What makes WHM special? Nothing anymore.

[Lorielle]

There's still some things I need to play around with when I get the time. Just messing around with potencies and things. However, many people probably pinged on these things already. As we progress more and more into the game, things will continue to hit harder and harder. We will have more HP to cover and things of the sort. Freecure, as lovely as it is, will be hard to achieve because the only time we'll be using it is potentially when the tanks BARELY take damage. But the damage people take today we are forced to use Cure II to keep up. And guess what? We can't get Freecure that way. But we do get Overcure..Oh, but wait...The situations of getting the full usefulness of Cure 3(much less Overcure..) is slim to none. That's just a nitpick on those traits.

Medica and Helios do the same thing, but Helios costs less with a smaller range. People want to say Range Matters, but there's only been one fight where I felt 20 yalms was helpful and that was A1S. All the other fields are small enough to get in close or you can just run in and AoE heal. Boom. Where's the point of this range? Now Medica costs 1200~ versus. Helios which does the same for 1k. The difference here is Medica has a change of casting half at 20%...However, should this proc never actually happen..We're expending more MP for the same ability for what reason?

Media II vs. Aspected Helios - Same concept. Only difference is 1200 on Aspected while Med 2 is 1700 for 10 Potency more over for those 30 seconds(Range too, but see above). You can play into overall HOT potencial numbers if you want. But realistically, we all know that these abilities by themselves are rather crappy and that HOT isn't going to really save anyone. Especially down the road when things eventually hit harder.

MP Management - WHM has SoS and Assize(to a certain degree Freecure). Personally, when I am raiding, I do not wait on using Assize or SoS. I use them soon as their up to stay on top of my MP. Therefore, this 300 Potency can be missed on a lot of things and the healing can go to waste at times. AST has LA(SoS equivalent save Enmity) and potential Ewer. Ewer can show it's face at any point in the fight and literally give AST a bonus in MP anywhere between 1-3(Assize Recast being 90). So one fight AST can have better MP management. Another fight AST can have it worse. But they can also extend these abilities with Celestial Opposition. Where WHM is stuck with default timers. The only thing WHM has for -consistent- MP return is Assize over AST. That's it. See earlier mention about Freecure.

Cure/Cure II vs. Benefic/Benfic II - MP. That's it. The defining things about these right now are literally the traits from Cure/Benfic procs. Instant vs. Free. But if neither are getting used, who is going to be using more MP in the long run? WHM. RIP. Cure 3...Raw Cure 3 freaking hurts. I cannot stress this. I've opted cutting out Cure 3 from a lot of things because I never seem to get Overcure when I really need it. So I'm more reliant on double Medica and Hots versus Cure 3.

Some nitpicks on my end though. Haven't had the chance to really play AST end game wise with buffs yet. The seperation from the two I feel right now -reliably- is Divine Seal alone and their DPS ability(which is kinda laughable because of lolAccuracy)

[Cynfael]

There's still some things I need to play around with when I get the time. Just messing around with potencies and things. However, many people probably pinged on these things already. As we progress more and more into the game, things will continue to hit harder and harder. We will have more HP to cover and things of the sort. Freecure, as lovely as it is, will be hard to achieve...

I don't see this. Our heals have scaled up quite nicely IMO; Cure, Benefic, and Physick all do quite well for most damage, especially in conjunction with supplementary healing tools such as a ticking Regen, Diurnal HoTs, and Embrace spam.

Personally, when I am raiding, I do not wait on using Assize or SoS. I use them soon as their up to stay on top of my MP. Therefore, this 300 Potency can be missed on a lot of things and the healing can go to waste at times.

Shroud is generally fine to use on CD unless you have a very specific need to dump enmity at a certain point in the fight, but Assize is worth using strategically as long as you aren't sitting on it for what is obviously way too long.

[Lorielle]

I don't see this. Our heals have scaled up quite nicely IMO; Cure, Benefic, and Physick all do quite well for most damage, especially in conjunction with supplementary healing tools such as a ticking Regen, Diurnal HoTs, and Embrace spam.

It all depends on the damage going out. Let's take A1S progression. I promise you that you couldn't use shuffle a Cure between your Cure II casts when someone beside a tank was hit with Prey. They WILL die. The damage going out versus how fast Cure/Cure II could go out and recover was too much that you were forced to use Cure II. Or even splitting damage in AS3 with the hand while trying to keep the tank up. Dangerous to even bother with a Cure for potential Freecure. Again, if the target has -barely- taken damage then your Cure is optimal. Or when Cure II is basically not warranted(aka close to being topped)

Shroud is generally fine to use on CD unless you have a very specific need to dump enmity at a certain point in the fight, but Assize is worth using strategically as long as you aren't sitting on it for what is obviously way too long.

It's hard to gauge the 'strategically' because of certain situations. I do agree with you that it has some place, but it really depends. AS1 is best during Gunnery Pods. AS2(if you're DPSing is usually good due to early Holy Spam IMO) is best to use ASAP to get your MP back ASAP. AS3 has numerous spots where its hard to justify it being a bad spot to use. No experience on AS4, but I imagine there's some places for everything.

[Rewind]

That's the thing, like i said previously, solo heal is viable but not the best solution because when stuff gets outhealed by simple fairy power + aoe HoT + occasional aoe heal (medica I/indomitability/helios) people will start asking if its not better to take a astrologian that can do that instead of a whm because astrologian can increase people dps by using their cards.

That was rarely the case in coil and I highly doubt that will ever be the case in Alex. Maybe crystal tower stuff. I just went back to undersized T13 and it was still a challenge to solo heal as WHM and AST.

I'm sure there will be plenty of groups that will still take WHM to their farm unless their WHM wants to swap. Pugs are always going to be fussy over ilvl, comp and other things...you can't really change that.

[Cynfael]

It all depends on the damage going out. Let's take A1S progression. I promise you that you couldn't use shuffle a Cure between your Cure II casts when someone beside a tank was hit with Prey. They WILL die. The damage going out versus how fast Cure/Cure II could go out and recover was too much that you were forced to use Cure II. Or even splitting damage in AS3 with the hand while trying to keep the tank up. Dangerous to even bother with a Cure for potential Freecure. Again, if the target has -barely- taken damage then your Cure is optimal. Or when Cure II is basically not warranted(aka close to being topped)

You're citing heal check mechanics; naturally you will be forced to use a higher ratio of Cure II to Cure I in such situations.

[Tsurayu]

I'm firmly in the camp that White Mages are still very useful, and I have no intention of switching my main from WHM to another healer based upon the Astrologian buffs.

For me, all three healers are sitting pretty. Oh sure, AST may play a bit too similarly to WHMs for my taste, but to say that they make WHMs less important, or useless, is ludicrous.

I see many of the users in this topic throwing out numbers and theories to try to justify their position, and while it is good to be so passionate about the way you feel about a certain class, I can't help but feel like most of you are missing the big picture - having fun. You can throw out your statistics and parsing data until you are blue in the face, but if you aren't having fun, then in the end, you are wasting your own precious time. And if ASTs getting their buff really makes you no longer have fun playing WHM, then you need to re-evaluate playing WHM or even why you play this game - No reason to try to nerf a class to justify you having fun on yours, that's assholish-ness to the highest degree.

That all said, I wouldn't mind a WHM buff or two, in response to the AST's buffs. I would like to see Presence of Mind reworked that would keep our flat 20% attack speed increase, but reincorporate our 20% increase to Spell Speed too, in order to boost our HoTs. I don't think that would be too overpowered. A 20% increase to Spell Speed wouldn't mean a direct 20% increase to HoT ticking, probably significantly less, to the point it might need to be boosted a bit, just to make it usable, but not overpowered on a 150s cooldown.

[NorthernLadMSP]

@Tsurayu

I agreed with everything you said, up until the point where you said WHM needs a buff.

Just because AST got buffed up to be able to possibly compete against WHM and SCH does not mean that WHM (or SCH) are lacking anything. The simple fact is that AST was lacking.

Buffing WHM or SCH would literally cause this issue with AST all over again. You buff WHM and SCH and AST gets shoved to the dirt bottom again, which is completely the opposite of why SE buffed AST in the first place. They buffed AST because it was completely underpowered at release making WHM and SCH seem completely god-like compared with it's weakling new cousin.

With this said, I do think they need to give WHM back their improved Stoneskin. This would not be a buff, but simply a reinstatement of a trait they used to have.

[Tsurayu]

@Tsurayu

I agreed with everything you said, up until the point where you said WHM needs a buff.

Just because AST got buffed up to be able to possibly compete against WHM and SCH does not mean that WHM (or SCH) are lacking anything. The simple fact is that AST was lacking.

Sorry, I'm not sure why I worded it that way. Guess I just had the whole AST v. WHM on the brain. I thought it would be nice to have Presence of Mind affect our HoTs before I even knew they were going to change the ability. I still think it would be a nice addition to have something that affected our HoTs in that way.

Certainly not necessary, just something I'd like to fiddle around with.

[NorthernLadMSP]

Divine Seal affects a WHMs HOT potency.

Oh, I also think WHM should get access to Supervirus.

[Raso]

Every class should be viable and every class should be unique, anyone who disputes that is an idiot.

With these buffs however the latter took a huge hit, classes should be more different than having 2-3 different cooldowns, one having no utility and everything else being exactly the same.

WHM's unique ability was throughput and that was it, with the buffs the gap between classes on this is shrunk massively to where the class has lost most of its uniqueness. They could buff WHM but really that kinda defeats the purpose of trying to bring everyone to the same throughput benchmark with the buffs, so no, what they need to do is add more uniqueness in the spells in general or give WHM a utility that its clearly a lot better at than the others.


IE: Benefic II and Cure II should not be the exact same spell they are now at all, the old style of Benefic II being faster, cheaper, and heals for less was perfect actually. If only they had gone further in that direction like instead of 5% faster with sect make it 10 or 15% faster and cheaper then things would be a lot different.