Chemist Kit theorycraft

[Seraphor]

I think that people who are looking for a new healing job are looking for something that offers a different experience from the existing healing options. I think that the idea of 'mixing' effects between potions and/or toxins (in the same vein as Bravely Default's Salve Maker) is a good idea.

One way to do this is to play with ground effect fields. Let's say that you throw a potion at someone, much like FFT's chemist. There's an upfront heal to the target, as well as a heal over time ground effect field that heals up anyone who stands in your healing puddle. Let's say that you throw a second potion. That then interacts with the 'over time' effect of the first if the fields overlap. So as an example, let's say you threw a Potion, followed by a Hi-Potion, and the two fields overlapped. The heal-over-time effect might be enhanced. Alternatively, if you thew a Potion, followed by a Grenade, perhaps the field ignites, with healing over time for your team and damage over time for enemies standing inside.

As far as resource systems are concerned, I think it would be interesting to play with a system that was more cooldown dependant than resource dependent, especially with the 'charge' system available for some oGCDs. You could create a healer that wasn't reliant on MP at all. Also, don't forget about Auto-Potion. That almost certainly has to show up.

This sounds kinda similar to my suggestion to be honest.
Mixing three healing and one dps elements.
Ground effect that utilises them.
More CD/charge based skills... slightly.

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

[Lyth]

Just for fun, I threw together my own take on it.

Lore:Thavnair. Because Alchemy.
Weapon: Blowgun. Deals damage and extends any existing potion damage effects.

Salve: Single target heal. Spell.
Gil Toss: Single target attack. Spell. Damage increases with more damage over time effects on target.
Bomb Fragment: Single target fire damage. 3 Charges. Restocks 1 Potion.
Potion: Restores target’s HP. For the next X seconds, area of effect heal over time. 3 Charges. Restocks 1 Bomb.
Oil: Covers area with oil. On bomb effect, all targets in field gain immolation. Immolation: Take fire damage over time.
Hi-Potion: Restores a medium amount of target’s HP. If used with Potion active, increases effectiveness of heal over time effects received. 2 Charges. Restocks Arctic Wind.
Hide: Evades next attack.
Restock: Reduces recast on all potions by X seconds. Spell.
Phoenix Down: Resurrects target to a weakened state. 4 Charges per fight (shares charges with all other in-combat resurrection actions).
Auto-Potion: If target drops below 50% HP in the next 10 seconds, follow-up with last healing potion used. If target dies, restocks 1 Phoenix Down.
X-Potion: Restores a large amount of target’s HP. If used with Potion active, heals X potency to all targets within an area. 1 Charge. Restocks Heavenly Wrath.
Gyshal Green: Line AoE. Spell. Causes stampede of chocobos to deal X damage. Spreads AoE effects of any field it passes through.
X-Item: The next potion thrown activates twice.
Arctic Wind: AoE ice damage. Binds target. If immolation active, ends immolation and gains drenched status. Drenched: Take additional lightning damage. 1 Charge. Restocks Hi-Potion.
Heavenly Wrath: Single target lightning damage. Gains Forked Lightning: Deals lightning damage over time to self and all adjacent targets. 1 Charge. Restocks X-Potion.
Smoke Bomb: For next 3 hits, all targets take 10% less damage. Lasts 10 seconds.
Vanish Edge: Targets are vulnerable to item-based non-elemental damage.
Dark Matter: Draws targets in to centre of AoE, doing high non-elemental damage over time. If Immolation, Drenched, and Forked Lightning active on any one target in field, damage dealt to all targets is increased. Restocks Bravery Potion.
Reverse Mote: Reverses any damage incurred to target over the last 3 seconds.
Bravery Potion: Buffs damage dealt, damage reduction, and max HP for next 8 seconds. Does not replenish automatically. Does not stack with other buffs.
Nihopalaoa: Reverses nearby healing effects on target enemy.
Rat Tail: Boosts effectiveness of next potion.
Transfuse: You lose X HP. Target gains double HP lost.

LB3: Megaelixir: Blue dialogue box appears with Fight, Magic, Item, and Run. Floating cursor moves down to Item and selects Megaelixir.

Traits:
Compounding: Using certain potions restocks others.
Mixology and Mend: Increases base action damage and HP restoration.
Item Pouch:If an action grants you an additional charge, you can exceed the maximum number of charges available for that ability.
Bartender: If an ally gains a beneficial effect from a potion, you receive half the effect. Effect procs once per potion.

Idea here is that you'd have a healing job that doesn't operate off of MP, but instead uses item charges to deal out healing and damage. There are a few traditional spells in case you mismanage and run out. Healing items replenish charges on attack items and vice versa. End goal should be to reference as much of FF's item lore as possible. Vanish is a reference to FF6's Vanish+X-zone trick.

[Jonnycbad]

Chemist will definitely use mp because ffxiv operates on homogenized roles. They will have casts (mixing) and mp costs, probably will contrive the lore to fit, like imbuing herbs and concoctions with aether, so the instead of a hi potion healing 200 HP it heals 26,000 HP etc

[Lyth]

For tanks, some use MP as a resource, some don't. There are no hard and fast rules, and the only way to get a unique experience is to break them.

[Shurrikhan]

For tanks, some use MP as a resource, some don't. There are no hard and fast rules, and the only way to get a unique experience is to break them.

That's because all tanks which use MP essentially use it as a job gauge akin to Ninki, rather than as a limit preventing one from spamming their strongest abilities indefinitely that can thereby carry a further axis for complexity and internal balance.

Breaking such a rule, moreover, would be unlikely to make any unique experience in itself. It simply makes its kit inherently more difficult to provide internal balance for (i.e. allowing one skill of lower ppgcd but greater efficiency to ever see use, as is already likely an excessive issue on existing healers).

I'm all for mix providing such a pacing that MP has no need to be a thing, as the internal balance is provided by other means, but simply removing a further means of complexity for the sake of uniqueness ('All melee have positioning, so let's remove it from this otherwise identical melee class to make it unique!') seems short-sighted at best. MP concerns, if merely brought beyond a barebone state, are already a means of generating further uniqueness, after all.
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Edit: Liking the look of your kit sample, Lyth. Not sure if Niho will end up forcing it into a damage-based off-healer role, though, to the detriment of feel of play; it'd likely depend on healing resource bankability.

[Seraphor]

I don't see them axing MP even for just one healer, especially as the healer exclusive stat is piety.
Healer is the MP role.

[Lyth]

This might be controversial, but the bulk of important healer gameplay happens on oGCDs. Not on ye olde Cure 2 spam piety builds. It would be nice to see a job that took that into account from the ground up, and left the long cast MP spells as a back up for when you mess up your resource management.

You can have a Chemist that uses MP Spell "Potions" as reskinned Cures, but then there's no point complaining when it turns out to be WHM number 3.

[Shurrikhan]

This might be controversial, but the bulk of important healer gameplay happens on oGCDs. Not on ye olde Cure 2 spam piety builds. It would be nice to see a job that took that into account from the ground up, and left the long cast MP spells as a back up for when you mess up your resource management.

You can have a Chemist that uses MP Spell "Potions" as reskinned Cures, but then there's no point complaining when it turns out to be WHM number 3.

I'm by no means suggesting that Chemist even have spells, let alone a Cure II spam equivalent. I'm just saying that MP costs are a decent way to allow for especially powerful options that nonetheless do not overpower the kit overall. You could, for instance, include different MP costs in the different mixable components, whereby you could include high-expense ingredients to burst a particular buff period or , might have a high-MP cost dynamic finisher with a lower (or no) GCD cost that you could use to rush a mix in case of emergency and follow more modestly synergetic options otherwise.

MP costs aren't something I'd go out of the way to accommodate, but there's no point in going out of the way to avoid that design axis, either. That would just be to pride yourself for axing one particular means of complexity that otherwise, if well utilized, could have sourced more interesting gameplay.

[Lyth]

The more layers you add to something, the more unnecessarily clunky it becomes. So you use MP to purchase ingredients. Great. Then you HQ the sub-components. Great. Now you need to combine them to produce different effects. What is this, a crafting job?

Keep it simple. There are two commonly described Chemists, one from FFT and one from BD (Salve-maker). If you want a 'Mix' to be the job's main theme, then just have the potions combo off each other when you use them. We've done combo-based jobs before, right?

I don't personally care about MP. You can have a combo-based potion healer where each potion has an MP cost, but that's a marginal step away from WHM. What I really want to see is a healer who gains additional healing output from doing damage and vice versa. A situation in which throwing offensive items restocks your healing items and throwing healing items restocks your offensive items. You can keep an MP safety blanket in there if it makes you feel better. Just make sure that the bulk of the job plays differently from WHM, please.

[Shurrikhan]

If you want a 'Mix' to be the job's main theme, then just have the potions combo off each other when you use them. We've done combo-based jobs before, right?

So because I want a central Mix feature, but more than a single layer of complexity is "unnecessarily clunky", I'm forced to literally reduce the potions to combos, i.e. Sack of Wind->Jar of Lightning->Bomb Fragment; repeat?

God forbid I want it to be as least as involved as Mudras and not merely carry a healer-equivalent of 10 other jobs' primary system?

I don't personally care about MP. You can have a combo-based potion healer where each potion has an MP cost, but that's a marginal step away from WHM.

That one step would be the fact it has combos, not the MP, unless the MP ends up an actual gameplay-affecting concern. But again, you're the one pushing for combos, not me. Why are you strawmanning?

Just make sure that the bulk of the job plays differently from WHM, please.

It's literally not a compromise between the two; MP does not necessitate a WHM-like kit.

That NIN used TP did not make it more like Monk or Dragoon; its range of combo-lengths and attack speed did.
That DRK, like PLD before it, used MP for AoE did not make it a PLD-copy; its mostly carbon-copied bank of defensives CDs did, while MP was its largest diversifier.
That PLD later came to use TP for AoE like WAR before it, or MP for ST like DRK before it, did not make it a WAR-copy or DRK-copy respectively; it leveraged its differences from WAR and DRK each through balancing Flash and Total Eclipse and creating alternate burst periods via FoF and Requiescat.

It's merely an available axis of design that allows for further, granular means of internal balance or gameplay periods, not a WHM-ifier.