Quote Originally Posted by Archwizard View Post
And if you could tell me how either one would work instead of just giving names, I might concede you have a point.
Oh, I'm sorry. I wasn't aware I had to draft a design document for this discussion.

The write up I made for Mystic a long time ago took an approach similar to AST where a concept was built upon from near scratch. In the case of Mystic, it was the theme of duality (after all, JP guides call it Ying-Yang Mage) by tying the job to XIV's own avatars of duality, Nald'thal. If I recall, the gameplay took elements from Thaumaturge gameplay but applied them to swapping between "death" (AKA dealing damage) and "life" (healing), much like how the traders represent both aspects when put together. This was during a time when Cleric Stance was still a thing and all healers were expected to use it, so I'd have to go back and rebuild it with the current design philosophies in mind.

As for Chemist, you already have some rough ideas of how I think it could work.
The point I was trying to make is that they could make any healer change its cast animations to a bottle throw and slap the name "Chemist" on it, because without the connection to consumables, it's just a name and aesthetic.
That's not much of an argument, especially considering Cure, Physic and Benefic at the baseline are the same thing with different particle effects. Same goes for standard rez, standard AoE heal and standard debuff remover. And as I said, consumables mean nothing in context of class design here, because if we suddenly care about consumables we'd have to put that burden on several current jobs for the sake of consistency. I'm sure MCHs would love to have bag space occupied by bullet pouches (or perhaps oils/batteries for their rooks and queens), BRDs with arrow quivers, NIN with ninjutsu tools and so on. Consumables are one of those all-or-nothing things; either everyone in the roster has to use consumables where applicable (with all the problems that invites), or we move on from consumables in search of ways to make the job work.
There are no mechanics unique to Chemist besides Mix.
Which at most is a hurdle to overcome and means you're gonna have to expand of what makes the job tick. As I mentioned before, AST in FF Tactics was limited to just Galaxy Stop because Olan Durai was a guest character in one mission, but that didn't stop the FFXIV devs from adding things to it and adjusting how the concept worked to make a healer out of it. Thus my point that the same could be done with Chemist stands.
And while you could theoretically build an alternate resource just to not have to use MP, then you run into the question of whether or not said resource would be affected by Piety -- if no, that becomes a dead stat for the job, and if yes, you've put the devs through the work of reskinning MP just to say it doesn't use MP.
You mean like all those other resources the devs made up for every job in the game, regardless of whether they were needed (see: PLD)? Somehow giving one to a potential healer becomes too much work for the devs? Really?

As I said in my prior post, stat-wise I'd just put it on Aiming gear and call it a day. Putting a non-magical healer on magical healer gear makes little sense and would indeed lead to wasted/dead stats. I'm sure there'd be loot drama, but the only alternative I can come up with is giving healer gear the ARR MNK gear treatment where it had two main stats (STR and DEX in the case of MNK gear) to accommodate the newcomer NIN. An alternative alternative would be having Piety work differently for this new job. Off the top of my head, have it modify ability recast timers (with diminishing returns) or reduce how much Tool Energy is consumed by abilities. This leaves us with weird nomenclature, but my first choice would be just putting CHM on Aiming gear.
You ever notice how the only jobs that have ranged weapons are Ranged DPS? Casters don't, and even while RDM uses a rapier, one would think having Scathe be an auto-attack for BLM would be obvious. Healers don't; even Astrologian has to slash people with their cards from close-up, instead of throwing them like Urianger is fond of.

I suspect this has something to do with not wanting to add auto-attack damage to the roles' repertoire in order to increase the value of GCD damage, particularly since healers are expected to switch targets frequently to do their job and casters are expected to... well, cast.
I was thinking about mentioning this when I made up that suggestion for Chemist, but one of the things about their weapon would be the inability to deal auto attacks. Assuming we left everything else alone, the weapon would simply be unable to do AAs and instead damage would entirely come from abilities. As for concerns of firearm size and payload, you could also change the weapon to something that cannot be quickly reloaded but shoots a bigger payload, further justifying why CHM wouldn't be able to auto-attack from range.

An alternative would be the job having a mallet as its main weapon (or perhaps a small crowbar-like weapon that is a sort of main key/lever to operate the medic tools CHM uses), and use something akin to the syringer from Fallout 4 for poison/tranq darts and launching catalysts. Yet another alternative would be going with a different ranged weapon; non-mechanical crossbows are still available, as are combat slingshots (bonus being that then the job could lob tar bombs that can be ignited with a catalyst, healing "grenades" that create a mist that restores HP, vials that release Pluto vapors to fortify allies and so on).