New healer ideas?

[YakiaLisee]

I recently saw the caster gear designs, and fell in love with the healer gear runner up that was designed from the skysteel manufacturer, and it made me think of a healer that uses alchemical potions/ gasses to heal with a weapon that's similar to a design of the healer in tf2. What are your thoughts on this and what healer would you like to see in the game?

[Gemina]

I'm still on the dancer train that uses steps, sambas, waltzes, and other dances to perform their abilities. I like the idea of them being a healer/ranged DPS using magical/aetherial chakrams as their primary weapon, and primary means to heal and deal damage.

The way I envision it is the chakrams are thrown at the enemy to cause damage, while aetherial bursts of energy from these weapons are used to heal. The dances are pretty much straight utility that helps the dancers and/or their comrades, all while flowing smoothly to create this elegant and exquisite healing style.

[YakiaLisee]

I like the chakram idea, and I would like to see dancer be brought in but I remember in a interview they said they wanted to play around with entirely new classes to FF, so I'm curious as to what they are planning.

[Gemina]

That would be interesting to see. I still think back to the initial reaction of the lady in red (sorry, I'm still doing HW stuff), and the excitement when people thought DNC was coming in. I think that reaction will be taken into consideration along with entirely new classes.

There are actually still a ton of classes from previous FF titles that are not in this game. I wonder if they can come up with anything truly new that doesn't overlap in some way.

[Maverick_Zero]

Been brainstorming with a friend about a possible Chemist class, where the class gauge would work like a Ninja's mudras except with potions and a lot more combinations.

Combine certain potions to make something that you can toss on the ground and make it explode to be a simple healing aoe on the floor like asylum.
Combine another set of potions to give an HP leech buff that drains a certain % of the damage they deal into HP to heal themselves (you wanna heal yourself up and not die? better do more dps, buddy).
Combine another set of ingredients to make a remedy to remove ailments.
Combine another set to craft an ether to restore MP, or another set to craft an elixir that fully restores HP / MP (obviously this would be like a 5 minute cooldown maybe).
Need to raise somebody? Better craft a phoenix down and use it on them.
Craft a steroid potion and it increases a person's DPS but lowers their DEF.
Craft another potion that removes GCD until you use 4 abilities or something.

[Jhett_Magnum]

Definitely DNC. I'm curious as to how they'll add a melee healer.

[Riyshn]

This is more or less how I would handle Dancer, though I would probably like to see a "dash to target" effect on "Golden Bell".
http://ffxivhomebrew.weebly.com/dancer.html

[Tridus]

The real difficulty is coming up with something that plays mechanically differently than what we already have for healing, though. It doesn't matter what coat of paint you put on it if it boils down to exactly the same gameplay.

[Gemina]

The real difficulty is coming up with something that plays mechanically differently than what we already have for healing, though. It doesn't matter what coat of paint you put on it if it boils down to exactly the same gameplay.

Each healer needs a core set of abilities that will naturally make all of them play similar. They need a cure, regen, cleanse, raise, AoE heal, MP restoration/cost mitigation, healing potency buff, and offensive skills in order to work in this game.

They don't necessarily have to play different, but rather 'feel' different. Giving each of them variations to their fundamental abilities goes a long way in making this happen. Such claim only needs to go as far as a WHM, SCH, and AST's very basic heal spell. They all do the same thing, but make each healer feel very different. Further diversity is where balance issues come in, because when you give one healer something another doesn't have, the other healer(s) need to bring something to the table that compensates for it.

I think an easy way for SE to plug and play with the healers is with their offense. The shear number of DPS jobs shows why this would be so easy. It's just more flexible, and each healer has their own flashy way of doing damage. It's pretty much that way now, and the cause of the imbalance is due to the utility each healer brings. It honestly should be an easy fix imo, but SE just loves to complicate things.

I think a healer like dancer can really bring something different to the table. Those core abilities would still be there, but they would have a different way to go about it, but the HUGE difference would be that we would have a healer that heals damage through either melee or ranged melee attacks. I believe ranged would be better as FF healers typically don't belong in the fray.

[Anova]

Each healer needs a core set of abilities that will naturally make all of them play similar. They need a cure, regen, cleanse, raise, AoE heal, MP restoration/cost mitigation, healing potency buff, and offensive skills in order to work in this game.

They don't necessarily have to play different, but rather 'feel' different. Giving each of them variations to their fundamental abilities goes a long way in making this happen. Such claim only needs to go as far as a WHM, SCH, and AST's very basic heal spell. They all do the same thing, but make each healer feel very different. Further diversity is where balance issues come in, because when you give one healer something another doesn't have, the other healer(s) need to bring something to the table that compensates for it.

I think an easy way for SE to plug and play with the healers is with their offense. The shear number of DPS jobs shows why this would be so easy. It's just more flexible, and each healer has their own flashy way of doing damage. It's pretty much that way now, and the cause of the imbalance is due to the utility each healer brings. It honestly should be an easy fix imo, but SE just loves to complicate things.

I think a healer like dancer can really bring something different to the table. Those core abilities would still be there, but they would have a different way to go about it, but the HUGE difference would be that we would have a healer that heals damage through either melee or ranged melee attacks. I believe ranged would be better as FF healers typically don't belong in the fray.

The issue on job mechanics for ff14 healers is actually two-fold: AST have cards for buffs, WHM have lilies for CDs, and SCH uses aetherflow management. Most healers also have a secondary mechanic that often appears as a buff, such as Nocturnal/Diurnal, Confession and Free Cure procs, or the presence of a Fairy (which is effectively half of a character). There's a lot of room for creativity on this one, and there have been several proposals, especially for dancer.

As for the healer meta in FF14, which I think the both of you are talking about, there is a demand to move away from heals-over-time and barriers to something new. I think we all understand that healers need to be able to recover hp on a single target and in an area, to remove status effects, and raise players up. Without those core abilities, it just wouldn't be a healer in a MMO trinity. The question instead, is how do we make a healer that doesn't rely on either regen or barrier to help heal through the current or future content.

A damage-leech healer is a popular idea, but I really doubt it would ever be implemented in FF14 because the devs are really cautious about damage creep. It was an unintended consequence of the 2.0 SCH release (because they paired it with ACN and SMN), and it seems they devs have been somewhat split on how to deal with the balance in the job design ever since, hence the SMN and SCH's slightly schizophrenic gameplay. The same could be said to a lesser extent about Warrior as well.

One new idea that's seen some traction are healing orbs that a player can scatter around in an area and with whom anyone can pick up. This is especially useful with a more mobile fighting style and could work very well with a melee healer. This is because the melee healer can simply drop healing orbs that melee or tanks can pick up later for as much healing as they need. Of course, the healer can still provide more conventional targeted heals, but this on-demand burst healing would give the healing class an unique 'dps' phase where they are just trying to gain enough resources to drop enough healing orbs in time for the next damage spike. Mystics from Tera, and to some extent, Medics from Wildstar, are some examples of this type of healing.