Should WHM get a personal damage buff?

[VanilleFang]

The problem with looking at it like this is... no one PF recruits or goes to raid recruiter discords for dungeons. In a raid setting, however...

Buffing WHM purely for more raid efficiency will also buff WHM in non-raid scenarios. WHM doesn't need buffs. I dont want to see WHM become broken and then nerfed into uselessness.

[EaMett]

The real problem with WHM is the same that everyone complained about before stormblood released. They don't scale properly with gear. The more gear you get the less likely you are to use cures and the associated skills (Lillies). Of course since then they've rendered Lillies totally useless so I would expect some change there. Next to that AST and SCH become more and more attractive as the gear cap increases. Once the next tier hits and people are comfortable and geared up WHM will fall back into oblivion.

[VanilleFang]

The real problem with WHM is the same that everyone complained about before stormblood released. They don't scale properly with gear. The more gear you get the less likely you are to use cures and the associated skills (Lillies). Of course since then they've rendered Lillies totally useless so I would expect some change there. Next to that AST and SCH become more and more attractive as the gear cap increases. Once the next tier hits and people are comfortable and geared up WHM will fall back into oblivion.

I don't feel this is true anymore. WHM has received a lot of really good tools with SB. Yes AST + SCH will still be the "meta" unless something changes, but WHM as it currently is will never be in the spot it was in HW.

[MoroMurasaki]

SCH does more, by a wide margin, in addition to bringing the raid buff.

(In raids. Yeah yeah holy spam dungeons etc etc)

I agree that SCH does more dps in a raid setting than WHM when you factor in Chain Stratagem but it seems like you're trying to say there is a wide margin in the personal dps of WHM and SCH... this is untrue.

[Risvertasashi]

Buffing WHM purely for more raid efficiency will also buff WHM in non-raid scenarios. WHM doesn't need buffs. I dont want to see WHM become broken and then nerfed into uselessness.

I never said WHM needed buffs.

I agree that SCH does more dps in a raid setting than WHM when you factor in Chain Stratagem but it seems like you're trying to say there is a wide margin in the personal dps of WHM and SCH... this is untrue.

I suppose 'wide' is subjective. SCH has a noticeable lead over WHM in personal DPS, then? About the same lead that WHM has over AST.

[MoroMurasaki]

I suppose 'wide' is subjective. SCH has a noticeable lead over WHM in personal DPS, then? About the same lead that WHM has over AST.

I can't find any evidence of this. I'm trying to, I want to understand where you're coming from because it isn't what I see when I play. I'm looking through Byakko, o5s and o6s because those are currently in PF and they're fights I understand.

Looking through speedkill rankings WHM appears to have the strongest personal DPS of the healers. Looking through boss damage rankings in those same fights (even though top parses in those are generally cheesed) WHM dps tends to be on par or slightly better than SCH.

I'm just not sure what you're talking about here.

I will admit I'm no fflogs expert, I haven't been using it very long and I can't parse myself because I play on ps4. If there is something I'm missing please explain but as far as I can see WHM has the strongest personal dps of the three healers.

[Risvertasashi]

I can't find any evidence of this. I'm trying to, I want to understand where you're coming from because it isn't what I see when I play. I'm looking through Byakko, o5s and o6s because those are currently in PF and they're fights I understand.

Ok, the gap seems to have closed a bit since last I looked. Last I checked in Delta it was SCH > WHM > AST with WHM cleanly in the middle. Now WHM is slightly above the middle.



edit: So I did some digging through my history, I guess the old frame of reference used to discuss on the forums was o2s.

But here's o6s if you'd rather look at that (which is probably better because uptime):



And here's the really old one that came up in 4.0:



But it does vary a bit on the fight, WHM does seem to catch up more on fights with lower uptime. More PoM during damage windows I guess?

[MoroMurasaki]

This is great because I'm learning about other functions on fflogs at the same time so thanks for that!

I'm on my phone so I can't screenshot but over the course of all of Sigma savage at the 75th percentile it seems like WHM and SCH are separated by about 90-150 dps where as the gap between WHM and AST grows to nearly 500 dps on Guardian. A notable exception for Kefka - WHM is currently slightly ahead of SCH for the 'normal' Kefka phase.

There is certainly something to be said for progression versus speedkill grouping as well, especially considering the comparatively small portion of the playerbase to make it to later stage Savage. In a group that truly cares about fine-tuning their optimization you'll see a SCH/AST pair where as a proportionally larger portion of WHM parses will likely be from sloppier progression/learning clears. Even if this only accounts for a few percent it makes the gap between WHM and SCH effective dps that much narrower.

All in all I just don't think it's fair to call the gap in WHM and SCH dps anything more than what it is - small. Certainly not a wide margin. When you factor in the raw healing power of WHM which is considerably more malleable than SCH (Cure III anyone?) and the huge throughput available through what many times feels like a limitless mp pool it's hard to call a 100 personal dps advantage and a crit bump unbalancing.

Finally let's not forget that the whole game isn't Savage. WHM completely dominates the dungeon scene with it's AoE dps. WHM has basically no mp restrictions beyond not needlessly spamming AoE heals or raising so many people you're likely to wipe anyways. It requires very little from the party to perform well and infinately less micromanagement to stay competitive. There's a reason that I swapped to mouse/keyboard when I became a SCH main back in HW.

I don't think WHM needs anything right now. Again, would I enjoy a personal dps buff? Of course. Not at the expense of my fancy healing toys though! Even if Stone IV was 500 potency I wouldn't trade away Cure III.

Also since I've never really had a back-and-forth with you I just wanted to take a chance to thank you for your signature - saved me a lot of trouble when I first started bird farming.

Also I should get to bed. There are birds chirping outside my window >.>

[Ceasaria]

If you buff WHM, just say goodbye to AST for Ultimate.

[Estelle9lives]

The finnicky thing about WHM DPS is that while it has the biggest output of all healers, it's also much more reliant on GCD-based healing (Regen, Cure III, Medica II) than SCH, which plays a big part on why SCH is ahead during raids even if you don't factor Chain Strategem. You see WHM at the top of cheesed healer parses because those people take full advantage of said output without spending GCDs on healing. Another factor that you need to consider is that SCH is extremely mobile and can easily sustain constant DPS in basically any situation as long as you're pressing buttons.

After playing SCH more in dungeons I came to realize people really overrate how strong WHM AOE is and how much DPS it brings to a dungeon run - surely it does the most AOE damage, but SCH is not really that far behind. If you look at the dungeon rankings on FFlogs, the gap between top WHMs and SCHs is at most around 500 dps for the full run, being less than that in certain dungeons.