New Healer Job Suggestion: Necromancer

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Originally Posted by Typhoria

Why not just Plague Doctor/Chemist? Large part of it would be creating various flasks for several different purposes without interfering with the lore.

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Because we already have Alchemist, Plague Doctor has no precedent in FF, Scholar's lore is already more fitting for a Plague Doctor "theme" (one of their removed skills was even an Esuna-clone called Leeches), and neither of those has anything to do with anything in the OP?

As I've said before, the only ones saying it "interferes" with the lore are players who do not determine the lore.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

I also don't generally think of a necromancer as healing anything without a cost. Maybe 'transfering' life harming one foe to heal another.

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... I take it you didn't read the OP.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

Because we already have Alchemist, Plague Doctor has no precedent in FF, Scholar's lore is already more fitting for a Plague Doctor "theme" (one of their removed skills was even an Esuna-clone called Leeches), and neither of those has anything to do with anything in the OP?

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I guess the main problem now with introducing a healing class based on being most effective by dealing damage is the general shift of playstyle the devs want healers to go. A self sacrificing healer definitely would be a fun minigame to keep yourself alive while keeping everyone alive.

In the theme of supporting ideas:
Soul Well - Grants maximum Soul Power. Duration 10s (2m Cooldown)

Similar to White Mage Thin Air, but would also effect OGCD abilities.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

Because we already have Alchemist, Plague Doctor has no precedent in FF, Scholar's lore is already more fitting for a Plague Doctor "theme" (one of their removed skills was even an Esuna-clone called Leeches), and neither of those has anything to do with anything in the OP?

As I've said before, the only ones saying it "interferes" with the lore are players who do not determine the lore.



... I take it you didn't read the OP.

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Sure they 'could' make a necromance about the 'balance' but healesr in this game, especially going forward, are too focused on the healing part of it.

A Necromancer healer with 15 or so healing related anctions and 3 or 4 dps actions is not going to feel like a necromancer IMO. The balance angle would require an actual balance between life and death related things, and if the healer only gets a small handful of dps actions, it seems like a weird appraoch to go with.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

A Necromancer healer with 15 or so healing related anctions and 3 or 4 dps actions is not going to feel like a necromancer IMO.

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First of all, you're thinking in pure binary and assuming that all the "healing" actions are automatically "life"-aligned actions. This ignores the potential of skills like turning people into various forms of undead to improve survival or sacrificing minions to heal, which are at best in a grey area between the two and more likely death-aligned healing.
Every single healing skill in the OP comes with its own "balance" or requires a sacrifice to fuel it. False Life, for instance, heals first but slowly deals damage after. The closest you get to a "freebie" as far as healing would probably be the vampirism skills, which... are exceedingly obvious in regards to sacrifice.

Second... let's dissect this logic real quick.

So as far as the typical Necromancer arsenal in gaming, we have:

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Attacks: Summoning undead minions, damage over time effects (curses, disease, etc), Dark-aspected magic

Utility: Fear, curses/debuffs, raising undead impediments, maybe a death-y travel power (swapping with minions, changing form, etc)

Healing/Survival: Life-draining/vampirism/blood magic, transferring debuffs, sacrificing minions, phylacteries/lichdom, bone/soul barriers, undeath (ie ghost form), "fake health" effects, resurrection

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You'll note that most of the categories under "attacks" have significant overlap with the listed utility and healing/survival trees (ie a drain effect as their main attack, curses that both DoT and adjust vulnerability or output).

Now, the way that the attack category often keeps from being repetitive for most necromancers is variety of DoTs and summoned minions to maintain -- instead of a curse it's a poison, instead of a zombie it's a blood golem, whatever. Maybe you'll see something like exploding corpses or getting a damage buff from kills, but both are unreliable to balance and useless in single-target boss encounters, so smart MMOs avoid them.
But something you will note however, is that as implemented, FFXIV's Summoner has variety of both DoTs and summoned minions. Summoner in fact covers all the attack-oriented aspects of typical Necromancer gameplay (even Energy Drain functions as a health-leech effect), aside from perhaps swarming the battlefield with multiple summons at once (which I wouldn't discount as some future cooldown). Hell, you even have Resurrection.

So allow me to propose this: do the DPS actions you have available as a Summoner right now satisfy the itch to play a Necromancer?

The answer, most likely, is "no". Not because of anything related to aesthetic -- you could reskin the Egis as undead, give us a Bone Dragon instead of Demi-Bahamut or rename Ruin to Dark.

It's because mechanically, at the end of the day you're just doing the typical attack roulette, hitting things until they die.
A large part of the Necromancer isn't just pet management, it's treating Life as a part of the Death equation. Most of the typical aspects we mentally associate with Necromancy aren't even related to dealing direct damage, they're just related to the ways you can manipulate living and dead things with dark magic, which is quite a lot. I could just as easily retitle this thread as the "Witch" with exactly the same primary necromantic focus, and you would say it fits the description -- because by many definitions they're synonymous (as "necromancy" is often incorrectly used as a catch-all term for black magic).

In summation, what does feel like a Necromancer, while being distinct from Summoner (or for that matter, Scholar)? All of the potential it has outside of damage.

On a semi-related note...

Something I do find interesting, I think, is that with Shadowbringers we'll have 4 tanks, 4 melee, 3 casters, 3 healers and 3 ranged jobs. Given the implementation of Dancer was partly fueled by an intent to balance the number of ranged jobs, it seems likely in future expansions that we'll be seeing a new caster, healer, and/or ranger. (Not definitive, of course.)

Now, with WHM pulling away from its elemental roots in Shadowbringers (with a stated intent to make them a pure holy caster at some point in the future), it feels like a natural opening is being made for a Geomancer to take over its elemental spells -- which I am absolutely 100% on-board for, I know several people who look forward to something similar to its XI implementation which I don't see being repeated (hardly anything from XI has particularly carried over, Scholar has fairies for gods' sakes) but I can at least see a number of GTAoEs and trip-mines being tossed around.
Much like I said above about SMN covering a lot of the spaces normally occupied by Necromancer DPS, we can comfortably say WHM (and AST, for that matter) already covers what minor potential GEO might have had as a healer.

And while I think we can leave the argument alone about ranged for now, it does mean a healer spot may open up in the future. And despite the musings about overlap between DRK and NCM's themes, if PLD and WHM can have overlap and there's even a shred of a chance for GEO and WHM to overlap (on top of BRD and DNC, or GNB and MCH...), I don't see why this can't continue further for a dark healer job so long as they do different things...