Melee Healer Idea: Shrine Priest

[Renathras]

(Honestly, I actually like this idea some thinking about it. Not sure I'd want to play it, but I'm always up for more Jobs and diversity between Jobs.)

Shrine Priest because I can't remember the name of the thing that our good large Samurai friend becomes in a certain EW Role quest. Onimiju? Something in that vein. I'm thinking something like Miroku from Inuyasha with the staff fighting and sutras and spiritual barriers and stuff.

Idea is simple:

Star with WAR. Yes WAR. Not being sarcastic, but it seems like a good base. It has a relatively simple single target combo, but one with a bit of optimization and depth to play with and which wouldn't lock people out of healing. Not to mention the -4 would be distinct from the other Healer Jobs, being a damage upkeep buff rather than a DoT. It also has a simple gauge builder/spender system, which could work well for a melee Healer, and it has a simple parallel AOE rotation (1-2, oGCD that shares CD with the single target one, and gauge spender). While we might not want to rip the mechanics off DIRECTLY, it still is a workable base foundation since almost anything could build out from it.

Take the Rage gauge and change it into a healing resource. Not all of its heals, mind you, but its general use heals would rely on this gauge.

This will be a melee Healer. As has been impressed upon me (and I agree with), mechanics rarely force disengages for Healers/Ranged in any real sense anymore, and boss hitboxes can be meleed from Narnia, so this still should be viable.

The bread and butter will be a 1-2-3 combo with a -4 damage boosting upkeep buff like WAR has.

It will have a 1-2 AOE combo in the same vein, with the -2 being used to apply and maintain said damage boosting upkeep buff.

In both cases, it will have an oGCD that is shared between the two like WAR has. It will also have a damage boosting button that unlocks an extra damage button. Basic melee attacks are with the staff. A basic ranged attack (Tomahawk equivalent for forced disengages) could use sacred Sacred Sutras (think Miroku from Inuyasha). It also would have an Infuriate-like ability to build 50 guage on the spot, stacks to 2 charges.

Granted, this takes a decent amount of buttons at this point since we effectively have Heavy Swing, Maim, Storm's Eye, Storm's Path, Tomahawk, Upheaval, Inner Release, Infuriate, Overpower, Mythril Tempest, Orogeny, and Primal Rend (if I'm not missing any there...), which is 12. We could add a Fell Cleave and Decimate (AOE) buttons as well for Gauge spenders for when there's no healing needs, so that brings us to 14.

After that, it is a Healer Job still, so we need to start talking healing abilities. For better or worse, all Healers have a basic single target and aoe heal (Cure 1 and Medica 1), so it's likely this one would as well. Oh, and a Raise, of course. That brings us to 17 as our base number of abilities.

And don't forget the standard Healer 6 Role actions, which brings us to 23 total so far.

...so, where would you go from here?

.

Now, where would I go with it...

I'd give it a gap closer on a CD (no charges, personally, though I guess 1 might work), but to prevent spamming it and make optimization a thing to work for, I think I'd make it where you have to use a Sacred Sutra on the target before you can gapclose to it. Not sure if the game's programming could work for that, but basically this means it would have a use for reengaging or quickly moving between enemies as opposed to "just another oGCD you work into the burst window", which I think would make it more interesting. I know SAM has something like this that people ridicule, but that's a bit different (using its ranged GCD after its gap opener), where this would be more about making the gap closer unique and requiring at least a smidge of forethought, while also allowing fun stuff in 4 mans/the world like dashing to one pack and then dashing to the next, which Tanks often already do, so you'd be keeping up with them.

I'd probably also give it some kind of a CD that works to boost damage but not like how others do it. So maybe something like using one of its attacks (maybe the Primal Rend) places a debuff on the boss where everyone's damaging attacks proc an additional amount based on the priest's stats. So sort of like you're weakening the enemy to take extra damage, but the damage is fixed to you. So something like "every attacking Weaponskill/Spell (GCD attacks) that strikes the target proc additional damage equal to a 20 potency attack from the Shrine Priest, lasts 8 seconds; in theory, this would do 20 * 8 * 3 = 480 potency of damage - what I'm thinking here is a damaging take on something like WoW Paladin Judgement of Light, except instead of healing party members, it makes their attacks tick a bit of extra damage on the boss. This is scaled to the Shrine Priest, not the attacker, so it won't do wildly variable damage based on what Jobs are in your party. Kind of a purge/banish/seal evil effect.

While we're at it, we could have one of its big CDs be Judgement of Light; for the next 8 seconds, all Weaponskills/Spells striking the target proc a small heal on the party member using them. So a reverse take on Kardia where the party member attacks are healing themselves (for a small amount, maybe 100-150 potency).

Probably going to want a single target and AOE gauge spender. At the risk of this being a "clone" of an existing healer, we're talking either Eukrasian Diagnosis/Prognosis (if we go shielding) or Afflatus Solace/Rapture (if we don't want to go the barrier route). I'm not sure what else we could do there. I suppose we could make them Regen/Medica 2 (HoTs) instead, though that would make them less useful in multi-hit burst attacks which FFXIV encounter design is now known for. Any of the three I'm fine with. Or we could mix things up and have all of them in some way. Like maybe the single target "Solace" is a barrier instead (think Divine Benison if it cost a Lily), the AOE could come in two flavors, one being a Medica direct heal (but a bit bigger) for burst needs and the other a Medica 2 HoT (just the HoT, not the instant heal) for less immediate but more overall tapered healing or to lay on the party when you just need to top them up but want to get some continued healing from future mechanics/Tank damage from boss autos for the next few seconds.

Probably also want a party mitigation or two, and at least one oGCD heal that doesn't burn gauge in case of needing emergency healing, though the Infuriate-like ability should mitigate the need for this somewhat, at high optimization levels, you'll be trying to use that for additional burst with the Fell Cleaves, so this will be your backup to the backup last line of defense BEFORE Medica 1/Cure 1.

And again at the risk of "homogenization", something like Aetherpact/Kardia to translate your melee hits into heals on at the very least the Main Tank. STRICTLY speaking, this probably isn't necessary IF the gauge build rate is fast enough you can use the gauge spender heals to keep the Tank topped up, though that will require some target switching, it's probably not that terrible and could be macroed to the Tank (the single target one) anyway.

That gives us a grand total of 32 buttons, which is a pretty good amount (takes up all of two complete crossbar sets on controller or slightly less than three rows on keyboard)

A thought I might toy with (and possibly in place of the Kardia) would be a button KIND of like Eukrasia, but what it does is make the next GCD heal an instant cast ability with no cast time or MP cost, but costing healing gauge instead. The amount of gauge would depend on the ability, with Raise costing the full 100, Medica 1 costing 50, and Cure 1 costing 20. Though...if one of the gauge spenders is Afflatus Rapture for 50, I suppose this would be rather redundant. But basically, it's letting you convert gauge into a heal for a DPS loss but making them movement castable and probably this would be used mostly for Raise when Swiftcast was on CD...I dunno, I think the idea has merit, but this Job not having many hardcast heals to use with it may make it pointless, lol

.

Anyway, that's my thought. What's yours?

I honestly think there might be merit to this given that there's no reason we can't have a melee Healer with boss hitboxes the size of the sun, but what are your thoughts?

[Osmond]

Just no………

[Renathras]

Just no………

Then what?

[Osmond]

Reading this 50 paragraph discussion, I just play RDM. They are not going to do that period. If they want to do that, they’ll just create a DPS job or add it on BLU.

[Renathras]

Reading this 50 paragraph discussion, I just play RDM. They are not going to do that period. If they want to do that, they’ll just create a DPS job or add it on BLU.

No, I'm saying if you had an idea for a melee Healer that you think would be fun, what would that be?

[Jkap_Goat]

Prishe from Final fantasy 11 is a MNK/WHM



I would love to see more unique jobs but FFXIV suffers from the holy Trinity system so support jobs and very unique jobs can't exist unless they are in the limited job section

[Sebazy]

My personal take, a melee healer would be a good candidate for some seriously experimental ability consolidation with a focus on multi purpose short cooldown abilities to offer expanded downtime gameplay without making the job feel barebones in prog style situations where it may actually have to knuckle down and pump out some HPS.

Rather than modelling the job on existing FFXIV melee norms, I'm of the opinion that Dancer's AoE gameplay with a few tweaks is actually a much more interesting foundation for a few different reasons. Let's hypothetically go with a Chemist style job with flails for a weapon type.

So just like Dancer's AoE we start with a 1-2 combo akin to Windmill > Bladeshower but with them being slightly larger cleaves instead of PBAOES to reduce the need to stand directly under packs of mobs. Also like dancer, let's have a 3+4 proc akin to Rising Windmill and Bloodshower, however with these, lets keep them circular, again slightly enlarge the aoe radius and give them a matching healing effect around the player akin to Assize but smaller. You could even do something interesting like having a frontal 90 degree damage cleave with a rearward 270 degree healing cleave, there's tons of different ways to jig something like this.

Next, lets have this bread and butter melee generate resource in a gauge, lets go with 4 gauge generated per GCD attack providing that it lands on something to keep our resource generation consistent and predictable.

For mobility, an interesting concept I could see working well would be to add a short GCD leap that jumps to your friendly or hostile target and with a moderate 5yalm Damage + AoE splash, lets go with a max of 3 charges and with each charge taking 20 seconds to regenerate. To spice it up it we can have a minimum range of 10 yalms so you need a target to jump to.

For the core healing kit, we can have a few basic GCD potion throwing skills. The core skill would simply be called Vial, by itself it's an 800 potency GCD ability with no cast time so can be cast on the move. The usual 30yalm range, MP costs etc apply here, more on this soon.

Additionally lets have Medica 1 and combo Cure+Esuna type throws to give the job a fallback AoE heal and esuna that are both usable without gauge. Lets give both of these a 2 second cast time to emphasise that they are fall backs rather than mainstays of your kit.

Now for the gauge usage, with 4 gauge generated per GCD we can assume that we will generate full 100 gauge in 25 GCDs aka roughly a minute assuming we have full uptime. Now lets go with a variety of 'mixing' oGCD abilities.

oGCD AoE mix 1 - 20 Gauge cost: Causes your next vial to have a 10y splash radius around the target it hits but reduces the healing potency by 25%

oGCD mitigation mix 2 - 20 Gauge cost: Adds a 10% damage reduction effect onto the next friendly target your vial hits and increases the duration by an additional 9 seconds

oGCD potency mix 3 - 20 Gauge cost: Adds a 10% additional HP recovery via healing actions effect to the target your next vial hits and increases the duration by an additional 9 seconds

oGCD duration mix 4 - 20 Gauge cost: Causes your next vial to persist on the target it hits for an additional 9 seconds with base healing potency being doubled but spread across the entire duration

oGCD ground mix 5 - 20 Gauge cost: Causes your next vial to persist on the ground where it hits it's target for an additional 9 seconds (Will have a 4y radius without AoE mix 1) with base healing potency being doubled but spread across the entire duration

oGCD Speed throw mix 6 - 40 Gauge cost: Causes your next vial to become an oGCD.

Before you go 'huh' at these, the idea is to empower your core Vial Throw GCD with various effects by spending gauge on mixes. The combination of different mixes is where things get interesting, kind of like a mashup of Ninjitsu and Dances. For example, Mix 1 + Vial effectively gives you Cure III. Mix 2 + Vial gives you Exaltation. Where it gets really interesting is adding multiple mixes together, Mix 1 + 2 + 5 into Vial gives you a ground bubble akin to Succor with an upfront heal. Got a static that knows how to stack properly, forgo Mix 1 and save some gauge at the price of having a much smaller bubble. Want that bubble to follow someone and behave more like an aura or just simply last longer? Drop mixes 1+ 2 + 4 + 5 in and you've got yourself an old fashioned Warcraft Paladin aura. Even in casual content with that pesky warrior that won't leave you anything to heal, you can still at the very least drop something like mix 2 + 4 into a Vial to give a mitigation boost+regen whilst keeping your gauge flowing. More on that in a moment...

An important caveat would be to impose a max duration limit on mixes to keep things somewhat sane, 24 seconds seems like the sensible choice to me. Also important to note is that these would weave like any other oGCD. Double weaving between melee swings would be about the limit but there's nothing to stop you going Melee > Double weave > Melee > Double weave > Vial to get 4 Mixes on 1 throw.

Now to be clear, I suspect the gauge generation rate is too high with this concept and either that or the strength of mixes would need to be toned down to be balanced, perhaps even both, but IMO this could also be offset partially by not giving the job a major autoheal such as Macrocosmos or Lilybell.

Continuing on, each time you use gauge on a mixing ability, lets have a second gauge called 'failed experiments'. Lets give it 5 stages and when filled, you can spend it on a true Chemist stable... A Bomb. Think WHM's Misery, it's GCD instant cast with similar damage but larger radius. To make things more interesting, and balance that large radius, let'ss give it a penalty that if you get hit by your own bomb, your current gauge value is halved, this would make it neat to combo in with the earlier GCD leap ability.

Beyond this, we would want a couple of long cooldowns, since it's on trend, lets go with an additional 'forbidden' oGCD mix on a 2 minute cooldown with no gauge cost that adds a 5% damage dealt buff to your next vial target that can also be used in combination with other mixes. Without Mix 4 or 5 it would simply enhance your target's next ability or spell cast. This would be a neat way to emphasise the importance and value of mix combinations as using Mixes 1 + 2/3 + 4 + 5 with the 'forbidden' mix would give you a 18 second duration on that 5% damage buff+damage reduction or healing up with a 10y radius around the target for 80 gauge aka .

For the next cooldown, let's have a GCD Napalm Vial with a 2 second cast on a 1 minute cooldown with 2 charges that generates 20 gauge+1 failed experiment and deals moderate damage in a 5 yalm radius with the usual 30 yalm range. This serves two purposes, it allows the Chemist to quickly generate enough gauge on pull to get Mix 1 + 4 + 'forbidden' 2 GCDs after the pull so that it has a slightly weaker party buff for the opening burst. It also gives the Chemist a few GCDs to use if they are unable to get in melee range for mechanics. With a little planning and saving gauge+failed experiments, a Chemist would be able to spend a decent number of GCDs out of melee range Napalming, then spending the gauge on a Vial before following up with a Bomb and then leaping back into melee position.

Now why do I suggest all of this in place of a more typical melee combo? The beauty of this is that when you are actually in melee range, meleeing, you don't need to have the enemy targeted, you just cleave and aoe away. This leaves you free to line up your your next vial target whilst mixing in between swings. The only time you'd directly need to target an enemy is when using Napalm or Bomb. This alleviates the targeting pressure that AST in particular suffers from.

The other key point with this is when you actually look closely at the kit, it's got a lot of parallels to WHM. You get a DPS refund for a limited amount of healing, it's got a Cure II, it's got a Regen, it's got a Medica and Medica II, it's got Asylum etc. It just achieves them in a wildly different manner.

The TLDR is that it plays like an AoEing Dancer, but instead of generating feather procs, you're generating resources to empower your healing Vials and throw Bombs.

[Renathras]

Hm, interesting. DNC is the one Job in the game I have 0 experience with, so can't really speak to it other than I've noticed a lot of people who play Healers seem to kind of like it (not all, but a fair amount). I kinda used WAR because people tend to say "Healers should have a rotation like the tanks or at least WAR", but I'm not married to the idea.

I was thinking you meant a straight melee build in that other thread, so interesting you mean more cone/cleave (if I'm understanding right) near-melee kind of a thing. Same general concept, just...also not.

Personally, I figured Chemist would use the caster gun kind of a thing (would make slightly more sense than chucking potions at people), but as I always say, I'm for more Jobs and more diverse playstyles, and this one does appear interesting, even if I'm not sure I fully understand it given I don't really get the base.

[Darkmoonrise]

I laid out my take on melee healer in another thread yesterday, let me copy past it here:


A melee healer based on hot.

Core mechanism : you place short hot on the target and then a small melee rotation keeps refreshing it. A resource builds each time you finish a dps rotation.

Example : 4 DPS skills rotation (easy rotation, no positional, just smash them one after another) (if you're not comfy with the rotation, just spam DPS1, it will do the same from a heal perspective but without the DPS)

• DPS1, DPS + applies (4 seconds) or refreshes hot (+ 4 seconds) .
• DPS2, DPS + if chained, refreshes hot (+ 4 seconds) and increase potency buff
• DPS3, DPS + if chained, refreshes hot (+ 6 seconds) and gives one ressource and incresae potency
• DPS4, applies 10sec dot and if chained add 20sec to dot (so it can be applied anytime when lost but only needs to be refreshed every 3 rotations)

gcd heal :

• direct solo heal (cast) in case of emergency (or for "pure healer")
• direct aoe heal (cast) in case of emergency (or for "pure healer")

ogcd heal :

• single direct heal (cd 30 sec)
• group hot (cd 30 sec, duration 10 sec),
• group shield (cd 60 sec),
• a heal trap (cd 60 sec)! let me explain : you place something (totem for instance) on the floor near whoever will need heal and when someone steps onto it, boooooom small radius heal. you can even put a small zone around it that mitigates damage (deported heal, like scholar's fairy)

ressource use :

• direct aoe heal,
• powerfull single target hot with some damage reduction (use for TB),
• ranged attack (to get ride of ressource when needed or during melee down time).
• After every 3 ressources spent, you activate a skill that buffs your hot for 15 sec (needed if you want to keep up with hot without relaying on gcd)

ogcd utilities :

• combat sprint (like scholar) (duration 10 sec, cd 60 sec),
• melee DPS buff (cd 120 sec, standard raid buff),
• "increase hot potenty on nearby allies" (duration 15 sec, cd 90 sec) (this + ogcd aoe hot to recover from raid wide)
• "reduce damage done by enemy" (duration 10 sec, cd 30 sec) (idea is to use it in alternance with the "3 ressources use" buff)

DPS :

• 3 single target gcd (instant) (See above)
• dot (instant)(see above)
• player centered aoe gcd (cast) also applies and refresh hot on target to keep up with trashs in dungeon

Note :

• I don't have no idea for the lore or the theme of the job
• Weapon could be something like claws (like in the secret world)
• The idea is to have a "nervouse" healer, all timing are short and if you want to be efficiant, you'll need to hit those ogcd and ressources asap. If you're a "pure healer" you'll be able to keep up by spamming the direct gcd heal and ogcd heals but it will be painfull and hard.

[Faidid]

Prishe from Final fantasy 11 is a MNK/WHM



I would love to see more unique jobs but FFXIV suffers from the holy Trinity system so support jobs and very unique jobs can't exist unless they are in the limited job section

True--and, they're homogenizing job diversity into cosmetic spell and combat effects only more each expansion. I love FF14, but it's becoming an MMO that's so bare-boned, basic I almost feel like the target audience isn't even aimed at adults anymore.