Quote Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe View Post
If I could suggest an idea to SE, it'd be this: Drop the hard split, and swap over to a 'sliding scale' system. The better at 'Pure healing' a job is, the less Barrier capability it has, and vice versa. With this, WHM and SCH can be the champions at the far ends of the scale, masters of Pure and Barrier healing respectively, and AST/SGE can be a bit closer to the middle, leaning towards one side, but not fully abandoning the other. With this 'sliding scale', it becomes much easier to slot a new healer in too, eg one could be added that perfectly straddles Pure and Barrier capability, directly in the centre (I'd suggest a gameplay where the Barrier side is achieved by turning a portion of damage taken into a DOT, and the Pure side is achieved by mainly using HOTs to counteract the delayed damage DOT).
In my previous mmo, there was actually a third option, which was an HoT focused healer. It was very strategic, in a similar way to the shield healers, but you'd stack various HoT's on the tank/party to try to match the damage input. There were a couple instant emergency heals available if you needed them, but which were also grossly inefficient and/or had a very long (5 min) recast. This same job also had a Dot-centric damage model. I actually enjoyed the heck out of it. I'd love to see something like that make an appearance in 14.