4.1 and us healers

[Tridus]

I think a part of this may be from the original idea that WHM in SB was designed to be the "My First Healer™" job for players, and to fulfil the niche of players that wanted a healer that primarily focuses on just healing.

It's supposed to be easy to grasp, the cost of it a being bit boring compared to other jobs.

"Boring" is of course, relative. I mean, people say that SCH is fun to play and I look at them like they're telling me I have two heads, because I find SCH clunky and needlessly cumbersome. Even at the end of HW where it was clearly better, I still didn't like it. I levelled it to get the title, then immediately ran back to WHM and AST.

That's the reason behind having lots of jobs, at the end of the day. They don't play the same way and you're going to like some more than others. They're never deliberately designing one to be boring (although that may happen accidentally), they're just designing it to appeal to different play styles.

That might be why the Lily and Confession system is so secondary and unnecessary feeling.

Those systems added on to classes that didn't have them before were pretty hit or miss, though. It feels tacked on because it was tacked on. They didn't change anything about how WHM worked to integrate lilies, they simply added lilies on to what was already there and said "k, now you get cooldown reduction", with the exception of Divine Benison, which is the only case that lilies matter at all. I don't know what they were thinking with confessions except that they clearly didn't want to add another oGCD heal that could be used at any time, so they tossed something in to gate it (and then had to immediately rethink it because the first version was completely useless).

PLD feels similar, where the oath gauge system was added on after the fact and it shows pretty clearly. Jobs that already had some kind of secondary resource system fared better because the job was already designed with that resource in mind. WHM wasn't, and didn't get the redesign that would be required to to really make lilies feel like an important part of the job.

Thing is, RDM now carries a big "this is easy to gitgud at" sign, too, and no one is too worried about a DPS being easy to understand. YMMV.

RDM flows so beautifully when you play it that it'd be obvious it was made after the designers had years of experience even for someone just joining the game today who might not know that. Everything fits together and synergizes with itself flawlessly. It's also forgiving enough that mistakes can be relatively easily corrected, which certainly makes it friendly to people who aren't at the top skill level. In this case some of the skill difference doesn't show up on the personal DPS side (because it's pretty striaghtforward to do well on that), but on other stuff like being fast with the Verraise to take that burden off the healers. You'd be depressed at how many RDM players don't seem to realize just how awesome their support abilities are.

I mean, seriously, mana shift that person spamming Holy.

I'm currently grinding WHM to 70 so my opinion doesn't have the weight of a main WHM player, but I've always fell into that same opinion as you, only to later end up going through phases of playing WHM constantly from how less stressful it can feel some days to play healer easy-mode, ha.

I don't know, I think your opinion is just as valid as anyone else that plays a healer. The people who main it are probably doing so because they like it, so they're not going to tell you why they didn't main it. It's a bit different if you're talking about the best abilities for a given job on a given encounter since a main on that job will have more experience, but this is more general opinions.

I can say that the thing I like about WHM is the thing I don't like about SCH: all the extra complexity winds up feeling like the job is fighting me sometimes. I don't want to deal with that, I want to deal with keeping people alive and nuking the boss into the ground. When I'm already babysitting DPS who love standing in Void Thunder to finish a combo, I don't feel like babysitting a fairy as well.

YMMV, which is why it's great that we are in a position where all three healing jobs are capable of clearing everything.

Except, screw Cleric Stance. I don't miss that crap at all.

Amen to that.

[Trunks]

I have no particular love for Cleric Stance, but it was the only thing that prevented WHM DPS from being the one-button snoozefest that it is now. I don't buy the, "it has to be this way because we need an easy healer Job" thing, either. Simple, straightforward healing is not mutually exclusive with overall engaging gameplay or even complexity. Look at AST. Take away NoctSect and it's pretty similar to WHM. Well, if Sylphie just wants to heal and completely ignores the card mechanics, it scarcely affects her healing efficacy. For people who want more out of the Job, it's all there.

Now, WHM is fundamentally different on the non-healing side, but it's not difficult to imagine what a similar approach would look like:

- Lilies are granted by Cure/II AND Stone II/III.
- Asylum, Tetragrammaton, Thin Air, and Divine Benison require and consume 1 Lily to cast.
(Personally, I'd like to see Thin Air be changed into something else entirely -- perhaps a CD that buffs your next Aero II or III cast.)
- Stone IV no longer replaces Stone III; requires and consumes 3 Lilies to cast.
- Plenary Indulgence no longer has applied stacks; consumes all Lilies and heals for x/y/z based on the number consumed. (Also, gets a better animation because, come on.)

Adjust potencies and CDs as necessary. This hardly makes the Job intimidating. If you want to stand there and spam Cure overheals night and day, go for it. If you want to play the Job to its potential, you at least need to have your eyes open. And now there's actually a reason to have the Lily gauge on your screen.

But that's not going to happen any time soon, so, hopefully the changes to future encounter design, with less stringent scripting, will make a difference.

[IllyaPrisma]

I would only be ok with an dmg buff, if the nerf balance hard. I do agree with an skill to weave, tho. If they don't want to nerf balance, then they should nerf malefic and add an new instant dot skill.

They already nerfed the Balance back to it's original value. WutFace O_O

[Tridus]

- Lilies are granted by Cure/II AND Stone II/III.
- Asylum, Tetragrammaton, Thin Air, and Divine Benison require and consume 1 Lily to cast.
- Stone IV no longer replaces Stone III; requires and consumes 3 Lilies to cast.
- Plenary Indulgence no longer has applied stacks; consumes all Lilies and heals for x/y/z based on the number consumed. (Also, gets a better animation because, come on.)

Aside from the Thin Air part, that sounds really interesting. Thin Air is my "spam holy" button, don't touch that plx.

[Saraphin]

- Lilies are granted by Cure/II AND Stone II/III.
- Asylum, Tetragrammaton, Thin Air, and Divine Benison require and consume 1 Lily to cast.
(Personally, I'd like to see Thin Air be changed into something else entirely -- perhaps a CD that buffs your next Aero II or III cast.)
- Stone IV no longer replaces Stone III; requires and consumes 3 Lilies to cast.
- Plenary Indulgence no longer has applied stacks; consumes all Lilies and heals for x/y/z based on the number consumed. (Also, gets a better animation because, come on.)

no touchy Thin Air. Thin Air is "Holy Spam" or "that XXX just got me killed, time to get my MP back up" Button.
PI i can get behind......Stone IV...i'd rather just have my Stone III Animation back. felt less like i was channeling my Inner Toph.
I would rather my "shite's gone to hell heals NOT be gated behind Lilies. that was the first issue with DB, because it was gated. Yes, I know we get them easily now, but.....I don't think fundamentally changing WHM game play again is going to make many people happier, but create another Mega thread (we all remember the 300+ page WHM thread prior to and during the first month of SB). These are already oGCDs, with a slight reduction due to how many lilies you had at the time of being used, so i think changing them to "gated" skills will have a similar issue to the complaints that original arose with DB.

[era1Ne]

They already nerfed the Balance back to it's original value. WutFace O_O

I asked them to nerf balance, IF they increase the "personal ast dmg" as some people in here wish. After all you need to balance around raiddps, which is the combination of own dmg and raid utility and ast is already strong as it is.

"Boring" is of course, relative. I mean, people say that SCH is fun to play and I look at them like they're telling me I have two heads, because I find SCH clunky and needlessly cumbersome. Even at the end of HW where it was clearly better, I still didn't like it. I levelled it to get the title, then immediately ran back to WHM and AST.

That's the reason behind having lots of jobs, at the end of the day. They don't play the same way and you're going to like some more than others. They're never deliberately designing one to be boring (although that may happen accidentally), they're just designing it to appeal to different play styles.

Spot on. I think with the addition of miasma 2, they already made scholar better and more fun to play. I started with scholar in storm and leveling was boring with it, but now running expert dungeons is fun enough imo. The class still excel in 8 man content, tho.

[Jxnibbles]

These prelim notes hurt.

Whms still have the worst trait. The Ui for Confession stacks are still terrible when two whms are in the same party.

Still have a tacked on Gauge system that offers nothing with heavy scripted fights can I just hide it yet. Really hate the fact that "Pure Healer still means nothing."

Correct me if I am wrong but all Healers and Tanks have utility to a certain degree except Whm. Do they also all have more Rdps as well.

Really dislike how Whm has so much of its Healing and Dmg tied to Gcds.. Would like to see some of that power go to oGcds..

Heres hoping that 4.2 solves any of the Healers issues including the Role actions. The Ui changes are a nice step at least.

[Trunks]

Aside from the Thin Air part, that sounds really interesting. Thin Air is my "spam holy" button, don't touch that plx.

Eh, I mean yeah, but at the same time... you can spam Holy pretty well without Thin Air, even, so anything that makes other aspects of WHM more interesting is worth it, to me. But I don't even necessarily advocate what I listed there, or any real specifics (as Saraphin said, I'm not entirely comfortable with "gating" core skills behind Lilies). It was meant more as an example of the sort of thing they could do to make WHM gameplay in general more dynamic without affecting the straightforwardness of its healing toolkit overmuch. The general idea is just making Lilies more abundant and useful, and giving us some either-or options in employing them.

[Ametrine]

Snip.

I think I love everything about this response, Tridus.

But for SCH was the more attractive job. Admittedly, much of my love for SCH over WHM (and later AST) was rooted in my dissapointment with the lore. The imagery associated with SCH was more appealing, even if I do enjoy WHM more on paper. HW absolved much of that feeling, but I also started feeling a nasty ability crunch. The job, while strong, was over encumbered, while AST and WHM was not. (Honestly I was initially very interested in AST, but it was so underpowered at it's launch, and it resulted in me never settling on a healer during the course of HW.)

After seeing abilty bloat cuts being a SB focus, I jumped right back on to SCH, and I enjoy it fully again, but woof, it's clunky. I think once it became clear SE was tooling it as an primarily oGCD healer verses a primarily mitigating healer, it started feeling good again.

[Saraphin]

snip

well...yeah i can spam it without Thin Air >.> but it's a lot more fun lol until you cast one too many and the tank dies XD oops. been there, done that.

I just look at it from the view of what happened Pre-SB with the Media release (we all know how that went) and looking forward how the Healer players will react. from this patch, SCH got what it needed, or at least some of what it needed. WHM still needs a bit of TLC and we can only hope the Job gets it.