What else can a Conjurer do?

[4gotmypassword]

Warning: Long, post ahead. I tend to ramble on.

So, I've been thinking. As things stand, SE are going to have to, eventually, either have a whole reshuffle of the job/class system, or introduce more jobs. This post is in, of course, the Healer forums, so we can ignore the Arcanist here, as it already has two jobs, which are decently different enough. So let us focus on the CNJ/WHM.

The Conjurer is a healer. There's no way round that. It's a class with very little offensive potential- Cleric Stance, Stone, Stone 2, Aero, Aero 2 and Fluid Aura being its only offensive abilities- with a lot of healing and some utility.

The White Mage is also a healer. Divine Seal, Benediction and Regen are all wholly healing. Presence of Mind is great and should be kept as is (although a shorter cooldown would be nice), and then there's Holy. Holy, as I'm sure you're all aware, has no place in the real world. It's a lore spell, a throwback to previous FFs, and no sane WHM uses it ever.
So what HAS the White Mage got, what spells does it own that would make you choose White Mage were there an alternative? Regen and Benediction. The two other spells are nice, Divine Seal being quite incredible, but truly, Regen and Benediction are better. And Regen isn't so fantastic you couldn't drop it.

So I propose a small reshuffle. Give Conjurer Holy. Swap it out for Medica 2. I'd personally have it like this:
Conjurer learns its abilities just the same, except Aero 2 is at level 42, Holy is at level 46, and Cure 3 is at level 50. Sidenote: Cure 3 needs an AoE range buff, especially in the case of this reshuffle.
White Mage learns Medica 2 at level 45.
This gives a REAL reason to pick White Mage over just Benediction, were there an alternative possible. More importantly, it gives CNJ some more offense and less pure focus on healing. Now we can finally move on to where this thread is going. I want this because... wait for it... I want the CNJ's second job to be a DPS.
Yes, that's right. A DPS. And for this, the CNJ needs a little more offense, and a little less healing. Exactly what I arranged above.

Now, I have no idea what you'd call this new job. I was thinking maybe Witch Doctor, or Plague Doctor. Something along those lines. Essentially, a less extreme Summoner, in that they have significantly more healing, and less DPS.
I was thinking about this for a while. How on earth could the CNJ get a job that wasn't pure healing? I mean, if it got a healer job, what would it do? WHM has burst heals, SCH has mitigation? There's probably some more variations on healing, but I couldn't think of any. So I thought of making it a tank. Someone who sat there healing every hit they took. It would be simple enough- give the new job an ability that doubles enmity earned from heals or something. But it'd be boring. So perhaps a DPS...? But how would you change a class so heavily healing focussed into a DPS? So I thought of the reshuffle above, and set to thinking. And then it hit me.

Zombie. I think the CNJ should, eventually, get a new job. And it should be very heavily focussed around Zombie. This is a spell that has appeared in most (if not all) FFs that reverses healing effects- healing spells deal damage, and other spells like Doom, Death and Raise do pretty much the exact opposite.

Unfortunately, this is as far as I can think. I'm not proposing other spells for this job, simply because I can't think of any. I'm also wondering if this is OP because a CNJ's heals are pretty potent, and also status effects have diminishing returns (and therefore the Zombie spell should either ignore this or have a small DoT applied- perhaps if this were the case, the small amount of constant healing provided by the DoT would balance with the CNJ's high potency spells and would thus make it a balanced DPS). Of course, this is really just a thought I had that I had to write down, and so it really isn't very well thought out.
But what do you think? Is a Zombie-based DPS class for Conjurer a good idea? I'd love to know.

[Vortok]

and then there's Holy. Holy, as I'm sure you're all aware, has no place in the real world. It's a lore spell, a throwback to previous FFs, and no sane WHM uses it ever.

Come at me.

And for the record, tank ran off into the whirlwind at the start of phase 2. Also find Holy useful in Aurum Vale on the last boss to drop his fruit spawns if your party is weak on aoe burst damage (Monk/Summoner being the fun combo).

[Phileas]

Why not something like Geomancer? I have a feeling that is the natural progression of CNJ...since its all about being one with the environment. I'm betting that is CNJ's next job...and I reckon it will be...less about big heals and more about support maybe?

And Holy is effin awesome :3

[Shyluv]

What is "real world"? I use Holy in CM, WP, AK, Prae, used it in DD when adds popped during the eye boss.

[Fiosha_Maureiba]

I could see the Geomancer further developing abilities toward an offensive nature. They might have an innately high INT and a severe drop in MND to reduce their effectiveness as healers.

But abilities like Tornado, that may be like an AoE DoT.
Some type of ability that debuffs resistance to earth, water, and wind, possibly an attack spell with the effect built in.
Or like the thaumaturge/BLM Apocastasis to buff earth, water, and wind.

[Shuon]

geomancer because it is essentially, as far as the lore is concerned, what the cnj does.

and no whm never use Holy, ever, because it's bloody amazing.

[Tanaya]

Uh, Holy is amazing. My world uses it all the time.

[Melithea]

For single target damage Stone II does as much as Holy, but for packs of 3+ mobs, give your tank Stoneskin and Regen and go to town. You'll out-DPS the damage dealers for a little while. I finally got comfortable doing this in AK and it's hilarious.

Putting that aside, I'm going to echo Geomancer. Conjurer pretty much is Geomancer already. I mean, I can't even necessarily think of what the Geomancer job would add to CNJ that it doesn't already do. It was a pretty limited job in Tactics, other than having status effects attached to the main attack and that's not particularly new or interesting without some serious development.

But more than that, I hope the treatment of ARC doesn't become the norm. It forces you to gimp one job while ending up with two jobs that share most of the same abilities anyway. Any new job they put on top of CNJ is just a job I'm not going to be able to play optimally without resetting my stats, and that's not good for anyone.

[Maku]

It is going to be Geomancer and Geomance is going to be a DPS/support like Bard I am sure because they would not make it another Healer Role that would be kinda silly. But you said Holy is useless which just proves you have no idea what you are talking about and thus everything you say can not be worth 2cents.

[Brises]

I've been in parties where a third WHM was playing as dps. With Cleric stance, the WHM attack power is nothing to sneeze at.