WHM's current problems, and how to solve them

[Annalise]

[*]Give WHM more (functional!) Barstatus spells, Bardispelra at the least. Remember that one of the factors behind Embrava dependence is that it is the only performance buff that can't be dispelled.

Not entirely true, aside from the mentioned light/dark arts. If the monster casts Kaustra (e.g. Diabolos Mega Boss in Dynamis -Tavnazia) it will overwrite Embrava and the effect will be gone. While not technically 'dispelled', the buff is still removed.

I totally agree. We should get banish V at least, and the damage when cast on undeads (and maybe demons too?) should nearly be up there with what blm can do on normal mobs with their equally tiered elemental nukes. Holy and Holy 2 does get boosted by afflatuses, but the damage is really terrible even with that, compared to the MP it uses. I think they should have a damage potential of about 80% of AM and AM2, up to maybe 100% with max afflatus bonuses. If the quick cast is an issue, extend the casting time to let it be more comparable with AM and AM2 instead.

Why is this not overpowered? Even with the same base damage ratings, BLM has access to a more nuking gear, has native MAB traits, can do their maximum damage from spells on a much greater variety of mobs (the only place where WHM would have a chance of getting close would be on undeads), and on top of that, they can rotate between different elements within the same tier when waiting for spell cooldowns to go away (although this isn't as relevant anymore when they implement the planned cast time changes).

In short, giving this to whm would not make them a go-to job for when you need magic damage. blm and sch would still outperform it in that department, so there's no reason why they shouldn't be allowed to get some nuking love.

I believe back in the day, Holy used to be a lot stronger than it used to be. White mages spammed it a lot, and it got nerfed. I'd have to dig up the info to find it... but this may be long forgotten anyways. There used to be a LOT of weird stuff (e.g. charmed mobs on BST could uncharm if hit with a critical, paladins used to sub BST and charm beastmen in experience parties because it was far more hate than provoke, etc.)

[Stan64]

Since someone told me stal is the way to go to avoid blinking I tried it out, and now I used it for a while. Even though it's handy and you avoid blinking it raises a couple of other problems.

1. You can't see on your screen where your target is. There is no arrow above the player so if you need to find someone fast to cure him I hope you know exactly where he went. Is he on the other side of the boss and you need to go closer? Or is he back at the entrance and you are just wasting your time? Good luck and have fun.

2. You can target people who aren't really close. They can be anywhere in the zone and out of healing distance and you still can select them thinking that maybe you are just on cool down and try to cure a couple of times until the lagging battle log shows you that he isn't even close. You lost time and neglected someone else who maybe died in the process.

3. If you need to rotate parties or stand outside of party to heal all your macros are shit. Easily solved by having a identical macro set with <t>. But hey, really?

It still is better though, but without blinking there would be no problems at all.

[Dekusuta]

Can't have everything being asked as SE is unlikely to give us everything. If we get Banish buffed, our healing will definately suffer.

If you we Afflatus Misery Buffed, healing will also suffer. Misery IMHO is a good stance for the DD WHM to be on. The Auspice buff is useful.

I'd much rather we get spells/abilities that are complementary to our healing instead of more toys. Cautionary tale here is Red Mages. Once an indispensible job, it was hijacked by DD Red Mages asking for DD centric Job abilities. SE gave it to them to the detriment of their enfeebling. And now, Geomancer is getting all the new enfeebles.

I'm not sure if the -ra spells can be fixed so that the WHM doesn't have to rush it. SE seems to have decided it is part of our job description to do so, given the buff provided to Cura with Misery active.

But I absolutely agree that the Barstatus buffs needs to be revised so that the connection between having the spell active and resists/partial resists is more clear.

As a WHM, a big problem with our spells is DDs won't notice them half the time or what we're doing won't be obvious.

[Demon6324236]

I'd much rather we get spells/abilities that are complementary to our healing instead of more toys. Cautionary tale here is Red Mages. Once an indispensible job, it was hijacked by DD Red Mages asking for DD centric Job abilities. SE gave it to them to the detriment of their enfeebling. And now, Geomancer is getting all the new enfeebles.

You do realize that the only melee focused Job Ability we have ever gotten on RDM was Composure right? Besides that there is Temper but it came after RDM died out, where melee is a part of the job and we simply asked them to support it a bit more. As for meleeing on WHM, I personally thing WHM can melee fine right now, its not a better DD than most jobs, its one of the worst, but its the healer, fighting is a side activity, not a priority, so it shouldn't be expected to be amazing.

[Dekusuta]

You do realize that the only melee focused Job Ability we have ever gotten on RDM was Composure right? Besides that there is Temper but it came after RDM died out, where melee is a part of the job and we simply asked them to support it a bit more. As for meleeing on WHM, I personally thing WHM can melee fine right now, its not a better DD than most jobs, its one of the worst, but its the healer, fighting is a side activity, not a priority, so it shouldn't be expected to be amazing.

Composure, tier2 enspells, Temper. Imagine if Temper was instead a major enfeeble class of spells and caused a Terror effect, or amnesiased NMs. RDM would be significantly more relevant for end-game content.

But yeah, this was 06/07 right around Aht Urghan and right before WotG, before Blus came into their own as the true melee mage, before Abyssea and before FFXI Forums was a thing and SE was still sort of sanctioning Allakhazam's forums plus a few others as semi-official places to get feedback.

There was definately a push by a hardcore of Red Mage players then for DD abilities. I pointed it out then it would be better to have enfeebling spells, but was karma bombed for it.

Glad RDM wasn't my main. I do still greatly enjoy the job tho, for its versatility.