RIP WHM

[mp-please]

So in using your example:
18k raid wide damage to non tanks.
Disable + Collective reduces that to 14.4k damage (3.6k mitigated) precast
1st gcd Synastry + Helios = 4.1k healed. 10.3 to go
2nd gcd Helios = +4.1k healed, 6.2k to go which can be covered by fairy/hots/cohealer
+Collective HoT 2 ticks = 3.6k healed.
Total healing done = 15.4k, 2.6k heal that can be covered by fairy/remaining CU hots/cohealer
5 skills used, 2 precasted with 2120 MP used

There's also sustained AoE healing to consider. SCH cannot sustain heal and in certain fights like A11S, it proper cycling of mitigation and healing is needed.

My math wasn't too precise either, just changed some stuff so it's similar to what i've done (mainly the 2 gcd part since you had a extra helios cast that wasn't needed), but yea it's within what i was expecting of ast. And what you've pointed out is also true about SCH, there is no DT or ET after a rotation like the one i've pointed out.

So yea it's easy to see how all that whm has on it's favor is how readily available it is to heal burst damage. AST still needs disable+CU, SCH still needs ET+DT while WHM doesn't need exactly need DS to cure III spam but this kind of burst healing isn't exactly necessary on this patch due to it's lower difficulty nature.
If 4.0 raiding is similar to the creator, WHM will definitely need some major changes, not because it's bad, but because it's way too good.


Edit: Meanwhile a year ago.

The main issue about white mage is that burst healing starts becoming irrelevant as more people learn the fight and get overgeared for it, we could say burst healing is negatively proportional to overgear. Now it's not noticeable because back on ARR 2.0-2.1 required a lot of burst healing, but some months after SCOB got released together with soldiery tomestones people were so overgeared that burst healing became irrelevant and so the "sch can solo heal everything" began and that kept going to fcob because yoshida didn't stop and think "damn, i130 might be a bit too much for this kind of instance".

Cure III
(...) 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.

(...)
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.

It's like clockwork.

[Rai_Takara]

From my experience, healing in A9S and A10S is light, but A11S ramps it up. Especially this early into progression. However, I can see in a few weeks with more gear, the margin of error will be much higher. Haven't been in 12 yet but I would imagine it would be similar to 11 if not harder to heal.

But yea, the point I was getting at is that AST can match the raw healing of WHM by using a combination of mitigation and raw heals. In the case of WHM with better gear making excess healing, I don't think there is much to be done about it other than the content, like you said, being more requiring of the raw healing. Though, I disagree with the notion that AST/SCH comp won't be able to keep up.

[Teraluna]

RIP WHM
mmm, now where have I seen this kind of thread?
ah, here we are:
http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20747424787
http://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/17612943974
http://www.wowhead.com/forums&topic=...i-p-fire-mages
http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20749196305

Thought I recognized the familiar smell.

[loreleidiangelo]

AST has been excluded from a decent amount of content either because it still has the stigma from the original release, or because many people believed it was not on par with WHM. So, I just find it interesting that WHMs suddenly feel threatened. As far as I'm aware WHM has always been needed/preferred in the past. Why shouldn't AST be favored for once? (And who is to say it will even be preferred? The patch just came out today.)

What is with this mindset of "buzz off, WHMs had their turn, it's AST's time now"? Are you really that petty? ALL compositions should be viable, that's what I'm trying to express. I say this as an AST main, even, who used to get quite the stigma from the parties I grouped with. I still remember how every Vault wipe was my fault, and every Thordan EX wipe was my fault. (I never even cleared that one because I got tired of the anti-AST bias with parties for it.) I STILL don't want WHMs to be left out in the cold of favor of ASTs. I want SE to fix their crappy healer balance, and work on designing future healing jobs to have unique playstyles and fill different niches, not just a "burst or mitigative" healer trend.

[gumas]

AST has been excluded from a decent amount of content

i dont know about your server but here in tonberry i never see anyone straight up "pointing" AST is bad and then rage quit or immediately vote kick at the party/raid pre 3.4, hell i never even see a general chat talking about "this class is bad" type of talk, and i mostly spend my time idling in major town.

i DO however notice a decent increase of AST in my server now, doing a lot of DF and i rarely see WHM this day, no change on SCH though.

[mp-please]

What is with this mindset of "buzz off, WHMs had their turn, it's AST's time now"? Are you really that petty? ALL compositions should be viable, that's what I'm trying to express. I say this as an AST main, even, who used to get quite the stigma from the parties I grouped with. I still remember how every Vault wipe was my fault, and every Thordan EX wipe was my fault. (I never even cleared that one because I got tired of the anti-AST bias with parties for it.) I STILL don't want WHMs to be left out in the cold of favor of ASTs. I want SE to fix their crappy healer balance, and work on designing future healing jobs to have unique playstyles and fill different niches, not just a "burst or mitigative" healer trend.

That's because a lot of ASTs accuse WHMs of being salty. But then anyone would be salty.

SE literally took WHM toolkit and handed it over to AST with lower mp costs and higher mp regen regardless AST having ewer. 3.2 AST mp regen was already higher than SCH but someone on SE team decided that wasn't enough so they gave ASTs yet more LA ticks for 3.4. And that was before counting with ewers.

SE constantly balances dps with brd/mch nin/mnk to keep the classes balanced, but when AST got buffed nothing was done to SCH/WHM.

When AST skillset got equalized to WHM in potencies, either AST mp costs should've increased as well or WHM mp costs decreased. Nothing was changed
When CU got buffed, stoneskin II should've been allowed in combat at 0mp cost as well (w/ cooldown ofc) so all 3 healers had a 10% shield, either that or add it up to asylum. Nothing was changed
When proshell and graniteskin got homogenized for all healers and ast given disable, supervirus and enhanced E4E should've been as well. Nothing was changed.
When, somewhere in development, someone decided to remove accuracy on healer gear WHM should've had accuracy changes to either cleric or to at least aero dots. Nothing was c... actually one thing changed, they gave more offensive spells to WHM to miss their targets. I don't mind the extra dps but this is a good example of the saying that god gives nuts to men without teeth.
When AST was equal to WHM in terms to mp regen but yet given more mp regen capabilities, WHM should've shroud buffed as well or at least freecure proc more often than 15%. Nothing was changed.

The changes above would've been nice, not really needed but they would make pretty good QoLs. After all if they really wanted to homogenize all healers, WHM would have at least supervirus, enhanced e4e and a aoe 10% mitigation.

And to add to the salt, people seem to like to trashtalk WHM for some reason, since SCH got buffed on early ARR that WHM was always labeled the worse healer because it heals too much, but damn, AST definitely needed to be buffed. But the other 2 healers also required a follow up that didn't happen and WHM suffered the most with it to to how specific the job is. I didn't mentioned anything about SCH but dissipation never got addressed.

And then there's the actual role/function.
WHM is supposed to heal lots of damage in short amount of time with cure III, with 3.4 that isn't needed anymore due to overgearing and mobs hitting like wet noodles even on raids. WHM also has the highest dps potential of all 3 healers both in single target and aoe, but due to mp issues and being called to main heal everytime that "title" is completely thrown out the window.
So yea, i said this a year ago and i say it again, the hell does yoshida want to do with WHM?

[loreleidiangelo]

snip

The bigger problem, IMO, is that XIV's content design so far hasn't really allowed for any flexibility within the healing meta. You have three healers ATM, but only two raid spots for either of them. The game's content at the raid level is designed around requiring some kind of shielding or mitigative barriers to survive what would otherwise instantly wipe a full-health raid, so the content is physically IMPOSSIBLE without having a healer that does one of those things. To balance that, the devs made it so that shields don't stack, ensuring that a burst/reactionary healer has its place in the content design, but what this results in is that every healer will be burst or mitigative, and they'll all be judged in that vacuum. "How does a Noct AST stand up to a SCH?" "How will DNC compared to DiAST/WHM?" "Can GEO heal as effectively as SCH while still doing decent DPS?" These are the kinds of questions that people will be asking, and they're not questions present in other games ATM, because the content design is much better. In games with shield/barrier type healers, that concept IS their healing - they don't recover damage, they literally exist for the most part around preventing it (Discipline Priest in WoW). Burst healers might have SOME barrier or defensive type abilities, much like how shield healers have SOME method of recovery healing, but their kits don't overlap and thus, the developers don't feel the need to design content around requiring one or the other so that "everyone belongs".

This MIGHT be a self-correcting issue, where the wider spread of healing jobs we have makes up for the "burst or mitigative" niche that each one is shoved into, but I'd rather the devs work on fixing their restrictive content design and class homogenization over anything else. I'd love a HoT-based healer, and a channel healer, and a melee healer, but the game devs have absolutely got to drop that reliance on insta-gib raid/tank busters without healer mitigation and instead make SCH/Noct AST's playstyle an optional playstyle based on preference, not on necessity.

Just my 2 cents.

[Rai_Takara]

The way I see it in terms of overall healer balance. Anyone should be able to play whatever healer they want and not be a burden. Currently all healer comps are viable and that's how it always should be. Yes, there are optimal comps but optimal does not mean necessary and never should. In light of that, the current healer balance is fine, although I feel like they still need to fix some of ASTs cards (Spear/Arrow) and make certain abilities not be useless in Noct (Time Dilation).

[mp-please]

The way I see it in terms of overall healer balance. Anyone should be able to play whatever healer they want and not be a burden. Currently all healer comps are viable and that's how it always should be. Yes, there are optimal comps but optimal does not mean necessary and never should.

Yea I agree. Though to be fair we need another midas tier to actually test each composition, the creator is a tid too easy to consider any healer dead.

[gumas]

I like how in this game the healer is the hot topic/competitive discussion.

Usually in other mmo its always the dps (the salt, the cry, the hate, the kicked nominee) but last time i check the dps forum, everyone over there just chill and being firendly like gentleman lol.