How would they even make another healer job though?

[Townsperson]

The biggest problem, which I find hilarious in a game that let's you play any job on one character, is SE's need to balance every class into oblivion. Now, it's mainly the players fault for finding out the "meta" comps and applying them in places that have no right caring about them (like 90% of the player base isn't doing content where meta factors in at all), but it's given us this impossible to balance healer role, and the absolute crap that is ShB healer changes.

If SE was willing to say accept one job being better than another at certain tasks, we'd be able to justify another healer easily. Make WHM the pure healer. Give SCH back it's DPS. Give AST the RNG and high rDPS. Now you can add healers in to fill other roles. Make a niche healer that is good for magic heavy fights. Make one that handles raid-wide damage the best. Make one that's weak, but doesn't use MP and needs to utilize buffs and debuffs alongside it's lower heals.

Yeah, one of them might suck at one fight. Another will suck at another. WHM might go back to just being "worse" by some percentage. But you're not stuck with one job forever, and the amount that WHM sucks compared to something else doesn't effect anyone outside of hardcore, world first Savage clears.

The most fun I ever had as a healer was playing AST at HW launch. AST was absolute crap at HW launch, and WHM/SCH were just straight better than it. But I didn't care, because the gameplay was fun. I cleared everything I needed to with that undertuned class.

Once SE stops trying to force perfect balance, we can have another healer job that doesn't play like a WHM with some visual flair. Hopefully that's 6.0, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Penthea]

I mean... we have one that regens, we've got one that shields, and we've got another one that can do either.

so what is the 4th healer even going to do? :v

We don't have a healer whose central mechanics are hots. Yes all current healers have access to hots but it's not the central mechanic for any of those classes. A lot of interesting things can be done with hots. Far more than FFXIV has ever done. I have seen it for myself with WoW druids.

We also don't have a techy healer. Gnb is a techy tank, mch is a techy dps. We have no techy healer.

We could get a healer that uses technology such as droids to do heals/buffs/shields/whatever, and the player commands the droids directly to work together or separately. Or maybe something else like a healing laser from a gun to continue the gun theme we have going on so far with the other techy classes. Or maybe a combo of the two, or maybe we will see chemist come to the game with a techy theme. Or maybe some other techy idea I've not thought of.

We could even get a healer that shape shifts depending on what is needed at the time. Something with proper stance dancing. The only healer that vaguely resembles this is ast because it has two stances, but it can't switch between them freely so it can't stance dance. This would be something very new not just to healers, but to the game.

Really the possibilities are endless. I have faith SE will bring something quite different to the table. Whether it's balanced properly or not is another thing altogether, of course.

[hynaku]

That was Gaia

the 2nd boss of Eden

atm it is all theory crafting for what she will be doing but she could be war due to them getting a dwarven hammer

That's sure not picture I saw in live video. One I saw had wings on her helmet wasn't in cloth armor and hammer saw was one handed.

[Kazrah]

What I said still stands however. SCH does not have a "large heal" or an "AoE heal" as it was put. I prefer to call them a second tier single target heal and a first tier AoE heal, but that's just me however.

....because of how often players forget that damage absorption effects do indeed qualify as healing.

Absorption effects are simply preemptive healing. Just because the green numbers don't fly up for them doesn't mean that the game's systems don't count them as effective healing.

Admittedly though, if you put in Adlo and Succor as the two specialty heals, then Lustrate and Whispering Dawn (faerie AoE HoT) become the large heal and aoe heal respectively. Sure, you might think "oh no, then you won't have an instant heal", but that would be Excogitation. Alternatively, if you kept Adlo and Succor as the large heal and aoe heal, then the healing specialty for Scholar would become shotgun healing via Aetherflow abilities. Scholar is weird like that, and all the more reason why it can be a pain to balance at times.

[Eloah]

Absorption effects are simply preemptive healing. Just because the green numbers don't fly up for them doesn't mean that the game's systems don't count them as effective healing.

Admittedly though, if you put in Adlo and Succor as the two specialty heals, then Lustrate and Whispering Dawn (faerie AoE HoT) become the large heal and aoe heal respectively. Sure, you might think "oh no, then you won't have an instant heal", but that would be Excogitation. Alternatively, if you kept Adlo and Succor as the large heal and aoe heal, then the healing specialty for Scholar would become shotgun healing via Aetherflow abilities. Scholar is weird like that, and all the more reason why it can be a pain to balance at times.

It has nothing to do with absorption. Let's try it like this, I am going to break the skills down using your own categories, this way you can see what I mean. I will order the skill WHM, SCH, AST

From those two things, you'd follow the basic healer kit shared across other healers:
Basic heal
Large heal
AoE heal
Instant heal
Specialty heal
AoE specialty heal
Raising spell
"Increased healing" cooldown.

Basic heal - Cure, Physick, Benefic
Large heal - Cure II, Benefic II
AoE heal - Medica, Helios
Instant heal - Tetragramaton, Lustrate, Essential Dignity(the main oGCD ones)
Specialty heal - Regen, Adloquium, Aspected Benefic
AoE specialty heal - Medica II, Succor, Aspected Helios
Raising spell - Raise, Resurrection, Ascend
"Increased healing" cooldown. - Temperance, Dissipation, Neutral Sect

See, this is how the skills line up. But as I have been saying some skills do overlap in different ways. The Afflatus skills are all instant as well, but on the GCD. Indomitability, Excogitation, and Benediction are instant too, but are oGCD. Celestial Opposition and Celestial Intersection are instant heals, but have the specialty gimmick attached. WHM and AST both have skills that do damage and heal at the same time, as well as skills that increase their spell casting and reduce MP cost. WHM and SCH both have damaging skills they can spend their gauges on, AST lost theirs once 5.0 launched. SCH and AST can heal two targets at once, although it's a bit "harder" for SCHs now.

The skills each healer has wont always line up 100%, but the listing you gave as the basics of a healer kit was pretty solid. But regardless of anything it's a fact that SCH does not have those two heals (large and AoE). The skills listed in your categories, have no overlap, they are exactly as they appear. Adloquium and Succor only "act" like a large heal and an AoE heal while under the effects of Emergency Tactics.

Think of it this way, does SCH have a large heal or an AoE heal they can spam should the need arise. They do not, the only heal they can spam, realistically is Physick, their basic heal.

[Varilyon]

For 7 years I am hoping for another healing-class nobody mentioned yet. I'd like to play the ... (just looking for the name in english, because I just played the game in german) the alchemist.

Wait what?

The Item Sagittarius (Item-Schütze) from Final Fantasy X-2 is called alchemist like in more medieval settings.

But I like to see the modern approach with a Tech-Gun. That would fit with the Garlean Magitek.

And of course creating Potions and Items in general and throwing them at your allies.

[SaberMaxwell]

For what healers currently are, that's a fair question. Healer damage rotations should be distinct akin to how DD rotations are, imo; then again I'm of the unpopular opinion that in XIV all three roles are DPS, just with side responsibilities.

It would be easier to introduce and balance healers if they stopped cowering from healer DPS, and indeed, how their players engage with the endgame.

[Maero]

No, I agree, whilst DPS are categorised, those categories all have the same role and same focus, to consider them as separate roles is arbitrary. As much as I love my ranged physical DNC and believed they'd have ruined it if they made it into a healer. I don't think "we need another ranged physical instead" is a good reason. "we are struggling with healers and don't know what to do with them" however, is.

Whilst some may try to argue something like DNC is a support role and that makes it different, it's support is to still push the DPS of the group. Each DPS I kinda balanced around how much selfish DPS they do and how much they benefit the party DPS. And how they do this is not categorised, which I think is fine. MCH is the selfish DPS version of ranged physical, and SAM is the melee one and BLM is the mage one. Whereas RDM, NIN and DNC kinda are less on the selfish side.

I just want to thank you
Because most of the time i mention such things i am met with hostility, lol

[Zsplash]

SE is just in over its heads. It can't design jobs with unique healing methods because everything is essentially the same kit with a little extra twist. There's nothing they can do unless they do a massive re-haul of each healing kit otherwise you just have another healer with a few minor twists. Astrologer has nothing especially "new" but they tacked on cards... now if they go vanilla with this they can just make it a healer with a twist that focuses on something extra with no relation to healing but that's all. Astrologer alone is proof they had no clue how to make a new healer... it's just a re-hash of the first 2.

They can get away with this on dps because these kits don't feel necessarily stale with the "twists" that make it a dps. Dancer was basically just adding a dance twist to old MCH-like rotation with some procs after all. and the dance themselves are a rehash sort of of ninjutsu but with a how-to built in. Gnb is barely different from other tanks except in that it dpses sort of differently. Could go on but basically this trick doesn't work with healing for the most part so they're stumped.

If they abandoned their standardized kit Id say something like alchemist.

Sort of similar to druid probably from WoW

Theory on how it'd work:
twist would be mixing potions for extra benefits to your heals
abilities that add HoTs which build up instead of "standard healing kit"
a finisher heal that "eats up hots to heal large amounts (big heal)"
aoe heal HoT much like fairy with another big heal that expends existing HoTs to heal.

Eh just the only way they could really add a healer to this game, on top of that more of its kit should use instants than other healers, or in general low GCDs. *shrug*

to make it feel unique they could drop other regens but regen healing is the only thing they have left to utilize.

[KageTokage]

As much as I like the sound of a tech-based healer, I'm not sure how they'd handle their gearing because they'd look even more awkward decked out in robes then DNC does in most aiming gear.