An Integration of Former and Current Ideas for WHM

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

These seem to be the issues that SE attempted to address with the revamped Lily system in Shadowbringers. WHM got two new instant-cast GCD heals, Afflatus Solace and Rapture, and a big damage spell, Misery, that "refunds" some of the DPS lost due to GCD healing. I'd say this solution has been fairly successful. I know some people still complain about WHM's lack of mobility, but the job is at least more viable than in Stormblood.

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The main issue is that while the current Lily system is quite successful, that's on the level of taking something terrible and making it less than good. It's an improvement, but we're still in the negatives.

The two big issues with the lily system is that you only get one lily every 30 seconds, if you want to use a lily for movement, you need either a blood lily up, or someone hurt to heal, and the system's pretty much useless if you're on a big movement mechanic that lasts more than one or two GCDs. This last one especially happens quite often, though the other two is only a little bit less common of an issue.

It wouldn't be so bad if you could just generate blood lilies through some alternative means, like an instant cast GCD "quick prayer" that simply gives you a third of a blood lily or something.

I've been thinking a little bit about the lily system, how to create a safe healer that has a high skill ceiling but also a high skill floor, and also taking inspiration from things that we like from Bozja to come up with my own interpretation of what WHM could look like including this new "Divine Benison II." I have absolutely no hope that anything like this will be utilized, but here's a basic rundown of the concept:

GCD Healing:
As it stands, WHM's GCD healing has a bit of repetition that renders some spells entirely unnecessary in the later stages of the game. I think simplicity here is key to making each spell feel important while also contributing to what WHM wants to do, so here the idea: All cure spells consume lilies, increasing their potency by 100, and nourish the blood lily when a lily is consumed. Between levels 50 and 60, they also upgrade to flowering cure spells that will additionally generate a lily if no lily is consumed. This will create an interesting relationship with a new DPS action I'll talk about later.
- Cure -> Flowering Cure (450 Potency)(Instant Cast): Cure becomes your instant GCD heal the cost of lower potency.
- Cure II -> Flowering Cure II (700 Potency)(2 second Cast): The same as it is now.
- Cure III -> Flowering Cure III (350 Potency)(2 second Cast): Cure III and Medica merge, costing 1000 MP but retain Cure III's unique ability to target distant allies. This would make WHM's AoE healing a little more unique.
- Raise (No Change)

OGCD Healing:
OGCD as it stands is not the WHM's strongest asset, and that's perfectly fine. There are some subtle adjustments here though that are worth mentioning...
- Benediction (No Change)
- Regen (45 second recast): Regen gets moved off the GCD which allows it to be weaved onto allies rather than fighting your DPS.
- Regen II (45 second recast): Medica II gets converted into Regen II, your AoE OGCD heal that you'll be using frequently, again, now no longer fighting your DPS.
- Assize (No Change)
- Divine Benison -> Divine Benison II (250/350 potency barrier): The barrier gets weakened here in exchange for having 2 charges and also generating an extra lily for the WHM when the barrier is broken. Additionally, the recast for Divine Benison I/II will be reset when using Water/Banish spells (more on that later), so you'll be able to take advantage of more frequent, weaker barriers that will supply you with more lilies.
Tetragrammaton and Asylum are cut in this concept, which may seem like a huge downer, but the idea is to encourage more dependency on GCD healing and how you interact with it to maintain your DPS contributions. We talk about wanting more healing uptime for the healer role, and one of the things that may need to happen is the trimming of OGCD healing in order to achieve that.

GCD DPS:
This is where a lot of the messiness comes into play for WHM. The fight for the highest potency drowns out the desire to actually use GCD healing and also causes a demand for mobility that the job currently doesn't support very well. I think foiling the BLM's lack of mobility does make sense for WHM, but it needs tools that feel good to use rather than just burning lilies to weave instead of actually needing them for healing. So let's work on that...
- Stone/Glare (No change): Stone/Glare will stay the default DPS button, but we'll be integrating more things to diversify the WHM's options when not healing.
- Aero/Dia (No change)
- Water/Banish (400 Potency when fully upgraded)(400 MP Cost)(Instant Cast)(15 second recast)(holds 3 charges when fully upgraded): This replaces Fluid Aura and upgrades naturally until it transforms into Banish at the same time that Stone and Aero change into Glare and Dia respectively. Basically, Water/Banish will give you more diversity in your casts and will also function as more efficient weave tools. Since you have charges, you don't need to burn them all at once and can hold onto Water/Banish for when you need to weave or want to reset the cooldown of your Benisons, as that's another thing that this spell offers.
Holy/Holy II (Gets upgraded at level 82. There seems to be a common trend in enhancing AoE actions, so it seems like a safe bet)
- Misery/Flowering Misery (500/900 Potency): Renamed from Afflatus Misery. We get a new, weaker Misery at level 30 now. One minor issue with a lot of jobs is how early levels can feel very flat and don't always teach you about your job. Having a weaker Misery will allow new players to start learning how to take advantage of lilies and also make WHM gameplay more entertaining much earlier.
- Flowering Holy (250 Potency)(2000 MP Cost)(2 second cast)(2.5 second recast): A separate action from regular Holy. The MP cost is very high, and this is because Flowering Holy requires a lily to be used and nourishes the blood lily. 3 Flowering Holys + Flowering Misery = 1650 potency in contrast to the 1200 from 4 Glares It's here to give WHM players an option to deal with excess lilies and try to maximize damage potential, but you have to be cautious with your MP and can't just spam it. I'd ultimately need to test the numbers in a built to actually find an appropriate balance between potency and MP cost, but the idea I think has a lot of potential.
- Eschaton (300 Potency)(4000 MP Cost)(instant cast)(60 second recast): Taking inspiration from Lost Seraph Strike, this action grants the WHM 15 seconds of 50% healing potency reduction and 25% DPS increase. Again, I'm really uncertain about the numbers here since they probably can't afford to be as strong as Lost Seraph Strike, but a lot of players have taken a liking to this action, myself included, and it especially feels natural for the WHM.
In general, WHM currently lacks any meaningful reason to use Thin Air, and I think some of these new options gives WHM players a lot to think about when using Thin Air and how to get the most out of the tools while balancing their MP and their lilies.

Other Actions:
- Thin Air (No Change)
- Plenary Indulgence (Reworked): Now simply grants 3 lilies on a 90 second recast (must be used in combat). Something I'd like to add as a QoL improvement to the lilies is that the natural 30 second generation of lilies will also be counting while the WHM has 3 lilies, much like how the BLM's Polyglots work. As long as you use your 3rd lily before the 30 seconds are up, you'll get another lily back. If you don't use a lily before then, the timer just resets at no gain. This removes any ugly dead seconds that would otherwise be generated by a max-out-your-lilies button.
- Germinate (New): Fully nourishes the Blood Lily on a 120 second timer (must be used in combat). This allows the WHM to start with a Blood Lily and use a free Flowering Misery every 2 minutes.
- Temperance: Temperance stays mostly the same but gets a new aspect added to the buff. Now, it also allows the WHM to move while casting for the duration of the effect, giving Temperance more opportunities to feel good to use while feeling a bit different to a 'WHM Triplecast'
- Refresh (GCD Action)(2 second cast)(2.5 second recast): A GCD action that restores 10% of your MP. Since this iteration of WHM has some heavy MP costs, we probably would need to have some sort of safety net button to retain the 'low skill floor' identity that WHM has to have. It's very inefficient of course since you have to cast this, but for a struggling WHM, it's there to protect them. You could argue that it's probably not necessary if you're managing your resources correctly, but it doesn't really hurt to have the option even if you yourself never end up needing it.
I ended up dropping Presence of Mind as well. It's a nice DPS boost, but there are a lot of additional sources of damage in this concept that I think cover the benefits PoM offered and then some.

I'm sure a lot of these ideas would need to be tasted in a prototyping build, but I think this captures a lot of the things people want to see with WHM and would capture the identity that both the developers and the community see in the WHM, but maybe I'm off the mark.

I have been thinking about how to make the healers in this game more interactive for a while and the og post inspired me so i decided to write out what my ideal changed to WM would be . I tried to keep the feel of WM intact while adding some Black Mage flavor to the class since WM and BM are sort of the yin and yang of magic in ffxiv.

1. I would increase the maximum amount of lilies to 5. (The importance of this will be explained below)

2. Like the og poster's idea, I would also alter or remove all extraneous instant/ogcd heals from the kit, leaving only Afflatus Solus and Afflatus Rapture. To compensate for this change as well as to thematically connect WM to BM, WM will be given the spell Triplecast.

3. I would remove all of the current single target damage spells, replacing them with a 3 spell combo. The combo will not be interrupted by other spell casts in between. Examples of the spells are below (the potencies are probably off but that would need testing):
Earth (2.3s cast) - Deal 250 potency earth damage.
Water (2.3s cast) = Deal 250 potency ice damage. (Combo:Earth): Grants a nearby ally with the most missing health a heal over time effect. Cure Potency:150 Duration:6s
Light's Radiance (2.3s cast) = Deal 250 potency unaspected damage. (Combo:Water): Deal an additional 150 potency and gain 1 lily.
(each spell has a lower cast time to allow for ogcd weaving which is important for the next section)

4. Now for the most interesting part. Like the og poster, in my idea, Lilies will now be gained from casting any gcd healing spell. (excluding the water spell from the damage combo). In addition to Afflatus Solus and Rapture, I would add two new instant cast ogcd damage spells (1 single target and 1 aoe) as lily spenders. (The potency of these spells would most likely need to be lowered to compensate for higher availability of lilies). Finally, Afflatus Misery would be altered to require 5 blood lily charges to activate but , most importantly, the blood lily would ONLY gain charges from casting the damaging lily spells and NOT from the healing lily spells.

With these changes, White Mage would work much more similarly to a black mage. It would still have the low skill floor for new player since they will still have access to a multitude of gcd and ogcd heals while heavily rewarding experienced player who plans out their gcds by giving them significantly more damage as well as more access to those juicy Afflatus Misery procs. Other skills in the WM tool kit would most likely need to be altered as well but this is the overall framework I would like to see.

I remember the idea I had prior to shadowbringers for Lilies was to essentially turn them into a greased lightning effect that could be spent on powerful OGCD abilities, where the idea was to make WHM's flow a trade off of reducing their cast time (but not the gcd, to enable weaving) for said abilities. The TL;DR was this

Casting Cure spells generated a Lily. Casting Stone spells would generate Lilies but at a slower rate (essentially creating stacks that where consumed to generate lilies every 3 times Stone spells where cast)

Aero ticks would generate a Lily when they crit (with an internal cooldown) Regen had an X% chance and Medica II had a Y% chance to generate lilys when they successfully healed. (with its own internal cooldown as well)

Lilies stacked up to 3 times, each stack reducing the cast time of their Cure/Medica/Stone/Holy spells by .25 seconds. Capping at -1 second. GCD is not effected by this, thus meaning every spells had Malefic cast time.

Finally I had 3 OGCDs that consumed the Lillies.
Salvation: Single Target Heal + Regen refresh.
Plenury Indulgence: Reworked into the AoE version of this "Salvation" effect.
Tornado: DPS dump + Aero refresh on the target.

And ofc, a cooldown that instantly filled the lily guage, iirc i made it 45 seconds.

The whole idea was that as you kept actively using your gcds you would gain stacks that would essentially give you the weaving space needed to use your OGCds and then you would spend the lilies to either heal as needed or to refresh your Aero dot. Granted I'm aware that in this model most WHM's would likely dump the lilies on Tornado 90% of the time in this model, but that's just a matter of tuning, even if it means removing the damage on Tornado and renaming it to something less badass.