Would Discipline Priest Mechanics work in FFXIV?

[FoxyAreku]

@OP: I'm guessing you're talking about the new Disc Priest seen in Legion.

More pandaria and before, but it's the same thing as far as I'm aware.

Haven't touched WoW in years.

If a melee healer has ranged heals, then it's not really a melee healer.

Not really?

There aren't actually healers that have to go around chasing after DPS to heal them with every move they have, are there? Because that sounds horrid.

[Shurrikhan]

Would Discipline Priest Mechanics work in FFXIV?

If we're talking about ally-targeted casts (potentially including heals) that make players receive healing from your damage, so that you alternate between buff application and heal-y damage uptime, I don't see why that would be impossible to balance by any means. Whether it ends up as fun here as there (and plenty will argue that Legion Disc healing is far from fun anyways) is another story, though it again seems likely enough to pull off that aspect in an entertaining way, if not even, perhaps, better. (At least here in XIV, with an equal if not higher amount of in-combat or rotational abilities and no talent tree, you wouldn't have to worry about any of the fun talent ideas not being base-line, either.)

The only real limiting factor I can imagine is that raid (i.e. multi-party) healing isn't a thing in XIV, as you can only AoE heal your own party members. But on the other hand, (full) party healing would contribute a larger amount than a WoW party... Hmm.

tl;dr it could almost certainly work, but like the idea source can easily turn people off who prefer more of a 40/60 split to dps and support casts, in either direction.

Assuming that others are attracted to the more forcibly damage-focused uptime, though, the opposite too might be attractive to many — a healer who spends most of his or her time on healing casts, even when seemingly unnecessary, in order to empower later attacks and heals, giving a greater sense of preparation and time spent healing, even in casual 90% Cleric Stance contents.

Sidenote: until Legion, Disc was basically a mechanics-cheesing Scholar. Stack enough of them in your raid, and previous soft wipe mechanics just have no effect. Only with Legion have they turned into vampiric raid healers. Prior to that, only Shadow priests, the dps spec, had that element, as far as I'm aware.

[Shurrikhan]

(Melee healer concept discussion)

You do not need to redesign old encounters because the gear is worthless from them and power levels are so high compared to when they came out that they are nearly trivial.

This. But, I would argue that you could also equip the new healer style with means of immunizing themselves to these things, rather than causing content to treat them all equally or leaving certain old fights unaccessible to melee healers..

Give them a Veil function, similar to the later half of Warden's Paeon, which keeps them from receiving the next debuff and immunizing them completely to others; give them an ability that draws projectiles from nearby allies to themselves, up to a damage cap, and reduces their AoE radius if any; give them directional barriers, etc., etc. These can all play into interesting parts of the class while making them viable for such raids.

If a melee healer has ranged heals, then it's not really a melee healer.

A "melee healer" as a term to describe certain healers across multiple MMOs has usually just meant that some part of its toolkit is limited to melee range. This can be just its filler dps, just its AoE heals, it could be short-range auras, etc.; it doesn't have to be everything, or even all of its healing abilities. It just describes in what range the healer would typically be standing, for a fair bonus, not that it can't move out a bit (albeit likely at cost).

[Duelle]

Infact all we have to look is at the 3 new jobs we've got: instead of actually try something original they copied the pre-existing jobs in fear that their diversity wouldn't be effective, and being effective in dps and heal is basically all that this games want: anything less is unwanted.

It's not as clear cut as you think it may be. Part of the issue is that there's nothing in the way of new/unique resources to help build up gameplay for the new jobs. The job that has the closest thing to a resource is MCH with ammo, except even that behaves like a stacked damage buff that gets consumed when you use abilities. This may be because of UI limitations (like the hell the devs supposedly went through to let us see the TP of our party members), or perhaps one of those "this is Final Fantasy so all classes have to work off TP and MP only!" things.

AST is the best example here: their stances are literal copies of SCH and WHM skills and I really REALLY fear this might be a trend in the future because, instead of making a new interesting combat for them they simply copied pieces of the existing healers. Despite having the card Mechanics - which I really like - their skill sets is a literal copy of the pre-existing healers, and if they were an original healer - like a discipline priest for example - they might be ignored totally because "not effective as WHM or SCH".

There's a couple of things you're not taking into account. First that they've invested so much into the WHM+SCH combo that it's probably difficult for the devs to work in extra healing that provides different gameplay without getting outpaced by either or. That's largely why AST was designed to be a partner to one or the other (going Diurnal when partnered with SCH, going Nocturnal when partnered with WHM). I'll be the first one to tell you it's a very flimsy excuse, but having just leveled WHM and SCH to 60 and currently leveling AST, I'm starting to see how this all fits together. It's still not good design and sure as hell should not have happened, but that's the way things are right now.

[ADVSS]

A healer thats heals are dependent on its dps? Very possible, but the system and attitude of how the trinity is "supposed" to be would have to change in my opinion- More importantly how tanks were dealt with in 3.2. Sure! more attack power meant more mitigation! More self healing! "More better" tanking, with "more better" tank enmity generation! anyway like i said before i think it would be fun to play, a cool concept, but i think it would get nerfed so hard it was unplayable, till something changes in the meta. Very possible yes, unlikely atm

[Ageofwar]

I hate to say this but we already have something like this in FFXI called Dancer, where under Drain samba the part of the damage that the party does to a mob is return as HP back

[HideoKojima]

I really like this! Hope that developer consider this

[Miste]

This is something I've been curious about for a long time, as someone who mained a Priest in World of Warcraft before coming to this game nearly 3 years ago.

I also played Disc Priest and I like it also.

Only thing I am wondering is...

How would this healer work with the others? Like there are 3 healers right now and we add a discipline-like healer for the 4th...it would need to be balanced very carefully to make sure it was not overpowered compared to other healers...like I can see it now raid groups only taking this new healer and SCH while WHM and AST get backseated and no one wants to take them since this new healer can DPS a lot and heal simultaneously. This game isn't like WoW when it comes to battle so I just don't know if it can be added properly, but I do like this type of healer.

[Teraluna]

Rift mmo Chloromancer operates in a similar manner.
http://rift.wikia.com/wiki/Chloromancer

It's a class based on nature elements, with healing generated via damage. I find it a really good and interesting class to play, and one of my favourites in that mmo.

[Zojha]

A "melee healer" has usually just meant that some part of its toolkit is limited to melee range.

The predominant part, rather. A machinist has both blank and suppressive fire locked to melee range, but that doesn't make it a melee class, does it? Similarly, many Ninjutsu and Dagger throw are ranged, but a Ninja is still a melee, as Dagger Throw is extremely inefficient for DPS and TP both. Similar would apply to a melee healer - if the melee part was a mere gimmick and not an essential part of their toolkit, it would not be much of a melee at all.