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

[Miste]

It's better in numbers, yes, but as an effective heal, I do think Indom and Earthly Star has it beat.
I just notice Indom and Earthly Star so much more than a Medica + Assize/Plenary. It just feels so much more powerful.

It feels more powerful....but it actually isn't based on math...so sorry I just don't understand your issue with this. I mean that is your opinion that Indom and Earthly Star feel more powerful, but the math shows that your opinion doesn't match the facts.

So yeah you can feel that way about it, but it doesn't make it true.

Would a mitigation CD that matches the strength of a Succor or Aspected Helios really be such a big deal when Indom and Earthly Star exists?

You remember that post awhile back in this thread where you said that the problem is that healers can do too much now? You're making it worse again.

WHM cannot have a shield that has the same power as SCH or Nocturnal AST shields. WHM is not a shield healer. If you want shields like that then go play SCH or Nocturnal AST. Like I said before people have to stop coveting things other jobs have in their toolkits and trying to make it so they have everything all the other jobs have, if you want what another job has then go play that job. WHM isn't a shielder job so if you want shields there are two other choices.

Giving WHM too much shielding you might as well hold a funeral for SCH, because they gonna be real dead.

A very weak long cooldown aoe shield would be the only thing even acceptable for WHM to get in order to avoid messing up the nice level of balance we have going right now, but this is that homogenization problem again; you want WHM to have everything the other healers have. WHM doesn't NEED everything the other healers have just like AST doesn't need everything WHM has or SCH doesn't need everything AST has.

[Jxnibbles]

Not specifically Mitigation but actually giving us some unique utility that helps the party. Even having it require our Lilies would be nice. Not more Cdr or aoe healing trash.

So much power is being tied to Aero 3, Aero, and Stone 4 all gcds which does not have a impact on lilies zzzz...

Then we have Cure I, and Cure II which we want to almost never use tied to our resource..

[Exiled_Tonberry]

There's a difference between being good at something and being non-functional.

Get rid of Indomintable and Earthly Star and I doubt you can say the same for Scholar and Ast, let alone double Sch / Double ast.

It's fine if AST and SCH needs to rely on their burst heal CDs to be functional. But doesn't that mean that WHM needs something added to them to make the unique? Heavy on demand healing is WHMs identity afterall.

As it stands, SCH and AST can, quite literally, do everything. WHM is the only healer that only does one thing and does it well, and both healers can mimic it while offering their own unique benefits to the raid.

It just confuses me so much that people don't see anything wrong with this. I get that WHM is a functional, viable healer, but their kit in comparison is clearly lacking that extra "something".

You remember that post awhile back in this thread where you said that the problem is that healers can do too much now? You're making it worse again.

WHM cannot have a shield that has the same power as SCH or Nocturnal AST shields. WHM is not a shield healer.

I understand, and I still do hold on to my opinion that the healers do too much as it is. But why is WHM the only healer playing by the rules?
In WHMs case, if it needs mitigation, it has no other choice but to turn to a shielding healer or a tank to cover it's weakness. If it wants raid buffs? It needs to rely on someone else.

On the other hand, if SCH needs heavy AOE healing? They have an answer to that. They need to push raid DPS ahead a bit? They have an answer for that. Same case with AST. Sure they can't spam it like a WHM can, but you never actually need to.

I don't get why WHM needs to be held back by all these limitations when the other healers can have whatever they want to fill in their weak points.

[Sebazy]

It just confuses me so much that people don't see anything wrong with this. I get that WHM is a functional, viable healer, but their kit in comparison is clearly lacking that extra "something".

What they lack is a reliance on cooldowns to push HPS, that is the WHMs 'unique' strength. A WHM can get caught flat footed and still keep up with virtually anything this game throws at a party right now without a single cooldown thanks to Cure III. AST and SCH can't.

Again, I question your raiding experience and I would really love for you to link your actual character's lodestone rather than hiding behind an alt.

I appreciate your views, but the numbers you're basing them on simply don't add up and it really strikes me as a case of 'the grass is greener on the other side' syndrome TBH.

[loreleidiangelo]

What they lack is a reliance on cooldowns to push HPS, that is the WHMs 'unique' strength. A WHM can get caught flat footed and still keep up with virtually anything this game throws at a party right now without a single cooldown thanks to Cure III. AST and SCH can't.

Again, I question your raiding experience and I would really love for you to link your actual character's lodestone rather than hiding behind an alt.

Can definitely tell people who have never done O4S, at least, yeah. Sure, it's been solo healed by (I think) every healer in the book now, but there is a MASSIVE difference in doing progression as an AST/SCH vs doing it as a WHM/anybody else. I average about 2 or 3 more casts per minute than my WHM cohealer in raid but she roundly beats me on both DPS and HPS by about 200 and 1000 every O4S clear. WHM is a throughput MONSTER - while I think a cool DPS utility buff like Reflect or something would definitely fit in with their kit, I also don't get where so many of the complaints are coming from about them feeling "useless".

[Miste]

But why is WHM the only healer playing by the rules?

WHM isn't the only one playing by the rules, you just think it is.

On the other hand, if SCH needs heavy AOE healing? They have an answer to that.

SCH does not have heavy AoE healing by themselves. Their AoE healing is very limited by cooldowns. As Sebazy said it is obvious you have not been in the harder savage floors. In O3S and O4S there is so much AoE healing that my boyfriend, who mains SCH, has to decide when he can use Indom because it simply will not be up for every single AoE damage the party takes.

I have to coordinate with him and know when he can use Indom and when he can't and adjust accordingly as the Diurnal AST to handle the extra AoE healing needed the times where he can't use Indom. SCH doesn't have AoE healing for every time where it is needed due to cooldowns? Oh snap! I found a weak point!

I rely on his SCH for consistent shields since Diurnal AST has zero shields except for a mitigation bubble that needs to be constantly channeled locking the AST out of casting or moving in order to obtain any mitigation and is on a minute and a half cooldown timer. I have nothing for tank busters as a Diurnal AST. It's too bad I don't have that shield WHM has, Divine Benison was it? Oh snap! I found a weak point.

This is the reason why WHM has to rely on the other healer sometimes, because ALL healers need to rely on the other healer sometimes. That is how 8 man content is designed. Two healers working together and coordinating together to cover each other's weaknesses and to cover multiple challenges as a single unit instead of separately.

The fights in this game have scaling difficulty so some fights if the healers are exceptionally skilled you don't need as much coordination and even both healers can DPS, but experience and being over geared for a fight is what does this. A fight's real difficulty cannot be measured unless you go into it with no experience and with minimum item level it was designed for by the dev team.

Casual content the skill required is so low that most players on any of the three healers trivialize any healing needed, but the reason healers have access to that kind of healing power is because of savage otherwise it would be too hard to clear.

They need to push raid DPS ahead a bit? They have an answer for that.

What's your point here? All healers can contribute raid DPS. WHM actually has the highest direct DPS output. I really cannot take you seriously.

Are you seriously suggesting that one or two of the healers be completely unable to contribute DPS? Otherwise...OF COURSE they have an answer for that?

Same case with AST. Sure they can't spam it like a WHM can, but you never actually need to.

AST has decent AoE healing because they are a hybrid. They can fill in the spot of a WHM (as Diurnal AST) or a SCH (as Nocturnal AST). If you took away AST's Earthly Star/Helios they would no longer be able to properly fulfill these spots because they no longer have any answer at all to Cure III/Plenary/Medica I/Assize from WHM or Indom/Emergency Tactics/Fairy from SCH.

So yes AST needs an answer to AoE healing, it isn't as powerful as WHM, but they need it in order to be viable just as SCH needs theirs. They also suffer from cooldowns on their AoE heals like Earhly Star can only be used once every minute which is another weak point compared to WHM who has Cure III.

As for never actually needing to....its 100% obvious you don't raid at this point so you are making claims like that and you haven't even healed or experienced the hardest content in the game. "you never actually need to" is a lie. Almagest from O4S Neo says Hi.

I'd like to see you try to deal with Almagest with just Earthly Star alone. It would be amusing to say the least.

You have zero experience in the hardest content in the game at the moment to understand that while healers might trivialize healing in easy casual content they actually NEED these abilities and spells for the harder content otherwise no one would be able to beat it without a WHM in the group until it got nerfed.

The healer compositions is as follows...

WHM + SCH
WHM + AST
AST + SCH

These ^ are all supposed to be viable compositions and at the moment they are. So SCH and AST need some AoE healing in order to make sure all compositions are viable. If both AST and SCH had barely any AoE healing and zero answers to the AoE healing that WHM has then the AST + SCH composition would be deleted and the only viable groups would require a WHM at all times.

You simply do not understand that while healers don't need an answer to every thing in another healer's toolkit there are some things that each healer needs an answer for from the other healers to actually be able to fulfill the requirements of being viable composition with another healer. WHM having an AoE shield isn't necessary for WHM to be viable and that is easily proven by the fact that most O4S world first clears had a WHM in the group.

I don't get why WHM needs to be held back by all these limitations when the other healers can have whatever they want to fill in their weak points.

AST and SCH do have weak points in their kits but you wouldn't know that because like I said at this point it is plain you don't play AST or SCH and it is highly obvious you have not been in the hardest content in the game at the moment where each healer's weak points are noticeable.

If WHM can get a powerful AoE shield then fine, but then you have to give SCH Cure III and and remove the cooldown for Emergency Tactics to fix their AoE healing weak points and I want AST to get Benediction and Divine Benison to fix their oGCD instant heal weak point and having no tank buster shields on Diurnal weak point.

I mean you want to cover all your weak points right? So it is only fair that SCH and AST also get to cover all of their weak points that you seem to believe don't exist, but that is because you don't have the experience to be claiming what you are claiming.

[Kabooa]

Can definitely tell people who have never done O4S, at least, yeah. Sure, it's been solo healed by (I think) every healer in the book now, but there is a MASSIVE difference in doing progression as an AST/SCH vs doing it as a WHM/anybody else. I average about 2 or 3 more casts per minute than my WHM cohealer in raid but she roundly beats me on both DPS and HPS by about 200 and 1000 every O4S clear. WHM is a throughput MONSTER - while I think a cool DPS utility buff like Reflect or something would definitely fit in with their kit, I also don't get where so many of the complaints are coming from about them feeling "useless".

Oh man. Depending how you implement it, Reflect would potentially be the most game breaking ability thus far.

[loreleidiangelo]

Oh man. Depending how you implement it, Reflect would potentially be the most game breaking ability thus far.

SMN "kinda" has a version of it through Ifrit - I could see something similar eventually being added to WHM.

[Ghishlain]

I feel the perception of why WHM is deemed weaker than AST and SCH is the fact that WHMs weaknesses stem when you try to incorporate their kit towards a speed kill group. WHM is very selfish, focusing primarily on the personal DPS they can bring to the table which doesn't fit the current speedkill meta of stacking as many synergistic abilities as possible for optimal burst phases.

We don't really get to see SCH's or AST's weaknesses currently because we're overgeared for the content and/or the raiders have the fights on farm so they know how to get around the kit weaknesses. Things like Earthly Star and Deployment Tactics need to be used ahead of the incoming damage for maximum effect. SCHs need to understand when to save Indomatability or Fey Covenant and using Whispering Dawn willy nilly will just lead to massive waste. These are weaknesses emphasized in progression-type content since they require intimate knowledge of the fight to use to maximum effect. If things aren't going to plan and SCHs / ASTs have to compensate for mechanical drops, they'll need to spend cooldowns and/or MP to right the raid ship back forward. WHM does too but their eMP pool is higher than SCH or AST due to Thin Air, Assize, and Shroud of Saints.

Just to add an anecdotal point, one of my closest friends who lead the Hyperion server first group told me their SCH actually had to change to WHM just to compensate for the number of healing spikes within the fight because SCH couldn't keep up with it. Not to say SCH can't handle this (EM showed it could be done) but SCH certainly has to work harder at these spikes when your ilvls are that low and you need to hit those high healing hurdles in the fight.

So, if we're going to talk about weaknesses, we do have to consider all types of content and the context associated with them. WHM isn't weak, but it's weaker in speed kill or farm setups when the groups are already out leveling the content so much the heal check becomes negligible. Likewise a WHMs eMP pool and higher HPS spike capacity really shines when things are going south quickly in Rabanastre or when you just want to progress through content to see more phases to get more prepared.

I personally don't perceive WHM as weak, they're just not optimal for super coordinated speed kill groups. I do see where the strengths lie and work around those strengths to minimize the weaknesses to the best of my ability. Right now, WHM does just fine and if a "farm group" in PF is excluding WHM due to "meta reasons", they're most likely not a group you want to join as they most likely don't understand why a meta group is meta and don't have the skill and/or coordination to reach those peaks.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Again, I question your raiding experience and I would really love for you to link your actual character's lodestone rather than hiding behind an alt.

Just want to stop this type of talk now, so I updated my profile to show my main character. You can search up my name on FFlogs/Lodestone or whatever else to confirm anything else you need to.

It's all month old logs, I haven't been raiding for a while now outside of Shinryu. And even then, every kill was probably not uploaded since I play on a console and don't have access to upload to FFlogs as I'd like to.

Just doing this to prove I do endgame raid, I even participated in progression raiding during Alexander.
These opinions I have aren't just being shouted at others from a backseat casual perspective. They're my personal opinions that I obtained from actual endgame raiding.


Also I do get where all you guys are coming from. It's not like I think WHM is non viable, or even weak for that matter. I don't main WHM for nothing, I do think it's strong. Especially in content where our high personal DPS can shine.

I simply think it's lacking compared to others in its role.
Think of it as something similar to the Warrior situation. They were in a place where both other tanks offered party mitigation and they didn't. Did they actually NEED that party mitigation? Absolutely not, they were fine as is, but they still got it.

Would some form of utility, however small, really be such a bad thing, despite them NEEDING it or not?