Pipe Dreams: Chemist

[Duelle]

Greetings.

Been a while since I've done one of these. Because healers seem to be a topic that comes up due to FFXIV still having 3 healers in the roster, along with some of the issues certain players have with healer design and the recent chemist discussions that have come up, I've decided to take a stab at designing a chemist healer. While it took me a bit too long to settle on a design, I think it's ready for peer review.

As is always the case with my write-ups, potencies and cooldowns are negotiable, though I'm open to all feedback.

FFXIV: Chemist

[MOZZYSTAR]

May I introduce you to Al the Chemist?

[Duelle]

May I introduce you to Al the Chemist?

In turn, meet User. Item User. But they sometimes go by Chemist, and often get confused for Al Chemist even though they're nothing alike.

[Lambdafish]

May I introduce you to Al the Chemist?

You do know that Chemist as a healer is one of the most anticipated jobs in the game right now right?

As for the OP, I have two issues with your design:

You have them wearing Aiming gear, with glamour as the reasoning. I feel like this isn't good enough reason to justify having a healer wearing DPS gear, and nowhere have you considered the stat implications. If CHM wore aiming gear it would have much higher DPS than the other healers, and very low heals as you haven't made any allowances to account for the lack of MND and PIE on aiming gear. This is all without considering that a party involving multiple ranged physical will now have to compete with a healer for gear.

My second issue is the lack of Mix. Mix is CHMs iconic move and should be involved in the job fundamentally in some way. Every job in the game has its iconic move within its toolkit, so a job like CHM (which can easily be built around its iconic move) should have that skill as a baseline. To put it simply, making CHM without Mix is as bad as making DRG without Jump.

[ReiMakoto]

You do know that Chemist as a healer is one of the most anticipated jobs in the game right now right?

As for the OP, I have two issues with your design:

You have them wearing Aiming gear, with glamour as the reasoning. I feel like this isn't good enough reason to justify having a healer wearing DPS gear, and nowhere have you considered the stat implications. If CHM wore aiming gear it would have much higher DPS than the other healers, and very low heals as you haven't made any allowances to account for the lack of MND and PIE on aiming gear. This is all without considering that a party involving multiple ranged physical will now have to compete with a healer for gear.

My second issue is the lack of Mix. Mix is CHMs iconic move and should be involved in the job fundamentally in some way. Every job in the game has its iconic move within its toolkit, so a job like CHM (which can easily be built around its iconic move) should have that skill as a baseline. To put it simply, making CHM without Mix is as bad as making DRG without Jump.

I dont think your MND point has legs, heals and damage scale off of what the devs want them to scale off of, healing scaling off of dex isnt an issue when RDM has a heal that scales off of int and PLD has a heal that scales off of strength, theres nothing intrinsic to mnd that would make it better, and the sheer fact that it is dex doesnt magically make it do more damage and less healing. The lack of PIE is a valid concern, however they could have a trait that turns DH into PIE

[Rongway]

You have them wearing Aiming gear, with glamour as the reasoning. I feel like this isn't good enough reason to justify having a healer wearing DPS gear, and nowhere have you considered the stat implications.

I dont think your MND point has legs, heals and damage scale off of what the devs want them to scale off of, healing scaling off of dex isnt an issue when RDM has a heal that scales off of int and PLD has a heal that scales off of strength, theres nothing intrinsic to mnd that would make it better, and the sheer fact that it is dex doesnt magically make it do more damage and less healing. The lack of PIE is a valid concern, however they could have a trait that turns DH into PIE

Rei is right. There are no real stat implications, and any minor adjustments that need to be made can be applied via a Lv1 trait. The main stat on any piece of gear is really just "power" with a different label. We should have stopped assigning gear by role by now, and started assigning it by aesthetics.

[Shurrikhan]

You have them wearing Aiming gear, with glamour as the reasoning. I feel like this isn't good enough reason to justify having a healer wearing DPS gear, and nowhere have you considered the stat implications. If CHM wore aiming gear it would have much higher DPS than the other healers, and very low heals as you haven't made any allowances to account for the lack of MND and PIE on aiming gear.

You realize different skills use different stats for their throughput stat, right? Cleric Stance, for instance, allowed healing based on Intelligence if normally based on Mind, while other heals are just outright based on Mind, Strength (via Attack Power), or Dexterity (again, via Attack Power). We've have multiple Attack Power heals since ARR, so why would it suddenly be an issue now? You could quite simply have all Chemist skills generate throughput from Dexterity and... done. At worst you'd have to worry about no access to Piety outside of melds, but... who has ever wanted Piety?

[Risvertasashi]

So, a nitpick that's minor in the long run, but still. Role actions are, well, role actions. I really doubt SE is going to make CHM's entirely unique, if they add the job.

But that does bring to mind an interesting point for discussion. Who will they share with? Of course, healer role actions would be the obvious choice. But that means MP will be a resource, and they'll probably be casters to some extent.

It would be both odd and bold if they shared with phys range, but that could be interesting in its own way. That and making them use aiming gear might be a bit too much balancing work for SE, but it would be an interesting changeup...

(Also, I have to laugh at people that think chemist can't be distinct from alchemist. I wonder what's even going on in their minds...)

[Duelle]

Well, this is going better than I anticipated.

You have them wearing Aiming gear, with glamour as the reasoning. I feel like this isn't good enough reason to justify having a healer wearing DPS gear, and nowhere have you considered the stat implications.

As others have said, the devs can make anything scale with whatever stat they want. The idea here is that potions would scale with DEX the way cures scale with MND. I guess I should have written that somewhere in my document, even if I considered it a logical inference.

This is all without considering that a party involving multiple ranged physical will now have to compete with a healer for gear.

Considering the current design aims to have a single physical ranged DPS in groups (you don't see many EX or Savage groups with more than one physical ranged), gear distribution wouldn't be as strained as you think. It'd be another story if physical ranged were treated the same DPS-wise as caster DPS, since then you'd see a lot more groups with multiple physical ranged and CHM would indeed become a problem in terms of gear distribution.

Aside from aesthetics, the beef I have with "of Healing" gear is that MND makes no sense for a non-magic healer, and neither does PIE. Sure, it might be possible to circumvent this issue by creating alternate names to MND and PIE on gear when equipped by CHM, but since "of Healing" aesthetics already clash, I thought killing two birds with one stone was the way to go.

My second issue is the lack of Mix. Mix is CHMs iconic move and should be involved in the job fundamentally in some way. Every job in the game has its iconic move within its toolkit, so a job like CHM (which can easily be built around its iconic move) should have that skill as a baseline.

At the risk of sounding like a PR spokesperson, Mix is in there. It's just part of the gameplay's design instead of being an ability on its own. Hence why Catalyst and Primers are there.

Considering certain people have called the proposals for Mix "copies of the Mudra system", I decided to take a different angle while still technically ticking that box.

So, a nitpick that's minor in the long run, but still. Role actions are, well, role actions. I really doubt SE is going to make CHM's entirely unique, if they add the job.

But that does bring to mind an interesting point for discussion. Who will they share with? Of course, healer role actions would be the obvious choice. But that means MP will be a resource, and they'll probably be casters to some extent.

Most Healer Role Actions are utility cooldowns with the exception of Repose and Esuna, so I don't think there's much to be worried about when it comes to MP. My suggested role actions are the exact same as the role actions for WHM/SCH/AST, but with a different name and tied to CHM's resource, Energy. Making CHM use MP for role actions and work off Energy for everything else doesn't make much sense to me.

Something else to note is that this points to the fact that SE has shackled the healer role to jobs that involve magic in some way, which is going to create problems when a non-magic healer like Chemist enters the discussion.

[MartaDemireux]

I like your idea but I would like to see a more typical use of Mix in a Chemist job. Not so much as using it for direct heals/damage, but in prepping for other abilities.

For example: Using Mix could pop up 3 vials that have the speed of mudras. Each of your proposed Catalyst effects could be achieved by mixing the proper 2 vials together (1+2 for healing boost, 1+3 for damage boost, 2+3 for support boost). Catalysts could have 3 tiers so that you can store them for future uses mid battle or during downtime. Catalyst buttons could switch to vial buttons after pressing Mix to prevent bloat (like DNC steps do). Make the DoTs do more damage to account for more time mixing and less time nuking.

I feel like CHM should be more busy than current SCH but less busy than current AST with liberal use of oGCDs due to mixing and using catalysts.