What if Support Role was Added to FFXIV?

[Shurrikhan]

Each of AST's six cards has a place in the lore, and they would have to redo all the class quests from 30-50. They can't just remove them. Your other suggestion just reverts them. The seal system is tied to Astrodyne, and only benefits the AST. This is exactly how it needs to be since it is based on RNG, as unlucky draws will not hinder the party's dmg output.

If it hinders the AST's damage even indirectly, it's technically still hurting the party's DPS. It just doesn't hurt the member's individual meters (for all those are worth outside of... contributing to the party's DPS).

Again, encounter design of FFXIV removes the meaningfulness of these abilities, which is a big reason why they have been removed. Their removal has been staggered, and I would say a big part of that is because they wanted them to be meaningful during encounters. Just look at a skill like Repose/Sleep which players have been saying to just delete if skill/button bloat is a problem. They are still here though.

I think this touches on an interesting point, even if a tangential one: The actual design of the support tools matter also in relation to each other; clear-cut tools usable for every instance of some type of situation can easily stiffle the button efficiency or interest of other support tools that would otherwise take a more thematic bend.

Repose/Sleep, for example, could easily be made more interesting and broadly useful as, say, a typal cleanse/purge... if not for Esuna already denigrating all underlined debuffs into "solve by pressing this button." Or, imagine something akin to the old mob TP system, wherein mobs could change behaviors or perform [usually offensive] special abilities via a combination of enmity and TP. Repose/Sleep could be an interesting option by which to delay either.

(Yes, I think a non-dispellable random-target Doom, thereby forming or acting as a heal check, is more interesting in most contexts than a dispellable Doom, which typically manages only to be a check one's ability to look at their party frames after a particular cast and have predetermined which healer cleanses "top" or "bottom".)

This is quite literally what they have already done to healers. They are extremely powerful in FFXIV in terms of their supportive ability. Their downtime is another issue entirely.

1/8th uptime of a 5% raid damage increase, etc. (with only half the supports having any such tools) is "extremely powerful"?

Or, if you want to make the very reasonable case that Divination, modern Cards, and Chain Stratagem are "just rDPS"... do Rescue and Expedient somehow qualify as "extremely powerful"? Because that's all you'd really have left.