Quote Originally Posted by FusionFool3 View Post
Putting all that in mind, a Melee Healer in FF14 of today would be a lot more of a problem since Melee would need more damaging skills than Casters. I should have taken that into consideration and remove some damage skills and rework the 'Stress' mechanic to be more like the Bard's Song gauge vs. this weird version of the Warrior's Beast Gauge.
I think the other big problem with a melee healer is "taking" the melee spot in raids. Having more than 4 melee in a group (2 tanks, 2 melee) for current content is punishing because there's just not that much room in melee range when mechanics are making people spread or dump or whatnot. Having that fifth melee in a group means one of those melee is out of range during some mechanics and has to delicately work with all other melee/tanks for most other mechanics.

If we had a melee healer, that melee healer is not getting a prime melee spot. So either the group comp would have to be 1 melee shy to accommodate a melee healer, or the melee healer is just last priority and no group concern with being in range when mechanics become involved.

I would only consider a melee healer in a preformed group that is caster heavy, and then I would feel compelled to keep an off job healer for pugging.

You could circumvent this by adding yet another ability, a dps nuke at range, but if it is weaker than the melee stuff, it will feel bad to be stuck using, and if it is not weaker than the melee stuff, than it is used in place of it.

But the game is already 30 levels deep in 8-man content that do not support a melee healer. I don't see the game design changing to accommodate one healer when most gameplay development time is given to melee dps. And since I'm getting salty about developer stuff, I might as well add the obligatory "SE spends entire live letters talking about SAM MNK and NIN tweaks while ignoring widespread complaints of all healers, so I can't trust them with a melee healer. They won't do it well."