In defense of WHM 4.0

[OcieKo]

Pointing out some things that seemed to have not connected with people.

Confession: as currently known with th relatively short buff duration, may be hard to use/track i have nithing to counter this part with.
Cure 1/2 Spam Procs: so lets see currently spamming these will give you, chance to save MP on a heal, charge a low ogcd heal on a target, and stack an OGCD spell CD reduction. While each point of RNG may very, you get quite a lot out of it. Also AST gets hit with a similar function on Benefic 1/2 for reducing the GCD on Lightspeed with crits, so the crit RNG directly applies, and a chance to crit with Benefic 2, so basically a big (usually overheal) with a guaranteed CD reduc proc.
Compare Gauge to Gauge: complaints about comparing lilies to ast cards... Um have you looked at the AST gauge, it has like 4 things on it... All related to our cards.
AST Getting Healing Magic Potency on Diurnal: were also losing the spell speed on it, and 10% has always been there on noct, so mild buff. Both WHM regens are natively stronger. Also WHM Medica 2 has the widest radius of any healer aoe heal by 5y, and with how big bosses get, thats a huge issue SCHs and ASTs have to watch for.
Esuna: Negated, all 3 are hit by it.
Lucid Dreaming: SCH made out like a bandit here, AST and WHM both got hit tho. AST gained enmity reduction, WHM gained duration out of this.
Largesse: Not sure if Dissipation was removed for this, but Synastry was as well (honestly I expected this to be XRS synastry when the Divine Seal is gone rage began). Albiet I used synastry for the extra heal target not the bonus healing, still im assuming some ASTs did care about the 20% healing bonus.
Direct Damage: Stone IV, Boil II, Malefic III i dont think this point matters, going to cancel out for the most part.
DoTs Loss: SCH is losing at least 2, WHM/AST are losing 1 each as far as I can tell, also kindof cancels out.
Lilies vs Spear: In the ideal world of nothing preventing an AST from being able to use it, comparable. But unless some changes to how Royal Road activates happen, even if our odds of having it are 4% better, your odds of being able to use the lillies is 100%, ASTs and Spear, hard to calculate, but at best, maybe 20-30%.
Our Stuff is Tied to RNG: Understandable until you make it seem negative compared to AST whos core component is based on it. We even have 3 buttons dedicated to mitigating the RNG of the system, were getting another, and a button to make it easier to deal with when we fail... So if you include the draw, we have to manage 6 buttons to accomodate the natural RNG of our core mechanic.
Stoneskin is Gone: from what it seems tanks got a version of it, and some is tied into other WHM stuff. Not much to comment here.
Protect Moving to XRS: pretty much everyone is getting hit by this type of thing, SCH got hit with it as well in the case of Virus and Eye for an Eye, they can get half of Virus back the same way and all of E4E.
No DMG on Fluid Aura: all OGCD CC in the game got this treatment, and it was long overdue. These skills being used for DMG pretty much killed the ability to use CC in game. IMHO good riddance for all of it.
Lack of Extra Utility: Bit concerning, cant lie, but on the other hand, this means you can pretty much dedicate to DPS once your caught up.
Efficiency: WHM looks like its going to retain being the most MP efficiency healer in the game from what I can tell, SCH is maintaining having the easiest to regain MP. ASTs still in 3rd here, tho lightspeed being used more for its cost reduction purposes seems to be something thats getting advocated in 4.X. Wonder how long it will take people to realize Cure I, Physick, and Benefic I plain casted are the most MP efficient heals in the game. Maybe 4.X will finally make players here realize the value of MP efficiency instead of pure throughput.
AoE DPS: SCH lost here, mostly because it has to play on the same playing field as the others now.
Group Composition Demerits: WHM still wins here. WHM/WHM is still the easiest on the player. SCH/SCH is the worst. AST/AST changes based on sect preference of the player, it can be fine or one gets screwed, same with AST/SCH in the case where the AST prefers Noct Sect. Imagine a world where 2 WHMs couldnt stack Medica 2 in PvE. Yep, itd suck. Rest of us live it.
Being Ignored; Facets of RNG: RNG has 2 main points to it, chance of occurance and chance of desired outcome. WHM range is completely chance of occurance, which means as long as it happens, you have. 100% chance of the desired outcome. On the flip side AST has a 100% chance of occurance with a a ~16-17% chance of desired outcome for usage, and a ~32-34% chance of desire outcome for holding. Essential difference here being, if our chance of desired outcome is equal to your chance of occurance are remotely equal, your odds of getting what you want are vastly higher, given that the outcome cannot fail or be wrong.

Checking back thru to see what I missed.

[Feidam]

Exactly.

Let's paint a scenario where neither healer uses a single damage only ability. Would you rather White Mage or Astro? The answer is fairly obvious, which is the whole issue. Even in an idealized healing situation, Astro and Scholar are simply better at literally everything.

the problem with this scenario is the astologian has lower dps compared to whm and sch to compensate for the buffing. you'd need to keep the cards out too. in which case it is even. the only real offender is the balance card currently imo.

[Semirhage]

It's not even really the potency of the cooldown reduction. Everyone hates the Spear for a reason. The only abilities that tangibly benefit from cooldown reduction are the ones you'd use immediately after they came off cooldown. Aetherflow is one of them. Shroud. Draw. Assize, but only for the mana recovery and the damage, not the heal. You know what doesn't benefit from cooldown reduction? off-GCD heals. Sure, you could use Tetra the moment it came back up, but what if nobody is hurt? You can't plan around it, doubly so because the lilies are random and you have to use the emergency heal you need to use when it's needed by the party, not when you've waited for three lilies to make it come back slightly sooner.

Plus it's a system that actively rewards cure spamming. I'm not saying everyone needs to be optimal, I'm saying the game shouldn't disincentivize optimization. New Enochian comes with a reward for keeping your rotation up, not spamming Scathe.

[javid]

snip

There is an assumption you're making, and everyone else is making taking for granted CURRENT content requirements. Cure spamming is inefficient IFFFF the content doesnt mandate it.... from gordias all the way up to creator; the mini boss faust required gcd instant healing attention and not just during progression phases; even at max ilv only the best of the best were able to substitute most of/if not all instant healing gcds with regens and utilties and pre shields. So while there is a general disdain for spam, there has been a generally optimal cure spamming requirement. The question we'll be constantly asking our WHM selves is, "Will there be sufficient number of instant heavy healing sequences in game and throughout the fight to demonstrate the advantage that WHM has over the others??? Our whoooooole system is dependent dedicated healing sequences .....




Edit
I pointed this out in another forum, but if they made lilies proc off regen ticks at just 5% success rate, you'd have a 30% chance of getting at least 1 lily over that 21 sec window. Now typically you keep regen applied 24/7 (typically...humor me); over a span of 60 sec of regens thats 20 ticks !!?
chances of getting at least 1 of 20 = 64%
chances of getting at least 2 of 20 = 26%
chances of getting at least 3 of 20 = 7%
keep in mind that's the rate for a single regen target....

the rates go up exponentially the more ppl you pop a regen on.
quick example in 60 sec if you kept regen up on two persons that would be a combined 39 ticks in the 60 sec window

chances of at least 1 of 39 = 86%
... 2 of 39 =58%
... 3 of 39 =30%

Mind you, you guys would demand it not only be on regens but remain on cures or even be as audacious to demand it be on all forms of HoTs and cures!!! . So much for making it a RNG perk, not intended to be scripted but mildly dependable to differentiate a few scenarios.

[OcieKo]

There is an assumption you're making, and everyone else is making taking for granted CURRENT content requirements. Cure spamming is inefficient IFFFF the content doesnt mandate it.... from gordias all the way up to creator; the mini boss faust required gcd instant healing attention and not just during progression phases; even at max ilv only the best of the best were able to substitute most of/if not all instant healing gcds with regens and utilties and pre shields. So while there is a general disdain for spam, there has been a generally optimal cure spamming requirement. The question we'll be constantly asking our WHM selves is, "Will there be sufficient number of instant heavy healing sequences in game and throughout the fight to demonstrate the advantage that WHM has over the others??? Our whoooooole system is dependent dedicated healing sequences .....

Liked it btw. Valid point your trying to make thats not getting across. Cure 1/Physick/Benefic 1 are VERY efficient heals, they just lose their luster when the content is so far beneath you that regens/faerie can dominate on their own.
For the people who think this is nonsense, collect a gear set thats at the MINIMUM ilvl for a piece of content (not synced down, thats actually better) and try relying on your regens as much as you normally do. Start a brand new WHM if you have to.
We don't actually get much content that pushes your gear after the X.2 patch. You get the 8m Savage updates and the EX Trials. Thats about it, unless your new and gearing just up to the point of doing stuff, after 4.05 (+3-4 weeks of tomecap) most of us will be ahead of the normal level content until 5.X.

[TaleraRistain]

Okay I have to correct something here. Cures are not instant heals. Cures have a cast time. Whm are very reactionary. Our HoTs help us have that extra time we need while the Cure or Cure II is casting. Both are essential tools in our kit and to have this new mechanic having a pitiful proc chance on just one side of that toolkit is making us inefficient.

[Saraphin]

Pointing out some things that seemed to have not connected with people.
DoTs Loss: SCH is losing at least 2, WHM/AST are losing 1 each as far as I can tell, also kindof cancels out.

WHMs are losing 2 dots: Aero 1 and 2...and 3 if it scales up to an Aero 4, but we're not sure if there's a DOT on that if we get it. I will say that WHM is officially losing "2 DoTs"

[RopeDrink]

Am I the only one who sees it as a means to lower CD's at specific points? People keep saying it as if you need to be mashing them constantly from start to finish. I see it as a way to lower CD's when such spam is actually called for on, say, the MT during intense moments, not all the time. I don't see what's stopping me from being my usual stone-throwing self, especially with a juicy Stone IV that supposedly hits quite hard despite its simplicity. I'm pretty sure I'll still be spamming that far more than I ever will cures, because even without the above system, what am I going to be looking to lower CD wise? Assize for MP or an AoE phase? Another tetra? I'm pretty sure it would cool by itself by the time such moments occur. Having opportunities to reduce them via the natural healing process is fine by me - when it's called for.

NOTE: I have not and will not read into the static tooltips and theories - I'm more of a 'try it when it arrives' type who can't be bothered overthinking too hard when I can't physically play it myself and form my own opinion with my own eyes/hands, so I'm sure I'm missing a few of the more intricate details, but you get the idea.

[javid]

Okay I have to correct something here. Cures are not instant heals. Cures have a cast time. Whm are very reactionary. Our HoTs help us have that extra time we need while the Cure or Cure II is casting. Both are essential tools in our kit and to have this new mechanic having a pitiful proc chance on just one side of that toolkit is making us inefficient.

instant is in reference to getting all the potency of the cure instantaneously upon execution as oppose to regen which gives you the full potency over time; which is understood since, each time it's mentioned there is the "GCD" associated. There isn't anyone confused about cure GCDs are cast spells.

[javid]

WHMs are losing 2 dots: Aero 1 and 2...and 3 if it scales up to an Aero 4, but we're not sure if there's a DOT on that if we get it. I will say that WHM is officially losing "2 DoTs"

We'll have to see the potency changes; but if there is no changes WHM lost 1 dot that you were not using at lvl 60 (stone 3 > aero 1). Again we'll have to see the final potency.