The concept of pure healers

[Bourne_Endeavor]

There is merit to the idea a skilled White Mage could solo heal even Savage. It would play out like a risk/reward feature where hardcore raiders would be far more prone to adapt whereas midcore and below probably maintain the standard, though it'd still be entirely viable. I suppose the concern then becomes what about four man content? Not that it entirely matters, however White Mage would be king by a landslide with this scenario.

Either way, I just cannot see the devs embracing the idea White Mage being the undisputed superior healer. They really seem to fancy all three having comparable healing prowess. Which is what puts White Mage in that situation it's in.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

There is merit to the idea a skilled White Mage could solo heal even Savage. It would play out like a risk/reward feature where hardcore raiders would be far more prone to adapt whereas midcore and below probably maintain the standard, though it'd still be entirely viable.

It's a nice idea, but it just won't happen. The second WHM can solo heal content, both healers will instantly become raid irrelevant. The meta will call for solo WHM comps, and the two others will be shunned, leading to healing buffs, and back to WHM being irrelevant. It will simply never work. Plain and simple. It fixes the WHMs problem, but it just pushes the problem on others.

The only thing we can do is give WHM unique utility and leave this pure healer crap alone.

[Skyrior]

WHM isn't even that good at pure healing. Tetragrammaton is on a ridiculously long 60s cooldown while Essential Dignity is on 40s. Assize is on 90s cooldown while Indomitability takes an Aetherflow action (which is at worst a 60s cooldown).

If they want to make WHM a class for pure healing make it actually good at pure healing first. Right now it's only good for bringing CureIII for Photon IMHO (AST + SCH can do whatever WHM can do).

[Sebazy]

I was solo healing most content back in 2.0 sir! =(

I don't think it would be a problem if WHM had a more significant HPS advantage than it does now. All 3 healers have overkill throughput for the vast majority of current content anyway, if we are going to assume that SE are going to keep undertuning content then only time it'll become a problem is if we see a repeat of how AST performed at the start of Gordias (which was a comparible experience to driving a 50cc moped amongst a 40mph limit road). As things stand it's lack of mitigation would keep it in check during early progression irrespective of how much HPS it can push. I've been able to solo heal the bulk of Creator for months, my group still takes a SCH along because A) It's a lot safer and more consistent for the weekly farm and B) Logs filters out 'non standard' comps into their own category, chasing oranges counts for a lot.

Personally I really liked where WHM was in 2.x. Even then, SCH got a lot of attention for being so versatile and DPS-friendly

Absolutely, SCH and WHM were Ying and Yang back then, they both had their niches and complimented each other perfectly. AST was an interesting if somewhat shallow concept that was pasted over the top of WHM and then bludgeoned into a position where it could also fill a SCH's shoes if need be. It's worth noting that there was a wave of 'RIP Whm' posting back when Twintania was the endgame as well, primarily due to combo of Media II's change and Lustrate ignoring Infirmity (And yet at least as far as Europe went, we were still running WHM/SCH and just timing our cure 2s to land in the little gap between the Death Sentence hitting and Infirmity applying). We also had some quite meaty threads leading into 3.0 where people were proclaiming that WHMs were dead in the water and that ASTs would be everywhere. I might have snorted my cereal a bit in amusement when Gordias Savage hit and the likes of Vlady instantly went quiet

The most realistic and likely solution to this isn't a rework of WHM though imo, I don't think Yoshida's team has anyone with a wide enough view of MMO healing across the ages to do a good job of it beyond simply cutting and pasting more uninteresting and stale abilities (*edit* with long cooldowns as noted above) into the job. Rather I'd like to think that they will use the 4.0 card system changes to readdress the disparity between balance and the other cards. I shouldn't be using consistently using /statusoff macros on 5/6 cards to speed up my odds of getting more balance cards in progression content. Toning balance back down whilst making the other cards a bit more interesting would in turn do wonders for WHM's appeal.

In the long term though, I suspect Yoshida would do well to eat a slice of humble pie and hire in a couple of veterans from the JP raiding community specifically with experience and a solid understanding of the fresh concepts many Korean and Western MMOs have brought in to combat this stagnation. It worked wonders for Blizzard leading into WoW's launch, there's no reason it wouldn't do the same for SE as they start looking towards 5.0 and the challenges it'll likely bring.

[Sylvain]

In the long term though, I suspect Yoshida would do well to eat a slice of humble pie and hire in a couple of veterans from the JP raiding community specifically with experience and a solid understanding of the fresh concepts many Korean and Western MMOs have brought in to combat this stagnation. It worked wonders for Blizzard leading into WoW's launch, there's no reason it wouldn't do the same for SE as they start looking towards 5.0 and the challenges it'll likely bring.

Isn't already the case?

[Sebazy]

Not sure what you mean? If he's hired in outside help already, then assuming it was early enough to make a difference with 4.0's design then that's fantastic news. If you mean that they need to hire fresh blood now, It's far too late to have any impact on 4.0 at this point =/

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

snip

Before I get into this (and when I am no longer on mobile), how much of my post have you read? In particular the second last paragraph

[Ghishlain]

I think the one thing that the #RIPWHM team fails to incorporate in their discussions is the current state of WHM is based around the buffs S-E took to bring AST up to "par", effectively snuffing out any advantage WHM may have had in the healing paradigm. Even if current raid tiers had higher healing requirements, you would still bring an AST because and AST can do everything a WHM can with both better MP sustain and better utility. WHM is literally an inferior AST in every sense of the way in the current iteration.

If S-E defines a "pure healer" as a healer designed only to heal and provides a greater healing output than the other utility-centered healers, they've achieved their goal. S-E now has the means to reset the healing slab with the 4.0 expansion hitting in less than a month and I personally wouldn't be surprised if we see WHM's healing potential exceed their counterparts - thus achieving the definition listed earlier.

Raid design and healer meta aside, if WHM's have increased healing, the choice between WHM or AST then becomes a preference of either more healing power (WHM) or more utility power (AST) - unlike the current iteration of bring AST because of "Anything you can do I can do better (than WHM)". While yes, WHM is servicable, I don't think there's a conceivable reason to bring WHM when you can bring AST in the current raid tier. Once we get over that hurdle and go from "WHM is complete inferior" to "WHM is suboptimal", then I say we have a fairly well balanced group of healers.

Take into account no matter what there will always be an optimal healer pair and that'll make the third a tertiary choice. No game can be perfectly balanced - but we can at least try to get as close to that as possible in terms of the XIV healer paradigm.

[Skye_]

And around we go.

No, WHM can't be so powerful it can solo heal content. It can't even be a certain amount stronger than the other healers because they'll feel they're at a disadvantage in healing. So all the healers are forced to heal for around the same amount.

Which is the very problem of the roles. People want their role to be as good as their healing partners. AST should ever have been as good as WHM in healing. You are a healing PAIR and you need to adjust to who are you healing with. When AST/SCH, they SCH should have to heal more to make up for the AST. The SCH dps does down, but party dps makes it even, but SCH's dont adjust their play style from whm and ASTs cry until they got over buffed.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Take into account no matter what there will always be an optimal healer pair and that'll make the third a tertiary choice. No game can be perfectly balanced - but we can at least try to get as close to that as possible in terms of the XIV healer paradigm.

Yes this is something to keep in mind. No matter what happens, we shouldn't be looking for WHM to just outright be better than AST or SCH. It should just be competitive enough to seriously be considered rather than scoffed at instantly. I just believe that a job that specializes in just healing is simply a non competitive identity. Unless of course the healing is so strong it has the ability to trivialize damage, which again would be unbalanced...

Then again, why should WHM worry about trivializing damage when SCH can put up shields worth more than the entirety of a DPS' HP or an AST can put up cards that can up your DPS to the point where DPS checks are steamrolled?