What Healer kit (not encounter) change would make GCD heals NOT bad gameplay?

[ForsakenRoe]

Thinking about the question posed in the OP a bit while eating, and I've come up with this thought:

Don't.

Let's think about it, people enjoy parsing in this game. Not me personally, but some do. If we were to make GCD heals damage neutral in some way, (ie make Toxicon do double damage so it refunds the Dosis), this means that a huge aspect of that side of the game (parsing) is removed. Many more people would reach the point of 'zero lossy GCDs used', by dint of the fact that their heals are refunding themselves. This means the issue we currently have, of 'the difference between a 74 and a 99 is whether your DoubleDowns all crit', would become pretty much the only factor in expression of skill. That might be the point to some, but I think that is pretty bad design. I guess it's kinda like how the further back in Mario Kart you are, the better items you get, and I remember when I raced my brother, we'd often start hitting the brakes right before item boxes, so that we'd be 'the one in second' and get the better items. That's not good gameplay but it's what the system caused, and I imagine a change like this would result in similar, causing parses to be almost entirely about 'did you crit super lots', purposely keeping your Miserys outside of buffs in case they crit naturally, and going for specific kill times that benefit you. Well, they already are about all that, but y'know, even more so

I think 'healing GCDs that cost damage' are just a fact of life in this game. They see use in prog, and as we get more geared/learn fights, we start to remove them from our timeline. They cost us damage, yes, but not using that Succor and wiping to the raidwide costs us more time. I think certain elements of the playerbase need to reconsider what's important in doing raids, high number means nothing if you let a wipe occur when you could have saved it.

As an aside, even making 'every GCD heal give blood lily' as previously talked about, doesn't fully solve the problem. In Harrowing Hell for P10S week 1, you'd cap on Misery, spend it, and in that one GCD where you try to spend it, the damage would likely kill you. So... you'd still be 'suboptimal' there. I blame the obsession with the funny colored number, because it doesn't tell you jack about the skill of the healer, only how good they are at hitting Glare. EG: if a healer has to LB3 to save a P10S run because Bonds 3 kills like 5 people, their parse gets lowered (animation locked for 8 sec), but the people who died are ressed with no weakness, and can get right back into their rotation, the only thing they lose is their Gauges. Happened to me in reclears this week actually, the NIN assassinated themselves and the DNC, the DNC got a res from my coheal just before I hit LB, the NIN got ressed by the LB and had no weakness. NIN got a 89, DNC got a 55. The DNC did everything correctly, and it was the 'assassin' that got the better score this week (not that we minded, it was funny and we oneshot it). But it goes to show that making plays and saving runs, eg LBing, or taking a hit someone else should have and sacrificing yourself to save the run, is not worth it in the eyes of FFlogs

Yes I'm mad, FFlogs always makes me mad

Heck, we could even allow certain oGCDs to be used even while on cooldown, instantly completing that recast time for additional MP cost. For instance, maybe Benison normally costs just 400 MP, but as soon as you use it, it can be used again for 1200 MP fading back to 600 over its cooldown. The 400 is pretty darn efficient, but the 1200 is not worth spamming outside of emergencies.

This is an interesting idea, because we could have the timer by which the MP cost returns to it's base value be affected by Piety, making that stat... not less dead, maybe, but at least slightly more interesting. Though I suppose that idea, and 'restore MP faster', both would have the same net result. It'd be interesting for specific cases though, like rushing Deployment Tactics for more uses of Spreadlo, or rushing Pneuma for more throughput in something like Harrowing Hell