How MUCH healing can non-Healers do?

[ForsakenRoe]

For what it's worth, Ren did very specifically stat "healing ogcds" and not "every single kind of ogcd, fullstop".

And that's why I asked, 'why are we singling healers out with this change, just to 'fix' an issue with them in the most roundabout way possible', with it very likely not actually fixing the issue? Okay, let's say we now have every healing tool that is OGCD at the moment, now GCD. Every single one, even buff type stuff like Soteria or Krasis or Zoe. Even Pepsis! Let me go take a decent SGE run of mine (P8S doorboss):



So, let's be generous and say that EVERYthing is GCDs now, because the objective is to mix up how often we press our filler spell (Dosis). Personally, I'd keep stuff like Soteria, Krasis, Zoe as OGCD but we're taking it to the extreme for the example. We can see that, aside from me being kinda trash (one Soteria in an 8min fight, what are you playing at), around 60% of my skills used were just Dosis. Removing all of my damage GCDs (Dosis, E.Dosis, the Eurkasias for those E.Dosis, Toxicon, and Phlegma) leaves a total casts of 48. 48 x 2.50 (GCD) is 120 seconds worth of GCDs that would be spent on these healing tools. Exactly two minutes of extra encounter duration would be needed to fit it all in. So lets fit it in, by pruning the worst skills from our damage (that'd be the filler, Dosis). We take 48 casts of Dosis out to sub in these healing skills that we needed, leaving 83 Dosis. We then use an online calculator to find out what percentage of the total 213 casts that 83 is (because I'm lazy) and get:



...Let's call it 39%. This is still only Dosis, mind you. If we factor in Phlegma, DOT, Toxicon, the Eukrasias to access the DOT, we're going up to...



So, it is with no surprise that I can say, with evidence to back it up, that 'we will still be using over half of our GCDs on damage even if you did this'. And all of this workarounds and rebalancing healing potencies, all to desperately avoid the simple obvious solution of just making the over-half of our time, where we are doing damage, a little bit more interesting. Now, there's one situation where I'd give this idea credit. If SE actually ramped healing requirements so that the GCD heals are more required. WOW has stricter healing required even in their 'casual content', and it only goes up from there. Their 'most heals are GCDs' system works because there is so much TO heal, but even then there's time to sneak in a bit of damage. Or in some cases, like Paladin, Monk, Disc, you can do both at the same time. I hear Resto Shaman's got a talent that makes their 'GCD version of Asylum', Healing Rain, also do damage to enemies.

Oh, and there needs to be a solution to SCH. If the change happened to their fairy commands, it'd be untold levels of clunky awful feeling gameplay. If you specifically exclude the fairy from being GCD-ified, you lock SCH into being meta for the rest of time. We've already had like 6 straight years of it being a locked slot, we don't need to go back to THAT aspect of HW design thanks

[Icecylee]

And that's why I asked, 'why are we singling healers out with this change, just to 'fix' an issue with them in the most roundabout way possible'

...

So, it is with no surprise that I can say, with evidence to back it up, that 'we will still be using over half of our GCDs on damage even if you did this'. And all of this workarounds and rebalancing healing potencies, all to desperately avoid the simple obvious solution of just making the over-half of our time, where we are doing damage, a little bit more interesting.

It's less "singling healers out" and more "addressing the excessive amounts of free healing that's spread out around all roles in the game". (Also on a personal note I kind of do miss 2.x WAR having a defensive cooldown on the GCD in Inner Beast and kind of wish we had leaned more into stuff like that instead of moving entirely away from it, but that's that separate discussion entirely.)

And yeah, I don't think this one change would be the solution that fixes every problem healers in 14 have, I even acknowledges that I feel like we need more GCDs that contribute to the group's damage in the same reply. But it seems strange to me that people are so hostile to the idea of healers... spending more time on GCD heals. Or well, no, I do get it; it's because the game has actively pushed everyone into needing that mind-frame to play the role in Current 14 well. But still: it doesn't have to STAY like this. If all the healers were designed such that occasionally tossing out was not only normal, but the only way *to* deal with incoming damage, people wouldn't have to get up in arms anytime someone did it. It'd just be how you play the game. And yeah it wouldn't be a huge change, but like... even if it only winds up with you pushing dosis 10% less at best, that's still less mashing your filler spell and ultimately isn't that the direction we want to be moving in??? Again, not a perfect all encompassing solution, but imo it's one of the small steps we should be taking in parallel with other solutions.

[Silver-Strider]

It's less "singling healers out" and more "addressing the excessive amounts of free healing that's spread out around all roles in the game". (Also on a personal note I kind of do miss 2.x WAR having a defensive cooldown on the GCD in Inner Beast and kind of wish we had leaned more into stuff like that instead of moving entirely away from it, but that's that separate discussion entirely.)

And yeah, I don't think this one change would be the solution that fixes every problem healers in 14 have, I even acknowledges that I feel like we need more GCDs that contribute to the group's damage in the same reply. But it seems strange to me that people are so hostile to the idea of healers... spending more time on GCD heals. Or well, no, I do get it; it's because the game has actively pushed everyone into needing that mind-frame to play the role in Current 14 well. But still: it doesn't have to STAY like this. If all the healers were designed such that occasionally tossing out was not only normal, but the only way *to* deal with incoming damage, people wouldn't have to get up in arms anytime someone did it. It'd just be how you play the game. And yeah it wouldn't be a huge change, but like... even if it only winds up with you pushing dosis 10% less at best, that's still less mashing your filler spell and ultimately isn't that the direction we want to be moving in??? Again, not a perfect all encompassing solution, but imo it's one of the small steps we should be taking in parallel with other solutions.

Sounds like how Healers played in ARR and even then, Healers had more DPS actions and mitigation tools to juggle.

[ForsakenRoe]

And yeah it wouldn't be a huge change, but like... even if it only winds up with you pushing dosis 10% less at best, that's still less mashing your filler spell and ultimately isn't that the direction we want to be moving in??? Again, not a perfect all encompassing solution, but imo it's one of the small steps we should be taking in parallel with other solutions.

Problem is, it's a baby step that we are sat with for a whole expansion. And if we then go 'it wasn't enough of a step, go further with it', dev team will wring their hands, and go 'mmm well I dunno, cos if we consider the casual players...' and dither and delay about if they actually should follow through with it. Then another expansion later, they finally get another 10% of our Dosis casts out of the picture. It's too slow an implementation. The issue is severe enough that it warrants radical, immediate course correction. And the level of 'course correction' that I think would be needed, if done via the 'make the healing OGCDs into GCDs', would mean certain HPS checks at the end of fights, eg Terminal Relativity, J-Waves in TEA, and the like, would not be clearable anymore. They're designed to be cleared with 'use GCD healing, and mix OGCD healing in to keep up', so suddenly changing the OGCD tools to GCD means you're essentially removing a Medica/Helios of throughput from the player. Maybe there's a way to work around that from the player's side. Maybe there's a way to rebalance the OGCDs to have more potency. But again, it seems like we're going round the houses to try and solve the problem in the most roundabout way possible, all in order to avoid the simple and logical solution of 'just add some damage skills back'.

And yeh as Silver says, ARR. Or, I'd argue more apt a comparison is HW, where we had 'a couple of OGCDs' to AOE heal the party with, like Assize (used for damage only though usually, thanks Cleric Stance), Asylum, Indom, W.Dawn, and... Did AST actually have any? The bubble's regen didn't stick unless you channeled it, iirc. And Opposition extended buffs, not a HOT. Did it actually have ANY OGCD tools to heal the party, or was it just 'Essential Dignity on the tank and pray the SCH got it'? It's been so long I can't remember. I remember Disable though, they should bring that back

edit: Let me put my thoughts on 'But it seems strange to me that people are so hostile to the idea of healers... spending more time on GCD heals.', and push back against it. The problem is not 'that', 'that' is what we do in early progression. I've got no problems with throwing out a safety shield for a raidwide in week 1 prog. No 'competent healer' does, it's what we have to do to get the clear, so we do it. No, I think the problem is that as a player gets better at the fight, as a tank they get to do more damage and take less damage, as a DPS they get to do more damage, and as a healer we get to do more damage, yes, but do less healing, it's antithetical to the role's purpose. Changing all of our OGCD heals to be GCDs does not 'solve' this problem, it only delays the inevitable. It doesn't matter to me personally if 60% of my casts are Dosis, or 16% or even 6%. What matters is that, as I improved at that fight, my Dosis casts go from 40%, to 50%, to 60%. My 'reward' for getting better at the fight and my class, both in the current game and in this proposed 'solution', is that I get to press my boring damage spam skill a bit more often. THAT is what we need to address, and this proposal doesn't address it. Maybe we go down to 40% Dosis casts, like my maths said. Heck, in prog maybe we would be as low as 30%. But as we learn the fight, our 'reward' would be that we creep up to 35%, and then 40%. Players better than me could maybe even reach 50%. But that is the issue at the heart of it, the fact that the reward is 'press this one button more'.

It'd be like telling a tank 'hey you got better at the fight, okay your reward is you get to press your level 1 skill 25 more times in the fight'. No extra OGCD damage stuff like Blasting Zones, no bonus DOT ticks, no extra resources, just 'oh you get 25 more Keen Edges'. And maybe that player is so good they start parsing orange, and their reward? 35 Keen Edges.

[fulminating]

The current combat system is "If you're not doing damage you're dead weight.", the amount of effort to accommodate changing this would probably kill whichever tier they push those changes in. Just look how much bother the 2 minute buff and increased healing demands of abyssos changes have caused.

[Renathras]

You may not recognize it (somehow?) but it's been true for 20 years, if not longer; as long as the Trinity has existed (which is from AT THE LATEST 2004) it's been true in some form or another. Even before then, before there were clearly defined roles in gaming, there were often setups that had leanings. Baldur's Gate in the 90s, for example, often would have people specialize in healing since it was strictly necessary to have available. While you had an option of how much you wanted to lean into it (Cleric vs Druid, for example), it was still present. And that's based off tabletop, which as you say was the inspiration for MMOs. MUDs, likewise, had class and skill setups that allowed people to focus more on healing or buffing or utility or damage. Indeed, TANKING, if anything, is one of the newer things to come on the scene, not Healer as a role. Back then, it was a thing you tried to force (e.g. having your Paladin or Warrior in full plate run into the room first to try and be the first thing enemies saw), but you often didn't have clear ways to generate, force, or keep agro. It was kind of a chickens with their heads cut off thing as to whether the enemies made a bee line for the healer in the back hurling Sling rocks or not.

For most of MMO history, healing was not a "side gig". In WoW, Vanilla, BC, Wrath, Cataclysm, and Mists (after that I can't say since I pretty much left the game), there was consistent, unavoidable damage, which required consistent healing to counter. Healing wasn't a side gig or optional. Druids would roll HoTs across the party because if they didn't, people would die, and combat raises were rare (only Druid had one, and it had a long CD on use, with Shaman having a self-only combat raise). And that was the gold standard of MMOs for a decade and a half. "End the encounter first. Patch people up later." only makes sense on trash fights, not 10+ minute boss fights. There is no case where you can output enough damage on a Healer to bring fights to a significantly earlier end, and if all of you are to be believed, the encounters and boss HP are designed around Healer damage, so you're ending the fight on time, not early, by using them.

And what do you do when not casting heals? Well, in Baldur's Gate, Clerics and Druids would use Slings. You would...literally be autoattacking, with your autoattack being throwing stones. In Everquest, you'd /meditate (/sit, basically). In WoW you'd basically always be casting a heal - Holy Paladins in Wrath would Beacon one Tank, target the other, then spend the next 10-20 minutes pressing Holy Light, breaking it up occasionally to use Judgement of Light/Wisdom if in 10 mans. In 25 mans, you'd usually have a Prot and Ret Paladin doing both of those for you, and the other Judgement (the one that did a heavy or stun or whatever) was useless.

I think the issue is more you're used to games where Healers aren't all the same (and often where they had customization - in BG, for example, you had the choice of spells to use from your spellbook in your various slots, and in BG2, you had Kits, or basically specs), so you could pick one that was more support and combat focused. In other words...my "4 Healers" idea you constantly attack because you want what it offers, in effect, but you want it for the one Healer you suspect would be the one that wouldn't have the gameplay you wanted.

[ForsakenRoe]

stuff

We are going in circles. People in Vanilla WOW did not 'just' heal because the healing was more demanding. Classic WOW proved very much that actually, people back then were just bad at the game. I was able to get plenty of attack time in during levelling. Discounting that time as 'oh wands don't count cos that's like autoattacks' is absolutely ridiculous, because casting a spell interrupts your wand's swing timer. If you are 0.2 seconds away from using a wand shot, and you cancel to cast Flash Heal, you're reset back to whatever your wand's timer is. Maybe in raids, it's a lot tougher to get healing out and there is less time for damage. Or maybe it is not, I wouldn't know, because Classic WOW has this amazing system where, if you don't need as much healing, you can respec a healer to a DPS and push more damage that way. Makes it a bit harder to work out when there's flexibility like that. If the raids were locked to a comp of 2/5/33, then we'd likely see some of the healers doing some damage, especially considering, again, Omen of Clarity (autoattacks make your next resource spender free, including your heals), Judgements (autoattacks refresh the duration), restoring MP via Judgement of Wisdom, etc.

This also proves part of the issue. I had time to damage stuff in dungeons. I might have had time to in raids, IDK I burned out at level 48 in the vanilla version (Feralas sucks ass), and got tired of running daily heroics in Wrath for a trinket that never dropped (and I was Enh because a friend wanted to go Resto Druid). So we could say 'raids require big healing' sure, but 'dungeons kinda don't.' In fact, I saw a 'Enh healing guide' where you'd basically play Enh the regular way, but spend Maelstrom on instantcast Healing Wave or Chain Heals, allowing you to do like 50-60% of the damage of an 'actual DPS' while still keeping up with the healing the dungeon required. Sound familiar? It's the problem we have here! Raids need heals during prog, and dungeons absolutely do not. The devs of WOW saw how little challenge healers had in WOTLK's end, and made it 'more challenging' by ramping up healing requirements. We got Cataclysm. You know the effect Cata had on the healer population. You should therefore know, that 'increase healing requirements' is an absolute death knell for the role's playerbase. This game used MOP design to steer it's design for the remaking into 2.0, so I would argue it should take lessons of 'what to definitely not do, under any circumstance ever' from the absolute decimation caused by the Cata healing changes.

And if we DON'T use our DPS tools, as you claim should be the case, we don't clear the fight at all. So every fight in the game thus far has to be rescaled in HP to factor in this sudden drop in healer DPS, or it becomes harder/potentially impossible to clear at minimum ILVL. I know the DPS checks on old Ultimates like UCOB aren't exactly... demanding, anymore, thanks to the stat squish, but the mere possibility that they become impossible due to a change like this should be reason enough to pause and consider the ramifications of such a gamewide shakeup. Also, if you're saying that only the 'healing' OGCDs should be made GCD on tanks/dps, Arcane Crest/Riddle of Earth would never get pressed, for a start. Tanks would get 'globalled', that is, in the time between an ability like a TB hitting them and the next autoattack getting to them, they would not be able to react due to Equilibrium and the like being GCD'd out. It feels clunky. It'd also screw up the loop for some jobs. I heard somewhere that GNB has only 3 seconds of leeway in it's 60s loop, or it does not get enough Cartridges to do it's full burst. So, any downtime and it's immediately on thin ice. Adding a forced -2.5s to that because they need to use Aurora to help stay alive, means there is zero flexibility left.

Oh, and you'd have the Holy Paladin doing the Judgement of Light in WOTLK, to my knowledge. More than anything, it needs to judge something, because the talent Judgements of the Pure gives them 15% cast/melee haste for 60s whenever they use Judgement.

Actually nvm I was looking into JOL and it seems that, while it scaled off of spellpower originally, in 3.2 (and therefore WOTLK Classic too, being on 3.3.5a) it was changed to a flat 2% of the attacker's health pool. Guess it was scaling way too hard because of the Holy Paladins stacking SP gear. So yeh, theoretically anyone could put it up, now. But the Holy Paladin gets an additional bonus of haste for doing so. And with that revelation, now I understand why this is here:

If everyone's going to heal for a flat 2% whether it's a Holy, Prot or Ret putting the Judgement up, I guess it doesn't matter which judgement the Holy uses, just that they use one of them for the haste buff. But this part also makes sense to me, because the only other way to get back mana is potions (oof), Divine Plea (halves your throughput while it's active), AFKing (lmao), or attacking with Seal of Wisdom/Judgement of Wisdom up (having both means two potential procs of mana). I'm too used to the vanilla renditions of things I guess

Also I've asked before but I don't recall getting an answer, what would you do on Vanilla Loatheb, the Naxx boss who, when you cast a heal, locks you out of casting any more heals for 60 seconds? Stand around for 60s? Or actually hit the boss with whatever you have, be it autoattacks or Smite casts? Even in the remade version for WOTLK, where it's 16s of 'cant heal' and 4s of 'can heal', what are you going to do for those 16 seconds? And a question to you Semi, if you are playing D+D as a cleric (or other healer), and you don't need to heal anyone, do you skip turn or whack the nearby enemy with your mace? (I've never played D+D I wouldn't know)

edit:

...in other words, stuff like Zoe and Pepsis would still be oGCDs considering they're modifiers, not direct heals themselves.

This.
It's why the "real healers" thing comes up so often, because people who insist they want to heal are actively hostile to the idea of...healing instead of doing more damage.

I've done comparative analysis before and, depending on which patch and how you're counting, WHM in EW has as many or, at most, one less, damage action than they did in ARR. Their oGCDs (other than Benediction) were also modifier abilities (Divine Seal, Presence of Mind - at the time used almost exclusively on heals) or utility abilities (Shroud of Saints, Swiftcast - then used almost exclusively on Raise). Their damage actions realistically consisted of Stone 2 (even then Stone 1 was not beneficial to use unless you liked the animation better and didn't mind doing less damage; for the record, I like the Stone 1 animation better, but we have to be honest), Aero 1 (Dia), Aero 2 (cast + DoT like Miasma), Holy for AOE (Blizzard 2 was lower damage, I think?), Thunder for another DoT, but ONLY in patch 2.0 itself (this was removed in either 2.1 or 2.2 and traded for Blizzard 2, I think), and that's pretty much it. Oh, and Aqua Veil when it did damage. EW WHM has Glare (Stone), Dia (Aero 1, though pressed less often), Misery (less often than Aero 2, but we're just talking number of abilities), Holy is still Holy, and Assize in place of Aqua Veil. As Thunder was removed in 2.1 and Blizzard 2 wasn't ever used in most any combat applications (since Holy didn't require a target, it didn't even have a niche use for targetless damage), the number of damage abilities of WHM now is comparable to most of ARR.

1: Excluding 'modifiers' reduces the number of non-damage skills that are being considered as 'GCDs' in my maths, essentially increasing the percentage of the total that the 'damage skills' constitute. I purposely included those modifiers (despite saying I wouldn't if I was doing the design) to show the absolute 'best case' of how low we can push the 'damage skills as a percentage of total GCDs used' value.

So, let's be generous and say that EVERYthing is GCDs now, because the objective is to mix up how often we press our filler spell (Dosis). Personally, I'd keep stuff like Soteria, Krasis, Zoe as OGCD but we're taking it to the extreme for the example. We can see that, aside from me being kinda trash (one Soteria in an 8min fight, what are you playing at), around 60% of my skills used were just Dosis. Removing all of my damage GCDs (Dosis, E.Dosis, the Eurkasias for those E.Dosis, Toxicon, and Phlegma) leaves a total casts of 48. 48 x 2.50 (GCD) is 120 seconds worth of GCDs that would be spent on these healing tools. Exactly two minutes of extra encounter duration would be needed to fit it all in. So lets fit it in, by pruning the worst skills from our damage (that'd be the filler, Dosis). We take 48 casts of Dosis out to sub in these healing skills that we needed, leaving 83 Dosis. We then use an online calculator to find out what percentage of the total 213 casts that 83 is (because I'm lazy) and get:

/sigh

Did you even read my post?

2: 'Real healers' have no issue with doing healing. We throw out Medica 2 for Aionagonia, and safety shields on every raidwide during prog. Our issue is that as we get more gear, we don't need to do that anymore, and we replace it with one of our many OGCD tools, which feels cool. Reducing 'useless healing' and getting that overheal % as close to 0 as we can feels fun. The problem is that the reward is 'press this level 1 skill more times'. If you want a WOW example, imagine your reward for practicing as Priest so much that you get time to fit 30 GCDs into the fight that you otherwise wouldn't have, and you're told 'you can cast Smite 30 more times'. Not Mind Blast, not SW:P, not Penance. Just Smite, and it's absolutely terrible animation god I hate it it looks so weak. Back to FFXIV, I have no issue with 'healing'. You can look at my logs, I won't care. I have some good ones, sure, but you can see that I also have a fairly 'meh' median on later fights. You know why? It's not because I'm not skilled, the fact I have some purples shows I'm at least 'sort of competent'. No, the reason I have those medians is because in a lot of runs (I PF) I make the active decision:

'Sod this fight, and sod wiping to stupid mistakes, I am going to purposely overheal, play safe, do whatever is necessary to get the clear so I can get out of this hell.'

And if we clear anyway, me doing 10 less Dosis casts (replaced with E.Prognosis or something) is worth it to make sure we absolutely definitely have enough mitigation for the raidwide. IDK who you're aiming this 'no true scotsman' bullshit at when you say 'real healer' but it sure as hell shouldn't be me at least

3: Nice comparison. But let's look a little deeper at some of the details:



I guess if you want to get really REALLY picky you could argue that Misery should be 'average of 15s because of the Lily Spenders you have to use too!'. Even if we remove Blizzard 2 (cos it sucked) and Thunder (cos SE removed it), we can see that the 'interval between presses' for any skill that is not the spam skill, has been VASTLY increased since ARR. What does this lead to? Less GCDs used on the non-spam skill. What do we fill those now-empty GCDs with? Spam skill. It's part of the reason why I suggested dragging Dia back down to a 12 second duration, and having the new Banish skill as a 15s GCD. To try and mirror the old Aero 1/2 timers a bit.

[Silver-Strider]

3: Nice comparison. But let's look a little deeper at some of the details:



I guess if you want to get really REALLY picky you could argue that Misery should be 'average of 15s because of the Lily Spenders you have to use too!'. Even if we remove Blizzard 2 (cos it sucked) and Thunder (cos SE removed it), we can see that the 'interval between presses' for any skill that is not the spam skill, has been VASTLY increased since ARR. What does this lead to? Less GCDs used on the non-spam skill. What do we fill those now-empty GCDs with? Spam skill. It's part of the reason why I suggested dragging Dia back down to a 12 second duration, and having the new Banish skill as a 15s GCD. To try and mirror the old Aero 1/2 timers a bit.[/HB]

I would count Cleric Stance as a detail as well. Regardless if people liked it or not, it was a DPS tool at the end of the day.

[Deceptus]

3: Nice comparison. But let's look a little deeper at some of the details:



I guess if you want to get really REALLY picky you could argue that Misery should be 'average of 15s because of the Lily Spenders you have to use too!'. Even if we remove Blizzard 2 (cos it sucked) and Thunder (cos SE removed it), we can see that the 'interval between presses' for any skill that is not the spam skill, has been VASTLY increased since ARR. What does this lead to? Less GCDs used on the non-spam skill. What do we fill those now-empty GCDs with? Spam skill. It's part of the reason why I suggested dragging Dia back down to a 12 second duration, and having the new Banish skill as a 15s GCD. To try and mirror the old Aero 1/2 timers a bit.

From an old 2.0 veteran I'd just like to point out that Blizzard II was amazing on healers in ARR because it allowed access to AoE at a **VERY** early level (WHM didn't get AoE until Holy), and at 50 potency per mob was a DPS increase on 4 or more mobs (might have been 3)

[Sebazy]

For most of MMO history, healing was not a "side gig". In WoW, Vanilla, BC, Wrath, Cataclysm, and Mists (after that I can't say since I pretty much left the game), there was consistent, unavoidable damage, which required consistent healing to counter. Healing wasn't a side gig or optional.

FFXIV by design will struggle to replicate that for a couple of reasons though.

In 'healer centric' MMOs (And even other RPGS such as Baldur's Gate TBH) like WoW and Everquest, you are always scaling yourself to the content. You're not forced to bring X amount of healers, instead you bring what you need. First time I killed Zlandicar in Everquest for Sleeper's keys we had a literal army of dorf clerics. When I killed him years later with some casual friends, we didn't even have a full group, I as the debuffing Shaman was also the sole healer and as such, I had plenty to do.

The other issue of course is that WoW and Everquest both worked on an attrition focused model. You didn't wipe to a 1 shot, you wiped because you ran out of resources or even just bodies.

IMHO the true solution needs to be tackled from multiple angles at once.

Just switching to attrition isn't great by itself as our healing kits aren't that much more satisfying than our damage kits, they are really just a vomit box of cooldowns that heal and little else. Even 3.4 AST with it's time extension mini games gives the current healing kits a run for their money IMO.

Chopping our oGCD heals into GCDs amplifies that issue making significant portions of the kit completely redundant without significant reworks. Why would a somewhat casual WHM press any of it when they could just press Medica II?

As I mathed out earlier, upping incoming damage alone isn't the answer either. With how things work in this game there's a very fine line where healing goes from being trivial to one shotting randoms and there's too little in between to get some satisfaction for healers outside of this tiny band.

If you ask me the solution is as follows:

Switch to an attrition model, at least double our HP, maybe even triple.

Revamp our kits top to bottom with a focus on ability consolidation, interaction within abilities in our kit and emphasising the importance of cooldown usage vs just pressing Medica II be it by resource limitations, accumulative buffs from cooldown usage or just raw throughput limitations. We have 4 healer jobs, try something different on each of them and see what sticks.

Come down hard on the availability of combat ressing. Forcing people to play a little safer is a good bump to lessening the value of raw damage above all else and will be a step in helping ease off the current need to set a fights difficulty by its enrage timer.

Obviously this isn't without it's problems. It's basically going to render old content almost entirely obsolete but frankly, I think it's something that needs to be done for the long term health of the game. The healing situation in FFXIV has progressively gotten worse and worse with every expansion post HW. Either they course correct and deal with the pain or they accept that healing in this game is forever condemned to be unsatisfying and unenjoyable outside of the narrow little window that is early Savage prog.

*Edit* Also, your Everquest comparison claiming that healers just sat isn't particularly fair. As a Cleric in a serious raid? Sure. But you could almost guarantee that said cleric in said serious raid was multi boxing another character. And as a Shaman main, I had enough to do that I generally couldn't multi box and I spent very little time sat down. Depending on the situation I could be baby sitting a mod rod team, pulling bodies, handling debuffs and potentially even CC or even fetching and queuing up mobs.