White Mage Overflow

[TonberiScholar]

It's actually somewhat baffling that people will claim SCH and AST were never OP before, just because it's undertuned right now. The reason why these changes hit AST and SCH in the first place is because they were so incredibly strong, and the reason why WHM was left alone was because it had nothing OP to rework. If that's not telling you something then I don't know what to say.

AST needs some buffs and maybe SCH as well, but please don't claim these jobs were never OP and that WHM was always a fine job when it was struggling with any kind of identity or raid spot for 4 years.

Or, after having the same problem with White Mage for one and a half expansions (late Heavensward and most of Stormblood), they could've just brought the outlier up instead of sticking to a concept ("pure healer with no shields or utility") that they themselves ended up abandoning in the next expansion.

White Mage was underpowered towards the end of Heavensward and for most of Stormblood for the things players actually cared about, and the devs should've just normalized based on that for Shadowbringers instead of "balancing" around a healing paradigm that hasn't existed since ARR, if even then.

Adding stuff to WHM to make it more competitive wouldn't have changed its core gameplay loop, because the things it was missing were things that were separate from its kit in the first place. Being the high-personal-DPS Healer that it is now would still work even if it got the instants and revamped Lily system it has now.

Instead two unique styles of Healer play (pet micro and RNG buff decisions) got butchered because they decided WHM was the only "acceptable" Healer style.

And then they turn around and end up giving WHMs the stuff that people liked SCH and AST for, but only after ruining the two other Healers in the process.

Yet most of the WHMs here are just more concerned about "SCH/AST were OP" and how it's "their time to shine".

For a Job with so many vehement defenders of "healers shouldn't have to DPS", y'all are pretty good at doing damage to all the Healers.

In "pure healing", SCH's stronger than it has ever been, to the point where every element of mechanical identity it's had since ARR except shielding is gone. If all SCH players cared about was "being OP", you'd think there wouldn't be as many complaints as there are now. And with the cost cut to Art of War, it's quicker AoE Potency for a lower proportional cost, yet I (and seemingly others) would still prefer the old DoTs->Bane-> Shadowflare loop.

Both SCH and AST got hack-job nerfs applied to them to the point where they've even got leftovers that entirely don't fit (SCH's entire pet bar, every bit of Lore around Astrologian) that they didn't even bother removing or changing. In the expansion of "Healer balancing", no less.

There's way more to what makes a job enjoyable/distinct than just its pure DPS or healing throughput numbers (or it being "OP"), but so long as they're cramming every Healer into a WHM-lite mold, all that stuff's going to be thrown by the wayside to try and balance things with just Potency adjustments and cost adjustments.

And that's doomed to fail.

If the Tank roles or DPS roles were treated like this, you wouldn't see people coming into every thread discussing the thing and talking about how "it's okay they lost their identity, because x class I liked was underpowered based on what players want but not against the content" as they try to drown out the dissatisfied people or temporize the problems they bring up.

Yet it's somehow "okay" for Healers, so long as all the Healers end up looking like White Mage.

[WaxSw]

I agree, Whm right now is overpowered and on top of that Ast/Sch feels less interesting as ever, I hope 5.05 and maybe 5.1 address this problems but seeing what the devs delivered in 5.0 I'm not sure that they are able to fix it

[TonberiScholar]

I agree, Whm right now is overpowered and on top of that Ast/Sch feels less interesting as ever, I hope 5.05 and maybe 5.1 address this problems but seeing what the devs delivered in 5.0 I'm not sure that they are able to fix it

The saddest part about this?

Nerfing WHM won't fix anything.

It shouldn't be nerfed, period. If they're going to be so stubborn as to completely lock it out of raid DPS buffs, it needs to have a lead in personal DPS roughly proportional to the "selfish DPS" vs "support DPS" dichotomy elsewhere (modified by whatever proportion of DPS'ing time they're assuming).

But breaking off all the bits that don't fit into the WHM-lite mold for every other Healer and then buffing WHM sets a bad precedent for healer identity/diversity going forward.

About the only thing that'd make the outlook gloomier is if they end up nerfing WHM after using "it's underperforming" as an excuse to kill off the other Healer gameplay styles that were previously represented.

[aiqa]

If they're going to be so stubborn as to completely lock it out of raid DPS buffs

It's dumb there are so many complaints about healers being made to similar, and in the same breath players ask for healers to be made even more similar (but of course similar to their own preferred job).
WHM never was a buff class, and players that enjoy WHM are very likely not the players that enjoy buffing others.
It's fine to "fight" for your own preferred class to keep it's own identity and playstyle, but it's dumb to try get other classes changed to mirror your own preferred class and playstyle.
Even more so if your main complaint is SCH being to similar to WHM now.

[TonberiScholar]

It's dumb there are so many complaints about healers being made to similar, and in the same breath players ask for healers to be made even more similar (but of course similar to their own preferred job).
WHM never was a buff class, and players that enjoy WHM are very likely not the players that enjoy buffing others.
It's fine to "fight" for your own preferred class to keep it's own identity and playstyle, but it's dumb to try get other classes changed to mirror your own preferred class and playstyle.
Even more so if your main complaint is SCH being to similar to WHM now.

Getting a raid DPS buff added (even something like Chain Stratagem where it's an oGCD you hit once every two minutes or so) would've solved the "oh noes WHM is weak and no one wants it in raids" problem that existed in Stormblood without requiring any other changes.

Compare that to how much had to be broken or removed on AST/SCH to make them more like WHM.

Adding a single skill that you hit once every two minutes back in Stormblood would've let them keep WHM 99.9% the same as it is now in Shadowbringers without requiring them to gut AST/SCH, while also going a long way towards solving the "WHM doesn't offer a DPS increase" thing that was bandied about so heavily during Stormblood.

Instead, SCH/AST lost :

• Bane
• Miasma (and the concept of being the "DoT-focused" healer
• Shadowflare
• Targeted Fairy Control
• Different Fairy Abilities
• Energy Drain
• Non-damaging Card buffs (between 3 and 5 depending how you count)
• Stun on CO
• Most of AST's healing potencies
• Some of AST's shielding potencies
• Ability to extend buffs (bet we're getting Time Mage as a Caster DPS)

Against all that...you're complaining about the potential of WHM getting one ability.

The two situations aren't even remotely comparable.

The most laughable part?

"Designated Healers" in story instances have damage buffs for the party. Go look at Lamitt in the Physical DPS Roleplay quest (I believe 76?)

My "preferred playstyle" doesn't exist in this game anymore because of your Jobmates' constant whining.

[aiqa]

#snip*

You're the one that is doing all these SCH vs WHM things, in stead of just saying "I want SCH to be like this and that" you're making suggestions for changing mechanics other classes to "fix" your own preferred class.
And then you're attacking players about their opinions about SCH changes, even if they never actually gave their opinion.
So you're doing exactly what you're complaining about, while the people you're attacking are not, and I was pointing that out.
If you can't see that, it's probably time to take a break from the forums wars for a day or two.

[Billythepancake]

You're the one that is doing all these SCH vs WHM things, in stead of just saying "I want SCH to be like this and that" you're making suggestions for changing mechanics other classes to "fix" your own preferred class.
And then you're attacking players about their opinions about SCH changes, even if they never actually gave their opinion.
So you're doing exactly what you're complaining about, while the people you're attacking are not, and I was pointing that out.
If you can't see that, it's probably time to take a break from the forums wars for a day or two.

His point, from how I understand it anyhow, isnt that they should change WHM completely, you could've added a single buff to them, ie. A debuff that raises magic vulvn by 5 percent every 2 minutes, and then they wouldn't have had to do the other healer changes they did. Whether it's intentional or not, the changes they did come off as them gutting the other two healers just to make WHM better, when in reality, all they had to do was just make WHM better. Obviously, they're not going to go back and change all that now the soonest we could expect big changes is, sadly, 6.0, the most we can hope for at this point is that they at least fix some of the issues on AST/SCH so they arent dreadful to play for 2 years.

[EaMett]

It's difficult to compare individuals, but statistics will just average out eventually.
When looking at any reasonable percentile at fflog I am not seeing such big differences.
And assuming both healers contribute the same to HPS I am not also seeing where doubling the DPS would come from from a rotation point of view.

Healers will never contribute the same HPS because of the way toolkits are set up. Afflatus when used properly is a dps gain so in a WHM/SCH comp WHM heals take precedence over scholars. Order priority should be afflatus heal + ogcd weave > then sch ogcd > then WHM ogcd without afflatus > then sch gcd > then WHM gcd. You should almost never hit the last part. Currently, given how low the healing requirement is, this means WHM do a huge chunk of the healing.

And again, as far as job potential and balance goes you should only concern yourself with top tier optimized play. In which WHM is ahead by a landslide. FFlogs actually introduced raid dps today and it's become clear that in upper tiers WHM is ahead overall by about 800 dps (that's 800 ahead of pdps and rdps combined for sch). So that would be double what CS brings (and mind you this is in a context where the parties leverages CS to it's max).

That gap is reduced at lower tiers because the lower the skill the better CS is compared to your personal DPS. But again it's a little weird to look at those for job comparison since players aren't optimized. If you don't understand how afflatus skills benefit you and should be used, that's more telling of the class design than it is the class balance, for example.

[EaMett]

Also WHM doesn't need a party buff. They just need pDPS that is equivalent to the pDPS+rDPS of the other healers. The problem is that given the nature of rDPS scaling better with gear progression it means they need to treat it like BLM and SAM and buff them throughout the raiding tiers to make up for it. Something they've severely overlooked in the past.

[TonberiScholar]

The problem is that given the nature of rDPS scaling better with gear progression it means they need to treat it like BLM and SAM and buff them throughout the raiding tiers to make up for it. Something they've severely overlooked in the past.

So much this.

That's why, even though I'm a gigantic salt pile right now (and becoming moreso with every gloating post I see), I still think it'd be a terrible idea for them to nerf WHM's pDPS.

It needs to be treated almost exactly like "BLM of Healers" in this case and they need to stick with it, up to and including the periodic potency increases EaMett mentioned.

His point, from how I understand it anyhow, isnt that they should change WHM completely, you could've added a single buff to them, ie. A debuff that raises magic vulvn by 5 percent every 2 minutes, and then they wouldn't have had to do the other healer changes they did. Whether it's intentional or not, the changes they did come off as them gutting the other two healers just to make WHM better, when in reality, all they had to do was just make WHM better. Obviously, they're not going to go back and change all that now the soonest we could expect big changes is, sadly, 6.0, the most we can hope for at this point is that they at least fix some of the issues on AST/SCH so they arent dreadful to play for 2 years.

Yup, you said it more coherently than I did.

A small change two years ago (even if it was just, as Billy said, like a debuff on an enemy to avoid the "don't give every healer a buff" thing) would've saved a world of trouble and probably let them avoid most of the changes they made this time around. Could even attach it to Fluid Aura (instead of the Bind).


While I'm "what if"'ing...

Shadowbringers White Mage - Leave it as it is in-game now, though I think getting ahead of the curve a little by buffing Misery a bit to where it's DPS-neutral on single-target would be a good idea.

A mix between Stormblood and Shadowbringers SCH - Nerf Chain Strat, don't add Seraph, Recitation or Art of War. Keep Fey Blessing I guess. Leave Bane/manual Fairy control/Rouse/Shadowflare and keep the lower ET cooldown from ShB. Move most of Miasma II's potency from the initial hit to the DoT effect. While I'm hoping I'd also like to bring back Bio/Bio II and replace Ruin II with one of 'em, but I was a fan of HW SCH so yeah.

A split between late Stormblood/Shadowbringers AST - Remove Royal Road and make all the cards be substat buffs: Crit/Direct Hit/Skillspeed/Spellspeed/Determination and a Tenacity/Piety combo. Adjust as necessary (meaning Crit/Direct Hit would be smaller and Det and the Ten/Piety combo would need to be huge). Remove the healing buffs from the Sects but don't nerf the Potencies on top. Leave Divination at like a 6% buff with a shorter cooldown (but at least a minute). And do...something...for Nocturnal Sect, it's kinda embarrassing.


Those three combined would simultaneously be the closest this game's gotten to "Healer Balance" while also leaving us at the most differentiated the Healers have ever been from a playstyle perspective.

Balance it to where AST/WHM is a higher rDPS combo basically no matter what you do and go from there. "Lots of oGCDs and Fairy" vs "absolute massive piles of added damage by Healer standards" is a far closer "competition" point than anything they've tried previously.

Oh well.