And so it begins again

[Lunaxia]

snip

There was also IIRC a sizeable thread on reddit at 4.0 about it; things quietened down when the ridiculous Cure-dependent lily proc was removed and DB improved, but the original sentiments haven't really changed.

You could conveniently make the same assumption here, though. The happy (non-WHM main) minority are here saying WHM feels fine, the unhappy majority are not a part of the forum. It evidently caused enough of a problem that the dev team modified the worst aspects of the job, but the lesser complaints remain. And while these complaints remain, the other classes receive more attention.

snip

If you don't think 10% or less of a difference matters to players in terms of clears and speed... boy, we've really been playing a different game.

And I'm on that path already, make no mistake, but "play something else" is hardly a solution to class imbalance, nor should it be.

[Sebazy]

we haven't grown since 3.0 and we have little to offer compared to the other healers.

I'm going to take umbrage with this point.

We absolutely have grown very significantly since 3.0. WHM has always had brute force throughput but prior to Thin Air (as well as more mp overall via mana shift and such) we never had the resource pool to do much with it. 4.0 fixed this in a big way, propelling us from dead last to arguably first here. Not to mention, Benison in it's current form is beastly.

I completely agree that our gauge system is absolutely ignorable in it's current form. I don't think it'd actually take all that much to fix it though and I'll always remind anyone that whilst our CDs are certainly a bit plain and simplistic, we have the strongest core kit of all 3 healers by a healthy margin to make up for it. A WHM is handily the safest pair of hands for learning new content, so it's only fair that an AST is more optimal once the mistakes stop.

[Elamys]

There was also IIRC a sizeable thread on reddit at 4.0 about it; things quietened down when the ridiculous Cure-dependent lily proc was removed and DB improved, but the original sentiments haven't really changed.

You could conveniently make the same assumption here, though. The happy (non-WHM main) minority are here saying WHM feels fine, the unhappy majority are not a part of the forum.

We had a several hundred page consolidated feedback thread that was active up until right when Stormblood released on this forum, full of WHM mains, and largely based on the Cure/Lily mechanics. To say that we don't have WHM mains who feel there are things wrong with the job here on the forums is completely wrong. As is saying that WHM right now is useless or being mass-excluded from groups.

I play WHM almost as much as I play AST, and from my perspective, the balance hasn't shifted that much. And while I don't raid on here myself, I can tell you several reasons my raiding friends have been happy to have WHMs in their groups: strong, reliable, consistent healing and damage, with tons of emergency tools. Could WHM use a few changes and some utility? Sure, definitely. But WHM is far from being utter garbage. As mentioned WHM is by far the strongest healer for learning and progression, and once you get out of that phase, it hardly makes much of a difference which healer you bring.

[Maeka]

If people are unhappy about something, you know they will speak up.

There is no "silent unhappy majority" because silent and unhappy don't go well together. It's almost like an oxymoron.

Unhappy people are only silent when they are too afraid to speak about their issue, or when they have no means to speak up about their issue, or when their issue is not big enough of a problem to speak of.

EDIT: And yes, I am NOT saying the job is perfect. It has flaws. Like....the entire Lily system. However, as the person above me stated, WHM is nowhere near as bad as you make it sound like.

[Lunaxia]

snip

I'll concede the Thin Air point, I suppose it'd be more accurate to say we offer nothing new. Our toolkit doesn't feel any better, it's just more manageable, and now we have an insta-Stoneskin. That doesn't feel like growth to me, and our utility is still poor.

WHMs have always had the dubious honour of being the healer with the most oh-snap buttons, but throughout 4.0 I haven't come across anything that really warrants it. Not against what an AST/ SCH can do, at any rate.

[Maeka]

Problem is, if you want that utility, you have to give up something, and the problem with that is.... if you become like SCH or AST, then you're just a clone of another job.

The idea here is that the 3 healers need to be DIFFERENT than each other.

AST gets Group Buffs.

SCH has a pet to help heal and all of their heals apply small damage absorption shields and they get some other tools.

WHM is the brute force healer and is the easy-to-learn straightforward job.

If you change WHM to be more like AST or SCH, you have to give up some of that raw healing strength and raw DPS, and you end up becoming a clone of one or the other job.

Why would you want to homogenize yourself to be closer to other jobs? If you like the playstyle of the other jobs, just.....go play those jobs instead.

That's like saying "Paladin sucks because they don't do ______ like DRK or WAR does". Each has their own niche to fill.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

I have my own thoughs and feeling about how competitive WHM is and what it may or may not need, but this thread is about WHM being locked out of PF, not WHM being weaker than the other healers.
They're simply not being excluded from anything, and as long as you're decent, you can usually contribute much more dps to your party than the average AST or SCH that hopped on the meta bandwagon.

Also I'm not sure what type of content you've been healing, but God Kefka definitely has plenty of situations where you need to heal like hell and plenty of situations where even Plenary Indulgence is useful.

[Miste]

It is to satisfy you, as I've already stated I don't particularly care if you believe me or not. No amount of demanding "factual evidence" I'm not obligated to provide you is going to change what I've seen. As I've said, believe me, don't believe me, it's immaterial. Really, if you're so certain I'm lying, why does this concern you so much?

I don't care if you don't care if I believe you. I am asking you to prove your claims.

You made a thread saying "X is happening."
So I said "you don't have any evidence that X is happening."
You say "I do have evidence!"
So I say "So...where is it?"
Then you are like "I don't have to prove it."

/shrug

I mean if you don't want to prove your claims then you might as well concede you were exaggerating or change your OP to state "It is my OPINION that WHM is being excluded by a large amount of groups."

If that is your opinion, sure, go nuts, either keep playing WHM and joining the few bread crumb PFs that allow a poor WHM in it, or switch to another job. You aren't going to get anywhere complaining on the forums about a situation where you have no proof that it is an actual problem.

Other Chaos posters have popped up in this thread saying they see tons of WHMs in the PFs so something doesn't add up here /shrug

It doesn't really concern me in any particular way. I simply dislike when people post paranoid exaggerations which if you know my post history you'll see more of it. Exiled_Tonberry knows since I used to nag at her about getting too paranoid and making exaggerations or claiming stuff that can't be proven.

But I've also been called a liar, which I'm not.
If people think I'm wrong, fine. But I take issue with saying "I'm making something up" or even trolling

There is a difference between outright calling someone a liar and simply stating one's own opinion.

It is my opinion that you are lying about this particular situation in order to exaggerate it into being a problem when it is not.

My opinion that you are lying in order to exaggerate isn't even that bad at all compared to what you have said in the past to me. So I mean take issue with it all you want I guess, but I won't change my opinion.

I wasn't about to sugarcoat my own opinion to spare your feelings since you haven't exactly been very nice to me anyway. Had a discussion/debate with you awhile back where you just outright threw personal attacks/ad hominem at me because you couldn't prove your claims back then either.

You're vague with your explanations. I have yet to see you say exactly how many PFs you apparently saw. If this was such a big deal to you then I am curious how you don't seem to know how many you saw and how many weren't locked.

If you post things claiming things are happening but can't prove it you may have people answer with their opinions on what you are claiming. If it looks like an exaggeration, smells like an exaggeration, and sounds like an exaggeration...it just might be an exaggeration.

If you are unhappy with WHM then either change jobs or post useful threads asking for WHM changes or buffs, not waste time over exaggerating things to be an issue when you can't even prove it is. SE isn't going to do anything but laugh at people making exaggerations since they have the full statistics on their end likely proving that WHM isn't being "excluded by a large amount of groups."

[Wilford111]

I'm not calling anyone a liar, but I just wanna throw my 2 cents. I haven't seen any PFs so far in 4.3 that have excluded White Mage except for the ones that already have one in them.

[Lunaxia]

hm

You quite clearly care very much.

There isn't much point in my replying to this. You obviously have some sort of underlying issue with me from a previous debate I'm not even sure I remember; we've clarified, needlessly many times, that you think I am a liar and exaggerating and you want statistics and a diagram I don't have to give you, so what is your goal here? If my assertion is vague to you because I don't gather screenshots and statistics and note times in preparation for internet arguments, then that's your problem. I was airing a frustration after witnessing a change I was told would never happen, struggling to find a group for the first time in a year. It's fine if you think I'm wrong. If you even think I'm a liar, so be it; you misunderstood what I meant in that respect anyway. But if you're waiting for me to say my own eyes were wrong to please you, you'll be waiting a while.