RIP WHM

[Evumeimei]

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.

I just think people are making a huge deal out of nothing with regards to the AST buff. You're right, all the healers should be balanced. Even if the balance isn't perfect any of them are perfectly fine to use right now, which is a good thing.

Also, no need to put words in my mouth. *shrugs* Take it as "buzz of WHMs" if you want, but that's not what I intended (I enjoy playing all three healer jobs). I simply stated that WHMs are overreacting, and that it wouldn't be a bad thing for AST to shine for once. I was just sick, at the time, of seeing multiple threads like "RIP WHM" / "SCH going to be replaced by AST" before the patch has even hit.

White Mage has the least amount of raid utility of all the healers and hasn't been "needed" in savage since the 3.07 buffs. The job doesn't offer anything more than raw healing power and instants, which is perfectly okay. That is why raids take a Scholar as the off-healer for mitigation.

It's even a fallacy to think White Mage is a "safer" option than Astro. Diurnal Astro has better raid mitigation utility, up to 20% with Disable and CU.

Ah okay. Just seemed like, at least until this patch, WHM was still heavily preferred over AST overall.

[mp-please]

Ah okay. Just seemed like, at least until this patch, WHM was still heavily preferred over AST overall.

Nope, you're actually right.
Up until 3.3 and considering FFlogs numbers, you'd see around hundreds of WHM/SCH clears, a dozen of AST/SCH clears and a handful of WHM/AST clears (yes, WHM/AST clears existed pre 3.4 buffs). And those dozen of AST/SCH clears were usually by groups who had the floor on farm and were just boosting up their own dps for epeen, rarely there was a AST on progression groups since you'd be shooting yourself on the foot with one in the party, mainly for gordias at 3.07 with A3S being absolutely unforgiving.

[technole]

What really was preferred is player skill. Ultros server first Gordias Savage clear was AST/SCH. The low amount of AST clears in Gordias Savage was because of early poor reception, and then you have the Eso job-only gear purchases so after the changes it wasn't an overnight change to just gear up unless you were already raiding in Savage to get cross-job gear. You can go back in this forum a year ago and see folks like myself and Staris, those whom raided Gordias on our server argue how good AST was in-places. It did still have some nagging downsides.


AST was really good in A3S. Synastry for solo healing hand of prayer/parting. Lightspeed is arguably the best healer cooldown for the x6 splashes, and disable is up for every cascade. The only real downside was to have some coordination for the hand of pain healer aggro. With the strict DPS checks we always had our main tank going Grit-less as much as possible. Even just having the SCH put up a few Succors to even the healing load manages it better. I always felt AST had unnecessary high aggro generation even with proper Aether use before, thankfully they finally addressed this.

In A4S With not killing straf dolls whirbelwind strategy (where everyone loses their MP). Having Assize was just an easier way of dealing with it. Every tier will have a healer that might have more luxury with it's skills than others. It's like the "But Cure III" argument in A6S/A8S. You don't need Cure III, and can Helios the damage. It isn't any harder, just a different way of doing things.

[Tint]

What really was preferred is player skill.

[...]

It's like the "But Cure III" argument in A6S/A8S. You don't need Cure III, and can Helios the damage. It isn't any harder, just a different way of doing things.

first we are not talking about player skill here. we are talking about classes. for this purpose we ignore player skill and just think that the players are skilled to play their class perfectly.

so... if a skilled AST player can heal every content then the WHM is only for unskilled players? but when both players are equal in skill and can both heal every content, it comes down to utility. a dps class without utility but higher potencys is fine, because more dps is always good. a healer like the WHM without much utility but high potencys is another story, because more hps just lead to more overheal.

of course all 3 healers should be able to clear all the content. but if all healers are able to clear all content, the healer wich can offer the best utility on top of that is the better choice. and THAT'S the problem of the WHM. but of course the WHM is a really powerfull healer and more than able to clear all content.

the only strengh a WHM can offer is that he is easier to play and can burstheal through shit. so the WHM is for unskilled players and unskilled partys. and that's not really satisfying.

[mp-please]

...

That's because every single healer has their strength on a different field. WHM uses less gcds (or even none) to burst heal while SCH and AST (check previous page for theory)uses a lot more making WHM a more reliable healer as it heals a fixed amount every single time it casts something. It's not just about "lol cure III" like you're saying, that's how the class whole class works with skills such as divineseal being a perfect match to almost every single stage of the fight that requires more aoe healing.
It's funny how you praise synastry as a better way of healing hand split phase on A3S and yet call assize just a easier way of dealing with adds. All healers could solo heal handsplit, i've done it as WHM, i've had my static SCH do it as SCH and AST could do it as well so in the end nobody cares about who does it better or who does it harder as long it's done. WHM was usually prefered for 3.0 raiding cause it added breather to a already tight fight and once again to the handsplit phase, a lot of groups manipulated the debuffs so the WHM would be dpsing during hand split due to POM+stone III.

For anyone that played tera, anyone will know the whole priest vs mystic argument back on early days. Mystic had around -50% healing than priest, it wasn't a neglectible difference like we have on XIV of just 15% ish, the main direct healing source was by mote picking up. Yes if the person was injured they would need to walk to the mote and pick it up to be healed with mystic single target heals being, well, not bad, but inconvenient. And yet mystic was considered to be the best healer on every single endgame aspect, why? As you progress into the fight the least damage will take so people will prefer a support class that increases the offense while still having enough heal power to carry out its healer job. Then devs baby'd priest with buffs and mystic playerbase died out but that's another story, just hope that doesn't happen in this game where a player population goes from 1/# of classes to <5% of total population.

Back to the topic at hand, it's not that WHM is bad, it's just suffering what tera priests suffered too. It's too good at healing so once fights become easier it will always be considered worse, but can a WHM heal any fight in the game? Sure it does even if not by the most efficient way and on fights where heal checks are tight the extra healing provides a good safetynet to the group allowing for mistakes to happen. And how did bluehole fixed this issue, albeit in a retard way that made mystics useless? They gave priests a potency buff and a mp regen move of their own while mystics had a crit/mp regen buff.

[ADVSS]

truth is ast was supposed to compete with both whm/sch or not so much compete but play a pinch=hitter role as filling in when the raid was missing one or the other. However apparently scholars are just too impossible to compete with over a myriad of things, so they decided to just go the whm route. if any of you remember 3.0 and ast horrible potencies compared to both sch and whm for a moment, that perhaps the err was on either not committing to what was advertised, or fearing it would be too good otherwise to warrantt any comp besides ast/ast but i leave it off as this. it isnt any longer what it was meant to ne. Apparently sch replacement is impossible and so is balance and so, yeah its ogtta play whm neo for a while till they figure it out, Do I trust a WHM over a AST? At this moment I just want to not die to prey.