#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

I get your point fine you just don’t really have a point. You have no evidence I don’t know how to play or don’t jive with WHM other than you like it and I don’t so I obviously don’t know how to play it (even though I never accused either of you of not knowing how to play AST when you didn’t jive with it) and the only point you have that it’s not underpowered is it kinda had a niche in kefka style fights which we haven’t had in 7 years

As the game stands right now WHM really doesn’t have a gameplay niche, the fact it doesn’t have a niche makes it feel week in my eyes because whenever I play it all I feel is I could be achieving more on any other healer which is why it feels like a void of a class pick

If a class is badly designed to the modern games need its badly designed, just because it was kinda sorta good 10 years ago is meaningless

The issue is more clear if we use solid evidence like potency/MP cost numbers, so let's talk numbers. WHM has Cure3, 600p. But thanks to SE's genius design decisions for DT, Seraphism allows a SCH to, in an emergency, give out 100p of regen per 3sec for its duration, and also throw out EmergencyTactics-Accession, 240p with 180% shield. That's 672p per GCD in total (not including the regen). Additionally, Accession is 1000 900mp per cast, I forgot they changed it, while Cure3 is 1500mp. But, WHM gets 2 charges of Thin Air, so to break even with each other, the two have to each spend 5 total GCDs on their respective action, to end up both spending 4500MP. The other problem, though, is that WHM can ONLY use healing via Cure3. SCH can, if it sees there's a small amount of HP to heal and no barrier applied, elect to not use ET, and instead heal less, but also apply the 180% shield as, well, a shield, reducing overheal and therefore how 'wasteful' the GCD is. Additionally, the SCH has a variety of actions that reduce the incoming damage in the first place, to make it easier to deal with the incoming damage. Effectively, in an emergency, a SCH can simply decide 'I'm the WHM now' and throw out Cure3s, for less MP cost, with higher range, and they're instantcast so even if you have to move it does not affect the SCH like it would the WHM. Yes, it's once per 3min, but it's pretty safe to hold onto Seraphism for an actual emergency, because SCH has so many other actions that it can use to deal with other things.

Every expansion, it feels like SE has taken from WHM and given to other healers. WHM got Benison in SB? Better give AST a version in SHB (Celestial Intersection). WHM has a % increase to healing via Divine Seal? Better take it away in SB, then give it back as Role Action Largesse, then take it away and give it back as Temperance, and also give Neutral Sect to AST, and now Seraphism/Philosophia have a 20% boost attached too. WHM has good MP economy via Thin Air? Now it's only active for one GCD instead of 12s of duration, also, make it so SCH has a MP-free healing GCD cast every 60s if they so choose via Recitation (which also makes their barrier stronger)

The job has throughput, but it lacks a lot of versatility, IMO, when it comes to 'how to deal with X situation'. Just changing Liturgy of the Overheal to be 3 stacks instead of 5, have no early-detonation penalty, and a 90s CD instead of 180, would add an incredible amount of versatility to the job IMO, changing it from a 'once per 3mins, 1000-2000p' tool, to a guaranteed 1200p every time, every 90s if you so choose. That'd give that tool, at least, a niche of its own (versus its competition, Macrocosmos): the niches of 'it's up twice as often', and 'it's not reliant on anything to scale its output, it's consistently 1200p of healing'. Another suggestion would be to mirror SCH/SGE's access to purehealing via Indom/Ixochole, and give WHM a Lily Spender that applies a (weaker than SCH/SGE GCDs) barrier, but SE seems deathly allergic to the idea of giving WHM an on-demand GCD barrier back ever since they removed Stoneskin

The issue, IMO, isn't necessarily 'WHM offers literally nothing', because it clearly does. Simplicity, ease-of-use, it doesn't break my creaky hands if I use it for prog, etc. The issue is 'whatever WHM can do, other healers offer just as much, if not more'. SGE is also simple and easy to use. All three of the other healers (now that AST has been slowed down to a crawl) have low enough APM to not cause physical discomfort over long durations of progression. And because healing (specifically, the 'restore ally HP' part of the healing duties) is binary, 'you either have enough or you don't', the other healers (mainly AST, since it's the other Pure Healer) HAVE to have enough healing to keep up with WHM. So WHM's supposed 'niche' gets encroached on more and more, like someone getting painted into a corner of a room.

Even the latest additions to AST and WHM, Sun Sign and Divine Aura, I'd say Sun Sign is the better of the two and it's really not even close. Because 15% scales with how much damage the enemy is dealing to you, but a flat 400p barrier scales only with your gear, and the 1000p total regen (???) afterwards is... overkill, considering the whole deal with WHM is 'it has strong HPS throughput' apparently. There's a point where the job had 'enough' and the devs should have focused on giving it something else, but they didn't and now its niche is 'it's really good at overhealing'. Personally, I'd rather have had Divine Aura as a separate action from Temperance, so I can stagger their uses more, instead of one being gated behind the other

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Originally Posted by Lorika

It can dish the biggest raw and direct healing of all the Healer without using a single MP (Benediction + 2 Tetagramaton + 3 aflatus solace + 2 thin air while being under Asylum + Temperance).

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The fact that we have to twist the comparisons with metrics like 'without spending any MP', rather than metrics that actually see use in our gameplay like 'without losing any damage to a non-refunded GCD', shows how weak the WHM's place in the game is. I would love to see SE implement ways to incentivize Pure Healing more as a gameplay element, and leverage the throughput WHM has access to. But this game is designed around mitigation, and since WHM has very little, we have to accept that it's struggling to find a place in the current gameplay design. WHM is not bad. It's just 'not as well suited to the design of the game as the others'. Someone has to be the weakest of the bunch, that's how comparisons work. It's just unfortunate that it keeps ending up being WHM.

I'd like to think there's some hope, though. PLD's sustained damage profile, via Goring Blade DOT, didn't mesh well with the design of the game, leading to it being 'underpowered'. It was like, behind by so little in Abyssos, simple potency adjustments would have sorted the problem out. Crit variance probably contributed more to the problem than the design of the job. But it got reworked in 6.3 to be more burst oriented. So we can see, if a job isn't fitting well with the design of the game, SE reworks it. Unless that job is WHM, in which case, they do not. 'PLD struggles against DOTs', Sheltron is reworked. 'WHM struggles against literally anything that requires raidwide mitigation be applied, because it has only one option for it'? Eh, give it a second mitigation tool, which is tied to, and requires, the use of their only other mitigation tool, it's bizarre

But hey, at least the WHM can dash across the arena? AST can't do that yet, but as we can see from PVP, it's only a matter of time before that particular WHM 'niche cool thing' is also given out to other healers

Also while we're at it, can SE please fix the sudden 'snap to ground' in the Medica 3 animation

Honestly? If a group ever needs raw healing, subbing in a SGE instead of a WHM probably would've been better too considering that space laser mage, for whatever reason vomits HPS like crazy they just can't help but to top the HPS chart no matter what they do. To add insult to the injury, they also bring a wealth of extra, very accessible mitigations without accounting E.Prog in case their partner is a SCH - something that WHM also lacks.

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

This sounds weirdly similar to what I said of RDM/SMN's balancing in EW. Dumbing it down in ShB made healer dps seem too easy to do compared to tanks, so instead of returning the damaging tools they just lowered healer damage output.

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Rather than lowered, IMHO they ignored that front while increasing the tank's. Then again, hey: same differences xD

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

As the game stands right now WHM really doesn’t have a gameplay niche, the fact it doesn’t have a niche makes it feel week in my eyes because whenever I play it all I feel is I could be achieving more on any other healer which is why it feels like a void of a class pick

If a class is badly designed to the modern games need its badly designed, just because it was kinda sorta good 10 years ago is meaningless

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That's like saying WAR is good designed because it can replace the healer role.

The other healers stepping on WHMs toes is not WHMs fault. Why is AST the healer with the party buffs AND the mitigation tools while WHM has nothing? AST is the real problem here, not WHM.

But since the Lilly rework in ShB WHM at least as a gameplay niche and does not simply play like an AST without buffs. There is a place for WHM, it is not a "void of a class pick", even if it's not a meta job.

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Originally Posted by Tint

That's like saying WAR is good designed because it can replace the healer role.

The other healers stepping on WHMs toes is not WHMs fault. Why is AST the healer with the party buffs AND the mitigation tools while WHM has nothing? AST is the real problem here, not WHM.

But since the Lilly rework in ShB WHM at least as a gameplay niche and does not simply play like an AST without buffs. There is a place for WHM, it is not a "void of a class pick", even if it's not a meta job.

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I mean SCH can also do WHM but better (seraphism anyone), and SGE has more HPS throughput than any other healer

When you have 3 healers that have a rough niche and one that doesn’t it’s hard to call “everyone else” the problem

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Also while we're at it, can SE please fix the sudden 'snap to ground' in the Medica 3 animation

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lol. At one point, I had a mind to file that as a bug report. (But then, doing my day job when I'm not actually at work struck me as Not Fun, and I let it drop…)

Right now, speaking as a career WHM since release, WHM has its place but its getting reduced each expansion and patch and most of that is just exploratry prog.

Think of WHM like this: Its a healing fire truck, and not just a little one but one of those huge monstrous airport fire trucks. It can put out a titanic amount of healing in nearly a blink of an eye. While this is awesome and used to be needed, healing requirements have gone from needing a big fire truck to a small fire truck, then to a fire extingusher to a wet blanket to "its ok to let it smolder", it wont catch on fire before the boss is dead.

So WHM is a great healer, if its needed, but there are no more healing fires that need a WHM.

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Originally Posted by Tint

The other healers stepping on WHMs toes is not WHMs fault. Why is AST the healer with the party buffs AND the mitigation tools while WHM has nothing? AST is the real problem here, not WHM.

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If the criticism is "while WHM has nothing," then the solution is to give WHM something, not to blame and take away from all the other healers.

My own spitball take of the day: Give WHM a lily spender for an AoE shield. Decouple Divine Caress from Temperance. Add an AoE that doesn't include Stun as a side-effect. Voilà! We've addressed WHM's glaring (pun-intended) lack of AoE mitigations and shields, and given Holy's Stun an opportunity to be used strategically on trash mobs.

Because…

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Originally Posted by Lorika

WHM have the most raw and direct healing power potential of all the healer

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is all good and well, but a poor identity or niche, because in Duty Finder, two Shield Healers paired together have to be able to pump out enough pure heals to deal with something like the opening of Seat of Sacrifice. Which is to say, thanks to Duty Finder, the Shield Healers have to be able to step on WHM's supposed niche of "raw and direct healing power". (And that's why the whole Pure/Shield split is silly, but that's a topic unto itself…)

This is such an irony. I want to remind you of the manifesto of this very thread:

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Originally Posted by Gemina

~~Manifesto~~

• Self-sustain and healing abilities given to other roles.
  The choice/direction to give such abilities to roles outside of healer encroaches on the role.
  
• Over simplified DPS rotation
  Every job in FFXIV has a 'filler GCD' skill that they press when there are no other requirements. No role in the game pushes this skill more than healer. Not by a long shot. Our offensive capability should still feel dynamic and rewarding. Yes, we are healers, but we are also casters.
  
• Homogenization of healer jobs
  Barrier/Pure healer split is largely redundant. All healers essentially play the same with the exception of few and far between niche abilities.
  
• Excessive oGCD heals.
  These are not only abundant, but exceptionally powerful. This in addition to self-sustain on other roles reduces the dynamic of healing comrades.
  
• Lack of engaging content outside the most difficult duties (Savage/Ultimate). i.e. the threat level is too low.
  Healers should feel like they have a place in all forms of content. It is understandable that difficulty can't be so great as to bar progression of story-based content. However, innovative means should still be employed to make greater/full use of abilities.

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Which advocates to take away healing from all other roles (at least to some degree) to let the healer role shine again. See any parallels to taking away from other healers so the "pure" healer can shine more?

Which advocates against homogenisation of the healer role. So is "I can do everything" now good design or not? Should WHM become more homogenized or the other healers less?

Talks about excessive and too powerfull oGCD healing and wants it dialed back, but now you are trash talking WHM for being too weak.


Yes, WHM is too weak, compared to the other healers. But it is not too weak to clear content. Buffing WHM will lead to more homogenisation, power creep and will cut down the time we spend with healing even more.


Keep in mind that we have just seen this in the tank role. DRK was lacking behind and just recently got additional self healing added. Which is the opposite of the first point of the manifesto.