Healer adjustment in 4.05

[Ghishlain]

How about looking at the numbers when a group doesn't buff up one player by putting the balance on them and only them.

Susano EX Healer DPS
#1 WHM - 2,301.5 DPS
#1 SCH - 2,210.3 DPS (4.0% less than WHM)
#1 AST - 1,965.3 DPS (14.6% less than WHM)

Lakshimi EX Healer DPS
#1 WHM - 2,548.5 DPS
#1 SCH - 2,220.3 DPS (12.9% less than WHM)
#1 AST - 2,045.5 DPS (19.7% less than WHM)

WHM still leads the DPS trial without Balance (though I guess it's rare to see an AST parse without Balance being used, gotta love that RNG). Also expected SSS numbers substantiate how S-E perceives the damage tiers to be and the % ahead. Again, of course that changes based

You are telling someone who stuck with WHM through all of 2.x and 3.x, and will continue to do so during 4.x, despite the blatand weaknesses of the job they are a sheeple and blind meta follower for feeling they didn't do enough to help the job? I literally played AGAINST meta for around the past half year or longer, and you still tell me I'm a 'blind follower of meta'? LOL. If that were the case, I would have switched to AST ages ago because that's the only healer I feel makes sense to play right now. But, you know, I love WHM and want to play it, even though people told me how much slower their runs are with me instead of an AST in 3.3 and 3.4. And just for your information, I don't need anybody to tell me how good or bad something is, I think for my own, and if my own opinion, by chance, aligns with most other people, that still doesn't make me a blind follower of anything. The blind meta junkies are the reason I'm so angry, because they are the ones who exclude people from stuff for playing certain jobs.

Also, you did literally nothing to rebuke my claim of WHM being 200 DPS ahead of SCH, you even gave me the proof I was looking for the past half an hour. Thank you for that I guess. Also, I would argue WHM is MORE reliant on the rest of the party playing perfectly than, say, SCH, because I still can't heal and DPS at the same time outside of Assize, while SCH still has the Fairy (even with the nerfs) and Stratagem is a buff to the party, not reliant on how well people dodge and how much unavoidable AoE goes out. I, however, have to care about those things very much and it greatly lowers my DPS if I have to heal instead of DPS. And why should I not treat it like a 3.4 kit? We got almost nothing new in Stormblood except for MP management, and even lost so much it's not even funny. Benison? A slightly stronger, far less flexible Stoneskin. It CAN be instant of you have a Lily, but will likely not be, forcing you to cast Cure II to get one, giving it a cast time again. This can also screw with you majorly if your co-healer tops off the tank before you can. Even after playing 4.0 WHM for a month now, the Lily system still feels incredibly clunky, and gets ignored by me for the most part because why bother if the benefits are so miniscule and I have to jump through hoops to get them? Also, there are far, FAR too many Lily dumps and too few skills that build them, and half of them is reliant on RNG. Horrible design. And lets not even start on the train wreck that's PI, not even YOU can think that skill is actually good...

Then if I may make a suggestion - stop sounding so angry with all your posts and about how "WHM is dead, the sky is falling!" because that's the perception I'm getting from your posts. You have shown a very biased opinion that WHM is dead in the water and an inflexibility about how the WHM kit actually works. Claiming Divine Benison is bad makes me shake my head. It's infinitely better than Stoneskin because it's an oGCD, even with the Lily requirement. You got something that allows WHM to become more flexible - as long as they're attentive with their resources. Don't save Benison for a tank buster, use it when you get it! You'll get far more mileage out of Benison then you would EVER get out of Stoneskin pre-4.0. Why Stoneskin when using Cure II is generally a more efficient use of the GCD? At the same MP cost and cast time. Yes, there's an argument to use Stoneskin on weakened players pre-4.0 but with the changes to Stormsblood, players maintain their full HP values even when weakened, meaning it's still up to them to ensure they do mechanics properly and they won't get wiped out by Raid buster due to that 10 or 15% hit to their Vitality. Keeping Stoneskin is pointless given the current Weakness changes and how much better Cure II would be compared to Stoneskin under the same GCD.

To answer some of your points more directly - Yes, I am hoping Lily generation gets changed. Not in terms of % proc rate but more in terms of the number of ways to get Lilies would be increased. This would make the WHM kit less narrowly focussed and funner to play overall.

I don't find PI to be terrible, but it definitely needs some QoL love and not a giant overhaul. Again, to mimic other suggestions made, I'd be happy with infinite duration Confession stacks or higher / more ways to generate Confession. There was even one suggestion where turning PI into a DPS ability and I'd actually wouldn't mind seeing that either. Holy damage under a title of "repentance" that generates when you DPS a mob. The way the Live Letter went, it seems they've hit these two issues I had a concern with the WHM kit and I'm reserving further judgement on changes until I see what they're actually changing.

So while I agree with you that 4.0 WHM is better off than its 3.4 counterpart, the above reasoning is TERRIBLE. Even assuming there's no Balance padding in those parses, no healer's hitting that without spending every GCD DPS'ing -- as in, they're TRYING to be #1 for fun and having the other healer solo heal. Such a setup would obviously never be useful in a real static, as at that point you'd sub that healer for a DPS.

The reason why this is important is because setting up Expanded Balance costs oGCDs, while WHM higher personal DPS costs GCDs. A good AST will know how to minimize clipping their GCD with oGCDs, so the raid DPS they provide through Balance can still be given even as healing demands increase, while the same cannot be said for a WHM. You could argue that a WHM has more healing oGCDs, which allows them to spend more GCDs doing damage, but every or nearly every oGCD that AST has that can be compared to a WHM is better than its WHM counterpart overall (from a healing perspective), which mitigates that WHM advantage a fair bit.

In practical settings (see 75th - 80th percentile, for example), a WHM brings about 150-200 personal DPS more than AST, which isn't nearly enough to cover the difference in raid DPS from Expanded Balance. Because of Sleeve Draw, expanded Balance is technically stronger in 4.0 or 4.05 than it was in 3.4 because its uptime will go up.

Honestly, the issue is that many of the advantages that a WHM brings (notably MP efficiency and AoE damage) work really well in dungeons, but don't translate well to 8 man content due to raid design in HW and now Deltascape. If you don't want WHM to give raid utility, to be the SAM of healers, that's fine. But in order for that to work, Stone IV and Aero II should get a potency buff, which should help WHM in 8 man content without making them any more ridiculously good in dungeons.

I agree with the sentiment that there is fault in looking at the absolute best and an average in the 80% is more pragmatic. For those wondering here are the 80 percentile results:

Lakshmi EX
Susano EX

Inb4 "SEE! SCH IS BETTER DPS!!!!"

I will disagree with your sentiment that setting up Expanded Balance is easier for a AST and rather push the argument that both setting up Expanded Balance on AST and providing heavy DPS while on WHM while not shirking your healing duties have similar skill sets - setting up your oGCDs to minimize your GCD clipping.

If I were to compare oGCDs amongest AST and WHM, AST's oGCD provide more raw benefit (ED > Tetra; ES > Assize; CU > Asylum), but the fact WHM has more oGCDs they can use to heal their party means eventually AST has to stop DPSing to spend GCDs to heal. Of course gauging where the break point where AST contribution > WHM contribution and vice versa is not something easy to make.

This is why I keep commenting over and over that it's important for players to pick the healer they feel comfortable playing. Even if a kit may be marginally better than the other, your comfort level can make up that difference or make you play the other kit worse and make you an overall worse healer. I get tired of the players blindly following the meta and the rage that ensues. Yeah, I know I'm not exempt from that rage either *Points to earlier comments in the thread* so I'll apologize for that.

I do agree that if we want to give WHM more damage, the way to go is through things like Stone IV and Aero II.