Can we have a healer on the next expansion boxart please?

[Derio]

If they follow the trend it will be a physical ranged dps and tank. In shadowbringers they did this and the poster was DRK. Stormblood was redmage and samurai but the poster was monk/samurai.

Healers have been highlighted by mostly the scions. Urianger with AST and Alphinaud with SGE.

Usually when a new healer is introduced its given to a scion or a character other than the WOL, which is strange is it not. This is because healers dont have flashy damage kits that sell the expansion.

[dwodmots]

If they do a healer then they need to put Lamitt on the box. She's really cute.

[Valence]

It's in every final fantasy ever, and a good chunk of JRPGs (even the scify ones). The main protagonist is always the dude with the sword.

Sad but true.

[MrKusabi]

Unfortunately, I just don't see the Derplander being anything other than Tank/Melee anymore. Hell, last time he was ranged was way back in 1.0/start of ARR, and he transitioned into WAR. The ShB trailer even shows him cycling through all of his "official" jobs. So we've got:

1.0/ARR - ARC/WAR (Ranged/Tank)
HW - DRG (Melee)
StB - MNK/SAM (Melee)
ShB - DRK (Tank)
EW - PLD (Tank)
DT - VPR (Melee)

In short, a ranged, three melees, and three tanks. We've never even gotten a caster for the boy. So at this point, I'd take either a caster or a healer.

Even though Alphie was kinda a SCH before, I do like ForsakenRoe's idea from over on the Healer Strike page. It shows how a healer trailer could be kinda badass (especially the battle tactician SCH is supposed to be).

I think some combination of the SCH throwing out attacks, throwing down Sacred Soil (bonus points if it 'blocks' a projectile, ie the projectile explodes on contact with the bubble, not the characters within), and the fairy darting to and fro to heal people, could work. I think the main thing they'd need to emphasize is the idea of 'SCH is a barrier healer, and when you play it 'well', you can literally negate enemy attacks'

Maybe some quick-cuts between closeups of the WOL (shoulders down, not showing their face until the end to reveal 'oh the SCH was the WOL the whole time) where they're giving out orders/tactics for the other combatants to follow, and battlefield scenes where the other combatants are executing the orders given (and it's a very onesided fight in their favour, because the WOL's tactical decisions are so on point) mixed in too

edit: the 'reveal' shot can be that a projectile 'hits' the SCH, and when the smoke clears, the hexagons from an Adlo fall to the floor as if they are solid objects (like panes of glass) and we see 'oh it was the WOL and he Adlo'd himself in the nick of time'. Also, ideally the WOL has like, zero reaction to the projectile/explosion, because we're emphasizing the 'tactical mastery' element of SCH, and so 'the enemy tried to attack the healer' is a variable the WOL had already considered and factored into the strategy.

[ZephyrMenodora]

I kind of like that the WoL has been pretty consistent in being a physical guy.

Though it's a missed opportunity we didn't get to see him Pictomance in a CG lol.

[azaleai]

I'm a caster main. I'm not really fond of any melees - I'll play tank if I have to, but if given the choice I'd much rather play caster/healer/ranged. I don't really see my character suiting melee classes much either by extension. I'm not really fussed about what they do with Meteor in the trailers, but it would be really nice to have a benchmark one day where I can actually see my character as the roles I prefer to play.

[PercibelTheren]

It would be cool to see a new healer. Doubly so if it was the ‘poster child job’ for that expansion. But I can’t imagine they would because it’d completely tip the balance one way or the other Their design right now is pretty much predicated on there being four healers (two pure / two shield, two dps focused / two rDPS focused)

Like, either there more ‘pure healers’ than ‘shield healers’ or vice-versa, or it’s an AST Sect type hybrid that switches between the two, which is always going to fall into the issue of the hybrid either being strong enough to invalidate the ‘pure’ versions or so weak that they’re not worth taking.

I think before they added a new healer they’d first need to readjust the current healers to be more individuals jobs with their own strengths and weaknesses, as opposed to current design where we have mostly identical counterpart healers split into categories (pure/shield mainly).

The split is a corner they backed themselves into for no good reason. If it even can be called a split at this point considering how many regens both "shield" healers have. Especially SGE has regens on pretty much everything, making double shield comps vastly superior in pretty much every situation.

[Connor]

The split is a corner they backed themselves into for no good reason. If it even can be called a split at this point considering how many regens both "shield" healers have. Especially SGE has regens on pretty much everything, making double shield comps vastly superior in pretty much every situation.

Yeah, there’s a bunch of things that blatantly undercut the entire point of the split like Neutral Sect and Emergency Tactics lol. Every shield healer has a bunch of regens and high potency direct heals, every pure healer has shielding. Plus their attempt to have healers split in such a way has done nothing but cause even more egregious homogenisation between pairs (i.e SCH/SGE being the same thing gameplay-wise with different visuals lol)

Repeating what I said before but I think re-designing the healers to be more individual with their own strengths and weaknesses is going to be kinda necessary if they ever want to add new ones.

Adding a fifth healer to the current bizarre design philosophy of ‘categorising healers into one of two groups then immediately giving them the tools to completely subvert said grouping’ would just cause a bunch of balancing issues. But if each healer was its own thing, there’d be much more space to design newer ones. Though, I guess that’s too much work for poor indie devs SE lol

[Ramiee]

Urianger is AST and Alphinaud is sage. That leaves only WHM and SCH and neither of these has Derplander poster job vibes. As a healer, he could only ever be a new job.

SCH could work, if they returned it to its roots of being a Warlock that has a healer pet.

[lolnotacat]

SCH could work, if they returned it to its roots of being a Warlock that has a healer pet.

I wish SCH would drop all the angel motif BS and go back to its fairy roots. There's so many cool opportunities with the pixies and sylphs to have some role in the job, but it probably won't happen because they're too lazy to flesh out lore for jobs past the initial job quests now.