Healer Unhappiness exists on the Jap Healing Forums as well.

[GrimGale]

That's one way to go about fixing it, yes. BLM after all has next to no utility, but it has a challenging and rewarding gameplay loop that give it some of the highest personal damage in the game if you play it skillfully enough. WHM doesn't follow this design pattern. Its gameplay loop requires almost no skill until you're at the point where smoothing out your awful clipping is most of what's left to do. Having functionally one attack spell is boring. But as you see here



Some of the community thinks Glare Mage is a good thing. Which is mortifying to me.

If a generous portion of this forum got its way with regards to healer design, SCH and AST would get all their complexities and utility back, and WHM wouldn't get anything. It's "perfect the way it is" after all. And we'd be right back to Stormblood and late Heavensward again: AST and SCH output equivalent or more damage than WHM, are better healers because this game's combat system heavily favors their oGCD healing over GCD healing, and on top of it have a batman toolbelt of utility they can play with when the occasion calls for it.

Just give WHM utility and kit complexity. Why not? If WHM stays the boring vanilla healer, then in order to stand out in its own way it needs to do noticeably more damage than the other two. And since the other two healers will scream bloody murder if that happens...then utility it is. I don't think I will ever understand this forum's bizarre insistence that, even though all three healers have the same dead boring rotation they spam in every fight, it's a hideous injustice to AST and SCH that mustn't stand, but yippee yay it's so FUN and SATISFYING if I'm holding a staff while doing the exact same thing.

Potency-wise, WHM is superior on both healing and Damage to SCH and AST. In an uncoordinated group at least, which happens to be make up most content in this game.

I do agree WHM needs a more elaborate DPS rotation, but I don't see why giving it more utility skills would be the magical solution.

I personally think WHM should be BLM's counter-part healing wise. Long, very powerful nukes combined with quick burst heals and strong damage+healing oGCDs to weave in. Spice things up with self buff that need to be maintained and a mobility slill to help. If there is a job that deserves weaving damage and healing together that's WHM.

I don't think utility should be the core of WHM's identity, that belongs to AST.

[Mansion]

I don't think utility should be the core of WHM's identity, that belongs to AST.

While not being core, they could have some. Healers can all do the healing job in any composition and any situation. All healers now have quick burst reactive healing, strong regens and forms of shielding / mitigation.
They don't know how to make WHM stand out compared to AST because AST can do the same healing output and bring utility.
And while the numbers seem ok on paper in terms of balance, WHM's problem is that for a "strong personal DPS" identity, DPSing is not that interesting. And AST and SCH do prety much the same thing during their filler time. That does not work identity-wise.

[Semirhage]

Potency-wise, WHM is superior on both healing and Damage to SCH and AST. In an uncoordinated group at least, which happens to be make up most content in this game.

...huh? Damage sure, because that's how raid buffs (don't) work when you're the only competent person in a party full of randoms. But healing? AST and SCH have busted strong oGCD healing, which is objectively superior to GCD healing. WHM's a stronger healer if they spam their GCD heals on overhealing like a curebot.

I personally think WHM should be BLM's counter-part healing wise. Long, very powerful nukes combined with quick burst heals and strong damage+healing oGCDs to weave in. Spice things up with self buff that need to be maintained and a mobility spell to help. If there is a job that deserves weaving damage and healing together that's WHM.

Sounds like it has potential. Glarebot is nowhere close to those things. Instead, Squeenix seems to want WHM to be "the GCD healer". The problem there is the game's combat system makes oGCD healing just flat out better than GCD heals unless the oGCDs aren't sufficient enough to keep things going. Now, the solution here isn't necessarily that healers should be homogenized along their oGCD potential. But the thing is, as skill level increases, GCD healing IS worse than oGCD healing, and the power budget for the healer kits reflects their floor rather than their ceiling. Historically Scholar has better supported weaving healing and damage together, and it's no surprise. Needing to deal damage is near constant. Needing to heal isn't. The most straightforward way to create a healer that's great at weaving powerful damage and healing together with no offensive utility to manage is to design it like early Scholar: most of your GCD focused on a robust damage kit and a large portion of your healing budget goes to quick, powerful oGCDs.

Plus, the community would have a collective stroke if WHM's damage gap were anywhere near the gap between BLM and RDM. If there's anything I've learned from watching the forums since ARR, it's that AST and SCH mains think they should have literally 100% of the utility (offensive, defensive, or otherwise) AND be better at damage for it, because "it's not fair if we're harder to play and have lower output".

I don't think utility should be the core of WHM's identity, that belongs to AST.

Good thing I didn't say "core" then. AST and SCH mains think "giving WHM any utility at all" means "encroaching on AST and SCH identity", meanwhile there is no reverse scenario because WHM doesn't have an identity to encroach on, because "having GCD heals" and "having one damage spell to spam" isn't an identity, it's a skeleton of baseline requirements you build an actual job from.

[Mansion]

...huh? Damage sure, because that's how raid buffs (don't) work when you're the only competent person in a party full of randoms. But healing? AST and SCH have busted strong oGCD healing, which is objectively superior to GCD healing. WHM's a stronger healer if they spam their GCD heals on overhealing like a curebot.

Agree, and that's something very important actually. While WHM does have the strongest AoE healing in the form of Plenary > Cure III (all this under an Asylum or Temperance, Thin Air and PoM if you want), healing is a finite value. There is no need to heal more than "enough so that the next hit is not lethal". And this completely negate WHM's healing potential. Yes it's strong, but the other two healers can just heal the amount needed by any given fight, and that's it for healing, back to downtime.