDs / raidbuff cycles) isn't a perfect loop, either (if using Optimal Drift and/or, especially, very high SkS),
• it has active opportunities for resync and for gambles, and
• the best rotational string (i.e., the actions to be taken between one Demolish and the next) isn't always obvious from over that period's time alone (you may have to think both contextually and well into the future).

In healer terms, I honestly believe you could still do that even with minimal (purely) offensive actions, though... (A) it'd take a good 5000+ characters to do a proper mock-up, and (B) the less damage-capable options you have, the more reliant the kit would be on fine balancing of content vs. gear vs. average player skill and on the relative value of soft utility on allies, etc., etc., which is a huge undertaking to find value from (though I do think it'd ultimately be worth it).

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. But your post did spark the idea of a healer DPS action that would function something to the effect of:

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.

[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.

[Renathras]

I mean, if you don't find DPS classes fun, that's valid. Different strokes for different folks. But if that's the case, I don't understand why you would want to add mechanics you don't find fun to healers?

I seek compromise. Part of that is trying to help other people be happy who are not. While many do not, I like having systems where most people can enjoy them. I also think it's nice having heterogeneity so that there's more choice and so that different things feel distinct and different, again increasing the odds people can find at least something they enjoy. Some people are only going to enjoy something like SMN. Some people are only going to enjoy something like BLM. Imo, it's good then to have both, as that means both types of people have something they enjoy.

Part of that comes from figuring out what SPECIFICALLY people enjoy, to see if it's even possible in the first place. Getting specifics also allows more understanding and can lead to more workable compromises.

As to the specific spells; I also point out I think the problem is encounter design. Encounter design, I'd argue, is a huge part of the problem, honestly. Like you say, you cast Medica 2 and don't have to touch a heal for another minute. Why not? Because the encounter damage doesn't call for it. That's a problem.

I think the solution would need to be holistic.

1) Encounter design needs to change. It has over time, and to the point of making it possible for 1 or even 0 healer clears of harder content. "more DPS buttons" wouldn't change that.

2) Healer kits need to change, or at least change RELATIVE TO encounter design. For example, you can cast one Medica 2 and maybe an Assize and that's all the healing you need for a minute. What if the damage was higher or your heals weaker such that you DID need to cast another heal or two or three? That already changes the game. Fewer and/or weaker oGCDs means more GCD heals cast as well, which cuts down on the amount of "dead GCDs" and Glarespam.

3) I also consistently advocate for what I call the "4 Healers Model", which is the idea we have four Healer Jobs, so they should each play and act distinct from one another. For example, why not have SGE have a DPS rotation like RDM where it heals via Kardia instead of via oGCDs? Balance it to where it does the same damage and healing as WHM, say, but how it does it is different, as WHM does this by casting heals and SGE by casting damage spells in a rotation. Again, this means more appeal to different sorts of players. Which is good.

4) I was more stating what BLU has, not what I'd want. If you want to have an argument with people over that sort of thing, basically everyone in this subforum OTHER THAN me are who you'd be arguing with. I'm not the who wants more focus on damage/dps rotation/more dps abilities. I'm just open to it, on some Healer Jobs (not all of them) for the sake of others who do want that. Me personally, I like Healers as they are right now for the most part. I have issue with encounter design not working with them.

.

My personal proposals, were I to give them, would be...

1) Keep WHM mostly as it is, with some pretty minor alterations. Namely, remove Solace/Rapture. Replace them with Secret of the Lily, which will work like Eukrasia does on SGE making the next GCD heal instant cast and cost no MP. Make all GCD heals nourish the Blood Lily to be damage neutral. Give a low level "Protect" spell that upgrades into Proshell and finally into Plenary Indulgence (alternatively work this into Asylum, but I think PI works better). Give WHM Stoneskin back as a castable but MP inefficient shield that upgrades to Divine Benison and later Aquaveil (first increases potency, second adds damage reduction); GCD but short cast time like 1 or 1.5 sec. Revert Thin Air to the ShB version of the spell. Have Cure 1 trait upgrade into Esuna, same MP cost, same cast time as Esuna, just also has a 500 potency heal attached. Make Holy like Cure 3 where you can either center it on yourself or center it on a target. This could also be used to make Holy part of the main rotation, like every 3rd Glare cast generates a free and instant cast Holy, sorta like PLD's 1-2-3 does for Holy Spirit. I'm not 100% sold on all of that, but I think that would be generally fine. My Plan B is just to leave WHM as it is, though I very much think its GCD heals need to be made damage neutral. There are so many variations I could use, but I feel trapped with Rapture/Solace because other options are "doing it wrong". I'd rather all those options be acceptable, as then they'd be actual OPTIONS instead of "press Cure 1 and you're wrong".

2) SCH I'm torn on. I like it as it is now, though it has some issues with button bloat. I made a modest proposal (think that was the thread title) here a few weeks/months back on it, but the short version would be make Energy Drain work off Faerie Gauge so it doesn't fight with Aetherflow abilities, combine Lustrate and Excogitation removing the CD on Excog, make Aetherpact into a mini-Lustrate instead, change Dissipate into a flat healing increase and resource grant, have Whispering Dawn trait upgrade into Fey Blessing (heal + HoT). Change Ruin 2 into a short duration DoT with most of its damage up front (so that it's still useful as a movement tool but can also be stacked with the existing DoT)...maybe a few more things, but it was mostly stuff like that. Tidying up the kit so it's not all over the place and doesn't have quite so many buttons. One issue I have with SCH is that its buttons are mostly USEFUL (even if often overkill), so there's not a lot of fat to trim, just some things that could be combined a bit better.

3) AST would be to make Cards on the GCD (at least Draw if not also Play) and have them generate a buff to the next Malific so using them is damage neutral as far as GCDs goes. Give it a much shorter CD (10-15 sec) so you get to throw them out far more often. Split the buffs into offensive (Major Arcana, say) and utility (Minor Arcana), and allow one to stock a card for later if they wish. The offensive would be balanced like BRD's are as a 1/2/3 damage/crit/direct hit ratio. The utility ones would be MP regen, defense, and haste/movement speed. The player being able to stock one means you could, for example, stop the Bole for use on a Tank later instead of it coming up and being useless. This all would cut down on the "RNG screws you" effect pre-ShB AST had, while returning the feel of the Cards being different and unique. Outside of that, shifting AST's healing more to HoTs, probably with some ability that can extend the HoTs out, or can consume them all at once for burst healing. Basically WoW Druid + party buffs.

4) SGE I'd probably give a rotation akin to RDM's caster rotation (not the melee part), and really emphasize Kardia. Give SGE a Synastry-like second Kardia on a CD that it can use to heal two targets simultaneously (maybe 60 sec CD 10 sec duration?), and likewise an AOE version (45 sec CD 10 sec duration or 30 sec CD 5 sec duration?) for healing the party. The SGE's job would be to maintain their DPS rotation and simply use the Kardia variants to fuel their healing, possibly with a few oGCDs for mitigation if that healing needs augments (stuff like Soteria is fine, stuff like Panhamia and Holos are too much; SGE can outheal WHM in some situations blowing all those oGCDs!), and keeping its fallback heals and barriers (the GCD spells) for emergencies.

I'm not saying this would be good, I'm not saying it would be perfect by any means, and other than SCH which I really worked out in that thread I posted, the rest are more broad brush strokes. But given what people complain about here all the time, it would address many of those issues while keeping something resembling the current playstyle at the same time for those who enjoy it.

I think the key is seeing that the Healer Jobs are different in lore and so making them function differently is a good idea, and further, that making each different means there's a higher chance someone can find one they like. Maybe someone doesn't like RPR or SAM or DRG or MNK, but they do like NIN. Because all 5 play somewhat differently, it means that while not EVERYONE will find at least one appealing, MOST people will find at least one (and sometimes more) appealing.

I think that should be the goal.

.

So I'm trying to figure out WHAT people find appealing. Since you have to know what people find appealing in order to figure out how it could be offered. We all know what we personally like, but to build a bridge to compromise and a better state of the game, it requires us to understand what others like as well, and then offer compromises that include that knowledge.

[ty_taurus]

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.)

All I was doing was sharing an idea that came from your post, something that could be interesting to think about, nothing more. I only specify that it doesn't work now because if I don't, someone will come along and tear me a new one.

[Shurrikhan]

So I'm trying to figure out WHAT people find appealing.

While it's nothing easily actionable, thus far, common grounds I've seen lately seem to hit upon three points we'd like to see in balance or otherwise follow narrowed determinations of success:

1. That the engagement available to a given job neither be overly conditional or transient.
   

   A healer shouldn't be fun only when shoveling through a shitshow, nor only for the first few runs of prog (before it is effectively "solved" and thereby, in our present case, done).

2. That tools and decision-making have both breadth and depth.
   

   That is to say that a tool should not see only a single use in practice, nor should "decision-making" only include one real choice (unless perhaps if consequent to a decently complex series of real choices that made this last 'non-choice' occurring at that particular time... indirectly a very real choice that was simply made earlier / just the second separately timeable part of an earlier real decision).
   
   Of course, that came come from many places: the tool itself could have multiple effects with use cases competitive with each other, its effect may affect other actions that themselves have competitive uses for that effect (in the broader view), and either may require a particular tuning of the content itself such that, say, an auto-crit is not only ever used on offense or only ever used on defense. That said, the choices must also matter.
   
   In effect, this means that one shifts between multiple palettes of choices in the short-term, and multiple flows of choices in the longer term, with the optimal choice being subject to some degree of randomization (probably not arbitrary, as through some Dancer-like RNG gimmick, but rather just through randomization within the fight's mechanics and the fight being designed in such a way that effectively identical actions or performance with each run would be unlikely). We should have multiple choices, but to be choices they must also have real impact; trying to make every choice competitive with each other in all circumstances would probably be incapable of doing that -- hence the analogy of branching through palettes of choices.

3. That healers should have more agency (more work that can be put in, should the need arise, for real reward) in the outcomes of fights and in improving a team's performance as skill improves.
   

   Or, to use a couple rough examples, there should be a slightly smoother but larger range of contribution towards clear reliability and/or, especially, speed that healers can manage as they gear up and get better at a given fight, and there should be more such value that healers can manage through their healing itself (such as more mistakes being recoverable and perhaps even more greed being not just permissible but also a net positive [through well-timed preemptive healing or the like]).

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

[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

[Zairava]

Yeah. I know it would be murder for balance, but I think if FFXIV actually added an actually Support role and designed around it, it would fix a lot of problems.

Hell, even without that, if they were just less RIGID about the combat system and role system where it's good. They have this weird thing where they don't want anyone coloring outside the lines...but then you have WAR and it's like "Dude's doodling all over the PAGE...and the wall...and the ceiling..."

Personally I like the way SMN does it. It's there in case of emergencies, but requires a fairly significant trade-off to use, especially more than once in a minute. BLU is another case, but I feel like the CD on Angel's Whisper is a bit TOO long. I think it's nice there are Jobs that can do back-up raising or raise the Healer. Always feel better in a 4 man if there's a DPS that can raise. I mean, now Tanks can solo bosses (not you, DRK!), but once upon a time, if the Healer went down at 20% or more, it was a wipe, which is kind of a lot of stress on that single point of failure. Instead of making Tanks unkillable, having some DPS able to limited raise was a nicer solution. It's not always there, though..but it's nice when it is, I guess?

I dunno. I don't think it's bad, I do think it's part of the role/encounter systems needing tweaked, though.

I will die on the hill of my stance.

Support could, and should, be its own role. Rift had this, and it to this day baffles me that no other mmo replicates it.