Next healer class released should be

[Amnmaat]

You can't just fob off any techy suggestions with a glib reference to scifi.
You've heard of magitek right? It's a pretty big Final Fantasy staple, in literally every Final Fantasy game. The fusion of magic and technology.
A techy chemist fits that concept perfectly and it wouldn't take much lore explanation at all.
People wouldn't be suggesting chemist as a gun toting techy job if it wasn't already a recurring job in that exact form either.
Are you sure you know what Final Fantasy is? Because it sounds like you want to play LotR.

You think we're gonna get a gun chemist? Haha, I'll buy you a anything you want in the mogstation if that happens!

[Seraphor]

You think we're gonna get a gun chemist? Haha, I'll buy you a anything you want in the mogstation if that happens!

Can I hold you to that?

[MirronTulaxia]

Snip.

Oh, that's why I missed it, you didn't reply with a quote.

Using water, wind, and earth aether does not mean "blasts enemies with these spells offensively". So all of your evidence falls to the wayside in that sense. None of what I said was "they won't use those elements". But there are a lot, lot more ways to use those elements than chucking them at enemies. Scholar uses them without doing that after all, as does White Mage, likely Astrologian too. So even if we got Geomancer as a healer it wouldn't have to somehow be fire/ice/lightning aether only.

There also isn't an Astral or Umbral focused Caster, and those are just as important (if not more really) than Wind/Water/Earth. Which really makes it difficult to justify it on the basis of completing things, as you're only making the obvious two missing more of a thing as opposed to where we are currently.

Snip.

Oh, I definitely wasn't saying robes as a deterrent. I'm just making the point that whatever we get for Chemist is not going to somehow be radically different from the existing healers. It'll be a DoM, it'll use a melee weapon, it'll likely have something resembling robes or maybe a light armor outfit (aka Scholar, which really is a good thing to look at when people think Chemist), it'll have cast times and MP costs, so on and so forth. People think it's going to be something resembling... I don't know, Sharla from Xenoblade or some such, and that's a relatively tame interpretation to me of the things people seem to push for.

Snip.

The issue with this is that Gunbreaker and Machinist already do this, and that makes them DoW. While it's certainly possible you could get some clunky tech-like array and you have to channel aether into it for all of your actions it seems like a needlessly complicated way to do it. Just... you know, make it an actual caster. Trying to jump through a bunch of silly hoops when Alchemist already exists, from the Ivalice games that XIV loves to copy, seems a lot simpler. Just change the name to one of the other terms (in Japanese there are two they use for Alchemist, so whatever one they currently have for the DoH can be ignored and they can use the other) and come up with some fluffy silly translation for it in English/other languages (sadly there isn't really a lot of good Alchemist substitutes).

Can I hold you to that?

You can hold me to that. If we get a Chemist that does all the things I listed? I'll be quite fine with it. But I can already guarantee we won't. It's just people trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, or going wild with fantasies. Being able to be pragmatic and realistic is better than falling for forlorn hope.

[BasicBlake]

Can I hold you to that?

Rifle chemist worked great in Tactics I don’t see why it couldn’t here.

[MirronTulaxia]

Rifle chemist worked great in Tactics I don’t see why it couldn’t here.

Because unless they overhaul the other healers they aren't going to give one healer a ranged auto attack and the others not. Which means you're advocating for one of three options:

1. Massive overhaul so all healers get a ranged auto-attack (theoretically plausible, even if it's kind of odd).
2. A blatant balance issue (this from the creators who didn't want to balance Eos and Selene, to say nothing of other things).
3. A gun that can't even be used as a proper gun (certainly possible, but being that overtly misleading seems like such a poor choice, though if anything this seems the most likely at this juncture).

None of those are good options. I suppose the first is fine, but there isn't any reason to expect it will happen at this juncture.

[GucciSan]

Because unless they overhaul the other healers they aren't going to give one healer a ranged auto attack and the others not. Which means you're advocating for one of three options:

1. Massive overhaul so all healers get a ranged auto-attack (theoretically plausible, even if it's kind of odd).
2. A blatant balance issue (this from the creators who didn't want to balance Eos and Selene, to say nothing of other things).
3. A gun that can't even be used as a proper gun (certainly possible, but being that overtly misleading seems like such a poor choice, though if anything this seems the most likely at this juncture).

None of those are good options. I suppose the first is fine, but there isn't any reason to expect it will happen at this juncture.

They could just make it a bolt-action rifle, or a single-shot grenade launcher. You'd still have "cast-times" but it's just an animation of your character reloading. And if it's one of those two now you have a way of justifying different ammo types, i.e. flame rounds vs healing salve shells for a grenade launcher.

[MirronTulaxia]

I'm talking about the auto attack though. Your basic "whack with a stick" level thing. I even said auto attack in it. All the other healers have a melee weapon. Stick, book, globe, all of them require you being up next to the enemy. Gun? Not so much. You could certainly whack the enemy with a rifle, but that's just option 3.

[GucciSan]

Oh I see what you're saying now. You could just have them hit them with the butt of the rifle/launcher while still having it shoot stuff. It's nothing fantastical or anything but I don't think Healers should be concerned with autos very much.

[BasicBlake]

They could just make it a bolt-action rifle, or a single-shot grenade launcher. You'd still have "cast-times" but it's just an animation of your character reloading. And if it's one of those two now you have a way of justifying different ammo types, i.e. flame rounds vs healing salve shells for a grenade launcher.

If the devs were that worried about the auto attack tipping the scales they would shift power from other parts of the kit. Just like every other class in the game. You shift power around so nothing is busted, take red mage resurrection tax for example. If these all powerful healer autos are gonna be that strong they could make their dps abilities weaker to make up for it.

There is also not much in the game keeping you from auto attacking a boss as a healer either, other than you should be casting lol. At savage level, and as red mage, I can spend almost every every encounter in melee range to get autos off except for certain required mechanics and the autos add trivial amounts of damage.

So if auto attacks are the big hold up here... Why would you be idling enough to get that many autos in to begin with? Your encounter analysis would be shaming you every encounter to hit more buttons.

[MirronTulaxia]

I think it's the kind of thing that, while not important from a mechanical standpoint, is still an important aspect of fluff. Which... you know, is the entire reason people are arguing for a Chemist to begin with. Because "aesthetics" and what not. If you're not committing to it then you're wasting your time.

As for how important it is, it's a minor but still potentially important thing. People wishing for them to make Chemists somehow special and stand out from the others are going to be sorely disappointed if they expect otherwise. We will see soon enough, but one of those three will happen if they push a Chemist out with a ranged weapon, it's inevitable.