Melee Healer Idea: Green Mage

Hello everyone, I had an idea that I wanted to post somewhere to raise possible discussion or just new ideas to add to my concept. I was trying to think of something that could work as a melee healer, and the first class that came to mind was a Green Mage.

Green magic debuted in Final Fantasy 12, and later as an actual mage for the Viera race in Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift. It focused almost exclusively on buffing party members and debuffing enemies, with the FFTA2 version wielding a mace or hammer.

My concept for them being a melee healer is mostly due to their large weapon and buff oriented magics, but we have a small insight to healing in melee already with paladins.

Using melee combos and casting is seen in Red Mage, but with much more focus on the latter, whereas Green Mages damage would be (almost) exclusively melee combos.



The Green Mage's weapon would be a 2 handed mace/hammer with short cast times, and their healing mechanic would be damage reduction. Like regen to white mages, and absorbs to scholars, this new mechanic would give green mages something to bring. It would make them better at healing tanks and melee, as they are already in melee range so their aoe heals would hit them much more reliably with the damage reduction benefiting them more.

Weaponskill ideas:

1-2-3 Combo with a 1-2-4 Variant (with some buff/debuff)

Sap Strike: Melee attack applying a DoT (Sap)

Imperil or Deprotect/deshell: 5% damage taken debuff / alternative to ninja debuff

Spell ideas:

Dia/Diara: Single target heals / Cure or Benefic equivalent

Diaga: AoE heal / Medica equivalent

Protect: Heal with a small damage reduction buff (5 to 10%) 8s duration 20s cooldown

Shell: Damage reduction buff for X instances of damage (20 to 30%) / short cooldown buff

Bravery/Faith: damage buff for physical or magic, alternative to astrologian buff

Arcane Hammer: Dealing damage heals the lowest health target equal to a % of damage done. 90s to 120s cooldown

All the numbers are obviously not balanced, just to give my thoughts on possible abilities.

Any input or thoughts are welcome, thanks for looking!

Would it start at level 70?

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Originally Posted by glamazon

Would it start at level 70?

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well assuming it was added in 6.0 yeah I would assume so.

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Originally Posted by Fanatic

Hello everyone, I had an idea that I wanted to post somewhere to raise possible discussion or just new ideas to add to my concept. I was trying to think of something that could work as a melee healer, and the first class that came to mind was a Green Mage.

Green magic debuted in Final Fantasy 12, and later as an actual mage for the Viera race in Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift. It focused almost exclusively on buffing party members and debuffing enemies, with the FFTA2 version wielding a mace or hammer.

My concept for them being a melee healer is mostly due to their large weapon and buff oriented magics, but we have a small insight to healing in melee already with paladins.

Using melee combos and casting is seen in Red Mage, but with much more focus on the latter, whereas Green Mages damage would be (almost) exclusively melee combos.



The Green Mage's weapon would be a 2 handed mace/hammer with short cast times, and their healing mechanic would be damage reduction. Like regen to white mages, and absorbs to scholars, this new mechanic would give green mages something to bring. It would make them better at healing tanks and melee, as they are already in melee range so their aoe heals would hit them much more reliably with the damage reduction benefiting them more.

Weaponskill ideas:

1-2-3 Combo with a 1-2-4 Variant (with some buff/debuff)

Sap Strike: Melee attack applying a DoT (Sap)

Imperil or Deprotect/deshell: 5% damage taken debuff / alternative to ninja debuff

Spell ideas:

Dia/Diara: Single target heals / Cure or Benefic equivalent

Diaga: AoE heal / Medica equivalent

Protect: Heal with a small damage reduction buff (5 to 10%) 8s duration 20s cooldown

Shell: Damage reduction buff for X instances of damage (20 to 30%) / short cooldown buff

Bravery/Faith: damage buff for physical or magic, alternative to astrologian buff

Arcane Hammer: Dealing damage heals the lowest health target equal to a % of damage done. 90s to 120s cooldown

All the numbers are obviously not balanced, just to give my thoughts on possible abilities.

Any input or thoughts are welcome, thanks for looking!

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Green Mage as practicioner of Green magic essentially would step on everybody's toes. He'd be a stronger debuffer than Ninja/Scholar and at the same time a more consistent buffer than AST.

Interestingly, Green Magic holds the utility spells that belonged both to Black Magic and White Magic in prior FF games. Not to say the idea of a Green Mage is unfeasable tho. I just don't think Green Magic holds enough personality to make a class all about it in a game where Job kits are such a mix of classic FF abilities.

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Originally Posted by GrimGale

Green Mage as practicioner of Green magic essentially would step on everybody's toes. He'd be a stronger debuffer than Ninja/Scholar and at the same time a more consistent buffer than AST.

Interestingly, Green Magic holds the utility spells that belonged both to Black Magic and White Magic in prior FF games. Not to say the idea of a Green Mage is unfeasable tho. I just don't think Green Magic holds enough personality to make a class all about it in a game where Job kits are such a mix of classic FF abilities.

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Yeah looking at its spell set from the wiki, looks like it had a smaller spellbook from mystic/oracle, but pretty much focused on the same spell types minus protect/shell. Mayyyybe crossing both jobs into one would work, but absolutely see some toes being stepped on. That being said it does have a very defining niche, and theme. Would it make it out the gate? Im not entirely sure. It could work, but just how well would it work?

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Originally Posted by ADVSS

Yeah looking at its spell set from the wiki, looks like it had a smaller spellbook from mystic/oracle, but pretty much focused on the same spell types minus protect/shell. Mayyyybe crossing both jobs into one would work, but absolutely see some toes being stepped on. That being said it does have a very defining niche, and theme. Would it make it out the gate? Im not entirely sure. It could work, but just how well would it work?

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Buff/Debuff niche already belongs to AST and SCH. (Or at least it used to when SCH had Shadow Flare, Virus, Eye for an Eye and Miasma I and II.)

I could see Green Mage as utility caster DPS rather than a healer. A Caster Job that would have strong utility with debilitating debuffs.

Two years ago I would have told you we already had Green Mage, as it's themes were felt pretty strongly in Scholar, just as Time Mage was essentially mixed into Astrologian. At this point however I think it could potentially be viable. It would take some more tweaking of the current healers themes and playstyle to really give it a place of it's own without stepping on to many toes, but it could work. If AST moves more toward the "set and forget" healer type and focuses a majority of it's time on cards and SCH continues down the path of shields and fairy "only" then GRN could slip in between and could potentially do well. This being said, I feel like Green Mage could become the new "must have" healer pushing the others to the side if not balanced properly.

As to the idea of Green Mage specifically I don't particularly care one way or the other but a melee healer (or specifically a healer with a smaller range on their heals and little actual cast times to compensate) would be fun.

If your biggest heal is maybe the size of old Asylum you'll struggle healing through mechanics which force your party to be very spread out (like HW2 and such) or need to spend potent single target resources on that sort of thing. On the other hand you'd excel when it comes to burst healing when people can be grouped up, able to resolve things like the Akh-variants perhaps better than your cohealer.

Basically, I want a Cure-3-style healer. I know, it'd be annoying when you had a dps off 30 yalms away... but maybe dying over there will teach them a lesson. I also think it'd be an interesting and varied gimmick as opposed to the sheild/regen dichotomy that they're trying to distance us from.