Is It Even Possible To Have A New Healer Job?

If the HoT healer brought other benefits that made it worthwhile (aka dps or group dps buffs) I suspect it'd actually be rather tasty for speed run and optimisation junkies TBH. Look at the %s around Whispering Dawn in the top speed run logs if you're unsure of the worth of decent HoTs in the end game.

Of course the difficult bit there is finding the balance between them being able to heal fast enough to be viable in raids (and not feel like a repeat of 3.0 AST) whilst not being too strong to the point where they can heal half of the more casual content out there by just hitting an aoe hot every 30 seconds and AFKing the rest of the time.

I see issues with balance though. A job like that might be too good or terrible in a DPS meta. It all comes down to the rest of its kit. Just... having a huge focus on HoTs doesn't appeal to me personally I guess. I like having Regen and such on WHM but whatevers.

Still a melee healer would be awesome.

if anything, i think new healer should have some elemental affinity skills. like mitigate fire\water\etc. damage depending on situation and boss. there is a concept of elemental damage and elemental resistance in this game, but very poorly executed, resulting in players diffirianting only physical and magical damage, while there is so much more in fact, just there are no tools at players disposal to make use of it

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tint

so we have to turn the HoT healer into a burst / shield healer to make him work?

---

Not at all, Tint. You just give them the option to burst heal in exchange for their HoTs. After the burst, the HoT healer would have to reapply all her spells again.

A HoT healer is a popular play style in WoW. But, with White Mages having multiple HoT spells already, I don't feel that Square Enix will introduce another healer who depends on HoT spells to FFXIV.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

A HoT healer is a popular play style in WoW. But, with White Mages having multiple HoT spells already, I don't feel that Square Enix will introduce another healer who depends on HoT spells to FFXIV.

---

Yep agreed, I think we need an actual ground up alternative to SCH first. Diu AST and WHM are already very decently matched overall. Noct AST isn't as bad as it has been in the past, but it's still not quite there and I don't think SE will ever truly be able to balance it whilst keeping it's identity without a fairly comprehensive rework.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tint

so we have to turn the HoT healer into a burst / shield healer to make him work?

---

A "HoT" healer would need to find ways to "Heal" in emergencies where chunks of HP drop suddenly, BUT through the means of their HoTs.
Thats the point of them being a "HoT" healer.

A WHM SCH and AST dont heal people back up quickly with HoTs, they only top them up.

Now, again, with the examples I gave, you can easily see how you can use a HoT to burst.
(Such as popping the HoTs currently active, which requires having had them up originally. Or maybe tripling their effect for a few seconds,a nd the last one, which i doubt SE would do, but speed up the tick rate and shorten the duration.)

I know your question was sarcastic, but does this help you understand the concept of making something focus on its theme, rather than saying something is a theme because it barely touches the idea?

Quote:

---

Tanks have buffs to raise DPS for a short while, who needs a job dedicated to DPS, since this now makes them a full DPS

---

This is why WHM having a HoT doesnt make them a HoT healer.

RDM is the one of the least bursty DPS, yet it does have SOME burst, in order to help with situations where burst is needed. Its still not a MCH or SMN.

With the current raid design, a HoT healer would hardly work

Too many fight inflict damage in a bursty way and ask you to heal that damage rather quickly (Shin is a notably good exemple of a fight with double AoE burt)
Also, damage on tank (outside of burst) is rather negligible and could be healed by a fairy + WHM HoT alone


So either they overall stop making fight where you need to quickly heal the raid, or they rework healer strength in general and make AoE less potent and increase damage on tank by a significant amount (because this is what makes HoT hardly effective, WHM cureIII brings everyone up to 80% alone and is a 2sec cast and tank take barely enough damage to require a heal once every 15sec)
Another possibility would be to make more fight require double healers. For instance, HoT are rather good on Shin because both tank take damage the whole fight. If more fight were designed that way where both tanks constantly take significant damage HoT would become more valuable.


If they'd cut in half healing potency (for 5.0) and design fight in a way that makes HoT desirable on both raid and tank, then it would work. Basically, healing would need to be closer from WoW's healing design.


Regarding the dancer healing through damage, this is a tricky one because currently 2 healers passively bring damage, SCH and AST
WHM has to stop healing altogether to deal damage at the expense of mana (not that it is a problem considering they have unlimited mp),

If you make a healer that heals through damage, then either the damage has to be extremely low to not make it too good, but then if it is super low how do you make it do decent damage for when no heal is required (let say like when a WHM spend 90% of his casts doing stoneIV).
A stance could be used, but my feeling would make this a weird healer.
They'd need to be able to heal when there's no target to hit, and unlike WoW with disc priest, FF14 has notably a crap ton of transition phase where there's nothing to hit to heal. So they'd need to be able to properly heal without smashing the boss, so then you'd end up with a design issue, if the heal out of melee is as potent as the one in melee, how is this different then a regular healer standing in melee?


It's not that there's no possible heal design, there's plenty of things they can do (just look at WoW, they have 6 healing class), but they'd need to rework the way damage work in the game, because currently AoE quick heal and shields are king, and this is prevent a lot of original design.
No healer have channeling ability or walk over ability.
Very few healer use triggering mechanic (although this would arguably be a very SCH thing to have)

But honestly, i'm rather confident we'll see a change of healing design for 5.0 because the dev team has probably realised this is an issue long ago for both tank and heal. (in the case of tanks, since they take so little damage they don't need to increase their tankiness which makes tank and healer go all out dps, which is something that annoys Y.P a little)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sylvain

With the current raid design, a HoT healer would hardly work

Too many fight inflict damage in a bursty way and ask you to heal that damage rather quickly

---

I dont even want to play a HoT healer, but with so many ppl not reading the counter arguments, but inserting made up excuses, I dont see a reason to continue with this.

Hate to break it to you guys, but none of the healers we have are "burst" healers.
Having a VERY minor amount of burst doesnt make them a "burst" class.
(Literally every healer is a small sustain GCD, with occasional oGCD "burst", which is no different from how a HoT healer is designed. If anything, the other healers need MORE burst, and less sustain, in order to play how a GCD healer should be playing, which is almost in SCH design, except that style was needed just to keep up with other healers, until they were fixed.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

Hate to break it to you guys, but none of the healers we have are "burst" healers.
Having a VERY minor amount of burst doesnt make them a "burst" class.
(Literally every healer is a small sustain GCD, with occasional oGCD "burst", which is no different from how a HoT healer is designed. If anything, the other healers need MORE burst, and less sustain, in order to play how a GCD healer should be playing, which is almost in SCH design, except that style was needed just to keep up with other healers, until they were fixed.)

---

Literally this.

Pulling up my FC's current quickest Shinryu EX kill, just over 50% of the total damage done is being healed by HoTs and the Fairy, a further ~30% comes from oGCDs with the last ~20% coming from direct GCD heals.

Whilst it's a highly extreme example, it shows how little burst and GCD healing is actually needed. In that run, Indom was the main culprit with there only being a single Cure III and Medica being cast.

I don't really consider FFXIV's healers to be true HoT healers as they don't have the depth of the likes of WoW's resto druid tbh. But there's no denying that HoTs are at the core of all 3 healers as things stand.

We don't have burst healers, no. We don't have hot healers either. But the damage pattern of most bosses is generally focused on burst dmg. The reason you can still let oGCDs and hots do most of your work is mainly that healers are extremely powerful compared to incoming damage and that the damage patterns are heavily scripted.
I'm not just speaking of WoW when I say that many skills you toss out without second thought are designed as some sort of long cd in other games.
If oGCDs & hots with the occasaional GCD is enough to keep everyone alive and safe there is not much room for complex mechanics, combos etc.
Once a bar is full, it's full. Period.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

Hate to break it to you guys, but none of the healers we have are "burst" healers.
Having a VERY minor amount of burst doesnt make them a "burst" class.

---

Well, what would you define as burst healer?
All 3 healers can top a party from 10% to full in a few GCD


I think what people mean by burst VS HoT would be that most of the heal actually come from the HoT portion. A bit like MedicaII with a stronger HoT and weaker initial heal.

However there's very few case where MedicaII HoT will actually heal on each tick over its duration.
As a side note, HoT doesn't mean it has to be a really lengthy weak HoT. (like they all currently are in this game)
HoT can be powerful, most HoT from WoW's resto druid have a rather short duration and some of them are actually tweaked to make most of their heal in the initial ticks.
But something like this would require FF14 to rework their ticking system.

And yes current, current healer are tweaked toward direct strong heal. (what most people could call burst)
for AST/WHM, their basic heal are a simple yet good example. cure1: small heal, cure2: bigger heal, most ofgcd are also quick hp recovery mechanic. Essential Dignity, Assize Tetragrame etc. They are all based on giving hp quickly.
There are few other options, Asylum and Collective Inconsciousness, but seriously, how many time will Asylum actually heal on each of its tick (unless placed on tank) and since when do AST use C.I for the HoT? C.I is almost exclusively used to reduce a boss aoe burst, the HoT is then useless as more often than not the other healer will cast 1 or 2 aoe heal topping people (and if they aren't the HoT will perhaps tick once or twice and that's it)

If mana was a concern perhaps healer would be more kin to let HoT ticks. But mana is far from being a concern since not only we have more than enough mana to spam almost anything + rez 4-5 time a fight, and on top of that we have so much of it that we can actually spamm the boss with dmg skills.
So beside optimising your dps on a fight you know very well (so you know when you can let HoT ticks without risking a death), there's no incitive to let a HoT tick.
Most player will simply spend another 2sec on another Medica to be sure everyone is full.
And this is possible because our heal are just too potent. It is simply too easy to top a group.



So this is why Ithink, most people say "it wouldn't be really good" when it comes to raid wide damage is that most fight do ask you to heal quickly the damage.

Very few fight leave you with DoT slowly crippling you or anything making a HoT useful. And when they do (like shin) the DoT is so weak that you barely notice it.
So far only tank benefit from HoT and since most fight only require 1 tank a time for a significant portion of the fight, it's not something you'd value the healer for.

Group are more concern by the lack of shield than the lack of HoTs. If you go as double WHM, you're worried that some aoe may kill one of your dps. Going as double shield is more an annoying than anything else, but this is easily fixable by making one healer not applying shields.

And this is also something they'd need to adress.

Assuming they do make some kind of HoT healer, it means that you could end up with a shield less group (unless they'd give shield to all 3 healers but WHM, that'd be odd), fight would need to be designed around that, and they are currently not designed around not having shields. Unless you overgear the fight, many boss will simply obliterate dps and healers on their first AoE.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

I dont even want to play a HoT healer

---

Well that's fine; I'd probably stay with my AST too but many player would like to play a HoT healer and this is something they don't have access to. (and no, WHM isn't a HoT healer, having access to Recup + Weak MedicaII HoT doesn't make you a HoT healers)

A healer with an aura mechanic could be fun. Something that consumes mp over time similar to the old darkside to create an AOE HoT/utility aura originating from the caster, as well as single target toggle-able spells that latch onto a target, draining MP over time to provide various effects. We need something to compete with SCH's GCD-less healing niche. Maybe toss in an actual dps rotation that's not as mindless as spamming broil, malefic or stone.

The difference between "BURST" and just simply always being good at the role you do, is that to "BURST" you need to be unable to maintain this level of effectiveness. if basic cure1 can be maintained, and still be an effective way to get a tank up to full HP in a couple of GCD, then that doesnt count as "BURST"
Cure2 and cure3 USED to be the burst healing spells, back when WHM would actually fear running out of MP trying to overdue it with thier "burst".

You cant maintain BURST, otherwise its not BURST.
Putting an ability on a CD, does make the CD itself the resource, and is the only real form of burst atm.
But if there's no real mechanics built around it, then it barely scratches the surface of being a class built on that mechanic.

oGCD heals were not meant to for burst, other than benediction.
They were meant for movement heavy fights, where SCH outdid WHM, due to WHM being a turret healer.

In most cases, you do NOT need to pop oGCD heals, to heal a tank up after a heal. Basic heals WILL work, unless you need to move, or as I made it sound, the exception being a 2nd attack just as strong is about to go off. And in most cases, you have 2 healers, and both healers basic cures are almost always enough, if the tank mitigated propperly. (in the case they dont, then the group is probably having a tank out of tank stance, who doesnt swap with their OT to maximize thier CDs, which is one of the worst ways to do endgame, though possible, by being carried by your healers)

You DO however, need to shield a tank right before a TB, in order to maximize the shields effectiveness.

Next up, Burst in this game is either "over doing it" at the cost of performance later, such as being out of MP, or the more simplified method of being less effective 2/3rds of the fight, and then more than effective 1/3rd of the fight. Which is "almost" possible, with a proper amount of teamwork with your off healer, as SCH sort of does this already. The 1st is better than the second, though combinations of both can still work.

WHM is vanilla basic healer, with no "theme" or mechanics. Its closer to a jack of all trades healer, than a specialized healer atm. (Though it was originally designed to be closer to a burst healer in 2.0, and then burst healing was far less useful in 3.0, so people went to DPS healers, and then the MP drain was far lessened to the point of just being "standard" healing.)

Another example, is like saying PLD is a burst DPS, because at Lv70, it does more dmg than the Lv10 PGL its in a party with.
The PLD is clearly the muscle of the group and easily out dmges the PGL, but if their attacks/mechanics arent actually about Burst, its no more a burst class, than it is a DoT class, with its stronger DoT than the Lv10 PGLs attacks.)
Having a HoT, Shield, etc, alone isnt enough to make u the "hot/shield" class, unless no other class has it at all, and then you're just BARELY being put into that position by default. (and yes, HoT classes shoudl be based on "burst playstyles" while things like basic healers shold be closer to a MNk, in "stable healing")

Good points, Claire! It all goes to show what goes into the design of a healer. Such phrases as burst healer and HoT healer are thrown around a lot but healing is deeper. You have to consider what to put on the global cooldown and what not too. Just as you have to consider proactive healing, reactive healing, damage mitigation, and damage dealing.

Each of these things have a profound impact on the feel of a healing class and its performance. In addition, you have to consider how damage is dealt to the party through the various encounters and dungeons.

So, with all these things taken into account, is there room for another healing class? You all know my opinion; but, there have been some interesting ideas proposed in this thread. For example, I'd like to hear more about how a melee range healer would work.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

You cant maintain BURST, otherwise its not BURST.

---

And you do not maintain healing in the first place, because that just results in pointless overheal.

You're just arguing semantics. With the power of healing spells in this game and the way mechanics come at you, healing typically comes in brief bursts of activity followed by periods of nothing filled with DPS. The gameplay is burst gameplay, regardless of how you technically classify abilities.
The defining thing about burst is that it's explosive, sudden, rapid. And I'd consider any sudden, explosive health bar movement in either direction such, regardless of how often the health bar ping-pongs back and forth in a given time period. But that is arguing semantics as well.

And honestly, the "theme" is only relevant insofar the mechanics are relevant. If your HoT or leech-DPS or proxy or whatever healer ends up "bursting" people back up for every mechanic that can remotely threaten the group and then only using their thematic abilities to top the remainder off, that theme really isn't relevant. You're gonna play like a WHM in the end.

You are right however that WHM currently isn't much of a specialized healer. But neither is Scholar, there's hardly a healing tool you won't find in its kit and the interactions with shields are just two abilities, so not much of an identity as per your own admission. AST doesn't set itself apart with its healing either, it sets itself apart with its cards. And any new healer would probably not be specialized either, but set itself apart via other means.

I had imagined a Dancer class would have some sort of Bard-like buffs from dancing with perhaps HOT abilities and a few panic buttons. I wouldn't expect anything too terribly unique with our current meta. I'm personally not a fan of how similar our healers are currently. I much preferred when it was just WHM and SCH and I didn't much care that everyone wanted SCH for raiding because I loved WHM as a class. :(

I’ve always quite fancied the idea of a dark healer like a puppet master who heals by stealing life force directly from the boss/mobs and giving it though pupppet strings to the player(s) thus damage dealing at the same time. Who’s dots on the boss would equal minor buffs to the party. And would have to sacrifice say a portion of their own health or dots/buffs for “burst” healing. Ooooh it could have either like a creepy mirror or like a voodoo doll < (insert sacrificial lala here) that shows the cause and effect of its actions :rolleyes:

Adding unique mechanics to a new healer class could be refreshing.

I think a "siphon" type of mechanic could be useful in a more dps-oriented healer.

The more damage they do, the more they heal allies. The specifics of how that would work would take someone with more game design knowledge than myself haha, but "do damage to heal" is an archetype that hasn't been introduced yet.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Indefiinable

I’ve always quite fancied the idea of a dark healer like a puppet master who heals by stealing life force directly from the boss/mobs and giving it though puppet strings to the player(s) thus damage dealing at the same time. Who’s dots on the boss would equal minor buffs to the party. And would have to sacrifice say a portion of their own health or dots/buffs for “burst” healing. Ooooh it could have either like a creepy mirror or like a voodoo doll < (insert sacrificial lala here) that shows the cause and effect of its actions :rolleyes:

---

It's an interesting idea. There is just one issue with healers who heal by dealing damage.

They tend to become the most popular. However, that may not be an issue in FFXIV because healers are already expected to contribute to the damage dealing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

There is truth to this, but there's work arounds. (Such as SMN, for bursty situations in 2.0, and changes made to SMN to make them work better for burst DPS moments)

A HoT healer would focus on keeping 4 HoTs up, with maybe 1 or 2 being the more important/strong ones.
Then when a person is at cap or close to it, an ability to remove all HoTs, and gain a small def/att buff per HoT. (something like .5% bonus)
(AoEs would work a bit differently.)
An oGCD would increase how much it heals for, based on the number of HoTs up, and remove them. (Emergency heal)
A GCD would heal based on the number of HoTs up, w/o removing them.

---

And so you have the likeness of WoW's Restoration Druid, a HoT healer who can nonetheless function in burst situations.

But even that runs into issues when you need your full strength on two separate targets who there is no time to stack HoTs on beforehand due to the pressure proceeding that event.

We only have as much freedom in our healer styles as the fights and surrounding compositions allow. And if it doesn't add new concerns or difficulties, it's going to feel pretty much like any of the existent healers.

There is a very fine line between what mechanics allow for at all and what becomes functionally redundant.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Indefiinable

I’ve always quite fancied the idea of a dark healer like a puppet master who heals by stealing life force directly from the boss/mobs and giving it though pupppet strings to the player(s) thus damage dealing at the same time. Who’s dots on the boss would equal minor buffs to the party. And would have to sacrifice say a portion of their own health or dots/buffs for “burst” healing. Ooooh it could have either like a creepy mirror or like a voodoo doll < (insert sacrificial lala here) that shows the cause and effect of its actions :rolleyes:

---

Oh! That's actually a really cool idea!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dynus

Oh! That's actually a really cool idea!

---

It would be cool if most hard fight wouldnt drop your health to 5% every 30sec. If you need to sacrifice your health to heal, then it can't work in FF because everytime you need to heal (beside AA on the tank), you're most likely very close from death. (In savage content).

So we run in the same problem as was discussed before with the suggestion of a healer revolving around HoTs.

FF14 raid damage is just too spiky in most fight to consider sacrificing your own health to heal others (unless it's for a handful of spells, like SCH only have a 2 shield skills) but even if it's for only a few skills.
If the requirement for your skill is to sacrifice your own health, then it must be a potent skill, so for high damage situation, unfortunately you most likely can't sacrifice your health in those situation (unless the health requirement is so small that most player can safely forget there's such a requirement)

I want a melee range healer where instead of casting damage spells they use their weapon like a mace or something.Also I wouldn't mind if they added chemist or dancer or something like a shaman/psychic healer would be really cool to me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Indefiinable

I’ve always quite fancied the idea of a dark healer like a puppet master who heals by stealing life force directly from the boss/mobs and giving it though pupppet strings to the player(s) thus damage dealing at the same time. Who’s dots on the boss would equal minor buffs to the party. And would have to sacrifice say a portion of their own health or dots/buffs for “burst” healing. Ooooh it could have either like a creepy mirror or like a voodoo doll < (insert sacrificial lala here) that shows the cause and effect of its actions :rolleyes:

---

Memories of the earlier Shadow-priest- / Oracle-esque identity for 1.0 Thaumaturge...

And yeah, this would be neat. No idea how to make it viable without being dominant, but definitely interesting enough to at least warrant blocking out the possibilities.

Yes there is plenty of room to make other healers, one just needs a bit of imagination. I wont get into naming FF classes just pointing out mechanics (gimmicks) from other games that could be utilized:

6 ideas off the top of my head are:

* A healer that uses honest to goodness AoE auras to buff and heal, stronger buffs/heals the closer you are, weaker the farther away you are.
* A turret/totem healer, places down nodes that have buff and healing effects, can link nodes for greater effect.
* A beam/chain healer, lays down a buff that allows thier heals and buffs to ricochette between other players, a bit challenging since the ricochette effect is random at times.
* A healer that uses a mechanic not that much different than ninja, they combine glyphs or symbols to create different healing effects.
* A healer that get in melee range, thier strikes land a debuff that allows all thier allies who hit the same creature to get healing and buffs from that creature.
* A healer that is kind of a controller, one who lays down ranged debuffs and to that effect small but functional ammounts of healing come from the afflicted target.

Disclaimer: I am not suggesting these classes to actually be put in the game, which is the reason why i have not named them. I am not actually asking to put more classes in the game, this is just to facilitate the discussion as it has been presented. I am not suggesting that the game be changed in any way or mechanics to be adjusted from what they are, however these are ideas that i see as the realm of possibility with the mechanics we have now. Lastly, I also realize that several of these ideas may be redundant, again the idea is to help stimulate creative thinking and not about any form of competition over brainstorming.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by s3ystic

* A healer that uses honest to goodness AoE auras to buff and heal, stronger buffs/heals the closer you are, weaker the farther away you are.

---

Your ideas are pretty good, but this one here would be a nightmare. BRDs and BLMs love to float around on the very edge of AoE heals. This would just make healing these buggers even harder!

Some ideas I had for healers.

Dancer: Uses melee combos to perform dances. Dances provide buffs in an aura around the dancer. Has an ability to dash to a party member. Positioning is important.

Chemist: Uses a syringe gun. No cast times. Can use Mix to provide debuffs. Think MCH for playstyle.

Necromancer. Because we already have an emo tank class, might as well make an emo healing class.

This idea of a necromancer just came to my mind. Not sure if this would even work, but I want to share my thoughts:

1) basic heal
2) instant single heal
3) aoe heal
4) basic damage spell
5) aoe damage spell
6) deals damage and drains hp
7) sacrifices own hp to heal an ally
8) deals damage and drains mp
9) sacrifices own mp to heal the mp of an ally
10) every time an enemy dies, every ally inflicted with this spell will be healed
11) places a field on the ground, switching healing and damaging effects for everyone staying in the field
12) reduces own hp to 1 to increase job gauge by 25%
13) revive

job gauge:
gets filled when the party receives damage (or gets filled when time passes)– depending on the gauge, the following skills can be used on one ally:
25%: deletes the death debuff of a party member
75%: if an ally dies, he/she can live for 10 more seconds after death, ignoring incoming damage, but getting affected by mechanics
100%: if an ally dies, he/she will be instantly revived

I’m liking the concept of using HP to heal and allowing distribution of MP around as this type of healer will be in sync with Mage type parties. We already have physical parties might as well have a magical one (along with a mystic/blue knight). I can foresee clashes in idealogy between these two on the forums though!

Any healer Job will be viable provided it has the following tools:

A) A spamable, potent single target heal (to use on tanks).
B) A spamable, decent AOE heal.
C) A spamable, decent single target heal (for spot healing).
D) The MP to use these consistently for the fight.
E) A Raise ability.

All the three healers currently in the game have these abilities as their base toolkit. So:

A) Healer/debuffer.
B) Healer that stacks points/tokens. Like NIN combinations but for healing.
C) Healer with consistent, but weaker, buffs than AST, with each retaining some unique buffs.
D) TP based healer with weaker heals that can be sustained, can use MP for burst healing with a TP skills to manage MP (like PLD), probably a melee based healer. (RDM/PLD-ish)
E) "Blood Mage" healer that uses their own Health pool + drain life.
F) Sky's the limit - there are more possibilities.

FF Jobs:
Dancer(C/D), Chemist(B/C/D), Cleric(C), Druid(A), Shaman(E), Blue Mage(A/C/D/E)
(Could explain, but char limit...)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Renathras

TP based healer/melee healer and debuff/healer

---

This games debuffs are a joke and the whole enfeebling system would have to be redone for this combination to be of any use. However, if they did this and allowed this debuff/healer combo to also DPS they would outshine the other healers immediately provided their healer abilities were enough to get by on.

Melee/healer/TP will again outshine all other healers because if their healing is good enough to clear content the literal NEED to DPS to heal will outshine the other healers who have a choice to DPS or not and some times can't because of healing requirements.

I have no doubt that we will see another healer, but it will be a redesign of the three we already have and that is all that SE's current design will allow without significant redesign.

"...but it will be a redesign..."

As I said, char limit, but that was a thought of mine as well. But not necessary.

But, you say that something "would/will outshine" - that's an assumption of your part, not a logical necessity. It's possible that a new healer with those traits would NOT outshine. AST was initially undertuned, if I recall correctly. A melee/TP healer could be balanced by simply making its DPS roughly on par with a SCH's "nominal" (not great but not poor player) DPS. It would be "easier" since it would be passively part of their "rotation", but that doesn't mean "better". Again, a RDM that heals instead of casting DPS abilities, but has something like PLD's Riot Blade as a 3 point melee combo would fit in just fine with the current meta and give people a "different" feeling healer to play. Dancer/Blue Mage could fit.

I do agree that buff/support and debuffing really isn't fleshed out in this game enough to warrant a separate entry, though. But there are possibilities.

I quite like the idea that others have mentioned about having a Chemist type healer who can Mix in the way that Ninjas use Mudras. As to what niche it might fill (shields, etc.), who knows?
However as others have said, healers that heal by dealing damage sound like a nightmare to balance in that their damage would likely be negligible to make up for the fact that they have much smaller dps downtime compared to the other healers (although this does mean that they'd also have less healing uptime ie. when the boss jumps and can't even be targetted, so again, who knows?)
Just my 2 cents =)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Renathras

snip

---

Except that yoshi has said many times that he wants healers to get away from trying to push DPS. So making a DPSing healer seem very unlikely as it breaks what Yoshi wants to see happen to healers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Maku

Except that yoshi has said many times that he wants healers to get away from trying to push DPS. So making a DPSing healer seem very unlikely as it breaks what Yoshi wants to see happen to healers.

---

He did? I remember him commenting about his disdain for cleric stance as well as the whole Gordias balancing saga. I don't ever remember him outright stating that he doesn't want healers to be pushing DPS tho? Got a quote or link for any of those times?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sebazy

He did? I remember him commenting about his disdain for cleric stance as well as the whole Gordias balancing saga. I don't ever remember him outright stating that he doesn't want healers to be pushing DPS tho? Got a quote or link for any of those times?

---

I'm sure I can find one but he mentioned he wanted healers to focus on healing more in one of the live letters before StormBlood release.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sebazy

I think there is, but it’s either going to be a SCH clone or something properly fresh (to ffxiv at least). Warhammer Online is a good example of how diverse healers can be.

---

Oh god i miss bashing faces for heals and justice.... Good times.

sexual healing is stilll missing

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Maku

I'm sure I can find one but he mentioned he wanted healers to focus on healing more in one of the live letters before StormBlood release.

---

I believe this is from an Email interview he did with Mr. Happy:
https://68.media.tumblr.com/59542d6d...vv3o1_1280.png
He said that the dev team doesn't expect healers to DPS or for it to be mandatory but he knows a lot of endgame healers like that aspect of the role, so they wanted to make it more approachable and less punishing (by making damage based on Mind and removing the Cleric-Stance-Dance).