After this is all over, can we never claim "WHM is fine"?

[Irenia]

While this conversation is rather important, since when has "utility" become shorthand for "party damage buffs"? It feels like we're pigeonholing ourselves into a certain way of thinking...

Mostly because I'm thinking about 'utility' to give WHM that doesn't necessarily have to line up with Trick Attack and its ilk...

[Lagomorph]

While this conversation is rather important, since when has "utility" become shorthand for "party damage buffs"? It feels like we're pigeonholing ourselves into a certain way of thinking...

Mostly because I'm thinking about 'utility' to give WHM that doesn't necessarily have to line up with Trick Attack and its ilk...

Since creator. If "utility" in the form of mitigation, healing, etc isn't needed, then groups will almost always choose damage buffs. Path 3.4 marked when most aspects this game became ridiculously easy and the only metric that mattered to people was dps.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

WHM has always been fine and not bad, it always had the highest healing throughput and the highest pDPS of the healers

Except this has not been true since HW. It's so frustrating that people would continue to believe this. Only now has their DPS been allowed to shine.

[Trunks]

oh gods, here we go again...

Oh for the love of... I didn't say anything about it being balanced. But it's difficult to say a Job is hopelessly, broken and underpowered when it's present (often preferred) in early kills of Ultimates, and has tens of thousands of parses posted from Savage raids in every tier. "Viable" and "balanced" are not synonyms; I specifically chose the word "viable" because it does not imply a state of balance. My point was simply that SE has seldom left any Job in a non-viable state for any significant length of time, which is more than I can say for any other MMO I've played. That's the only argument I was making, in direct reply to some fatalistic garbage about how balance is impossible to achieve (which it's not).

If you'd actually read anything I've posted in this thread, you'd know I'm 100% with you on this.

[Thoosa]

Honestly for a game that puts so much emphasis on dps there has been some weird choices made on the healers.

It seems to me that the only healer now with an identity is AST now. It has cards (which aren’t as good as stormblood, but the utility is still there), it has lightspeed, Earthy Star, Divination (with a long cooldown) and it has shields or regens. The shields cost a load of MP which I assume is deliberate so not to cast Scholar into irrelevancy and the dps is weak presumably because the job has utility.

Scholar seems a shadow of its former self. I miss Miasma 2, Shadowflare and Bane. It was fun to play balancing doing DPS with shielding. Scholar was meant to be the DPSA healer?

WHM just feels the same without Aero 3, lots of healing options (which don’t seem needed outside Savage) and pretty boring DPS which currently seems to outshine the other healers lol. WHM should always have a place in savage assuming the incoming damage is high, because I assume in the current state an AST and SCH partnership would be harder.

I’m not sure why they couldn’t have just kept the DPS abilities and by proxy the healer identities and just increased the incoming damage for normal content.

[Saefinn]

This likely wouldn't work, as far as balancing things goes. All three healers being viable numbers-wise is an explicit design goal from Square. Fun, interesting gameplay, utility, et al aside, from a very basic standpoint, this has been true with few exceptions (viable in this instance meaning "can heal content with reasonable skill levels"). So if numbers are, in theory, always going to be fine, then nerfing Scholar's pure numbers would just lower the acceptability bar and create more overhealing for the other two.

It was fine in ARR before they buffed its pure heals, I get content is not exactly the same as it was in ARR but the way I handled the handicap was to learn how to better utilise my faeries (through micromanagement) and using damage mitigation and shields to keep people from taking further damage whilst I get their health up. Personally, I enjoy that kind of healing. I don't mean getting people's health up needs to be a slog, but I want to be able to work harder to better utilise my mitigation and also to push more out of my faeries and think a little more about how I might adjust to the situation over simple spamming of heals. I just find with the buffs SCH has kept getting to pure healing that the healing side has gotten too easy and too boring.

If stuff is heading south, I don't even have to give any thought to what I am doing, because it's really easy for me to get people's health back up, even without any shields. In ARR, I might Succor first so no more damage is being taken whilst I focus on getting people back up to health, I'd probably utilise my faerie somewhat to do that, Eos had a damage mitigation spell, I might throw on a SS on top and how this was balanced was enough to keep people from dying whilst I topped up their HP pool. Or utilise my faerie in another way, with Rouse, throwing a healing-received buff and then Whispering Dawn and it was potency enough of an AoE Regen to top people up.

SCH DPS was also good enough at this point and relied on DoT's enough to account for the fact I might have to do more than a WHM to get people's HP up and I liked that.

Nowadays I get a lot more downtime to just DPS. And now that's boring with ShB changes. My preference would be an evolution of the above experience but to match today's content. Though I also get this is how I prefered the job and what drew me in when I started playing. But I don't think it'd be unbalanced to SCH's detriment, I think it'd just be shifting the emphasis on how a SCH heals. Their method would prevent people from taking damage to then top them up and use their faerie more to achieve it or be more proactive in approach so people don't need you to top them up as much. I know other people started later and probably enjoy a different aspect of SCH and probably like that it is really good at both pure healing and shielding, so it may be an unwelcome change for some...that said, they may even find they like/enjoy it. My compromise to those people would be just: make the job interesting to play.

[supaiku]

It's funny how all of this could have been fixed by giving WHM utility, but for whatever reason they absolutely will not budge. They would rather gut every other job than give them utility. It's weird, I'm actually really curious what their reasoning is for this.

This.
I really don't understand why they brought AST and SCH down instead of bringing WHM up. A simple haste buff would have been enough for WHM. It doesn't need as much utility as AST has, one (1!) haste skill wouldn't make it more difficult to play or put it away from the "pure" healer role. But for some reason the dev team is as stubborn as a teenager when it comes to this point.
They also could have replaced balance with a direct hit buff and spire with something that decreases cooldowns instead of the mess we got now.

[TankHunter678]

Honestly for a game that puts so much emphasis on dps there has been some weird choices made on the healers.

It seems to me that the only healer now with an identity is AST now. It has cards (which aren’t as good as stormblood, but the utility is still there), it has lightspeed, Earthy Star, Divination (with a long cooldown) and it has shields or regens. The shields cost a load of MP which I assume is deliberate so not to cast Scholar into irrelevancy and the dps is weak presumably because the job has utility.

Scholar seems a shadow of its former self. I miss Miasma 2, Shadowflare and Bane. It was fun to play balancing doing DPS with shielding. Scholar was meant to be the DPSA healer?

WHM just feels the same without Aero 3, lots of healing options (which don’t seem needed outside Savage) and pretty boring DPS which currently seems to outshine the other healers lol. WHM should always have a place in savage assuming the incoming damage is high, because I assume in the current state an AST and SCH partnership would be harder.

I’m not sure why they couldn’t have just kept the DPS abilities and by proxy the healer identities and just increased the incoming damage for normal content.

SCH feels like it still has an identity to me. AST is like a discount WHM with the option of being a horrendously underpowered discount SCH. The card system is such a shadow of its old self it makes the SCH issues of having fewer DPS buttons look more like a joke. A SCH is going to get plenty of reward for the effort they put in, and AST puts in a ton more effort for a reward that is just not worth it to the point people exclude it.

[galbsadi]

SCH feels like it still has an identity to me. AST is like a discount WHM with the option of being a horrendously underpowered discount SCH. The card system is such a shadow of its old self it makes the SCH issues of having fewer DPS buttons look more like a joke. A SCH is going to get plenty of reward for the effort they put in, and AST puts in a ton more effort for a reward that is just not worth it to the point people exclude it.

To me, SCH feels like a discount WHM but with a few shields. The fairy is basically cosmetic-only now, or otherwise a limitation on existing abilities.

Physick is just a weaker Cure that doesn't buff Adlo/Cure2 like Cure does.

Adlo is basically Cure2 but with part of it as a shield instead.

Lustrate is just Afflatus:Solace but with shared cooldowns with Sacred Soil as well as Indom (whereas A:S just shares a cooldown with A:R, aka WHM Indom).

Indom is just Afflatus:Raputre but with shared cooldowns with Sacred Soil as well as Lustrate...oh, and a 1m cooldown too, b/c why not?

Sacred Soil is basically Asylum, but with shared cooldowns with Lustrate and Indom....and by changing "bonus healing" into "reduced damage"...both serve the same effect in the vast majority of situations.

Dissipation is basically Temperance except by also locking you out of all fairy abilities for the duration.

Whispering Dawn is basically Medica2 but with a CD instead of a cast time...and requiring a fairy to be active...and no initial heal...and taking just as long to actually go off...and possibly being weaker because of the pet tax.

Need I continue? How about a twist? I've been playing quite a bit of WHM lately, so let's look at it from the other side!

Afflatus:Solace is basically Lustrate, but without as many restrictions, although it is on the GCD....this just means it lines up nicely with Benison or Tetra or Plenary or Assize.

Afflatus:Rapture is basically Indom, with the same notes as A:S above.

Temperance is basically Dissipation, but without all the drawbacks.

Tetra is basically a once/min oGCD A:S that can also be weaved in with A:S or A:R if needed.

Benediction is a cheat code. Period. The end. Except when it doesn't go off in time b/c RNGesus hates you (doesn't happen often, but when it does it's obnoxious).

Benison is kinda like Excog...gives some nice breathing room, and doesn't cost a Lustrate or Indom.

Asylum is kinda like Sacred Soil...gives a nice boost to group heals....and doesn't cost a Lustrate or Indom.

Assize is kinda like an extra Indom...except it doesn't cost a Lustrate...and is on a separate CD, and damages enemies, and restores mana too!

Losing the fairy was felt slightly, but Regen basically covers that, and is targetable too!

MedicaII is basically like a WD, except I have to spend a couple seconds casting it (that WD took anyhow to take effect, so no major loss)...and I can spam it if I needed to for some odd reason.

Medica is basically like a weaker Succor, and Cure3 is basically a stronger succor but with a shorter range.

Holy is basically art of war, except with a NICE stun (but you do have to stand still for a second to use it).

PoM is another cheat code.

Thin Air is another cheat code.

and finally...Afflatus Misery...is the reason you all exist...to feed the blood lily....

[galbsadi]

and our heals already being weaker than SCH.

Daily reminder that this is FALSE.

Here's WHM out-healing SCH and AST both in Eden (normal, b/c Savage isn't out yet): https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...gregate=amount

Here's WHM out-healing SCH and AST both in EX Trials: https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...gregate=amount

Here's WHM out-healing SCH (but not AST) in lv80 Dungeons: https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...gregate=amount

...note that all of these includes shielding as healing.

Also note that this is in addition to WHM pDPS outshining the total rDPS of both AST and SCH.