Fuck no.

As someone who loves maining healers, I would never play one again if my only hope for defence was my team mates.

Healers are already are hard role due to lack of support and cover, making them more dependent on it would be worse

I enjoy playing support classes, you want me to stop Playing support classes? Make it so that they are utterly defenseless and rely solely on others to stay alive.

Ultimately, it will play absolutely terribly if all you can do is run away unless you are playing with a well organized team. And then you may find that all your team mates get to have all the fun in the game while you get stuck with only the boring stuff.

No thank you.

So basically Mercy from Overwatch? I think most games have versions of this type of healer. Medic in TF2 etc. They basically have guns that can't do much other than be used to shoot your teammates in the face to get their attention.

Medic in TF2 is a pure healer. The only time their weapons come out is if they get separated or get surprised by a spy. In high-level play, basically never.

Team Fortress is built off the idea that no class can't do something, some just do it way better.

Sounds like you want OG Mercy from Overwatch, who didn't work out btw

No, FPS players tend to be the “killer” type of player who play to score and win, they are rarely the “socialite” type of player who are in it for teamwork.
Simply put, this is the wrong audience to implement this idea in, there are gaming communities where this works but FPS just isn't one of them.

This is coward talk. Healers should be given silver bullets for their guns with badass names like "Spectre Covenant" and huge medieval maces.

The only reason I start shooting is if my team isn't doing their job. You want me to go out there and heal with no protection from the enemy? They already focus on the healers as it is, and we get left behind often. I honestly would never play healer again. All the stuff you're explaining already happens. My goal already is to avoid damage, my team is already supposed to protect me (and when they don't/can't, I have a weapon for that).

~~also, not only "girlfriends" dislike shooting, there are plenty of guys who are main healers~~

Wouldn't shooting them violate some kind of convention (like Geneva, idk) in this case?

Was with you until you thought you were speaking of my girlfriend being a support role.

Dude, I’d be willing to bet she’d eat your lunch in a multiplayer shooter.

Maybe lose the sexist shit and I’d say you’ve got something here!

I like the idea from a roleplaying-POV.

However, as someone who loves to play medic since BF2, I can tell you that I'd stop playing supportive (medic) if they'd remove the guns from the class. It sounds like it's just half as fun.

Battlefield does most of this, except medics csn defend themselves because people already rarely play support. As seen by the endless rage and whining, the ad-hoc emergent teamplay doesn't work as often as it does.

What If "healer" was assigned at random at the start of a match of no one picks it, healers weren't on either team, land were scored separately by how many people they revived?

That would just make them even bigger targets than they already are. And now they won't have a way to defend themselves? That sounds like a nightmare. I used to play Overwatch and would always play support. There's no way in hell i'd trust my team to help me if I'm being attacked. They're probably just gonna jump ahead and say "I need healing!" fifteen times and call me a trash healer as I get the shit beaten out of me with no way to fight back. If this is how support roles worked nobody would play them. I already get left to my own devices as the rest of the team ignores me getting attacked in the back line. It's already a thankless and painful role to play and this would make it unbearable.

It would exclusively work for competitive eSports.

Many people play just for fun, don't want to focus on teamwork

So you're respawning and no DPS are near you and you encounter an enemy DPS in a narrow corridor. No thanks.

This almost seems like healers would become the main focus of the game. Some might like it some may not. But it would change things. It almost seems like you want healers to be so core that you will basically auto lose a fight due to a lack of revival and sustain. So if your healer gets caught out of position or sniped you just have to back off or otherwise just lose. To me that does not sound like a fun game loop.

A better option would likely to be have a multitude of different style of healers that can fulfill multiple different styles of gameplay. Sure have one that can only heal and not dps and has to be protected by teammates, but also have a healer that can Frontline and half allies when they do melee dmg. Have are healers, have single target healers. Have dot healers, have burst healers.

Nope. Favours pro play and is absolutely shit at lower tiers.

This is why Mercy has a gun and why tanks in mobas have to have a bit of kill potential. It'd be incredibly frustrating to want to play a healer like that and your team being completely dogshite without you having any ability to affect enemies.

AugustUwU, a Riot developer talks about that a bit on some of his videos.

Dude, in even MMOs or other party-based games healers can defend themselves.

But also: ARMA 3 with the DLC that adds in the humanitarian aid and rules of engagement stuff. Medics aren't allowed to carry weapons, IIRC, and all the milsim servers tend to enforce real life rules like that. You could be a NATO medic and not even be given a gun.

If healers are unable to harm others, then maybe add a scoring system which penalizes people for harming/killing healers. Taking “kills” away or whatever.

Play squad or Arma.