Would Discipline Priest Mechanics work in FFXIV?

[JisKing98]

melee healers do not work in XIV. They would have to redesign old encounters and never use a mechanic they have used in multiple fights in the future to accommodate for melee healers.

Ifrit EX, Leviathan and Gordias 4 are all examples of why we will never get melee healers.

or we can get them and then us the players would have to come up with strats to deal with mechanics as the melee healer class/job

[Brannigan]

melee healers do not work in XIV. They would have to redesign old encounters and never use a mechanic they have used in multiple fights in the future to accommodate for melee healers.

Ifrit EX, Leviathan and Gordias 4 are all examples of why we will never get melee healers.

You do not need to redesign old encounters because the gear is worthless from them and power levels are so high compared to when they came out that they are nearly trivial.

[Shurrikhan]

(Melee healer concept discussion)

You do not need to redesign old encounters because the gear is worthless from them and power levels are so high compared to when they came out that they are nearly trivial.

This. But, I would argue that you could also equip the new healer style with means of immunizing themselves to these things, rather than causing content to treat them all equally or leaving certain old fights unaccessible to melee healers..

Give them a Veil function, similar to the later half of Warden's Paeon, which keeps them from receiving the next debuff and immunizing them completely to others; give them an ability that draws projectiles from nearby allies to themselves, up to a damage cap, and reduces their AoE radius if any; give them directional barriers, etc., etc. These can all play into interesting parts of the class while making them viable for such raids.

If a melee healer has ranged heals, then it's not really a melee healer.

A "melee healer" as a term to describe certain healers across multiple MMOs has usually just meant that some part of its toolkit is limited to melee range. This can be just its filler dps, just its AoE heals, it could be short-range auras, etc.; it doesn't have to be everything, or even all of its healing abilities. It just describes in what range the healer would typically be standing, for a fair bonus, not that it can't move out a bit (albeit likely at cost).

[Zojha]

A "melee healer" has usually just meant that some part of its toolkit is limited to melee range.

The predominant part, rather. A machinist has both blank and suppressive fire locked to melee range, but that doesn't make it a melee class, does it? Similarly, many Ninjutsu and Dagger throw are ranged, but a Ninja is still a melee, as Dagger Throw is extremely inefficient for DPS and TP both. Similar would apply to a melee healer - if the melee part was a mere gimmick and not an essential part of their toolkit, it would not be much of a melee at all.

[SendohJin]

This. But, I would argue that you could also equip the new healer style with means of immunizing themselves to these things, rather than causing content to treat them all equally or leaving certain old fights unaccessible to melee healers..

If 1 of the 4 healer jobs can immunize themselves against Searing Wind then the other healers will always be ostracized for that fight. And I'm not just talking about one or two existing old fights but also any future encounters that will use similar mechanics.

player targeted splash damage will always be a thing. having a healer that likes/wants/needs to be in melee range will make job compositions really difficult as there's only so much room available around a boss.

[FoxyAreku]

melee healers do not work in XIV. They would have to redesign old encounters and never use a mechanic they have used in multiple fights in the future to accommodate for melee healers.

Ifrit EX, Leviathan and Gordias 4 are all examples of why we will never get melee healers.

Really it just means they wouldn't be able to attack, wouldn't the heals still be ranged?

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Really it just means they wouldn't be able to attack, wouldn't the heals still be ranged?

If a melee healer has ranged heals, then it's not really a melee healer.

[Reinha]

If a melee healer has ranged heals, then it's not really a melee healer.

A melee healer is one that has only melee attacks and is considered a melee for boss mechanics. An example is the Mistweaver Monk in WoW, who would never be targeted by boss abilities that are meant to keep the ranged moving (puddles, spreading debuffs etc). If there are any such mechanics that specifically target healers (like in A4) then the melee healer simply doesn't do any dps during those mechanics. There are both positives (not being targeted by certain mechanics) and negatives (not being able to dps in every situation) to being a melee healer so I'd consider it balanced overall.

How would this healer work with the others? Like there are 3 healers right now and we add a discipline-like healer for the 4th...it would need to be balanced very carefully to make sure it was not overpowered compared to other healers...like I can see it now raid groups only taking this new healer and SCH while WHM and AST get backseated and no one wants to take them since this new healer can DPS a lot and heal simultaneously. This game isn't like WoW when it comes to battle so I just don't know if it can be added properly, but I do like this type of healer.

I think it could be a healer that can actually take the spot of the SCH, unlike Nocturnal AST. A healer that has significant dps and can cause automated healing during dps, but whose "pure" healing capabilities are not as good as a WHM or Diurnal AST has. To make sure SCH stays put they could make the new healer (I'll call the new healer DISC) incompatible with SCH in some way. For example make DISC dps cause random absorb shields which overwrite the stronger SCH shields. When balanced in such a way the best comps would be:

WHM / DISC
AST / DISC
WHM / SCH
AST / SCH

Everyone would have an equal chance to get a raid spot, and have 2 good co-healer options and 1 not so good option (WHM / AST and SCH / DISC). Nocturnal would remain the way it currently is: a stance that is used only when paired with another AST (or in some cases WHM) in DF.

[Duelle]

Really it just means they wouldn't be able to attack, wouldn't the heals still be ranged?

Yes and no. Melee healers usually work around building the healing resource via melee and then spending it on heals. Additionally, their attacks would usually do splash healing (read: heals the attacker and those nearby for a portion of the damage dealt).

@OP: I'm guessing you're talking about the new Disc Priest seen in Legion. To give the FFXIV players a working example, let's take AST and treat it like a Disc Priest.

Say that AST had a mechanic where Aspected Benefic applies a heal every time you deal damage. So AST would focus on keeping Aspected Benefic up on party members, and as long as the effect is active, those party members get a heal applied to them every time you cast Malefic. That's generally Disc Priests in a nutshell.

As to whether it would work here or not, the tricky part is healer damage output. It certainly offers a different playstyle, but I fear it would become "required" because of how bent on maximizing raid DPS people are in this game. Hell, Legion's Disc Priest also carries this risk, though it would be less noticeable because you have 5 other healing specs and 20-man raids mean you already have multiple healers in-group.

[Voltyblast]

As to whether it would work here or not, the tricky part is healer damage output. It certainly offers a different playstyle, but I fear it would become "required" because of how bent on maximizing raid DPS people are in this game.

And honestly that's a major issue with this game. Infact all we have to look is at the 3 new jobs we've got: instead of actually try something original they copied the pre-existing jobs in fear that their diversity wouldn't be effective, and being effective in dps and heal is basically all that this games want: anything less is unwanted.

AST is the best example here: their stances are literal copies of SCH and WHM skills and I really REALLY fear this might be a trend in the future because, instead of making a new interesting combat for them they simply copied pieces of the existing healers. Despite having the card Mechanics - which I really like - their skill sets is a literal copy of the pre-existing healers, and if they were an original healer - like a discipline priest for example - they might be ignored totally because "not effective as WHM or SCH".

So while I hope for new diverse jobs, with the current "mentality" that the game demands I can't see this happening that easily...I mean even MCH and DRK are copies of other jobs with really minor differences!