Making healers more interesting via buffs

[FOD_GS]

This is just a brainstorm, not a statement of what could or should happen. Also, focused on concepts as opposed to numbers.

Many complaints about healers stem from not having consistent need for critical thinking, and complex actions or rotations to go along with this. Most threads I see are asking for more complex DPS rotations to fill this need, followed by bickering between people about whether healers should be doing so much direct DPS or not. What most people seem to want is some added complexity to the job that is good for min/max and raids/dungeons, but not implemented in a way that is too scary or confusing to new or less skilled players that results in deaths and harassment.

As opposed to making healers do more complex DPS (rotations, positionals, conditionals), which brings about more "Green DPS" arguments, why not add DPS-related buffs to better fit within the healing/helping role? This still meets many DPS healers' goals of making fights end faster without being the direct contributor of that DPS. What quickly comes to mind is Brave and Faith. These have FF history with Brave being physical DPS boost and Faith being a magic DPS boost.

I believe that making such buffs AoE or party-wide is too simplistic. To me, this would just be boring. Also, making it single target can add complexity when determining who gets the buff when. Maybe you give Faith to the PLD for the Holy Spirit window instead of the RDM who is doing their melee combo at that time. You could really optimize based on fight and timing for best overall DPS assistance. Less skilled or comfortable healers could simple do a more basic rotation. Making duration and cooldown such that you can only have buffs on 1 or 2 people at any given time (including self) also adds something for consideration.

The buffs should not be so short that they interfere with healing, but not so long that you don't really need to think about them. The goal is to add complexity, so applying buffs should be moderate frequency. There should also be an appropriate cooldown so this isn't something that is spammed instead of <healer DPS skill>.

The buffs should not stack (neither Brave and Faith together nor buffs from another healer). This encourages healers to work out who they are responsible for, and not just a super-pad of the top parser.


Potential ways to increase complexity even further:
- Give an extra (double?) potency effect when applying to self and adjust spell/ability potencies down accordingly? This would further the gap between healers and DPS where it should be more optimal to buff the DPS as opposed to the healer, but still allow the healer to solo/duo as they do now. Maybe make a penalty take effect when Brave/Faith are learned so it doesn't punish new players that don't understand how this works. I will admit that I was one of the healers that nuked without cleric stance for 30 levels in 2.0 before I figured it out...
- Brave and Faith could share a cooldown. That way you have to think about which one to do when, in what order, and which one to apply to jobs that have multiple damage types. This does reduce the busywork of buff management slightly since it is a single cooldown to consider instead of two. It could also make mixed magic/physical DPS jobs more interesting in the future.
- The cooldown(s) and duration could be such that they do not evenly map. Perhaps it should not be possible for 1 healer to have 100% uptime on 2 members. Otherwise, it becomes a matter of which 2 DPS are covered by which healer. Having a gap means that either one person gets 100% uptime at the loss of a portion of DPS boost to another person, or the healer needs to be much more calculating in their buff application.
- I don't personally like this, but they could have diminishing potency like Embolden. This would make timing even more important, and maybe you let a buff fall off in order to have the highest potency throughout a burst window.

My biggest concern with this is that it could make AST too busy. Dealing a DPS buff in addition to card management could be a bit overwhelming. Something would likely need to be done to ease this.

I've tried to think of a good way to do this without making these healer role actions, but I can't think of anything that wouldn't result in the healer given a specific buff from becoming the required healer. I also know this sounds like it's just giving the AST card effects to the other healers (because it effectively is), but I also can't think of any other buffs other than flat DPS that wouldn't be ridiculed by the playerbase. Giving one healer DPS while giving another something like skill/spell speed or recast reduction wouldn't go over well because timing messes with people's buff lineups and rotations or the effective DPS from those buffs doesn't equal the raw DPS buff. This gets even harder if you want to plan for a 4th or 5th healer down the line. Maybe job-specific traits like additional potency, duration, a damage spikes effect, or noticeable auto-attack speed (not GCD reduction) could add some job uniqueness to it. Maybe they are on the GCD for some jobs, and oGCD for others based on their kit mapping and weave requirements. SCH and AST have a lot of oGCD stuff to do, and instant GCD application would be nifty, but maybe WHM has a trait that makes it oGCD for them.

This approach of job traits to augment role actions could also break up some of the homogeneity of healers without taking necessary things away from any of them. But that is a separate topic.