What is WHM's true identity?

This is something I've been pondering over the past couple days before patch day, but this really nagged at me: With AST getting these buffs to their toolkit, SE not only buffed Nocturnal, but indirectly buffed Diurnal as well. Since WHM got their Stoneskin's 18% damage reduction and Proshell taken away to be spread across the entire healer spectrum, what is its true identity? We have Cure III, Assize, Asylum, Benediction...

The only bland thing I can come up with is just a high potency healer. AST already gets a unique trait for a Guaranteed Crit Benefic II, meaning they would have higher heals most of the time if their procs went off. Also there is one redundant thing I want to point out: Quick Stoneskin. What's the reason of it? It was made for ARR, but there needs to be something more to discern WHM's nature outside of having best heals in the game.

Um.............. It's a powerful heal no matter what, it has regen and a regen bubble that can be placed anywhere. It also is able to increase casting speed and healin power. It's a powerful dps also, whm is powerful but comes with a price, mp. Whm is always needed, that's it's identity.

Whm is not "always needed" lol, Astro can fill the spot just fine before AND after 3.4.

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Originally Posted by Rennies

Whm is not "always needed" lol, Astro can fill the spot just fine before AND after 3.4.

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But cure 3 op lol, but yea the AST can fill the whm role but I was trying to be nice to the whm job

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Originally Posted by Powe

Um.............. It's a powerful heal no matter what, it has regen and a regen bubble that can be placed anywhere. It also is able to increase casting speed and healin power. It's a powerful dps also, whm is powerful but comes with a price, mp. Whm is always needed, that's it's identity.

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This isn't necessarily true in terms of WHM always being needed. AST fills it fine like Rennies said, but I'm trying to figure out what WHM's identity is outside of just powerful heals.

WHM identity comes from the flexibility in its role. Assize can be used for dps or heals (though I argue it should always be dps.) Asylum can be used as a party regen or a single target tank regen.. both of which provide more cleric stance windows. Benediction can be used as an "oh sh*t button" or as it should be used, intentionally at a specific interval in a fight to either provide more cleric up time or conserve mana.
Presence of mind is yet another versatile cooldown that can be used for healing or cleric stance uptime however it is very rare that you will actually NEED this to heal any content.

White mage identity is versatility and that will not change whether they are paired with a scholar or paired with a nocturnal astrologian.

The Mind Party Buff contributor.

WHM doesn't have a card management system to deal with. Its cooldowns are extremely direct, predictable and impactful. WHM is stable. WHM is reliable.
WHM is a very barebones healer with powerful heals and answers to almost every situation (single target, AoE, regen, instants...). Even its DPS toolkit goes that way.

That's its identity.

So it's unique in that it has no interesting strengths... that sounds pretty lame.

Excellent summation, Fyce.

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Originally Posted by Rennies

So it's unique in that it has no interesting strengths... that sounds pretty lame.

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Reliability isn't interesting? Say that the next morning you get up to go to work and go to turn on your car. Oh! Well it be out of gas? Will it take flight but explode after a count down? Will it even start at all?

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The only bland thing I can come up with is just a high potency healer.

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Its pretty much that WHM is powerfull healer, it may be bland but compare to other healer, the WHM are the best at doing what healer are supposed to do... Healing.

Think of them like food, WHM is XL size fried rice, it offer nothing else but the main course (healing), SCH is fried rice with drink combo (fairy), it Ease you up if you have trouble dealing with the "fried rice", while the AST is S size fried rice but has an omellete, fries and small chicken pieces on top of it (cards), you can mix and match between eating the main or the others.

At least.. Thats the way i imagine it =D

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Originally Posted by Leogun

Reliability isn't interesting? Say that the next morning you get up to go to work and go to turn on your car. Oh! Well it be out of gas? Will it take flight but explode after a count down? Will it even start at all?

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I think I've owned that car.

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Originally Posted by Leogun

Reliability isn't interesting? Say that the next morning you get up to go to work and go to turn on your car. Oh! Well it be out of gas? Will it take flight but explode after a count down? Will it even start at all?

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What I'm saying is that the White Mage job feels dull because it feels like a bland burst mage mixed with a burst healer. It has the highest personal healing/damage numbers, sure, but... that's all. Scholar is way more interesting due to the interactions with the fairy and shields, and also by being one of few healers who actually uses and heavily relies on a pet (in my MMO experience, anyway). Astro is interesting because of the YUUUUUGE number of possibilities with the card system (even though many combinations look and feel underwhelming).

If reliability isn't interesting for you doesn't mean WHM is an uninteresting job. WHM is a safety net, much like Paladin among the three tanks. It's a job that, due to its simplicity in job mechanics, allows for a main healer to be on top of everything and everyone and have a quick and easy tool that lets them react to any situation. And that's precisely where WHM's strenght lies, it can react to anything and still pull through.

I dropped WHM a loooong time ago in favor of Scholar because the later is much more interesting for me, but that doesn't mean WHM isn't well designed. It's made with simplicity in mind, and really imo there's nothing wrong with that. I do think they'll have to buff the class sooner or later, but the buffs, like Paladin's changes for 3.X, will probably still be very straightforward and powerful by themselves.

If i want to be harsh i would say that :

WHM identity is being the training ground before taking your sch book or ast globe and go healing

Then if i want to be more objective
His identity is having some over the top skill that fit some situation

Yololololodiction that can heal anyone to 100% with or without cleric the ultimate healing
And cure 3 that is stronger aoe heal hands down but... Only shine in particular situation (nidhogg akh morn are one)

Otherwise whl lack a lot in group support and mitigation

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

Since WHM got their Stoneskin's 18% damage reduction and Proshell taken away to be spread across the entire healer spectrum, what is its true identity?

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You seem to allude to the idea that Graniteskin and WHM having the only buff that reduced physical and magic damage defined the job. This is very far from the truth.

if I were to define WHM, it would be as a jack-of-all-trades type of healer. It has an answer for everything and does so adequately. I'd compare it to a Holy Priest in WoW, since it follows the same idea. While other healers focus on smart heals or HoTs, Holy Priests are all-rounder healers and are valuable because of that. This'll become more evident once SE starts to implement healers with more diverse healing styles (instead of stuff like AST that is designed to ape WHM in addition to SCH).

WHM in FFXI: http://ffxiclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/White_Mage

I imagine they will copy a few of those spells over to this game as the level cap is increased. WHM is basically the strongest healer that also has some buffs/debuffs and the iconic Holy damage spell. WHM is a just a solid hammer that is straightforward, reliable, and never breaks.

WHM is the tried and tested healer. Good variety of heals for various situations, generally has an answer to everything. The main area it's weak at is mitigation.

Meanwhile, the constant changes to AST merely highlight how much of a mess the Job has been as a whole. WHM's lack of adjustments during 3.x is a highlight of how solid the Job is, while the current AST buff is like SE desperately saying to players "please add AST to your parties now, we even made the Card you only cared about even better too!"

WHM is as you say, the high power healer. Its what BLM is for dps, big fat nukes, you dont really need more to have an identity. When it comes to desirability, it seems somewhat probable that WHM might fall out of favor for an AST+SCH pairing, however this can be somewhat easily fixed by just buffing WHMs personal dps (and maybe mp regen) to compensate for lack of cards (in case of AST) or lack of fairy and infinite MP (in case of SCH).

WHM is already very strong as a mainhealer, you cant really fix something thats not broken - Now you just need to make it more desirable as an offhealer in a WHM+AST pairing. And to stay in flavor, you do that by making it hit like a truck.

WHM is really stream-lined. not many gadgets just straight healing. it's simple, it's often boring and yet most ppl can't play it. medica II spam all day, no use of cure III, regen before large pulls, lot's of over curing and bad mp management...

I'm happy that we have this job the way it is, cause with all those mistakes it's stil kinda forgiving and get's the job done. I don't wanna see those players as SCH or AST. there must be an easy accessible healer, just like PLD is an easy accessible tank.

WHM is meant to be the PLD of healers.

WHM in FFXI is not a good comparison because in FFXI they were the ONLY 'healer'. RDM was not a healer, they were a debuffer that COULD heal but did not have AoEs or many of the -na spells to remove debuffs as WHM, nor did they have Cure V, although RDM could heal in merit parties if the tank had /NIN sub. DNC later came around and could be a healer but the playerbase used them as a DPS instead, which makes sense because DNC used TP to heal and TP was gained mostly from autoattacks, which DNC sucked at against high level HNM that annihilated melees with AoE and had high evasion. So really, in FFXI, the only actual healer job was WHM. SCH could be a support healer with their regens and embrava and AoE Cure IVs (rip Enmity), but could not sustain it. Also in FFXI, WHM had a stance called "Afflatus: Solace" which gave a shield worth 33% of their cures. So a 1.4k heal gave a player about a 450 HP shield to boot. In a game where most tanks only had 2k HP or so, that was a pretty damn good shield. No other job was anywhere near on par with the healing output of a WHM, because WHM had a monopoly on almost all of the healer toolkits, and SCH had about 70% of the same toolkit but also had 70% of the BLM toolkit and was better off throwing out high power nukes and DoTs with their Helix spells or being on stun duty than healing in an HNM fight or raid like Legion

Whm's identity is defined by the person playing it. Yes, limitations to what you can offer a static exist but you still posses greater versatility than scholar or both sect Ast. Depending on your parties composition you can use Whm for difference purposes, for example if you choose to run Noct/whm then in theory whm's regens serve the purpose that a sch's fairy would. You then are given an opportunity to fit in more dps, more so now that noct is going to be buffed. (If your Noct ast is good)

The people who don't understand the full extent of how to play whm or accept the meta as fact are the ones calling for change. Yes whm has less buttons to press in comparison to Ast or Sch but half the time Ast's and Sch's aren't even using their utility efficiently. I've also seen it in whm's. The most flexible and underused skills being assize, presence of mind, and Asylum really make whm shine.

When the cap was 50 I juggled WHM and SCH depending on content (and sometimes the other healer). After the cap raise as well as when the end gear was job specific, I kind of stuck with just WHM. I like WHM alot, because it is in fact, that straight up healer class. Granted the other 2 healing roles have a more unique feel to them, some people such as myself enjoy the simplicity of WHM. This game has become silly mechanics heavy. The last thing I want to deal with while dancing on the battlefield is a complex skill set (personally, I know others feel differently).

Also Holy. My god...Holy. Love it in PvP. Love it for trashing slightly weaker things. Love PL'ing people with it. Holy I think is the one move that keeps me from the other healing classes. It just feels so good spamming it.

What is WHM's true identity?..........Bruce Wayne

To me, white mages the only actual healers on FFXIV. Sch and AST seem more like healer based support jobs. All are capable of healing but it seems to me that WHM excels at big numbers from curing hp, where as AST and Sch do more to lessen those healing numbers from even being needed and bumping dps numbers more than white Mage can.

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Originally Posted by gehrtalert

To me, white mages the only actual healers on FFXIV. Sch and AST seem more like healer based support jobs. All are capable of healing but it seems to me that WHM excels at big numbers from curing hp, where as AST and Sch do more to lessen those healing numbers from even being needed and bumping dps numbers more than white Mage can.

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Which is why whm is less and less attractive due to the need of mitigation in fight
They all can heal

But big number are useless if the target die instantly
You can't heal dead body :S

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Originally Posted by Nekotee

Which is why whm is less and less attractive due to the need of mitigation in fight
They all can heal

But big number are useless if the target die instantly
You can't heal dead body :S

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Stoneskin is mitigation. It's not the greatest but it works. Virus might work depending on the damage coming in. If people are dying instantly then mitigation probably isn't the problem.

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Originally Posted by Nekotee

Which is why whm is less and less attractive due to the need of mitigation in fight
They all can heal

But big number are useless if the target die instantly
You can't heal dead body :S

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Which brings up a huge issue itself. Mechanics that require nothing but dancing around a battleground or instant death isn't exactly an RPG like element. I feel sometimes like we're playing Resident Evil with the button cutscenes.

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What is WHM's true identity?..........Bruce Wayne

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kinda missed opportunity there, you should say "my sig/banner will tell you" =D