Divine Benison change is freaking amazing

I knew that the change was going to be good, obviously, but it didn't really sink in how good it is until I actually played with it.

A free, instant cast shield every 25-30 seconds is bloody amazing and makes WHM so much stronger. It's up every pull in dungeons, and it's free mitigation throughout boss fights and raids... I know this is all obvious but it feels great to have another oGCD tool, especially one that isn't just raw healing.

I know! It saved me so many times during Sigmascape.

I would read an ability name on my focus target bar and think 'that looks tankbusterish' and pop DB like candy on the MT. Also helped when my Medica II ticks would invariably have me tanking adds during O7 until they got picked up instead of burning Tetra on myself.

I love it!! I queued for roulettes to test it and had the pleasure of "Pull all the things!" tank which I don't mind, I find those challenging! That DB was amazing on those big pulls!

I said before the patch that WHM was getting the biggest buff and I stand by that. We got a whole new ability because, really, who uses Cure??

I'm a little conflicted. I thought the Lily requirement was necessary to prevent the ability from being too useful, but because of the implementation of Lilies it also made Benison useless. Stacking DB + Adlo / Aspected + SiO / TBN is a real absurdity, potentially shielding a tank for more than half of their max HP (without factoring in a Critlo). That's a dangerous direction, and it won't be long before tank busters are in excess of a one-shot.

And yet...

Benison fills a gap in WHM's toolkit. Everyone knows those moments when you see a player is going to die, Tetra is on CD, but there's not enough time to cast Cure. Divine Benison is perfect for buying you enough time to realign your GCD usage (GCD bottleneck being the cornerstone of WHM gameplay) to dynamic situations and eliminating that frustrating sense of helplessness. The gameplay impact has been a significant improvement.

Good for me, bad for the game. Moral hazard approaching!

The whole lily mechanic feels rather useless now that Bension is not a part of it. Even moreso than it already did.

I find myself having absolutely no reason to gather lilies for a slight CD decrease. The Bension change really brought the issues of the Lily system up front. That it's completely useless and doesn't actually serve a purpose. I really hope that it being separated is acknowledgement from SE that they really aren't satisfied with the mechanic and that it'll either be removed or heavily adjusted.

That being said, I wonder if the actual skill needs a nerf now. I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but it's really strong. It's up so often I find that I'm using it just to put it back on CD.

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

The whole lily mechanic feels rather useless now that Bension is not a part of it. Even moreso than it already did.

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Lilies are for getting DB back faster. While that's not great, it's not strictly speaking useless. Secret of the Lily II is useless, for comparison purposes.

But yes, DB feels so much better without the tacked on requirement for a resource that we may or may not even generate. It's amazing how much more fun it makes the class.

I have a feeling, that reason why lilies seem like a weak mechanic is that you dont "see" the benefit very clearly.
But is IS there. If you can use ability like DB/Tetra/Assize with 3 lilies, you will get it back much sooner which can be important on hard encounters.

It is just hard to perceive the benefit on easy fights, where you barely ever need to Cure or use affected abilities on cooldown.

PS: one change I wich was made is getting some low percentage to proc lilies from offensive abilities (stone at least).

Said it before in a separate thread and will say it again - the Lily system was/is little more than a perk system. I knew the DB change was going to be great when it was previously discussed before the patch and it still stands. However, its removal from the Lily system (as said before) will now bring said Lily system to attention for the next patch... It has to, seeing as it was forgettable before the change and is even more so after. While we can hold onto hope that they revisit the system entirely, I have a bad feeling that it'll lead to less pleasant changes. Time will tell.

I'm actually very happy with both WHM and Warrior, despite having seen a lot of worry expressed on the tank forum. The content has also been, as expected, short-lived but fun. Overall, quite happy with the patch thus far. Let's see what happens from here.

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

That being said, I wonder if the actual skill needs a nerf now. I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but it's really strong. It's up so often I find that I'm using it just to put it back on CD.

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I know what you mean. 15% of an ally's max HP as a shield every 30ish seconds is pretty strong, but I really don't want to see WHM nerfed.

Like Trunks said, it fills in a gap in the WHM toolkit. So really it shouldn't change too much.

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Originally Posted by Tridus

It's amazing how much more fun it makes the class.

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I know right!? It gives WHMs more breathing room, and allows us to stretch our DPS just that much further. It's hard to explain why it's so much more fun with just being a free shield... maybe its all that jumping and dancing we do to cast it? Hmm...

Divine Benison is like Stoneskin but MUCH better. I didn't like having to use lillies to cast it so seeing that it no longer requires them to cast DB put a smile on my face.

Love it. Slap regen + benison on it, and start spamming holy!

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Originally Posted by RylaBee

I have a feeling, that reason why lilies seem like a weak mechanic is that you dont "see" the benefit very clearly.
But is IS there. If you can use ability like DB/Tetra/Assize with 3 lilies, you will get it back much sooner which can be important on hard encounters.

It is just hard to perceive the benefit on easy fights, where you barely ever need to Cure or use affected abilities on cooldown.

PS: one change I wich was made is getting some low percentage to proc lilies from offensive abilities (stone at least).

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This is true, but on the other hand there isn't always an advantage to having more frequent access to certain abilities in more difficult encounters due to how we all learn mechanics and time CD usage accordingly.

Overall yes, it's definitely useful to have shorter cooldowns, but in practice it's not as useful as it sounds.

Pretty much as above, RNG and Savage aren't good bed fellows. I tend to try to funnel my Lilies into Assize where possible, but for example, in O4S any Lilies I actually gain are usually lost leading into each set of meteors as I'll hold Assize for that. I have much more success in dungeons, Hell's Lid in particular where a couple of the trash pulls actually hit hard enough for me to generate a good few Lilies to use.

The Lilies themselves aren't really the problem in my eyes, it's the difficulty of actually getting them in much of the content out there.

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Originally Posted by RylaBee

I have a feeling, that reason why lilies seem like a weak mechanic is that you dont "see" the benefit very clearly.

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If they give you a big unique UI element and yet you can't "see" the mechanic's impact, that's a pretty egregious design flaw.

S/he's not referring to the UI aspect, but the fact that the system is simply a CD-shaver. Most people play as if it doesn't exists (and won't even notice it - and I say that as someone who typically ignores it outside of moments where I'm reduced to spewing out CureII for some stupid reason), whereas those paying it proper attention would have to be mindful of their CD-timers to notice the impact. As a counter-example, let's compare it to the 3xProc Bard Ballad. Getting three notes means you can unleash a whopping OGCD attack. This is noticeable. WHM can cast the lily effected spells with or without generating any actual lilies (and doing so shreds a chunk of time off the ability), thus the impact isn't overly noticeable, especially to those who aren't inclined to over-heal for the sake of generating them.

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Originally Posted by Trunks

I said before the patch that WHM was getting the biggest buff and I stand by that. We got a whole new ability because, really, who uses Cure??

I'm a little conflicted...

Good for me, bad for the game. Moral hazard approaching!

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Hmm - had the same thought when I read the patch notes and even more so after playing it. Guess you schooled me well professor.

I will say in my dungeon healing I had developed a habit of casting a Cure/II at the end of a pull to land before the last mob died so that I'd had a lily to DB the tank for the next fight and it's been frustratingly hard to break. Like, I'm still doing it all the time.

That cast could be a Stone IV now and it's bugging me >.<

Also DB+Regen yessss, so much free dps time! :D

Divine Benison is now one of my favorite abilities. 4.2 made a world of a difference in terms of flow and feel for WHM.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

I will say in my dungeon healing I had developed a habit of casting a Cure/II at the end of a pull to land before the last mob died so that I'd had a lily to DB the tank for the next fight and it's been frustratingly hard to break. Like, I'm still doing it all the time.

That cast could be a Stone IV now and it's bugging me >.<

Also DB+Regen yessss, so much free dps time! :D

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That's not a bad habit. The lily mechanic has nothing to do with that and is good to do even pre-50. Beginning a pull with your tank at full HP just gives you more DPS uptime before you need to actually start allocating your resources to healing. It's all about knowing the distance between the current and the next set of mobs. After a boss, you can pretty much let the health of the group regen on its own before the next encounter even if very low. After a trash pull however, an aggressive tank is just going to keep going to the next pack if not begin the next pull before the mob from the last is dead.

Your stone IV doesn't equate to a whole lot if it is total overkill. It's gratifying to finish off a mob (believe me, I know), but if efficiency is your thing, then next to no time is spent outside of combat in a speed run dungeon. Sometimes, this does involve healing over DPS as a healer. Whatever the situation, when a mob can quickly be finished off by the tank and DPS, it's all about their TP vs your MP in a speed run situation. In short, it really isn't a good thing to spend a lot of MP on a spell that hits a mob for way more than it takes to kill it, which is why your gcd is likely better spent of bringing the tank back up to full for the next pull when the DPS and tank will spend easily recoverable TP to finish off the pack.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

That's not a bad habit.

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I get the idea behind what you're saying and to be fair I wasn't very specific. If the tank is low enough at the end of a pull that it could matter to me if he sprinted off to the next pull I would heal him anyways because it's common sense but if we're talking a sliver of health missing it is certainly a waste in almost any scenario.

A happy byproduct of it is more lillies though so whether I apply DB or use another move at least I'm shaving off some CDs.

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Originally Posted by Seredeelfer

Hmm - had the same thought when I read the patch notes and even more so after playing it. Guess you schooled me well professor.

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I stared at this for a good 2-3 minutes thinking, "oh no, what trauma did I inflict and forget?", before I looked at your name. Small world! Hi! :D

I'd prefer it to have a flat CD and be untied from Lillies entirely, akin to an improved Stoneskin. Still a step in the right direction regardless.

Love it! And it's there right at the start of the fight, so we can DB the tank, drop our DoTs and get Regen/Medica II/Holy going as needed before they need our attention again.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

Love it! And it's there right at the start of the fight, so we can DB the tank, drop our DoTs and get Regen/Medica II/Holy going as needed before they need our attention again.

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Yeah, that is my favorite benefit of a shields. It doesn’t cause aggro like regens do making pulls easier. Now all three healers can consistently do it.