WHM Divine Benison

Overhealing has got to be the most overrated "bad" term in the healing Dictionary. There's absolutely nothing inherently bad about overhealing.
The issues only arise in one of two cases:
- You overheal when you don't have the mana (old whm gameplay or current WHM when you've just been rezed and all your mana management skills are on cooldown)
- You could use that gcd to optimize your play and dps instead.

Appart from those it's actually beneficial to overheal. Now in FFXIV that second point often takes precedence in class optimisation so it isn't as obvious. But just to illustrate this point, picture an encounter where you do not dps. Finishing such a fight with 30% mana vs finishing it with 10% mana but constant overhealing.. The later is clearly better, even if it's just a matter of comfort.

To rebound on what has been said. Casting Cure II instead of Cure I does not hit either of those drawbacks. So it's a perfect example of how overhealing is good. Not to mention that you actually get the overheal back in the form of benison for later use. It's just win win.

I will however agree that this is a bit of a dick move because it goes against all the whm gameplay optimizations that had been done by players up until now.

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Originally Posted by QooEr

you dont *ever* want to stack lilies for the sake of stacking them.

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My point is, with MP being a virtual non-issue, you are now playing sub-optimally if you don't find excuses to use Cure 2, and for many WHM players this is a strange and counterintuitive notion.

Sure, no one is forced to make use of Lilies, but that's not what we're talking about.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

it's actually beneficial to overheal.

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I can't believe I had to read this sentence with my own two eyes

I'd like to think WHM play has gotten a lot less straight forward and individual White Mages will need to think more on their feet about what's optimal while continuing to understand the flow of the fight to maximize efficiency.

Cure now has a chance to proc three things
(1) Freecure
(2) Lily [Divine Benison]
(3) Confession

If you get Freecure, that gives the WHM more windows to DPS and then use their Freecure proc a bit later than normal or when it's about to expire and on top of that get them a Lily for Divine Benison immediately afterwards.
If you get the Lily just pop Divine Benison and keep DPSing
If you get the confession treat it like another free Cure and pop it appropriately while you keep DPSing

I feel it's non-optimal to save Benison for tankbusters. If the opportunity presents itself to allow you to shield a tank buster, go for it but having the ability to use Divine Benison and not doing so is just neglecting another excellent source of free healing from the WHM kit.

While I won't disagree that it would be nice for Benison to have additional benefits past one lily or only consume one lily, making good use of Benison doesn't require a White Mage to play non-optimally or ineffectively if the player understands the flow of the fight and the nuances of how their abilities interact with each other.

Ghishlain, good points as always, but I'd emphasize the chance part when it comes to Cure I procs.

Personally I think Benison is fine aside from consuming all Lilies without so much as a CD reduction; my concerns have more to do with how Lily generation currently works and how it disproportionately rewards Cure 2 usage.

I consider it in a different way - the 100% chance on Cure II means I get even more benefit out of my Freecures. I think it's important for White Mages of all stripes to consider the fact that you're not actively fishing for lilies but you should make opportunities to use Cure more often - especially now that Cleric Stance has gone the way of the dodo. Spend one GCD to DPS, while you're casting determine if your next GCD should be a Cure, make use of Cure when the HP windows are appropriate to minimize overheal and use any gained procs appropriately in your next decision making step. The chance part doesn't personally bug me in the slightest, to be honest. It just means I have to show a level of flexibility to adapt to the situations given to me. Given the rigidity of the healing game to date (make sure to save X CD for Y tank/raid buster, repeat ad nausea), this chance to flex in such a manner is a breath of fresh air for healing.

I feel a lot of players get hung up on the "chance" part of the Lilies and it just shows a incredibly massive level if inflexibility towards the White Mage kit. I will argue that White Mages might have a low skill floor because you could easily be effective without worrying about the RNG aspects of your kit but also has the highest skill ceiling now because of the level of knowledge the player must have of both the fight and the kit to properly manage all the RNG procs without losing effectiveness or efficiency. WHM is the healer to play if you don't want to repeat the same fight over and over again. Regardless if the encounter is the same the flow at which the WHM kit operates will always change.

I actually kinda wish 3.X MCH was still a thing. If the opportunity presented itself, I would've actively encouraged any aspiring Stormblood White Mage to play the 3.X MCH toolkit because the core optimization concepts of the MCH kit is the same. In fact when I reflect on, the fact that I played MCH for Creator (Savage) and deal with the RNG proc rates and mobility issues that come with it probably help me optimize for WHM even further.

Ghislain: always a breathe of fresh air. Everything you said I agree with completely.

No people are hung up on the fact that in dungeons and even in savage content a WHM may only use Cure I and Cure II a single digit amount of times because so much healing comes from Regen, Medica II, and OGCDs. Everything about WHM could be fixed right now with two simple changes:

-Divine Benison only uses one Lily. Its absolutely terrible design for it to need one, yet consume up to three for no benefit.
-Regen ticks have a 10% and 20% chance to create a Lily and Confession respectively.

If you're at a ilvl and skill level where you can get away with using a single digit number of cures in dungeons and savage mode, you and your party is probably well overgeared past the content anyway and don't need those additional tools to assist. Just DPS harder and enjoy the massive MP sustain the kit gives you at that point~

I won't dispute more ways to proc Lilies and Confessions would be nice, and the change to Divine Benison would be a good QoL but if it never happens I'd still be very satisfied with the kit. But my beef with the WHM community as a whole ATM is the absolute salt that's being laid about how unplayable the job is suppose to be when... the job has immense amounts of longevity in MP and can provide more throughput than any other healer in the game right now and provide tons of wipe recovery potential. It's not a dead job.

exactly my thoughts. whm is far from dead, and the current state of all the healing skills is pretty nice (except for plenary indulgence, they really should increase that proc). and aside from healing, whm's dps is so high that it can compensate for its lack or "utility" (versus scholar's strategem. if the party's dps is low, strategem is less impactful)