Why does everyone want Chemist as a new job?

[Kacho_Nacho]

Why does everyone want Chemist as a new job?

I can't speak for everyone else. I know I've wanted to play as one since completing the thaumaturge quest line.

[Reaperking386]

4 Tanks, 3 healers, 10 DPS (3 casters, 4 melee, 3 ranged).

So why do you think we don't need more healers? Was this a serious comment?

Also. Most recent DPS? Dancer in Shadowbringers, July 9, 2019.
Most recent Melee and Magic DPS? Red Mage and Samurai, Stormblood, June 20, 2017.
Most recent tank? Gunbreaker, Shadowbringers, see date above.
Most recent healer? Astrologian, Heavensward, June 23, 2015.

So, again. Do you think Healers just...Don't deserve anything new?



Once again, taking comments like this with the assumption you don't actually have anything of value to add. "Oh, a DoH exists, therefore it can't be a DoW/M" Get down off your high horse.

Seems you are overly passionate on this. Even if you add another healer class it will not tip the scales on DPS going healer in the long term.
yes, they will try it out, but in the end they are going to revert back to the class role they originally played. The issue is not a new class, it's making the role interesting to balance out the need of healers. Adding another healer will only cause healers to just have healers be a little bit more diverse if you can make them more diverse.

Getting to the point of the post I don't see Alchemist being "realistic" as far as gameplay goes. A person making positions during a combat situations seems silly and having potions consistently on hand takes away that RPG element of making potions. They are going to have to figure out a way where you can make potions and be effective in the field. What weapon would they use? How would they DPS during their DPS phase? What type of healer would they be and will they over step the other healing class? Luckily you have experts working on it, but you can't expect them to make miracles happen. Vera was one thing, but a new class is another.

1. Decide on the job and its weapon.
2. Determine its primary mechanics.
3. Consult the lore and art teams to determine its aesthetic.
4. Lay out a complete list of abilities.
5. Consult the programmers about implementation.
6. Issue formal development requests to the programmers and artists.
7. Set parameters for each action.
8. Allocate resources for motions and effects.
9. Make adjustments to potency, recast time, etc.
10. Fine-tune based on testing.

[Allegor]

We have jobs that literally start dancing, playing music, reading our fortune and spitting fish in combat so the argument of 'realism' has long jumped off the window, if it was ever there. I agree healers need better balancing other than homogenization and spell pruning, and admit to being worried they end up creating a 'WHM but with-', but to speak as if it's a guaranteed truth and therefore a waste of time is a fallacy at best and being nihilistic at worst.

[GucciSan]

Seems you are overly passionate on this. Even if you add another healer class it will not tip the scales on DPS going healer in the long term...

The point still stands: healers haven't gotten a new Job since HW and are long overdue for one at this point. As for how it would work and what type of healer it would slot into Yoshida has said numerous times that the Heal/Shield dichotomy is difficult to balance around and pretty much abandoned the idea in ShB. It's safe to assume going forward that any new healers on the table are essentially going to be WHM clones by having mostly heals, a shield or maybe two. Any interesting gameplay to separate themselves from the others would probably boil down to unique Job mechanics vs how the Job heals, which Chemist is an easy pick with Mix.

These issues you mention aren't really issues with implementing the Job. Making potions during battle isn't any more ridiculous than a Ninja making fancy hand gestures that make magic or a Bard singing and playing an instrument during a fight. You mentioned using potions would somehow take away from the "RPG element of potions" but potions are all but useless at max level and nobody uses them, so wouldn't having a Job that specializes in them reinforce that idea? If anything they're one of the most realistic Jobs you could add if we're talking gameplay and story integration. The only real issue is that some people might somehow get confused that Alchemist and Chemist would be two seperate things.

They are going to have to figure out a way where you can make potions and be effective in the field.

Their potions are effective because something something found a way to enhance their properties to be more effective during battle. *shrug*. This is easily handwavable away by lore and not at all a hinderance.

Weapons are tricky but giving them a gun of some kind to keep them at range with the other Healers seems like the best approach. If anything a single shot grenade launcher would be unique and cool since

1. Reloading before every shot means Cast Times and No ranged autos
2. Added flavor and mechanics of firing shells with healing gel/salve.

Mix would be the obvious mechanic that works like NIN mudras: you have to remember the different ingredient combinations and it raises the skill ceiling a bit. I'd personally have no failure like a Bunny for a bad mix other than forcing you to restart, and have Mix constantly available and never on CD so you can try as many times as you need if you make a mistake or need more heals.

Something you're overlooking are the people that might actually want to play Healers long term, but none of the current Healers' aesthetics appeal to them. Chemist kills 2 birds with 1 stone by giving gameplay and aesthetic variety at the same time.

[Ilenya]

Getting to the point of the post I don't see Alchemist being "realistic" as far as gameplay goes. A person making positions during a combat situations seems silly and having potions consistently on hand takes away that RPG element of making potions. They are going to have to figure out a way where you can make potions and be effective in the field. What weapon would they use? How would they DPS during their DPS phase? What type of healer would they be and will they over step the other healing class? Luckily you have experts working on it, but you can't expect them to make miracles happen. Vera was one thing, but a new class is another.

I'm mostly going to ignore the first part because, by that logic, we shouldn't have gotten GNB.

Anyways, quick, easy answer to how they make potions on the fly? It already exists in a form. See Machinist. How do they have infinite ammo of so many types? They have the pouch thing on the side whose name I have completely blanked on gathering aether to use as ammo. Every other question makes me wonder why they should add a DPS, though. "What type would they be and will they step on other's toes?" Really? Unless they make *any* job 100% different than the ones that exist, it'll step on other jobs' toes. Dancer existing basically removed all buffing capabilities from Bard Songs. Didn't see people saying Dancer shouldn't exist because of that. Gunbreaker has the Parry stance now, didn't see DRKs saying GNB shouldn't exist because of that. AST stepped on both WHM and SCH's toes just by having the stance system, and people weren't saying it shouldn't exist.

Mix would be the obvious mechanic that works like NIN mudras: you have to remember the different ingredient combinations and it raises the skill ceiling a bit. I'd personally have no failure like a Bunny for a bad mix other than forcing you to restart, and have Mix constantly available and never on CD so you can try as many times as you need if you make a mistake or need more heals.

Failed Mix makes the original Mysidian Rabbit from Setzer's slots, doing a small AoE heal on failed mix.

[Mhaeric]

See Machinist. How do they have infinite ammo of so many types? They have the pouch thing on the side whose name I have completely blanked on gathering aether to use as ammo.

The LunchBox™

(But really, it's an aetherotransformer.)

[Raikai]

Seems you are overly passionate on this. Even if you add another healer class it will not tip the scales on DPS going healer in the long term.
yes, they will try it out, but in the end they are going to revert back to the class role they originally played. The issue is not a new class, it's making the role interesting to balance out the need of healers.

My usual group had a new tank after Shadowbringers because the player was really hyped for the GNB and actually learned the role and plays it fairly well. I know Chemist/Apothecary doesn't carry the same hype as a Gunblade wielder, but depending on how it would turn out, I can see some adhesion. Of course, we won't see a mass exodus anyway, because healer is the hardest role to play.

[Shougun]

See Machinist.

I keep picturing Chemist gets a roomba buddy, like in Death Stranding and the luggage or whatever lol. Part of the balance design to Chemist might be that when you craft a potion it has a cast bar, but it's actually on your roomba (the cast bar). Also with the thought it might be influenced by Garleans, might be called Medic or something, that then the job would gain a number of technological features too. So "see machinist" rings even further true then. Like the medic would have many gadgets, on top of their potion / concoction slinging nature, and we've already Garleans in the game that use tonics and such in combat. That open air time (while roomba mixes) can be used to queue other mixes and do else exciting (keeping a nice pace of activity)- perhaps a special passive or skill allows the buddy to have two cast bars active at once (mega craft mode lol).

Might see you can attach stuff to your roomba too like adding a mobile shield dome, healing raidus tower, may also see turrets or whatever, tesla coil attached to your buddy.

Keeping to the roomba nature thought being a bit less commanding then SCH, and more like a passive buddy to be there for you and hold things for you (like accepting your turret attachment and then firing off at enemies).

If we're going insane maybe a super special move is the roomba going a bit iron man / Thor (Starcraft 2 - Tychus / Heroes of the Storm) and the healer getting this sort of mega siege mode lol. Launching of huge cannisters of healing gas, rockets for.. anti-healing the enemy, etc.

Anyway, I feel if you slap the engineer vibes onto Chemist then you've solved the minor name issue (Alchemist) and also opened up a huge amount of conceptual activities the job could do. While also avoiding any sort of desire for a chemist player to be like "I want to cast hi-potion on my friend" or whatever other imagery might appear with standard chemist, as a medic they'd have their own unique concocutions (like I said perhaps Garlean influenced, perhaps even Cid / Ironworks as part of the job guide team as he uses his knowledge and your aether abilities to create a new type of front line support).

Seems you are overly passionate on this. Even if you add another healer class it will not tip the scales on DPS going healer in the long term.
yes, they will try it out, but in the end they are going to revert back to the class role they originally played. The issue is not a new class, it's making the role interesting to balance out the need of healers. Adding another healer will only cause healers to just have healers be a little bit more diverse if you can make them more diverse.

I think having a healer be a bit straight forward and simple is a good idea but probably not for all of them, like some people who play Monk or Summoner (both weird and or wild) so too should probably be healer. I think SE needs to make sure some of the healers ask more from the player, perhaps very minimally give more too but not really required (people still play those wonky jobs even if they're not at the top of the list lol).

A new healer, or an existing one, should probably gain some more attack focus (without greatly imbalancing the end result damage), and other healers getting some more interesting healing mechanics so it's not just one button OGCD and everything is good lol.

A thought I had for Scholar's combat was utilizing their current attack mechanics but adding a new sort of pustule dance on top of it. Where your art of war would gain a concentric circle of smaller radius for additional damage and interaction with the pustule, broil and ruin as well, and each having a different effect that would cause your mental decision tree to branch based on the situation. The pustules coming from your dots naturally. That's the massive tl;dr, but basically you'd have a SCH now moving around the field while doing damage as they assess the situation and they would change their single target attack up from the standard when someone was ready to pop (such that if you were spamming Art of War you'd take a moment to do a single target, or the inverse if you were spamming one single target you'd consider another). Another concept was patent zero, allowing scholar to produce their shadow flare effect again (generates ground zero which adds QoL in spreading their disease and producing more pustules). Suddenly you've a bit more to do and think about without actually having to add any new buttons. Wrote a lot more detail about it over yonder: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5192759

Or in another thread had imagined a few new types of heal spells, on top of a job that has a bit of a combat focus. New heal like one that curses the boss preventing damage from going out to X potency, while adding some other effect, another heal that acts as an inverted shield (set up on an ally, then when damaged they have gray health which is cost efficient to restore for the job- meanwhile they would have another heal that didn't rely on that but wasn't as cost effective), on top of a heal spell that could work on both ally and enemy (allowing the healer to easily and quickly switch targets), new auras that worked on X nearby allies and had an active (meaning it was interactive and easily balanced), adding some new sort of gimmicks including ones like for restoring resources (like possession / connecting to an enemy and damaging them as your casting resource rather than your own mana while granting even greater cast range), and generally a visual theme that isn't incredibly common (was dark theme'd, engineer theme'd healer isn't crazy common either, at least compared to holy magic sort of stuff). Also yonder: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/392280-Dark-Magic-Theme-d-Healer-Blood-Mind-Flayer-Eldritch-Necromancer-Etc

Anyway.. I think having a simple healer is good, like a simple tank or DD, allows for people who want to that to have it as an option, but definitely see how a number of healers could be wondering "isn't there anything else out there?" lol. SCH and AST have a bit of activity, although AST became quite a bit more straight forward, personally my brain wasn't prepared for SCH (no one died, and I still did damage, but way more yoyo than I had ever wanted) but from what I heard from SCH many loved the dance before so many moves were removed (of course some were returned later), but I did personally find WHM so easy that it was common to out DPS many other non-healers who weren't using their buttons right (and everyone was full health and it was all taken care of by oGCD stuff lol). Since I don't focus on healers I don't think I'm even close to the natural feeling main healers have though, so I can easily imagine being bored as you touch three to four buttons the whole dungeon (speaking the easy content of course, not ultimate lol).

[Morningstar1337]

I don't think we need a new job class concerning tanks or healers in general. We need a healthy balance of dps/healers/ tanks. The question is more: Why do we need a new healer class?

You call Tanks having one more Job than Healers Balanced?

Also one can argue that the Light Party system requires there to be twice as many DPS as there are the other two so that makes sense to apply it to the Job design. But even with that in mind the scales are still tipped on the DPS side with 7 Non-DPS jobs to 10 DPS jobs (11 counting BLU)

Also why we need a new Healer class? I posit that it would give the devs a reason to look at Healer design and agrees the problems the communities sees in the role (or thinks there are the role), as they been very tight lipped on the topic, leading them to think that that is the only way to get fixes at all.

Furthermore there is the aforementioned element of parity. Tanks have 4 Jobs now and the most recent being in SHB, Healers have 3 with the most recent being from...Heavesnward, the very first xpac. So we're overdue for one anyway and the gap would obviously widen if the next few expansions doens't introduce Healers but adds more Tanks and DPS jobs.

[MsQi]

Chemist as a healer will be throwing premade bottles on people to heal them with the only difference from other healers being the animations.

People remember these jobs from other games and think they'll be cool, but the aspects that make them cool would be drastically diminished in a "trinity" based, mechanical, non creative play style.