New Job idea for 5.0 Necromancer

[Balipu]

Looking at the new threads for Blue mage and Legate and whatever popping up I figured it is time to open the job speculation season. Who knows? I might even give a few ideas to the devs and the'll hire me for 6.0

Anyway as we burn out all the super iconic jobs and are left with the ones super problematic to do (Puppet Master, Blue Mage.....etc) sooner or later we will get to more obscure but still fun little jobs. Here is one particularly nice. Necromancer.

For those unaware Necro was a pointless but super OP job in Final Fantasy V, almost made it into Final Fantasy XI and was available in Airborne Brigade.

In V it was a mix of Blue Mage (Dark Arts) and Summoner (Oath).

But Balipu? Shouldn't we get a tank or a heler this time?

Correct. I intend Necromancer to be a Healer



What?!

Seriously. I'm not high. Necromancer as a healer. Here is why:
There really isn't much left we can do with injuries at this point. Heal them. Use regen and shields to prevent them. Mix the two and add rng dependant buffs as a bonus.

Dancer would be fun to have and it is very much requested. I could thing of several ways to use the Mix command to do fun stuff with chemist. Geomancer got plenty of lore in Stormblood.

But at the end of the day the only real thing we can do with injuries is to redistribute them.


The Necromancer would be the healer that embraces healer DPS.

As you use your dark arts to attack and debuff your enemies you gain your specific necro resource (soul, life force, essence, darkness, whatever). You can then use that to heal injuries. In extreme circumstances you could use your own life force to heal others and just drain back your health from enemies later. Or drain a bit from all party members and transfer it to the one in need.

What about Oath? Will you summon undead? And will they work different from the fairies? The way i inted it is for Oath to use up a huge chunk of your resource to summon a spirit that fights for you. And if a party member dies while the spirit is still alive, you can instantly sacrefice it to bring your friend back.

Haven't figured out the background lore for them but I'll be sure to post it if I have one desinged.

For weapons I could picture them armed with shotel like our old friend Malthael from Diablo III, or perhaps even scythes. Daggers could work, but those are way too mundane for my taste. If I wanted to pick something very odd I would give them a lantern with an eerie glow.

EDIT: Job Story

Inspector Briardien asks the warrior of light for assistance. He is on the trail of a coven of Necromancers that are obviously up to no good. They ARE necromancers after all. After successfully intercepting a group of them carrying a chest you manage to confiscate some robes sickles and job crystals. The crystal seems to respond to you so Briardien asks you to take it and go undercover into the coven.

All goes according to the plan and you join the coven as a promising new recruit. The leader does not reveal any specific plans only that you will need to gather pages to reconstruct a very old grimoire needed for a ritual.

From here on the story will be about gathering said pages in various far away places like the Palace of the Dead or the Great Gubal Library (all special solo duties of course). Naturally in most cases you will have someone with you that needs healing. Like when you go to Yanxia to loot a page from a band of Onmyoji. You hear muffled cries from one of their crates and see a bound and gagged Kinko (or Ginko, take your pick) instead of a grimoire page. You escort her to safety and actually get the page from an Onmyoji trying to stop you.

After the penultimate quest the leader will reveal to the coven the purpose of the grimoire. The resurrection of Nael van Darnus in order to finish what Project Meteor could not do. The purge of those unworthy of living in Eorzea. It is time for the WoL to return to Briardien.

The final quest has you assault the coven base with the authorities. Your former allies of course aim to stop you. The leader is not around and neither is the book but in desperation at your progress, some acolytes attempt the ritual anyway.
In your fight against the White Raven you get an unexpected ally. The head necromancer. When the fight is done he(or she, whatever) explains that he lied to the coven. He just knew that he needed some megalomaniac crazy plan to convince so many necromancers to work for him. He also knew who you were but decided to play along as he knew you would bring in the authorities to capture or kill his followers when we had no real use for them. He then explains what the grimoire really is for.
In the old days necromancy had nothing to do with bringing back the dead. It was just a form of divniation not unlike Astrology or Geomancy. It was about communing with the spirits of those who had literally a lifetime of wisdom to figure out how to be a better man. It was later perverted into the dark magic it is now, but the first grimoire still has the original aspects of Necromancy.

Bridardien asks the head necromancer what he plans to do now. He answers that if he were to escape imprisonment he would try to gather more like minded people and lead more evil necromancers into the clutches of justice. Hearing this Briardien finds something very interesting on one of the walls that he absolutely must investigate immediately.


Playing as a necromancer

Necromancers are sort of melee range healers. As in melee range combat is a part of their repertoir. Combat revolved around managing their special resource, spirit (final name TBD). Normally you have one spirit gauge but with Oath you can summon spirits that function as additional gauges as long as they are alive. You can fill the gauge by using Dark Arts: debuffs applied to the enemy(needs MP), Weaponskills that involve using your sickle damage the enemies(needs TP), sacreficing your spirit, giving some of your blood or a rather long ritual that drains mana are requires you to stand still and not get hit.
It is used up by healing or resurrecting players or by the life drain spell that is the opposite of giving your blood to fill the gauge. You know, whichever is more important in a given situation.

Let's look at a hypothetical battle to see how it works.

Sygmund Ertaker the Necromancer, Bruce the Dark Knight Adrian the Monk and Scab the Bard or up against a fearsome womanticore. You know, a female manticore.

Sygmund applies protect cause of course he has access to role actions.
Once Bruce pulled the womanticore he uses some of his Dark Arts for some quick spirit and begins slashing.
Bruce is still doing very well as he knows how to use his skills and can even be bothered to move out of AoE so Sygmund casts Oath II which costs him quite a bit of spirit, but gives him two more gauges to fill.
The Womanticore suddenly used a huge AoE attack and burned down the HP of both Bruce and Adrian. Sygmund heals both of them back to maximum but has depleated his spirit gauge completely and his summoned frined isn't doing so hot in the HP department so kills it to recover spirit.
All goes well untill Scab gets some lag right when the womanticore targets her for an attack. She dies. Sygmund has a resurrection spell of course, but that requires lots of spirit so he sacrefices some of his own blood to fill the gauge back.
Once Scab is back on her feet Sygmund uses a spell that evens out the group HP a bit. Bruce and Adrian loose some, but now everybody is above 50%. Luckily the add phase comes next which is ligth on healing so Sygmund just throws out a few debuffs before using Ritual to get back all his spirit. He heals everyone beside himself back to maximum and cuts up the still standing adds.
When the womanticore becomes targetable again Sygmund drains its life to replenish what the lost with his sacrefice.

The monster goes down. Sygmund doesn't get any good loot but he does get three commendations. He gives his to Bruce.

[Malzian]

Necromancy as a theme in XIV is considered taboo and illegal, there are many... many quest lines that deal with the subject and the end result is always, "This is really bad, an affront to the gods and never really turns out the way you want. Don't do it." As far as speculation, that's fine, but it's fairly clear that Necromancer will never be a Job in XIV.

[Balipu]

Necromancy as a theme in XIV is considered taboo and illegal, there are many... many quest lines that deal with the subject and the end result is always, "This is really bad, an affront to the gods and never really turns out the way you want. Don't do it." As far as speculation, that's fine, but it's fairly clear that Necromancer will never be a Job in XIV.

A fair point. But seeing as a Dark Knight your teacher is a hallucination born of your frustration with other people, you kinda use your own moral compass.
Hell it could be a valuable lesson that the use of the ability determines it evilness rather than the source.

[Xau]

...

except you didn't created it willing, it was born from such feelings yes, but not whit your consent

[Aylis]

It's a fun concept yes, just with the issues that came from them trying to balance the pet classes that currently exist. (remember Sustain as an example) I'd be a wee bit worried of them trying to make another pet class at this point.

[Risvertasashi]

It's a fun concept yes, just with the issues that came from them trying to balance the pet classes that currently exist. (remember Sustain as an example) I'd be a wee bit worried of them trying to make another pet class at this point.

I don't think they will. We got what we have because in the 1.0 remake surveys, a lot of people wanted to see pet jobs. But SE has continually moved power away from the pets and onto the summoner/scholar, and said various comments about how they don't want pets to be powerful as well. Not that it's impossible but SE's temperament towards pet jobs' pets does seem very negative.

My bigger concern with a DPS healer is balancing. Too strong and it's all anyone will use, too weak and no one will, and SE's already walking a knife edge with the current healers. We already saw with AST that having weaker heals in exchange for utility won't fly, so I don't think it will for DPS either. But then if it's heals are just as strong as everyone else's but it can DPS more... yeah.

Lastly a specific problem with this concept. How would you heal damage intense phases while the boss is off screen/invulnerable? Think like Grand Cross Omega. All healers, current and future, will need to have enough healing to get through stuff like this... without being gated by things like not having a target.

Specific concerns aside, it's a neat concept. Personally, I'm not excited for Dancer at all. With all the demand I think it's what we'll get next but... I'd be glad to see a more innovative concept, eg necromancer here, or chemist, or others..

[Singularity]

Necromancy as a theme in XIV is considered taboo and illegal, there are many... many quest lines that deal with the subject and the end result is always, "This is really bad, an affront to the gods and never really turns out the way you want. Don't do it." As far as speculation, that's fine, but it's fairly clear that Necromancer will never be a Job in XIV.

I actually don't think that's much of a barrier. There are many societies on Hydaelyn. Not all of them worship the twelve and not all of them will have the same taboos. It could easily be a job with origins in a place we haven't been to yet, or indeed a place we go to in the expansion that it gets released in.

[Beckett]

Necromancy as a theme in XIV is considered taboo and illegal, there are many... many quest lines that deal with the subject and the end result is always, "This is really bad, an affront to the gods and never really turns out the way you want. Don't do it." As far as speculation, that's fine, but it's fairly clear that Necromancer will never be a Job in XIV.

I really don't want Necromancer to be a job in FFXIV (I feel it's on the same level as people who wish we could join the Garleans) but in fairness, Summoning is also considered an awful taboo and an affront to the gods, but we still have Summoners in the game. SE had to bend over backwards to make player Summoners fit in a world where summoning is one of the worst things you can do, but they did it, because there was enough demand from the playerbase to do so.

[Balipu]

Well I don't strictly speaking need the pets. I just want to keep as many aspects of the original Necro intact as possible. Just think of the pet as a philactery of sort that can be destroyed by enemies if you are not careful.

Yes, balancing the dps is hard. I don't really want to make all the other healing jobs useless. But I do want a new way to heal to make things interesting.

How would I heal damage intense phases where the boss is off screen? Well, by using up the resources i generated while the boss was on screen. The damage to healing transfer is not instant. I mean it might be for some skills but not for all. Damage is used to generate your resource which will not deplete unless you use it up.

Thanks for the feedback by the way. I really wanted to think of something fresh for the healers. Admittedly it needs some work, but as feedback comes I'm certain we could end up with something very cool.

[SomeRandomHuman]

For pet issues please refer to machinist which sadly fills that little gap. The other big idea that could work is already filled by astrologians.

As much as I would love a dark magic themed job, the work around is just too complicated. To reiterate my fellows:
-Every related quest line displays it as bad and not to be used(emphasis on whm 50-60 quests)
-The world lore is predominantly hydelean worshipers which conflicts with the themes
-Ascians sort of already do this

Again, I would love it, but I don't think they'll got for it.