There's a discussion on the main forum right now about possible alternatives:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/13098-dev1024-healing-magic
I was reading through it earlier in the week and most of the ideas are based around either better damage mitigation or better Regen spells (higher tier Regen or a healing type of Helix spell). Whilst reading it, I had an idea based on an ability from Guild Wars called Reversal of Fortune and posted it up on a whim, not really expecting a response. I've gotten 2; admittedly not a huge amount of feedback, but I thought I'd put the idea up here to help try and stimulate the discussion on what we can do to become useful healers again (since let's face it, SE have stonewalled us on Cure V, so I'm not expecting us to get it any time soon).
Drusenija wrote:
Scroll of Reversal
Scholar Lv.?? (>= 50 to make it a SCH main only spell)
Teaches the White Magic Reversal.
Absorbs the next attack on target party
member as HP. Amount absorbed is greatly
affected by the weather.
I put up some data on the official forum (it's on page 5 if you're interested) on cast/recast timers, MP cost, etc, but I'll leave them out here as they weren't based off anything in particular (well, they were loosely based on Cure V ^^)
The basic concept is you cast a buff on a party member that lasts for a set duration (30 seconds for example). That buff will absorb the next attack that party member receives, and convert it into HP, up to a capped amount that can be increased if the element of the attack corresponds to the weather effect that was on the Scholar at the time they cast the spell.
To avoid the spell being wasted on basic attacks, you could either:
(a) Set it so the spell only procs when the attack is over a certain percentage/value of HP
(b) Set it so the spell only triggers on elemental based damage (so TP moves and spells) - this fits in better with the weather aspect
It fits in with the concept of Scholar being a tactician, because you'd need to anticipate the attack in advance to cast the spell, and you'd need to ensure the right storm spell was active at the time to maximize the amount of HP returned by the spell.
If the spell was a reasonably low recast (doesn't need to necessarily be low cast time, but shouldn't be too long), then this would remove the need for a higher tier Cure spell, since when used correctly, you could effectively block 1k+ of damage, with the added benefit of converting a percentage of that back into HP for the party member.
I added a second idea today as well, which links in to Reversal:
Drusenija wrote:
Following on from our Sublimation concept, why not add in a new job ability? Let's call it "Sanguinem" (Latin for bleeding). Like Sublimation, it drains x/tic HP from you and stores it in a pool (to make it actually viable as an ability, you'd probably need it storing y:1 in the pool for each tic taken, much like Sublimation grants 3:1 MP:HP; if you had a 20:1 ratio, then you'd store 400hp per minute, which is roughly equivalent of 1 Cure IV every minute, hardly game breaking). It would need to stack with Sublimation though (this is where Regen spells are useful ^^)
I'm going to link this to my Reversal idea. When Reversal is cast on a target party member whilst the Scholar is under the effect of Sanguinem, any stored HP is immediately granted to the target party member and the effect of Sanguinem is removed from the Scholar. So essentially it turn Reversal into an immediate Cure spell (whose potency is affected by the amount of time the Scholar was under the effect of Sanguinem), plus has the benefits of Reversal.
If Cure V is completely off the table, what do you think we need to become viable healers (not the best obviously, but at least an option!)