Pipe Dreams: Expanding the healer pool

**IndigoDarkwolf** · 02-11-2013 01:15 PM

Originally Posted by Daniolaut

You've turned my opinion into a sign of "whiny, naive, and foolish" -ness. Yet you clearly missed what I and quite possibly many others are trying to point out.

WHM is a FF trademark. Its is, and has been known as the designated "healer."

Its not a matter of what other MMO's do, or what people who dont play the job think, its a matter of formula.

Again you havent stated a real valid point yet. So far your statement is you dont play WHM because you dont like it, thus you request another class. This is not solid grounds for arguing that SE should change the famed FF formula. Other companies can get away with throwing whatever out there because they dont have a good formula that works, or that is defined.

We all acknowledge the possibility of another healing job, and know the current development team is more than capable of properly balancing the job, the problem is that its completely unnecessary. (I highly doubt anyone in this entire forum is that completely uninformed and "naive." I also doubt you honestly believe that, and you are instead, just trying to use aggressive persuasiveness, which sadly works often times on the internet for some unknown reason.)

Please state why its needed. To my knowledge there was not a lack of WHM's, and if there were, its because people just dont like healing, no matter what the job. WHM, IMO, is by far the most perfected healing job.

Also take into consideration we are awaiting Final Fantasy XIV:A Realm Reborn, which will usher in a change to all the jobs, and their style of play.

I'm sorry if it appears that I tried to make you look whiny and naive. I do believe there have been a number of people on this thread who have been whiny and naive, and I was intending to refer to them. Quoting you was simply to provide the context leading to my observation of the others.

It's true that I didn't play much CNJ/WHM in 1.0. That was mostly from a lack of time.

Long story short: I was so displeased at how 1.0 had originally shipped that I had written it off entirely. Then, I ran into a fan while waiting in line to get into the Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Party, the one in Seattle during PAX Prime. That fan convinced me to try 1.0 again. I re-subbed at the beginning of September 2012 and played until the End of an Era event (including trying to suffer through all the disconnect problems during that event). However, there just wasn't enough time for me to raise multiple classes and complete the storyline and Grand Company quests that I wanted to finish. I had originally chosen to raise DRG because of my great fondness for Kain from FFIV, and was using that class to complete quests until the final character save.

I did raise WHM in FFXI, and my impressions of CNJ/WHM in 1.0 were that it was very similar. That may be an erroneous conclusion, my sig tells all that really needs to be said about how little progress I made into actually experiencing WHM in 1.0 as opposed to just playing with WHMs.

The point I would like to convey is simply that it is possible to create a balanced alternative to the WHM which is aesthetically different, and this may attract more players to healing roles.

Your perspective may have been that there enough healers in 1.0. Several people on this thread would beg to differ, and I would be inclined to agree after struggling multiple times to find someone willing to go WHM for the sake of the party. As from the expandable section above, my own experience is limited, so I'm relying more on the experience of other players who may have played for longer than I did.

Clearly, 2.0 will feature a different set of mechanics. It's hard to know how WHM will change without being the beta. Whether nothing changes or whether everything changes may be irrelevant anyways, though, because it turns out that aesthetics matter, in and of themselves. They do.

Finally, there is a canonical example of a job from Final Fantasy that I think would fit well into a restorative role: Chemist. Other posters have commented on this, already, so I didn't feel it was strongly necessary to repeat them.

Chemists have historically doubled the effectiveness of healing items in the single-player entries of the franchise, and their Throw command in the Tactics series is invaluable for making sure healing items get to the characters that need them most. Truthfully, whether we're talking about the FFV flavor, Tactics flavor, Rikku from FFX, or the Chemist dress sphere from FFX-2, I've always thought of Chemists as healers first, a complement to WHMs (though the FFX-2 Chemist was flat out superior, in my mind, once you had Mega-potion trained). True, Chemists typically have offensive capabilities as well. I don't see how structuring them to be mostly restoration-oriented in XIV in order to provide a different option for playing a role is that much different from giving the WHMs access to Stone, Aero, and other offensive spells out of due consideration for their need to defend themselves when soloing. WHMs, after all, have historically been dedicated healers, with the exception of White/Holy at the endgame, and Dia/Harm for fighting undead.

So a strict view of Final Fantasy tradition was already broken for WHMs in XI. It hardly seems fair to disallow a little leeway for other jobs.

**SkyeWindbinder** · 02-11-2013 01:23 PM