How can we really define Healers?

[Renathras]

The irony is, as I said before, I would actually like a system where you COULD just go healer on RDM like you can on BLU. Your icon goes green, you que green, and you have healing actions set. When RDM was first released as "a healer that uses White Magic to cure allies and has Black Magic to attack enemies", I seriously thought "So like WHM, just with Stone and Aero replaced with Fire and Thunder?" Given FFXIV's focus of healers as somewhat hybrids that are damage dealing casters + healing spells, RDM as a healer would actually have fit FFXIV's healing model at the time, SB, pretty well. Before healing shifted to being almost entirely oGCDs, anyway.

I'm more just saying the idea to switch - unless it's an actual full on switch like that - won't work in FFXIV, or really in very many modern MMOs. If a RDM could go White Shift and ACTUALLY fill a healer slot AS A HEALER (that is, for the entire instance run, you're in the healer slot and healing the party and doing so as a healer, not a hybrid dpser), that could actually work.

But if it's just "some abilities do some splash healing", it wouldn't work outside of solo content like PotD or some Eureka/Bozja type content that allows for more flexibility. So it would need to be a complete shift. While qued as White Shift, you're in White Shift the whole instance and you're a healer, not a DPSer.

Kind of like SCH shifting to SMN or SMN shifting to SCH.

And honestly, RDM's damage kit I like okay, so making a "healer version" of that with less steps would honestly be kind of cool.

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EDIT because of post limit:

Honestly at that point it sounds like you're just describing the class/job system as initializally envisioned, but uh... we never got more than ACN -> SMN or SCH, and, well, we've all seen how that got built off of. (it didn't, and also, they've been doing everything in their power to scrub it out. Wouldn't be surprise if 7.0 finally completely removed SCH from ACN tbh).

Basically, yeah. Thing is, it's not a terrible concept. Most old school MMOs had hybrids that could heal in small man content and COULD heal in higher end content but usually went DPS. While that has issues of its own, considering how FFXIV groups like pushing "one healer" clears, it would actually work into the meta more here where people WOULD want to try these healer specs out if they're at least passingly viable in high end content. As long as they are treated AS A HEALER (as opposed to replacing/crowding out healers), I think it would be fine conceptually...

I don't think it would work in practice because of a "this is why we can't have nice things", but the concept is still interesting to me.

Imagine if you go "healer spec" on RDM and lose Verfire/stone/scorch/thenewone but instead got Vermedica, Vercure2, and all your healing spells generate White Mana? (Probably some other changes like Fletche and Contre turned into something like Tetra and Assize, but keeping it simple for the sake of discussion)

Now you'd have a Job that is healer focused and has single and party heals and mitigation (Magick Barrier) and party buff (Embolden) where your gameplay is Jolt - Verthunder - Jolt - Veraero, and you can replace the Jolts/Veraeros with Vercure, Verucure2, or Vermedica to adapt to party needs and it would give you White Mana to help keep your DPS rotation moving forward. You then go into your melee combo in a simplified form since it just ends with Holy/Flare, and the rotation can be set up where casting heals doesn't break the combo. AOE would be Impact -> Veraero2/thunder2 (I know it works the other way in live RDM but I hate that, darnit! No, seriously, I hate that the AOE rotation feels "backwards" from the single target, that kinda thing sets my OCD off... XD), where again you could use heals and get White Mana from doing so. If Mana imbalance is a concern, they could just give both (like Jolt/Impact do), then go into an Enchanted Moulin spam before capping it off with a Holy/Flare.

A more engaging damage kit, a slim but effective healing kit, and where the healing kit doesn't interfere with your damage kit AND healing contributes to damage via Mana generation.

I feel like that would be fun to a lot of people kind of like how GNB as a "tank that plays like a DPS" is fun to a lot of people.