Must All Healers be Casters?

[Azurarok]

I haven't really checked if this has been discussed before, so sorry if there's already been a thread on it. Using Astrologian earlier today got me thinking, must all healers be casters? Aside from, well, dev things, could a ranger-styled healer that has no cast bars or even mp be possible?

Of the jobs we have right now, I think Astrologian and Sage could be ranger healers while White Mage and Scholar be the caster healers, where the former would heavily rely on doubleweaving oGCDs while constantly being able to move, and the latter has powerful casts with limited mobility to mirror that of their DPS counterparts.

Admittedly, the caster/ranger line's been a little blurred by the SMN rework, and Healers overall have been given a lot more mobility now that many of their cast times have been shortened to that of AST's. However, the main reason AST even had that shorter cast time in the first place was because of the sheer amount of oGCDs it needs to weave from its card system, but its EW rework's increased that load with the way Redraw/Minor Arcana/Astrodyne/Divination now functions, and the single weave window isn't enough for it anymore.

I do think shortening all the other healers' cast times was a correct move considering all healers also got more oGCDs going up to lv90, but the others don't really need to be able to doubleweave nearly as often as AST does. Lightspeed seems to be designed to cover for that, but the timing to use it is heavily dependent on the party and the duty, and it alone is its own oGCD to weave. The job also has little to worry about with MP economy, so at this point I feel it has very little reason to really be a caster at all.

As for SGE, currently Eukrasia's a weird instant cast with its 1s cooldown adding up to a full 2.5s GCD with Dosis/Diagnosis/Prognosis. It also has a gap closer and Toxicon/Phlegma are GCD instant casts it can stockpile, so it's already got a kit that encourages having a lot of mobility. Being able to doubleweave would also make it easier to throw Kardia around, since most of the time, at least for casual content, we just slap it on the MT and leave it there for the entire duty. Its MP economy's not as good as AST, but as long as your Addersgall usage is good I'd argue it's still mostly unnecessary compared to SCH and of course WHM's.

But more importantly, aesthetics. It'd look way cooler to constantly be able to run and gun with floating laser pods. I found both the cast and shot animations of Dosis to look underwhelming compared to Glare/Broil/Malefic. We don't even get to keep the rapid fire Toxicon, which even the EW trailer showcases with Alphinaud, after it upgrades to the cross slash (not that I don't want the latter), and I'd imagine a Dosis without a cast would have a similar enough feel to somewhat make up for that.

[Recon1o6]

People were asking for a non magic healer throughout shb and yoshida recently said that healers must be Disciple of magic sadly

[Semirhage]

Not against the idea in theory, but like a lot of ideas on the healer forums I'd say it's putting the cart before the horse. The role needs a huge overhaul to make some of these things feasible. If, for example, you were to just add a ranged layer on top of current Sage and Astro, all you've done is given the two strongest, most mobile, least resource constrained healers even more mobility, more power, and fewer constraints while tying the two healers that actually still have to pay for things to resources, immobility, and the like. One of the biggest conundrums with the healer role is that, with the pattern of outgoing damage and the way FFXIV's combat system works, oGCD heals are way, way, way, way, way superior to GCD heals in basically every single way. They cost nothing, they don't interrupt your damage, they're instant, they tend to be higher potency because they "are on a cooldown" (which ends up not mattering at all given FFXIV's tickle tickle boom damage model).

With the current healing paradigm, a healer that has all instant casts with a buttload of oGCDs for healing and party buffs out the wazoo is just straight better than a slow resource-dependent caster unless you put some HEAVY range taxes on the potencies.

[Azurarok]

People were asking for a non magic healer throughout shb and yoshida recently said that healers must be Disciple of magic sadly

Ah, wasn't aware of that. Well that's that I guess. Do you know if it was in a live letter, and which one if so? I kinda want to know what his reasoning for that is.

snip

I mean this was all under the assumption that skills and core mechanics were adjusted to actually make the caster side worthwhile, but that's more or less a discussion for the White Mage threads.

[MistakeNot]

All the fights in FFXIV are designed with the assumption that healers are casters. That could of course be changed, but would require a tremendous amount of work and rebalancing.
Other than such minor issues, one could in principle have melee healers and such. They exist in other MMOs and work well there, so it is clearly possible, but as mentioned they would not fit into current design of FFXIV

[Bad_Luck]

Reminds me of Chemist, but how would that work in FFXIV?

[Semirhage]

Reminds me of Chemist, but how would that work in FFXIV?

I don't remember which Live Letter it was in, but Yoshi mentioned that Astro was the result of them attempting a Chemist's Mix ability, finding a hard time making it work, and settling on random buff cards instead.

[Recon1o6]

[QUOTE=Azurarok;5846002]Ah, wasn't aware of that. Well that's that I guess. Do you know if it was in a live letter, and which one if so? I kinda want to know what his reasoning for that is.

It was one of many interviews done straight after EW's launch that got translated over on the ff14 reddit discord. I don't remember which one off the top of my head.

Reminds me of Chemist, but how would that work in FFXIV?

tbh though there's a number of ways they could do chemist but we know that whatever way they did choose it would be a shallow shell given the one person in the job team who seemed to care about healers left somewhere between hw and sb and all we got now are people who dont care or actively hate healer players

[Lieri]

If chemist is a thing they will still be casting their skills.

[MerlinCross]

Chemist as a healer could work if it was like Ninja.

Either hitting different mixes before throwing/casts or having it interact with the buffs it gives. Like it gives out “Regen Salve” and hitting the target with another skill could expend it for burst heal, shield, AoE heal.

The problem comes from people having to remember the right order and mixes. And NIN mudras get enough complaints so having to cheat sheet a healer? That wouldn’t get cleared.