New Healer Request Next Expansion

[Lambdafish]

My problem with the requests for Chemist aren't because I hate the idea of a potion-based healer or whathaveyou. My problem is that "potion-based healer" is as far as most people get with the idea, and that only providing the aesthetics without a mechanical backing implies a lack of interest in how that affects gameplay.

All the suggestions for CHM I have ever seen have been because of the gameplay implication rather than aesthetics. The idea of mix fits so well with XIV and would be central to CHMs mechanical identity, just as cards are for AST. People are always throwing around the idea of "healing mudras", and now that we have dancer, the idea of incorporating the step/mudra functionality into a healer seems very interesting and very feasible.

Please don't presume the reasons for why people want jobs. I threw around CHM early in the thread and by the sounds of your comment, you would assume I only want it for the aesthetic, which simply isn't true. CHM aesthetic is bland.

[Archwizard]

Personally, this is why I keep saying Necromancer would be an interesting idea; there's so much more to it than wielding scythes or summoning zombies.

Continuing from this, I've prepared a few ~samples~ to entice intrepid minds.

Lore/Background

Priests of the city state of Ul'dah favor Nald'thal, overseer of transactions and the underworld. Many who come to the city seek to barter not only for riches, but for their very lives.

Long ago during a war with its sister city of Sil'dih, the Thaumaturges of Ul'dah developed alchemical means to alter the aetheric composition of a target, turning their foes into the undead so they might tear one another apart. Following the horrors of this war, the secrets of undead conversion were locked away to forever be forgotten. In recent years however, enthusiasts of history have once again brought these secrets to light.

Today, the Order of Nald'thal instead use the same vital knowledge to extend lives, cure ailments, study and slay Ashkin, sanctify graveyards, and bring solace to both the living and the dying, while carefully monitored so as not to repeat the atrocities of the past...

Weapons: Scythes (including Warscythes, Hooks, Sickles, Kama and possibly Kusarigama)

Resources: Soul Gauge (stores up to 100 Soul Power, generated by damaging abilities and consumed by healing oGCDs), Revenants (sacrificial pets that function like Demi-summons)

Other design notes:

• Primary healing method is based on sacrifice -- stocking excess healing as Soul Power to be transferred to allies, sacrificing minions, etc.
• Use of HP as an alternative resource mitigates MP consumption
• Use of life drain and Max HP/healing-received buffs substitute for HoTs and Shields
• Pets ideally function as substitute for DoT effects in damage balance pass
• High uptime, low damage before execution phase

Damage skills

Drain (II/III/IV/Reap) (1.5 sec cast): Deal moderate unaspected damage to the target.
Additional effect: Restores a percentage of HP to the caster on a successful hit. If the caster is restored to full health, overhealing is converted into Soul Power.

Pain (2.5 sec cast): Deal moderate unaspected damage to the target and nearby enemies.
Additional effect: Generates Soul Power for each target struck.
Additional effect: Inflicts Paralysis on enemies not already affected.
Duration: 15s

Scourge (Instant): Deal minor unaspected damage to the target.

Death (2.5 sec cast, 15 sec CD): Deal heavy unaspected damage to the target. No effect on targets above 25% health.
Additional effect: If damage is dealt, attempts to inflict Instant Death on the target. No effect on enemies of higher level than you.
Additional effect: Fully replenishes Soul Gauge and resets cooldown if target is killed by either effect of Death.

Oath (2.5 sec cast): Call forth a Revenant to fight for you. Up to three Revenants may be active at a time. Each time you cast a spell on an enemy, each active Revenant will execute Haunt on the same target. Always summons up to the maximum number of Revenants if cast out of combat.
Haunt: Deals low damage and restores Soul Power to the Necromancer.

Soul Douse (oGCD command): Instantly sacrifice an active Revenant to deal moderate unaspected damage to enemies near your target.

Healing skills

Numb (1.5 sec cast): Restore moderate health to self or target.

Wake (8 sec cast): Resurrects target to a weakened state.

False Life (2 sec cast): Restore health to the target while temporarily increasing their maximum health and healing received. This effect does not stack.
Duration: 10s

Soul Bind (2 min oGCD): Generate an aetheric bond with target party member. Each time you receive a healing effect while the bond is active, 75% of the health transfers to that target instead. Recast the effect to end the bond.
Duration: 20s

Vital Shift (1 sec oGCD): Siphon Soul Power to instantly heal the target. If not enough Soul Power is available, consumes a percentage of the caster's HP instead.

Sacrifice (15 sec oGCD): Siphon triple Soul Power to instantly heal all nearby party members. If not enough Soul Power is available, consumes a greater percentage of the caster's HP instead.

Soul Wall (30 sec oGCD): Consume all available Soul Power to place a barrier on the target that absorbs damage equal to a percentage of their maximum health. Barrier potency scales with the amount of Soul Power consumed.
Duration: 30s

Soul Spiral (oGCD command): Instantly sacrifice an active Revenant to heal self and all nearby allies.

Phylactery (3 min oGCD): Store the soul of self or target ally, causing them to receive periodic damage. When the effect ends or they are reduced below 1 HP, all damage received during Phylactery is refunded to the target as health, to a minimum of 50% of the target's maximum health.
Additional effect: Immunity to most Instant Death effects
Duration: 10s
You may only apply one Undead status to targets at a time.

Vampyr (Instant): Grants Vampire to self or target ally, causing their attacks to heal for an additional 10% of damage they inflict.
Duration: 10s
You may only apply one Undead status to targets at a time.

Red Feast (2.5 sec cast): Grants Vampire to self and all nearby allies, causing their attacks to heal for an additional 5% of damage they inflict.
Duration: 15s
You may only apply one Undead status to targets at a time.

Utility skills

Blood Rite (20 sec oGCD): Double the effectiveness of the next ability that consumes Soul Power while increasing the health cost by 50%. This effect cannot reduce the caster below 1 HP.

Psychopomp (90 sec oGCD): Reduces the cast time of Drain, Pain and Death by 2.5 sec, while causing any damage dealt or health consumed to also recover MP.
Duration: 15s

Danse Macabre (Trait): The cast and recast time of Oath is reduced by 75% while no Revenants are active, and by 50% if less than two Revenants are active.

Veil Ethereal (90 sec oGCD): Grants Ethereal to self and all nearby allies, reducing all incoming damage by 10% and significantly raising evasion.
Duration: 10s
You may only apply one Undead status to targets at a time.

Stygian Spikes (1 min oGCD): Clads self or target party member in the armor of the hells, causing attacks against them to deal unaspected damage to their attacker and generate minor Soul Power.
Duration: 10s
You may only apply one Undead status to targets at a time.

Seance (Trait): When the Soul Gauge is full, Wake is instant and consumes no MP, but consumes the entire Soul Gauge.

Thanatophobia (2.5 sec cast): Inflicts nearby enemies with Hysteria, causing them to flee in fear. Damage will end the effect.
Duration: 30s
Cancels auto-attack upon execution.
(Alternately it could inflict Terror, causing them to huddle in fear instead, but that felt a bit too much like Repose.)

Zombie Powder (Instant): Inflicts the target with Zombie, causing them to turn against allies.
Duration: 10s
Additional effect: Target is immune to Zombie status for 1 minute after execution.
Only one target may be afflicted with Zombie at a time.

Curse (2 min oGCD): Consume all available Soul Power to increase the target's vulnerability to damage. Duration is affected by amount of Soul Power consumed.

Exaltation (5 min oGCD): Dispel Weakness from a party member other than yourself, or reduce Brink of Death to Weakness for half of its remaining duration.

Shallow Grave (2.5 min oGCD): Marks an area that grants allies resistance to knockback and draw-in effects.
Additional effect: Leaden on enemies
Duration: 20s

Limit Break - Door of Souls: Open the gate to the underworld.

Worth noting that around half of the spells/abilities here are either references or direct calls to previous FF entries (or in a couple cases, Kingdom Hearts), if not lifted from existing enemy abilities in 14. Some of the other filler is more classically inspired by D&D, which early FF entries were inspired by.

[IntrovertAnt]

I'd like it if the Chemist felt like a potion/gadget themed job with some form of tie-in with Alchemy crafting. I know the potions, elemental resistances, and status potions, got removed for lack of use and such. But without them I feel like Alchemy is really missing something vital.

Referring to the Alchemy tie-in. What about for people who don’t have Alchemy leveled? Would they just not be able to be a Chemist?

And if it didn’t have a tie in, why would we have both a chemist and an alchemist?

[Archwizard]

Referring to the Alchemy tie-in. What about for people who don’t have Alchemy leveled? Would they just not be able to be a Chemist?

And if it didn’t have a tie in, why would we have both a chemist and an alchemist?

I can't wait for the follow-up from people who want a Godbert-inspired Oil Wrestler job as an offshoot of Goldsmith.
Or for Pirate to require Fishing as a prereq. Maybe a Botanist-Druid or Leatherworker-Beastmaster.

/s

[Rika007]

I'm going to throw a wild option out of left field and say I would love to see the Psychic Dress Sphere from FFX2 turned into a healer in XIV. I always loved it's aesthetic and style, and it's playstyle in X-2 was all about protecting against elemental damage, so it's wide open on what it could actually be made into in a hypothetical XIV option. It's teleportation abilities would provide the healer role with a much needed mobility option, and it's nul and eater spells would be fun to represent a new way of healing by choosing the correct spell to 'eat' damage and convert it into HP. But more importantly it would be a job that based on it's aesthetic would provide some much needed hype to the role. With Dancer having gone to Ranged DPS, we've pretty much ran out of all the most iconic FF job's that have that certain 'cool' factor that get many players super excited to try out something new. I feel like instead of going with another robed, sparkle mage healer, the next one should be one that shift's the paradigm a bit.

Admittedly I know a Psychic has almost 0% chance of ever happening in this game, but the idea remains. A chemist could be cool but again I would want to see it really have an aesthetic counter to the current healers. A chemist I could see having a very battlefield, gunbreaker styled modern look, using a healing dart gun and actually walking around in Armor instead of robes. I feel healing need's this as a foil to the look of all it's current jobs.

[Archwizard]

I'm going to throw a wild option out of left field and say I would love to see the Psychic Dress Sphere from FFX2 turned into a healer in XIV.

I love left field ideas like this, not just 'cuz they're unexpected, but because the people who pose them tend to put a greater deal of thought into their reasoning than people whose suggestions just rely on buzzwords.

My main concern, however, is that aside from "Magic" and "Physical" damage in a broad sense, elemental typings don't really matter to damage. It honestly wouldn't surprise me if most bosses today simply default to Unaspected damage for magic, barring obvious elemental themes. So you end up with a heavy, heavy imbalance with Psychic's "spell eating" ability, since having specific elemental effects would be basically pointless most of the time and even potentially crippling based on the healer's encyclopedic knowledge of the exceptions to what is or isn't Elemental/Magic/Physical damage.

[SieyaM]

I honestly do not expect a new healer job next expansion or ever. They always cite balance issues when asked about adding new healers and the balance issues are never going away. The reality is that one job will always be better, no matter how slight, than others. this was true for other jobs and yet they added more DPS and tanks last expansion.

[Rika007]

I honestly do not expect a new healer job next expansion or ever. They always cite balance issues when asked about adding new healers and the balance issues are never going away. The reality is that one job will always be better, no matter how slight, than others. this was true for other jobs and yet they added more DPS and tanks last expansion.

If this is what actually occurs then Healer players will eventually start quitting the game, and unlike all the other times where players are just being hyperbolic, they would have a valid reason. Terrible melee balance in 3.0 when Monk was considered a meme and DRG and NIN was a hard locked meta combo didn't stop them from adding SAM. Terrible caster balance in 3.0 when summoner was blowing Black Mage out of the water didn't stop them from adding Red Mage. Dark Knight in 4.0 was no different then White Mage in 4.0 yet they added Gunbreaker, Machinist was an absolute meme compared to Bard in 4.0 and yet Dancer got thrown in with no thought at all, while also doing a complete and total gutting of Bard on top of it.

Healer every time they have added a job there has been a balance problem. This will never change, and it never will. So if they continue to cling to that, they better be ready to start losing players over it.

[Hatstand]

If this is what actually occurs then Healer players will eventually start quitting the game, and unlike all the other times where players are just being hyperbolic, they would have a valid reason. Terrible melee balance in 3.0 when Monk was considered a meme and DRG and NIN was a hard locked meta combo didn't stop them from adding SAM. Terrible caster balance in 3.0 when summoner was blowing Black Mage out of the water didn't stop them from adding Red Mage. Dark Knight in 4.0 was no different then White Mage in 4.0 yet they added Gunbreaker, Machinist was an absolute meme compared to Bard in 4.0 and yet Dancer got thrown in with no thought at all, while also doing a complete and total gutting of Bard on top of it.

Healer every time they have added a job there has been a balance problem. This will never change, and it never will. So if they continue to cling to that, they better be ready to start losing players over it.

First off, not enjoying playing a game is an excellent reason to stop playing it. I’d say better than anger at the devs over their continued behaviour.

Also, as you say, balance issues have never stopped the devs from adding a new dps class. Yet they cited balance as the reason that we didn’t get a new healer in Shadowbringers. If this double standard is worth getting angry over, it’s worth getting angry over now.

I agree with you that if they keep this up expansion after expansion more healers will get fed up and leave. I just don’t think it’s a discrete cause. It’s a continuous one, and it’s just a question of when each individual healer decides they’ve had enough.

[hynaku]

There better be new healer in the next expansion or later on in this one. Or I would say the healers should go on strike and then see how Yoshi will fix the problem. I use to main a healer but not anymore since 5.0. Next expansion they better get rid of mp to make it fair where ones that used tp don't have to worry about running out of it anymore.