Healers need damage recapture in order to get more involved dps rotations

[Atmaweapon510]

Before anything, take one good look at fflogs to see the difference between the average and top dps performers between all roles:

For most of the DPS, the difference is around 10%, in flat damage terms, about 1000-1200 more dps; BLM, BRD, and DNC are the main outliers, topping out at 14% and a 1400 dps difference between average and top (BRD and DNC are entirely based on party composition. BLM tops out around 1300 and a 12.7% dps difference).
For tanks, the difference is still around 10%, the flat damage difference being 600-700.

For healers however, the damage difference between the two starts at 22% for WHM going up to 27% on SCH, the numerical difference going from 1250 to 1500. In short, despite healers having minimalist dps rotations, bringing a good healer over an average one is a greater dps gain than a good dps over an average dps job.

Given that SQEX is kind of squeamish about rocking the boat, you can see how precarious the situation is regarding healer dps. Having an involved dps rotation on top of healing duties will only widen the gap between average and top healers.

It's plainly obvious why this dps gap exists, GCD healing. Whether you misjudge the situation and need to throw out extra healing, or your shield healer needs to throw out shields to survive every raidwide, GCD healing involves sacrificing dps which ends up being a bigger penalty than performing a dps rotation poorly. Unless healers get something to make up for this fact, balance regarding healing is too volatile to give them a dps rotation. Heck, even now the most obnoxious thing you can witness in a party is a parsing healer that simply lets people die to incoming raidwides in an attempt to squeeze out more dps, which leads to a wipe if both healers have this mindset.

In order for healers to get an involved dps rotation, every healer needs a damage recapture mechanic on their GCD heal akin to WHM lilies. Call it Cleric Stance or Faith or whatever, but healers need system that boosts their damage when they cast a heal. A straightforward and generic system for all healers is best, you don't want stuff like "SGE gets more damage from Toxicosis when shields are broken" because
1) The goal is to lower the difference between top and average dps. Adding different conditionals per isn't conducive to that goal.
2) Balancing all of this would waste dev time when the goal is to have something to do when people aren't taking damage.

For example:
Casting a GCD heal gives you 5 stacks of Faith, increasing the potency of your next Single target damage spell by X or AoE damage spell by Y. (X and Y are 20% of your filler damage spells.)

So with this example, every 6th spell can be a heal without losing dps. Freecure has a purpose on WHM again, and healers can medica on every single raidwide attack without losing dps. This gives plenty of leeway for a dps rotation, and the way Faith works means you aren't pooling it to spend on heavy hitting spells and you aren't constantly spamming heals during downtime (most of the time, you'll throw out 2 heals during downtime anyways.)

Also, assume that Energy Drain is removed as it breaks this sort of system as SCH is then incentivized to only use GCD heals and spend every Aetherflow on ED.

[VentVanitas]

No to everything, to be honest. I don't see how any of this is at all necessary.

[AnotherPerson]

Before anything, take one good look at fflogs to see the difference between the average and top dps performers between all roles:

For most of the DPS, the difference is around 10%, in flat damage terms, about 1000-1200 more dps; BLM, BRD, and DNC are the main outliers, topping out at 14% and a 1400 dps difference between average and top (BRD and DNC are entirely based on party composition. BLM tops out around 1300 and a 12.7% dps difference).
For tanks, the difference is still around 10%, the flat damage difference being 600-700.

For healers however, the damage difference between the two starts at 22% for WHM going up to 27% on SCH, the numerical difference going from 1250 to 1500. In short, despite healers having minimalist dps rotations, bringing a good healer over an average one is a greater dps gain than a good dps over an average dps job.

Given that SQEX is kind of squeamish about rocking the boat, you can see how precarious the situation is regarding healer dps. Having an involved dps rotation on top of healing duties will only widen the gap between average and top healers.

Actually, having a bigger DPS rotation can reduce the numerical difference. The reason why healer DPS differences is so vast is because the best healers can minimize unnecessary healing and allow them to press Dosis / Glare / Malefic / Broil many more times than another healer can.
The reason why having more DPS buttons reduces this numerical difference is because most of the damage will no longer be made through constantly pressing your main attack skill. It could be through a burst damage skill or a long term DoT.

Having more of these skills mean you need to press your main attack skill far less for the same amount of percentage of total damage the healer can output.

1. For example, let's take sage. Sage has both Dosis and Phlegma. In 15 GCDs, if they use Phlegma II twice and Dosis III 13 times, they have a total DPS of (600 x 2) + (330 x 13) = 5490 potency.
Say they can only have 6 GCD uptime out of the 15. As long as they use their hard hitting attacks first like Phlegma II, they can get up to (600 x 2) + (330 x 4) = 2520 potency.

2. Now say Sage actually has a second DPS skill with a potency of 600 and a DoT with a potency of 700. In the same 15 GCDs, they have a total DPS of (600 x2) + (600) + (700) + (330 x 11) = 6130 potency.
Say they can only have 6 GCD uptime out of the 15. Again, they only use the hard hitting skills first. (600 x 2) + (600) + (700) + (330 x 2) = 3160 potency.

2520 / 5490 = 45.90% maximum output
3160 / 6130 = 51.54% maximum output

As you can see from the latter example, having more DPS skills in the same GCD uptime constraints will shrink the DPS variance as a result from minimizing the amount of DPS coming from the main attack button and moving the numbers around to other DPS skills that are more readily accessible and powerful. Through adding more DPS skills, the variance of the highest DPS healer and the average healer has been reduced by 6%.
If you want to go further, assuming healer total DPS is roughly the same, the amount of DPS coming from their main attack skill will be reduced further to rebalance the total amount of potency a healer can output.

2a. While keeping all the attack skills, we readjust the potency of the main attack skill down to keep total healer DPS roughly the same. Dosis will be reduced from 330 potency to 280 potency.
In the same 15 GCDs, they have a total DPS of (600 x2) + (600) + (700) + (280 x 11) = 5580 potency.
Say they can only have 6 GCD uptime out of the 15. Again, they only use the hard hitting skills first. (600 x 2) + (600) + (700) + (280x 2) = 3060 potency.

3060 / 5580 = 54.84% maximum output.

Now the variance has been reduced by another 3%. This reduces the total DPS variance by 9%.

[Atmaweapon510]

You could have just said "Phlegma on a 15 second cooldown" you know.

[AnotherPerson]

You could have just said "Phlegma on a 15 second cooldown" you know.

Well, no. I actually do want something other than Phlegma in Sage's toolkit. Kardia is still underwhelming to use because of how the current toolkit is designed is not very compatible to its GCD healing. Lowering the cooldown of Phlegma from 45 to 15 doesn't solve that issue. All it does is make the DPS variance lower without introducing an engaging toolkit that works well with Eukrasian shields. Pneuma is a step in the right direction to make GCD heals work on Sage, but it's also very underwhelming for what it does simply because it's a healing skill, not something you actively use on the DPS rotation. The addersting gauge is also equally as underwhelming to use. 3 charges every battle? Discouraged from use after spending the initial 3 charges because it's a DPS loss if you try to gain more? No thanks.

[Atmaweapon510]

Shields and mitigation are definitely one of those things that you really don't want to tie to damage rotation and again, this damage recapture mechanic is about opening up healer kits to an actual damage rotation. Tying damage and healing together needs a lot of leeway to not get situations like Assize and Earthly Star which you press on cooldown for damage and then adjust your healing cycle around.

As of now, healers have severe button bloat with a bunch of different ogcd heals, leaving no room for more damage buttons for an actual rotation. A lot of GCD heals also become nearly vestigial the higher level you are. A damage recapture mechanic allows you to simply keep using your older buttons, especially Cure I equivalents which become damage and MP neutral weave resources in a rotation, a good healer can constantly weave them in to reduce healing load (Imagine that, a good healer naturally makes life easier for everyone rather than keeping people at the edge of their seat when two healers play the GCD chicken game). SGE for example, can have Soteria, Krasis, and maybe even Physis folded into other abilities or repurposed as part of a damage rotation. For example:

-Panhaima and Haima cooldowns reduced to 60 seconds and hold 2 charges. Panhaima and Haima increase healing received by their targets by 20%.
-Soteria causes all party members to receive Kardia healing for a duration.
-Krasis and Physis removed.
-Phlegma grants Addersting, up to 3.
-Toxicon is an ogcd cooldown ability that still triggers Kardia.
-Eukrasian Phlegma added which consumes Addersting to enter Hypercharge-ripoff#3 mode with 5 stacks, allowing the casting of a new spell that's instant with a 1.5 second recast that also reduces the cooldown of Toxicon. Phlegma becomes a finisher that ends the mode. (E.Phlegma has a 20 second cooldown to not double up during raid buffs).
-New spell with a cooldown that deals damage, reduces the cast time of spells by 1.5 seconds, and grants a 20% recast time reduction for 10 seconds.

There, traded two healing ogcds for 2 new damage buttons. Given how the Endwalker trailer was with Alphinaud, a hypercharge spender mode seemed the best fit for SGE dps. The more flavorful ogcds of SGE are retained and repurposed a bit, Toxicon for movement is replaced by two separate instant cast modes, and the new spell mainly works like Drill in that you want to press it on cooldown to maximize dps. Soteria now fills an incredibly important role here instead of being a filler ogcd; Soteria can be combo-ed with the hypercharge rotation, tacking on massive healing to it without explicitly tying the two together, allowing you freedom whether you want to save Soteria for maximizing dps uptime through raid buffs or just need a spike in healing at any point. The new SGE rotation involves playing around with your two modes granted by E.Phlegma and the new spell recast buff that you don't want to overlap with eachother. The Hypercharge mode is flexible, while the recast buff is inflexible

[Zolvolt]

My problem with this is it creates a world where we gain "faith" stacks outside of burst and spend them all during burst and I don't want to do that.