What makes WHM special? Nothing anymore.

[Raso]

Asylum is a regen bubble that's unique to us, but AST has the best of both worlds with CU(and makes them immobile and unable to do anything for 18s).

CU changed, it's channel now is only for the 10% DR. Anyone who steps or was in when cast gets a HoT that is 150 potency for 15 second that does not go away when the channel ends, if you want to refresh the HoT just step out and step back in. It is literally an AoE Regen with an added DR bonus field if you want to hold it.

It is WAY better than Asylum now as Asylum is 100 over 24, you have to stay in it and has no DR.

Edit: Honestly a spell that casts an AoE Regen sounds more like something a WHM should have really.

[GideonHighmourn]

CU changed, it's channel now is only for the 10% DR. Anyone who steps or was in when cast gets a HoT that is 150 potency for 15 second that does not go away when the channel ends, if you want to refresh the HoT just step out and step back in. It is literally an AoE Regen with an added DR bonus field if you want to hold it.

It is WAY better than Asylum now as Asylum is 100 over 24, you have to stay in it and has no DR.

Edit: Honestly a spell that casts an AoE Regen sounds more like something a WHM should have really.

CU total healing: 750 Potency

Asylum total healing: 800 Potency

[Raso]

CU total healing: 750 Potency

Asylum total healing: 800 Potency

CU's total healing potency can be cheesed if needed, leaving and reentering the field refreshes the HoT so CU can potentially have 1500 potency but it isn't easy to do.

Also CU's HoT is far more useful considering that the best place to put Asylum is on the melee and due to flanking back attack rotations they will never actually stay in the field the whole time vs large bosses.

[GideonHighmourn]

CU's total healing potency can be cheesed if needed, leaving and reentering the field refreshes the HoT so CU can potentially have 1500 potency but it isn't easy to do.

If you have time to stand still and channel for the entire 18s, chances are you don't need the healing anyways.

Also, Asylum is less for DPS (if you're placing it like that) and more about the tank, which should know to stay inside the bubble if possible.

[Cynfael]

If you have time to stand still and channel for the entire 18s, chances are you don't need the healing anyways.

Yep.

CU is so much improved from what it was, but the requirement of standing still for up to 3 seconds (depending on global tick to apply the buff) along with the inability to place it anywhere that you are not allows Asylum to retain some unique utility.

[mp-please]

The "identity problem" looks more like people being
A) Bored with the class,
B) Don't and haven't enjoyed the playstyle or
C) Are just selfish and upset that AST got a buff and WHM didn't.

Now this is the kind of stuff that annoys me, astrologian needed a buff, badly.
I was sick and tired of having to heal for a healer and half everytime i found one on alexander BUT not a buff like this, they straight out copied most of WHM skills and gave to astrologian. Maybe it was a quick fix so they could enter on groups asap but it's just unfair how skills were straight up copied.

Since 3.0 WHM lost

> Proshell

> Granite skin (Ok 18% SS with the current HP bloat would be a bit OP but it's still a class trait lost)
>> Thanks to this loss and astrologian lightspeed, it's actually easier (and less costy) to spam SS during combat on a AST than on WHM making the quick stoneskin trait quite insignificant. And to be honest, 0.5s is hardly noticeable when most of the attacks on this game are telegraphed in a way or another.

> Accuracy on gear which is indispensable for a WHM as every single dps skill requires it
>> DPS was buffed to the best of all 3 healers, but nothing was done to allow us to dps because "Healers don't need to dps, mr yoshi-p says"

> Most powerful single target healing spells since benefic and benefic II are exact copies of Cure I and Cure II
>> Said copies cost LESS MP than the original skills at the exact same potency

> HoT speciality
>>The difference between Diurnal Aspected benefic/helios potencies and regen/medica II is almost insignificant

On another matter since i keep seeing this mentioned on this thread.

Cure III
Mind you, i love this skill. I'd marry it if i could. (i'd probably marry holy faster though) However like i said before the usefulness of cure III is negatively proportional to overgear and this game has history of throwing unnecessary gear levels to people to the point FCOB was being solo healed a month after it's release. We'll eventually get again to the point where a single medica II does the job and currently astrologian can do that with negligible losses. To add up they even gave scholars the ability to burst aoe heal with indomitability.

Synastry vs Divine seal
Divine seal straight up buffs every single healing spell power by 30% (except a few chosen), that's as straightfoward as it is. So a cure II that has 650 potency gets turned into 845.
Synastry is hard to calculate the potency since not everyone will get second hand heals for that long but benefic II gets turned into a 780 and then the 2nd target receives half of that, that's 20 seconds of 1170 heal potency right there. The main concern about synastry is it's higher cooldown (reduceable with the spear) and that that once the secondary target is fully healed, the second hand healing is completely wasted. Either way i wouldn't call the skills equal, but they're on equal ground.

Medica II range
Honestly, nobody cares. Everyone should be near the boss, no exceptions. Positionals are a mechanic everyone has in a way or another.

To cut short this already big wall of text, and on a personal note. I'm worried about the long term usefulness of the job i love and main for more than a year now.
Once again overgear is a huge concern of mine as nobody cares about healing numbers as long healing is done and in a few months nobody will care if white mage heals for more than everyone else because that heal bonus will only result on overheal. All people will care will be "can the healer dps while it doesn't need to heal?"
SCH does their job as the summoner lite that they're, AST has no issues in maintaining the DoTs and buff everyone with their cards that has absolutely no mp cost and then we have WHM with the best single target dps that has to spend millions on melds just to hit stuff with their "best" dps which result on a huge mnd, pie and det loss compared to full i210 accessories.

To conclude, i don't defend ast being nerfed or whm being buffed. But hell, both classes need to be tweaked so they're different from each other with WHM actually being viable on farmable-out of accuracy reach content.

A) play another class for a while

Reminder WEEKLY LOOT IS CLASS SPECIFIC NOW. Changing classes just because SE can't into job balance this late in the marathon is just BS.

[J-Dax]

> Most powerful single target healing spells since benefic and benefic II are exact copies of Cure I and Cure II

WHM still has powerful single target healing spells that where not given to AST.
Benediction and Tetragrammation.

The fear that WHM is somehow not viable for farm content is odd to me. WHM can heal wonderfully for progression, and will be too OP for farm content? There will always be people new to a particular instance, people who make mistakes and otherwise put the party in a situation where the WHM would be able to pull everyone from the brink of death more efficiently and with more ease than any other healing class. This has not changed.

And yes the cards can add very helpful effects in situations, the problem with using them in examples is the situations some of the AST card abilities get brought up in are far to situational to be realistic. Yes if someone is lucky they can pull a spear right when they need it to use a cool down. They are also just as likely to pull spire number five.

All I see is WHM has no identity because it shares some spells with another class, WHM has 28 spells, 5 cross class, one with similiar or identical effects of the other two healers, (Bene, Cure, Physic), and four more they kinda sometimes share with AST (cure 2, asp bene, aspected Helios, helios) That gives them a grand total shared ten spell healing kit leaving them with 18 abilities unique to the WHM. With another 4 unique traits. How much more unique does a class need?

[Rewind]

Synastry vs Divine seal
Divine seal straight up buffs every single healing spell power by 30% (except a few chosen), that's as straightfoward as it is. So a cure II that has 650 potency gets turned into 845.
Synastry is hard to calculate the potency since not everyone will get second hand heals for that long but benefic II gets turned into a 780 and then the 2nd target receives half of that, that's 20 seconds of 1170 heal potency right there. The main concern about synastry is it's higher cooldown (reduceable with the spear) and that that once the secondary target is fully healed, the second hand healing is completely wasted. Either way i wouldn't call the skills equal, but they're on equal ground.

Divine Seal>Synastry.

Divine seal is not restricted to one play, increases the potency of hot ticks and is on a shorter cooldown (it is insanely difficult/impossible to plan a meaningful spear reduction unless you spread a card before the boss is pulled). Divine Seal is flexible to be used for both tank d amage mechanics AND raid damage mechanics. Don't underestimate the powerful(ness?) of this ability. Whilst synastry is good/better than it was before it really can't match Divine Seal.

And on another note - yes weekly loot is class specific but it's not the end of the world for healers imo to use lower tier gear or prioritize shared pieces first (accessories) or opt to use craftable gear with melds (also a good alternative). The only fight that has some what of a gear gate is A4s though more so for DPS rather than healers...

[AdamFyi]

Reminder WEEKLY LOOT IS CLASS SPECIFIC NOW. Changing classes just because SE can't into job balance this late in the marathon is just BS.

I didn't know that switching to other jobs had a weekly lockout. Huh. Good to know.

In all seriousness, I can get behind the removal of Graniteskin being quite underwhelming, but everything else I have to disagree with. That is all.

[mp-please]

WHM still has powerful single target healing spells that where not given to AST.
Benediction and Tetragrammaton.

Astrologian doesn't have a comparable version to benediction, but essential dignity is.. essentially tetragrammaton. The main difference is that the potency is variable while tetra has a fixed 700.

The fear that WHM is somehow not viable for farm content is odd to me. WHM can heal wonderfully for progression, and will be too OP for farm content? There will always be people new to a particular instance, people who make mistakes and otherwise put the party in a situation where the WHM would be able to pull everyone from the brink of death more efficiently and with more ease than any other healing class. This has not changed.

Not everyone will stay on progression stages forever, nobody wants to hear a "now change classes because we're farming now". I think most tanks heard that, mainly paladin mains who were forced to go DRK/WAR due static preference for savage.

And yes the cards can add very helpful effects in situations, the problem with using them in examples is the situations some of the AST card abilities get brought up in are far to situational to be realistic. Yes if someone is lucky they can pull a spear right when they need it to use a cool down. They are also just as likely to pull spire number five.

I play astrologian as well but i main WHM, i know well the card RNG.

All I see is WHM has no identity because it shares some spells with another class, WHM has 28 spells, 5 cross class, one with similiar or identical effects of the other two healers, (Bene, Cure, Physic), and four more they kinda sometimes share with AST (cure 2, asp bene, aspected Helios, helios) That gives them a grand total shared ten spell healing kit leaving them with 18 abilities unique to the WHM. With another 4 unique traits. How much more unique does a class need?

The issue isn't the amount of skills, it's which skills are mostly used, and every single skill they copied are pretty much most of the most used which turn both jobs way to similar.

Divine Seal>Synastry.

As i said, synastry potential is hard to calculate. Yes on most situations a single benefic II can do the job and the remain synastry bonus will fall into empty hands, but when burst healing is needed like on situations such as t11 where both tanks take massive amounts of damage, synastry will shine a lot more than what currently does.
That's why i said while both skills aren't equal, i consider both on the same level. Synastry is just a lot more situational than divine seal.