I HATE WHITE MAGES

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Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
I can't think of a more boring job in a classic Final Fantasy-esque RPG than a white mage. At least warriors, for a simple as their game plan is, give you the satisfaction of killing an enemy to progress. What does a white mage add to the party dynamic? Healing and buffing.

I was reading through Darken's topic about fixing thieves, and I caught myself having similar thoughts about white mages. Problem is, I'm not sure white mages can be "fixed" because they fulfill their fundamental role so perfectly that adding more diverse abilities essentially graduates them from the white mage class. Therefore, I'm using this topic to call the fundamental role itself into question instead. Much like Darken's topic, I am assuming the game in question features a mostly standard turn-based battles like what you see in default RPG Maker projects or classic Final Fantasy-esque games.

Healing skills
For one thing, the idea that you need a dedicated party member just to heal feels like a waste of a member slot to me. Most RPGs already have items that can fulfil that purpose, and they can be used by anyone, not just white mages. Taking dedicated healers out of the party forces the player to think about which offensive unit should give up their action to use the item to heal themselves or the party, creating interesting micro choices throughout an entire dungeon crawl. If you're just hoarding your recovery items and instead using your white mage to heal, that costs MP that can only be restored via ether or other mp-restoring items. Either way, you're using items, so why not just skip the middleman and use the healing items instead? Ethers, from my experience, are generally rarer and more expensive than potions, so it's wild to me that white mages have somehow tricked players into consuming more ethers to restore a white mage's MP than using the healing items to restore HP.

I'll back up that last claim with an example from Prayer of the Faithless, my latest game. PotF heavily encouraged healing items over skills by 1) only having 2 healing skills in the entire game, 2) having those skills only be cast by the primary damage dealer, and even then cost a lot of MP and extra actions to be able to use, and 3) limiting the stack of healing items that can be carried so players are more likely use them to make room pick up more out in the field. However, when watching playthroughs, I noticed that people still kept using the skills anyway to heal, costing them more health and resources overall in battle since extra turns are used to set up and cast the healing skill. What this tells me is that players feel like MP is a more disposable resource than items, and will resort to using items if there is absolutely no other option.

Also, in general, I find skills that fully heal the entire party to be a bit of a cop-out. It feels like a "get out of jail free" card that you can play at any time to negate any tension or strategy to get your party out of a dangerous situation. It's not that I'm against "get out of jail free" cards, but having them be spells that you can replenish with a quick gulp of ether or a visit to an inn means that you will likely always have a comfortable stack of these cards to negate any tension that could have been found in a dungeon crawling session.

Buffs
Regarding buffs, I want to propose the idea that maybe they aren't needed as much as you think. Think of each stat in an RPGMaker database and ask yourself this "why can't I just raise this stat's base value permanently instead of relying on skills to buff it temporarily?" Buff attack to see big numbers and end the battle quicker? Why not just have the attack stat of warrior classes higher so you can ALWAYS see big numbers? Buff defense to take more damage? Why not have higher variance in equippable armor to encourage mixing and matching to a player's preference?

If you absolutely have to have buffs in your game, fine. However, do you really need a dedicated white mage just to apply them? How about attack skills that also buff the user? Or giving buff skills to other party members instead? A warrior/paladin would get a lot of mileage out of any skill that buffs their defense, especially if they have a cover skill to guard against weaker party members who wouldn't benefit much from a defense buff anyway.

Inflexibility
Finally, (and this is the biggest issue I have with them) white mages are so inflexible in their role that they are completely useless in any other situation. Trash mobs? Warriors can dispatch them quickly, thieves can steal from them to get items, black mages can cast spells to hit their weakness. What's a white mage going to do? Heal the party? Buff allies? Neither of those things are needed. All that white mages can do is bonk an enemy with their staff to maybe deplete some health that a warrior can inflict tenfold. Giving them a Holy-esque skill might solve the problem, but those are usually mid-late game skills that cost a lot of MP.

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All in all, I fail to see any component of a white mage that wouldn't be better off taken away and added to a different job class. What are some solutions that you have done/would like to do to address these issues? If you disagree that what I laid out are even issues in the first place, please explain why. Thanks for reading.
Dyluck
For thousands of years, I laid dormant. Who has disturbed my slumber?
5184
White mages also sometimes have offensive skills like Holy, Turn Undead, and some status effects like Silence
Turn based games on principle are really about doing damage. Yeah you need to stay alive but the threat doesn't come up often at least not until bosses. Turns are so precious that any turn that isn't doing damage is probably a waste unless it's a boss. Thief and White Mage are both the same "uhhh I got to their turn but there's nothing crucial for them to do"

I personally love tense boss fights where half your party is wiped and the only way to keep up is to spam life full heal spells. It never quite gets old for me even though the flowchart is quite linear. Yet outside of bosses its a different story.

Recovery Items Only Work Outside of Battle Pretty self explanatory but basically prevents every character from being a glorified healer. In FF1 of all games its actually a waste to use restoratives in battle. Most of the healing is done in the menu, but it's one of those weird things where the chance to land a critical strike outweighs maybe living an extra turn.

Make Filler Battles Matter If you don't put on a defense buff, you die. If you take more than 2 hits, you die. This can be problematic if there exists a playstyle without a white mage, but in that case you just make it so doing the optimal damage is its own way of healing (if you don't kill this thing in 2 turns you die). This sounds like "HARDER" difficulty but just idk make it so the player can replay the last battle. Making things matter more is often why difficulty can be necessary (however subjective that may be). A lot of filler battles aren't meant to be grueling chess games though, and I think a lot of people inspired by SMT often forget this. So uh drawbacks for sure.

Provide Armor, not health It's time to play the game everybody loves: stealing a mechanic from Slay The Spire!!! Going into uh, inventing a brand new mechanic to solve a class territory. In this case another problem is when everyones at full health and its the first turn of the battle. Get rid of healing and have a spell that provides armor that can stack, but its flat damage. Meaning it becomes more about preventing future damage in a concise understandable way. A lot of defense buffs in RPGs are very vague, you see the resulting damage and I SUPPOSE they would have taken more damage, but I think taking a page out of slay the spire means communicating preemptive benefits better. (Theres a number with the shield icon behind it and it tells you how much damage is avoided) You could also keep heals and just factor this into overhealing.

Give them a healing tailored debuff smack

If a white mage uses a normal attack, just have them debuff an enemy. To make it more flavorful make it so some enemies heal and have the debuff cancel all healing. If there's no white mage in the party, make it so having more damage kinda cancels out the enemy healing but gee it really would be nice to have a healing specialist prevent heals. Hopefully there's a dilemma of weighing the risks of preventing the enemies heals vs preventing party damage! Biggest problem is that when enemies heal it SUCKS and I generally find it demotivating, but having that remedied by a healer I think can add to something.

Burst vs Consistency

But I'm also reminded of FF14. Different genre and not turn based but hear me out. The hardest healer in FF14 imo is the Scholar, the specialty is that they can prevent a lot of burst damage but it requires more knowledge of the raid in question. The default white mage has the chunkiest heals but is mostly reactive and this is better for going into a boss blind but worse if you use your big heals at the wrong moments.

This isn't so much of a solution than a way to think about what is the player skill being tested when using a healer. When damaging in turn based RPGs hopefully the game has some kind of target priority / optimal damage spread. But healing is usually very straight forward whack a mole. Enforcing and back and forth between preemptive healing and reactive healing might make white mages more interesting which probably involves using my above solution and factoring in heals more.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and making heals more interesting

Again, different genre, completely action based, multuplayer etc. But the best magic casting system and healing system is in FFCC bar none. Every spell in the game is an AOE circle that has to be manually placed by the player, including healing. This means that getting healed yourself requires positioning but also actually communicating with your healer. Healing effectiveness increases if multiple players get in the circle, but enemies also have big damage aoe circles so there's tons of dynamics going on. What's even more cool is when you die you can still move around as a ghost, so an essential life spell placement means whether or not the revived player is going to die AGAIN in an unfortunate boss AOE. Not only that but the healer also has an offensive role with the holy spell, Holy can only be cast if two players combine any elemental offensive spell fire/blizzard/whatever with the life spell, it's expensive but is really powerful and can hit a particular important ghost boss. Again the same positioning principle applies but the healer is working together with the offensive caster.

I don't know how you can incorporate action co-op mechanics into a pure singleplayer turn based affair but I guess the main takeaway is more synergy (tbh I just wanted to gush about FFCC and the most fun I had as a healer in any game). Fighter goes into a guard state? Well maybe that blocks heals hilariously but turns into armor instead. Black mage uses a fire spell? well maybe the normally undead only holy spell being used on the same enemy combines with it to do even more damage. Maybe there's some weird thing to do with back rows and positioning that makes heals more interesting. IDK! Something to wonder about.
It's essentially a priest, which has a strong religious component. Since there are all kinds of religion, you could play with that. Especially if the whole point of being "healed" is undergoing communion into those principles. So, you could have a whole range of "sins" or undesirable characteristics in opponents in your game, and they vary per each religion, and only that religion's priest is effective against them.

Typically, in the offensive sense, priests were seen as exorcists, which lines up with stereotypical white magic. So, just change what needs exorcising.

It's funny because the more I think about this, the simpler it seems to do. Just give each opponent an extra property, call it "emotion" or "sin" or "proclivity" or whatever: that personality which each religion affronts, with varying efficacy.
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
As I recall, Prayer of the Faithless uses Stamina instead of (or replacing) MP, and each character has a "Focus" command that restores it mid-battle. Characters also restore their stamina after every battle, unlike a typical MP counter. This is not to say there were not items that restore Stamina mid-battle, but, I don't recall how efficient they were in doing so. However, I will note that the cost of using those items is both in the consumption of that item and a turn, whereas the cost of "Focus" is just a turn. So, perhaps the players analyze the cost-benefit of Focus as "better" than using an item that restores MP?

As for the decisions players might make in a typical FF game to restore lost HP, I'll note that items in those kinds of games typically restore specific amounts of HP, whereas spells, typically, do not. Like, for example, as a player, I might expect a Cure would restore more HP than a Potion. Likewise, a Cura might cure more than a High Potion, and a Curaga would be close in it's effectiveness as an X-Potion.

*Edit: Ethers and High Potions in FF-likes might be rare, if not uncommon, in the beginning of the game, but, tend to be more available mid-game. X-Potions and High Ethers, however, are generally always rare, possibly sold at shops only in the very late-game.

As an aside, I'll note that FF9 and FF10 both gave their White Mages the Summon command/ability, quite possibly in an attempt for those characters to have an offensive use. Though, the summons of FF10 never used MP, so, Yuna had plenty of MP to spare for what was available to her (with with or without a LvlX Key Sphere) on the Sphere grid.
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
Good stuff, all of this.

Personally, my two favorite ideas to fix the class are position-based healing and converting excess health into armor. I'm not sure how to implement this in RPG Maker, but I'm sure there is a way to cast healing spells in a small AOE instead of either one target or the whole party. It would also encourage players to put some thought in the position of your party. Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk had specific healing skills that targeted either front row allies or back row allies, so maybe something similar could be implemented in RPG Maker? Overhealing into armor sorta combines the healing and buff problems into one, but the more granular nature of the armor buff means that healers will always have something to do.

I haven't played FFXIV, so the closest thing I can compare it to is Xenoblade. Healers in Xenoblade don't have overly strong healing, but are vital to outpace the damage being done to the tanks. Maybe with a different balancing goals in enemy encounters the same effect could be replicated with turn-based fights? To make the transition easier, maybe most healing spells could be replaced with a regen spell instead? That could free up the healer to do other things while healing is already being taken care of?
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
I thought about this some more, and remembered Suikoden 2 and the Bright Shield Rune. It's first-level spell heals one target to full, and removes status conditions. It's second-level spell is an AOE damage spell. It's third-level spell is an AOE healing spell that sometimes applies the "Berserk" state, which buffs attack, and maybe speed, without the usual sacrifice of character control.

Then there is the fourth-level spell, Forgiver Sign. I believe that spell is part of that game's 108% bonus, but, the basic idea is that there's a pool of 2000 HP that is first applied as healing to the party, and whatever remains of that pool after the healing is applied spills over as damage to a single target.

*Edit: Though, I suppose I would be remiss in not mentioning the Water Rune as far as magic-based healing in Suikoden games are concerned. Using items for healing might be considered more viable in these games because any given spell slot would not exceed 9 charges, and spell-slot recovery is pretty much limited to resting in inns.

*Edit2: Suikoden 3 is something of a black sheep of the series, but, it does make using Runes less viable because of the skill system. Like, a character with a high enough "Swing" skill can get three, maybe four hits in with an "Attack" action. This is especially true if the character also has a high SPD stat. Meanwhile, attempting to cast a fourth-level spell will result in the character taking two turns, unless that character has at least a "B" rank in the appropriate magic skill?

I forget. With Hugo as Flame Champion, topping out at a "C" in Fire Magic, I'm pretty sure he takes most of a turn, if not slightly over one turn, to cast the 4th-level spell on the True Fire Rune. Whereas Geddoe, with his "A" rank in Lightning Magic, can cast True Lightning Rune's 4th level spell maybe somewhere before the halfway point of the turn? Man, it's been a while, and I don't think I noted terribly much about how action-timing worked with my LP of Suikoden 3.
Darken's point about combining tactics with other classes to increase potency reminded me of Chrono Trigger. Usually, the most effective healing abilities were combos done with other characters, so that's an example of trying to coordinate the healer with other players in a single player turn based RPG.

Anyway, I like combining the healer skills with poison skills on a single character - while the primary focus is whack-a-mole spot healing, taking a turn to start a life draining poison skill vs the enemies helps make me feel like the healer is still contributing to taking down the monsters... in a passive way.
I mean, my solution to this was fairly simple. Combine the "traditional" black and white mage into one class, then create a separate mage class with a different focus. In BSH, Grey uses elemental damaging magic, and can learn healing spells. Later on, you can get a dark mage, but instead of the focus being damaging spells, this mage focuses on spells that inflict debilitating status ailments. They have a damaging spell as well, but the focus is definitely shifted.

Also, as much as I wanted to chime in, the real reason I'm replying is just to comment on FFCC, because goddamn that game was amazing, especially for its multiplayer, but oh my god did the remaster ever kill it. No local multiplayer, no controller support for mobile, and no unified world progression? Damn, they dropped the ball on that. Literally the best multiplayer game I ever played on GameCube, and an awesome way of identifying clear job roles without boxing somebody into one specific task.
author=Red_Nova
To make the transition easier, maybe most healing spells could be replaced with a regen spell instead? That could free up the healer to do other things while healing is already being taken care of?

Yeah, in my never-going-to-happen spreadsheet-based dream RPG, I've basically done this, and for all the same reasons. All healing is either regen-based or happens with a delay. (All magic happens at the beginning of your next turn, instead of immediately like regular attacks do.) So the idea is that you are trying to set up periods of continued health regeneration which then frees you up to either do other stuff, or layer on more regen.

I think for a system like this, as long as you resist the urge to have a way to do a massive heal shot, it'll work in the balance. Even one immediate heal spell would create a dynamic where you optimize ways to only use that spell instead of any of the regen stuff.



But really, let's just kill two birds with one stone, eh?

MAKE YOUR THIEF CLASS THE HEALER CLASS!
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
What's the thief supposed to do? Steal their wounds?

...actually....
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
Hrm. Lifedrain effects typically apply to the user of said effect, but, it might be interesting to play around with a lifedrain that effects outside that range.
If you decide not to use a white mage and heal with items instead, you still need a party member to use those items. Who's it going to be? Usually the one who does the least damage, who then effectively becomes the white mage. Items do give you a little more flexibility; a black mage can use items when you're fighting enemies that are immune to magic, or a thief can do it once they're done stealing. The tradeoff is that you're consuming those items and thus, ultimately, money.

By putting a white mage in the party, you're committing a character to the healer role full time, and in exchange, you get a renewable resource, MP, tied to that character that doesn't cost money (except for the price of sleeping at an inn between dungeons, but you'd probably do that anyway). For the white mage to be worth the opportunity cost of not bringing another damage dealer, they need to be saving you money in that way, which means they have to have enough MP to get through a dungeon without needing ethers, or at least not so many ethers that you end up spending more than you would have on healing potions if you were relying on those instead.

This is assuming you have a use for extra money, though. In most RPGs, all it takes is a little grinding to buy all the best equipment in each new town and maintain a healthy supply of items as well. In some games, you can do that even if you don't grind at all. In those games, where the economic advantage the white mage offers on paper ends up not mattering, what good are they?

The answer is that items and magic don't have to be equal in healing capability, and probably shouldn't be. If nothing else, magic should have an edge late in the game, unless you do something like putting a shop with the best weapons in the game right in front of the final boss so the player has a use for the money the enemies in the final dungeon dropped. Even in a game where healing only with items is viable, I think it's better if they work differently. Like, maybe items are faster, making them better for emergency healing, but magic is the only way to heal multiple party members at once. I think a lot of games go too far to make healing magic too good too soon (the buyable healing items in most of the classic Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games become obsolete pretty quickly), but even if that isn't always the best thing for game balance, it's cool, you know? Magic is magic. It's supposed to be awesome and let you do things that non-magic users just can't do.

author=Red_Nova
What's the thief supposed to do? Steal their wounds?

...actually....
author=Marrend
Hrm. Lifedrain effects typically apply to the user of said effect, but, it might be interesting to play around with a lifedrain that effects outside that range.


I like the idea of a thief who heals their allies by sacrificing their own HP and heals themselves by stealing HP from enemies. They'd be like the Robin Hood of HP.
I’ve been playing with a class in my new game where the character punches the life force out of the enemy, which in turn heals the party.

I’m still testing it, but the idea is the class heals by inflicting as much damage as they can.

author=DungeonDevDude
I’ve been playing with a class in my new game where the character punches the life force out of the enemy, which in turn heals the party.

I’m still testing it, but the idea is the class heals by inflicting as much damage as they can.


The Paladin class in Angry Birds Epic had this skill. It was pretty great. Damage dealt would heal the entire party a % of the damage.
Paladin is a good point to bring up. If a Paladin is Warrior + Healer, there should be a Thief + Healer.

Reject Paladin and embrace the stealer/healer.
iddalai
RPG Maker 2k/2k3 for life, baby!!
1194
author=Red_Nova
For one thing, the idea that you need a dedicated party member just to heal feels like a waste of a member slot to me. Most RPGs already have items that can fulfil that purpose, and they can be used by anyone, not just white mages. Taking dedicated healers out of the party forces the player to think about which offensive unit should give up their action to use the item to heal themselves or the party, creating interesting micro choices throughout an entire dungeon crawl. If you're just hoarding your recovery items and instead using your white mage to heal, that costs MP that can only be restored via ether or other mp-restoring items. Either way, you're using items, so why not just skip the middleman and use the healing items instead? Ethers, from my experience, are generally rarer and more expensive than potions, so it's wild to me that white mages have somehow tricked players into consuming more ethers to restore a white mage's MP than using the healing items to restore HP.


I just wanted to reply to this part in specific because I don't have time for more today, sorry if anyone already brought these points up, I haven't read everything.

Most of these points make an assumption that the game is balanced in a certain way.

A White Mage is only a wasted party slot depending on how that class functions in that game.

What if it's a game where items don't heal enough to keep up with the damage? But I guess the issue here is that if you don't give White Mages anything else to do, they become boring to play with.

MP restoring items are only rare if you want them to be. But you can also play with that concept and make them rare and give the WM higher level healing spells that actually consume less MP than previous spells. A rarely used balancing method. Also, I never understood spellcasters consuming unreasonable amounts of MP, thus forbidding them from using their spells. Their purpose is to use spells! Let them do it. You can balance this in several ways while still making spells useful.

If you give WM more to do, then once again the player must decide between healing or something else. the WM can excel at destroying undead, if you make those undead extra spicy, then it may really become a hard choice. I'm sure healing items will still be used in this instance. And would give the WM the chance to shine in a mostly undead dungeon.

One interesting spell to give the WM is what I call "glow", a spell that when used in a party member will cause healing spells to heal it more. Specially interesting in boss battles due to all the choices this provides. I also refuse to give the WM a spell that causes "glow" in the whole party. Enemies can also use a "reverse-glow" that, you guessed it, causes healing to be less effective, and which only the WM can counter.

One additional point I'd like to bring up is that, sure you can make every battle a trial, but I feel that can make for a tiring game, so I only like to sprinkle some random "trial" battles among the "normal" random ones, to balance things, and obviously make every boss battle a trial as well. By trial, I mean strategic battles where you have to carefully consider your options and what to do.

If during every random battle I have to really consider what character should give up their action to heal, then it becomes tiresome for me, since all battles are hard and there's no resting period to keep the flow going. This for me is as problematic as a boring WM.
Kentona, some years ago (yes I do read this stuff and pay attention), mentioned something about having harder battles and easier battles, harder dungeons and easier dungeons. I agree with this because it gives the player the chance to feel stronger and notice an evolution, and allows them to rest before the next difficult challenge.

Unless I completely misunderstood this and you're only talking about FF1? In that case disregard my insane babbling.

In other news, I'm excited to see this kind of discussion again in RMN. I haven't been around much, so maybe this is common again. I dunno.
author=iddalai
Kentona, some years ago (yes I do read this stuff and pay attention), mentioned something about having harder battles and easier battles, harder dungeons and easier dungeons. I agree with this because it gives the player the chance to feel stronger and notice an evolution, and allows them to rest before the next difficult challenge.

I remember this now. From like 1000 years ago.

It was a thread on constant difficulty progression vs varied progression, and psychology of the feeling of accomplishment and validation garnered from a (relatively) easier difficulty progression, after overcoming a tough one.
I like to give healer classes bonuses to their healing so that having them heal others instead of others healing is the optimal play. I also like beefy healers who can either hit like a truck in specific situations or have the defense that makes things bounce.

I like to allow their weapons to do things to enemies, too. Like, if no-one needs a heal, why not whack an enemy with your staff, which has a chance to trip an enemy so that they miss a turn? Or apply stuff like poisons and damage-specific types to allies' weapons? Things that make them part of the strategy beyond just "heal the owies".

Also a fan of stacking things to make stuff better. So maybe you have a heal spell that also increases magical defense every time it's cast on the same person, or a heal that has regen for a few rounds after the initial casting, to top up and allow the healer to do something else.

I had one healer who had stacking heals - the first heal was just HP healing but using the spell again on the same person would add an MP regen for a few rounds, and another cast would then increase defences. Also, the first heal was lower amounts, but grew each cast. That way you've got a dedicated healer who focuses on healing but also gives reason to keep up the healing.

Then there's the drain-healers, or healers that use items. I had one healer who got to use one free item per turn, so they could dip into their equipped item stash to heal someone, then heal someone else that needed it or use some other ability.

IDK, I like healing classes. They can be fun if you mess around with them and consider what they can do with the other classes you're using. Like, a healer who can cast a heal spell that drawn the enemy's attention works well with a tank - that way the tank doesn't have to worry about drawing aggro themself by wasting a turn to yell or whatever, and instead can focus on doing other stuff instead. Or a healer who can apply bonuses to, say, crit rates or hit ability with their heal spell too. That's fun! It gives you a heal-buffer but in a way that doesn't mean you waste turns buffing up.

Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
I think I found the answer! I was going to respond to a lot of the good points that were brought up, but they've all given me so much to think about that responding to them all would take a novel. That's on me for not replying to this topic sooner. Oops.

I've been playing Etrian Odyssey Nexus, and I can point to the Arcanist class and say "Do this. This is cool!" Arcanist class is not a dedicated healer, but they can be built to both contribute to damage and supporting the party at the same time. See, the main function of the Arcanist is to drop one of a variety of magic Circles down on the field. At the end of each turn, the Circle will attempt to inflict a status ailment like paralysis or poison on all enemies and provide decent healing to the party until it wears out or is replaced by another Circle. For added flexibility, the Arcanist has skills that consume the Circle prematurely to either damage enemies or heal allies.

The Circle solution solves just about every problem I had with white mages listed in the original post. Not only will the Circle take care of healing automatically, but they can still contribute to the fight directly by applying status ailments and damaging enemies by consuming the circle if it isn't needed anymore. This extra step not only requires just enough thought from the player to keep them from falling into a monotonous slog without requiring battles to be overly challenging, but gives the class breathing room to have more utility in battle without sacrificing their role as the healer. In my mind, this makes the healer architype an interesting and fun class to use.

In addition to the Arcanist, there are a surprising number of classes in Nexus that can perform healing as a sub function without sacrificing their primary roles. I picked out Arcanist specifically because it's the next closest thing to a white mage other than the actual white mage class, but I highly recommend looking at Etrian Odyssey Nexus in general because there is a lot of cool ideas condensed into one game.
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