Healers need an overhaul

[Aravell]

It's why I think having all their GCDs be damage neutral via nourishing the Blood Lily makes sense. That generates ACTUAL choice. Choice they don't (in practice) have right now. Sure, there's a "choice" but the "choice" is "doing it wrong".

The solution to avoiding the oGCD bloat IS making heals damage neutral. In a world where, say, Succor was damage neutral, it would actually be more worth casting and would reduce the need for things like Whispering Dawn or Indom.

For there to be meaningful choice, there has to be a variety of outcomes. The current situation is either you're right (this gives me damage) or you're wrong (this doesn't give me damage), in a world where all heals are damage neutral, there is only one choice because everything gives you damage, that's not meaningful choices. Picking either Afflatus Rapture or Medica becomes a meaningless choice when they both do the same thing (give you damage) because they become essentially the same thing. I maintain my position that people who think casting GCD heals when needed is a waste has a personal problem that the game should not design around.

As for skill ceiling: Some people like their skill ceiling to be based around picking heals smartly, not juggling damage buttons/a damage rotation...

I didn't mention damage buttons or a damage rotation once in my entire post. Don't push that idea onto me. I said in my post that part of being a skilled healer in previous expansions is by cutting down on unnecessary heals and freeing up extra time to do other things, that looks like I'm advocating for "smart use of healing" and not "damage rotations".

[Eisi]

Well there is no alternative. One of us needs to design actual playable mods with new healers for people to find out how they actually play because theorizing has reached its limit and goes in circles now.

True design only works when you can take the first step into actuality and then continue mutating and refining that object. It needs to be more than ideas peepz.

[OM3GA-Z3RO]

But the devs are too scared to do that.

[Shurrikhan]

E.g. WHMs use Lily heals even though they are GCDs, but despite them being identical to Medica and Cure 2, they AVOID using Medica and Cure 2 because they are not damage neutral.

That's because there is no "Avoid GCDs" rule, in itself; that's at best an indirect indicator... which does not function for/on WHM.

There is only "avoid excess at-cost healing". As you noted, Lilies have no cost (until less than 90 seconds remain in the fight), so they're not avoided. It's that simple.

People speak about how bad homogenization is, but when someone points out "So we can do this thing on one Job that's different", it's attacked.

Which depends on the quality of the thing being suggested, not on the mere fact that it may be different.

Yes, context will always matter...

If you suggest something that takes far, far more effort with zero advantage (e.g., no other ways to leverage that complexity that could, even if with the same on-paper power, result in an advantage in practice when optimized), then yes, it will be shot down unless you indicate that similar changes would be happening to the other healers as not to simply put the affected one on a "To be Avoided" list. (Though even then, the fact that those components offer virtually nothing to warrant their complexity might still cause a poor reaction to the suggestion.)

If you suggest something that just does what another job but better (more easily, more leveragably, or at a better fit with content, etc.), then it'll likewise probably be shot down unless you indicate similar changes being made to the other healers.

...But let's not conflate "I don't like <Idea A>" with "I don't like differences among healers."

It's why I think having all their GCDs be damage neutral via nourishing the Blood Lily makes sense. That generates ACTUAL choice. Choice they don't (in practice) have right now. Sure, there's a "choice" but the "choice" is "doing it wrong".

The solution to avoiding the oGCD bloat IS making heals damage neutral. In a world where, say, Succor was damage neutral, it would actually be more worth casting and would reduce the need for things like Whispering Dawn or Indom.

Current "choice" is not between which skills to use over time, agreed, but there is at least (brief-lived) choice over when to use them.

The problem is that the relevant emergencies are so few and scripted (in WHM's case, solely for mobility, the need for which is almost only ever tightly scripted) and being overconservative (using a GCD heal on the expectation that you'll need the Lily for later, only to end up thereby needing to use the Lily before overcap without needing its mobility or burst healing*) is so heavily punished.

*Inb4 "They're not burst!!!" Yes, I realize Lily heals are identical to their normal analogs aside from their being MP-free, instant-cast, and damage-neutral. In other contexts, though, any of those things would already matter, not just the last.

This "burst healing", for those who remember ARR/HW, can be featured from a simple a matter as being able to pre-cast a normal, casted heal to land just after, say, the first of a two-hit TB and then to follow it up with another hefty heal instantly such that a mechanic that would have needed a timely tank-swap can now be done with a 1|5|2 comp.

Such can be powerful, even if our contexts have made us since forget anything beyond rDPS and the occasional mechanic-hard-countering ability. Which sucks, by the way. Without sufficient damage intake, it's very hard to make space for healing nuance or to accentuate soft utilities.

But the result of what you're suggesting would be to replace choice in timing (X must be used, but you determine when) and the gambling that may (even if only for a few runs) involve... with a broader selection of choices that... make little difference anyways. I feel like it'd be slightly better, but far from sufficient. We both agree that we need more damage, and that MP management probably shouldn't just be a joke; even with those somehow fixed, though, I suspect something more and essential would be missing before this could provide any significant increase in the breadth-x-depth of choice available to healers. For now, you'd lose nearly as much in depth and impact, I suspect, as you'd gain in breadth.


More importantly, though, I don't want to further roll over with this insistence on damage-neutrality. The more we make everything damage-neutral, the more we're just effectively pre-paying for all our damage potential. Sure, now, none of our GCD heals cost any damage... but because our offensive potency would almost certainly be balanced to keep us at roughly the same maximum total HPS + DPS against low damage intake, you'd simply have reduced healers' sense of progression over a fight.

Stark damage-neutrality is effectively just a way to replace (the starting, and thereby unavoidable / most important) part of that 'ramp' of healers' total effective output as they get better at handling a fight with (A) taxation and (B) a single goliath stair-step. It's... not a good thing.

And the only reason we're as a community thinking so much about daMagE-neUtraL GCDs right now is simply that so many still somehow confuse Lilies with being functionally "GCDs(-and-therefore-at-cost)" instead of simply a WHM's functional analog to "oGCDs(-with-thereby-free-healing)" with bonus utility attached (mobility and at least a filler attack's worth of MP saved each).
They're... CDs. They fill the same function as the other healers'... CDs. They just pack more compound utility than most.

[Zarkovitch]

Just make tank rotation on healers. gcd dmg, ogcd heals. Nowdays this job need a fresh gameplay and meta is DMG on hard content. The pressing 3 buttons for dmg gameplay seem not fun. It's just a idea i'm not a game designer.

[Eisi]

I'm not afraid to ask: What does "ppgcd" mean?

[Shurrikhan]

I'm not afraid to ask: What does "ppgcd" mean?

Potency per GCD.

(See also p/gcd or %AP/gcd or %SP/gcd in WoW, or PPR (power per round) in other MMOs.)

Now, is that, too, ambiguous, in terms of what that'd mean for a given job? A little bit. PPGCD accounts for the contributions of GCD DoTs/CDs/AAs averaged across all GDDs but tends to focus on the potency floor or the amount of potential lost for each GCD of uptime lost.

PPM (potency per minute), on the other hand, includes everything (including oGCDs) by default (one would say "Spell PPM" or "GCD PPM" otherwise), and tends to be the term mentioned when considering how much potency per minute can be put out with the fewest GCDs.

To use the earlier ARR example, SCH's damage decayed less from each GCD lost because so much of its damage was clustered into fewer GCDs (due to its 4 DoTs and mere 100-potency filler, opposite WHM's 2 DoTs and 180-potency filler).

I.e., I want healers to have less free healing but more damage available per average GCD in which they deal damage. (Similarly, I'd like tanks to have a higher damage ceiling but less free mitigation, and to again have the means to sacrifice damage for further mitigation, but that's tangential.)

[Renathras]

For there to be meaningful choice, there has to be a variety of outcomes. The current situation is either you're right (this gives me damage) or you're wrong (this doesn't give me damage), in a world where all heals are damage neutral, there is only one choice because everything gives you damage, that's not meaningful choices.

Uh...I think we aren't considering the concept of "choice" to be the same thing.

RIGHT NOW:

Need an AOE heal and have 1 Lily up. Here are your choices:

1) Cast Glare (someone will die): Wrong
2) Cast Medica 1 (no one will die, but you do less damage): Wrong
3) Cast Rapture (no one will die, you will not do less damage): Right

There is only one right answer here. Your other "choices" are both wrong.

Now, suppose all GCD heals were damage neutral. NOW you have some serious choices:

Do you have a lot of MP and no need for movement? Medica might be the right choice.
Do you have a lot of MP and no immediate need for movement, but an upcoming movement where you will need an AOE heal? Medica is now really attractive since you may want to save the Rapture.
...but you could ALSO choose Medica 2 here and have the HoT carry over for that future damage.
Do you need to move right now? Rapture is a good choice in this case.
Are you low on MP? Now Medica is a lesser choice and Rapture might be the better one.
Do you need to move in the near future but NOT have to AOE heal at that time? Rapture could work now since you can use Regen on the Tank then for your movement tool.

These are actually meaningful choices related to what's happening in the fight and going to happen, and what resources you have available. It rewards fight knowledge, both of what's happening and what's going to happen, which is what "skill expression" is all about.

I maintain my position that people who think casting GCD heals when needed is a waste has a personal problem that the game should not design around.

I do agree, but I'm working in reality, not just what I think reality should be.

I didn't mention damage buttons or a damage rotation once in my entire post.

I didn't say you did. Though I also meant this more generically as "to be based around damage". If you prefer, substitute that as such:

"As for skill ceiling: Some people like their skill ceiling to be based around picking heals smartly, not dealing damage"

I said in my post that part of being a skilled healer in previous expansions is by cutting down on unnecessary heals and freeing up extra time to do other things, that looks like I'm advocating for "smart use of healing" and not "damage rotations".

To be fair, the "other things" was...

There's no skill ceiling
Part of being skilled at healer in previous expansion is cutting down on the amount of necessary healing that you do, that frees you time to help the party do damage. By making everything damage neutral or a gain, you lose this meaningful part of mastering a healer. Anyone halfway decent at any other role can easily pick up a healer and do almost as good as any veteran because there is no wrong decision to make.

"help the party do damage", "this meaningful part of mastering a healer"

Maybe you can clarify, as that seemed to me you saying "The point of mastering a healer is maximizing your damage". The mechanism is "by choosing the most optimum heal for the situation to thus free you up for dealing more damage", but that still makes the purpose of your optimization to optimize/increase damage, not healing.

This may seem a semantics argument, but I think it's significant. Is your focus to most efficiently and effectively heal your party, or to maximize your damage contribution in the fight? As those are not exactly the same thing, even if they share a road.

.

For me as an example, I try to use the most efficient heals since I grew up in older school MMOs where MP was actually a limiting resource that mattered, and I also tailor my healing to the situation - I'm not afraid to use GCD heals, especially stuff like barriers in prog runs of PF Ex where I know a bunch of people are probably going to mess up a mechanic and just try to get them through it as best as I can. Cast time is relevant in some situations where you need a faster casting or Instant spell to save someone from death, etc.

While the glut of oGCD heals makes this largely meaningless, it isn't in all situations, and it's where I think the gameplay should more focus. BLU healing is all GCD, for example, which has a very different feel to it. And White Wind DOES make it where MP management is relevant if you're having to use a lot of it, which is why you should spot cure with Pom Cure and use things like Exuviation or Angel Snack as situations demand it, and likewise Gobskin for large damage.

I don't do this "so I can do more damage". To me, when I have nothing to do, I fill dead GCDs with Glare, because the alternative (doing nothing) is just stupid.

But I don't try to make my healing as efficient as possible so I can do more damage. To me, the doing more damage is "when I have nothing else better to do" as opposed to something I'm actively trying to maximize. It's the consolation prize when I don't need to heal, not a reward or something I enjoy. It's like when I finish all my allotted work for the day but can't go home from work yet, so I get to sit and relax and maybe prep stuff for the next day. Those aren't things that are "fun" or "rewarding", it's just the thing to do when I don't have to do the thing I'm actually getting paid to do since it's all done for the time being. "Hurry up and wait", as is often said in the military.

While choosing the correct heals DOES work to maximize this, it isn't my focus or concern. I'm not sure a good way to explain this other than that saying about "the journey or the destination". Which one you're most wanting to focus on is actually relevant, even if they're both leading to the same general result. It also effects what changes you advocate for.

For my part, the changes I'd focus on would be to make all GCD heals viable - something that isn't possible when most of them aren't damage neutral, making oGCD heals or the few damage neutral GCD ones the only "right" choices in most situations. Right now, there's never ANY case you'd pick Medica 1 on WHM if you have a Lily up. There's also no case you'd pick Medica 1 over Medica 2. The two things that would resolve this problem, imo, would be (1) have Medica 1 trait up to Medica 2 and (2) have all GCD heals nourish the Blood Lily. Now you have a choice based on what MP you have, what healing needs may be upcoming, what movement may be upcoming, and over what pace the healing needs to occur (fast or if you have time to wait for HoT ticks). Those are relevant and interesting considerations that we, at present, do not have.

We need to trim out the heals that overlap too much, even if that means slight modifications to the other heals, and to make them all viable to use.

Part of this is removing/traiting some abilities - Medica 1 into Medica 2, for example, as Medical 2 does more healing, even with the first tick happening on application, meaning there's no case Medica 1 would be used unless you needed one of the spells and had exactly 900-999 MP but not one more nor less.

Part of this is removing the damage advantage that some carry - this means making oGCDs and Lilies NOT damage neutral OR making other GCD heals damage neutral. As I can't imagine a world where oGCDs are made damage negative (e.g. "Indominability decreases the damage of the next Broil by 100%") as practical, the logical alternative would be making the other GCDs damage neutral.

The third thing is encounter design, as we've both said, but as we both agree on that, I'm not sure it's necessary to mention here.

[Aravell]

Uh...I think we aren't considering the concept of "choice" to be the same thing.

RIGHT NOW:

Need an AOE heal and have 1 Lily up. Here are your choices:

1) Cast Glare (someone will die): Wrong
2) Cast Medica 1 (no one will die, but you do less damage): Wrong
3) Cast Rapture (no one will die, you will not do less damage): Right

There is only one right answer here. Your other "choices" are both wrong.

That's exactly what I said. You said it yourself, out of all 3 options, only 1 does your job and also gives you damage. So the only choice available to you right now is the right choice (gives you damage) or the wrong choice (doesn't give you damage).

Now, suppose all GCD heals were damage neutral. NOW you have some serious choices:

Do you have a lot of MP and no need for movement? Medica might be the right choice.
Do you have a lot of MP and no immediate need for movement, but an upcoming movement where you will need an AOE heal? Medica is now really attractive since you may want to save the Rapture.
...but you could ALSO choose Medica 2 here and have the HoT carry over for that future damage.
Do you need to move right now? Rapture is a good choice in this case.
Are you low on MP? Now Medica is a lesser choice and Rapture might be the better one.
Do you need to move in the near future but NOT have to AOE heal at that time? Rapture could work now since you can use Regen on the Tank then for your movement tool..

My point is that you can already do all these things right now, you have the freedom to make any of these choices right now. Why don't people make most of these choices? Because it loses them damage. That's log mentality and it's damaging the healer role, if you need to heal, you heal, it shouldn't matter if it loses you damage as damage shouldn't be your main focus in the first place. Making more and more heals damage neutral only feeds into this log mentality and hurts the role further, even now you'd sometimes see healers that do literally no healing if they have no free healing available, they'd rather let the party die than cast anything that loses them damage.

Making everything as damage neutral as possible also removes the need for choice. You say you'd have more choices available, yes, you would, but all the reasons for making those choices will be completely removed. Why consider your next move when they all do the same thing? If you cast a damage neutral Cure III here to top up the party, what's the difference between that and using an Afflatus Solace under Plenary?

Maybe you can clarify, as that seemed to me you saying "The point of mastering a healer is maximizing your damage". The mechanism is "by choosing the most optimum heal for the situation to thus free you up for dealing more damage", but that still makes the purpose of your optimization to optimize/increase damage, not healing.

This may seem a semantics argument, but I think it's significant. Is your focus to most efficiently and effectively heal your party, or to maximize your damage contribution in the fight? As those are not exactly the same thing, even if they share a road.

I mentioned helping the party do damage because that's literally the only thing you can do if you free up space where you don't need to heal. We have no support spells to keep up, we have no upkeep spells, we have no debilitating spells to use according to the situation. Free space = damage, that's how this game is designed. I didn't say I like it this way, it's just what it is. I have a lot more fun planning out healing and being as efficient as possible, which is why I only play healer for progression as there's nothing else to strive for after healing is efficient. This is also why I advocate for changing job design in addition to encounter design.

[Renathras]

Just a couple points on this one:

There is only "avoid excess at-cost healing". As you noted, Lilies have no cost (until less than 90 seconds remain in the fight), so they're not avoided. It's that simple.

In practice, this amounts to an "avoid GCD healing unless there's absolutely no other option; Lilies get a pass".

As I said above, I'm trying to operate in the real world here, not in what I think it should be. Yes, I think it shouldn't be this way...but I recognize it IS this way, and that means we have to design around that until such time as we can convince people to change.

Which depends on the quality of the thing being suggested, not on the mere fact that it may be different.
...
...But let's not conflate "I don't like <Idea A>" with "I don't like differences among healers."

Right, but I address that. It's just ignored by people who don't want the solution.

Suppose it was possible - just pretend for a moment that it was - to design two perfectly balanced Healer Jobs/Classes in a game. They do the same healing, to the same number/specific targets, and they both do the same damage.

In one case, the class has mostly healing spells. They have a variety so they can approach situations in different ways, etc. And they have few damage spells. Since this is a "arguing the endpoint" example, let's say they have 10 healing spells and 1 damage spell, and can output overall 10,000 healing and 5,000 damage.

In the other case, the class has mostly damage spells, with only a clutch emergency heal, and they heal the party while executing their rotation. Let's say they have 10 damage spells and 1 healing spell, and can output overall 10,000 healing and 5,000 damage.

For the sake of argument, let's say this is all effective healing/damage, etc. Basically, the point being to design two healers that both arrive at the same endpoint, but arrive there different ways. Like if Disc and Holy Priest were both balanced in WoW to do the same damage and healing, but one heals by properly doing a damage rotation and the other heals by smart choice of healing tools. Or the RIFT Chloromancer which also worked by doing damage to heal, but was a Mage class. So imagine, for example, a BLM o9r RDM where its attacks heal, so to keep the party alive, it must do its DPS rotation properly.

In both cases, the objective is the same - do the appropriate amount of healing to keep the party alive, do damage to the enemy as able. But the focus is different. As I said in my prior post. The latter appeals to those who like to engage with a DPS rotation, the former to those who do not and prefer more situational and reactive decision making based on the current situation on the field.

Two completely different playstyles, but both having a place and both working within the role.

.

Now, I recognize in practice things are seldom perfectly balanced, but they also don't have to be exact on it, as long as they're in the right general ballpark that all of them are viable and none are being blacklisted, something that is entirely possible to do.

That's not one doing what another does better. It's them both doing the same thing, but with a different playstyle.

BLM and SAM both do (roughly) comparable damage, but SAM players tend to like it better than BLM and BLM players tend to like it better than SAM. Why? "they're just the same", right? Except they aren't. How they do it is different. And that's relevant to players.

The problem is that the relevant emergencies are so few and scripted

This I agree with 100%, though.

Encounter design MUST change.

Pass/fail mechanics not only eliminate the need for healers (when done correctly doing no damage, I mean), they also lead to generally weird gameplay, especially when in a tab-targeting type MMO.

There's just no case sustained Cure 2 casts (more than 1 or 2, such that Solace can't answer that problem on its own) are needed, or Cure 3 is needed. The "Tradeoff" of "Rapture or Cure 3" is never relevant in practice. That needs to change somehow, and part of that requires addressing encounter design and part of it damage neutrality of abilities and part of it overlapping abilities.

Medica 2 and Cure 3 can both exist and be a choice because there are relevant times to use one or the other - Cure 3 if a bit more healing needs to be done NOW and the party can stack, Medica 2 if the healing can be over a little time and/or the party is more spread out.

Rapture breaks that equation because it adds in MP efficiency, movement efficiency, and more damage, which makes it always the better choice UNLESS you'd need to use Cure 3. And there's just no time in the current game you MUST use Cure 3, it's just slightly more efficient than Medica and slightly faster than Medica 2, neither of which are relevant under current encounter design.

.

I don't think the distinction in choosing heals should be "this one does more damage". That shouldn't be relevant.

It should be "which heal is most efficient for the given situation, factoring in things like current MP, what resources I have, and what the fight will require from me in the near-term future".

But, the reason I suggest doing something different with each of the healers (the "endpoint" example above is an extreme case I'm not advocating for, btw, it was just a way of saying "we can do this without it leading to blacklisting or other things, but where each type of player has a type of rotation/gameplay they actually enjoy engaging with") is that having them all the same doesn't work. It alienates a lot of people who want something different. But changing them all to be exactly the same AGAIN just in a different way doesn't fix that. It just alienates a different set of people.

Instead, we should embrace some difference between the. If SGE became a Chloromancer, would people be upset? Sure, some would, but give that's what most people were expecting from the Job to begin with, it would probably make things better for us collectively, not worse. "But we can't do that without also making WHM a Chloromancer!!"? Why? Why can't we change the one and not the other? "Because some people will be bored!" You mean the people who are bored now and if we can't reach a compromise and thus stay with the status quo will still be bored? At worst, they're no worse off than they are now. "But the people who like the aesthetics of WHM but want the SGE/Chloromancer gameplay!" So maybe some people like BLM's aesthetic but don't like the gameplay, they like RDM's. Do we change BLM to play like RDM to suit those people? No. No we do not.

Every role in this game other than Healers (and increasingly Tanks, but they're not QUITE as bad as Healers) has to make this choice. You like NIN's rotation but don't like Naruto/ninjas? Tough luck for you, it seems. You like Naruto/ninjas but hate NIN's rotation? Also tough luck for you. You like Rogues but hate ninja magic and ninja aesthetic in general? Double tough luck for you. You like rogues/ninjas but also want a rigid static rotation like DRG? Everyone's going to tell you to play DRG because we aren't going to see NIN changed to play like DRG.

Healers are, ironically, spoiled. By all having the same rotation, it means you get to pick the aesthetic you want right now and get the same (general) gameplay experience.

And people are complaining about that.

An inevitability of changing it to where the healers are not homogenized means that there WILL be people who like the aesthetics of one but the gameplay of another. And at the end of the day, we have to accept that disconnect will exist and some people will not be perfectly happy and have to choose between the gameplay or the aesthetic - like literally every other role in the game has to do. It's kind of the nature of the beast. Even in a game like WoW where classes have specs, you still get a different aesthetic. Maybe you like Frost Mage's gameplay but like Arcane Mage's spell animations better. You have to make a choice, you can't have both of them at the same time.

So the "aesthetics but want the different gameplay" isn't a valid counter, as it wouldn't be considered valid in any other discussion of any other class/role, and is something that is inevitable unless we continue to homogenize, which is something everyone says they don't want.

.

So, given all that, there's no reason NOT to use something like the "4 Healers model". I say it all the time, but it's the best solution since it actually does address the problems people cite we have now, and combined with encounter design changes that need to happen, would make healing in this game better and appealing to more people while not alienating people who enjoy it currently.

It really is the best solution, and there just aren't good counters being argued as to why it isn't.

.

EDIT:

That's exactly what I said. You said it yourself, out of all 3 options, only 1 does your job and also gives you damage. So the only choice available to you right now is the right choice (gives you damage) or the wrong choice (doesn't give you damage).

...y...yes?

But I feel like we're drawing different conclusions here.

My conclusion is this is bad, because it means there's no choice.

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, your conclusion seems to be that this is good, because only one right choice means skill expression. That you think every other choice being wrong is...somehow choice. Which makes no sense to me because every other choice being wrong means there IS no choice.

That's log mentality and it's damaging the healer role,

I don't disagree, but unless you have a wide angle mind-control device available to you to change it, I'm not seeing how that's relevant. It's the reality we're in. Unless you have a proposed way of changing the minds of (literally) millions of people, what of it?

Again, I'm working within the reality that is, not the reality I'd prefer exist. My efforts may be to nudge this reality to be closer to that, but I'm still proposing solutions that work within the current reality. And the current reality is "what loses you damage is wrong, don't do it unless it's absolutely necessary" as the prevailing thought...because it IS.

Making everything as damage neutral as possible also removes the need for choice.

No, it doesn't.

It's what ALLOWS choice.

Until you can change the minds of, again literally, millions of people, there is no choice unless they're damage neutral. Without that, there's only being right or wrong, there is no choice. The reasons for making those choices would exist, they wouldn't be DAMAGE. That's the point.

You say yourself that "it shouldn't matter if it loses you damage as damage shouldn't be your main focus in the first place".

That's LITERALLY what making the damage neutral would do - losing damage wouldn't matter (since it wouldn't exist aside from you just not pushing buttons), and thus damage wouldn't be your main focus. Making them damage neutral literally achieves what you say should be going on - that Healers should be concerned with healing and not what loses them damage and shouldn't be mainly focused on damage. Damage neutral GCD heals accomplishes this very goal.

Why consider your next move when they all do the same thing?

That's the point, they don't all do the same thing.

They do the same DAMAGE, but they don't do the same HPM, don't do the same HPS, and don't have the same restriction on movement. THOSE would be the metrics you'd be using for your choices. Not damage - which you said yourself shouldn't be factored into the choice at all - but movement, MP efficiency, and/or healing speed. (This is keeping it simple, I could obviously point out the difference between a 400 potency heal vs a 200 potency heal + 200 potency shield and so on; there are even more choices/metrics here than just these three.)

If you cast a damage neutral Cure III here to top up the party, what's the difference between that and using an Afflatus Solace under Plenary?

Cure 3 doesn't allow movement and costs 1500 MP where Afflatus Solace under Plenary requires burning the Plenary CD and can be done during movement while not costing MP.

Are those NOT differences? How are they not?

If you don't want healing focused on damage, why do you want Solace to be damage neutral and Cure 3 not to be?

If you don't want healing focused on damage, what DO you want it to be focused on? Damage neutral means it would be focused on resource use (MP, Lilies) and movement requirements, HPS (how fast healing is needed) vs HPM (the most efficient healing for the MP cost), eHP (using a heal with a barrier) vs direct healing (filling up the green bar; basically the Emergency Tactics situation of do you need a barrier on top of your health bars or do you just need to fill up empty health bars faster).

Are those NOT things you want factored into choice? Why not?

If not, what DO you want factored in that isn't damage? And why would making damage neutral harm this?

I mentioned helping the party do damage because that's literally the only thing you can do if you free up space where you don't need to heal. We have no support spells to keep up, we have no upkeep spells, we have no debilitating spells to use according to the situation. Free space = damage, that's how this game is designed. I didn't say I like it this way, it's just what it is. I have a lot more fun planning out healing and being as efficient as possible, which is why I only play healer for progression as there's nothing else to strive for after healing is efficient. This is also why I advocate for changing job design in addition to encounter design.

Then we're largely of a mind on this and it was just a misunderstanding based on word choice.