The Remaining Healers

[Docent]

Weapon could be anything. Rikku used a gauntlet, FFT chemists could use daggers or guns, and some others use rods/polearms.

FFX-2 alchemists used heavy GUNS and looked like Samus Aran from Metroid. I would love that in this game, but I'm not going to hold my breath :P

[MikeWW]

The red mage cooks rice cakes and deals damage by throwing a tennis ball against the wall.

[Mugiawara]

Dancer could be a HoT stack healer.
they dance and their hots get stronger.

[VanilleFang]

FFX-2 alchemists used heavy GUNS and looked like Samus Aran from Metroid. I would love that in this game, but I'm not going to hold my breath :P

I'd actually like to see something similar as well, though I'm very skeptical of a Chemist type character. Maybe. If they don't revolve around actual consumables then it could be pretty awesome.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

I doubt WHM will ever die, mostly because it's the most iconic healer that people default to before they find out they prefer others...

And then there's all those Holy nukes.

They're already dying out honestly. The only reason it's the most played job is because it's your only choice of a healer until level 30, which by then you're already a bit invested I them anyway.

Looking at endgame raiding, it's becoming more and more common to see dual AST or SCH and AST. WHM simply feels like too much of a nerf in raid utility to be worth bringing for nothing but Cure III, which is useless in this tier to begin with.

[VanilleFang]

...

Pretty much all this. I won't ever give up WHM (because it's always been my favourite class/job on FF), but it's blatant the difference between WHM and the other two healers. If they gave WHM more utility then maybe it wouldn't feel so much weaker.

[Teraluna]

If they do introduce a new healing class then I only hope it's not a copy & paste from another healer for half or more of it's skills.

For longer term whm players, Astro wasn't a completely new class - not by any stretch of the imagination. It was a whm with some fluff.
Fluff which then had to be reworked as output wasn't worth the effort of playing it.

They boosted it - rather dramatically in some areas - which only served to show that it was rushed in the first place, as they struggled with the resource required to introduce 3 x classes simultaneously.

[Nihility]

Astrologian was originally chemist, reskinned to fit an ishgard theme.
just think of the card skills as mixing ingredients and the skillset becomes pretty easy to imagine.

classes that could be made to work as a healer currently would be sage, shaman, oracle, mediator, dancer(but not really the way people think, the game is too reliant on bursty healing), and red mage(but i see this fitting the role of bard/machinist more as a caster/support)

[Razard]

though this isn't applied to Dark Knight...

Ahem

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/D...y_III)#Weapons

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/L...ns#Dark_swords

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Deathbringer



Looks very Sword-y to me.

Now back to your scheduled Healer discussion. Carry on.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

If they do introduce a new healing class then I only hope it's not a copy & paste from another healer for half or more of it's skills.

Oh seriously this. SERIOUSLY. The reason AST was so hard to balance in the first place was because it shared nearly all of WHMs basic healing toolkit. Because of this, none of their heals could be as strong as a WHMs heals or it would make WHM seem weak.

Apparently they said to hell with it all and did it anyway though, and now we have WHM at the bottom by a large margin. I can only hope they purposely over buffed AST just to get them into the raiding scene for at least one tier, and they have a plan for WHM.