Another WHM chicken little sees the sky falling. The sky is an AST.

[Remedi]

I don't think so. That would defeat the purpose imo. (since most changes seem to be geared towards card clipping and mp management). Then again I can't recall if haste skills lower the gcd by default or not.. Maybe.

I'm asking because in a translation they also mentioned making it also reducing the GCD, but I'd rather not believe 100% to the power of almighty google

[Squintina]

I think it'd be good to wait until we see the details.

Because even as you said: we don't know what the buffs are. Could be potency, could be range, could be tick duration.

Let's wait and see.

[Brightshadow]

I have an idea!

Since White Mage are considered the pure healer of the game, and Astrologian and Scholar have utility and WHM has none why don't they remove the stances from AST and give them to WHM and leave AST with their burst healing set as default. That way WHM would be able to adjust based on their partners healing style and it seems more balanced to me than having AST with both healing styles and a rdps gimmick. And any healers added in the future could result in WHM getting a new stance to copy their style. Seems fair to me especially since whm doesn't get any special gimmicks other than healing.

Heck, I wouldn't be opposed of allowing whm to change the stances during combat either.

so the healers would be:
SCH: Barrier Healer/W fairy support
AST: Burst Healer/W card support
WHM: Burst/Barrier Healer capable of changing healing style during combat, and is as powerful as the other two healers when healing in their style akin to what AST can do right now.

[LeoLupinos]

Jack of all trades/Versatility shouldn't be better than the master of one thing. That's the price of it.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Jack of all trades/Versatility shouldn't be better than the master of one thing. That's the price of it.

Yep, and things would be fairly balanced if they just stuck with this.
But again, they're dead set on creating a set of healers that can all heal content easily.

Common sense should tell you that if all healers are being built to heal the same content just as easily, then WHM should have something unique to itself so they don't feel redundant.
__

@Brightshadow: Taking ASTs identity away and shifting it to WHM would solve absolutely nothing. What we really need is for AST to lose it's WHM/SCH-lite healing style and have them heal in a unique way. Copying WHM and SCHs kit and throwing it on the another healer was a mistake from day one.

[miraidensetsu]

My prudency tells me that I must wait to see what will be actually done. At 4.2 it was said that some jobs wouldn't be updated, but they were in the end of the day.

And adjustments not always means "buffs". And even it was a buff, they promised a big change for DRK and for BLM, but the change was a "meh" at best. It was good, sure, but not enough to put both jobs at a better situation. And looking at tanks changes, we saw DRK getting a very discreet buff, PLD being actually nerfed and WAR being buffed on all its potencies when they don't announced any changes for WAR.

For me, the real risk here is S-E overbuffing SCH, give some QoL to AST and actually nerf WHM. But I prefer to wait the patch day before start panicking. Or I must start to level a SCH righ away, since AST/WHM was never META?

[Brightshadow]

@Brightshadow: Taking ASTs identity away and shifting it to WHM would solve absolutely nothing. What we really need is for AST to lose it's WHM/SCH-lite healing style and have them heal in a unique way. Copying WHM and SCHs kit and throwing it on the another healer was a mistake from day one.

SE excuse would be it takes 6 months for these type of changes after 5.0 launches. (So we should see this happen to AST around 7.0 if we're lucky)

[Aomine1992]

I think WHM will be fine only in hard raiding scene where you would see an AST over WHM but as it stands WHM is still the go to healer for majority of the players....it's simple which isn't a bad thing..

Yes there are some valid concerns here but WHM is far from the DRK of the group, but this also touches on SEs horrible design for AST to begin with and for them to be able to not only incorporate another healer but also fix their mistakes, 5.0 AST will have to be completely re done like BRD and MCH was

[Kabzy]

Jack of all trades/Versatility shouldn't be better than the master of one thing. That's the price of it.

You could counter that argument by saying that the most straightforward healer (maybe even the easiest job in the game) shouldn't be more powerful than ones which have more depth/skill to their kits.

I'm not saying your viewpoint is wrong, but I also think it would be terrible game design if a simple job gave better results than those which require more thought. WHM will still be a master of HPS and the 'safety net' thing for progression, these QoL changes will not affect that at all. WHM, in my opinion, is already behind AST in terms of being the better option, so again nothing is changing.

Since White Mage are considered the pure healer of the game, and Astrologian and Scholar have utility and WHM has none why don't they remove the stances from AST and give them to WHM and leave AST with their burst healing set as default.

What burst healing are you talking about? AST has the least burst out of all of them. A SCH can Indom, Lustrate spam and kill Faeries to Lustrate spam even more. WHM can just Cure III spam, Benediction, Assize and Tetra. AST only has Earthly Star, which requires setup to get the best potency, and one Essential Dignity. (Not counting Lady of Crowns as it's RNG.)

It's nice to see people come up with ideas, but you need to at least understand how the healers are currently working together, and why the community generally believes they are the most balanced they have been so far. Your suggestions are not only making WHM OP and AST trash, but you'd also be taking away one of WHMs selling points, its ease of play compared to the other healers.

[Zeromon]

I understand the sentiment, and I feel a little bit of it myself as well. I will admit these changes for AST are deserved. GCD clipping is god awful and MP is very tough for AST so I think these changes are needed for the job. However these very consequential changes just reminds me how WHM hasn't gotten needed changes. Overall I just want lilies to be meaningful or be removed (and why is our lvl68 trait still so god damn useless?).