How can we really define Healers?

[GrimGale]

The role trinity effectively breaks down classes into roles that serve to focus their kits to deal with one of the three basic types of interaction between NPCs and Players in a "battlefield".

DPS deal with Player>NPC
- Can be CC, Combos, Priming enemies for further damage, or simply going on the offensive.

Tanks deal with NPC>Player
- Getting the enemy attention, creating cover, intercepting attacks and mitigating incomming damage, simply put defending the party.

Support deal with Player>Player
- Its probably the most vague as there are a lot of ways to "assist" teammates, hell even tanking could be considered specialized support. Healing is a pretty straightforward one, but they can buff allies, shield them, give them mobility or anything that makes them more effective at their role.


In the end, all roles have to deal with those three interactions, as all roles must be at least be able to attack, recieve damage and party up. Support is the most ambiguous one as "helping" the party can come in many forms, but is usually the role that most conforms to the game's internal workings as it is the role that can make or break the game systems.

[TabrisOmbrelame]

snip

You just mentionned something really interresting about each role that actually gives me an idea.

When you said that healers can Buff, heal, shield, give mobility (which is kinda the same as buff), it doesn't come short of possibility. Instead, there is a Large amount of combinaison usable.

Even more, it will require less change on classes than an actual full-rework of the role and can be quite appealing for people who wants a "Full support" role. Of course you'll stick with the 1 button damage, but if you have more to manage on the side, it can balance the boring feeling that people have.

Let's take an exemple of what can done to give each healers his own identity while also being Lore-Friendly or logical.

WHM :

The first things that come in mind with WHM is the lost of Wind and Earth elements on the upper level. WHM actually only use Water and Light when they reach lvl 72. Earth and Wind can be used to buff people. Earth for defense/offense and Wind for Mobility.
Maybe using the Earth to buff your comrades for more damage or reducing damage income, and Wind to speed up party movement just like SCH do. (Before telling that SCH already got that and that's redundant, remember that it's only speculation, probably won't happen anyway, but it's still possible when you consider everything related to that). This can make Earth and Wind elements come back, while still being lore Friendly.

SCH :

As we all know, SCH use healing magic related to mathematical and science law (It's in the lore and even more obvious in the French version of the game). They are able to use schemes like Deployments for exemple, which make Scholar kinda the "Strategist" on the ground. Using something like that may lead to great possibility. A strategist must be able to use his strenght at the right moment to make a great counter attack and make it pay. Sadly, our current SCH is mostly defense based but could use serious offense based buff/debuff. It's even in the job description : "utilizing the creatures' (Faerie) magicks to heal the wounded and bolster the strength of their allies."

AST :

As we know, the AST is currently being reworked. I prefer not saying anything at this point and wait to see what they are up to.

SGE :

The Sage use aetherology, sorcery, and medicine all together to make their's spell. According to this, why Sage couldn't buff offensively his teammate by using either of those ?


Their is so much possibilities to do a full support job out of what we currently have. Only adding spell will not resolve anything. What's needed is the use of a new ressources unique to each job and the new spells going along with that. Maybe even build this ressource up by using the only spell of damage you have ? Why not ?

One things is for sure. If Square Enix don't change how Healer's work in the near future, they will reach a wall on what is possible to do with them. They need to do changes at least for the 7.0 Expansion