New Healer Request Next Expansion

[Duskane]

Oracle/Prophet from ff5 maybe

[Archwizard]

Oracle/Prophet from ff5 maybe

No offense, but I think that's a terrible idea.

RNG and extreme teamkilling potential of its abilities aside, Oracle's Predict skill functions similarly to Geomancy in other entries. Besides, doesn't AST already thematically cover the "predicting the future" angle?

[Ryoutoshi]

Ive always lived the Oracle theme so I'd say sweet!

But isn't the Astro already a prophet of sorts? Might feel too similar is theme to others.

[Billythepancake]

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

I like this purely because DPSing is not just filler, it\\\\'s a core component of its kit. I would love to see a healer with that sort of design in the game, one that DPSes, not because it has nothing else to do like the current healers, but because its needed to take full advantage of its kit. Not sure if necromancer will ever be in the game, am also not knowledgeable enough of FF lore to know what other job could possibly fit that role, but the design elements seem like fun.

[Archwizard]

I like this purely because DPSing is not just filler, it's a core component of its kit. I would love to see a healer with that sort of design in the game, one that DPSes, not because it has nothing else to do like the current healers, but because its needed to take full advantage of its kit. Not sure if necromancer will ever be in the game, am also not knowledgeable enough of FF lore to know what other job could possibly fit that role, but the design elements seem like fun.

That's the idea: battle healer. Sure, there are tools there if you must use traditional healing, like if you get Amnesia or the boss flees (with Vampyr/Red Feast as its alternative to HoTs and False Life to shields), but the intent is that you would get greater efficiency out of displacing life force as your primary method with those tools on the side for "in case".
Sort of a "nothing comes for free, all energy must come from somewhere" deal. Give it sort of a natural weakness without crippling it.

And of course, because Drain's healing isn't actually dependent on the amount of damage done much like DRK's Abyssal variant, it not only prevents the issues caused by Drain in the hands of DPS jobs (though I still believe BLM should have some variation of it for a modicum of self-sustain in solo content), but allows for its damage to be tuned independently of its healing. Which means of course we don't necessarily have to worry about the immediate concern that progression players would jump on Necromancer for having higher boss uptime, since that wouldn't necessarily have to translate to particularly higher damage output (Death casts aside).

Besides, the FF11 devs did strongly consider Necromancer as an alternative to Puppetmaster (which I fully expect would end up a limited job were it to be introduced to 14). The only real reason to say it "can't" happen is because Necromancer (and Vampire from which some inspiration was drawn) has a more limited list of entries, and is therefore not recognized as a "classic". Meanwhile most of the abilities in the sample list are unused Black and Blue (or Saboteur) spells from previous entries or other Square properties, or even copied from enemies in 14, so the components for this type of dark healer already exist, just untapped.

[Lola_bunny]

Healing doesn't strike me as a priority for the dev team or something that they enjoy and frequently play themselves. If someone has a link to the contrary I'd be curious to read it but every time they answer questions about any of the healing roles it's a sentence whereas dps and tank roles get paragraphs of reasoning and explanation. As a result I'd be genuinely surprised if they were to add a heal anytime soon, or at least one that is fairly unique or different. I feel if they add a heal with the next expansion they'd be doing it more out of obligation then desire so my expectations in that regard are pretty low.

To those who think the 3 we have need to be truly balanced before adding another one that doesn't seem possible. I main heals, I don't see me ever leaving the role completely but it is disheartening the lack of reasoning or communication where the heal role is considered.

[SaberMaxwell]

I'm constantly batting off people with a stick in RDM forums who want to turn it into Spellblade or Mystic Knight or Rune Fencer

Regarding RDM: I honestly wish they'd add a Spellblade / Mystic Knight so I can enjoy my fantasy of being a magical swordsman and others can enjoy their fantasy of whatever Red Mage is supposed to be. I doubt we'll ever see one though because it feels like the devs tried to put both class fantasies into one, and the more discussions I get into the more irreconcilable they seem to be.

I got into XIV's RDM because I love sword and magic, others want some sort of hybrid specialized in healer support and I'm stuck on the same job because class fantasies are just close enough.

[Kaiserdrache]

If SE wants to ever fix the situation of Healers, they should fix first the garbage mess that is Scholar/Summoner, by finally splitting these two up completely with each of them having an of Class to start with.
Then remove from Scholar all skills, that belong to it but basically to a Greenmage, spells like Bio, Miasma, Fester , Energy Drain, and from then on

- Add new skill replacements for the gaps,
- remove from all classes these garbage role skills and merge their effect from job to job individually into skills, this will help making the jobs more uniqye, if theres not half a dozen skills, that are for all jobs of a role the same.
Someone at SE should finally get some logic, count 1+1 together, to finally realize that Role Skills in this game are one of the most terribles ideas in this game, when you want to make actually classes unique. It's just counterproductive n obsolete, because their effect could be done all with different job specific skills as side effects or bonus effects.
- rework the Scholar gameplay to have its own mechanics, instead of sharing the same with SMNhowever the problem lies also partwise in the combat design, which is why all healers need to have certain skills, that fulfill specif ects, so that any healer combo is efficient enough together to heal their party good enough, when certain enemies are fought in the games dungeons, raids and 24er raids, where certain equality between healers is needed to be able to keep the party alive, like whm and ast basically share under their skills alot of similarities.

[Archwizard]

Then remove from Scholar all skills, that belong to it but basically to a Greenmage, spells like Bio, Miasma, Fester , Energy Drain, and from then on

- Add new skill replacements for the gaps,

... so replace all of SCH's filler skills (which of the list you described only actually includes Bio and Energy Drain) with abilities that have the same effects, but new names and visuals.
Okay. Given they already changed SCH's Bio to "Biolysis", all it needs is a rename to Energy Drain (or for SMN to have Energy Drain renamed), which already doesn't function the same way SMN's does.

What I find quite interesting is that you specify "all skills that belong [...] basically to a Green Mage" -- particularly since none of the skills you named have ever been in a Green Mage repertoire.
Maybe I'm splitting hairs a bit since different editions of FF12 consider Poison or Drain "Green Magick", but Green Mage isn't officially a class there and those skills get shuffled into Black Magic between editions. In any game where Green Mage exists as a full job (which is... one game), Green Magic is exclusively either damage-mitigating buffs or crowd control effects (which all existing healers have), without even the means to deal or heal damage.

You have to remember that in classical FF games, SCH was sort of a Red Mage with support abilities like Scan in place of any Physical skills -- able to use both White and Black Magic. In that regard, Scholar has a better claim to Bio or (Energy) Drain than Green Mage, having had access to such spells for longer, more consistently, and in more games overall.

But let's discuss that. I'm curious why you want to remove everything from SCH that resembles a Green Mage, then specify giving Scholar "its own mechanics" when the only mechanics it still "shares" with SMN are pets and Aetherflow, both of which it uses in a completely different manner. Particularly interesting is that you put the onus on SCH to change purely because some elements of it still resemble SMN, when SMN has already been moving in a new direction!

To be clear I'm not saying SCH lacks problems, I just think you're misattributing them.

Besides, being "unique" in the manner you describe is only aesthetic, and wouldn't impact any of the balance impasses faced by healers.

[Kaiserdrache]

A Greenmage is all about Alteration Magic, but that doesn't mean that they use that only for defense, support or other helpful things, to mitigate damage or to buff alliies, but also to specifically is it for offensive damage dealing debuffs, thats why Bio or Miasma belongs to the Greenmage as Magic Spell, because magically poisoning you enemies is offensive alteration of the physical status of that enemy by changing magically the blood of the victim to be not healthy for the victim anymore, if the target inhales the magical toxin from Bio.

The Greenmage uses Debuffs like Poison, Bleeding, Burning to deal that way mostly damage over time either, or burst damage, that comes from letting an enemy suffer on as many negative conditions as possible as the spells become more powerful, so much debuffs the target has, thats the offensive combat style of a Greenmage, to grind slowly an enemy to death and to overwhelm them with negative debuffs, until they haved powered themself and their allies up, to finish off targets then with massive debuff based burst skills, like Fester or Trisaster.

Yes, renaming those skills and slightly changing their effects to be not anymore the excat same effects that Summoner has, would be naturally the quickest solution.

Blackmages are about Black Magic, not Alteration Magic, that contains in first place destructive elements like fire und lightning spells, as also ice, that resembles to death, it has definetely some skills I'd rename to stop that confusion, which comes from its first spell that they learn to use those pink dot from that players, later get a second with this nonsensical named spell Xenoglossy, however I know what you meanby mentioning the Blackmage.
Theoretically those spells could be given to Blackmages, because of the Offline Games letting us assume it belongs there, but Offline b Online are two different pairs of shoes.

Blackmage here has with its elemental spells already everything it needs to fulfill its role as magical raw dps'er, they are not buffers/debuffers like Greenmages, which is why Bio, Miasma ect should be the offensive spells for the missing Greenmage.
A Scholar in comparison is no Greenmage, nor a magical Doctor, they dont use Alteration Magic and have no knowledge about that, but instead have just fairy power enhanced Healing and Protection Magic as their role as Healers.
Greenmages are no Healers, it would be a magical DPS class, that is weaker/slower/ less mobile than the Redmage and can't Heal/Revive, but therefore weakens enemies, has of all dps the most buffs n debuffs, including Field Spells to alterate even the environment around them,like for example the weather to influence this way elemental spells/mudras positively for black, white n redmages, or Ninjas to change/empower their effects

However, what I truly wanted to express with my post, was my opiniin, that Healer will be never really fixed completely, as long the Summoner is a burden for Scholars du to them being linked and sharing similar skills and mechanics. There needs to happen first finall a clear cut between those two, so that SE gains again complete design freedom with the Scholar