Quote Originally Posted by Ilyrian View Post
Well there are only so many ways you can fill a health bar [...]
Worse than that: There are only so many health points you need to fill in that bar and there are only set times in which you need to fill that bar. It is extremely rare that a DPS has to think about Overkill, but a healer needs to constantly think about Overheal.

More generally, healers are defined by healing, which is a fancy way of saying they are undoing damage that has been caused. That in turn means they are defined by the damage they are undoing and the way it is delivered dictates how diverse healers can be.

That's why looking at other games for concepts only really works if their content also delivers damage in a similar way. You cannot have a pure HoT healer if all content requires burst healing, the entire slow and steady line of healing designs is instantly shut down by burst requirements. And if healers are only healing 50% of their time anyway because their heals are tuned so high, healer designs that rely on combos, stacks or similar skill interactions are out as well, because they're going to be overhealing a lot and cost the group otherwise free DPS. Skills that do more damage than a person can take in one hit throw healers (or healer combos) without mitigation right out the window.

I personally think SE designed themselves into a corner. They definitely "will" implement more healer jobs, but they will probably fall into the line of:"White Mage with Gimmick X" or "Scholar with Gimmick Y". Their encounter design was based on that Duality, they haven't really changed it up since and it's painfully obvious that Astro isn't a healer job that stands on its own but rather is meant to fill the respective missing role.