How does SE plan to restore White Mage's identity as a healer?

[Tint]

Either give it some sort of advantage or just make raids so healer intensive that you need a WHM.

Funny, WHM is kinda like Monk. Never looked at it like that before..

High heals:High damage
little utility:little utility

the theory is like that, yeah. but the problem is: high heal leads to high overheal. high dps is always welcomend. you can't "over-dps" (instead of some specific fights maybe like ifrit ex - wich are already outgeared).

the healers should be equal in healing power. if you make raids so healer intensive that you need a WHM, then you have created a new imbalance for SCH/AST. the same can be said if you increase the healing power of WHM even further - then WHM will just solo heal.

the healers should be equal in healing power and should all bring some utility to the party. a healer wich only lives from "high heals" will either heal too much and destroy all other healers - or he heals not enough for his lack of utility and gets destroyed from the other healers.

the only reason why WHM does survive is that people just don't stop playing WHM. after all it is the most played job in the whole game. people like playing WHM and the WHM is one of the most iconic Final Fantasy classes.

[Cynfael]

I'd like to see WHM get a Balance Life spell to equalize party HP since no other job has it yet.

Generally I feel that WHM healing is overkill for most content. Frankly I enjoy WHM more for AoE burst damage and stun than I do for its healing and buffs these days. Unfortunately all that AoE support power is of situational use when it comes to anything other than trash pulls.

Maybe WHM could benefit from more multi-function abilities like Assize that can be used in different ways depending on the situation. Even Holy has a supportive function with that massive stun; it's just useless for CC against bosses and is quickly subject to diminishing returns otherwise.

[TenZer0]

I switched around my melds a bit... My DET is meh... But my CRIT and Spell Speed are over 1k each. That seems to help...

[Exiled_Tonberry]

the healers should be equal in healing power and should all bring some utility to the party. a healer wich only lives from "high heals" will either heal too much and destroy all other healers - or he heals not enough for his lack of utility and gets destroyed from the other healers.

This really hits the nail on the head. You can't just outright make WHM the strongest healer because it would screw over any other healer from AST and on because they would HAVE to have weaker healing in order for WHM to retain it's identity.

Obviously SE saw this didn't work and went ahead and bumped AST heals up to WHM levels. This however, only served to skewer what made WHM unique.
They should just move away from this "pure healer" nonsense and give WHM raid utility like every other healer.

[Yeol]

The formula we are currently following with healers.

There are two types of healers, region and shield.

WHM: Region.
SCH: Shield.
AST: Shield or Region.

DPs: SCH > AST >= WHM
Support/Utility: AST > SCH > WHM
Heal potency: WHM > AST > SCH

Any combo of healers work as long as you have 1 region and 1 shield.

WHM/SCH
WHM/AST(Nocturnal)
AST(Diurnal)/SCH
AST(Diurnal)/AST(Nocturnal)

SCH: DPs.
AST: Cards.
WHM: Big heals.

If you are suffering with heals then bring WHM + any shield healer and you should be fine.

WHM is still incomparable when it comes to healing. You said they are losing their identity?
I disagree with that. They are still the stand alone pure healer.

When WHM solo heal it is not surprising, but when SCH or AST does that then it is something.

[Neophyte]

again with that? really?

Benediction isnt a oh-shit button, it has a long animation sequence, and if you use it as an oh-shit button, you'll just heal yourself.

Your error is, that you value the skills based on their usefulness in random, chaotic pug groups.

You're right, it's not an Oh-shit button. It's an OP heal you can use when your WAR is holmganging something or you let your MT fall to 10-15% (well, you know.. you can plan something like this), while still being in cleric stance.

tetra is 700 potency every minute, sch has lustrate up to 6 times per minute for 600 potency => 3600 potency.

It's not 6 per minute. In a 9:30 minute fight you have at max. 45 AF stacks and that only if you use Dissipation on CD up to 4 times.

First minute: 3 stacks prep + AF off CD + Dissipation
Second minute: AF off CD
Third minute: AF off CD
Fourth minute: AF off CD + Dissipation
Fifth minute: AF off CD
Sixth minute: AF off CD
Seventh minute: AF off CD + Dissipation
Eight minute: AF off CD
Nineth minute: AF off CD
Tenth minute: AF off CD + Dissipation

So the absolut maximum ist around 4-5 AF per minute with 9 stacks at the beginning, where you never need that much healing anyway. Also you maybe should lower your (now) "extra" ~3150 healing pot/minute by 1250 fairy healing potency you lose per minute.

(4 times Dissipation equals 4*10*300 = 12000 potency fairy casts)

Or did you mean solely as a Oh-shit-button? Like "I saved my AF stacks for emergency and have six stacks available for that"?

When you know you need about 3200 potency to fully heal 40k HP, you'll see that the lustrate are way better at that than tetra or benediction, because you can control it, where benediction, if it actualy land, will have a portion of it in overhealing.

Who cares if bene is overhealing 1k or 2k or 3k? You use it at the lowest point your comfortable with.
It's more comfortable to just use bene, waste 0,2s and an ability with no other use for it, than to switch out of CS, blast a huge chunck of your dps out for healing, while with one crit or used with the tank 1-3k HP to high, you have way more potentially overheal than with Bene.

[Docteur_Fluttershy]

i never said it was "6 per minute", but that it was "up to 6 per minute", which isnt the same.

For benediction, its pretty rare to get only 1-2-3k hp on the tank unless its a benediction you had prepared as your strategy (with holmgang or the drk thing i cant remember the name), and most of the time, just switching out or cs and using one and a half gcd can do the work to full life the tank (boosted regen+tetra in offgcd + cure or cure II then back to cs).

Most of the time you will use bene (when you didnt expect to use it there) on a 7-10k hp tank, depending on your other healer that will mostly react the same way (with either lustrate or ED), making either a full instant overheal on his part, or a 10-20k overheal on your part. Don't take it wrong, i'm not saying benediction is bad, i'm just saying that people should stop taking it for an instant to react to something that wasnt suppoesd to happen. It's a CD that you are supposed to know when to put, not one you put when a bad situation suddenly happens (cause in this situation, half of the time, it will go badly).

i dont get the 'reduce your healing cause you lose your fairy' either. The potency i talked about was only from lustrate, and i didnt count any other heal. Losing the fairy wont influence the output heal of the lustrate.
And if you want to go that way, the dissipation also buff the scolar heals by 20%, so you lose your fairy, but your heals (not spells) are boosted too.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

I might have agreed with you if you said this back in 3.0 launch, but now their healing power is nearly 1:1 with WHM, with the exception of Cure III, and that's too limited in usefulness to base their entire identity around.

AST heals are too comparable to WHM while offering massive raid buffs and that's causing the imbalance. If they, perhaps, added these huge cards buff while still healing at their 3.0 values it would have been better, but that wouldn't have worked because first and foremost a healer has to be good at healing.
That's why a "pure healer" like WHM will stay behind in the competition. They can't simply make healers weaker to make WHM seem stronger. They need to function as a healer before anything, and AST at 3.0 healing potency failed in that. All healer will have to AT LEAST heal on the level of a WHMs basic toolkit and regens to be truly considered.

[FoxyAreku]

I might have agreed with you if you said this back in 3.0 launch, but now their healing power is nearly 1:1 with WHM, with the exception of Cure III, and that's too limited in usefulness to base their entire identity around.

You're forgetting oGCD healing. Assize, tetra, bene, asylum, these are all great tools that put white mage way ahead of AST's one oGCD healing skill.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

You're forgetting oGCD healing. Assize, tetra, bene, asylum, these are all great tools that put white mage way ahead of AST's one oGCD healing skill.

I'll agree with Asylum and get being decent, bit Benediction and Assize could see some change.
With assize, it's really just an instant cast medica with a very small MP restore attached to it. It's good yes, but it's hardly defining. Of you could be affected by divine seal? That would be pretty good.

As for benediction, it simply needs a CD adjustment. Again not bad, bit really not defining.