Should WHM get a personal damage buff?

[EaMett]

But with what evidence are you "calling it"? WHM was in a really, really bad place in HW. After 3.4 SCH and AST were like gods compared to WHM. AST was over buffed, and SCH had been a problem since day 1 of HW basically.

I played WHM in the post progression phase of HW (mind you not the worst time for whm), and up until last tier. The issues with the WHM then are the same we have now. Once everyone is familiar with content and geared up WHM brings nothing to the table compared to the other healers. So I naturally expect things to be somewhat similar. (ie: people wanting more raid utility for WHM, etc. etc.)
It's also an opinion comforted by my personal experience of PF having farmed a bunch of primals for mounts recently. It's not by a crazy amount but we're already seeing more frequent WHM lockouts of primal farms since players want kills as fast as possible. I think this is stupid but yeah.

[VanilleFang]

So primal farms are "important" but dungeons aren't?

And what Primals are we talking about here? Not only that but anyone who would lock out a WHM just because they are a WHM is pretty dumb. Even if a SCH or AST brings more rDPS, that's mostly only at the highest level of play...

[MoroMurasaki]

I think this is stupid but yeah.

Ever since the start of this farce of a conversation I have been looking primal farms every day multiple times because I didn't want to stick my foot in my mouth by claiming WHM isn't seeing any lockout.

I have seen one Shin EX party have a slot locked to SCH and it was formed by an AST. I joined the party despite not playing SCH to ask if she would take me with her on WHM, she said she preferred Diurnal healing which was the reason for the SCH lock.

No locked Byakko. No locked Lakshmi or Susano. Hardly a locked Shinryu, and nothing to do with rDPS in the subsequent conversation.

I would love to see any evidence of your claims. Without it your antecdote is just that - an antecdote.

There isn't any proof of an issue here. There are multiple WHM mains who frequent PF claiming to experience virtually no class restrictions spread over both NA datacenters.

[Tridus]

The goal is not to have AST equal to SCH, but to be able to compete against him (and be behind him a bit as he is with WHM).

I say it now, but either SE buff Noct Sect like that, either they can delete this stance at the 5.0, and bring a new job who can compete against SCH.
And we would have WHM/AST + SCH/???

I'm not sure why the goal would be to have AST be behind SCH and have WHM be behind SCH. There's no gospel that says SCH must be the best healer, all the time, in every expansion.

Since the thing that's out of line here is that SCH has the best DPS and also brings rDPS, target one of those.

[Shurrikhan]

Even with higher personal damage output, WHM would still technically be in the same place as SAM.

That's a truly useless analog. SAM personal DPS only beats out Monk on God Kefka and Guardian. It's not a cautionary tale of the limitations of having no indirect or interdependent damage; it's an example of undertuning.

All SAM needs -- and WHM by the same idea -- is competitive total DPS (sum of both personal and direct). That can just as easily come 100% from personal damage; it absolutely does not matter. It just needs to lead to very close effective output. That's it.

[Ceasaria]

I'm not sure why the goal would be to have AST be behind SCH and have WHM be behind SCH. There's no gospel that says SCH must be the best healer, all the time, in every expansion.

Since the thing that's out of line here is that SCH has the best DPS and also brings rDPS, target one of those.

Aahh, I forgot to precised, I mean about the DPS not the heal.
I was thinking, if SE buffed Noct, maybe the DPS AST could be it too (for Noct only), to allow to nearly reach the DPS of SCH.

[VanilleFang]

Aahh, I forgot to precised, I mean about the DPS not the heal.
I was thinking, if SE buffed Noct, maybe the DPS AST could be it too (for Noct only), to allow to nearly reach the DPS of SCH.

I'm pretty sure Tridus us using "healer" as the role title, not as the action.

You're still asking for SCH to be the best healer in terms of overall usefulness. Why should AST damage (Noct specifically) be the same or slightly behind SCH? Why can't it be higher than SCH?

[EaMett]

I would love to see any evidence of your claims. Without it your antecdote is just that - an antecdote.

Well first off I never claimed it to be anything but anecdotal. I even disclaimed it as such. I simply exposed my reasoning which stands on it's own, and backed it up a bit with some personal experiences.
Experiences of which aren't just over a "few days" worth but months of farming primals. And I'm talking hundreds of clears overall, over 500 at least. I stopped counting. I've seen hundreds if not a thousand + PFs during that time and have found that there is a noticeable increase in lockouts for WHM. Again, like I said in my previous post, it isn't a crazy amount and there is nothing atm that really holds you back from any content as a WHM, but it's still an increase.

Currently, because we're in progression, most lockouts are ilvl based anyways. People are asking for 350s to run lakshmi ex etc. etc. It's today's flavor of unreasonable restrictions to farm quickly. I'm just saying that tomorrow's flavor will be meta based (for the reasons exposed in previous posts)

[EaMett]

So primal farms are "important" but dungeons aren't?
And what Primals are we talking about here? Not only that but anyone who would lock out a WHM just because they are a WHM is pretty dumb. Even if a SCH or AST brings more rDPS, that's mostly only at the highest level of play...

I'm not saying locking based off of meta is a good thing. It is however something that always happens, the only thing that ever changes are the classes. Also, the rdps gap isn't only at the highest level of play. It's pretty much across the board which is understandable because classes are designed with strong and weak points in mind. The highest levels of play just show an accurate picture of how large/small those class differences are.

To speak to your mention of dungeons, they are pretty irrelevant in the context of this discussion for several reasons (the context being the WHM's position in the current healer line up).
First off you run them in DF so you don't run the chance of getting potentially locked out of them.
Secondly, they hardly require any healing anyways so it matters very little who your healer is. Heck, even expert dungeons could be done with a RDM or probably even just a PLD tank instead of a healer.
Lastly, there aren't enough people in party for your raid utility to warrant notice. It's mostly all about personal performance and AoE which is why WHM shines in this setting. The content is already biased in that way so you can't use it for balance.

I think the WHM, as it is, is fine as far as healing and dps output go. It's a good class that is a pure healer, easy to play, and shines during progression and leveling. It's fine, but the nature of the class also means that once progression is done and gear is capped WHM loses a lot of it's value in comparison to the other two healers. That was the very reason it was getting locked out at the end of HW and the reason why I expect things to be similar moving forward.

[Estelle9lives]

That was the very reason it was getting locked out at the end of HW and the reason why I expect things to be similar moving forward.

To be fair, WHM was locked out on 3.4 due to the fact it was basically AST without the insane Balance cards - 10% damage increase for 40s right at the beginning was ridiculous, and that is only one card. Back then the only thing it brought to the table when compared to AST was Cure III, which... Was basically useless on every fight that wasn't A12S, coupled with the fact it had mana issues so you couldn't exactly spam it like you can now.

Right now WHM has even higher individual DPS output while also being able to output massive, reliable burst healing with Thin Air Cure III+PI at any time as opposed to AST/SCH, which have their burst locked behind cooldowns, is able to cast 0 MP Raises and Benediction is strong skill with it's CD reduced to 180s. Naturally these qualities lose value when content is on farm, but I think it's in a pretty good spot as the fail-safe/progression healer. It's much better than HW, when its identity was basically just a worse AST.