WHM Desperately Needs An Overhaul

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

Misery and Toxikon can stay on GCD for all I care since they're offensives. I just want WHM's Afflatus abilities to actually be turned to oGCD since they grind hard against the 1.5s cast time despite being instant cast. It feels like there's a flaw in design when the other healers don't have this problem - and sure, you can argue that it'd be too similar to SGE in this regard, but those Lilies would at least be building up to something that's actually a gain instead of a loss and would bump up WHM significantly if they kept Misery's current potency.

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lilies being on the gcd helps their mp economy. it also still gives them much needed mobility for when they have to cross great distances in a short time. and youd still have the capacity to optimize them if theres downtime to dump a couple lilies on

literally if the only change was making misery was dps neutral it would improve a lot of whms current weaknesses. (mp, dps, mobility)

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

Misery and Toxikon can stay on GCD for all I care since they're offensives. I just want WHM's Afflatus abilities to actually be turned to oGCD since they grind hard against the 1.5s cast time despite being instant cast. It feels like there's a flaw in design when the other healers don't have this problem - and sure, you can argue that it'd be too similar to SGE in this regard, but those Lilies would at least be building up to something that's actually a gain instead of a loss and would bump up WHM significantly if they kept Misery's current potency.

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Turning the Afflatus actions (or, Afflatus actions minus Misery, in your case) into oGCDs would reduce their strength (as they'd then be free healing) and that of Misery (as it'd now be free damage in its excess over Glare III / Holy III) while reducing WHM MP conservation, mobility, and weave space.

There's no point in directly comparing a Lily heal to, say, Lustrate or Druochole when the latter do not build towards something like Misery and their respective kits were built around that healing output.

WHM's available free (i.e., that which doesn't cost offensive potency) cure potency per minute and available burst healing should be a bit higher, admittedly, but not by simply copying other jobs' procedures onto it heedless of context.

Having Lily healing be oGCD is interesting to me but I feel like it would need to be accompanied by a whole host of changes to the way the system works currently. Misery is going to be the only movement tool available and waiting 90 seconds, while in combat, to gain a single movement GCD is rubbish. I would make Lillie's generate every 20 seconds and make Misery cost 2 Lilies to use. In this scenario it would help to be able to hold 4 Blood Lilies allowing for two consecutive uses of Misery as well. The potency of Misery could be lowered to compensate for the faster access but it would need to have an MP gain tied to it's use to cover for the fact that Afflatus Heals wouldn't be an MP free GCD anymore. I would also change the recast time on Misery to 5 seconds allowing for ample time to move and weave and make it more distinct from Sage's Phlegma. As long as the potency warranted the recast no one would have any issues with it and just enjoy all the movement.

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

Misery and Toxikon can stay on GCD for all I care since they're offensives. I just want WHM's Afflatus abilities to actually be turned to oGCD since they grind hard against the 1.5s cast time despite being instant cast. It feels like there's a flaw in design when the other healers don't have this problem - and sure, you can argue that it'd be too similar to SGE in this regard, but those Lilies would at least be building up to something that's actually a gain instead of a loss and would bump up WHM significantly if they kept Misery's current potency.

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I'm going to throw down this card: Making the lilies OGCD heals is objectively worse than just buffing Misery's potency for every type of WHM player. Here's why...

1. Many players like that WHM is a slower-paced healer, whether it's because they're not as skilled enough to play the other healers, or sometimes because they physically have a hard time with higher APM jobs like AST due to conditions like arthritis. While WHM is hilariously bad in almost every way compared to the other healers, being a low APM job actually is a unique aspect of the job and could be utilized to great effect to make it a job that's slower but more methodological.
2. Currently, if you're reapplying your DoTs on time every time, that equates to 3 GCDs every 90 seconds leaving you with potentially 33 Glare III casts. You may be forced to heal instead for a few of those, but emphasis on the word "forced." Ideally, you will not have to use your GCD heals, and thus are aiming for 33 Glare IIIs every 90 seconds. If Misery is made DPS neutral, then lily heals are no longer a deterrent and can be used interchangeably with Glare III at no potency loss (Potentially for a gain if you time your Miseries with buff windows). This means theoretically 4 less Glare III casts per 90 second window if you're not over capping on lilies. Casting less Glare III is something everyone wants.
3. It makes lilies competitive with OGCD healing on other healers in the same way that Pneuma is. It's not OGCD, but because Pneuma is DPS neutral, it can therefore be used interchangeably with OGCDs. The same would be true for Lilies if Misery were buffed, resolving your concern.

Some people really don't know how to ask for buffs in a reasonable way... There's no way SQEX is going to give us a huge list of buffs when WHM is performing within 1-2% of other healers. And they're not going to completely rework anything when 80% of WHM players are happy, AND it's the most popular healer. If you ask for a ton of buffs, the devs are just going to see it as unreasonable forum whining and ignore it entirely.

If you really want an improvement, focus on ONE thing and ask for it relentlessly. For me, I'd want that one thing to be a second charge on Assize. Let me align it with raid buffs and/or save one charge for healing and I'd be happy. (Plus it's one extra guaranteed assize cast in a fight.) That change alone makes WHM more fun/interesting, and closes the gap with AST in terms of rDPS (in mediocre parties, not speedruns of course).

Btw, I don't mind if lilies are a DPS loss. It's on-par with Aetherflow heals vs. Energy Drain. Comparing WHM to SGE, I think SGE is boring because every heal is free, except Eukrasian heals which are humongous losses that you never want to cast. I'd rather have the middle ground on WHM, where I'm trying to be efficient and avoid overhealing with GCDs, but can still feel good about a Plenary + Rapture when it's actually needed, because it only costs ~100 potency.

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Originally Posted by Leonerdo

Btw, I don't mind if lilies are a DPS loss. It's on-par with Aetherflow heals vs. Energy Drain. Comparing WHM to SGE, I think SGE is boring because every heal is free, except Eukrasian heals which are humongous losses that you never want to cast. I'd rather have the middle ground on WHM, where I'm trying to be efficient and avoid overhealing with GCDs, but can still feel good about a Plenary + Rapture when it's actually needed, because it only costs ~100 potency.

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"it's okay because 1 other healer suffers from it too".
The Potency cost came not from healing but from using a Weave window, on SCH it came from Ruin II. Problem is with the 1.5s nuke cast time changes everything is a weave window now so this potency loss has no right existing. Neither SGE nor AST have to pay DPS to heal and just because there is no potency loss on healing on them doesn't mean you shouldn't avoid overhealing. This mentality is just silly.

I'm not even against a healer paying DPS to heal in principle- I think it could introduce meaningful choice if designed well. I'm against it for two reasons. 1) because half the role never has to pay for anything and is as a result hilariously better in many ways. If not in a rDPS advantage (as is the case with Scholar, but WHM is as ALWAYS behind the others), then at least in job design feel. And 2) if any class has to pay DPS to heal, why in God's name would you make it White Mage? Their personal DPS is, once again, reiterated until it doesn't sound like real words anymore, the only thing they bring to the table. Why is the healer that ONLY brings personal damage to the table the one that's riddled with systems that hamstring its ability to do that? Why do the healers with actual utility and raid buffs have tools that enable them to endlessly vomit out personal damage with zero losses? It's the only thing WHM has that passes for a mechanical identity, and it's the worst at achieving its own identity.

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Originally Posted by Leonerdo

. If you really want an improvement, focus on ONE thing and ask for it relentlessly. For me, I'd want that one thing to be a second charge on Assize. Let me align it with raid buffs and/or save one charge for healing and I'd be happy. (Plus it's one extra guaranteed assize cast in a fight.) That change alone makes WHM more fun/interesting, and closes the gap with AST in terms of rDPS (in mediocre parties, not speedruns of course).

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A 0.03% DPS buff that doesn't effectively help in addressing its MP issue nor the DPS discrepancy between WHM and SGE, much less AST, and only mildly addresses the issue of being unable to use Assize for healing. Hard pass there.

1 improvement is not going to solve all of WHM's issues.

Buffing Misery has the largest impact on WHM since lilies at least save more MP than Assize grants, grants you weave windows+mobility and offers the same benefits as an extra charge of Assize (More DPS and Healing) but even that wouldn't be enough to magically fix WHM because it has more issues than 1 improvement can realistically cover so no, I will NOT focus on 1 improvement because it's not enough.

The reason I don't see oGCD heal tax as a meaningful choice is because quite often you have no choice over how much healing the group needs. It's a decision at a very basic level, like "I shouldn't waste all my Aetherflow on scratches", but that stops being a thing once you become even moderately competent at the class. You can't choose if the dps collect vuln stacks or the group doesn't mitigate or the tanks are made of paper or 5 people die to a mechanic. When this happens, your "meaningful choice" is essentially a forced loss.

It's also not "meaningful" in that it really doesn't matter if you blow extra Aetherflow or Lilies to heal. Those tiny 100 potencies really don't mean much to the average player and are a tiny fraction of your overall dps. So it means very little and doesn't give you a big reward for playing well. It's just a feel-bad for the player who optimizes and is forced to take small hits for circumstances they couldn't avoid.

GCD heals are plenty for tax. They're your "out of resources" option where you convert dps into healing. Taxing your initial resources feels off.

I would like to see Lilies go oGCD but with a GCD refresh so you can't spam all 3 in 1 second and Lily Bell go to 120 seconds reuse and last 30 seconds or 15 seconds with a trigger to manually set it off. That would make things feel better for me and not require too many other changes.

As Lilies stand now, I found that once I stopped trying to use them, things started to flow a lot better. If I am going to use a GCD to heal, it's going to be a Cure II or swift Medica II.