We can have a 4th healer and have balance between all of them.

It’s not mutually exclusive, but time and time again I see people saying that they want our 3 balanced before a 4th.

To me, its not about balance, it's more about the fact that they attempted to achieve balance by gutting all the healers of what made them fun and unique. I don't want a 4th healer, not for balance's sake, but because they can't make the 3 we have fun and unique. Why would I want a 4th WHM with a small gimmick that barely distinguishes itself from the other 3?

What’s more, if the process of gaining a new healer becomes entwined with the process of gutting the existing healers (as this gutting is somewhat connected with the preparation for a fourth healer, given that they told us they were focusing in healer balance before giving us a new one) then getting a new healer becomes a bad thing. I want a new healer. I just want our old healers to be fun again first. SE broke healing. Their first priority should be fixing it. (I understand that they have other priorities, but it should definitely be up there).

There is no reason that they can’t make the 3 fun and add a 4th. I understand what you’re getting at, but making 1 additional engaging healer play style isn’t an insurmountable task.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YusiKha

There is no reason that they can’t make the 3 fun and add a 4th. I understand what you’re getting at, but making 1 additional engaging healer play style isn’t an insurmountable task.

---

I absolutely agree with this. I just think making ALL healers fun is more important than having more healers, and any request for more healers should be prefaced with “and fix the existing ones, and if you can only do one or the other, fix the existing ones”. Given the lack of effort that SE seems to have put into healers this expansion I feel a bit paranoid that if we ask for a new healer they’ll just do that because they don’t think they’ve done anything wrong or they won’t admit that they’ve done anything wrong and have no real interest in making our lives better if they can get away with not doing it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Billythepancake

To me, its not about balance, it's more about the fact that they attempted to achieve balance by gutting all the healers of what made them fun and unique. I don't want a 4th healer, not for balance's sake, but because they can't make the 3 we have fun and unique. Why would I want a 4th WHM with a small gimmick that barely distinguishes itself from the other 3?

---

Mirroring what Billy has said in bold, and also mirroring what OP has said in regards to seeing people time and time again stating they don't want a new healer until the other three are balanced - I also see time and time again people that want a fourth healer, but for what? This again leads into what Billy has said in terms of it being another WHM, one filler spell, one dot etc etc and then a neat little gimmick.

Healers as a whole need to be made fun whilst being balanced, which in itself is a balance that the devs can't seem the achieve, I don't want another fun and unique job to be compromised just as AST and SCH have this expansion simply for the brief period of ecstasy that a fourth healer would bring.

Not gonna lie, I have little faith that a new healer will be different from the other three.

I feel like it’ll just follow the same stale conveyor belt of ‘spam dps’ - ‘use oGCD’ - ‘spam DPS’ - ‘use another oGCD’, repeat ad infinitum. DPS will be one filler, one DoT and one AoE, it will have at least one oGCD that deals damage, and the healing kit can mostly be ignored bar the one Super Strong Instant Cast oGCD that probably relates to job gauge, which is strong enough that the job gauge doesn’t act as a restriction and you can do 80-90% of your healing with it. If the tank ever does get low HP. it’ll have ‘Long cooldown healing boost’ ability on a 120 second cooldown, but your healing is already so powerful you don’t technically need it.

Only alternative I can think of is they’ll release a new healer that’s entirely DPS oriented. So, no/minimal GCD heals, majority of GCD abilities are dedicated damage, oGCDs are all healing, job gauge turns DPS into healing or vice-versa. It will be a guaranteed raid spot in every composition, which the developers will react to by buffing it each patch. Which is pretty much how all three healers play now anyway though, so it’d still just be more of the same.

Addendum: I didn’t even mean to but I basically described pre-5.0 Scholar in last paragraph, except it still followed the healer standard toolkit

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YusiKha

There is no reason that they can’t make the 3 fun and add a 4th. I understand what you’re getting at, but making 1 additional engaging healer play style isn’t an insurmountable task.

---

there reason was they wanted to fix the other three before adding a new one so there was a reason

I know SE is capable of making healers, all jobs even, that has unique playstyles and their own theme and asthetic in Heavensward. But I can't shake the feeling some priorities got lost in the 4.0 and 5.0 patch and I hope we soon get to know more what reasoning went into it. Would want them to make the existing healers good to play and appeal to different playstyles first, then challenge themselves to make something completely different as a 4th Healer entry.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YusiKha

There is no reason that they can’t make the 3 fun and add a 4th. I understand what you’re getting at, but making 1 additional engaging healer play style isn’t an insurmountable task.

---

I wholeheartedly agree and I hope they do this.

But I'd rather they get the healer's right and have a direction that both works and keeps people relatively happy before they add another because otherwise it'd encounter the same issues.

Further to the OP, a 4th healer could actually lead to better balance and more unique class identity...

One of the issues with the current 3 healer setup is that WHM is direct heals, and SCH is shields, but AST is forced to choose between being a 'discount WHM' or a 'discount SCH' due to the need for a mix in savage raids. A 4th healer would let SE split the healers evenly between direct heals and shields, allowing each healer to have their own identity within their speciality without making any one healer 'required' for difficult content.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Billythepancake

To me, its not about balance, it's more about the fact that they attempted to achieve balance by gutting all the healers of what made them fun and unique. I don't want a 4th healer, not for balance's sake, but because they can't make the 3 we have fun and unique. Why would I want a 4th WHM with a small gimmick that barely distinguishes itself from the other 3?

---

Basically this. For 4 years now we've been told "You can't have a new healer because we need to balance what we have" and this is the result of that. Dumbed down jobs.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Acidblood

Further to the OP, a 4th healer could actually lead to better balance and more unique class identity...

One of the issues with the current 3 healer setup is that WHM is direct heals, and SCH is shields, but AST is forced to choose between being a 'discount WHM' or a 'discount SCH' due to the need for a mix in savage raids. A 4th healer would let SE split the healers evenly between direct heals and shields, allowing each healer to have their own identity within their speciality without making any one healer 'required' for difficult content.

---

Hopefully SE realizes that is long overdue for AST to either be regen or shield, to make their lives easier when the eventual 4th healer comes. Better to balance regen vs regen / shield vs shield, than having a turf war between the 3.

I hope there's a 4th healer in the future and that healer be a Meele. But if balance is the reason to the 4th Healer wasn't made yet i believe that a 4th Healer is out of question, unless they release a 4th healer even unbalanced, i already lost my hopes in Healers Balance after +6 years playing this game. I'm just waiting for new Jobs Updates to see WHM being nerfed directly ( nerfing their own skills ) or indirectly ( buffing af SCH/AST skills ) always being.

Anyway, SCH at SB was "almost a meele", you had to stand in Meele position to spam Miasma II always that debuff goes off ( 10 secs ) to improve your damage, a Meele Healer could be something like that where their DAMAGE skills was based on Meele style, NOT their HEALING skills, Healing Skills should be ranged like any other.

PLD and GNB are similar, as WAR and DRK are similar now as well. So AST should be focused in only one Stance, Nocturnal or Diurnal ( Nocturnal is useless to me, i just play NOC if there's another AST in my group already in DIU, so i wouldn't miss NOC at all especially now that DIU got Shields to cast ), that way we had 2 healers based on Regen Kit and 2 Healers based on Shield Kit, so the new Healer could be more Buff based too, so there's another 2 Healers for Buffs ( AST and their cards + the new one ) and 2 Healers for Raw Skills ( WHM with their Strong Healing and Damage + SCH with their strong Damage Mitigation and Shields ).

As much as I'd love a Geomancer or Chemist class, if SE's definition of balancing is to dumb all three classes down to a basic, bland toolkit, then I don't want a fourth healer.

Why do they even have to be balanced? Whats wrong with having 4 unique healers that all excel in different things?

What's the point in having 4 if they're just all the same homogenised class with an aesthetically different gauge?

I want to play things because they are fun, not to sit there and be all like 'Omg Astrologian can buff people and White Mage can't, that's not fair, change it!' If all the healers become 'balanced' aka, the same, then whats the point in me ever playing the other 3 out of my aesthetically preferred 1?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LukaRoselia

Why do they even have to be balanced? Whats wrong with having 4 unique healers that all excel in different things?

What's the point in having 4 if they're just all the same homogenised class with an aesthetically different gauge?

I want to play things because they are fun, not to sit there and be all like 'Omg Astrologian can buff people and White Mage can't, that's not fair, change it!' If all the healers become 'balanced' aka, the same, then whats the point in me ever playing the other 3 out of my aesthetically preferred 1?

---

Short answer: Savage Raids.

Savage Raids are designed so tightly around hard enrages (i.e. a DPS check) and scripted mechanics that if all classes of the same role don't bring A, B, C and D with X rDPS they are seen as 'useless' by the parser slaves and speed runners; rumours spread, party finders exclude said class, and people complain... so, Yoshi forbid any class be unique and fun, because apparently we aren't here to have fun (or think for ourselves), we are here to get a 99% parse on FFlogs :faceplam:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YusiKha

It’s not mutually exclusive, but time and time again I see people saying that they want our 3 balanced before a 4th.

---

It's possible if they change their vision and focus their work on this role (for once).

Skeptical, with SE's track record. They could do it, but it may end up being like how Tanks are right now, and I'm not too sure that would be worth it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Arale

Skeptical, with SE's track record. They could do it, but it may end up being like how Tanks are right now, and I'm not too sure that would be worth it.

---

True, also at least tank players got a new toy GNB to play with you know. What did healers get? Nothing. If healer just gonna end up getting homogenized like tank, why can't I have a new toy healer job to play with?

People should stop believing the "we add a 4th tank to better balance tanks" statement. Healers got treated the exact same way (if not worse) as tanks.

Add new job is one thing. Balance is another. If they can put effort into balancing/rework, add a 4th first or later doesn't matter.

Just thinking about I have the same three jobs to play as healer for at least another 2 year, I died a little inside.

Yes I want a fourth healer too, but plz consider to give us a third one: right now in game we have a barrier one and a regen one, nothin more, and let’s be honest, they are not even so entertaining.
Before trying to get a new one, devs should try at least to introduce new ways to fill HP bar, or all we would get would be Another AST, who, right now, doesn’t bring anything exclusive to this game (ast main).

I do agree with the notion that a 4th "WHM but with-" would be more disappointing than no healer at all. Due to how mechanics work I don't see any purely melee healer existing, but one that steps in and out like a RDM would be interesting - Imagine a Geomancer dashing in to shield a party member (you know, like Cover should?), or stomping an area with their hammer, leaving a field of flowers that does healing/damage over time, and then dashing out. Or a Chemist that has Mudra-like mechanic and needs to mix ingredients on the moment and each different combo makes for a different spell or effect.

In short, the dev team has to get creative, AST has enough to make it not look like a [blatant] WHM clone, but that's not going to work a second time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Allegor

I do agree with the notion that a 4th "WHM but with-" would be more disappointing than no healer at all. Due to how mechanics work I don't see any purely melee healer existing, but one that steps in and out like a RDM would be interesting - Imagine a Geomancer dashing in to shield a party member (you know, like Cover should?), or stomping an area with their hammer, leaving a field of flowers that does healing/damage over time, and then dashing out. Or a Chemist that has Mudra-like mechanic and needs to mix ingredients on the moment and each different combo makes for a different spell or effect.

In short, the dev team has to get creative, AST has enough to make it not look like a [blatant] WHM clone, but that's not going to work a second time.

---

We could get the foundation for a melee healer from SCH. You could have a "pet" which did heals in a relatively small aoe as well as the healer themselves being able to do a heals within a small radius around themselves.

To avoid treading on SCH's toes as the pet healer, the new healer could use a conduit of some sort, e.g. (if we go with a more scientific theme) a heal-bot of some kind, to channel their heals to other party members. You could have a command which ordered your conduit to jump to a target party member's position and stay on them, or a ground target to get it to stand in a specific spot.

So, the healer would heal the tank and melee dps while in melee range, the conduit would heal the ranged dps and (probably) the other healer. For this to work you'd have to have a much more even split between abilities for the healer themselves and the conduit than the SCH has between their own abilities and their fairy's, probably with conduit commands being instant abilities and the many healer spells having shorter cast times (like AST, or perhaps even shorter) to allow for semi-regular weaving, as well as for the healer to move around more (melee characters need more mobility than ranged ones, generally speaking).

Add to this a cooldown (with charges) to swap positions between the healer and the conduit, a second cooldown to spawn a temporary conduit on every party member for burst AoE healing, and some single target spells which can be cast from the healer and on anyone in range of the healer or the conduit, which will be automatically cast from whichever is in range (these being your single target top-up heals).

Ofc, a healer also needs offensive options with the current encounter design. I'd like to see the healer themselves doing some melee damage, maybe even with an actual weapon. The conduit could be capable of buffing in a small aoe around it (maybe this would even incentivise the ranged dps to stand near the thing, which would also mean they'd get healed). The swap positions tool would be used to swap the conduit in to melee range to top up buffs on the tank and melee dps. (ofc, buffs would have to be weaker than AST buffs, and personal dps weaker than WHM pdps to allow them to average out by having some of each).

I think something like this could be interesting. All of this is off the top of my head, though. I'm just spitballing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hatstand

We could get the foundation for a melee healer from SCH. You could have a "pet" which did heals in a relatively small aoe as well as the healer themselves being able to do a heals within a small radius around themselves.

To avoid treading on SCH's toes as the pet healer, the new healer could use a conduit of some sort, e.g. (if we go with a more scientific theme) a heal-bot of some kind, to channel their heals to other party members. You could have a command which ordered your conduit to jump to a target party member's position and stay on them, or a ground target to get it to stand in a specific spot.

So, the healer would heal the tank and melee dps while in melee range, the conduit would heal the ranged dps and (probably) the other healer. For this to work you'd have to have a much more even split between abilities for the healer themselves and the conduit than the SCH has between their own abilities and their fairy's, probably with conduit commands being instant abilities and the many healer spells having shorter cast times (like AST, or perhaps even shorter) to allow for semi-regular weaving, as well as for the healer to move around more (melee characters need more mobility than ranged ones, generally speaking).

Add to this a cooldown (with charges) to swap positions between the healer and the conduit, a second cooldown to spawn a temporary conduit on every party member for burst AoE healing, and some single target spells which can be cast from the healer and on anyone in range of the healer or the conduit, which will be automatically cast from whichever is in range (these being your single target top-up heals).

Ofc, a healer also needs offensive options with the current encounter design. I'd like to see the healer themselves doing some melee damage, maybe even with an actual weapon. The conduit could be capable of buffing in a small aoe around it (maybe this would even incentivise the ranged dps to stand near the thing, which would also mean they'd get healed

---

Rather than saying SCH is pet class, i would say current SCH is the conduit healer xD

Make a real pet class, example a shepherd, revolve around 2 pets at a same time, wolf dog for attack and damage buff. A lamb for healing and defend buff spreading seeds ground base HoT. As usual i would like a bell :D

Let's stop makingjobs so frequently and start adding more flavor and identity to them. More and more we add jobs without a direction to bringing some balance and keeping identity (not homogenization) soon enough we will be just like WoW. Dull boring and all the same.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lemuel81

Let's stop makingjobs so frequently and start adding more flavor and identity to them. More and more we add jobs without a direction to bringing some balance and keeping identity (not homogenization) soon enough we will be just like WoW. Dull boring and all the same.

---

Idk. I’ve been playing a little WoW since 5.05 and new ffxiv healers could give them a run for their money on the homogeneity front. Only tried disc priest and resto Druid so far but they seemed pretty different (by ffxiv’s current standard).

Edit: not so say the ffxiv healers are in an acceptable state. They’re not. Just wanted to point out that they’ve sunk so far WoW might not be such a good “it could be worse” anymore.