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

[ForsakenRoe]

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

Personally, I don't mind ET on SCH. It's there as an 'emergency tactic' as the name implies, for those times were you really gotta heal people to full for whatever reason (Eg a raidwide doom like SOS starts with). If anything is messing with the split in SCH's kit, it's Indomitability but we're in far too deep to do anything about that now. Personally, I'd just say 'screw it', ditch the split, and give WHM a pseudo-inverse of Indomitability (that being, a Lily spender that applies a barrier). That way, the WHM can get some use out of the Lily spend (when prepping a Misery for raidbuffs) even when everyone's at full HP. Bring back Stoneskin, the VFX for it are still in the game, job done

Adding a 5th healer would immediately undermine the point of the split in my opinion too. Though, I've always been against the hard split we have now, and would rather see a... sliding scale? Of Pure/Barrier capability. So rather than 'WHM and AST are Pure, SCH and SGE are Barrier', it'd be more like:

Pure-----------------------------------------------------Barrier
=====WHM===AST========SGE====SCH=====

So, a SCH CAN 'Pure Heal', but not as effectively as a SGE can. A SGE is Barrier aligned, but SCH has a bit more Barrier capability (Fey Illumination's existence means this is kind of true already). And this would mean that any two healers could be a valid comp, rather than 'any two except WHM/AST specifically' as we see now. This could be done by giving WHM Barriers, but very few mitigations (eg they only get Temperance and nothing else) and inversely, AST gets a few Mitigation effects, but almost no Barriers, forcing the two to rely on each other to cover what they lack in their own kit.


edit: Here's how for AST, reintroduce Nocturnal Sect/Diurnal Sect as a button, that lets you choose a sect out of combat, which changes the effects of actions as follows:

Celestial Opposition: 200p heal, 5% mitigation
Earthly Star: 300p heal, 5% mitigation, after 10s grows and becomes 10% mitigation (healing does not increase)
Collective Unconscious: Regen duration reduced to 6s, 10% Mit increased to 20s duration. Standing in the channelled bubble refreshes the durations once per 3s.
Horoscope: 5% mitigation for 10s. Casting Helios or Asp. Helios extends the buff by 20s, allowing for up to 30s duration of the 5% mitigation. Heals for 200p at expiration regardless of empowerment.

With this, a Noct AST would be able to Barrier-heal alongside a WHM, but A: is almost entirely reliant on the WHM for actual Barriers, and B: sacrifices a lot of their own Pure Heal potential to access the extra mitigative effects.


Finally, this 'sliding scale' allows a much easier time of slotting a new healer into the mix. For example, let's imagine a hypothetical. If we had a healer that is focused on A: applying a buff to allies that 'delays damage' into a DOT over the 30s after the hit (with the duration refreshing and the total 'delayed damage' updating each time a new damage instance comes in). For balance sake, let's assume it only converts 25% of the damage taken and the rest is dealt immediately. So, a Tankbuster of 300k damage is reduced to be 225k, plus 10 ticks of 7.5k each. And B: A very heavy focus on applying HOT effects to counteract the DOT. This hypothetical healer would be equally Pure and Barrier, and as such, simply slots itself into the direct center of the chart, between the AST and SGE.

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).

Whoa I agree, that idea does sound kinda cool /s

There's a lot of ways to make healers look cool. WOW managed it, someone linked the BFA trailer already. But I find it quite odd that some people would say 'you can't make healer look cool' when we have the animations for Astral Stasis and Techne Makre in the game. What that BFA trailer for WOW effectively did, was make a scene where a Healer LB3 was needed, and then have the character (Anduin's a Priest (despite the armour), effectively the WHM of WOW) use LB3.

Another example that SE's managed to write themselves out of being able to use, is the idea of using the natural elements on WHM for the trailer. Quake, Tornado, Flood, the three 'ultimate magics' of their elements (akin to Flare/Freeze/Burst for BLM), would make for great trailer scenes, but alas, we're stuck with Glare 3/4, Dia, and the occasional flower motif as a treat. BTW, isn't it crazy that RDM (made from the combined knowledges of WHM and BLM after the calamity) and PCT (idk the logic for PCT) still use the natural elements (Stone/Aero/Water), but WHM doesn't? I can handwave PCT due to, y'know, colour-element matching, but RDM? If the WHMs contributed to the creation of RDM and Glare's a part of White Magic, surely we'd have VerGlare instead of VerAero3?

[pecorino]

The next expansion, the Warrior of Light could be a Scholar. A giant enemy dashes at them and they use Sacred Soil to push them away. Then they cast Bio. Then they cast Broil. Then they cast Broil. Then they cast Broil. Then they cast Broil. Then they cast Broil. The enemy starts casting a devastating lightning attack, but the Warior of Light just stands there and takes it, spamming Broil while the faerie spams consolation. Nothing can interfere with the turret that WoL has become.

To be frank, depending on how they animated it, this kind of sequence could be pretty compelling... The WoL slings out repeated Broils mixed with Arts of War and Energy Drains, while the fairy does all sorts of dramatic things to heal and shield us, WoL is unbothered... Then we throw a boosted adlo onto like Estinien or something before he dives in to do something crazy.

[gumas]

nah next box art would be wuk lamat /s

but yeah either healer or magic class for box art pls, we nee representation for magic class, whats with melee class in box art, not just ff14 but other game box art too always majority feature the melee character (usually sword)

[Eyrilona]

nah next box art would be wuk lamat /s

but yeah either healer or magic class for box art pls, we nee representation for magic class, whats with melee class in box art, not just ff14 but other game box art too always majority feature the melee character (usually sword)

Maybe we will get a magic class on the box when they make a magic tank job? Every tank role other than Gunbreaker has been the poster job for an expansion.

I really don't get why there isn't a magic one of those yet actually, when we already have four physical ones. We see Louisoix shield-tank Bahamut in the ARR trailer! It can't be the argument that Fending Gear is all about physical attributes, because it isn't written anywhere that every tank should be using the Fending set -- we know sets are not 1:1 with the roles because Physical Melee role is split into Maiming, Striking, and Scouting sets within the same role group. And it also can't be that they can't put a tank in Casting gear, giving some excuse that gear needs to be allocated to one role group for some spaghetti code reason, because Ninja shares Aiming accessories with the Physical Ranged group.

EDIT: Also, I am a Blue Mage enjoyer. Do not tell me a magic using character can't be the cool frontliner type they like putting on the box, when they already have a mage job running entire dungeons just on its own!

[Ramiee]

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.

Its because Seraph exists, SHB destroyed all healers except WHM identity (though glare and dia do look ugly but the lily system suits WHM.)
Really the SCH should be a terrible pure healer who uses shields to close the gap and the fairy is your healing machine like how it used to be, it was really fun dynamic basically being a Warlock (What arcanist basically was) that was forced to become a healer through the help of a fairy pet but still keeping its identity as a Warlock with tactician motifs added in.

[CaptainLagbeard]

They should only be allowed to add in new Healers until they get the role with new Jobs and adjusting the old Jobs to a point where it's as played as Tanks and DPS are....

[BabyYoda]

We would rather fix the current healer issue.. adding new healer wont solve anything

[Doragan]

We would rather fix the current healer issue.. adding new healer wont solve anything

Frankly, I don't know. People said the exact same thing before Shadowbringers, and it's still very much the same thing.. so, if they're not going to fix anything, let alone acknowledge the issue, I would rather have a new healer regardless. Cosnidering they're never going to stop adding new jobs. I don't disagree thats what they should do.. but we all know they won't. So..

Besides, that could open up possibilities for them to have a more active healer, kinda like gunbreaker with the other tanks. Then again, they don't need another healer to start doing that.. ah well.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Frankly, I don't know. People said the exact same thing before Shadowbringers, and it's still very much the same thing.. so, if they're not going to fix anything, let alone acknowledge the issue, I would rather have a new healer regardless. Cosnidering they're never going to stop adding new jobs. I don't disagree thats what they should do.. but we all know they won't. So..

Besides, that could open up possibilities for them to have a more active healer, kinda like gunbreaker with the other tanks. Then again, they don't need another healer to start doing that.. ah well.

Yea they don't NEED a new healer to fix them, but getting new Healer Jobs could motivate them to actually start looking at why people aren't playing Healer as there seems to be a mild lack of them at the high-end stuff such as Savages...

[Zarkovitch]

No offence, but healers arent cool enough. Each time I see a healer on videogame, it always the most boring character or they design to be hella sex apeal to make them ''interesting''.