Help SE with new mechanics for WHM!

[LeoLupinos]

It seems that SE is running out of creativity for WHM.
So, I came here to incentivate players to create new mechanics for WHM abilities.
I will post mine here as a example.

So, that's it. Think of something unique for the class and share with us! <3 <3
Let's have fun

[LeoLupinos]

Crystallized Mana:

Every healing skill that exceeds the maximum Hp of the healed target has a chance of falling to the ground as a crystallized mana. When a member of the group, other than the original player from which the crystallized mana has fallen, walks over it, it got heals, or shield, or buff, or grants stack for something to the WHM, or recovers MP for the WHM, gives Reflect bla bla.

Only 3~5(more each new high lvl trait) crystallized mana can remain active at the same time, up to a maximum of 25-y distance from the WHM. (Think of Ramuh Extreme Orbs, but smaller ratio)

everytime crystallized mana effect is triggered and the maximum amount of crystallized mana on the ground is reached, then they start to change into crystallized orb, wich trigger stronger mechanic, bla bla...

With it, we can create a lot of skills, as: WHM can explode all the crystallized manas in a regeneration field, or do AoE damage, or AoE drain for Hp or MP, or gives 200~ potency reflect...

[Reiryuu]

New Gauge: Elemental Balance.

Disclaimer-- I'm not sure how it'd work with ability numbers or anything, but it's idea that I had so...


This gauge keeps track of the last 6 spells you cast and the elements (earth, air, water) of them. For example's sake: earth is self explanatory, air would be aero/medica/etc. Water would be fluid aura, cure, etc.

While this gauge is balanced, spells like Holy and Benediction are enhanced. It's when you break the balance per se, where you enter a risk/reward system.

Whenever your gauge registers 3 or more of a particular element, the balance of spells is disturbed and several things happen:
1) your party receives a buff.
2) you receive a debuff/curse.
3) in exchange for this curse, you are able to quell the elements to unleash a powerful spell or ability.

Wrath of Wind:
1) The entire party receives an Enaero effect adding an extra wind-elemental potency to each of their attacks and weaponskills
2) WHM is unable to cast any single target cure abilities that fall under water spells, takes considerable damage over time (and has an infirmity debuff on them reducing healing received)
3) WHM can quell the elementals to unleash Tornado (GTAoE) or White Wind (HP regen + tp refresh)

Sloth of Stone
1) Damage taken by party reduced for duration
2) Casting time for the whm is considerably increased. Cannot cast Wind-elemental spells, WHM is rooted/bound in place
3) WHM can unleash to cast Earthquake or an enhanced version of Stoneskin II which we lost >

Rampaging Rapids
1) TP and MP costs of all your party members are halved for the duration.
2) MP costs of whm skills are increased, movement speed reduced, cannot cast stone-based abilities.
3) WHM can unleash Flood or Bubbling Springs - a water "bubble" that bursts and heals the target HP, MP and TP when damage is taken.

Whenever these 3 effects are up, the WHM is also unable to cast Holy or Benediction. The idea behind them is risk/reward- You don't want to go into these states too often unless you know you can deal with the concequences.

[Acidblood]

Take 3.x WHM (so drop any rubbish they have added for 4.0) and ....
1. Prunning:
- Drop Stone III, making Stone II higher potency instead. (Leave heavy on Stone).
- Drop Fluid Aura (knockback spell), and Repose (sleep spell); does anyone honestly use these? (PvP has it own ability set now).
- Aeroes, etc. and moving certain things into cross-role are up for choice (though I would keep Divine Seal as WHM 'only', see below).
2. Improvements:
- Lower recast of Tetragrammton to 40s.
- Make Protect WHM exclusive, averaging about 3% 'always on' mitigation. (Doesn't quite equal 10% at critical times, but better than nothing).
3. New abilties:
- 'Over Heal': Your next heal spell applies 70% of it's over healing as temporary extra hitpoints to the target. (This is basically WHM answer to shields).
- 'Share the love': Spreads most buffs (Divine Seal, Presence of Mind, Adlo, Balance, etc.) currently on the WHM to nearby party members. (This is basically WHM answer to utility). Edit: This would be balanced by having a long cooldown tied to the buffs that were shared: e.g. share Divine Seal = 60s CD, share Adlo = 120s CD (same as deploy tactics), share Adlo+DS = 120+(60/2) = 150s CD, share PoM+Adlo+DS = 150+(120/2)+(60/3) = 230s CD, i.e. more power buff = longer cooldown, but each additional buff shared (in cooldown time order) contributes a bit less to the overall cooldown.
4. Healer Cross-Roles:
- Come up with something inventive (i.e. don't just take everything off WHM and call it day), with the primary criteria that any cross-role ability should be nice to have, but never mandatory.

Done.

Edit: My primary reasoning for these improvements are that more important than being a 'pure healer', WHM should be the 'simple healer' (i.e. no stacks, and FFS no RNG). These improvements also directly address the two pain points of WHM as it currently stands, namely mitigation and utility, and do so by offering unique abilities to WHM that don't directly step on the other healers toes, and in some cases even make the other healers indirectly more powerful when combined with a WHM (i.e. Shared Divine Seal, another way to deplay Adlo, and instead of simple AoE Balance, cast Balance on the WHM and have them share it to the rest of the party).

[Shurrikhan]

I've included my reasoning for each suggestion, and the prior text tends to greatly outnumber the latter. At the end of each discussion the suggestion itself I will post the suggestion itself in brief form as a tl;dr.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

While I feel like a take on the "pure healer" is aesthetically possible, it is in any practical sense a contradiction. The stronger a healer's heals, the less time they ought to spend healing. If this is not the case, that added power is wasted after reaching the content-appropriate gear level, leaving only the opportunity cost of forgone competing utilities from SCH and AST. Either the "pure healer" can spend more time DPSing though stronger healing (see below), or it can provide some sort of additional effective (non-capped) throughput benefit to heals cast.

In either case, it seems likely to me that to not overpower the White Mage, this base healing enhancement must be less incremental, or more analog, than can be acquired through fixed potencies. Even if raw potencies are increased, there is a huge breadth of time in which the final GCD spent simply overheals before a given GCD can actually be spared. That leaves us with two options: (1) dynamic heals (e.g. variable mana cost for variable healing as not to overheal), or (2) a mechanical use for overhealing.

I personally prefer the latter, especially as it may potentially give a viable option for spending more than a minimal number of GCDs on healing (given sufficient mana to avoid Cure I when direct Spell healing is actually needed).

To put it another way, a mechanic use for overhealing could allow the would-be waste between excessive healing on a final GCD of topping someone off (or returning them to survivable HP) and a trimmed GCD to take a cumulative effect. Even if it doesn't see use immediately after that series of heals has completed, it will in time, awarding a GCD of spared time without requiring a massive increase in per-GCD healing and no longer plateauing (in the long-term) against specific instances of damage.

For now I'm unsure of what exact formula would best suit this purpose, how long a duration it would need in order to meet that promise of allowing a trimmed GCD both in healing intensive and nonintensive situations (the latter requiring a longer duration), or what kind of fall-off would be balanced, but I believe the overheal mechanic is both necessary and fitting.

So, the first thing we need:

an Overheal Mechanic

(details TBD)
____________________________________________________________________________________________

The next most crucial change would be to free WHM of ineffective RNG mechanics and provide more even mana efficiency inside and (newly) outside heal-intensive scenarios (or rather, those that require Cure I/II spams). This imbalance has only worsened with the 4.x changes. This is where, again, the "pure healer" fantasy takes on two faces. Either anything can provide increased healing, giving consumable ramp-up or resource to WHM heals, or healing should provide increased efficiency to everything else. In the first cast, healing itself is stronger, fitting the idea of a heal specialist. In the second, healing is more frequent, fitting the idea of a job centered on healing (GCDs).

Tabling which of two is more appropriate for now, it's also worth considering how WHM procs work presently. Our three remaining 20% chance procs (Freecure, Overcure, Enhanced Medica — Esuna free-cast chance removed) are all about mana sustain. It would therefore stand to reason then that our base potencies already have any competing (proc) bonuses wrapped into them, at cost to mana efficiency (which is then balanced by our procs), however, the potencies are not currently high enough compared to its competing healers' to warrant this conclusion. In HW, WHM mana efficiency over time, especially during frequent DPS, fell slightly behind that of AST, even if Assize was used on cooldown. This is largely due to part of its mana sustain being allotted to skills that are inherently inefficient for combined throughput (raid DPS and survival — which is further indirect raid DPS) over time, Cure I and Cure II. While Stormblood has leveled the difference between Luminiferous Aether, Energy Drain casts over time, and Shroud of Saints, and still has Assize to boot, thereby forgoing most mana concerns, this toolkit contradiction has only deepened with further dependence on Cure I and II through the Lily and Confessions mechanics. While that may not be problematic from a throughput standpoint, so long as the job is in someway overbalanced to compensate that its being pushed towards a non-optimal playstyle, it is still frustrating from a design standpoint. It reeks.

And that's not just because of the contradiction. RNG has been mentioned time and time again as being a relatively bad fit for the healer role. I would argue that this depends on the exact proc rates, proc buff durations, and exact windows of play likely at the time of the given proc, but as a rule of thumb I have to agree. Healing, especially in XIV, is about learning and then matching known patterns. While RNG can help prepare for a given upcoming instance of damage on a healer for which the procs actually effect output (like AST's Benefic II auto-crit or a Crit-Adlo), this is rarely an engaging aspect when determining only sustain, and whether for sustain or burst I would argue that engaging gameplay when building or preparing for known or predicted danger sides with control more so than chance.

So how do we go about replacing or mitigating the RNG, in a way that still aids sustain more so than burst as to allow higher base potencies (thereby granting that "pure healer" reliability (see interpretation #67 of the term "pure healer")), but is more engaging than the current system of procs?

There are a few ways possible. In part, this is already rolled into the above change, by granting increased effectiveness, not quite as burst, to (over)healing. Another few options would include:

• Give incremental advantages in place of all-or-nothing procs.

  For instance, each Cure would reduce the MP cost of the next Cure II by a portion of the Cure's cost. This mana cost reduction would stack but also fade over time. Casts that have a chance to refund a portion of their own cost (e.g. Enhanced Medica) could be simplified into a reduced base mana cost. The latter is less than necessary, as it would be rare to lose throughput over time or any given burst window. In short, while this would be more reliable, it wouldn't be any more interesting.

• Use a normative proc rate, the maximal rate of which greatly exceeds the "average" (listed) proc rate, and which quickly regenerates, advantaging both infrequent and intensive casting periods.

  Normative procs tend to trigger with a seemingly abnormally high frequency after periods of inaction and/or non-procs. So long as a player has not benefited from a given proc in x time, the % chance of said proc increases over time (and/or the triggering action's failure to proc). Though the chance may quickly fall to the listed rate, or even beneath it after a series of procs, this tends to most benefit periods of infrequent (if [greatly] regenerating over time) or intensive casting (regenerating [greatly] per failure, either extreme. Especially if these utilities were left to Cure I and II itself, which are skills that should only be used infrequently except in intensive scenarios, this should improve throughput and reliability. The mechanical calculations can also be tuned in a number of ways to allow for greater synergy with other skills, etc.

• All casts generate additional, spendable resources.

  These can be either by-element or universal. I'd personally prefer the by-element version, as it lends itself more to the idea of a tactical, decisive-but-fluid, versatile take on the WHM that takes full advantage of its Conjurer roots, but a universal system would actually better fit the idea of a cut-out, stereotypical "pure healer".
  
  The elemental resources is an idea I've played around with since 1.x, but it seems I'm not alone in wanting to make something out of the elemental alignments of the WHM (see above, for instance). What this would look like in my case is that the every Wind, Water, and Earth element cast would generate a related resource, which provides passive bonuses, some of which may consume resource, and allows the use of resource-consuming "Release" skills.
  
  The Wind resource, Whispers of Wind, for instance, generated through the use of Aero, Aero II, and Aero III, could allow you to complete any spell instantly that would normally be interrupted by damage or movement, at resource cost. Alternatively, it can be spent on a channeled oGCD skill which ranks up based on total resource. The total potency output possible over the channel builds linearly, but its functionality increases in tiers, from Gust (single-target) to Gale (AoE). All first forms and some second forms have a self-cast, an allied-cast, and an enemy-cast form.
  
  Gust: Channel the power of wind in order to affect the movement speed and/or attack rate of your self, an ally, or an enemy, while dealing damage and healing to surrounding allies and enemies.
  
  On Ally: Channels wind through your ally, increasing their movement speed by 40% and attack speed by 15% for .3 seconds, stacking, for every .1 second channeled. Once the original duration has ended, the effect will fade over 3 seconds (e.g. 15% bonus attack speed at 0s, 10% at 1s, 5% at 2s, 0% at 3s seconds), and dealing up to 100 potency healing and/or 50 potency damage per second, split among nearby allies and enemies, prioritizing those with lowest HP. Application speed is reduced by 33% if moving.
  On Self: Channels wind through yourself. While active, you will move with 50% increased speed and heal for 200 potency or deal damage for 100 potency, split among all enemies and allies within 12 yalms, prioritizing those with lowest HP. You may cast abilities through Gust, but casting a spell will cancel the channel.
  On Enemy: Channels wind onto the target enemy, causing it to move with 50% decreased speed, and attack at 15% reduced speed for .3 seconds, stacking, for every .1 second channeled. Once the original duration has ended, the effect will fade over 3 seconds (e.g. 15% bonus attack speed at 0s, 10% at 1s, 5% at 2s, 0% at 3s seconds), and dealing up to 100 potency healing and/or 50 potency damage per second, split among your nearby allies and other enemies, prioritizing those with lowest HP. Application speed is reduced by 33% if moving.
  
  NOTE: This should read that the healing and damage-dealing draw from the same potency per second pool. I will correct the wording later, and will adjust numbers as needed to make up for the loss of casting uptime.

After that we move onto Gale, an AoE support function that, depending on the number of players affected, burns through resource much faster. If the party cannot make even use of the bonuses, it is generally better to spend Whispers of Wind of Gust instead.

Gale: <To be continued>

(Earth uses Rigor of Earth, which empowers spells by causing the Overheal mechanic or status effect debuffs to last longer on allies and enemies respectively and uses the Releases, Harden and Polylith (?).
Water (the Cure spells) builds Fluid Self, which can absorb potential spell damage and status effects on the WHM's behalf and uses the Releases Fluid Aura and Sacred Fount. Fluid Aura is now an AoE knock-back and severe Heavy when self-cast, a debuff-transfer, damage, and Heavy when cast on an enemy, and an oGCD cleanse when cast on an ally. Sacred Fount creates a proximity and %HP-based healing turret of sorts for as long as you channel, while making you immune to knock-backs, draw-ins and most status effects.)

_________________________________

To be continued... Jeesh this got out of hand...

[Brae]

I already posted this in a GD thread, but i think in a healer subforum, my thoughts are easier to follow and other healers can correct me better if I made any mistakes.

Secrets of the Lily I:
25% Chance on each Cure I or II cast to obtain a lily
Obtain a Lily every time a Regen ticks critically
Rest of the trait unchanged

This change should allow the Whitemage to build up lilys more reliably while no longer forcing him to spam cure 1 or 2 to make use of his new system

Replacement for the lv 40 Job skill: Enduring Regeneration (trait)
Casting Cure on a target increases the remaining duration of Regen on that target by 2 second
Casting Cure II on a target increases the remaining duration of Regen on that Target by 3 seconds

This trait adds more flow to generating healing lilys and gives the WHM more time to help with dps (and replaces the Divine Seal we lost, RiP our lord and savior)

Replacement for SotL II: Secrets of the Rose I (trait)
Everytime one of your Wind dots ticks critically on a target, you obtain a Wind rose (up to 3)
You can only obtain one wind Rose every 5 sceonds
On 3 wind roses, you can cast Wind Petal, a ogcd 200 Pot. Skill.

Instead of flat reducing the cast time of assize to spam it, weaving in damage spells (at least Dots) into your rotation should be rewarded. This trait would also add to the WHM philosophy. The WHM doesnt increases the partys Damage, he brings the damage himself.
On the Job UI, this trait would be a mirrored Version of the current UI added to the lilys, but with green flowers. (Lack of Photoshop/Paint skills doesnt allow visual demonstration)

Alone these 3 tweaks would fix WHM to a level where he can really compete with AST and SCH and make him a lot more flexible in Dungeon and Raid

I know this would force WHM to stack crit, but these traits could also be rewritten to match a more general Idea

Additional thoughts and ideas:

Plenary indulgence
When Plenary Indulgence hits a Target without a confession stack, that target gains a confession stack

Since PI is pretty much nothing else than an additional tetra on the tank available every 15 seconds, this little change would also include a bit of tactics in the WHM gameplay. (Even though this change could replace medica if I messed up here, that’s why its under additional stuff)

A Trait called „Tears of the Amdapori“
Everytime one type of your flowers reaches 3 Stacks, you obtain one (of five) petals of the Lunar Tear
When the Lunar Tear is complete, you can use either decay of the Amdapori or Mercy of the Amdapori.
When the lunar tear blooms, your potencies are increased by 5%. The lunar tear fades after 15 seconds.

Decay of the Amdapori
Increases the targets damage taken by 5% for 10 seconds (2min CD)

Mercy of the Amdapori
The next time the targeted ally would die, he is revived with 50% HP and MP. The target still loses its enmity, but doesnt gain a Weakness stack.
This Effect lasts 10 seconds with a 30 second cooldown.

These 4 Ideas would fit if the Goal would be to bring more utility to WHM. The basic idea would be that the WHM doesnt use all of his lunar tears, but combines them with Cleric to generate damage spikes on his own. All 2 mins, he adds a bit to boss damage, and is also able to save Party members from being weakened.
The UI for this trait would be located on top of the WHM Job UI.
And yes, the Lunar Tear was straight up stolen from NieR Automata.

[CranberryPuffCake]

I feel the Lilies should be used for something entirely different. Something to work towards. I came up with the idea of the WHM creating a stone statue of itself and placing it in the raid. This statue would then act as an extension of the WHM providing proximity based heals to the raid. The statue would switch from providing heals depending on what active buff the WHM activates. Shroud of Saints will provide MP regen to party members in range. Divine Seal with provide shields. Presence of Mind will speed up weaponskill and spellskill times to those in range. Cleric Stance will provide a DPS buff to those in range. The WHM could sacrifice the statue with three stacks of lilies with differing affects again depending on the active buff. Cleric Stance? AoE damage. Divine Seal? Strong AoE shield. Shroud of Saints? Large MP regen to selected target. It's not entirely thought out and I'm sure some of these ideas could definitely tweaked...

[AlphaSonic]

Remember that we sacrificed a new healer for "Healer Balance". They should start doing their job.

[Airget]

Toughest thing about WHM, is they want the focus on healing. So if one were to say, let Stone and Aero be part of the gimmick, then it means SE is encouraging them to DPS. As much as I'd like to suggest they use Wind/Earth in some way it can't be in an Offense way. However as I said this, something came to mind and it's something we've seen in a lot of abilities from other jobs. Abilities being upgraded to other abilities temporarily when certain requirements are meant. So imagine if it was as simple as this. 1 Lilly=Single Target, only 1 Lilly is used at a time when you activate "Elemental Presence" -Converts certain abilities which require Lille's to use, can't be used if you have no Lille's and only one ability can be used- Potentially put it on a 15/30 second timer so that it can't be spammed and do the following.

So 3 Lille's max, when you have 1/2 it's a single target but when you have 3 it forces AOE. Overall you would be more inclined to use the AOE of these abilities but there may be situations or emergencies in which you want to use the single target version on a specific player.

So as it stands we have Stone, Aero, AOE Aero, Fluid Aura and Holy as spells that only' do dmg with nothing else attached to them.

Holy=Divine Grace *Removes 1 stage of weakness from player but inflicts them with "Divine Fatigue" making them inapplicable for Divine Grace for the next 5 minutes.

A WHM ability that can be used in combo with Raise to get a player right back on their feet with I believe decent restriction to make the balance just right. If you want to add more restrictions to it maybe make 3 lille's only and only targets 1 person but I think 1 person 1 lille AOE with 3 lille's works in this situation without being OP because of the 5 min Fatigue to use it on the same player again.

Stone=New Stoneskin. Stone IV becomes Stoneskin with 1 lille you can target 1 preson, with 3 lille's you can make it AOE.

Aero(Single Target) =Haste, Single Target or AOE lower potency skill/ability recast decrease on target

Aero(AOE)=Haste Barrier, Self Target barrier which immoblizes healer for a set period of time, the more lille's the longer the duration

Or something to this extent, if SE wants healer's to focus on healer, then give them abilities that replace their damage spells when certain requirements are meant, when it comes to WHM. Since they do need some form of buffing like SCH or AST.

[Omnia]

Lilly should not be RNG. Allow to be passive: (ie Lilly count 1/2/3 = 10%/20%/30%) increased heal (expended ONLY by one of the "new" skills). Confessions stacks should be permanent- and drops off when out of combat. If it MUST be RNG- then Proc Lilly from Regens/Medica at 10% if not 100% through direct heals. Anything but spell-speed though. AST just throws Spell-Speed away all day. no logic as the main tool of WHM

If all else fails....copy/paste from WoW.
WHM can have some Chains heals like Shaman- with a rework of Plenary Indulgence. They can adjust Confession to act like Priests Prayer Mending or even Atonement from Discipline Priests in World of Warcraft- dealing damage by healing or vice-versa.