I want the game designers to show us WHM-s how to play optimally without clipping

Dear Yoshi-P,

Why have you designed a class that cannot be played optimally in one of the few places where optimal performance is required?

Just clip lmao

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Originally Posted by Aurida

Just clip lmao

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Clipping is the same as being afk.

In normal content is possible to achieve the 1x Dia - 12x Glare - 1x Dia rotation which is WHM's GCD rotation for optimal performance. In savage that's not possible to maintain under any circumstances.

From my pov we are being given a puzzle with an image, the pieces build the correct image but for some reason, the pieces, when put together, do not match, so we have to cut them and glue them with the others so that we build some semblance of the initial image of the puzzle. It is not right.

Embrace the clipmage, and cry together we shall!

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Originally Posted by Roeshel

Clipping is the same as being afk.

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That seems like an exaggeration. When you clip, you delay your next GCD by a small amount. But the gap between GCDs is filled by an oGCD. So it's not like you stop doing actions.

I do personally find that it feels bad to clip. Back in Stormblood it was optimal for SCH to clip in some circumstances, and I never liked doing it. But I wonder if this is because we've been conditioned to think that clipping is "wrong", because it's usually suboptimal. In situations where it's optimal, I'm not sure why we should be bothered by it. In a similar way, overhealing feels bad. But sometimes it's optimal (like using Whispering Dawn just to heal the tank during dungeon pulls). Why should we care if it's optimal?

By the way, whether or not clipping is optimal is a somewhat subtle matter. It depends on whether clipping results in losing GCDs over the course of the fight, and this depends on things like kill time. A single clip probably won't cost you a GCD. But obviously the more often you do it, the more likely you are to lose one.

Well, you're done then, friend.

You can't not clip on White Mage no matter what, because spells with cast time >= the recast time automatically clip when chain casting.

Pack it up, boys, magic users are trash.

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Originally Posted by Aurida

Just clip lmao

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The fact this gets the most upvotes just goes to prove how the skill level of healers has only plummeted ever since they simplified it.

Clipping is terrible gameplay design.

If they did care, then we wouldn't have this problem.
Clipping must be eliminated. Interface locks are a problem. Remember dragoon animation locks? where you jumped but even though you pressed a button your lock stopped the attack happening or even moving before the aoe smacked your health bar in two

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

Clipping is terrible gameplay design.

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Okay yeah it feels bad dude, I'm not gonna sit here and try to say that having to kick your GCD down the road 0.75 seconds every other time Assize comes up isn't dissimilar to the WHM designer making you bang your toe against the end table.

I'm also sorry that the dummy parse of a white mage in Savage is interrupted by occasionally having to play the game, as if it's somehow a devastating attack from Yoshi-P himself that people like the OP have to ever deign to cast anything that's not a Glare (or Dia, at perfectly spaced 30s intervals to allow for optimal refreshing) but at this level of optimization and/or brain rot it means that you're basically done actually playing FF14 and are just using it to play FFLogs

If you wanna ask for the cast time of Glare to be reduced as with AST's Malefic, so that WHM isn't the most immobile job in the game when played 'perfectly' from a DPS optimization standpoint then just ask for that straight up. Until they change that, WHM is going to be a game of little potency losses, as is befitting a healer that might occasionally have to heal, and equating that to the slow death of the skill of the user base because people don't get more upset over a 50 potency loss incurred for doing their job is out of touch at best.

Just clip lmao

If you don't really play WHM, why even post on a subject you have no knowledge about?

Clips are 100 potency loss not 50, the decline in healer ability is due to overall simplification, giving Glare the Malefic treatment fixes nothing with the depth of the toolkit, if you're "doing your job" as you say Assize is far from your only clip given any sort of unplanned heal or emergency, saying that a clip is "having to play the game" is ridiculous given nearly every job in the game can play with 0 clipping and why on earth would I just "clip lmao" when I can play AST which does literally everything WHM does with full mobility.

My simple view on this is that at least as far as healers are concerned, the job design team have been making healers for a game that simply doesn't exist anymore. The disconnect between the job and content designers is just bizarre at this stage.

With some very simple adjustments to cool down timers and the addition of a tank heal, a Dancer could comfortably heal a group through most casual content up until Extremes and frankly, it'd be more enjoyable than a real healer IMHO.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

(...) why on earth would I just "clip lmao" when I can play AST which does literally everything WHM does with full mobility.

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That's a question you really gotta dig down inside yourself to answer, but it seems like 'the depth of the toolkit' and 'it feels bad to use oGCDs between glare casts' are separate issues which require separate solutions here.

To do that the devs would have to play a healer to begin with

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

My simple view on this is that at least as far as healers are concerned, the job design team have been making healers for a game that simply doesn't exist anymore. The disconnect between the job and content designers is just bizarre at this stage.

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It seems like healers were designed to allow tanks and dps to have fun. Dying as a dps when your healer is struggling with their downtime skillset if "not fun" so healers can't have more than one attack spell that might distract them. Dying because your healer doesn't know how to use more than the basic healing spell they got at level 2 is "not fun" so everything before extremes has no healing requirement.

I desperately hope I'm wrong about this but I haven't seen anything in game or from SE to suggest otherwise.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

If you don't really play WHM, why even post on a subject you have no knowledge about?

Clips are 100 potency loss not 50, the decline in healer ability is due to overall simplification, giving Glare the Malefic treatment fixes nothing with the depth of the toolkit, if you're "doing your job" as you say Assize is far from your only clip given any sort of unplanned heal or emergency, saying that a clip is "having to play the game" is ridiculous given nearly every job in the game can play with 0 clipping and why on earth would I just "clip lmao" when I can play AST which does literally everything WHM does with full mobility.

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embrace the clip. let go of your anger. there isn't any content white mage can't clear. you really are bent out of shape over your fflogs score. it's bad for your health

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Originally Posted by cheolsu

embrace the clip. let go of your anger. there isn't any content white mage can't clear. you really are bent out of shape over your fflogs score. it's bad for your health

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Leave it to players to min-max the fun out of everything. For some people it's like an obsession at this point.

If a job gets feels worse the better you play it then it's a badly designed job Imo.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

Leave it to players to min-max the fun out of everything. For some people it's like an obsession at this point.

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I mean it’s not even about min max with whm. The job is just so clunky it does really feel bad . Like when you try astro in comparison and get used to it, you do feel like you are using cheats in comparison. And I whas whm mains since ages and swapped too astro mid shadowbringer. Astro got it all like mobility, dmg reducing bubble on 60 second cd that you only need to tap for a strong hot and the 10 % reduce for 5 full seconds, strong ogcd heals that you can weave in all spells, mobility because light speed can be used however you wanna use it now and better and it can 100 % heal the tank (40% more single target heal with synastry ) when you do dps in like 4 seconds so even the living dead excuse for benediction doesn’t work well either. Like astro is so stacked in comparison too whm (that has his own spell speed buff on 150 seconds cd so it doesn’t even line up with anything) it’s insane. The only problem astro has is that it is every expansion early really bad until they buff it so massive it runs atleast whm in the ground or if you don’t need shields anymore replaces scholar so whm can go full dps and heal never and let astro heal almost all ogcd solo.

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Originally Posted by Acece

If a job gets feels worse the better you play it then it's a badly designed job Imo.

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Also don’t forget the last strong buff whm got was in Stormblood in the form of a 15 second cast time decrease on assize that was over 2 years ago. Whm got so little in over 4 years it’s insane and too add even more insult it was forced to share some of it exclusive tools that were good with other healers in stormblood. So whm lost more good stuff then it gained and then they can’t even give blood lily a 300 potency buff too make it dmg neutral.

This just in, wanting a job to be designed well is just min-maxing the fun out of it. Embrace bad design.

Healer Stockholm syndrome is strong.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

This just in, wanting a job to be designed well is just min-maxing the fun out of it. Embrace bad design.

Healer Stockholm syndrome is strong.

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It is really insane when you think about how many people actually defend this. Every job can clear with the basic ability they have the “casual” content. Every job when you trying get better rewards you feeling wise and number and kill time wise. The only jobs were it isn’t the case is healers. The moment you actually try to play healer better you are rewarded with a 1 button spam fest also in comparison too dps and tanks, healer do feel so much more clunky every expansion. Scholar had in stormblood a super smooth fairy doing everything when ogcd the moment you pressed the button, now it takes you too cast the ogcd and then 3 seconds for the fairy too use the ability, also the ghosting being a think that never did happen in stormblood, if you pressed the abilities in order they were used in that order. Astro always being bad for 2 raid tiers each expansion we had that if you think about it sounds like a inside joke from the square enix job design team that, only for it to be buffed close to the end of the expansion to outshine all. And whm not gaining anything cool at all since 4 years if you count assize getting 100 potency on both healing and dmg and 15 second cd reduce. It’s just feels like we are not being treated like players and more like idiots.

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Originally Posted by Mortex

Also don’t forget the last strong buff whm got was in Stormblood in the form of a 15 second cast time decrease on assize that was over 2 years ago. Whm got so little in over 4 years it’s insane and too add even more insult it was forced to share some of it exclusive tools that were good with other healers in stormblood. So whm lost more good stuff then it gained and then they can’t even give blood lily a 300 potency buff too make it dmg neutral.

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WHM got the revamped lily system in Shadowbringers, which largely addressed the main problem for WHM in Stormblood, i.e. being heavily punished in DPS for having to GCD heal. WHM went from being the lowest rDPS healer in Stormblood by a large margin to being the highest at the start of Shadowbringers. (AST and SCH got some buffs during the expansion, and now WHM is bottom again, but only by a small margin.)

Some thoughts on clipping your GCD.

In my opinion, it adds interest to the game if the optimal thing to do in some situations is something which is generally suboptimal. Sometimes you have to break rules.

Some examples. In general, it's optimal to use raid buffs like Trick Attack on cooldown, to maximise the number of uses during an encounter. But given fight timings, it is sometimes better to delay raid buffs. In general, it's optimal not to clip your dots by refreshing them early. But sometimes it's better to clip your dot, e.g. to snapshot within raid buffs. In general, it's inefficient to use AoE heals to heal a single target. But this can be efficient during extended periods with no AoE damage (e.g. fighting dungeon mobs). I'm sure there must be other examples.

I think it would be less interesting if optimal play could be reduced to rigid adherence to a set of simple rules ("use raid buffs on cooldown", "never clip your dot", etc.) without any exceptions. The exceptional cases where the right thing to do is break the rules provide opportunities for creative optimisation.

Now, it seems to me that clipping your GCD is another example of this. Although as a general rule, you shouldn't clip your GCD, as this may result in fewer GCDs used over the course of the encounter, there are exceptions when it's optimal to clip. But this isn't a bad thing. As with the other examples, having exceptions to the rules makes things more interesting.

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

WHM got the revamped lily system in Shadowbringers, which largely addressed the main problem for WHM in Stormblood, i.e. being heavily punished in DPS for having to GCD heal. WHM went from being the lowest rDPS healer in Stormblood by a large margin to being the highest at the start of Shadowbringers. (AST and SCH got some buffs during the expansion, and now WHM is bottom again, but only by a small margin.)

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I mean the revamped lily system still forces you too use a Gcd to heal. The only reason why whm became the most dmg strong healer is the fact that his single target dmg spell got the highest potency number by a margin and that it changed from earth based element too neutral element. And yes they fixed Lily’s from being absolutely horrible to still horrible but you can play with it. And also when you look for the best player healer dmg you have fights were astro does out dps whm by a mile just because astro has so much better possibilities. And I can tell you that whm mains that try to perfect optimization the job are fierce players that would stick too the job through hell and back. I ditched it for astro and I still love the job.

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Originally Posted by Mortex

I mean the revamped lily system still forces you too use a Gcd to heal.

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What's wrong with using a GCD to heal? It costs you DSP. But when you use a lily GCD, the lost DPS is partially refunded by Misery. This is a solution to the problem WHM had in Stormblood. Lacking oGCD heals, they were forced to GCD heal, which tanked their DPS. A different solution would have been to move WHM's healing more towards oGCDs, but this would have further homogenised the healing jobs. I actually think the new lily system is a fairly elegant and innovative solution to the problem. Game devs don't get enough credit.

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

What's wrong with using a GCD to heal? It costs you DSP. But when you use a lily GCD, the lost DPS is partially refunded by Misery. This is a solution to the problem WHM had in Stormblood. Lacking oGCD heals, they were forced to GCD heal, which tanked their DPS. A different solution would have been to move WHM's healing more towards oGCDs, but this would have further homogenised the healing jobs. I actually think the new lily system is a fairly elegant and innovative solution to the problem. Game devs don't get enough credit.

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The problem is that both other healer have the sufficient Ogcd healing tools and weave possibilities too use them and lose either almost no dmg or if so little it doesn’t matter and they also have group support that whm doesn’t has at all. I mean it isn’t that hard to start by giving blood lily 300-600 more potency as a decent replacement for missing ogcd. Whm only strength is dmg because astro and sch can heal almost more efficiently then whm and you can’t use his dmg potential cause you are kneecapped by bad job design. Even Blm is more Mobil then whm and that should tell you how bad he is.

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Originally Posted by Mortex

The problem is that both other healer have the sufficient Ogcd healing tools and weave possibilities too use them and lose either almost no dmg or if so little it doesn’t matter

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It's not obvious that SCH loses much less DPS than WHM by healing. Aetherflow heals lose DPS (except with Recitation). And fairy heals also lose DPS unless you have a spare Aetherflow stack to weave Energy Drain. SCH loses more DPS by weaving an oGCD heal under Ruin II (without ED) than WHM loses by using an Afflatus heal, once you take into about the DPS refunded by Misery. AST is clearly the healer with the most free healing.

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Originally Posted by Mortex

The problem is that both other healer have the sufficient Ogcd healing tools and weave possibilities too use them and lose either almost no dmg or if so little it doesn’t matter and they also have group support that whm doesn’t has at all. I mean it isn’t that hard to start by giving blood lily 300-600 more potency as a decent replacement for missing ogcd. Whm only strength is dmg because astro and sch can heal almost more efficiently then whm and you can’t use his dmg potential cause you are kneecapped by bad job design. Even Blm is more Mobil then whm and that should tell you how bad he is.

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The thing about just boosting Misery is it doesn't change how you 'optimize'.

It is currently utilized in a way that even the 'penalty' is still a gain. So flat improving Misery's potency just means you do the same thing for an even bigger gain.

Now, do white mages need that sort of boost? Probably, sure, but at the tippy top end of the game, you still have all the same problems. It might be 'neutral' to use it at +300, but it's also 'better' to use it as they do now, because they already squeeze gains out of it. Why would you settle back into neutral when the gain is just bigger?

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

Some thoughts on clipping your GCD.

In my opinion, it adds interest to the game if the optimal thing to do in some situations is something which is generally suboptimal. Sometimes you have to break rules.

Some examples. In general, it's optimal to use raid buffs like Trick Attack on cooldown, to maximise the number of uses during an encounter. But given fight timings, it is sometimes better to delay raid buffs. In general, it's optimal not to clip your dots by refreshing them early. But sometimes it's better to clip your dot, e.g. to snapshot within raid buffs. In general, it's inefficient to use AoE heals to heal a single target. But this can be efficient during extended periods with no AoE damage (e.g. fighting dungeon mobs). I'm sure there must be other examples.

I think it would be less interesting if optimal play could be reduced to rigid adherence to a set of simple rules ("use raid buffs on cooldown", "never clip your dot", etc.) without any exceptions. The exceptional cases where the right thing to do is break the rules provide opportunities for creative optimisation.

Now, it seems to me that clipping your GCD is another example of this. Although as a general rule, you shouldn't clip your GCD, as this may result in fewer GCDs used over the course of the encounter, there are exceptions when it's optimal to clip. But this isn't a bad thing. As with the other examples, having exceptions to the rules makes things more interesting.

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I agree in theory, but I've also seen this done more elegantly on a DPS class.

Reprise is a fantastically designed ability. Hats off to that one. I *really* hope the design team leaves it alone in Endwalker. It allows you to move if you're stuck in Dualcast stutter step hell, which is great. At the low, low cost of 5 black and white mana. But it's also a damage gain. Yes, that's right, the math on its potency to recast ratio makes it a gain over using your spells. So why not use it constantly? Because compared to the melee burst combo, it's a loss. So you have to be careful, because if you use it so many times that it loses you a melee combo over the course of the fight, then you've actually lost damage for it.

It's a solution that encourages greed for the right reasons. Gives you a tempting, rewarding solution to a problem, but punishes you for indulging that temptation too much. And best of all, it doesn't require you to craptastically clip your GCD like a neanderthal White Mage, because playing smoothly is for classes with actual design behind them.

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Originally Posted by Aurida

But the topic started with the specific intent of 'it feels bad to get precisely 12 glares in in a savage fight' before it broadened to the more general topic of 'WHM has been wronged' so it's like, what do you actually want a solution to?

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I want the game designers to show us their real vision of optimal play for WHM because the current one is just bad and not really achievable.

Clipping is not the only problem. Not only is it not possible to achieve optimal play in the place where you need to play optimally but it also goes against what the class is meant to be doing. The way I see lily gauge now is as an effort of stitching the holes in the design of the class. A lily can reduce the damage potency loss when healing & provides WHM with the chance of weaving 2 oGCDs while giving time to move. All of that is available once every 30 seconds for a class that can weave 2 oGCDs without clipping and can move only when they reset Dia. The worse part is that in the perfect scenario a WHM would do more by not utilizing their job gauge at all. This only proves that the design of the class and the content are not in agreement.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

I agree in theory, but I've also seen this done more elegantly on a DPS class.

Reprise is a fantastically designed ability. Hats off to that one. I *really* hope the design team leaves it alone in Endwalker. It allows you to move if you're stuck in Dualcast stutter step hell, which is great. At the low, low cost of 5 black and white mana. But it's also a damage gain. Yes, that's right, the math on its potency to recast ratio makes it a gain over using your spells. So why not use it constantly? Because compared to the melee burst combo, it's a loss. So you have to be careful, because if you use it so many times that it loses you a melee combo over the course of the fight, then you've actually lost damage for it.

It's a solution that encourages greed for the right reasons. Gives you a tempting, rewarding solution to a problem, but punishes you for indulging that temptation too much. And best of all, it doesn't require you to craptastically clip your GCD like a neanderthal White Mage, because playing smoothly is for classes with actual design behind them.

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thank you. i never knew what reprise was for and have never touched it other than to test it out. now i know