Will we ever get an edgy healer?

[Gemina]

snip..

Don't worry. I know what you mean, and trust me when I say I am in total favor of a dark based healer. To extend on your own experience, I loved the Spawn series of comic books which depicted as the heaven/light side of the spectrum not being a whole lot different than the hell/dark side. In fact, the angelic methods of bringing about justice were not too far off, if not worse than the demonic ones. This leads to a whole different perspective where light is villainized due to dark being outcasted and branded as evil when the two are nowhere close to being synonymous.

This game is ripe for this kind of healer TBH. A healer who heals their allies by damaging enemies basically kills two birds with one stone, and that is likely the issue with bringing such a healer into this game. It would quickly and easily blow away its competition.

[Sunspawn]

All healers have hard edges made from salt.

[Lyth]

There's a lot of that already, if you look at the lore. Nymian scholars use a lot of abilities that are based on poison and miasma. Everyone knows that those Tonberries can hold a grudge. Likewise, the Amdapoori White Mages "won" the War of the Magi by flooding the world, ushering in the Sixth Umbral Calamity. Who ever told you that light is good?

If you're talking gameplay mechanics, then yes, it'd be nice to see a healer who gains healing power through their offensive moveset. WHM would have the beginnings of this, if the Lily system was tied to Stone casts instead of Cure spells. Likewise, if Dancer ever becomes a thing, I'd like to see it as a melee based healer who applies heals as you move through your combos. Also, Drain Samba seems to be one of their recurring moves, so maybe we'll have party-wide lifesteal as a means of healing.

[Seraphor]

Yeah, SCH is already the edgiest healer, just give us some non-faerie faerie glamours.

[Raikai]

If Dancer rumor is really true, you won't have an edgy healer... but a coreography healer!

[Rosa_Frandlia]

We did once have an 'edgy' healer in 1.0 - it was called THM. Then Jobs were added and THM lost it's drain healing and umbral/astral spells so as to be a better fit for BLM, becoming a straight spellcaster with a weird alignment shift mechanic (CNJ becoming the dedicated healer). So I don't see SE repeating that I'm afraid.

They had it also pre-SB. I had Raise/Stoneskin/and cure as cross class skills on my THM. I was practicing Red mage basically. Only real reason I leveled it at the time was to get quick cast.

[AppleJinx]

Any healer can become edgy healer when you use this macro:

/p just to prevent some missunderstandings here are 3 rules...
/p =====================================
/p 1. Bosses should be the hardest part of dungeons
/p not any trashmobs infront of them
/p -->NO rush! NO big pulls!
/p 2. I'm participate as HEALER so it is NOT my job to DPS
/p -->keep that in mind please!
/p 3. It's not needed to keep u up to 100% HP all the time
/p -->If u do everything correctly i wont let u die - I promise!
/p srsly... u wanna die?

[Enkidoh]

They had it also pre-SB. I had Raise/Stoneskin/and cure as cross class skills on my THM. I was practicing Red mage basically. Only real reason I leveled it at the time was to get quick cast.

I'm not meaning about crossclassing CNJ spells though on THM, I'm talking native healing abilities and spells that were part of the class itself - original release-version 1.0 THM really did have native healing spells, it was a 'dark' spellcaster that only cast Umbral and Astral aligned spells, healing spells were a mixture of mostly of the 'drain' or 'sacrifice your own HP to restore a party member's' variety, plus it also had quite a few debuffs to throw out as well, and thus suited the 'dark' healer angle quite nicely.

Then patch 1.20 came along, Jobs were added, the battle system was altered and THM was completely changed to be a better fit for BLM (it was probably the most altered class in the game from it's original form, along with CNJ, to the point it's new ability set no longer resembled it's original form). It's remaining legacy of it's 1.0 form was the Umbral/Astral element being incorporated into it's spellcasting as a buff shift mechanic. Even the debuffs it once had were mostly given to ACN in ARR (ACN had been a class planned for 1.0 but it was never implemented).

CNJ was also changed to lose it's most of it's RDM-like elemental spells at the same time to allow it to upgrade better to WHM (fire, ice and lightning spells being given to THM) and became a straight healer (CNJ already had the usual White Magic type healing spells like Cure and Protect natively from the beginning.

[Kalise]

An dark healer could be cool.

Would also fit in nicely among the other healers. Given we have WHM who brings HoTs, SCH who brings Shields and AST who brings either HoTs or Shields.

Having some sort of dark healer who brings damage debuffs would fit in without just ending up copying one of the already established healers.

Not to mention, would be another story that would revolve around the shades of grey that exist in the world (As opposed to everything being clearly Black and White) which the Dork Knight and WHM stories cover.

In addition, would work well given the theme of the expansions. ARR being morning as it's our first foray into the post-Calamity world. Heavensward being Mid-day as the Warrior of Light travels to the highest reaches of the world (Both literally, with Dravania and the Sea of Clouds, and also metaphorically when we take on the Archbishop). Stormblood being evening, when we start to travel to the other side of the world and get surrounded by Darkness (Warriors of Darkness, Imperials, Ascians and the stuff with Prelude in Violet) and so shine less brightly. Then Shadowbringers being Twilight/Dusk as things start to become darker, both in name (Literally, the Expac's called Shadowbringers >.>) and in terms of what's suggested by way of Prelude in Violet.

Thus, as things are becoming darker, having a new "Dark" class makes some sense. Either in Shadowbringers or the following expac (Which is likely to represent Nightfall and possibly be the darkest expansion)

[Rosa_Frandlia]

I'm not meaning about crossclassing CNJ spells though on THM, I'm talking native healing abilities and spells that were part of the class itself - original release-version 1.0 THM really did have native healing spells, it was a 'dark' spellcaster that only cast Umbral and Astral aligned spells, healing spells were a mixture of mostly of the 'drain' or 'sacrifice your own HP to restore a party member's' variety, plus it also had quite a few debuffs to throw out as well, and thus suited the 'dark' healer angle quite nicely.

Then patch 1.20 came along, Jobs were added, the battle system was altered and THM was completely changed to be a better fit for BLM (it was probably the most altered class in the game from it's original form, along with CNJ, to the point it's new ability set no longer resembled it's original form). It's remaining legacy of it's 1.0 form was the Umbral/Astral element being incorporated into it's spellcasting as a buff shift mechanic. Even the debuffs it once had were mostly given to ACN in ARR (ACN had been a class planned for 1.0 but it was never implemented).

CNJ was also changed to lose it's most of it's RDM-like elemental spells at the same time to allow it to upgrade better to WHM (fire, ice and lightning spells being given to THM) and became a straight healer (CNJ already had the usual White Magic type healing spells like Cure and Protect natively from the beginning.

Got you, just saying with cross class skills we had more customization than with role skills which I miss. Maybe we can get some of that back in 5.0, but who knows at this point as letting us have all 10 role skills took out all player customization.