How would you solve the boring "damage rotation" of the healers?

[TheDustyOne]

No. Something that seems to get continually dismissed is that healers are the only role whose support and damage dealing skills are tied to the GCD. There are some exceptions such as PLD's Clemency, RDM's Vercure/Verraise, etc. but generally speaking this is the case for healers. The meta always has been, and always will be to prioritize GCD allocation towards damage. Giving healers more ways to do X where X=damage will never change that GCDs towards damage will have to take a backseat once oGCD resources are used up. That is the disruption for healers that breaks their 'rotation' if we want to call it that.

"Healers are the only role, no don't look at the exceptions I listed."

Keeping the GCD rolling is always going to be meta, yes. Using GCD heals when you have no oGCDs is good play, yes. Just because it's "always been this way" doesn't mean Square can't change how it works. It's kinda like saying "SMN has always been a DoT job, it'll never change", Warrior used to be able to spend Beast Gauge on a mitigation under Defiance, so even tanks had a GCD to mitigate option. Also no one would deny that a rotation would be disrupted if healing is needed, that's part of the job description and the responsibility of a healer. GNB and DRK already may have to sacrifice weave slots during burst to mitigate as part of their responsibility, healers having an actual rotation that gets disrupted wouldn't be all that big a deal outside someone being completely parse-brained.

This is already a thing for some healers. SGE for example has Toxicon as their movement skill, but they have to ensure they have the resources. If they don't, then they have to build it up before movement is required or they can't keep the GCD rolling. However, building this resource requires non-offensive GCDs, so they need to try to apply it during downtimes. SCH has the ability to damage on the move as well with Ruin 2 + Energy Drain, which is actually a DPS increase over Broil IV, but you lose an Aetherflow charge that could be used for support, or you can just use Ruin 2 and lose a bit of DPS. These kind of choices are already present for healers in FFXIV.

Considering SCH can now use Energy Drain with Broil IV, using Ruin II at all is a loss compared to ShB. We're all happy that Ruin II exists, same with Toxikon (albeit that is its own can of worms), but that still doesn't stop our filler being 90% Glaroilificosis. Ruin II is a movement tool, not a rotational skill, same with Toxikon, so dismissing the complaints of pressing the same button over and over again because we have this one button that we MAY have to press (and ideally not want to press with Ruin II) every 20s isn't a comfort.

And this loss would be even greater if healers had more ways to deal damage.

Not necessarily true.

Let's say I have a skillset with just 3 buttons; a GCD with a 5s cooldown (so used every 2nd GCD) and 700 potency, a standard GCD attack with 100 potency, and a heal. The "rotation" is about 400 ppgcd, but if I needed to heal, I would use the heal whenever that GCD is on cooldown, meaning I only lost 100 potency, not 400. Even if I healed when it's off cooldown, I lost an average of 350 potency (which isn't strictly true, if I still used that cooldown just as a boss became untargetable or dying, I still got the full 700). Compare that to just having 1 GCD that's always doing 400 potency, if I have to heal, I always lose 400 potency, so in fact you don't lose more damage if you have more damage options, you lose less.

Someone correct my math here, I'm too tired to correct it.