What if Support Role was Added to FFXIV?

[Shurrikhan]

We have "Support" but you wouldn't call it that because it doesn't even look like one. Healers are supposed to be "Support" but they can barely support outside of just healing/shielding. They're just 1-button DPS otherwise, and it sucks on so many levels.
AoE Esuna? Removed. Increased Skill speed & Spell speed? Removed. Restoring TP? Removed. Regenerate MP to party member? Removed. Knockback enemy? Removed and replaced with Bind. Where's Bind you ask? Removed.

I think one of the main things to keep in mind alongside all this is that, once up and balanced, support is less about additions/features than it is about interdependence. The ability to make a significantly more pleasant experience or any other unique opportunity requires creating a baseline experience that is that comparatively that much more unpleasant or lacks those otherwise accessible opportunities, and will more than likely make what feels like it should be your gameplay deferable by others' errors.

Take granting Haste (SkS/SpS), for instance. If you already had a rotational speed you like, unless the particular percentage somehow coincidentally hits upon another pace that syncs up in itself and to your combo-progress when the buff is granted... it's just been screwed over. A healer Role Action to AoE immune a knockback mechanic? For that to be significant, the fight would have to offer X more knockbacks than would otherwise seem fitting.

That's not to say designing in support functionality is always going to be futile or a matter of... mechanical racketeering (wherein your problem exists only because it was designed in, without the usual concern for thematic or mechanical cohesion/alignment/etc., just to give those tools their place), but they create a fine line devs have to then walk between feeling like a bonus when they happen and making the baseline/normal feel like crap when they don't. Ideally, one ought to get a bigger dopamine spike, so to speak, from receiving that bonus than if it had come from their own kit, despite all the additional ways that could then go wrong (and all the massive balancing headaches it'd give in trying to make that support functionality worthwhile outside of just hivemind-ed statics).

There's also the matter of "fool-proofing" some of these potential Support skills. If Rescue extended melee range and allowed for casting while moving during and for some half-second after its use, people would complain a whole lot less about being Rescued. If players had specific control over their GCD speeds, or could allow Skill/Spell speed to be "junction"-ed to only increase GCD speed if able to hit certain thresholds (otherwise/thereafter spending it all on periodic potency increases), they wouldn't mind receiving Haste. Etc., etc.