Isn't it about time for WHM to get an AOE mitigation tool?

[Estelle9lives]

Except the exclusion of jobs has never been limited to just speedkills.
Open up PF right now. You'll see parties that are excluding any caster other than RDM, any melee other than DRG. And these are not speedkills or anything, they're simple weekly clears or practice parties.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. I've seen this happen on PF, but the cases were few and far inbetween. Weekly clears nowadays even taken dupe comps, people don't really care.

Things

Earthly Star is amazing, but it's locked behind a 60s cooldown and it requires at least 10s of buildup to be used efficiently. There are several reasons as to why Cure III remains strong:

- Can be buffed by Largesse
- Spammable (you can literally solo Almagests on V4S with it)
- Not locked behind a cooldown - This is important.

Granted, you can say "But all the damage in this game happens in bursts!", and while that is true, using a GCD to cast Cure III is much less of a deal than you're making it out to be, IMO. You rarely ever will spend more than 1 GCD using Cure III. That GCD you're saving by using Earthly Star is nowhere near enough to bring AST's damage close to WHM, either. You also mention the GCD bottleneck problem WHM has, yet doesn't mention that Asylum is an OGCD and says nothing about the fact you need to stop actions completely to have CU proc.

And no mention of WHM's strongest OGCD heal in Benediction. It's incredibly good now that it's cooldown has been reduced to 180s, syncing perfectly with Holmgang. No other healer can bring a tank from 1 to full without spending a single GCD. And no, Essential Dignity even when used when the target has 1 HP is nowhere near as strong. It can also be used to make things like Shinryu's healer check a joke - with an Astro it takes ED+2 Benefic II to bring a Reiryu to full.

Again, I'll say that I wouldn't complain at all if WHM got buffs, I just think it's got a great kit and a good game flow as of now, and a lot of the criticism is unwarranted.

[Fernosaur]

Again, I'll say that I wouldn't complain at all if WHM got buffs, I just think it's got a great kit and a good game flow as of now, and a lot of the criticism is unwarranted.

Ah, yes. I was talking exclusively about AoE healing oGCDs. I know Benediction is great, but the AoE oGCDS WHM has still pale in comparison to the ones SCH and AST possess.

You could say that it's not "that big a deal" to heal using a GCD instead of none, but it definitely grants much more mobility to the other jobs on top of the aforementioned efficiency, neither of which WHM has. And when you're striving to deal as much damage as possible (which is WHM's method of competing against the rDPS contributions of SCH and AST), stopping to cast a GCD heal is a bigger detriment than you would think.

While it's true that CU needs you to stop all your actions for up to 3 seconds before people get the HoT, it still has the mitigation element, it's still the strongest AoE HoT in the game, and once the HoT is applied both the AST and the rest of the party can forget about it and move wherever needed, whereas Asylum is just a static bubble with a mediocre potency HoT. Also, if you time CU right with server ticks you can have a literal instant HoT applied, which takes less time than a GCD cooldown. Honestly, for the awkward immobility Asylum has, I would say it deserves to have its potency per tick doubled, even if it means an overall duration decrease to match the same final total potency.

Earthly Star vs Cure III is kind of a finicky argument, since Cure III only edges out the former in very early progression, while AST needs to learn the fight to figure out the timing of the Star burst. Once that knowledge is down, though? It's likely that Cure III won't be used ever again save for really specific instances, even when running AST+WHM comps.

Even when using the Cure III Almagest solo-heal example, both AST and SCH can solo heal it using their own tools, so I don't think that's necessarily an advantage. WHM does it "easier" by just spamming the same spell over and over, but while also generating almost twice as much Enmity as the other two jobs, which is always risky in that particular part, specially if you're not running with a PLD.

To finish off, I definitely agree that WHM's kit is good and has a good flow of play right now. I don't think it needs buff to function. Heck, WHM is hands down the absolute best dungeon healer due to the raw power of its single target heals and AoE DPS. But for raids?

I'm just saying, when you compare all three kits against each other, the whole "WHM is the raw power healer" argument doesn't really hold up too well.

I repeat, I don't think it's needed to buff WHM, in the sense that it has a relatively healthy spot in the meta right now. It's safe, it's got infinite MP, and can spam huge heals. But the feeling of raw power really isn't there once you see Earthly Star topping everyone off from sub-30% and SCH putting out as much healing as Cure III while running every 30 seconds.

This is mostly coming from the user experience PoV. You can argue that it's an entirely subjective thing, and you would be right, honestly. I just don't see the issue in strengthening WHM's supposed identity, given that it would very likely not even change the meta as it currently stands. If anything, you'd only get more Scholars complaining about the job's low healing potencies and trying to get SE to buff SCH into a WHM with shields and a fairy.