Unexplored Class Concepts I'd Love to See in FF14's Future

[Haseno]

A Melee Orientated Damage-To-Heal Based Healer: Either with a 1h Mace/Offhand weapons or a 2h Hammer. For the MMORPG's veterans, think of Warhammer Online's Warrior Priest

A 2h Hammer Tank: Hard hitting, slow attacks. With some great crowd control.

A Thunder/Electrocution Themed Ranged DPS Caster: A ranged DPS caster with a theme built on lightning based spells and effects. Perhaps a utility centric caster as ranged caster DPS doesn't really have a utility centric class?

A Bladed Staff Melee DPS: No explanation needed. Weapon speaks for itself.

What are some class concepts you'd love to see? Be as detailed as you like.

[Kaliesto]

Your not the only one to request a Hammer-user.

That would be a epic job to play!

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I don't think a melee healer would ever really work in a raid situation, at least not while positioning for mechanics is still a thing. Generally there are only 4 spots safe for melee, and 2 of those are taken by tanks. Most groups split 4 melee 4 ranged, 2 tanks, 2 melee dps, 2 ranged dps, and 2 healers. That would reduce group composition flexibility.

[Haseno]

I don't think a melee healer would ever really work in a raid situation, at least not while positioning for mechanics is still a thing. Generally there are only 4 spots safe for melee, and 2 of those are taken by tanks. Most groups split 4 melee 4 ranged, 2 tanks, 2 melee dps, 2 ranged dps, and 2 healers. That would reduce group composition flexibility.

Being a melee based healer doesn't mean you'd be entirely limited to melee range heals. They'd still have some castable target range heals.

[Lunalepsy]

Being a melee based healer doesn't mean you'd be entirely limited to melee range heals. They'd still have some castable target range heals.

Something like Red Mage, I suppose?

[Haseno]

Something like Red Mage, I suppose?

Meh. I feel Red Mage is kinda lackluster in the utility category. At least in terms of what i'm thinking of.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't think a melee healer would ever really work in a raid situation, at least not while positioning for mechanics is still a thing. Generally there are only 4 spots safe for melee, and 2 of those are taken by tanks. Most groups split 4 melee 4 ranged, 2 tanks, 2 melee dps, 2 ranged dps, and 2 healers. That would reduce group composition flexibility.

Give us another melee (be it Red melee or Blue melee) with a flexible ranged phase/GCDs and it'd hardly be an issue. Moreover, the same issues have been claimed for every serious raid environment in which melee healers have appeared, and yet they've done fine despite that so long as they have even a smidgen of flexibility and compensatory utility.

Something like Red Mage, I suppose?

Red Mage is a ranged with very occasional melee constraints. A "melee healer" would likely be the other way around, but with slightly greater frequency of available ranged (in its case) phases.

A melee healer. WoW has 2 of them right now - given that both are new to 9.0, I suspect both will be gone by 10.0...

Neither is new. Holy Paladin has been melee since Legion (well before then, technically, if min-maxing it) or arguably Cataclysm. Mistweaver and Fistweaving (more powerful originally) have been a thing since Mists, when its class (Monk) was introduced. Holy has been meta since. Mistweaver has done fine so long as its damage and healing have also been fine; it's been off meta over 9.x merely because its throughput had been terrible. As the prior has now been melee for 3 expansions (soft-melee for 5 expansions) and the latter has always been melee, they are not likely to go away any time soon.

[Makeda]

Neither is new. Holy Paladin has been melee since Legion (well before then, technically, if min-maxing it) or arguably Cataclysm. Mistweaver and Fistweaving (more powerful originally) have been a thing since Mists, when its class (Monk) was introduced. Holy has been meta since. Mistweaver has done fine so long as its damage and healing have also been fine; it's been off meta over 9.x merely because its throughput had been terrible. As the prior has now been melee for 3 expansions (soft-melee for 5 expansions) and the latter has always been melee, they are not likely to go away any time soon.

They are new in the sense that fistweaving was pulled out at the end of Pandaria, and only put back in full force with Shadowlands where it is now the 'only' viable healer for monks. Fistweaving Monks now have the highest healer throughput in the game, but is #2 on healer DPS after Holy Paladin. and lacks any "utility" spells which are considered mandatory by Max Limit - so it's been ranked F-tier because one YouTuber who's a world firster hates it. He has a semi-point. Imagine if to bring a DPS that had the DPS of a Samurai - you could not bring a Dancer... The "utility" spot in WoW is on the healers - and if you bring a Fistweaver, you have one less utility for any mechanics that might require it. Such mechanics do not exist, at least not before Mythic raiding... but it's a concern nonetheless...

Paladin likewise - you could always melee for rando kicks on a holy Paladin, but now it's a difference of essentially doubling your healing throughput to do so. It's become 'S-Tier' because it's DPS can often beat an actual DPS, and it's healing throughput on anyone with melee range is insanely high. In 'M+' if you can keep your group close together this is very powerful.

In the past - these 2 had melee toolkits, but they were not directly tied to making healing even possible. Now they are, and their caster healing options have been dramatically reduced.

[Floortank]

I don't think a melee healer would ever really work in a raid situation, at least not while positioning for mechanics is still a thing. Generally there are only 4 spots safe for melee, and 2 of those are taken by tanks. Most groups split 4 melee 4 ranged, 2 tanks, 2 melee dps, 2 ranged dps, and 2 healers. That would reduce group composition flexibility.

This. Game will never see a healer who doesn't fight from ranged. If only because they're not going to rebuild the mechanics of dozens of old fights where the healer has to be away from the boss/party, such as Alex 4.

[Sylve]

I don't think a melee healer would ever really work in a raid situation

Well, It actually kind of improves flexibility. If you take 1 melee and 3 ranged, it messes with your 2x balance. But a Healer designed to want to stay in melee range could actually exchange places with that missing melee, bringing your party balance back to 4 melee and 4 ranged.

I don't do Savages or spend time in EX, But i dont recall any mechanics that forcibly required 4 melee and 4 ranged. IIRC, Pretty much all content in the game has been cleared with all sorts of comps, including 8 Tanks lol.

So the bigger question is: What makes a melee healer a healer who wants to be in melee range?
Theres a couple of ways to do that. You could make the heals very short range and tie its healing into doing melee strikes. But this causes massive problems with encounter design as all 4 healers currently do not have weird range restrictions.

Another way is to make it beneficial for the Healer to be in melee, but not a mechanical requirement in its healing mechanics.
An example would be the best way to explain how this could work:

Lets create a "Cleric" as our melee healer. Weapon is a Mace + Shield (Combo like RDMs Rapier + Focus rather than PLDs seperated weapons). Think of it like a Paladin that decided to go all in on the Healing aspects of being a Paladin instead of being a guardian.

It's DPS is a 3 step Weaponskill combo scaling from MIND. No positional requirements, the combo isnt interrupted by other actions and the combo window is handled via a no duration buff so that the rotation can be started and stopped at any time without breaking the combo or resetting.

Next, we give it a Kardion style buff to give to the Tank. Completing the 3 step combo grants a useful effect to the recipient. Kardion heals, so why not make this one grant a buff with a charge mechanic, absorbing 10% of the next damage source with 2 charges.

It's healing kit would for the most part resemble our current healers.
A direct heal GCD single target and AoE heal.
Off global heals of various flavors. Damage Reduction effects etc. No strange range requirements, they'd function at the same ranges all healers operate at.

Now, to make this healer want to be in melee, doing melee things you give it a resource bar akin to Addersgall.
Lets call it Faith. Cap it at 4 charges.
Faith generates naturally over time, 1 charge accumulating once per minute. Charges are spent on the various oGCDs.
However, we want this Healer to be doing melee things right?
So we add a benefit: The second hit of the Weaponskill combo reduces the time to the next Faith charge by 10 seconds.
Now your Cleric actively wants to be caving skulls in to rapidly build Faith charges.

The final problem is a ranged skill. If a particular boss was unfriendly to melees, our Cleric would struggle.
Enter: Smite.
Smite would function exactly like Dosis, Glare etc. A short cast long range spell dealing damage. Using it reduces the time to next Faith charge by 3 seconds. This is so you aren't wholly gimped out of Faith while at range but its not quite as much as bonking heads.

And with that, You have a Healer that aesthetically and mechanically stays in melee caving skulls in while also being a regular Healer when it needs to.
Melee CAN work, if you're creative enough :P