A summary of healer issues

[Renathras]

Whm is very much an elemental mage in ff14, this is the same “justification” they used for fucking up summoner. Or please also campaign for sage to be made back into a blm-whm-smn and so on.

Don't care about SGE. If you want it to be a RDM without the melee, I'm not going to complain. I've already said I don't like Plegma being near-melee range. Heck, I've even outright said - multiple times - SGE having a RDM-like caster rotation that it Kardia heals off of would be fine by me, and possibly even a preferred solution. I'm perfectly fine with that. I won't campaign for it - since I don't care - but if you want to campaign for that, I'd support your campaign.

And no, CNJ is an elemental mage in FFXIV. WHM is a Holy Mage. Started in ARR with Cure and Holy, and they fully cemented it in ShB with Glare and Dia. SMN's fine, the DoT mage thing never made sense for it. The game SHOULD, however, have a Green Mage for that (or maybe Time Mage...) archetype. Bio, Ruin, Fester, etc never made sense on a Job called "Summoner" anyway, and I think everyone knows it, just a lot of people really liked that playstyle.

When I first started playing, I didn't like white mage being the earth/wind/water mage (especially since the water aspect of that was half-assed with fluid aura and is now just non-existent ignorant of lore), and wanted black mage to have all 6 elements like in past titles, including XI.

Bingo. There are times, Ty, that we're very much alike. (I get you're saying your mind was changed after, but mine wasn't). Priest and Cleric are among my favorite archetypes in games, so "bland and uninteresting" isn't the word I'd use for them. I'd use that for Jobs like DNC.

In a lore sense, strictly speaking (sorta), WHM hasn't moved away from them, it's perfected them. We now know that Umbral/Light and Astral/Darkness can basically be considered "fundamental" elements. All other "lesser" elements derive from these. Sorta like considering Astral/Umbral as the fundamental blocks upon which everything else is built. Like say Umbral/Astral are protons/neutrons/electrons (or quarks if we want to go that far) and Fire/Earth/etc are molecules built from combining atoms made out of protons/neutrons/electrons. Though with that funky twist there can be "Umbral Fire" (dry heat) or "Astral Water" (tidal waves). But in a cliffnotes version, WHM has perfected their arts to where they're no longer borrowing the Elementals' power but directly tapping into the prime Umbral itself, like the Amdapori did. There are a lot of lore implications there, but since we no longer have Job quests...we'll never have to deal with them, I suppose. XD (Or they'd handwave it as us only taking what we need and doing it responsibly, whichever.)

Being able to pick spell rank animations would be cool, though. Like on RDM, I liked the Verthunder purple squiggly line bolt that we don't have now. I remember watching a video of opening the gates of AQ40 in WoW once. The big event where the giant stompy anubises rampaged across the desert there in Silithis? (I think it was Silithis...) One thing I always thought was cool was you could identify what classes were present (the ranged/caster ones, anyway) by the effects of their spells. Like you could see a Frostbolt and know there was a Frost Mage there. Shadowbolt for Warlock. Lightning Bolt for Shaman, Wrath for Druid, etc etc. Something in my head, I like identifying classes by their casts. It's probably the same thing that has me count DoT debuffs on Hunt Marks to see about how many of each Healer Job are present (and other Jobs that I quickly recognize their debuff icons). And I liked that RDM lightning bolt thing. Kinda miss it since the new one doesn't do that/have a travel animation.

In any case, being able to pick your spell animation - probably same rules as Glam where you can pick any of the lesser ones you have, like you couldn't replace Stone IV with Glare but you could replace Glare with Stone IV - would be neat. All the more reason to add in a level 15 Water as proto-Holy, eh? A simple system wouldn't have a lot of animations, but just letting you pick any level of a spell might work. But it would have to be for direct upgrade paths, probably. For instance, BLM's 1, 3, and 4 spells are all distinct, not upgrades (except Thunder 4, I guess?), unlike Verthunder/Verthunder 3, which are direct upgrades, or the Stone line. SCH Ruin 2 is also not a direct line with the Ruin/Broil line.

I disagree on WHM and floral/Aerith because it WOULD push too far on OP's rule 9 if you decided to make the identity explicitly feminine where no Job currently has a particular gendered aesthetic (though WHM probably comes closest). Not to mention we already have abilities that would do that. For example, Assize could simply upgrade to Sorcerous Storm, Divine Benison to Lustrous Shield, Aquaveil to Arcane Ward, Asylum to Planet's Protection, Misery to Soul Drain. There you go. Though I like the current animations better, and I'm not sure all of the single player FF7R animations would necessarily work with an MMO. For example, Soul Drain (I think it is) is a channeled spell. Look at how Passage of Arms and Collective Unconscious are used "optimally" and you an see why channeled spells are bad ideas at this point in FFXIV design.