Idea of a New WHM Mechanic: Thorns

[basketofseals]

Some people enjoy killing fights as quickly as they can, and in that case for the sake of shaving precious seconds off it is quite important which job you bring in order to take that time off. Healers in particular have vastly different tools in order to handle fights and improve their uptime more than any other job type in the game. WHM right now allocates significantly more GCDs to healing than other jobs because of how bad their oGCDs are compared to AST or SCH.

I mean there's nothing wrong with that, but I don't see any point in throwing damage buffs on WHM. That doesn't fix the "issue," it just changes the dynamic.

There's nothing wrong with WHM other than people overvaluing speed kills. It has its moment where it's best, just like AST and SCH do. The difference isn't so big that it's a huge handicap to bring WHM over the other two.

Sure, play the job you want. But that's no reason not to be unhappy with the way the job works. WHM's DPS is the only thing that makes it as useful as AST, and even then it's still grappling with SCH for the top healer DPS spot. Play the job you wanna play, but there's nothing wrong with being unhappy about the way your job works. There is something silly about taking pot shots at people playing another job using the trite excuse of homogenization. And if your group is serious about killing things quickly you might have to bite the bullet and play a healer you don't like (AST for example) in order to meet the group's needs. Playing a job that isn't as good as another job sucks even if you like it. So you want buffs or changes to bring it closer to par or improve the way a bad mechanic works. And these threads get made.

Just because people overuse homogenization, doesn't mean it's a criticism to be ignored. Nobody is taking pot shots. No insults were traded. As far as I'm concerned we were having a perfectly healthy discussion.

Now more to the point, jobs are different. That's a good thing. It means people can enjoy a role they might not otherwise like. More to the point, it allows for a more even level of imperfect balance. If WHM gets damage buffs, then they become incredibly similar to AST, and a greater/lesser than thinking is more obvious. Why would you bring one healer when it's just inferior to the other one? At the moment, it's more so based on your group's needs. You want safety? Go WHM. Need extra damage? Go AST.

[Crizhalid]

There's nothing wrong with WHM other than people overvaluing speed kills.

This. (aside from the trash lily system, of course)

[loreleidiangelo]

There's nothing wrong with WHM other than people overvaluing speed kills.

Now that's just crazy talk! Next you'll expect me to believe that AST is the least-represented class in Sigmascape Savage right now! Everyone knows that's unpossible because their buffs are OP and nobody cares about healing output during progression! By god, soon you'll be telling me that they have the least amount of clears for Deltascape Savage, too!

Seriously, it's okay for a class to be not be meta for speed runs. Restoration Shaman in WoW is an example of a class that is invaluable for progression but never brought along for Mythic speed clears because of how their Mastery inherently loses value the more geared/better the players in the raid get.

[Mimilu]

Now that's just crazy talk! Next you'll expect me to believe that AST is the least-represented class in Sigmascape Savage right now! Everyone knows that's unpossible because their buffs are OP and nobody cares about healing output during progression! By god, soon you'll be telling me that they have the least amount of clears for Deltascape Savage, too!

I think that has more to do with a combination of WHM/SCH being a better/easier pair to use for progression the AST/SCH or WHM/AST. Once people start to get more acclimated to the raids and geared up, we should see a shift to AST to boost raid damage.
Another reason could be that WHM and SCH might feel more personally satisfying to play because they can weave their oGCD heals with their damage spells.

[loreleidiangelo]

I think that has more to do with a combination of WHM/SCH being a better/easier pair to use for progression the AST/SCH or WHM/AST. Once people start to get more acclimated to the raids and geared up, we should see a shift to AST to boost raid damage.
Another reason could be that WHM and SCH might feel more personally satisfying to play because they can weave their oGCD heals with their damage spells.

And you think people aren't acclimated to Deltascape now? I also linked that just so people couldn't throw out the "WHMs are useless for farm content" nonsense.

The fact is, people are playing whatever healer they want to play outside of an EXTREMELY tiny niche of speed kill content, where frankly everyone should be expected to be flexible in order to reach that level of perfection/output. No one is dumping their WHMs from raids en masse (even after the tier is on farm), and nowhere are they being excluded from PFs. Literally the only place that is memeing about them being in a bad spot is, ironically, this subforum. Could lilies use improvements, mostly with regards to their generation? Sure. Does WHM need party buffs in their current state? Hell no.