Idea of a New WHM Mechanic: Thorns

I've been beating the drum for WHM to get damage shields for a while now on these forums. It could even have an elemental basis to fit the idea that our powers come from the elements. Maybe even provide different damage shield behavior based on which is used.

I'm sick of dpsing. I want to support the party. That's why I chose the green role.

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Originally Posted by VanilleFang

But the faster you can kill something the faster you win, so the easier it is to farm etc.

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Is it 4 fights a week. Assuming you're good enough to one shot it, that's less than 45 minutes, and the optimal dps comp will shave off maybe a total of 12 once you out gear it. If you wipe even once, you're back at even times with safer strats. I would give it to you once savaged looting is unlocked again, but normally this is not an important metric at all. If you're so good that you can one-shot the whole tier each week, what does it even matter what you bring?

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Originally Posted by VanilleFang

If a player is equally comfortable with playing WHM and AST why would they pick WHM for a clear? I'm not saying WHM is in a bad spot, all I am saying is that extra team damage would be welcome.

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How about because maybe they enjoy that job?

Let's flip this, why would you ever bring an AST if WHM get's a party damage buff? Cards are honestly really crap. In fact they might be the worst party damage boost in the game except maybe embolden. If WHMs can completely blow through all healer checks, allow their co-healer more dps uptime with their higher throughput, never have to worry about mana, bring extra safety with tankbusters with benison, AND provide a damage boost, what merits does AST have anymore?

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Originally Posted by VanilleFang

People don't equate "utility" with "damage buffs", but more with "things that allow more damage in some way". Shields, crit bonuses, direct hit bonuses, piercing/slashing debuff, decreasing damage received... These things either grant more damage to your allies' attacks, or reduce required healing to allow more damage from healers.

There's a reason PLD is considered king of utility among tanks, even though it's utility is much more defence oriented than WAR.

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It's more of all damage buffs are utility, but not all utility is damage buffs. What's the difference between dragon sight and raging strikes? That it affects another person? It's still just a damage buff. We have a word for those. Why lump them in with utility?

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Originally Posted by basketofseals

matter what you bring?

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Some people enjoy killing fights as quickly as they can, and in that case for the sake of shaving precious seconds off it is quite important which job you bring in order to take that time off. Healers in particular have vastly different tools in order to handle fights and improve their uptime more than any other job type in the game. WHM right now allocates significantly more GCDs to healing than other jobs because of how bad their oGCDs are compared to AST or SCH.

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Originally Posted by basketofseals

How about because maybe they enjoy that job?

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Sure, play the job you want. But that's no reason not to be unhappy with the way the job works. WHM's DPS is the only thing that makes it as useful as AST, and even then it's still grappling with SCH for the top healer DPS spot. Play the job you wanna play, but there's nothing wrong with being unhappy about the way your job works. There is something silly about taking pot shots at people playing another job using the trite excuse of homogenization. And if your group is serious about killing things quickly you might have to bite the bullet and play a healer you don't like (AST for example) in order to meet the group's needs. Playing a job that isn't as good as another job sucks even if you like it. So you want buffs or changes to bring it closer to par or improve the way a bad mechanic works. And these threads get made.

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Originally Posted by basketofseals

We have a word for those. Why lump them in with utility?

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All utility that doesn't strictly prevent you from dying decreases either the amount of healing required or increases the amount of damage done. Less healing is more damage, more damage is more damage. Utility that reduces enmity needs less tank stance (if you use it) and fewer aggro combos, which is more damage.

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Originally Posted by DaulBan

Some people enjoy killing fights as quickly as they can, and in that case for the sake of shaving precious seconds off it is quite important which job you bring in order to take that time off. Healers in particular have vastly different tools in order to handle fights and improve their uptime more than any other job type in the game. WHM right now allocates significantly more GCDs to healing than other jobs because of how bad their oGCDs are compared to AST or SCH.

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I mean there's nothing wrong with that, but I don't see any point in throwing damage buffs on WHM. That doesn't fix the "issue," it just changes the dynamic.

There's nothing wrong with WHM other than people overvaluing speed kills. It has its moment where it's best, just like AST and SCH do. The difference isn't so big that it's a huge handicap to bring WHM over the other two.

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Originally Posted by DaulBan

Sure, play the job you want. But that's no reason not to be unhappy with the way the job works. WHM's DPS is the only thing that makes it as useful as AST, and even then it's still grappling with SCH for the top healer DPS spot. Play the job you wanna play, but there's nothing wrong with being unhappy about the way your job works. There is something silly about taking pot shots at people playing another job using the trite excuse of homogenization. And if your group is serious about killing things quickly you might have to bite the bullet and play a healer you don't like (AST for example) in order to meet the group's needs. Playing a job that isn't as good as another job sucks even if you like it. So you want buffs or changes to bring it closer to par or improve the way a bad mechanic works. And these threads get made.

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Just because people overuse homogenization, doesn't mean it's a criticism to be ignored. Nobody is taking pot shots. No insults were traded. As far as I'm concerned we were having a perfectly healthy discussion.

Now more to the point, jobs are different. That's a good thing. It means people can enjoy a role they might not otherwise like. More to the point, it allows for a more even level of imperfect balance. If WHM gets damage buffs, then they become incredibly similar to AST, and a greater/lesser than thinking is more obvious. Why would you bring one healer when it's just inferior to the other one? At the moment, it's more so based on your group's needs. You want safety? Go WHM. Need extra damage? Go AST.

Altough I do not dpsing all that much while I heal as an astro (quite dull and cards actually keep me quite busy), a game play à bit more deep would be more than welcome, at least for solo content. Spamming malefic3 is just dull.

I don't want dps spells to take 2 slots of my precious 3 future new spells. But I would like something new yeah.

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Originally Posted by Sylvain

Altough I do not dpsing all that much while I heal as an astro (quite dull and cards actually keep me quite busy), a game play à bit more deep would be more than welcome, at least for solo content. Spamming malefic3 is just dull.

I don't want dps spells to take 2 slots of my precious 3 future new spells. But I would like something new yeah.

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For AST, they could just remove the Lady of Crown/healing effect from Minor Arcana. We can't really rely on an RNG heal that is weaker then Benefic II.
IF they want to keep it RNG with two options, they could change Lady of Crown to something that give the user x% of MP.

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Originally Posted by basketofseals

There's nothing wrong with WHM other than people overvaluing speed kills.

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This. (aside from the trash lily system, of course)

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Originally Posted by basketofseals

There's nothing wrong with WHM other than people overvaluing speed kills.

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Now that's just crazy talk! Next you'll expect me to believe that AST is the least-represented class in Sigmascape Savage right now! Everyone knows that's unpossible because their buffs are OP and nobody cares about healing output during progression! By god, soon you'll be telling me that they have the least amount of clears for Deltascape Savage, too!

Seriously, it's okay for a class to be not be meta for speed runs. Restoration Shaman in WoW is an example of a class that is invaluable for progression but never brought along for Mythic speed clears because of how their Mastery inherently loses value the more geared/better the players in the raid get.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

Now that's just crazy talk! Next you'll expect me to believe that AST is the least-represented class in Sigmascape Savage right now! Everyone knows that's unpossible because their buffs are OP and nobody cares about healing output during progression! By god, soon you'll be telling me that they have the least amount of clears for Deltascape Savage, too!

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I think that has more to do with a combination of WHM/SCH being a better/easier pair to use for progression the AST/SCH or WHM/AST. Once people start to get more acclimated to the raids and geared up, we should see a shift to AST to boost raid damage.
Another reason could be that WHM and SCH might feel more personally satisfying to play because they can weave their oGCD heals with their damage spells.

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

I think that has more to do with a combination of WHM/SCH being a better/easier pair to use for progression the AST/SCH or WHM/AST. Once people start to get more acclimated to the raids and geared up, we should see a shift to AST to boost raid damage.
Another reason could be that WHM and SCH might feel more personally satisfying to play because they can weave their oGCD heals with their damage spells.

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And you think people aren't acclimated to Deltascape now? I also linked that just so people couldn't throw out the "WHMs are useless for farm content" nonsense.

The fact is, people are playing whatever healer they want to play outside of an EXTREMELY tiny niche of speed kill content, where frankly everyone should be expected to be flexible in order to reach that level of perfection/output. No one is dumping their WHMs from raids en masse (even after the tier is on farm), and nowhere are they being excluded from PFs. Literally the only place that is memeing about them being in a bad spot is, ironically, this subforum. Could lilies use improvements, mostly with regards to their generation? Sure. Does WHM need party buffs in their current state? Hell no.