Could a melee Healer work?

[Zakuyia]

Yeah I thought thats what a battle cleric was

[MisterNublet]

A melee job wouldn't fit their healer design of 1 damage spell and 1 dot.

So, sadly, a melee healer wouldn't work in FFXIV.

[Claire_Pendragon]

Too often I see people who misunderstand what "Melee Healer" means, and additionally see too many who assume it has limitations that wouldnt be applied to any other jobs in the game.
All melee DPS have ranged attacks for scenarios they have to stay away from the boss, these attacks are a DPS loss when in melee range. The same would be applied to the melee healer.
The real question is, would it be fun to play a melee healer in a game where all healers just spam 1 button?
Not saying SE will do this, or should do this, just using as a quick example for others
Looking at how SE handles healers homoginization; Id see it as a sort of "4 melee strikes" type of deal. Where 3 are all different types of heals, and 1 is a straight up DoT. (Since SE loves the single DoT on every healer. Something akin to #1 adds to a pool for oGCD healing. #2 takes from the MP pool for direct GCD healing. (Inverse kardia, a 0.5s GCD triggers after this is pressed. maybe adjusted for 1s, instead of 0.5, depending on issues)
#3 splashes an AoE heal around you if you have the MP for it. (otherwise its just dmg w/o a heal)

all 3 do the same damage. so you use #1 until youre capped on resources, and then spam 2, until you need to aoe, then 3.
oGCDs heals will supplement the heals of the melee strikes.

for ranged situations, you have a straight up ranged attack thats like 10 potency lower, and takes up mp. (Id give it a 0.5s cast time for mobility purposes.)
(also a ranged casted heal thats more MP consuming. idealy try not to use these two unless needed)

[sindriiisgaming]

Just musing out loud.

I don't have one theorycrafted or anything, but suffice it to say by melee I of course don't mean the actual healing part of its skillset (or... do I?), I'm imagining it just being its damage-dealing abilities. I think it could make for a novel addition to the game's roster even then.

What brought this about was my pondering the kind of Job they might give Gaia in the future since although she's a MRD/WAR in terms of (roughly) weapon type and stance, nothing else about it matches her particular skillset. Making her a Tank still doesn't feel right (even if a time skip were involved), and then it struck me! A melee Healer that uses time magic to halt or rewind damage! After all, there's a strong connection between maces/hammers and clerics and the like (admittedly mostly in western media e.g. Warhammer Fantasy), and aligning it with Darkness would make for a fun twist, I think.

Damn it, I really want this now...

No. Because nobody would bring a healer that actively takes away uptime from a melee. And there aren't strats centered around 5 player uptime. This is already a huge issue If you play 3 melee in savage. This is 1 of these ideas that sounds quirky on paper but once you implement it you realize nothing good comes out of it. If healers need innovation. Forcing them into melee spits with positional and incredibly tight heal ranges isn't it. Even if this some how got green lit (after "smile" anythings possible I guess) the backlash would be so intense from both players and party members that it would literally get patched out and given the drk treatment until it was

[Fourbestintoner]

Mechanics in this game are designed with 4 melees and 4 ranged in mind.

[Claire_Pendragon]

Mechanics in this game are designed with 4 melees and 4 ranged in mind.

I honestly dont think theres a single person in this thread that doesnt already know and assume that with the job idea in mind. (I could be wrong, but this has been addressed so many times, it's hard to understand why its still brought up, so I can only assume that most ppl making these replies are just doing a quick drop in and out of the thread. (Obviously theres a lot said in the thread, and its a pain to read it all.))

[Chasingstars]

A melee healer kind of sounds like if you took away some of the tanky parts of a pvp paladin's kit and tweaked it so each time it heals itself, it also healed each other party member for that same amount. Like to use that as an example, on using Confeitor, you would afflict the boss with Sacred Claim, then each time you strike the boss with your damage dealing weaponskill abilities, you also heal party members each time, like as a 400 or 500 potency heal. Same with granting themself a regen and then party members.

If we were to consider what sort job fantasy this would be, I would personal say something that is nature-centric would differiante it. Though this could open it up to something that is specifically one thing, like wind or water or plants. Like if it were water, it could be a pirate corsair with water magic. If it were wind I would imagine a kind of azim steppe nomad. While for plants, I personally imagine a type of druid that might hail from somewhere like meracydia or xak tural.

Just cooking, but the healing for such a melee healer could be tied in a similar manner to a gauge bar like red mage's. Where the goal would be to fill a bar, then to later expend it for high potency emergency heals. The bar would be filled for simply doing dps rotation as it was intended.

[Wayfinder3]

It could, if the damage the disparity between ranged and melee was more homogenized so that taking 1 melee dps and 3 ranged jobs is indistinguishable from a comp that brings 2 melee and 2 ranged jobs. So basically put everything close to where Pictomancer and to a lesser extend black mage is.

The main issue is that SE designs mechanics around accomodating 4 melee jobs and 4 ranged jobs including tanks and healers. A ranged tank job could also work as a premier off tank job that has to be indistinguishable from a melee job whenever it's the main tank or has a sort of dummy/puppet that holds the attention of the target and the skill expression is how does one keep that alive. A melee healer seems very easy to make work since healers are primarily driven off ogcds and this wouldn't change for a melee job either.

So yeah, this could work, but would require SE to change how damage is distributed across the roles in the game so that it's worth taking 3 ranged to allow for that melee healer to be invited in. if you have a comp with 5 melee that will sucks for quite a few fights which means they need to make it so 4 melee jobs are the max which is why it is the way it is now

[Maxilor]

As probably mentioned already in this thread, there are plenty of healing Spell/Abilities that are PBAOE already.

So, I don't think it would be out of the realm of possibility.

The class name and theme would be the tough one to figure out.

[Magikazam]

Would be good if they put their focus into making ranged healer gameplay better b4 making melee one.