Could a melee Healer work?

There are games out there with melee healers. I'm fairly sure half the healer subclasses for Cleric in Rift were melee or a ranged/melee hybrid (admittedly I mostly played Mage, so I only vaguely remember) and they were fine. The only point of friction would be high end content where a melee spot would have to be given up to a healer, which DPS would whine about.

2 reasons it won't happen:

- You already have 2: WAR and PLD.

- They will take up a 5th melee slot.

The 2nd reason will force them to replace like ... almost half of the mechanic of every fight.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Raven2014

2 reasons it won't happen:

- You already have 2: WAR and PLD.

- They will take up a 5th melee slot.

The 2nd reason will force them to replace like ... almost half of the mechanic of every fight.

---

They could always pair up the release with a Ranged Tank.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

They could always pair up the release with a Ranged Tank.

---

That's even worse, because now you're forcing paired the 2 new jobs together. Basically every party gonna have to choose between both of them or none of them.

Waiting on a Naughty Nurse class where I have to run up and jab people with syringes

Melee healers can work. Paladin works in WoW.

Melee healers cannot work with this dev team. They don't have the creativity to understand anything outside of their little healer box.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

They could always pair up the release with a Ranged Tank.

---

I thought this was Summoner back in the day with Titan? lol

Melee healer could work, I think a "melee" healer would obviously need strong ranged options.

A good example would be if you turn paladin into a healer (with less mp costs), it's a job with melee attacks but has a lot of ranged options, even worse case you have a spell like holy spirit which is a loss, but isn't a massive loss compared to other jobs.

I don't think you could ever make a purely Melee healer Job with no real decent ranged attack, but you could certainly make a Job that has a lot melee attacks with range to fall back on for certain mechs.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Connor

Considering how poorly the healers are balanced currently (SCH+AST supremacy, WHM crying in corner, SGE idk exists I guess), I highly doubt throwing in not only a fifth healer but a ‘melee’ one at that would do anything other than making the entire role-balance fall apart. Either it dethroned SCH/AST (and we all know SE won’t let SCH give up it’s spot at the top lol) or gets thrown in the ‘no-raid-buffs’ bin with WHM/SGE

---

Fun > balance
I hope they realize this some day, then the healers might be enjoyable again

I think the only way it would work is if there was a lot of abilities that still had extra range. I've done several tiers on RDM and being a caster that has to get close to a boss can lead to some unpleasant 2 minute windows depending on the mechanic.