WHM is much better now

[LathusWHM]

Probably because they brought down Assize's cooldown from 90s to 60s. Just to break down the imply, or lack thereof, Lilies have on it.

1 Lily: 58s (4%)
2 Lilies: 52s (10%)
3 Lilies: 48s (20%)

That's not exactly anything to brag over.

Maybe not, but 12 seconds is 12 seconds. Add 5-10 extra seconds in there, I mean... it's better then having 0% chance of cooldown reduction.

[SecretCrowds]

The problem which many people surfaced was about the design.

First off is the lily system. Cooldown reduction sounds great on paper but not practically. That's why AST always say the Spear card is useless. Put it this way. You reduce your tetragrammaton cooldown from 60 seconds to 48 seconds. Now, as a healer, you aren't going to use it once it goes off cd. You are only going to use it when you really need to. Most likely, you will end up using it way after the cooldown has ended. Same with asylum and assize.

And the confession system. It just plain sucks.

Finally will be the role abilities. They take the essential abilities from our core pool of abilities and make them "optional".

Don't get me wrong. WHM definitely is not struggling to heal. It's the design that people are mad about. The AST changes actually build up on their weaknesses. They now have a way to use "redundant cards", such as the aforementioned Spear, instead of outright discarding them. The WHM changes seem half-assed in comparison. It's like they design WHM for PvP first and realised it was great in PvP and then transposed it to PvE without much thought.

[Nobuyuki_Sanada]

And pre-damage mitigation falls on anyone capable to do so, but hey, Square just stripped us of our only option, so yes, WHM is unable to do so because Benison is far too wonky a skill for it. Which is what I say this entire time.

Also, no need to get snappy here. Day was bad enough as is.

What do you fear from a tank buster? Its the fact that it does about 60% of your tanks health in damage, and your afraid hits after the tank buster will kill them. Stoneskin softens the first blow and you cure through the continued damage. Benison works in reverse you cure 2 through the first blow and Benison after to block the remaining damage. Your co healer doesn't need to help you heal the tank they can be topping off dps or doing damage. Benison can be used more than that 1 special time in a fight, its constant damage mitigation (every 15s). You get a lily about 1 in every 2 cures so lets not pretend lilies are hard to get (dont need 3 to cast benison)

[Elamys]

What do you fear from a tank buster? Its the fact that it does about 60% of your tanks health in damage, and your afraid hits after the tank buster will kill them. Stoneskin softens the first blow and you cure through the continued damage. Benison works in reverse you cure 2 through the first blow and Benison after to block the remaining damage. Your co healer doesn't need to help you heal the tank they can be topping off dps or doing damage. Benison can be used more than that 1 special time in a fight, its constant damage mitigation (every 15s). You get a lily about 1 in every 2 cures so lets not pretend lilies are hard to get (dont need 3 to cast benison)

Not to mention that Stoneskin was a clunky ability with a high mana cost and a long cast time, and wasn't exactly strong to boot. I'm glad it's gone. I'd like to see a slight numbers buff on Benison, but let's not pretend that Stoneskin was a core part of the white mage playstyle here.

[Crewman]

but let's not pretend that Stoneskin was a core part of the white mage playstyle here.

It actually wasn't at all. People seem to expect stoneskin to protect the tank above all else. I never once used it in this manner. I often used it to assist in keeping the squishy people alive because they aren't taking constant damage. Going back to FFXI days, stoneskin was much stronger as well. What we have here is a fixing what isn't broken mentality. What I mean by that is, it could of just been improved, rather than forcing you to rely on a gauge ability to even cast a damage mitigation spell on a single target. All SE needed to do was possibly change it a little, and allow stoneskin II during combat. Stoneskin was one of the most useful for soloing as well, and that is all but a crap shoot now with lower level healers trying to solo without it.

[Mikhaill]

All I want to say is: WHM should get Stone Skin back or make Bension better to use.
They lost too many skills and the very least they could do is give them ONE of their original utilities back.
SS was a massive lifesaver in many occasions. They should give them more utilities to make up what they
tossed in Roles. Their skills were not only thrown in roles, they are crappier versions of them too.
Hell, remove the junk version of CS, and give the original back to WHM too.
And putting up with another RNG based system on another healer is silly, when we have AST for that.
In short, they butchered WHMs and dunno what to do. So, good luck for us getting another healer in 5.0 or 6.0 until they
understand what to do. Meanwhile, AST is buffed to hell and beyond for some reason.

The Lily system needs to be looked at big time and make way way way more played more.
As a matter of fact the Lily system could or should play a bigger part on WHM than most Job gauges.
I mean damn, give WHM SOMETHING. They take was way more than what they gave.

[Crewman]

^ I completely agree. Why even bother with WHM if AST can do a better job anyways.

[Tjedition]

For the Confession stacks, i wish that they would make it so WHM gets the stack. and can give it to whichever party member they want, so then they can be ready to quick heal that one while also still being able to heal others. I also think they should get rid of the timer on confession stacks. And If it is going to pretty much be a tank heal, might want to up the potency a little. especially to be used in raid content.

[Ashikuro]

Lillies and Confession stacks.

WHM is viable, and works very well without CS but that doesn't mean its good or balanced. The new mechanics are clunky, needless and unintuitive demanding one to play inefficiently to make use of them. If you can get RNG to grace you that is. SCH is in a worse place, but AST is so far and away better than both its unreal.

Also OP is only lv. 62. Which is when you learn Thin Air. An amazing Cooldown, but hardly a real indicator of WHM at 70.

I agree. I like WHM overall, but lilies are useless. They could just remove the mechanic and I wouldn't really notice. It's a shame because most jobs got some type of cool mechanic.

I think they need to redesign lilies to either:

1. Increase heal percent per lily (theme of thruput champs)
2. Drastically reduce mana cost per lily (would cement WHM as best mana efficiency)
3. Spend lilies to add a short group spell haste buff (actual group utility).

[Annana]

After playing at 70 for a decent amount of time, I like the new WHM.

Yes, Confessions are underwhelming and are basically an RNG tank heal. Yes, our 68 trait is RNG (only crits) on RNG (20% chance) on RNG (Assize OR Asylum if I'm reading it right).

But the rest of our kit plays really well right now with the high damage people take from dungeons. My current fear is that as time goes on and people get better geared the WHM kit will end up less efficient, what with needing fewer heals due to better mitigation and increased healing, thus hurting our Lily procs. I also really wish confessions were a stack that the WHM themselves gained to let them use Plenary, it's super clunky right now.