New Healer Request Next Expansion

[Archwizard]

Personally, this is why I keep saying Necromancer would be an interesting idea; there's so much more to it than wielding scythes or summoning zombies.

Continuing from this, I've prepared a few ~samples~ to entice intrepid minds.

Lore/Background

Priests of the city state of Ul'dah favor Nald'thal, overseer of transactions and the underworld. Many who come to the city seek to barter not only for riches, but for their very lives.

Long ago during a war with its sister city of Sil'dih, the Thaumaturges of Ul'dah developed alchemical means to alter the aetheric composition of a target, turning their foes into the undead so they might tear one another apart. Following the horrors of this war, the secrets of undead conversion were locked away to forever be forgotten. In recent years however, enthusiasts of history have once again brought these secrets to light.

Today, the Order of Nald'thal instead use the same vital knowledge to extend lives, cure ailments, study and slay Ashkin, sanctify graveyards, and bring solace to both the living and the dying, while carefully monitored so as not to repeat the atrocities of the past...

Weapons: Scythes (including Warscythes, Hooks, Sickles, Kama and possibly Kusarigama)

Resources: Soul Gauge (stores up to 100 Soul Power, generated by damaging abilities and consumed by healing oGCDs), Revenants (sacrificial pets that function like Demi-summons)

Other design notes:

• Primary healing method is based on sacrifice -- stocking excess healing as Soul Power to be transferred to allies, sacrificing minions, etc.
• Use of HP as an alternative resource mitigates MP consumption
• Use of life drain and Max HP/healing-received buffs substitute for HoTs and Shields
• Pets ideally function as substitute for DoT effects in damage balance pass
• High uptime, low damage before execution phase

Damage skills

Drain (II/III/IV/Reap) (1.5 sec cast): Deal moderate unaspected damage to the target.
Additional effect: Restores a percentage of HP to the caster on a successful hit. If the caster is restored to full health, overhealing is converted into Soul Power.

Pain (2.5 sec cast): Deal moderate unaspected damage to the target and nearby enemies.
Additional effect: Generates Soul Power for each target struck.
Additional effect: Inflicts Paralysis on enemies not already affected.
Duration: 15s

Scourge (Instant): Deal minor unaspected damage to the target.

Death (2.5 sec cast, 15 sec CD): Deal heavy unaspected damage to the target. No effect on targets above 25% health.
Additional effect: If damage is dealt, attempts to inflict Instant Death on the target. No effect on enemies of higher level than you.
Additional effect: Fully replenishes Soul Gauge and resets cooldown if target is killed by either effect of Death.

Oath (2.5 sec cast): Call forth a Revenant to fight for you. Up to three Revenants may be active at a time. Each time you cast a spell on an enemy, each active Revenant will execute Haunt on the same target. Always summons up to the maximum number of Revenants if cast out of combat.
Haunt: Deals low damage and restores Soul Power to the Necromancer.

Soul Douse (oGCD command): Instantly sacrifice an active Revenant to deal moderate unaspected damage to enemies near your target.

Healing skills

Numb (1.5 sec cast): Restore moderate health to self or target.

Wake (8 sec cast): Resurrects target to a weakened state.

False Life (2 sec cast): Restore health to the target while temporarily increasing their maximum health and healing received. This effect does not stack.
Duration: 10s

Soul Bind (2 min oGCD): Generate an aetheric bond with target party member. Each time you receive a healing effect while the bond is active, 75% of the health transfers to that target instead. Recast the effect to end the bond.
Duration: 20s

Vital Shift (1 sec oGCD): Siphon Soul Power to instantly heal the target. If not enough Soul Power is available, consumes a percentage of the caster's HP instead.

Sacrifice (15 sec oGCD): Siphon triple Soul Power to instantly heal all nearby party members. If not enough Soul Power is available, consumes a greater percentage of the caster's HP instead.

Soul Wall (30 sec oGCD): Consume all available Soul Power to place a barrier on the target that absorbs damage equal to a percentage of their maximum health. Barrier potency scales with the amount of Soul Power consumed.
Duration: 30s

Soul Spiral (oGCD command): Instantly sacrifice an active Revenant to heal self and all nearby allies.

Phylactery (3 min oGCD): Store the soul of self or target ally, causing them to receive periodic damage. When the effect ends or they are reduced below 1 HP, all damage received during Phylactery is refunded to the target as health, to a minimum of 50% of the target's maximum health.
Additional effect: Immunity to most Instant Death effects
Duration: 10s
You may only apply one Undead status to targets at a time.

Vampyr (Instant): Grants Vampire to self or target ally, causing their attacks to heal for an additional 10% of damage they inflict.
Duration: 10s
You may only apply one Undead status to targets at a time.

Red Feast (2.5 sec cast): Grants Vampire to self and all nearby allies, causing their attacks to heal for an additional 5% of damage they inflict.
Duration: 15s
You may only apply one Undead status to targets at a time.

Utility skills

Blood Rite (20 sec oGCD): Double the effectiveness of the next ability that consumes Soul Power while increasing the health cost by 50%. This effect cannot reduce the caster below 1 HP.

Psychopomp (90 sec oGCD): Reduces the cast time of Drain, Pain and Death by 2.5 sec, while causing any damage dealt or health consumed to also recover MP.
Duration: 15s

Danse Macabre (Trait): The cast and recast time of Oath is reduced by 75% while no Revenants are active, and by 50% if less than two Revenants are active.

Veil Ethereal (90 sec oGCD): Grants Ethereal to self and all nearby allies, reducing all incoming damage by 10% and significantly raising evasion.
Duration: 10s
You may only apply one Undead status to targets at a time.

Stygian Spikes (1 min oGCD): Clads self or target party member in the armor of the hells, causing attacks against them to deal unaspected damage to their attacker and generate minor Soul Power.
Duration: 10s
You may only apply one Undead status to targets at a time.

Seance (Trait): When the Soul Gauge is full, Wake is instant and consumes no MP, but consumes the entire Soul Gauge.

Thanatophobia (2.5 sec cast): Inflicts nearby enemies with Hysteria, causing them to flee in fear. Damage will end the effect.
Duration: 30s
Cancels auto-attack upon execution.
(Alternately it could inflict Terror, causing them to huddle in fear instead, but that felt a bit too much like Repose.)

Zombie Powder (Instant): Inflicts the target with Zombie, causing them to turn against allies.
Duration: 10s
Additional effect: Target is immune to Zombie status for 1 minute after execution.
Only one target may be afflicted with Zombie at a time.

Curse (2 min oGCD): Consume all available Soul Power to increase the target's vulnerability to damage. Duration is affected by amount of Soul Power consumed.

Exaltation (5 min oGCD): Dispel Weakness from a party member other than yourself, or reduce Brink of Death to Weakness for half of its remaining duration.

Shallow Grave (2.5 min oGCD): Marks an area that grants allies resistance to knockback and draw-in effects.
Additional effect: Leaden on enemies
Duration: 20s

Limit Break - Door of Souls: Open the gate to the underworld.

Worth noting that around half of the spells/abilities here are either references or direct calls to previous FF entries (or in a couple cases, Kingdom Hearts), if not lifted from existing enemy abilities in 14. Some of the other filler is more classically inspired by D&D, which early FF entries were inspired by.

[Shurrikhan]

Technically the healers are more balanced now than they've ever been, DPS output excluded...
People not liking the mechanics of those healers is an entirely different issue.

No, it's not. The words were "fix" and "handle". That is in no way limited to balance. Gameplay has at least as much to do with the attractiveness of a job as how perfectly tight its balance is.

[Duskane]

Oracle/Prophet from ff5 maybe

[Archwizard]

Oracle/Prophet from ff5 maybe

No offense, but I think that's a terrible idea.

RNG and extreme teamkilling potential of its abilities aside, Oracle's Predict skill functions similarly to Geomancy in other entries. Besides, doesn't AST already thematically cover the "predicting the future" angle?

[Billythepancake]

Continuing from this, I\\\\'ve prepared a few ~samples~ to entice intrepid minds.

I like this purely because DPSing is not just filler, it\\\\'s a core component of its kit. I would love to see a healer with that sort of design in the game, one that DPSes, not because it has nothing else to do like the current healers, but because its needed to take full advantage of its kit. Not sure if necromancer will ever be in the game, am also not knowledgeable enough of FF lore to know what other job could possibly fit that role, but the design elements seem like fun.

[Archwizard]

I like this purely because DPSing is not just filler, it's a core component of its kit. I would love to see a healer with that sort of design in the game, one that DPSes, not because it has nothing else to do like the current healers, but because its needed to take full advantage of its kit. Not sure if necromancer will ever be in the game, am also not knowledgeable enough of FF lore to know what other job could possibly fit that role, but the design elements seem like fun.

That's the idea: battle healer. Sure, there are tools there if you must use traditional healing, like if you get Amnesia or the boss flees (with Vampyr/Red Feast as its alternative to HoTs and False Life to shields), but the intent is that you would get greater efficiency out of displacing life force as your primary method with those tools on the side for "in case".
Sort of a "nothing comes for free, all energy must come from somewhere" deal. Give it sort of a natural weakness without crippling it.

And of course, because Drain's healing isn't actually dependent on the amount of damage done much like DRK's Abyssal variant, it not only prevents the issues caused by Drain in the hands of DPS jobs (though I still believe BLM should have some variation of it for a modicum of self-sustain in solo content), but allows for its damage to be tuned independently of its healing. Which means of course we don't necessarily have to worry about the immediate concern that progression players would jump on Necromancer for having higher boss uptime, since that wouldn't necessarily have to translate to particularly higher damage output (Death casts aside).

Besides, the FF11 devs did strongly consider Necromancer as an alternative to Puppetmaster (which I fully expect would end up a limited job were it to be introduced to 14). The only real reason to say it "can't" happen is because Necromancer (and Vampire from which some inspiration was drawn) has a more limited list of entries, and is therefore not recognized as a "classic". Meanwhile most of the abilities in the sample list are unused Black and Blue (or Saboteur) spells from previous entries or other Square properties, or even copied from enemies in 14, so the components for this type of dark healer already exist, just untapped.

[Lola_bunny]

Healing doesn't strike me as a priority for the dev team or something that they enjoy and frequently play themselves. If someone has a link to the contrary I'd be curious to read it but every time they answer questions about any of the healing roles it's a sentence whereas dps and tank roles get paragraphs of reasoning and explanation. As a result I'd be genuinely surprised if they were to add a heal anytime soon, or at least one that is fairly unique or different. I feel if they add a heal with the next expansion they'd be doing it more out of obligation then desire so my expectations in that regard are pretty low.

To those who think the 3 we have need to be truly balanced before adding another one that doesn't seem possible. I main heals, I don't see me ever leaving the role completely but it is disheartening the lack of reasoning or communication where the heal role is considered.

[SaberMaxwell]

I'm constantly batting off people with a stick in RDM forums who want to turn it into Spellblade or Mystic Knight or Rune Fencer

Regarding RDM: I honestly wish they'd add a Spellblade / Mystic Knight so I can enjoy my fantasy of being a magical swordsman and others can enjoy their fantasy of whatever Red Mage is supposed to be. I doubt we'll ever see one though because it feels like the devs tried to put both class fantasies into one, and the more discussions I get into the more irreconcilable they seem to be.

I got into XIV's RDM because I love sword and magic, others want some sort of hybrid specialized in healer support and I'm stuck on the same job because class fantasies are just close enough.

[Ryoutoshi]

Ive always lived the Oracle theme so I'd say sweet!

But isn't the Astro already a prophet of sorts? Might feel too similar is theme to others.

[Kaiserdrache]

If SE wants to ever fix the situation of Healers, they should fix first the garbage mess that is Scholar/Summoner, by finally splitting these two up completely with each of them having an of Class to start with.
Then remove from Scholar all skills, that belong to it but basically to a Greenmage, spells like Bio, Miasma, Fester , Energy Drain, and from then on

- Add new skill replacements for the gaps,
- remove from all classes these garbage role skills and merge their effect from job to job individually into skills, this will help making the jobs more uniqye, if theres not half a dozen skills, that are for all jobs of a role the same.
Someone at SE should finally get some logic, count 1+1 together, to finally realize that Role Skills in this game are one of the most terribles ideas in this game, when you want to make actually classes unique. It's just counterproductive n obsolete, because their effect could be done all with different job specific skills as side effects or bonus effects.
- rework the Scholar gameplay to have its own mechanics, instead of sharing the same with SMNhowever the problem lies also partwise in the combat design, which is why all healers need to have certain skills, that fulfill specif ects, so that any healer combo is efficient enough together to heal their party good enough, when certain enemies are fought in the games dungeons, raids and 24er raids, where certain equality between healers is needed to be able to keep the party alive, like whm and ast basically share under their skills alot of similarities.