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

[Shurrikhan]

Note that [changing one role into an altered and narrow version thereof that only fits a small fraction of the role's jobs] is what people want to do with Healers.

Unless you're referring to the far rarer and extreme positions of those who want to remove all GCD healing instead of at all trying to make them more relevant again...

...It's not the same. It's really not.

Having additional healing-downtime options, reducing the portion of CPM (and possibly portion of GCDs) spent on our filler attack, and better spreading out its CPM... is not alike to, say, changing a MCH into a Support instead of a DPS.

That change in MCH's role necessitates a change in where one's output comes from (shifting it from self to others). Allowing healers more buttons to press in the time they already cannot heal does not do that; the available healing was already capped.

Nor would, say, adding more Card-related GCD options to AST suddenly force WHM, SGE, and SCH, too, to take on GCD buffs by nature of simply being in the same role as AST; even Ty's requested parameters for Healers as a role (no more than 30% of CPM spent on a single action, 10+ actions required to reach 80% of total CPM, and able to meet healing requirements) were as about broad as possible short of "should be labelled Healer" and were utterly uncontroversial to anyone playing XIV with a button count greater than that of an SNES controller.

Perhaps it's that Reddit is less tolerant of different views than here, but I see posts there with people raging on healers and posts where people praise them, and the comments come from both sides. Here, it's me and...that's it.

Been reading through threads searchable from "healer" or "healer gameplay" for the last couple hours (over a dozen threads so far scanned in full, many more skimmed) and gone through the replies therein... all to find the most liked comments (after those with purely direct answers to the OP's questions), sadly, centered on stuff like "What healing lol?" "Thought ends as soon as you've solved the fight, leaving you with only very barebone execution", "Expect to be bored after prog", "Green DPS", "Gutted gameplay", and "Your reward for getting good is to be less of a healer... which you could also do by just switching to WAR in the first place", etc...

I'm not seeing any less a portion of negativity there than here. There's a far larger portion that just forms no appraisal and will solely answer the OP's question, but the moment evaluations comes up... they've actually been even more negative, on average, than these forums.

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I'd say you can get meaningful value out of Magick Barrier in savage.

How often, though, does it actually save long-term resource (rDPS) by avoiding death in a situation where no one else could make that difference or by sparing a healer GCD, though? It feels like it's rarely if ever significant enough to do so.

Tangent: This actually feels like a good reason for AoEs to become weaker smart heals (e.g., a 300p smart-heal instead of a 400p basic heal), such that non-AoE mitigation can actually make a positive difference, and for more mitigation methods to become partially split among nearby allies (raising their maximal individual mitigation without improving their total mitigation, thereby providing more utility and agency).