The biggest obstacle to a fourth healer is how shields vs hots defines heal comps. As long as shields do not stack, two healers that use shields cannot play well together.

If a new healer relies on shields then it cannot be used alongside SCH. If it does not then it cannot be used alongside WHM. The easiest option to implement is to allow it to toggle stances like AST, however that infringes on a portion of AST's identity.

A second solution would be to allow all shields to stack. The majority of healing checks in this game are in fact mitigation checks. Everyone needs a certain EHP, or they die. Allowing at-will shielding to stack either eliminates this as a challenge or forces double shield comps.

A third option is to remove all at-will EHP increasing abilities and instead make them finite CDs. All healers would need comparable amounts of EHP increasing tools so ensure that all compositions are equally viable. This would require massive reworks to current healer kits but is the only way to truly dismantle current healer constraints.

A fourth possibility involves redefining damage curves in this game. Current healing design operates around infrequent spikes that can kill characters in a single hit. If sufficiently mitigated then everyone lives and can be topped off effortlessly. This could be adjusted to align more closely to other games by making damage more abundant, less spiky, and making healing a finite resource. This could be accomplished by making offensive spells free and placing large MP requirements on healing spells (MP limited healing), making all healing spells have limited charges and cooldowns (time limited healing), or requiring offensive actions be taken to build charges and resources for healing actions (performance limited healing). None of these would be easy to implement. Either past content is reworks to accommodate such a design, or all healer kits change dramatically at level 81 to match the new content.


As much as I would like to see it, I do not expect that healers will be differentiated by their offensive tools in the future.