Next healer class released should be

[BasicBlake]

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.

I’d bet on 3 then. A gun but not that powerful.

[GucciSan]

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.

What I meant was that people point out that giving a healer a rifle would open them up for autos in a way none of the others couldn't, so I just suggested that they give them a weapon that they can't continuously fire, like a bolt-action or a single shot GL. Their autos would function just like the other 3, i.e. run up to boss and smack them so there wouldn't be a need to worry about balancing them at all. By forcing their weapons to have cast times for their weaponskills, you create an in-universe justification why they can't just point and shoot their autos like Bard or Machinist; they literally have to "reload" for every shot.

[Seraphor]

Launcher/Mortar Cannon.
It's a firearm so technically a 'gun', only it fires potions, grenades for dps and disperses aerosols for AoE healing.
No ranged auto-attacks necessary.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/416487

[Granyala]

Instead of yet another 1 button green DPS, I'd like to see the current healing classes being actual healers first.

I find the meta game of "Heal as little as possible and DPS HARRRD!!11 or get dissed by the community." absurd.
I wanted to do that, SE, I would have rolled a DPS class.

For the record: I have no problem with filling my downtime with a few DPS spells, but "filling downtime" should not amount to 80% of what I am doing when playing the game as a healer. Especially in non raid content.

[Amnmaat]

Instead of yet another 1 button green DPS, I'd like to see the current healing classes being actual healers first.

I find the meta game of "Heal as little as possible and DPS HARRRD!!11 or get dissed by the community." absurd.
I wanted to do that, SE, I would have rolled a DPS class.

For the record: I have no problem with filling my downtime with a few DPS spells, but "filling downtime" should not amount to 80% of what I am doing when playing the game as a healer. Especially in non raid content.

I partially agree; one way I would solve it is to make vulnerability stacks a real thing in all encounters. Meaning, the lower your hp the more vul stacks you accumulate and the higher damage you take as a result, so keeping tanks and dps topped off actually becomes an active duty. It would bring real danger to the current state of healing where letting tank drop to 30% hp is just something to laugh at since the boss's auto-attacks will keep hitting the tank with the same flat damage. Those same auto attacks would hurt a lot more with 3 vul stacks. They would have to rebalance all the ultimate/savage content, but it ultimately would give healing some real importance; right not it's just something to glance at.

Only point I'm not 100% sure on is on not letting healers have fun with doing damage. It should still be an important part of healers, just like it's important for tanks.

PS. Remember those vulnerability fights? Those are some of the most active fights for a healer, great healers shine in those.

[WaxSw]

Instead of yet another 1 button green DPS, I'd like to see the current healing classes being actual healers first.

I find the meta game of "Heal as little as possible and DPS HARRRD!!11 or get dissed by the community." absurd.
I wanted to do that, SE, I would have rolled a DPS class.

For the record: I have no problem with filling my downtime with a few DPS spells, but "filling downtime" should not amount to 80% of what I am doing when playing the game as a healer. Especially in non raid content.

The problem with that approach is that it would require a retroactive change of the fights since most of them right now aren't like that (so more work for the devs), even if you tune the damage up more problems would arise since some less experienced healers woudn't be able to keep with the hps requirements in casual content from a game that pretty much handholds during all the main content. "Then don't increase/increase slightly the damage there" you would say but then we are going again to the starting point where the healers would still be mostly dps with healing tools and experienced healers would still have the problem of having to mash 1 or 2 buttons almost all the time.

That's without mentioning that the mentality of "Heal as little as possible and DPS HARRRD" is not a mentality itself is called optimization and happens in every game, healing is something binary, either you're alive or you're dead therefore any extra invest of resources further from "The party will live" are wasted resources and less contribution to the party. Good healers will always want to heal as little as possible and deal as much damage as possible because they want to help their party as much as possible.

[Jimmymagic]

Oracle/Calculator

I think these two could work with current gear set up from sch and whm.
implementing rotation would be challenging I imagine with CAL as to buffin or debuffing based on prime numbers or using a add,sub,mult,div wheel or gauge.
Could be interesting though.

Oracle would have to deviate from ast so it maybe using a different medium for attack and heals. im thinking a shout mech of some kind but not like brd singing mech.

[Billythepancake]

Instead of yet another 1 button green DPS, I'd like to see the current healing classes being actual healers first.

I find the meta game of "Heal as little as possible and DPS HARRRD!!11 or get dissed by the community." absurd.
I wanted to do that, SE, I would have rolled a DPS class.

For the record: I have no problem with filling my downtime with a few DPS spells, but "filling downtime" should not amount to 80% of what I am doing when playing the game as a healer. Especially in non raid content.

Nobody will ever convince me DPSing as a healer is a bad thing. Or even that it's a bad thing that it's a huge chunk of what you do. You're on the front lines with everyone else. Yes your job is to patch people up, but your job is also to deal damage.

What's the best way to heal? Make sure your men don't get hurt in the first place. What's the best way to prevent your men from getting hurt? Kill the guy trying to hurt them. Yes, patch up your men if they do get hurt, but they're big boys, they can handle a few scrapes and bruises before you need to do that.

[BasicBlake]

Nobody will ever convince me DPSing as a healer is a bad thing. Or even that it's a bad thing that it's a huge chunk of what you do. You're on the front lines with everyone else. Yes your job is to patch people up, but your job is also to deal damage.

What's the best way to heal? Make sure your men don't get hurt in the first place. What's the best way to prevent your men from getting hurt? Kill the guy trying to hurt them. Yes, patch up your men if they do get hurt, but they're big boys, they can handle a few scrapes and bruises before you need to do that.

Having come from 9 years of healing in wow to 14 back in the day was a bit jarring at first because of how different the healing structure was. But even in wow you end up dropping healers for dps as your group gets more comfortable with the content. Healing as little as possible or with as few healers has possible has always been the trend in mmos, this isn’t going to change because such a small % of a playerbase don’t like it.

But aside from that, the healing in 14 has always been (for the most part) this way. It’s just how design encounter is in this game. I know it’s a bummer if you don’t like like doing damage as a healer, but how many years has this game been out now? I don’t think that will be changing anytime soon.

[BasicBlake]

Also the amount of healers on this forum that want dps level complexity to your dps rotations while also wanting to dps less and healing more.. I will never understand.