How to fix WHM and AST

White Mage and Astrologian feel clunky to play right now. But fixing them would be extremely easy.

White Mage

Ability changes:
Make Afflatus Solace and Afflatus Rapture oGCD, similar to Lustrate / Indomitability
Increase Afflatus Misery potency so that it is not a DPS loss, and/or add a secondary healing effect

QoL changes:
Glare/Holy III -> Glare/Holy II (this is just really offputting)

Astrologian

Ability changes:
The card system is broken...
Make Draw change to the card that is drawn, so that the same button is pressed again to cast the card (Play is a useless waste of a button)
Get rid of Clarifying Draw effect, its overcomplicated for no reason, allow Draw to be used on a 30s cooldown like it was before
A big problem is that there is no way to use up a card that you don't want...
Make Minor Arcana "convert" a card you drew but don't want, get rid of Crown Play (another useless waste of a button)
These small changes would make the cards feel streamlined. Right now, they feel clunky, too many buttons, and there is no flow of using up cards.

QoL changes:
The Earthly Star ground placement marker is HUGE. The big range is great, but the entire floor turning orange when I place the star, is not great. Make the marker the size of the star itself (comparable to the size of Shukuchi's gound marker), once the star is placed, it's easy to see it's range from the particle effects.

uhhhh wait if the afflatus heals are ogcd misery no longer needs a potency increase since now it's automatically a dps gain, on account of ogcds not using up your gcd. right? or am I forgetting something?

I think keeping lilies as GCD actions is ultimately a better option for WHM and adjusting Misery's potency to be neutral rather than a loss. The reason for this is because you are now encouraged to use your Lilies when you need healing rather than using Glare as much as WHM does which is exactly something that many players would like to see. A lot of people may not mind having DPS be a part of healing, but hate that Glare is the overwhelming majority of what WHM casts.

It also helps keep WHM as a low APM job which I think a lot of players also are happy with. It's really more about giving WHM more love in its value as well as its priority of tools that it relies on. Another option originally pitched by Sarixis was "Diacloud" where your regen ticks could proc Aero/Dia to apply more upfront damage--essentially stealing the concept from BLM. It gives WHM more mobility, more damage, more rewards for maintaining your regens, and more choice with their casts. This picked up popularity here on the forums because it's honestly a great way to add more depth without necessarily changing WHM much or making it harder.

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Originally Posted by tadashi_3

Make Afflatus Solace and Afflatus Rapture oGCD, similar to Lustrate / Indomitability
Increase Afflatus Misery potency so that it is not a DPS loss, and/or add a secondary healing effect

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These are redundant. By making the generators for Afflatus Misery oGCD, you've made Misery itself free potency per 90 seconds (at a value of its potency minus your best filler's), to a net 393 extra potency per minute.

That's nearly enough to fix WHM's rDPS gap (440 extra ppm would be roughly equal to a 5% rDPS bump), varying based on how near the fight ends to your most recent Misery (and Assize) usage.

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Get rid of Clarifying Draw effect, its overcomplicated for no reason, allow Draw to be used on a 30s cooldown like it was before

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Going back to how it was before means that your effective cooldown is longer; any time you'd spend placing the card is time Draw wouldn't spend cooling.

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A big problem is that there is no way to use up a card that you don't want...
Make Minor Arcana "convert" a card you drew but don't want, get rid of Crown Play (another useless waste of a button)

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These I'd be fine with so long as you didn't revert the cooling procedure on Draw/Play, since that'd mean you could bank the damage/healing of Lord/Lady for up to 30 seconds, which would be plenty sufficient. Otherwise, you need to be able to load the effect immediately via Minor Arcana (which would then require you to separately use Crown Play, though its button could be made to replace Minor Arcana's once an effect is loaded).

Personally, I'd rather not make any of the Afflatus skills oGCD. So long as the potencies of their opportunity costs are superior, having them on the GCD is superior for all but burst healing, as the GCD provides add mobility and weave space. Rather than using a free Misery per 90 seconds (with progress theretoward being wasted if the fight doesn't last just long enough for a trio of Lilies to be spent and Misery released), I'd rather just buff Glare and Dia directly: 320 potency Glare III, up from 310, and 180 direct potency, up from 60, on Dia. Together, those would net about a 5.3% increase to raw potency per minute while also increasing the general usefulness of Dia (and decreasing its relative penalty for early reuse).

That said, we do need a way to not waste Afflatus potential in fights that won't end just after a 90-second mark. That means allowing Misery to be used at any number of Lilies' generation, rather than only every 3 Lilies. To do this, we need only cause every Lily consumed to build a Blood Lily. Misery could then be used to consume up to 3 Blood Lilies at a time, with --once upgraded by a lv82 trait-- 600 potency dealt for 1 Lily consumed, 940 for 2, and 1280 for 3. That'd make it DPS-neutral at 3 even in Endwalker while allowing one to sacrifice up to 40 potency for up to 2 extra mobile and fully weaveable GCDs per minute. WHM would thus reach up to 4.7 mobile available GCDs per average minute without loss (or 6 with only ~53 potency lost per minute), up from a practical limit of 2 (with up to 4.7 if not wasting ~250 potency per minute).

To fill WHM's other needs, just reduce its MP costs via some new trait and fix Liturgy of the Bell to make it competitive with Panhaima. And done; its capacities and functionality are good to go. It'd then merely still lack an involved identity (though that's largely true of the other healers, too, at this point).

<Humor> Merge AST & WHM into White Astrologen and merge SCH and SGE into Sage-Scholar, make them incompatible with the same job and ta da... meta fixed, we now have 2 healers per raid, one regen and one shield. </Humor>

In all seriousness, these are good changes for the most part, I hope the devs read this.

Here's a repost of something I said elsewhere since we needed another WHM thread...

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.

While I agree oGCD lilies are bad, APM isn't really an issue because players who struggle with high APM and have conditions like arthritis generally aren't keeping 100% GCD uptime or doing harder content. They'll just press the buttons at whichever pace they're able and that's fine for everything below Savage.

I disagree with designing specifically classes for people who can't handle more than one button press every 2-3 seconds. Remember they've already designed the content to cater for that type of player. Everything from MSQ, dungeons, Normal mode and even EX has extremely low or no dps requirements at all and is intentionally designed so every type of player can experience the game (which is great). There just isn't a need to butcher the classes too. Even if WHM had a bit more APM when optimized, you don't need to optimize it in Normal content and nothing changes there.

Slightly off topic but I'm tired of the concept that WHM must be the "simple" class with no skill ceiling when we already have accessibility built into the content.

There were ways to dump unwanted cards before EW. Lord and lady use to play a card without generating a seal, and before that even there was royal road, which would burn a card to modify the next card you played. It is really only recently that they have not offered a way to use cards you may not want.

I'd rather they make Misery DPS neutral simply because WHM still needs a way to move in long mobile mechanics.

Also add a second charge to Assize.

Honestly for AST just give us ShB AST back at this point, the cards somehow feel 100% useless without it being attached to Divination. Astrodyne is a neat idea but it's only for yourself? AST's entire gig is party buffing, I'd rather they make Astrodyne give you MP regen regardless of seals, regen on active tank for two and a 25s Balance for a random DPS.

Astro cards feel the worst they ever have atm and are why I dropped it as my main. Make them unique again (never gonna happen but I'll say it regardless). Make draw and play same button (same for arcana), give us a way to convert cards we don't want again, they can just convert to lord if we stick with current arcana since they all are dps. For the love of god fix astrodyne cause it feels awful, they removed the rng frustration from divination and made it again but worse with astrodyne. You put dps 1st and haste 2nd, make redraw ALWAYS give us a missing seal, so if we miss 2 seals its 50/50 between 2 we miss and if we miss 1 seal we get the one we are missing. If not that at least weight it more heavily so your luck is not bad so often! Missing proper burst due to bad luck feels bad but its esp worse with how rare it is atm to get 3 seals, at least for me it is rare -.-

Idk I want unique cards, less frustration and faffing about just to play a card.

Give back the 3 redraw charges.

Not sure if I'm a fan of the card system changes. Back in ShB you had a few ways to deal with cards you didn't want, now you only get one chance to reroll and end up getting stuck with 2 seals for Astrodyne half the time which feels real bad. I don't know, did they think the player had too many ways to mitigate bad RNG before?

White Mages are fine for Healers who want to heal. White Mages are not fine for DPS who roll Healers who do not like healing.

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Originally Posted by HisShadowX

White Mages are fine for Healers who want to heal. White Mages are not fine for DPS who roll Healers who do not like healing.

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Yeah, the objectively worst healer is the best for healers who want to HeAL onLy.

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Originally Posted by HisShadowX

White Mages are fine for Healers who want to heal. White Mages are not fine for DPS who roll Healers who do not like healing.

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Holy exists and counters your entire opinion by virtue of existing. You DPS so you don't have to heal.
AST is a better job for people that want to play healer than WHM due to having a plethora of oGCD heals and matching WHM's toolkit point for point where it matters while also having cheaper spells that have shorter cast times.
You can entirely ignore all of AST's Card mechanics entirely and just Benefic 2 just like a WHM and do better than WHM ever hoped they could simply by virtue of everything else in AST's kit.

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Originally Posted by elioaiko

Also add a second charge to Assize.

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Aside from the mana from assize. 2 charges would do nothing to current WHM, as assize gets used on cd anyways. 2 charges would just allow for a 2 assize opener, in retrospect.

On the topic tho, guess my main job, WHM lily system is flawed. WHM is essentially punished for using lilies. It is a dps loss not found in any of the other healers(nice! WHM#1). Some of these are a little wild, but I am a player from the beta phases so I, hopefully, can think of something useful.

All healers

• Using DoT ability amplifies your next damaging abilitiy's potency a bit. Inject dopamine

WHM

• Similar to PVP = Lily actions could apply a regeneration effect. It's okay for them to be on the GCD.
• Merge lily actions to cure 2 and medica 1. If a lily is available you can use a lily action. Reducing button bloat.
• Remove free cure bait.. I mean trait.
• Lowered cooldown on tetragrammaton. Maybe to match Assize's 45s cd?
• Fluid Aura oGCD that applies a Damage over Time. (single target?)
• Aquaveil bursting and doing damage at the end of duration.
• Afflatus Mysery usage entering into a "wow my Glares are red and stuff now phase" dps gain or stabilizer from using up lilies.

AST

• The bundling up of minor arcana should work.
• The bundling up of Draw... I don't think will be that simple because of how Draw works w/ 2 charges and a rolling cooldown. something something coding something.
• Collective Unconscious could freeze buff timers (applied by the AST) while held, wether that is of benefit or not having it shouldn't be a problem.
• Undraw rework/removal. There is no reason to skip out on using a card; thus, give a reason to skip out on a card. Expanded/Extended/Empowered cards anyone?
• Minor Arcana rework. Lady of Crowns is undesirable, which makes Minor Arcana a gimmick. Minor Arcana should do 1 thing, wether that be heal, defend, dmg up, or mobility.
• Gravity should apply a Slow debuff.
• AST could get the big burst spell Urianger uses.

SCH (but this ain't about them)

• Art of war should apply a Blind debuff.

SAGE (but this ain't about them)

• Dyskrasia should apply a Paralysis debuff.

I'll stop for now

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Originally Posted by HisShadowX

White Mages are fine for Healers who want to heal. White Mages are not fine for DPS who roll Healers who do not like healing.

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How to tell you have no idea about healer gameplay without saying you have no idea about healer gameplay.

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Originally Posted by HisShadowX

White Mages are fine for Healers who want to heal. White Mages are not fine for DPS who roll Healers who do not like healing.

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It's hilarious just how opposite reality is to what you've typed.

If you want to one-button Draw and Play you can use a macro. The only issue is that can't try and use Draw to change the card b/c Redraw still didn't provide one you wanted for Astrodyne. I'm not good enough to be that granular in the card decision process and if say you have two range dps and got another melee buff card with redraw, it's going on the tank. Anyway the macro I'd use your be:

/micon Draw (better to see draws avail, then likely redundant card drawn)
/merror off (this is so you don't see red error messages for the other activations, leave out until you know the macro works)
/ac Play <mo> (I use mouse over so I don't have to click target, but just have pointer over their bar in party list)
/ac Play (for solo so it targets myself or selected target, though relies on pointer not being on a target you can use play on)
/ac Draw (Draw is activated if no card to Play)

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

It's hilarious just how opposite reality is to what you've typed.

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Well, keep in mind you people as a member of the Hardcore Minority you people all like systems the majority of players don't like. You people all said the cross class system was here to stay and then whined when it went away because it is easier to level without it and you would lose cross class skills to make you a better DPS at healing. If the systems you people like so much were so great Final Fantasy XIV ARR would never existed and Tanka's Final Fantasy XIV would have never been destroyed.

Or we would still have the Cross Class System that thankfully was wiped before you joined FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by HisShadowX

Well, keep in mind you people as a member of the Hardcore Minority you people all like systems the majority of players don't like. You people all said the cross class system was here to stay and then whined when it went away because it is easier to level without it and you would lose cross class skills to make you a better DPS at healing. If the systems you people like so much were so great Final Fantasy XIV ARR would still exist and Tanka's Final Fantasy XIV would have never been destroyed.

Or we would still have the Cross Class System that thankfully was wiped before you joined FFXIV.

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What in the world does any of that nonsense have to do with WHM's outright worse healing capabilities?

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Originally Posted by HisShadowX

Well, keep in mind you people as a member of the Hardcore Minority you people all like systems the majority of players don't like. You people all said the cross class system was here to stay and then whined when it went away because it is easier to level without it and you would lose cross class skills to make you a better DPS at healing. If the systems you people like so much were so great Final Fantasy XIV ARR would never existed and Tanka's Final Fantasy XIV would have never been destroyed.

Or we would still have the Cross Class System that thankfully was wiped before you joined FFXIV.

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I swear I had a stroke trying to make sense of this. The Cross Class system was absolute garbage and did nothing but constantly nerf WHM in every expansion.

Protect lost the Pro-shell trait going into HW because "It wouldn't be fair if only WHM had the trait" and yet every healer currently has AoE Shielding effects EXCEPT WHM so that was BS.
Stoneskin 1+2 both got removed entirely with Divine Benison being Stoneskin but worse, with the only saving grace being that it's an oGCD. This meant that the Graniteskin Trait that made Stoneskin on WHM stronger than the cross role equivalent was also removed.
Cleric Stance was just straight up removed.
Divine Seal became Largesse in SB so that everyone could have it, despite neither AST or SCH needing the damn thing because they already had skills that buffed their GCD healing while also having solid oGCD skills. Now, we have to wait for level 80 to get Divine Seal's effect back in Temperance, at DOUBLE the CD because they added 10% mitigation to it as though Sacred Soil, Kerachole and Collective Unconsciousness don't provide that same Mitigation at half the CD.
Esuna is only there because they removed SCH/AST's equivalent skills in the grand Homogeneity of healers.
Shroud of Saints became Lucid Dreaming because of similar reasons so that SE didn't have to worry about making unique MP sustain tools for each healer......and went and did that anyways because Shroud of Saints wasn't enough for WHM in ARR and it still isn't.
Repose is the single most useless ability in the game and how it hasn't been removed yet just goes to show how little SE actually cares about healers.

The Cross Class/Role system is by far one of the worst systems in FFXIV but how that relates to WHM being the "fine for Healers who want to heal" when nothing on there helps with healing at all is the biggest strawman argument I've ever seen that it borders on delusion and leaves me questioning your sanity as a result.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

Repose is the single most useless ability in the game and how it hasn't been removed yet just goes to show how little SE actually cares about healers.

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To be fair they did the same to Casters by making BLM's sleep a role action, which is equally useless in content that isn't Eureka/Bozja. So i wouldn't necessarily use this as a example of how healers are neglected. What i would use as a example is that WHM early game is absolute garbage on a new character. Many Solo duties just make you go oom before you finish them because you have 0 Piety and no access to Lucid dreaming (and if you're not leveling on a preferred world, like i did last time i did conjurer alt, the absence of that skill is even longer). Ironically every other healer has it much better but none of them are selectable for a new character so that's a cruel joke by the devs.

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Originally Posted by RinaShinomiya

To be fair they did the same to Casters by making BLM's sleep a role action, which is equally useless in content that isn't Eureka/Bozja. So i wouldn't necessarily use this as a example of how healers are neglected. What i would use as a example is that WHM early game is absolute garbage on a new character. Many Solo duties just make you go oom before you finish them because you have 0 Piety and no access to Lucid dreaming (and if you're not leveling on a preferred world, like i did last time i did conjurer alt, the absence of that skill is even longer). Ironically every other healer has it much better but none of them are selectable for a new character so that's a cruel joke by the devs.

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Yeah but it wasn't forced on casters to complete a quest like it was on Healers.

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Originally Posted by RinaShinomiya

To be fair they did the same to Casters by making BLM's sleep a role action, which is equally useless in content that isn't Eureka/Bozja. So i wouldn't necessarily use this as a example of how healers are neglected. What i would use as a example is that WHM early game is absolute garbage on a new character. Many Solo duties just make you go oom before you finish them because you have 0 Piety and no access to Lucid dreaming (and if you're not leveling on a preferred world, like i did last time i did conjurer alt, the absence of that skill is even longer). Ironically every other healer has it much better but none of them are selectable for a new character so that's a cruel joke by the devs.

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You know, even in those niche examples, Sleep isn't great. It would be great if you could use Repose/Sleep in deep dungeons to avoid enemies, but that generates aggro so you're still forced to deal with them.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

You know, even in those niche examples, Sleep isn't great. It would be great if you could use Repose/Sleep in deep dungeons to avoid enemies, but that generates aggro so you're still forced to deal with them.

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This has always bothered me. I mean they are put to sleep. How are they able to notice me!? At best they’re useable as pseudo-stun but that’s still hugely niche.