Ideas for jobs beyond whm/ healer?

[myahele]

I honestly cant think of any.

There are all these great tank/dps classes or jobs, but what about a healer?

A white mage becomes a super white mage?

[MartaDemireux]

I'm not entirely sure of the question here but I'll do my best. Conjurer becomes a white mage (both are healers). Arcanist becomes a Scholar (just the SCH is a healer). Jobs don't see identity progression, only classes do.

For other jobs to stem from current or new classes they could do a lot of things. Possible new healers from the series could be: Sage, Red Mage, Devout/Seer, Time Mage, Chemist, Blue Mage, Geomancer, Dancer, and Bishop off the top of my head. All of these classes have seen healing magic/abilities at least once in the past and could make it back in. Some I don't think should, such as RDM/GEO/BLU/TIM but it is still a possibility for SE to do.

[Nahara]

I honestly don't see the Geomancer or the Red Mage as possible healers. Especially not Red Mage, since that's always been a magical fighter class.

Sage, Seer, Oracle, and Chemist seem like reasonable classes that could fill the healer roll.

[Kitru]

I honestly don't see the Geomancer or the Red Mage as possible healers. Especially not Red Mage, since that's always been a magical fighter class.

Sage, Seer, Oracle, and Chemist seem like reasonable classes that could fill the healer roll.

Geomancer is always a possibility for a healer since it *has* always had at least one "heal" as part of its Geomancy repertoire. A lot of it depends upon what they base Geomancer off of. A Geomancer grown out of CNJ is most definitely *not* going to be a healer and is, in my opinion, most likely going to be a CNJ DPS class. A Geomancer grown out something like MAR (in Tactics, they used Swords/Axes and were a balanced physical class) would also be a DPS class (in that case, they would likely have "support" as their secondary role and utilitize Geomancy in the same way that BRDs use their job abilities). A Geomancer grown out of THM could be a possibility for a healer, though the fundamental THM mechanics would present some design problems since you can't really have a healer that uses the burn/regen phase set up that THM uses (it would most likely have to completely repurpose Astral Fire/Umbral Ice, likely into something that changes the secondary/bonus effects of it heals between shields and HoTs, and repurposes some other aspects of the class to boot). I'll agree that it's not *likely* to see Geomancer as a healer, but it's not outside the realm of possibilities; I find it much more likely that it'll be a DPS unless its given an entirely new class to be grown out of, which I'm not entirely sure is going to happen.

Sage isn't likely to crop up since we've got scholar and the two are often conflated as the same class, specializing in casting bother white and black magic while being a full blown caster. SCH's schtick has regularly been some variation on "Scan", which we didn't get in this game (for good reasons, honestly, since I don't really see if being of any real use), so I doubt they'll add Sage since, really, it would be the same thing.

Chemist is also unlikely since we've got Alchemist as a DoH class. There are Chemist-healers in the game as NPCs, but I'm pretty confident that they really just have renamed CNJ/SCH heals and were only given them to avoid being completely and utterly useless as helper-NPCs. On top of that, Chemist always used consumables as its mechanic and the devs have outright stated that they don't want any classes based upon consumables in ARR.

Seer and Oracle are both wonky since they don't really have much to define them yet so they're really kind of wildcard-ish. The only game where Seer isn't simply an upgraded WHM (FFT:A2) has them existing as a weird BLM/WHM fusion class with some personal resource utility that only gets access to higher level magic (and, even then, mooches it from other classes). Oracle only exists as either a magic roulette class (abilities with a random spell list) in the remakes of FFV or a debuff specialist in FFT that required WHM to unlock it. Both of suggest some degree of White Magitude but neither really has a particularly strong presence in the FF series. If they were brought in, I expect them to be based off of a completely new class that provides some alternate healing schtick, likely a support/healer akin to SCH.

The most likely new healer, in my opinion, is dancer: it has a strong presence in the FF series, a well known skillset based around providing team support rather than outright damage, and has an easily accessed gimmick in being a TP/MP resource-fusion healer grown out of a DoW class (likely Thief, as I see it though ARC is a possibility if they could get around the problems of ARC not having anything that could really be repurposed as a heal).

Part of the problem with coming up with new healers is really identifying a new mechanical niche for them to fill: if they try to fill a niche that's already taken by an existing healer, you have to ask yourself why bother unless it's sufficiently different in some other way that isn't just thematic/aesthetic (like a completely different resource model akin to my TP/MP idea for DNC). WHM already covers most of the "HoT-healer" archetype and SCH covers both "shield-healer" and "pet-healer". Some of the only other major healer remaining archetypes that I can think of are the "puddle-healer" (throws down persistent ground effects that provide healing; the most likely implementation for Geomancer-as-healer) and the "aura-healer" (creates persistent/long term area effects around the caster or target that move with them; DNC could possibly use this but I'm not fond of the idea) since straight up direct healing is something that all healers have as baseline functionality. Another *possible* archetype would be the "retributive healer" that provides buffs that heal the target whenever they take damage with multiple charges or medium length durations though this creates problems in healing anyone that isn't a tank so they'd likely just have to rely upon a generic AoE heal.

[Nahara]

Seer and Oracle are both wonky since they don't really have much to define them yet so they're really kind of wildcard-ish.

• The Secrets of Eorzea (SOE) :
The scholar was a great surprise for the community. This is an unusual job in different games because it appears as if it does not always have the same special ability. While some expected a hybrid white mage / black mage with its own ability (as in FFXI), how did you come to turn it into a pet job specialized in buff / heal?

• Naoki Yoshida (NY):
Until last December, we were not sure what would be the next job to be added but, we knew we needed a second healer because one was clearly not enough.

We talked on the subject of the class system, about the Summoner, a pet class system and were looking for something attractive and not too strange to be using healing abilities. So we kept this idea and thought that the scholar might work this way. The idea quickly caught on and was accepted without too much trouble. That is how the scholar has acquired healing abilities and a pet.

The important thing to take away from this is that the Scholar is also kinda in that nebulous area where they really don't have anything that defines them. Square Enix took that and ran with it, turning them into a healer. Seer and Oracle could very likely be healer jobs because they don't have anything that does not already define them as something else (and for the record, my hopes are on Geomancer being the Conjurer's DD job, which is why I don't consider them a candidate for the next healing class/job).

[myahele]

I think a seer, specifically seed seer would make sense. They are in the game, though who knows how they'll be able to use them in game.

[Nahara]

I think a seer, specifically seed seer would make sense. They are in the game, though who knows how they'll be able to use them in game.

Seed Seer is a title of office in Gridania, not a job. They're all Padjal, so they're conjurers/white mages.

[Urthdigger]

I think one thing that might help the amount of DPS versus tanks and healers, would be to give every DPS a second job which allows them to use that for leveling if they need to, much like how Arcanist has Scholar. I've thought of two, for THM and ARC.

1: Dark Priest. This class would be a callback to the old Thaumaturge of 1.0's release, having an array of skills deal with the astral and umbral. It's main heal would be Sacrifice, which costs some of the caster's MP in exchange for doing a heal that also comes with a regen effect, as well as a buff that allows the tank to heal themselves by dealing damage. The core themes would be using death and pain to sustain the party.

2: Performer. While Bard focuses on playing their instrument to empower the party, the performer takes their art in another direction, using song and dance as the somatic components of healing magic. Based on Dancer of FFXI, this would be a healer that uses TP instead of MP. Their main advantage would be longevity, as TP continuously regenerates throughout battle, although their downside would be that they are less capable of doing heavy healing for a short amount of time (No equivalent of spamming Cure II or Adloquiom)

It's my impression that Pugilist and Lancer would be better off having tanks as their secondaries, which would bring us up to 4 tank options and 4 healer options. While these classes weren't designed to be a healer from the start, and thus lack a low level heal, hopefully folks doing low level content with these make sure to set Cure or Physick so they can aid in the earlier dungeons as well. Also, I'm fully aware the names could stand to be more "FF", possibly finding a job from another game that will fit.

[Nahara]

While these classes weren't designed to be a healer from the start, and thus lack a low level heal, hopefully folks doing low level content with these make sure to set Cure or Physick so they can aid in the earlier dungeons as well. Also, I'm fully aware the names could stand to be more "FF", possibly finding a job from another game that will fit.

No class or job should have to rely on cross-class abilities in order to do it's job. Everything a class/job needs to perform its role should be built into the class itself. Cross-class abilities should be helpful, but not critical.

[Kitru]

No class or job should have to rely on cross-class abilities in order to do it's job. Everything a class/job needs to perform its role should be built into the class itself. Cross-class abilities should be helpful, but not critical.

The devs have already said that they actually expect some degree of baseline functionality for a class to be drawn from their additional skills list. They outright said that WARs are intended to draw heavily from their additional skill list to augment their terrible local CD suite and they're forced to sacrifice a slot to Provoke for all of those fights that require tank swapping. As long as the ability comes from the first 15 levels of the prereq secondary class, the devs can easily plan on having some capabilities drawn from the additional skill list.