I feel like Plenary Indulgence should be a trait

Like, what's the point of activating a passive buff? if it did what it did and then granted a temporary shield, I could understand it then being an active skill, but it's 9/10 only coming into play after you or another white mage activates it, and then uses one of the select skills it applies to to have any effect. It seems like a waste of a skill lot/Hotbar that could be used for a trait for the same effects.

This\ is in contrast to say AST Divination or Horoscope,

What say you fellow healers?

Well unlike an actual fully passive Trait which works at all time, the so said "passive buffs" have cooldowns where you can only receive the benefits in a set amount of time, and they would be too powerful if they were to not have durations, hence you would want to activate them; it wouldn't be too useful if Plenary Indulgence actives on its own automatically regardless if you are using GCD heals would it?

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As a SCH main which half of my toolkit is basically actions that have to work with other actions, unfortunately I don't really get the feeling of "what's the point of activating a passive buff", it is genuinely satisfying to me that I can combine certain actions in ways to get the outcome that best suited for different situations. For example in the case of WHM when you don't have enough weaving slots, choosing between Thin Air or Plenary Indulgence into Medica II is already an active decision, which at least personally I enjoy it.

I like how it feels to use personally. It's one of the few skills in WHM's kit that requires using another skill to be useful and can't be used as a free healing button on its own.

It's pretty satisfying to see hp bar go up a lot more in a single GCD heal, which I find fitting for the burst heal design WHM goes by.

To me it’s an ability that can be used to make Afflatus Rapture stronger when doing Savage raids and needing a stronger heal. I’m not amazing at playing healer in raids so I’m not sure the best way to do it, but as White Mage my answer to a stronger raidwide damage is sometimes to press Afflatus Rapture right after some other thing (Plenary Indulgence, Asylum, or Temperance) to deal with it so I can maybe avoid needing to use Cure 3 or Medica. When I play White Mage I think of Rapture, Plenary, Asylum, and Temperance as my abilities I want to juggle to get as much use out of them as possible, so I enjoy that Plenary exists as a cooldown.

Although I haven’t played healer in Extreme or Ultimate, and I don’t think I’ve ever used Plenary Indulgence in normal difficulty content as there’s so much less healing required there.

It feels like you're underestimating an additional 200 cure potency gained when you use AoE GCD heals. That's literally an additional 50% of Medica and Afflatus Rapture so it makes sense that it's on a cooldown. AST's Divination shouldn't be in the comparison cause that's comparing a damage raid buff contribution to a heal. And Horoscope is 200 or 400(if Helios was used) cure potency.

An extra 200 Potency heal is rarely all that useful really... I think to make it actually good, it should be changed into a 200 potency shield that goes up from the next Medica/Rapture.

And if a 200 Potency shield every 60 sec sounds too strong, Succor from SCH is a GCD of a 320 Potency aoe shield.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

An extra 200 Potency heal is rarely all that useful really... I think to make it actually good, it should be changed into a 200 potency shield that goes up from the next Medica/Rapture.

And if a 200 Potency shield every 60 sec sounds too strong, Succor from SCH is a GCD of a 320 Potency aoe shield.

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Comparing rapture to succor is pointless because succor you actively don’t want to press, especially since if you are willing to GCD heal then you want spreadlo anyway

WHM needs more mitigation but it should be integrated into the lily system, not have indulgence become a wonky CU

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Comparing rapture to succor is pointless because succor you actively don’t want to press, especially since if you are willing to GCD heal then you want spreadlo anyway

WHM needs more mitigation but it should be integrated into the lily system, not have indulgence become a wonky CU

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They don't really need much more mitigation, that's what SCH and SGE are supposed to be for... And I think getting a CD access to a weaker Succor shield would probably be enough and be significantly better than a 200 Potency heal.

I mean it's not like it couldn't be done in an interesting way, but I also feel it's genuinely one of the most interesting abilities in the WHM kit, given its short duration, very strong effect and limited applicability. It's the equivalent to using your +20% buff, just in even more extreme.

The problem is of course, there's rarely~never a time you need more healing output for more than 1-2 casts. Making the vast majority of this go to waste, and hence why Horoscope etc feel much more useful in practice. They should not, if healers actually had a lot of healing to do.

As a passive trait, I'd envision it something like this, akin to the smart heals DAoC had:

"Any time you cast an group or multi-target heal an extra 800 potency heal is intelligently split between characters healed, prioritizing characters with lower health. This effect can happen no more than once every 20 seconds, and will not trigger if no one healed was below 50% health."

(also what's with the weird name for it?!)

Supposed we actually turned PI into a passive trait. What would we get in return?

I feel like Plenary Indulgence is fine as it is personally. I wouldn’t want it to be a trait because we’d ultimate just end up with no control over it whatsoever.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

(also what's with the weird name for it?!)

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As with the majority of White Mage’s abilities it’s named after (generally catholic) religious ‘stuff’. Like Benediction, Plenary Indulgence, Afflatus, Rapture (two separate things religiously), Tetragrammaton (Four letter name of god) lol.

Why a magical light healer from another world has so many references to a religion that doesn’t exist in their world is another question entirely lol (along with Scholar’s 1-50 toolkit sounding more like the skills a Priest would use than a Tactician lol)

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Originally Posted by Connor

As with the majority of White Mage’s abilities it’s named after (generally catholic) religious ‘stuff’. Like Benediction, Plenary Indulgence, Afflatus, Rapture (two separate things religiously), Tetragrammaton (Four letter name of god) lol.

Why a magical light healer from another world has so many references to a religion that doesn’t exist in their world is another question entirely lol (along with Scholar’s 1-50 toolkit sounding more like the skills a Priest would use than a Tactician lol)

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It's Indulgentia in JP. Not sure if I like that or Plenary Indulgence more tbh. WHM's skill names sorta fit Gridania's religious respect to nature at least.

Meanwhile SCH's Lustrate is Revitalize and Sacred Soil is Combat Treatment Circle (like a medical tent). I think the rest of its 1-50 skill names are closer and fit the tactician/field medic theme fine though

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

It's Indulgentia in JP. Not sure if I like that or Plenary Indulgence more tbh. WHM's skill names sorta fit Gridania's religious respect to nature at least.

Meanwhile SCH's Lustrate is Revitalize and Sacred Soil is Combat Treatment Circle (like a medical tent). I think the rest of its 1-50 skill names are closer and fit the tactician/field medic theme fine though

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Yeah I’ve seen some past posts about translations of SCH abilities (I think Broil was something like Demon Flame?) but not as much for WHM. Honestly I like how Combat Treatment Circle sounds more than Sacred Soil lol. Even if it is a bit literal.

And yeah, for White Mage as well it’s probably worth mentioning that Amdapor was (from the ruins we’ve seen) fairly different from Gridania in terms of how they worked with the elementals. So while it might seem weird that the jelly baby tree worshippers (their sprites make me think of sweets idk lol) have all this catholic religious stuff, it might not have been so weird in the context of Amdapor. Though that’s going way off topic lol.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

Supposed we actually turned PI into a passive trait. What would we get in return?

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me personally having a freed hotbar slot or button slot is more than enough but i really think healers should start expanding on their offensive options, really the game could be called, Damage vs Healing, its the only two aspects that should matter the most, yes tanks feel secure in their role as they have the most hp and the most self sustaining damage mitigation and healing outside of a healer, that works that makes sense, so for WHM this is just one more slot opening up to give them a new offensive button, and if the entire system for all roles isnt tweaked along these lines in 8.0 ill be surprised as hell.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

Supposed we actually turned PI into a passive trait. What would we get in return?

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Nothing, assuming the passive trait wouldn't screw us over.

That's the one benefit I could actually see from doing this (PI is one of the few really-well-designed healer abilities after all), hotbar decluttering. FFXIV just has too much guff on its hotbars comparing ~any other game, to the point where most designs fall apart at all edges.

Should of course not fix it by removing PI, since like I said, one of the few well-designed abilities. Can take ~anything else that isn't a GCD in the White Mage kit and cut it, first.

I agree that PI is a good example of a well designed skill, but I also agree that it could be cut just for hotbar bloat.

I've only ever used the skill for Valigarmanda EX and Shadowcaster in criterion. I don't feel like WHM ever says "I wish that heal had more potency". First you need to be in a situation where you're planning (planning!) on casting 2-3 GCD heals in a row. And that is never in dungeon or trials, very rare in extremes, but potentially critical in savage and criterion. Actually I take back what I said about PI being good design. If it was good then it wouldn't be so rarely useful.

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Originally Posted by Catastrophe573

I agree that PI is a good example of a well designed skill, but I also agree that it could be cut just for hotbar bloat.

I've only ever used the skill for Valigarmanda EX and Shadowcaster in criterion. I don't feel like WHM ever says "I wish that heal had more potency". First you need to be in a situation where you're planning (planning!) on casting 2-3 GCD heals in a row. And that is never in dungeon or trials, very rare in extremes, but potentially critical in savage and criterion. Actually I take back what I said about PI being good design. If it was good then it wouldn't be so rarely useful.

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A skill being situationally useful doesn’t make it bad design

14 healing is just badly designed per actually helping WHM’s strengths

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

A skill being situationally useful doesn’t make it bad design

14 healing is just badly designed per actually helping WHM’s strengths

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The main "strength" of WHM is the sheer amounts of healing they can put out, but at the same time there's really nothing out there that needs all that healing...

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

The main "strength" of WHM is the sheer amounts of healing they can put out, but at the same time there's really nothing out there that needs all that healing...

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It is always fun to spend all that healing to save the group when an alliance raid goes south, in some extreme situations only WHM could keep up the healing while recovering.