Armored Healer

I've seen people come up with all kinds of ideas for healers and chemist seems to be liked but how about an armored healer? I know the default thought is "paladin is already in the game" but for a game with no specializations like WoW, perhaps they could do something like how sch and smn level and your gladiator could choose between being a tank or healer. There's potential here in terms of gameplay to break up some of the sameness in healer roles and the gear would obviously be different. I loved maining a holy pally in my wow days and was sad to see no similar class was in ff14.

What are you envisaging this healer would do beyond "wear armour" though? It's not much of a gimmick to base a class around on its own.

SCH/SMN seems to be regarded as a failed experiment that they don't want to repeat - and a healer/tank combo would also be a bad plan in terms of keeping a balanced number of roles participating in roulettes. Make two separate classes and people will need to level both of them; combine them and they only need to spend half as much time playing those in-demand roles.

(Also, due to the way classes and weapons seem to work here, a "healer gladiator" might still need to use a sword, or at least the animations for it. You may or may not regard that as a problem.)

I thought the next Healer will be some kind of hammer wielding cleric anyway?

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Originally Posted by Pepsi_Plunge

I thought the next Healer will be some kind of hammer wielding cleric anyway?

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That or Chemist is also a popular choice. Potion / Item Stash healers are quite classy in FF. Since PvP has shown that potions as abilities or actions can exist, chances are good for our itemslinger here.

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Originally Posted by RinaB

I've seen people come up with all kinds of ideas for healers and chemist seems to be liked but how about an armored healer? I know the default thought is "paladin is already in the game" but for a game with no specializations like WoW, perhaps they could do something like how sch and smn level and your gladiator could choose between being a tank or healer. There's potential here in terms of gameplay to break up some of the sameness in healer roles and the gear would obviously be different. I loved maining a holy pally in my wow days and was sad to see no similar class was in ff14.

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People love the class branch idea and come up with these suggestions fairly frequently (though less so recently), but they seem to miss a key point - skills from a base class can't be separated out depending on the branch you choose. This is why SMN has physick, even though it's so weak it's useless. If you try to branch a healer from GLD, you have to keep in mind this healer will have things like enmity generating melee combos with no way to separate that out. You really might as well just make a new class/job entirely, it would be easier than trying to cancel all the tanking abilities.

Now with that out of the way, there's a problem with "armored healer" in general. All tanks share gear within their role, and all healers. SE isn't likely to make custom gear for every content for an armored healer. Even if you take the approach that maybe they should share gear with tanks or melee, that introduces its own problems, eg, they'd be more survivable than other healers while potentially having useless stats - or if you make them useful, you have to balance that as a dimension entirely separate from other healers.

Now what you could pragmatically do is have heavy armor be part of the new healer's AF. However, that's not much of an identity in itself. Maybe you could make Chemist armored, or have a necromaner-healer that's armored, but just "armored" doesn't tell us much. But if you're envisioning a holy type healer with the holy pally thing... well, it's doable, but it would be tricky to avoid a lot of overlap with WHM.

As is, you can get fairly close to this by glamoring plate armor onto WHM (just you've got a staff instead of a sword). So to separate your idea from this, I would suggest fleshing it out a bit more. For example, are you envisioning a melee healer? If so, that helps give it a bit more identity. But we still need to know more about what this healer would do.

tl;dr: "armored" healer is a visual style (not class/job design) that you can have right now. To create a class with that theme, a lot more work would need to be done.

Armor is an aesthetic. Unless you mean it would actually have higher max HP and defenses, but that then begs the question as to why this healer would require heavy armor and HP compared to other healers--like what purpose does it serve? In FFXI, DNC could wear leather armor class and was technically a healer but it was only because they were required to build TP through autoattacks to heal (and there was no dodging aoes in FFXI), so they sustained more damage than normal compared to WHM which was a ranged healer.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

People love the class branch idea and come up with these suggestions fairly frequently (though less so recently), but they seem to miss a key point - skills from a base class can't be separated out depending on the branch you choose. This is why SMN has physick, even though it's so weak it's useless. If you try to branch a healer from GLD, you have to keep in mind this healer will have things like enmity generating melee combos with no way to separate that out. You really might as well just make a new class/job entirely, it would be easier than trying to cancel all the tanking abilities.

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This is blatantly false.

SMN maintains all ACN spells. SCH maintains one ACN spell, plus a few that share the same name but have different spell IDs. You can verify this yourself on the official job guides or Garland Tools. It might also be visible in game, but I'm away from my computer right now and can't check it.

While I agree that a single class branching into multiple jobs is probably a poor idea, it's not because the split jobs would necessarily have all of the base class's abilities.

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Originally Posted by Jaelommiss

This is blatantly false.

SMN maintains all ACN spells. SCH maintains one ACN spell, plus a few that share the same name but have different spell IDs. You can verify this yourself on the official job guides or Garland Tools. It might also be visible in game, but I'm away from my computer right now and can't check it.

While I agree that a single class branching into multiple jobs is probably a poor idea, it's not because the split jobs would necessarily have all of the base class's abilities.

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(damn you beat me to it) Going further from this post, this would technically mean they could easily rework SMN Physick to work with INT instead since SCH's Physick has a different skill ID, or they could use the skill ID to implement a new skill.

To sum up all spells that exist on both jobs visually, but are rarely if ever the same:
1.) Ruin I - SMN: 180pot, SCH: 160pot
2.) Ruin II - SMN: 160pot, SCH: 160-200pot, upgraded with Broil masteries.
3.) Energy Drain - SMN: 100pot + grants 2x AF, SCH: 150pot + steals HP and MP + gives 10 fairy gauge (costs 1x AF)
4.) Physick - ironically same at this point, but the skill ID is seperated from ACN / SMN and SCH

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

That or Chemist is also a popular choice. Potion / Item Stash healers are quite classy in FF. Since PvP has shown that potions as abilities or actions can exist, chances are good for our itemslinger here.

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Yes, but Yoshi hinted more then once about Gaia and her hammer that her class could be the 4th healer. Itemslinger is probably more of an option for the 4th physical range.

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Originally Posted by Pepsi_Plunge

Yes, but Yoshi hinted more then once about Gaia and her hammer that her class could be the 4th healer. Itemslinger is probably more of an option for the 4th physical range.

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I don't think he ever hinted that. All I ever remember being officially said about Gaia's hammer is that the designer drew her like that, then realised there isn't a hammer-wielding class and Yoshida said it was fine.

People were just so desperate for news of a new healer class that they started brewing theories this could be it.

I would love to see an armored healer, especially if it involves healing by smashing things in the face.

While I didn't enjoy BfA Mistweaver's optimum build, fistweaving was so much fun on the one fight that it was appropriate. If I could play something like that in XIV...

By Armor do you mean they have their own armor set like DRG and NIN?

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Originally Posted by SleepyNeko

By Armor do you mean they have their own armor set like DRG and NIN?

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im just saying to make a holy paladin in ff14. the job is already here and in terms of the gear they could literally just make another set of the tank gear they already make with reduced vitality and different stats. I didn't really mean the armor would be a part of its mechanics I just meant more along the lines of paladins being kind of the epitomy of both tank/healer throughout fantasy worlds. I haven't had time to come up with class defining gameplay because I wanted to hear the ideas from you guys. my original post should have been more clear I suppose but for one clemency could be the baseline heal equivalent to benefic and then keep it how it is on tank paladins. I figured this class could be a lot easier to make for SE since the baseline of the job is already here

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Originally Posted by Jaelommiss

This is blatantly false.

SMN maintains all ACN spells. SCH maintains one ACN spell, plus a few that share the same name but have different spell IDs. You can verify this yourself on the official job guides or Garland Tools. It might also be visible in game, but I'm away from my computer right now and can't check it.

While I agree that a single class branching into multiple jobs is probably a poor idea, it's not because the split jobs would necessarily have all of the base class's abilities.

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Yeah, ok, I should have just said it would be easier than cancelling the stuff from the base class. At this point, there's really no reason to not just make stuff its own job, as SE has been doing for new jobs after Ninja.

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Originally Posted by RinaB

im just saying to make a holy paladin in ff14. the job is already here and in terms of the gear they could literally just make another set of the tank gear they already make with reduced vitality and different stats.

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Glamor some armor onto WHM. Bam! Holy paladin.

The only thing you're missing is a sword, but there are some metal staves that would fit with the armor pretty well (I'd suggest the Thordan weapons, probably).

Except PLD is increasingly gaining a more holy aspect to it anyway with successive expansions (we have a healing spell in Clemency where the PLD kneels in piety and the spell executes in a flurry of angel feathers and a heavenly light, we have Passage of Arms where the PLD throws up giant glowing blue aetheric angel wings behind them, and then we have actual holy spells in Holy Spirit, Holy Circle and Confiteor). So asking for a 'holy PLD' Job to be added is a little redundant as PLD already is that now.

Sure they may not have had quite that vibe at first, being just one step up from GLA, but it's clear SE are trying to make the Job better fit that aspect, and it's especially apparent now. :)

As for the OP, I think it's more likely that we will see more heavy armour allowed for existing healer classes and Jobs to be added rather than an actual 'armoured healer' class/Job (as Iscah mentioned, ignore Gaia, that was a mistake by Tetsuya Nomura who was not aware there wasn't a hammer-wielding Disciple of Magic in the game already when he designed her and just added a hammer for her "because it looked cool" - hammers being a WHM weapon in FFXI incidentally - and Yoshi basically just smiled and assured him it was fine, so players who want a new healer so badly are now clutching at whatever barest threads of possibility they can find, even if they're not even there).

A good place to start would be asking for FFXI's 'Holy Breastplate' gear to be added to the game (a bulky armoured breastplate that was only equippable by WHM and had the highest DEF in the game at that level, even more than actual tank gear at that same level), as I admit I'd love to see that added.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

So asking for a 'holy PLD' Job to be added is a little redundant as PLD already is that now.

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Then why does it need to be restricted to tank role only?

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Originally Posted by RinaB

Then why does it need to be restricted to tank role only?

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PLD and WHM are thematically (at least for abilities) very similar.

PLD is the holy tank. WHM is the holy healer. Just as PLD gets a bunch of 'light' themed spells, well, WHM is that for the green role.

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Originally Posted by RinaB

im just saying to make a holy paladin in ff14. the job is already here and in terms of the gear they could literally just make another set of the tank gear they already make with reduced vitality and different stats.

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What does that achieve though, beyond saying "look, this healer wears armour"?

As I asked in my first reply, what are you envisaging to be the selling point of an armoured holy healer that WHM doesn't offer, besides wearing armour?

It would be introducing a huge new number of items with very little clear benefit beyond the novelty of it, when our armoury chest is already strained for space.

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Originally Posted by RinaB

I haven't had time to come up with class defining gameplay because I wanted to hear the ideas from you guys.

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It's not really working that way. You're the one who wants the idea so you have to come up with how it works - otherwise it's a bit like saying "it's a great idea - you should put the work into developing it" while not giving us any details that would convince us of that fact. Otherwise it's more of a fleeting thought bubble than a real concept - and others aren't seeing a gap that needs filling, or how to fill it, so it's up to you to develop your idea.

There isn't much room to invent a class here without stepping on the toes of both PLD and WHM.

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Originally Posted by RinaB

Then why does it need to be restricted to tank role only?

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Because that's how FFXIV's battle system works. You have to queue as one of the three designated roles.

If you want an armoured healer, you glamour your WHM.

https://img2.finalfantasyxiv.com/acc...7b26502cb7.jpg

No. I'm already annoyed at needing to make separate sets for DRG and NIN when my other melee use Striking. Would I like more glamour options including some armor options? Sure, I think the only actual healer gear we've ever had that was "armor" was the daystar set, and that just had the boots, gloves, and some detailing on the chest while still being mostly a robe.