The problem with healing

[tinythinker]

Yes, but it is also in a Dark Knight's nature to kill. It's a little easier to paint a job as an anti-hero when they seek blood justice. Healers in the typical FF lore, especially WHMs are not violent in nature. However, many have been adventurous; seeking thrills to take them away from their strict disciplines.

I don't feel that SCHs and ASTs share the tree-hugging mentality/theme of WHMs. They may not bring a necromancer type edginess to the healer role, but they are each certainly unique in terms of questlines, attire, lore, and mentality. SCH and AST even bring unique mechanics with their fairy and cards respectively.

I'm not saying the game has no place for an edgy healer. Some of the healing sets out there are far from looking like it was made in the clouds, and are very dark. I really like the idea of this type of dark healer taking HP and buffs from their enemies and transferring it to themselves and their comrades, along with a similar concept when they cleanse debuffs (take from party member and give it to the mob).

Healing by doing damage is definitely something other MMOs offer, which of course potentially fits in with the OP's request for darker themes as well as the general demand for healer dps.

I don't care about edginess as a healer but I do worry that they basically made AST as a "half-WHM"/"half-SCH" with buff cards. SE will need to come up with some different themes/mechanics if they add a new healer job in 5.0 to avoid redundancy.

To avoid imbalance there would need to be some limitation on the duration or effectiveness of a needs-to-dps-to-heal job, maybe something like a heat gauge for Machinists or a need to flip from one resource to another like BLM. This need to ramp up and cool-down would provide a different kind of challenge for healers whether it is done up in goth/grim themes or in fluffy puppy rainbow power.