Could a melee Healer work?

[sindriiisgaming]

Just musing out loud.

I don't have one theorycrafted or anything, but suffice it to say by melee I of course don't mean the actual healing part of its skillset (or... do I?), I'm imagining it just being its damage-dealing abilities. I think it could make for a novel addition to the game's roster even then.

What brought this about was my pondering the kind of Job they might give Gaia in the future since although she's a MRD/WAR in terms of (roughly) weapon type and stance, nothing else about it matches her particular skillset. Making her a Tank still doesn't feel right (even if a time skip were involved), and then it struck me! A melee Healer that uses time magic to halt or rewind damage! After all, there's a strong connection between maces/hammers and clerics and the like (admittedly mostly in western media e.g. Warhammer Fantasy), and aligning it with Darkness would make for a fun twist, I think.

Damn it, I really want this now...

No. Because nobody would bring a healer that actively takes away uptime from a melee. And there aren't strats centered around 5 player uptime. This is already a huge issue If you play 3 melee in savage. This is 1 of these ideas that sounds quirky on paper but once you implement it you realize nothing good comes out of it. If healers need innovation. Forcing them into melee spits with positional and incredibly tight heal ranges isn't it. Even if this some how got green lit (after "smile" anythings possible I guess) the backlash would be so intense from both players and party members that it would literally get patched out and given the drk treatment until it was

[sindriiisgaming]

I'd like to go the other direction and have a magic-based tank.

What's the point In a tank that's ranged if the boss allways goes to it. Also wouldn't this literally break mecanics that force uptime stacks? This would just be equally as pointless.

[Claire_Pendragon]

stuff

you lack vision my friend. these rhetorical questions have been answered many a times over the last decade. now, the real problem is not *IF* it can be done, but how to mold it into the current limits that FF14 has created.
You randomly assigned restrictions on a melee healer that arent required. a melee healer is about their optimal dps being in melee range. not that they *MUST* stay in melee range. (As addressed in this very thread, and how to go about it fairly)

The absolute hardest gimmick to introduce into this game would be the ranged tank, 100%. Most of the games mechanics are built in a way to prevent its use from being useful, or from even functioning smooth enough to be enjoyable. So, rather than explain how it would be done in an ideal world, lets stick to how FF14 handles mechanics/gameplay usually.
(1) Ranged tank mostly means the tanks DPS can be applied from a distance, w/o suffering a DPS loss. (Such as a WAR spamming tomahawk)
but thats not entirely everythign ppl mean... so...
(2) To actually stand away from the boss, would require one of 2 things; (A) Crowd Controlling the boss from moving. (useless in 14, if not detrimental) and then (B) Pet tanking.
Pet tanking is seriously flawed in this game, which is why titan lost its ability to tank. The only way it could still work, is if its used like a cooldown. The pet vokes all nearby enemies, while taking reduced damage for X number of seconds. (Could be a replacement to the 40% reduction most tanks have) once the CD wears off, the pet goes away.
Its not around long enough to worry about needing to position the boss in X, Y, or Z location. (Id even argue u summon the pet with a ground marker, so u can have the boss move to that location. The pet cannot move.)
Another version of this would also be the invuln. Summon the pet again for 10s, and the pet cant die.
You can find ways to use this for more melee uptime. (an example for me, was when i was RDM, i really wanted to melee at points where only the 2 melee were allowed near the boss, so i was SooL and had to wait to get into melee range after we resolved mechanics.)

Do i think we *NEED* this? not really. but my only point is that its not really that absurd, even within the limits of how restricting the 14 tank/healer designs are.

[Fourbestintoner]

Mechanics in this game are designed with 4 melees and 4 ranged in mind.

[Chasingstars]

A melee healer kind of sounds like if you took away some of the tanky parts of a pvp paladin's kit and tweaked it so each time it heals itself, it also healed each other party member for that same amount. Like to use that as an example, on using Confeitor, you would afflict the boss with Sacred Claim, then each time you strike the boss with your damage dealing weaponskill abilities, you also heal party members each time, like as a 400 or 500 potency heal. Same with granting themself a regen and then party members.

If we were to consider what sort job fantasy this would be, I would personal say something that is nature-centric would differiante it. Though this could open it up to something that is specifically one thing, like wind or water or plants. Like if it were water, it could be a pirate corsair with water magic. If it were wind I would imagine a kind of azim steppe nomad. While for plants, I personally imagine a type of druid that might hail from somewhere like meracydia or xak tural.

Just cooking, but the healing for such a melee healer could be tied in a similar manner to a gauge bar like red mage's. Where the goal would be to fill a bar, then to later expend it for high potency emergency heals. The bar would be filled for simply doing dps rotation as it was intended.

[Wayfinder3]

It could, if the damage the disparity between ranged and melee was more homogenized so that taking 1 melee dps and 3 ranged jobs is indistinguishable from a comp that brings 2 melee and 2 ranged jobs. So basically put everything close to where Pictomancer and to a lesser extend black mage is.

The main issue is that SE designs mechanics around accomodating 4 melee jobs and 4 ranged jobs including tanks and healers. A ranged tank job could also work as a premier off tank job that has to be indistinguishable from a melee job whenever it's the main tank or has a sort of dummy/puppet that holds the attention of the target and the skill expression is how does one keep that alive. A melee healer seems very easy to make work since healers are primarily driven off ogcds and this wouldn't change for a melee job either.

So yeah, this could work, but would require SE to change how damage is distributed across the roles in the game so that it's worth taking 3 ranged to allow for that melee healer to be invited in. if you have a comp with 5 melee that will sucks for quite a few fights which means they need to make it so 4 melee jobs are the max which is why it is the way it is now

[Shurrikhan]

I mean I've always wanted a ranged healer that throws potions so why not

Isn't that just a regular healer, but without ever having to worry about cast-times on the heals?

Like warrior and pld?

PLD heals from up to 30 yards away, same as any other healer. Though I suppose WAR at least has to be in 20 yards for Tomahawk as its last resort heal, and would need to be in melee range of multiple enemies to spam its Benediction.

[Maxilor]

As probably mentioned already in this thread, there are plenty of healing Spell/Abilities that are PBAOE already.

So, I don't think it would be out of the realm of possibility.

The class name and theme would be the tough one to figure out.

[Claire_Pendragon]

Mechanics in this game are designed with 4 melees and 4 ranged in mind.

I honestly dont think theres a single person in this thread that doesnt already know and assume that with the job idea in mind. (I could be wrong, but this has been addressed so many times, it's hard to understand why its still brought up, so I can only assume that most ppl making these replies are just doing a quick drop in and out of the thread. (Obviously theres a lot said in the thread, and its a pain to read it all.))

[Magikazam]

Would be good if they put their focus into making ranged healer gameplay better b4 making melee one.