Why does everyone want Chemist as a new job?

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Originally Posted by MsQi

Chemist as a healer will be throwing premade bottles on people to heal them with the only difference from other healers being the animations.

People remember these jobs from other games and think they'll be cool, but the aspects that make them cool would be drastically diminished in a "trinity" based, mechanical, non creative play style.

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I think people like to be optimistic about Chemist's design. Even within the restrictions of an mmo trinity system it could certainly be creative and engaging. The reality however is that they did the exact opposite with SCH and AST, turning their unique and interesting playstyles into mostly doing the exact same thing across all 3 healers.


So it depends entirely on whether you're an optimist or not and believe that with 6.0 SE will diversify healers again and make them all engaging and unique.
The people who have become jaded by Shadowbringers however look at the way healers have been going, combined with SE's refusal to talk about the complaints, and came to the conclusion that you seem to have come to.


The biggest problem is that SE is very tight-lipped about their design. If all previous expansions are anything to go by they won't change the current healer design until the next expansion. This means we'll have to wait until the job previews or even the launch of 6.0 to see whether or not the healer design will be any better. So if Chemist were to be the new healer it could be great, or it could be the same thing as the 3 healers we already have, by the time we know it's basically already too late.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

So it depends entirely on whether you're an optimist or not and believe that with 6.0 SE will diversify healers again and make them all engaging and unique.

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It depends on what they actually do. Optimism nor pessimism will do nothing for that.

As long as battle revolves almost completely around straight damage there is only so much they can do. The most creative things they can do are self contained to the Player character: me doing this allows me to do this. Not much interaction with others other than doing more or less.

I had an idea for how Chemist could work as a healer after trying WoW for a few months and talking with friends who also played - specifically by looking at the Discipline Priest. Basically they place a shield buff on a target, and while that's on them the DPS they do also heals said target. It doesn't last long, though, and as far as healing classes goes it's one of the highest skill requirements and ceilings.

The idea that came to mind for Chemist, thematically, would probably be Garlean-originated tech with a flying drone (I'll get to this) and a weapon similar to Ishgard's Auger bazookas, with the majority of their healing and attacking being instant but slightly weaker than the other healers to compensate.

The drone would function similar to AST's Synastry, except on either a single target or the whole party as needed, and would heal them for a % of the damage the CHM would do with particular attacks - more on that. They would also not be a "pet" like SCH's fairies and would stay by the CHM at all times. You could swap for free, with a short-ish cooldown so it couldn't be spammed too hard.

The idea I came up with for Mix was a bit more dodgy, but the last brainstorm had it working in reverse to current gauged jobs - you'd use it and it'd give you several stacks of a unique effect along with a numbered gauge for more general abilities - IE: It saves the Mix as spots similar to Aetherflow, except each saved spot is a different effect - regens, shields, damage, ect - and you'd have cooldowns that apply the Mixtures (or give them out without expending them or refilling them instantly, as a capstone). It'd need a long-ish cooldown, though - probably equal to Aetherflow.

(Gotta split this into two posts, didn't realize it'd be this long.)

(Cont'd)

For damage-to-healing, the idea is a rather simple one. You'd have a single target big-hit, and a linear AoE (to be further unique from the other healers) and the damage you do gets converted to healing for the drone-Linked targets. Obviously better on single target, since you'd be tanksitting with it most of the time. An interesting thought for a completely different regen is that they'd have ranged autos, and that heals the target as a pseudo-Regen - obviously weaker but technically lasting longer than WHM and AST's. Balance would be far trickier, of course, but basing it off of... WHM in comparison, the DPS abilities doing roughly 200~500 potency that you'd use every 15~30 seconds doesn't make it sound too bad especially since the idea is...

Supplementing that with the instant healing I mentioned at the start. One of the things that bothers me is the procs tied to some of the heals (WHM and AST) that merely empower their more powerful heal in some way - basically, barely rewarding and rarely used. Instead, either the damage-healing procs something to make the instant heals better, or vice versa, so it'd give a sense of a "rotation" even in the lack of having a proper one. They'd also be an obvious choice for DH, whether applying it themselves with Mix and probably slotting it in like so many WHMs do.

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TLDR Chemist could be neat as a healer that does damage to heal but has instant heals (probably potions) to supplement each other in a way that flows. I'd have suggested specific skills, but that's MUCH harder to do and prone to cheesiness.

I do love the potential idea of Meltdown being their DoT, though, with their DPS skills being based on FF6's magitech-armor lasers.