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

[Renathras]

Look, Reddit is no nicer to healers.
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Opposition to how healers play right now... is not abnormal,

Actually, Reddit IS nicer to healers. There is a far more diverse view there than here. Probably because there are far more posters there, and there seems to be a more general audience. Oh, there are a LOT of people there, too, that hate current Healer design and want it changed (like the people here), but also a lot that are more neutral to it, and some that actually prefer it as it is. So it seems that the view here is not universal.

NOTE: I didn't use the word "majority" in that paragraph.

Opposition to healers is not abnormal. Where did I say it was?

I'm pointing out that NOT being opposed to healers as they are right now is ALSO not abnormal. That it is here is one of the reasons to point to this place being an echo chamber.

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WHM:

Right...? But that's what I'm saying, no heal costs less than Glare. Casting Cure 1 (or Esuna, depending on how and if we Trait it to Esuna or Cure 2 or not) or Regen would be the same MP cost as Glares. So you're only saving MP based specifically on how many Miseries you cast per minute. The maximum savings, assuming you still get one Misery from 3 Solace/Raptures (so that changes nothing and still takes 4 GCDs per minute) is that you are left with 20 - 2 (for Dias) GCDs per minute (24 total, 3 Solace/Rapture, 1 Misery associated with those, 2 Dias; leaves 18). For every 3 of those you fill with a GCD heal, you get 1 Misery. 18 / 4 = 4.5, meaning you get, on average, 4.5 extra Misery casts per minute. Given foregoing Glares to get there, that's the equivalent of 400 x 4.5 or 1800 (funny, that) MP in savings. (This is casting 12 Cure 1s + 4 Misery and the extras are split over every 2 minutes, 2 Cure 1s in the first minute and the other Cure 1 plus the Misery in the second minute.)

But, how do you generate those Miseries? Well, you can cast Cure 1/Cursuna/Regen over and over. That results in a 1800 MP gain per minute. Which, for reference, is not even enough to cast a Raise. Not sure that's "gamebreaking". But that's if you cast your cheapest healing spell over and over. If you cast Cure 2, you're now losing MP per minute. Each Cure 2 cast is 1000 MP, or 600 more than Glare/Cure 1/Regen. And you're casting 12 of those per minute, meaning -600 x 12 = -7,200. -7,200 + 1,800 = -5,400. That's a MP deficit, not an MP gain. Medica 1 is slightly better (900 MP so -500 per cast), Medica 2 slightly worse and Cure 3 significantly worse.

Point is, at best, you're generating enough MP for 3/4ths of a Raise, which is hardly gamebreaking, and at the worst, you're just refunding a small portion of your much higher MP burn from casting your higher expense heals. The reality, of course, is that people would mix it up a bit, and that MP management RIGHT NOW isn't a thing. So there's no logical way that this would be broken or overpowered. The only argument is if you're having to cast lots of Raises, but WHM is already the Job that has 2 Thin Air charges, and most Healers can easily sit around 90-100% MP all the time in the game at present. Overcapping MP isn't helping you, so often that MP "savings" is just going to be wasted, not powerful.

Again, the main issue with it I can see is that it would make Glare entirely pointless to cast unless you just feel like it. A solution could be to slightly increase Glare's damage so it's a slight DPS gain, but meh.

Personally, if "heal by doing damage" is something we're doing under this proposed system - which we are, with SGE - then "damage by doing healing" under this same system seems like the proper inverse so both playstyles are represented. The only issue comes down to tuning so they do similar levels of damage and healing to each other, but no, that's not broken in any way.

Think about it, in the WORST case scenario - that you never touch Glare and exclusively keep Regen rolling on all party members, maintain Dia uptime, and fill dead GCDs with Cure 1 spot healing, you probably wouldn't even be touching Cure 1 much since you'd be rolling HoTs on people like a WoW Druid in raids (which is a playstyle I always enjoyed, so not seeing the problem there) - isn't that WAY more active than WHM is now? You're actively rolling through party member targets, through the boss, and you're using at least three GCDs for the majority of your casts unlike the complaint right now you're using just Glare. Casting more than 1 Medica 2 per minute would be an MP loss: 2400 - 1800 = 600 MP net loss.

Moreover, did you read SGE? It's going to be doing the opposite of this. The only issue here comes from proper numbers tuning and, again, encounters actually requiring consistent healing, something you agreed was a needed change.

So no. That's not broken. It's a good idea. Hard go. Yes.

(Another alternative I once saw presented is make Glare nourish the Blood Lily, so you have a semi-combo of Glare Glare Glare Misery, which was proposed to break up the Glare spam. Not sure if that one's good or bad, but it and this would conflict so...)

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SCH/AST:

Are you missing the part where every healer Job works differently? Because that's the point of the entire proposal and I've said it over and over again...

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WoW: Yes, something FFXIV USED to have back in ARR. MP costs of spells were, once upon a time, RELEVANT. We did, in fact, swap from one design paradigm to another, roughly around SB. It's also why WHM sucked so much in SB, because it wasn't given the oGCD healing tools to make the transition. The only reason ShB/EW worked is because they shoehorned Solace/Rapture/Misery in as a "pseudo-oGCD GCD" to try and merge the two systems.

EDIT:

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Answer the damned question or shut the hell up about it. I'm tired of you derailing and wafting over this stupidity and trying to use it in some weird technicality to "win".

If a Support role was added to the game: Would you at all be interested in playing it?

It's a yes or no question. And if you won't answer it, as I said in the post before, I'm done beating the dead animal.

Actually? You know what? Duck it. I don't give a damn anymore. You can answer or not, I legitimately don't care and won't respond any more to you on this derail.

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You. Are. Wrong. Say it with me.

The supposed support role is P.Ranged.

They were.

For some reason, when ShB hit, the Devs decided Support was bad, so stripped BRD and MCH of their support. Then they promptly introduced DNC as a Support. Then BRDs were mad so they gave them some of theirs back, but it's all basically the same type of thing. And then nerfed AST cards into being just another form of the same thing. It's all "+X% damage" just through different proxies.

As to your points:

1: That's why I think the 4 Healers Model is the answer.
2: Agreed, it's also why I encourage changes to encounter design.
3: Also agreed, it's why I think non-Healer HEALING should be nerfed.
4: See 2.
5: See 1, and to an extent, 2 and 3 both.
6: See 1; if the Healers actually were different, there would also be different levels of damage tools between them (e.g. the SGE proposal would play like RDM without melee attacks, the SCH one would be the same damage profile it had in SB), meaning players who find something like current WHM boring but still want to play a Healer, just with more damage abilities for solo or downtime would have those options.

This has been said before as well. The conversation has spiraled (because of course it did), but the original post was about what if we had a 4th role, "Support," that was more support-y than the current physical ranged, offering more buffs and more utility. I'm not sure what other context would apply to this role, but I assume it would have less damage than even Bards and Dancers have now in exchange for that higher support potential while still having things like a rotation and active gameplay. I presume the intent of the entire thread was to try and get people in favor of expanding supports so that we'd leave the real healers alone.

You assume...incorrectly (a surprise to no one).

Note I wasn't even the one that brought up Support as a fourth role:

Aye Square, give us healer RDM specs and support DPS Astrologian specs. Shake it up a bit, hahah.

Vetch brought up the concept, which I agreed with later (in one of the few posts I make around here that gets a lot of Likes, btw), and then it was third-ed by someone else:

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.

Meaning it can't have been my intention with the thread, because I wasn't the one that even brought it up.

Maybe, Ty, you should be more careful about assuming other people's intentions...

Not that I suspect you care at this point, but if you do:

What would make a Support role different than PRanged is that it would actually be...well, Support. PRanged isn't even consistently supportive (MCH doesn't have anything itself other than Dismantle; TrubaticianSamba is just the Ranged's version of Feint/Addle, so no more "support" than Casters and Melee, it's just more generalized. It's like comparing AST ShB/EW cards to AST HW/SB cards. Clearly they're different - everyone complaints about them being different all the time here, so I don't think I need to hash that one out - and then you have DNC and BRD being ShB/EW card-like.

While the Devs COULD make them into an actual Support role, they've thus far declined to really do so. Nothing like Bole or CC (lol?) or TP/MP regen (lol..?). Hell, look at ARR BRD. Even ARR NIN. Even SB BLM with that MP transfer ability had more of a support capability than modern BRD does. DNC's only unique thing is Curing Waltz. Otherwise it's a targeted BRD song that's up 100% of the time. Hell, look at PvP AST's cards.

Damage buffing might be considered support more if, as Askellington said, it wasn't something that so many Jobs do to the point it's more a combat mechanic than support (and is done on a rote timer, not in reaction or preaction to any encounter abilities themselves).

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Anyway, I didn't start this thread with any intent of discussing Support as a role or subrole or half-role or people moving roles or anything else.

I was actually trying to see what people like about specific DPS Jobs SPECIFICALLY so I could consider how to add that in a more robust way to my Healer Job design proposals. Knowing what people find enjoyable is part of making a design that people would find enjoyable. Everyone knows what THEY like. What they need to do to be good designers is to see what OTHER people like, and then make proposals that incorporate those things.

It's why echo chambers are so bad for good design, because all they do is tell you over and over something you already think is true, but they aren't telling you what everyone else who isn't part of the echo chamber thinks.

And it's why I actually ask questions like this. Because instead of having decided how everyone should enjoy playing (and berating them if they do not), I actually want to see how everyone enjoys playing and then propose a set of healer Job designs where at least one appeals to each type. It's really that simple.