Openly admitting to ignoring the players

[SoraLuna]

Simple, I am just going to leave the job away until we get something.
It seems to be the only way for Square to even realize players dislike the job, as dumb as that may sound...

[Aword3213]

A common idea is to give healers "something to do during downtime."
Especially since good healers will have minutes of downtime, that's something that sounds sensible and jives with me more than most of the other ideas thrown around.
However...
I have no idea what that would look like.
I have no idea what kind of activity they could add that could possibly be downtime only.

Like, unless the game says "you haven't cast heals in a bit, must be downtime now" and unlocks some stuff for you until you use a GCD heal... any activity you add that's worth engaging with will be milked every possible chance, so it can't just be a downtime activity, it's gonna complicate uptime too.
But I also don't believe they would lock the activity away until you haven't been healing for a bit, because that is a terrible idea.

So I'm really at a loss here and have very little I feel I can contribute.

maybe lower our healing potency a bit?

The healers in this game are way too good at topping everyone's hp. It's way too easy and simple compared to other games. By reducing our healing potency, we will have less downtime... I guess?

Or maybe turn some of oGCD abilities into GCDs. The more oGCDs we have, the more 1 button spam we cast because we are so good at weaving.

Yeah...apparently my ideas are awful too

[Shurrikhan]

maybe lower our healing potency a bit?

The healers in this game are way too good at topping everyone's hp. It's way too easy and simple compared to other games. By reducing our healing potency, we will have less downtime... I guess?

Or maybe turn some of oGCD abilities into GCDs. The more oGCDs we have, the more 1 button spam we cast because we are so good at weaving.

Yeah...apparently my ideas are awful too

Nah, those ideas aren't bad; they would just impact the difficulty floor, which is a point of debate.

(I'd argue it's necessary to do so, but should come with a consequent learning/difficulty curve and options for direct instruction -- itself only necessary because many players would have already out-leveled their learning opportunities -- but others would argue that as long as healer APM leans significantly enough on non-healing actions, we can still manage engaging and accessible gameplay for both skilled and unskilled healers.)

It's worth also noting that as isolated changes, decreasing healing output would not decrease players' eHP (their time-to-die, so to speak), only their time-to-heal, whereas outright increasing incoming damage (without adjusting Vitality and/or Defense contribution accordingly) would decrease players' relative eHP, too.

[Ayche]

And they could give it charges so it's not something you're compelled to use right away so it can start cooling down.
Though, this kinda sounds like in practice it would be real similar to Cleric Stance, so who knows how the devs would feel about it.

I don't know if charges would be necessary, considering in trials and raids you ought to rarely get a chance to stand still for so long you could chain one after another. And it would be different from cleric stance since it does not reduce healing power or cost any healing resources other than time, which you gained by healing very well in advance.

[ItMe]

I don't know if charges would be necessary, considering in trials and raids you ought to rarely get a chance to stand still for so long you could chain one after another. And it would be different from cleric stance since it does not reduce healing power or cost any healing resources other than time, which you gained by healing very well in advance.

Fair, but who knows.
A button like that won't always come off cooldown during a time you can afford to stand around. And then the button has just created issues instead of being a downtime boredom tool.
Charges would let you use it whenever you have your downtime without you potentially losing uses because you had to hold onto it.

[Seraphor]

They're not going to give SCH multiple DoTs again. However, we've seen with Sage a novel way to implement DoTs, and a build that requires constant DPS, aka, a high damage output healer.

I think SCH should get a DoT related ability, or maybe multiple, that enhance the potency of it's DoT. This would be similar to applying multiple DoTs, but without the UI clutter.

Bring back (original) Bane for starters. Then...

Miasma - Ability, Recast - 30s, AoE 10 yalm radius
Increases the potency of any Bio effects currently applied to targets by 20.
(40 potency > 60 potency, which is up to a 180 potency buff for the duration of Bio if used immediately)

Condemnation - Ability, Recast - 3s, AoE 10 yalm radius
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100 to all enemies affected with Bio.
Additional Effect: Absorbs a portion of damage dealt as HP and restores MP
Additional Effect: Increases Faerie Gauge by 10
Aetherflow Gauge Cost: 1

Basically an AoE Energy Drain that's only effective against enemies inflicted with Bio (should be all if you're playing correctly) and would recover more HP/MP than Energy Drain if all enemies are Bio'd.

Then, a Trait:
Whenever you inflict an enemy with Bio, the next Embrace has a 10% additional chance to Crit.
So your first Bio would be a +10%, then you use Bane on a group of 5 and that gives you a +40%. If used back to back you might get both in before the next Embrace for +50% combined.