Lily a little unnecessary?

hello. it seems like Lily really isn't necessary. don't get me wrong, the coolodwn reduction is useful. but is it necessary?

i don't know, it just seems that an individual Lily hasn't very much worth at all, if any. the cooldown reduction is only useful at 3 Lily's. so then, what is the real point in it? it seems moot to trade time for time.

it would be great to see actions only consume one Lily ever. maybe still have the same cooldown reduction effect of 3, but maybe also add a delay in how fast Lily's can be consumed. because i understand people are probably used to this by now and actually like it. then i also don't play end-game. so, some may have strategy planned out around cooldown timers and such. (or maybe some new effect entirely)

either way... not much individual worth for the Lily. the entire Lily system just becomes a limiting factor. that is, unless you are some kind of genius when it comes to timing cooldown rotations without planing, or something... and if you are just winging it, the entire system becomes redundant. (again, trading time for time)



the point is is that each individual Lily has little to no worth. you need all 3 Lily to make the cooldown reduction even worth mentioning. unlike other classes/jobs it isn't like a WHM is stacking up to execute some ultimate move or something.

It's common consensus that Lillies are a lackluster mechanic that was clearly tacked on because the dev team wanted every job to have a gauge-mechanic. =w=

It's a pretty terrible mechanic. CD reduction isn't something you can or should rely on and the fact that it's used by so many useful abilities (Tetra, Assize, DB) it can be hard to have more than one lily at a time. Not only that but how you generate lilies is pretty bad, considering a good WHM can heal through most things with just Regen, DB, Tetra, Bene, Medica(II), Assize, and/or Asylum.

It's a mechanic you can ignore without any real detriment to yourself, which is the exact opposite of what a job gauge should be.

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

It's common consensus that Lillies are a lackluster mechanic that was clearly tacked on because the dev team wanted every job to have a gauge-mechanic. =w=

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I think the dev team's comments about not buffing DRK's CD times puts it into words pretty well, even if they were talking about a tank.

Content is designed for certain things to happen at certain intervals. Taking a few seconds off a CD doesn't really help you there.

Don't see why lollies can't be adjusted to be more useful.
AST has it's time dilation, so it's not as if cool down trimming has any balance issues with content.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

AST has it's time dilation, so it's not as if cool down trimming has any balance issues with content.

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Time dilation works in a fundamentally different way. There's a reason Spear was considered to be one of the most useless cards before it was changed...

You could get some value out of it in older dungeons via a bit of oGCD alignment, my aim was to align oGCDs to get 45 second assizes as consistently as possible. Even without bothering to take CS, I did some pretty hefty DPS in dungeons using this approach.

Can't say I've figured a way to do the same in any worthwhile manner in Hell's Lid/Fractal HM tho, Hell's only really has 1 rough pull that potentially needs a couple of GCD heals, whilst almost everything else can be handled by juggling oGCDs =/

in short, if the content pushes us enough to actually start throwing Cures then Lilies aren't actually that bad. Unfortunately there's very very little that actually does that with any real consistency. Savage included.

At least lilies have *some* use, albeit small. The SCH system is just appalling, I've only used it once or twice since it was implemented because it (in my opinion, for non-Savage use) reduces the effectiveness of the fairy. By which I mean that if she's concentrating on one player alone then she isn't able to throw out those sweet Embraces to the players I'm not necessarily concentrating on as much, like ranged DPS who are lower on my "must keep healed" list than tanks & co-healers.

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Originally Posted by Culfinrandir

At least lilies have *some* use, albeit small. The SCH system is just appalling, I've only used it once or twice

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Fey Union is a ridiculously powerful HoT on the tank during trash pulls, and any kind of content for that matter, so I'd 100% recommend you try to use it often!

Use a buffed Whispering Dawn before tethering the tank and you're basically healing them for 11kish per tick. If a DPS gets hit during a trash pull, you always have Lustrate or Indom to deal with that. During raids, when you know who can get hurt and exactly at what intervals, Fey Union is also really powerful because of how much healing it can procure on the tanks (or DPS with Bleed/Burns).

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

Time dilation works in a fundamentally different way. There's a reason Spear was considered to be one of the most useless cards before it was changed...

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Yup. Fully-scripted content encounters means that CD reduction on a fundamental level will never be useful, even truly "busted" gimmicks such as possible CD resets (which classes in other games looooooove). If you can't ever "bank" on Hallowed Ground being usable in particular scenarios from CD reductions or resets, you'll just pretend they don't exist for all the good they do.

At best CD reduction on something like Assize has practical use in dungeons due to how much AOE you're doing, but that's it.

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Originally Posted by Culfinrandir

At least lilies have *some* use, albeit small. The SCH system is just appalling, I've only used it once or twice since it was implemented because it (in my opinion, for non-Savage use) reduces the effectiveness of the fairy. By which I mean that if she's concentrating on one player alone then she isn't able to throw out those sweet Embraces to the players I'm not necessarily concentrating on as much, like ranged DPS who are lower on my "must keep healed" list than tanks & co-healers.

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You can cancel Fey Union if you want your fairy to start using Embrace on someone else. It's astronomically more useful than the Lily system as of now; there's a reason I play SCH for my expert roulettes despite being an Astrologian raid healer, and that's because SCH's off-hands healing tools are just straight busted.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

You can cancel Fey Union if you want your fairy to start using Embrace on someone else. It's astronomically more useful than the Lily system as of now; there's a reason I play SCH for my expert roulettes despite being an Astrologian raid healer, and that's because SCH's off-hands healing tools are just straight busted.

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Last time I cancelled Fey Union the fairy disappeared & I had to resummon. At least it's cheaper to do that now. I haven't done any expert roulettes in SB as I've just not had any motivation to do so. I still haven't done A12... I think I burned out on endgame content. At least Eureka is something different.

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Originally Posted by Culfinrandir

Last time I cancelled Fey Union the fairy disappeared & I had to resummon. At least it's cheaper to do that now. I haven't done any expert roulettes in SB as I've just not had any motivation to do so. I still haven't done A12... I think I burned out on endgame content. At least Eureka is something different.

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Fairy shouldn't disappear after canceling Fey Union; sounds like a bug (or accidentally hit Dissipation). And yes, I've noticed most of your time is just spent these days with the AFK chair next to your name in Rhalgar's. :P But at any rate, canceling Fey Union should work without de-summoning your fairy - I do it all the time for tank spot-heals during boss fights where I'd rather use stacks on Energy Drain than Lustrate.

yeah. i hope they will plan something else for the Lily :)

You're right. Lilies are tacked on and not especially important. One common tip for newbie white mages is to ignore them. Why? Because fishing for lilies encourages suboptimal gameplay. You do not want to spam Cure unless you have no choice. You do not want to save Assize/Asylum/Tetra/DB for a long time in case you might need them later and only use them with full lilies. You use them whenever they're useful (or at certain times in higher end content) to get the benefit and give yourself more time to do other stuff (like DPS).

Frankly, if you removed lilies, WHM would be barely affected in terms of how it plays. That is a dead giveaway.

edit - In fact, I contend WHM is the only job in the game that wouldn't be impacted at all if you removed its job gauge and the related mechanics. It's that unimportant.

Especially with the recent change to DB lilies bring literally nothing impactful. DB is so much stronger with out the lily requirement while the Lily system is weaker.

As Someone who has mained WHM since the day FFXIV was released on the PS3, I literally pay 0 attention whatsoever to the fact lilies exist, and it has no adverse effects on my game play. I even forget they're there until I've used cure 3 times and I hear the maxed out sound they play when you max out your gauge.

And since Divine Benison no longer requires a lily to use, I literally have no use for it. I run savage, and extreme content all the time, and the few second cool down reduction i may occasionally receive on the abilities that it may apply to has pretty much gone unnoticed by me.

So yes, you could remove lilies altogether, and you wouldn't change your play style at all.

Don't use them, don't need them.

Why should i align anything to this lackluster cooldownreduce?

Tetra up? Yes-> do i need it? Yes-> Use. Otherwise don't
Divine bension up? yes-> Need to use? Yes-> Use, otherwise don't. Should be up before next trashpull anyways.
Asylum up? Yes -> Do you need it? Yes-> Can you position it? Yes-> Use. Otherwise don't
Assize up? Yes->Use for trash. Assize up again? Yes-> use after aoes or just whenever on bosses in dungeons because who cares.

Divine bension and assize are the only things you can use for dynamic uses anyways. Divine fpr tankbuster and Assize for SOMETIMES little emergency mp boosts.
Thats about it.
That's all there is to it... Don't need cooldownreduce on skills i don't NEED to use on cooldown. Ever.
It's just a waste of complicated thinking when not needed.


Its the same as trying to stack more than 1 confession... everything is full then ANYWAYS.
Really, don't bother, just use skills when they are needed. And they either are or aren't up afterwards, whm has enough other options for that time.

I like lilies. They're a nice little comeback mechanic if you die or run out of mana through other means.

They only seemed so tacked on because healers don't really heal much. If you've done high level pulling in Eureka, you'll get a lot of use out of them.

Lilies system could actually be more or less interesting or at least "useful" if we could hold it and spend it on the specific ressources we want.

However with the current situation, if you wanted to make a max profit, you'd need to do the opposite, meaning you'd need to "hold" that specific spell OR having to cast 3 cure before using it, which isn't a very productive way to heal.

As we have seen sor far, we can totally play WHM well by completely ignoring lilies. And that's sad that they have spend time designing a jauge like this that is useless.
Should something be done about it ? Yes I think so. Not because WHM need something else particulary, but because well... it's there, dev team worked on it, but the results isn't what was expected.

Lillies could definitely be more useful. I mean if it's a cooldown reduction, why not go the extra mile and make it almost a White Mage version of Greased Lightning? So it affects spell speed too. Quicker heals (or quicker damage) would be appealing IMO. Though I can see if they did do that...they'd probably nerf something to accommodate it. But AST gets Lightspeed, which reduces damage but not heals, so I think a WHM version of Greased lightning could be balanced without cutting healing potency. Or replace it with something completely different, maybe increase your crit rate, more crit healing, more crit damage. There are plenty of better things out there than CD reduction to make Lillies more worth it.

But it is also a mechanic it relies too much on single target heals. I've always thought of WHM to be the competant AoE healer who probably focuses more on Medica, Medica II and Regen and only Cure/Cure II when necessary (depending on content). It means overheal or change playstyle.

If they understood Spear was bad, they might get Lillies aren't very good at some point... R-right?

Either way, I think the only plausible reasons Lillies haven't been changed yet are either A) Them being kind of useless doesn't make the job bad, so no point altering it for now or; B)Devs haven't came with anything they'd consider good or balanced to replace/rework.

Technically all the gauges are tacked on, but Lilies as a system does seem extra lackluster. Most of the gauges seem to just be providing a second or different visual indicator of what your status bar is/was already telling you. I was thinking that Lilies would tie into the level 70 WHM power somehow, but found out that confessions is a different thing. Then I realized what Lilies was doing and...meh. On the bright side, it's a gauge I think I can turn off completely and not just use simple mode on like most of my jobs. I do not understand why anyone would need a full 2"x2" (or however it scales) gauge on their screen. But that's another thread...

I feel like they made Lilies as a PvP thing then just tacked it onto PvE content. Lilies are great in PvP when the entire content revolves around spike damage and highly unpredictable damage so Cure, Cure II, and CDR start to become quite a thing to just help the WHM keep up with the explosiveness of the content.

I'm not holding my breath for any changes but it would be nice to see something for 4.4 leading up to the new raid tier.

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Originally Posted by basketofseals

I like lilies. They're a nice little comeback mechanic if you die or run out of mana through other means.

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????????????

Lilies have no appreciable positive impact on your mana pool. You're not saving much mana with a ~12s recast reduction on a select few oGCDs, especially when you're spending mana to generate them in the first place.

I completely ignore lillies to the point where I forget they even exist. That's how much they matter to me.

I never turned off the gauge for whatever reason though. I should probably do that.

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Originally Posted by zuzu-bq

If they understood Spear was bad, they might get Lillies aren't very good at some point... R-right?

Either way, I think the only plausible reasons Lillies haven't been changed yet are either A) Them being kind of useless doesn't make the job bad, so no point altering it for now or; B)Devs haven't came with anything they'd consider good or balanced to replace/rework.

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Divide them into two different types of lillies maybe. One type makes Aero / Stone spells instant per lily, and the other makes Cure spells instant per lily?

Would need to change how they generate, though.

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Originally Posted by RojGardoth

Technically all the gauges are tacked on, but Lilies as a system does seem extra lackluster. Most of the gauges seem to just be providing a second or different visual indicator of what your status bar is/was already telling you. I was thinking that Lilies would tie into the level 70 WHM power somehow, but found out that confessions is a different thing. Then I realized what Lilies was doing and...meh.

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The gagues are tacked on, but the systems aren't. Aetherflow matters to SCH no matter if it's on your buff bar or in a gauge, for example. Removing Aetherflow from the game would drastically alter SCH.

Lilies don't matter. Period. Removing lilies from the game wouldn't affect WHM at all. That's what we mean by "tacked on". I contend that WHM is the only job where the entire mechanic behind the gauge is functionally irrelevant. (PLD is the next closest one, but you do actually want to use Sheltron and Intervention so it's doing more than nothing.)

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

I feel like they made Lilies as a PvP thing then just tacked it onto PvE content. Lilies are great in PvP when the entire content revolves around spike damage and highly unpredictable damage so Cure, Cure II, and CDR start to become quite a thing to just help the WHM keep up with the explosiveness of the content.

I'm not holding my breath for any changes but it would be nice to see something for 4.4 leading up to the new raid tier.

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Well it also helps that lilies can reduce the CD of an ability up to 50% in PvP and Benediction is also affected. It's quite noticeable a 60 second reduction CD.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Divide them into two different types of lillies maybe. One type makes Aero / Stone spells instant per lily, and the other makes Cure spells instant per lily?

Would need to change how they generate, though.

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It doesn't matter how they're generated really, the actual cooldown reduction is so weak that it only becomes meaningful if you spend 3 Lillies on Asylum. I see lillies as just a small help to players that are still learning how to heal, which isn't bad? But it isn't good either.

The lilies, it's in a sense, an automatic Aetherflow-like function now. As originally designed they were RNG proc's. Removing the RNG was the right thing, but they should have learned from Arcanist/SCH/SMN Aetherflow that locking skills or changing their power behind a second manual mechanic only leads to that mechanic being ignored or fumbled by players who are too busy to look at this indicator, as was the case with Cleric Stance.

So all the lily gauge does is offer an indicator that you're actually healing, and not just wasting healing casts that result in nothing.

Where the Lily system was changed more from release was how Plenary Indulgence, wound up being made less useful, but now always usable.

In 4.05

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Plenary Indulgence
Party members will no longer be granted a Confession when HP is restored via Cure and Cure II. They will instead be granted a Confession when HP is restored via Medica, Medica II, or Cure III.
The chance of granting party members a Confession has been increased from 20% to 100%.
The duration of the Confession has been reduced from 30 to 10 seconds.
Healing potency based on the number of stacks of Confession has been reduced from 400 for one stack, 500 for two stacks, and 600 for three stacks to 150 for one stack, 300 for two stacks, and 450 for three stacks.
Recast time increased from 15 to 60 seconds.
Confession stacks will now also be granted to the player casting Medica, Medica II, or Cure III.

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So from the notes, you get the impression that PI was probably being ignored completely, because it was only creating stacks for one player at the time. I get what their thought process was behind this (eg player is using cure on the tanks, thus the confession stack should always be up, thus every third cure could be PI) but since it's a level 70 skill, there's little content for which it's available. Thus it's asking players to change their strategy just for level 70 content. The way it's setup now actually discourages overhealing by using Medica/Medica II/Cure III as well, since if you fumble it no stacks are given. However the recast time and confession stacks now make it even less likely to have the conditions to be used, since the confession stacks are shorter than the recast time.

If you look in the 4.2 patch notes:

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Divine Benison
Healing Lily requirement has been removed.
* The trait Secret of the Lily will still consume healing lilies upon the use of Divine Benison, shortening its cast time.
* Updated 02/01/2018 2:00 a.m. (PST)

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So as it stands right now Plenary Indulgence ends up being an additional "free" medica cast, assuming you notice it in the 10 second window it's available. Most of the time it's not available because the confession stacks drop off too quickly, because players only have the confession stack from being healed immediately before hand.

I still don't see why SE thought RNG based skills would be embraced. For a healer, there should be no RNG aspect to healing.

OMG, this thread scared me a sec, you really should change the title if you can. You meant Lilies, as in the WHM mechanic. Lily, is the faerie. I'm sure a lot of SCH clicked on this thread ready to question why, lol

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Originally Posted by IttyBitty

????????????

Lilies have no appreciable positive impact on your mana pool. You're not saving much mana with a ~12s recast reduction on a select few oGCDs, especially when you're spending mana to generate them in the first place.

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If you get smashed into the face with magic hammer or just die at an inopportune time, then you're going to be casting a lot more cure 1s than normal. 20% off on 4 oGCDs can go a long way when you're treading water.

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Originally Posted by basketofseals

If you get smashed into the face with magic hammer or just die at an inopportune time, then you're going to be casting a lot more cure 1s than normal. 20% off on 4 oGCDs can go a long way when you're treading water.

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But Medica, Medica 2, Cure 3 and Assize want to have a word with you?
And no,a ssize does nto care about lillies

How many people do you heal with cure 1 instead of using 1 Cure 2 on each? Or, aoe heal. Where ARE these people if you can't hit them with aoes?

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Originally Posted by Cheremia

But Medica, Medica 2, Cure 3 and Assize want to have a word with you?
And no,a ssize does nto care about lillies

How many people do you heal with cure 1 instead of using 1 Cure 2 on each? Or, aoe heal. Where ARE these people if you can't hit them with aoes?

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There's also Regen and Asylum too.
Never underestimate the power of a good HoT.

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Originally Posted by Cheremia

But Medica, Medica 2, Cure 3 and Assize want to have a word with you?
And no,a ssize does nto care about lillies

How many people do you heal with cure 1 instead of using 1 Cure 2 on each? Or, aoe heal. Where ARE these people if you can't hit them with aoes?

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If you died at an inopportune time, such as just after popping lucid dreaming, then I am not even speaking the same language as cure 3. You should definitely be priming your lilies for assize in that situation because nothing is less efficient than being unable to do anything because you have no mana.

Perhaps if you actually took the time to actually read what I wrote instead of inserting your completely unrelated hypthoticals you could actually have an argument. /salt

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Originally Posted by basketofseals

If you died at an inopportune time, such as just after popping lucid dreaming, then I am not even speaking the same language as cure 3. You should definitely be priming your lilies for assize in that situation because nothing is less efficient than being unable to do anything because you have no mana.

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Why prime 3 Lilies to use Assize when you can just use Assize normally? Especially if you just got rezed and need MP (and maybe help heal the party)?
If you're priming all 3 Lilies before every ability effected by them, then you're just over-healing and wasting MP.
Or are you holding on to the abilities, waiting til you get enough Lilies? That's just adding extra stress for yourself.

EDIT: This is meant to be what to do after you are raised.


If you have Lucid or Thin Air avaliable, you pop one or both and your MP should be fine.

If you have Assize you should use it as soon as possible, trying to get as much healing out of it as you can. Using 3 Cures and then casting Assize is usually a waste of GCDs and MP. A 20% CD reduction on Assize is 12 seconds, sure, but you would have to spend ~7.5 seconds priming it, effectively only reducing the CD by ~4.5 seconds.

But let's say you don't have any of the three above abilities ready, what should you do? I, personally, always drop a Tetra or Bene (if avaliable) on myself first. If those aren't ready then I'll use Cure II. Next I check to see if the tank has Regen, if not I cast it along with Divine Benison to be safe. At this point I see how many others need healing. Using oGCDs, Medicas, and the occasional Cure II I can easily keep everyone up.

And remember, this is excluding the possibility of you having another healer with you, and/or a caster/ranged who can give you MP.

The thing is: I died after using lucid. Every whm did at one point or another.
Every whm also died after using thin air.
But you usually should rotate them around so one or the other SHOULD be up after a res. Or at least close to being up.

Then i use tetra+regen on myself if needed. Then i protect. then i make sure I survive FIRST.
At NO point EVER, did i think about the lillies first. The only time was cure1/2+divine bension on big trash pulls in dungeons. For tank buster? Used after healing them (if i didn't use tetra for the buster) and even that was not needed.
Now that i don't need lillies anymore i care even less about them.

They did not change my playstyle at all and will never do so.
If emergencies happen, i will cure people after i res them(or got ressed) but if they're stupid and move instead of waiting and NOT instantly dying again they're not top priority anymore.

I don't know where lillies should change ANYTHING on skills you don't use when they're off cooldown usually... Like the only skill would be Assize if you know you don't use it on an aoe. But where to even GET them from? I heal with medica2 most of the time...

Also no, i do not forget about regen and asylum. Asylum sees not a LOT of uses (I'm actually trying to use it more at the moment because i'm a lazy holy main). But i try to have regen ups on tanks almost all of the time (even in raids if the tank isn't mine)

It's just... if you try to play for lillies you might be surprised: Everything works out just fine without them. The amount of times i hit 3 WILLINGLY... i can count on one hand.
Other times it was healing other alliances in raids... or on mega trashpulls where i'm forced to heal because the tank has tissue armor... but like, planned? Like... never?

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

Why prime 3 Lilies to use Assize when you can just use Assize normally? Especially if you just got rezed and need MP (and maybe help heal the party)?
If you're priming all 3 Lilies before every ability effected by them, then you're just over-healing and wasting MP.
Or are you holding on to the abilities, waiting til you get enough Lilies? That's just adding extra stress for yourself.

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Since Assize should be used on cooldown, so I don't think too much of an assumption that you have plenty of time to build lilies in the meantime. It might not seem like much, and in some cases it might not even matter at all, but if you're about to head into a heavy AoE phase like the Gaurdian's second add, then having your assize up 12 seconds earlier can make a difference.

You're going to have to heal sometime, and you shouldn't be cure 2ing at such a low mana level. It's not such an unusual thing to build a lily here and there. Just instead of waiting for the tank to get low and then burst him up with CDs, just throw in an extra cure or two right before assize comes up. Just avoid accidentally blowing them on a benison or something, that's all. I'm not advocating for sitting there farming for lillies for every CD. Cure 1 is the exact same mana as Stone 4 after all.

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Originally Posted by VanilleFang

If you have Lucid or Thin Air avaliable, you pop one or both and your MP should be fine.

...

And remember, this is excluding the possibility of you having another healer with you, and/or a caster/ranged who can give you MP.

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Forgive me if I'm wrong, but Lucid Dreaming and Thin Air should be used on CD. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that it would not be available in this circumstance. Mana batteries are certainly nice, but there's no guarantee those abilities are also not on cooldown, or even if you have those jobs in your raid. Isn't the common application of Tactician to extend Foe's Requiem use?

Mana shift would do the job sufficiently, but I find players rather reticent to use it. Should they even take it? Apocatastasis, Addle, Diversion, Lucid Dreaming, and Swiftcast all have very useful and strategic applications. It's your opinion on whether you should put a little added burden on the group to carry recovery tools. Personally I think you should, but not all would agree.

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Originally Posted by basketofseals

snip.

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I'm a tad confused. My post was built on hypothetical, and listed multiple scenarios. Sometimes you can forget to use a CD, so it might be up. Sometimes your raise aligns with a CD coming off CD. Sometimes you have multiple CDs avaliable. Sometimes you don't have any CDs.

My point was that using Cure I is hardly ever an efficient use of your GCD. Even with low MP you have other tools that can help you heal through until you get you MP back up. Why would I use 3 Cures if I could instead use Regen and Divine Benison?