4Gamer Interview with Yoshi-P!

[Nalien]

"However, we often use zero in the calculation for damage required from healers."

Can we close all the healer DPS threads now?

That actually really worries me... Mostly because it means we're not getting a unique healer...

They cannot, for example, give us a melee based healer (Dancer), because that kind of healer will contribute damage no matter what, but they work these things out with healers doing nothing... Something like Dancer would then be incredibly overpowered, because White Mage, Scholar, and Astrologian deal 0 DPS in their minds.

I cannot be the only one sick of this kind of set up, can I? I'd love to see Red Mage as a DPS mage, that sits in melee range with a sword. I'd love to see Dancer heal its allies from the front line. I'd love to see an entirely spell based tank, rather than yet another heavy armor user...

game isn't going to have melee healers because of all the abilities like Nisi and Searing Wind. lots of fights are designed so that healers are not stacked on top of people.

True, still a shame though... Although I can't imagine it would be too hard to change mechanics such that they work based on a deeper definition of role. Currently they target the healer role, wouldn't be too hard to have them instead target ranged roles, though then you have the issue of the 4~5 DPS not always having ranged...