White Mage Flavor in 6.0

[Grimoire-M]

Here's what I would tweak with the class... and largely leave it the same as is:

I can hear my static's WHM main healer having an aneurysm over this post from here. Lemme give him something entertaining to read in the morning.

• Cure 2 is a direct replacement for Cure 1
• Free Cure gets deleted
• Thin Air becomes available earlier (preferably shortly after Lucid Dreaming is unlocked at 24)

Cure I, Medica, and Freecure are all niche. They also don't need to be replaced if you add mechanics that make them more meaningful. Thin Air doesn't need to be that much lower either. Really WHM just needs slight mana cost tweaks at ARR and that's it.

All non-Raise cast times drop to 2 seconds

Man, you should just commit. In my opinion WHM's weaving options should be unique, but at least the "Give me AST Casting" suggestions accomplish what they're asking for. Lilies accomplish this in a unique way imo, so I'd rather make riffs on that mechanic in a different manner.

Medica 1 upgrades into Medica 2, and Medica 2 has a base potency increase to 300 and increase the HoT to 200.

This Medica II change is just busted. You shouldn't get this for no effort involved.

Extend the range of Cure 3 to 8y (so it matches Asylum's range)

Cure III doesn't need to change. It sucks that it's niche, but it's so good at what it does that it doesn't need more oomph. DPS Adjust. It just needs to cost a little less and it's good.

Restore Stone 4 and Aero 3.

I get Aero 3. Glare doesn't need a change. I'll get to it in a moment.

• Lilies are generated on a skill crit (DPS or healing), HoT tick crit, or DoT tick crit
• All lily skills become OGCD skills

Oh man there it is. The Proc Mage Ascends. oGCD Lilies would not only be a frustrating and counterproductive change, but getting access to them in this manner? Healing should be reliable. Period. This goes completely against the point of why they were added in the first place. I'd rather put Assize on the GCD.

Glare changes to be an 400 pot damage spell that consumes a single lily instead of mana and contributes to the Blood Lily.

Why not simply add a new spell that accomplishes this? Imo, Fluid Aura is a perfect target for this rework, and an upgrade to that that adds potency would be great nod.

f Temperance is on Cooldown, you can consume the Blood Lily to cast it without affecting it's cooldown.

This straight up wouldn't be pressed unless your group sucks, which means my WHM would press it. In lieu of taking his lilies from him, why not simply give Temperance charges and lower the duration and cooldown?

I'm scratching my head for a healing oriented blood lily option as every part of the lily mechanic should allow the WHM to either go damage or healing so there's an option to use resources as it makes sense in the fight, and right now I'm using Afflatus Rapture to dump lilies as I'm always letting it tick. Having more options around how to generate (and dump) lilies would help with making the class feel a little more fluid.

Overall, WHM is in a good spot, so most of what I'm asking are QoL changes rather than large changes overall. I also want more skills to work with so I've got a bit more to manage as WHM is a little too simple atm.

I agree WHM's in an okay spot. A good one? Ehhhhh. I want it in a spot where SE doesn't feel compelled to overbuff AST again. I also don't want it to be braindead. Let everyone have their fun.

Since I have a rework in mind that scratches this itch, I'll post it as well for comparison's sake.

[Grimoire-M]

Putting this in a separate post for convenience, but here goes:

WHM Identity:

• GCD focused healer.
• Lilies - Backloaded resource. Primarily adds mobility via instantcast GCDs whose use unlocks a powerful burst nuke spell.
• Plenty of GCD heals in general (Most are made redundant thanks to Lilies).
• Few but simple to use oGCD heals, varying in power.
• High personal dps, no raid dps based utility, minimal amounts of mitigation.

Current Problems:

1. Assize’s Healing component isn’t flexible. Need to shift some of its burdens onto other skills.
2. Add a ton more weaving windows and additional movement options.
3. Slight increase in healing output and flexibility necessary to compliment Lily healing.
4. Needs a touch more complexity and a ton more depth. There should be something extra to juggle around for healing, particularly if it makes seemingly redundant buttons relevant.

Skill Count (After condensing buttons):

• New/Returning: 6 Actions, 3 Traits
• Reworks/Tweaks: 8 Actions, 0 Traits
• Removal: 0 Actions, 0 Traits
• Total Additions/Alterations: 15

Evolution:

1. New Spell - Afflatus Antimony: Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100. Lily Cost: 1. Instant Cast. Replaces Fluid Aura.
   
2. Reworked Spell - Fluid Aura: Deals water damage with a potency of 50. Instant Cast. Lily Cost: 1.
   
3. Reworked Spell - Cure: Restores Target’s HP. Cure Potency: 450.
   Additional Effect: Cleric Stance.
   Cleric Stance Effect: Increases the potency of the next Stone, Glare, or Holy you cast by 50% while reducing its cast time by 2.5s. Duration: 15s.
   Cast Time: 1.5s.
4. Returning Spell - Aero III: Deals wind damage with a potency of 90 to target and nearby enemies.
   Additional Effect: Wind Damage over Time. Potency: 80. Duration: 9s (Note: Assumes a Glare II potency of 330).
   Instant Cast. Radius: 10y.
   
5. Reworked Ability - Assize: Deals damage with a potency of 400 to all nearby enemies.
   Additional Effect: Restores 5% of MP and applies two stacks of Confession to self and all allies in range. Cooldown 45s. Maximum Charges: 2.
6. Reworked Ability - Plenary Indulgence: Consumes all Confession Stacks currently on party members to heal them for 200 Potency per stack. 60 second Cooldown.
   Confession Effect: Upon receiving HP recovery or regeneration from the next Cure, Cure II, Medica, Tetragrammaton, Afflatus Solace, Afflatus Rapture, Regen, or Medica II cast by self, Confession consumes itself for an additional heal. Potency: 200. Maximum Stacks: 3.
7. New Trait - Gifted Mind: Presence of Mind’s cooldown is decreased to 120s and also increases healing action potency and magic damage by 10% for its duration.
8. New Trait - Enhanced Benediction: Allows the accumulation of charges for consecutive uses of Benediction. Maximum Charges: 2.
9. Reworked Ability - Tetragrammaton: Restores target’s HP. Cure potency 700.
   Cooldown: 20s. Shares a cooldown with Divine Benison. Maximum Charges: 3.
10. Reworked Ability - Divine Benison: Creates a barrier around self or target party member that absorbs damage with a potency of 500.
    Additional Effect: Applies a stack of Confession to the target.
    Cooldown: 20s. Maximum Charges: 3. Shares a cooldown with Tetragrammaton.
11. Returning Trait - Secret of the Lily II: Increases your maximum Lily Gauge to 4, Blood Lily Gauge to 4, reduces the number of Afflatus spells needed to put the Blood Lily into full bloom to 2, and increases the potency of Afflatus Misery to 1000.
12. Reworked Ability - Asylum: Envelops an area in a veil of succor, increasing HP recovery via healing actions by 10% and granting healing over time to self and any party members who enter. Cure Potency: 50. Duration 24s.
    Additional Effect: Applies a Confession stack and Sanctum to self and party members who do not have Sanctum upon entering Asylum.
    Sanctum Effect: Healing over Time. Cure Potency: 50. Duration: 24s.
    Cooldown: 90s.
13. Reworked Ability - Temperance: Increases Healing Magic potency by 10%, while reducing damage taken by self and all party members within a radius of 30y by 10%. Duration: 10s. Additional Effect: Applies a Confession stack to self and all party members in range.
    Cooldown: 60s. Maximum Charges: 2.
14. New Spell - Animus Attendance: Applies a blessing to self or ally, which heals them the next time they suffer damage. Cure Potency: 700. Duration: 20s.
    Additional Effect: Enhances target's next offensive spell, autoattack, weaponskill, or ability, causing it to deal additional unaspected damage with a potency of 330 to their primary target, and 40% less to nearby enemies.
    Cast Time: Instant. Recast: 20s. Charges: 2. Shares a recast timer with Animus Sanctuary. Range: 30y Radius: 0y (10y for Effect)
15. New Spell - Animus Sanctuary: Deals Unaspected Damage with a potency of 330 to the first target, and 40% less to nearby enemies.
    Additional Effect: Applies a blessing to all party members near target, healing them the next time they suffer damage or upon effect duration expiration. Cure Potency: 400. Duration: 20s.
    Cast Time: Instant. Recast: 20s. Charges: 2. Shares a recast timer with Animus Attendance.
16. Returning Ability - Divine Seal: Increases the potency of the next healing spell cast by 30%. Duration: 15s
    Additional Effect: Cleric Stance. Duration: 15s.
    Cooldown: 60s. Maximum Charges: 2.
17. New Ability - Aetherpath: Move quickly to the specified location. Cannot be executed while bound. Cooldown: 90s.

Summary:
WHM has a mixture of strong and flexible GCD and oGCD healing and supplementary mitigation options. Maximizing the job revolves around Confession and Animus management and mapping out where to use Lilies, Antimony, Divine Seal, or Aero for movement/weaving and otherwise focuses their attention on aligning Assize, Presence of Mind, and Misery under raid buffs where convenient. mistakes can be covered by using healing Lilies and supplementing movement with Cure I as necessary.

[Recon1o6]

the way things look, it appears we will, in theory be having

whm- selfish regen
ast- team regen
sage-selfish shield
sch- team shield

now personally I believe that sage and sch should be swapped around. even so, just because something is selfish doesn't mean it can't have some utility, just not as much as the others

with that said, here's my take on whm

-Stone now combos into water. Water when comboed is instant cast gcd and procs freecure. Water can be cast normally without a proc for weaving.
-aero back and upgrades to aero 4, aero 3 returned and upgrades to tornado
-stone upgrades to quake, water to flood
-cure 1 upgrades to cure 2
-cure 3 cost reduced and radius expanded by 2y, effect changed so you can actually see the radius
-medica upgrades to medica 2 (a self based cure 3 will do what medica did)
-Holy mp cost and damage increased
-lily generates every 20 seconds, blood lily is now 60s potency reduced but always crits.
-dia becomes an instant cast attack that causes a debuff, costs a lily, recast 60s
-glare is a lily dump that restores mp and inflicts damage
-blood lily heals in a cure 3 radius around target and gets a sound effect change so it actually has impact
-shroud of saints returned
-seraph strike added, costs a lily (bozjan gap closer) and with one free instant cast after
-plenary now costs a lily, applies confession, protect and shell
-cleric stance readded: causes all spells to have no cast time and boosts damage and movement speed by 15% for 5 casts or 20 seconds. Recast 2 minutes
-upgraded pieces of the kit like temperance have their bases restored eg temperance is upgraded from divine seal
-level 90 capstone Diligence: 2 minute cd, gain a lily, can be used outside of combat and automatically sets the lily count to max and cd is 30 seconds

The idea is to give whm mobility and recapture its elements and self buffing niche that were taken away from it while increasing mechanical depth and encouraging dps as a healer.

The lily offensive dumps are the same potency or weaker than your stone/water combo, but they still have their uses for dumping excess lillies and secondary uses like movement or mana.
Cleric stance and seraph strike give much needed mobility. Water 1,2,3,4 and flood give weaving windows. The capstone is to mitigate whm's slow start

[Almagnus1]

Amusing how I get called out, yet reading through this thread the next day, the post directly above mine gets ignored (as we basically posted much of the same thing and I didn't realize it at the time).

Cure I, Medica, and Freecure are all niche. They also don't need to be replaced if you add mechanics that make them more meaningful.

I don't think I've cast a Cure 1 at max level cap since maybe 60 or so. While Medica 1 does have it's uses, it's very rare. I'd love to hear your reasoning on why Free Cure isn't trash because it's an RNG proc right now and anyone at 80 that's attempting to use the Free Cure mechanic is doing it wrong as that mechanic is dumpster fire bad.

Thin Air doesn't need to be that much lower either. Really WHM just needs slight mana cost tweaks at ARR and that's it.

That would be fine too. It's not completely bad so long as you remember to use Lucid Dreaming... but this would help keep the class in parity with how it plays at higher levels so WHMs that are downscaled aren't punished as harshly when most of their useful kit gets turned off.

Man, you should just commit. In my opinion WHM's weaving options should be unique, but at least the "Give me AST Casting" suggestions accomplish what they're asking for. Lilies accomplish this in a unique way imo, so I'd rather make riffs on that mechanic in a different manner.

There's a very big reason why I have been stacking SpS on WHM since HW. IMO the class just feels so much better by speeding up the cast timer. Changing the timers from 2.5 second to 2.0 seconds (especially on Glare and Holy) would make things feel overall better when you're chain-casting stuff. 2.5 seconds is just too long on this class.

This Medica II change is just busted. You shouldn't get this for no effort involved.

Yes, changing it from a 200 pot heal to a 300 pot heal and a 100 pot regen to a 200 pot regen WITH the higher mana cost of 1300 and a 20y range is busted? (especially compared to Medica 1 which is 300 pot heal at 1000 mana and 15y range). That basically makes Medica 2 Afflatus Rapture which is a 300 pot AOE and 20y range for a lily that also casts a Regen (200 pot HoT) on everyone it hits. Maybe you didn't look this up before commenting?

Cure III doesn't need to change. It sucks that it's niche, but it's so good at what it does that it doesn't need more oomph. DPS Adjust. It just needs to cost a little less and it's good.

Bringing it up to Asylum's range (where it's 2y short now) makes it easier to visually tell people how close they need to group up. It's purely a cat-herding QoL change and that's why I didn't screw with it otherwise. There's still plenty of other use-cases, but IMO Asylum should be used as the WHM measuring stick so people know to stay close.

I get Aero 3. Glare doesn't need a change. I'll get to it in a moment.

I want to be a rock chucker again. Glare just feels completely unsatisfying to play with compared to Stone. I want stone back.

Oh man there it is. The Proc Mage Ascends. oGCD Lilies would not only be a frustrating and counterproductive change, but getting access to them in this manner? Healing should be reliable. Period. This goes completely against the point of why they were added in the first place. I'd rather put Assize on the GCD.

How would that be frustrating? Making them OGCD makes it so you have to weave them in, and if you're saying this would make healing unreliable then (to be very blunt) you likely don't know how to play WHM correctly.

Why not simply add a new spell that accomplishes this? Imo, Fluid Aura is a perfect target for this rework, and an upgrade to that that adds potency would be great nod.

Cause I'd rather be chucking rocks and don't want to discard Glare. If glare gets deleted I'm fine with that too.

This straight up wouldn't be pressed unless your group sucks, which means my WHM would press it. In lieu of taking his lilies from him, why not simply give Temperance charges and lower the duration and cooldown?

That's why I said:

I'm scratching my head for a healing oriented blood lily option as every part of the lily mechanic should allow the WHM to either go damage or healing so there's an option to use resources as it makes sense in the fight

I think incremental change rather than a complete reformatting is what WHM needs.

[Kacho_Nacho]

Just off the top of my head, I wonder if the issue players have with the simple dps rotation of healing jobs is to increase the MP cost of their damage spells while increasing the damage damage they inflict, remove all current spells which restore MP, then giving each healer a new fast, no cost damage dealing, MP restoring spell.

[Allegor]

Honestly, I see AST fitting a lot better with the "regen healer" niche whereas WHM is more of a burst/gcd focused healer. I'd actually like another spell or ability like Assize, something that can heal AND deal damage, and be used accordingly.

[Grimoire-M]

Amusing how I get called out, yet...

I don't think I've cast a Cure 1 at max level cap since maybe 60...

That would be fine too. It's not completely bad so long as you remember to use Lucid...

I responded your post because it's far more egregious once you think about it. I expected you to think about it. Yet here we are.

That said, I've seen WHMs use Freecure to save runs in ARR and HW when both were still relevant content. ie. Not nerfed four times in a row. I'm not gonna pretend it's good, but I understand what it's trying to solve. It's RNG-gated Thin Air on your most efficient single-target heal during the part of the levelling period Tanks generally would get murdered by auto attack and cleave routines. ARR Coil depended on one healer utilizing their single target healing efficiently, and Freecure was the basis of how that worked. Till Gordias happened and we got good or quit, anyways.

There's a very big reason why I have been stacking SpS on WHM since HW...

So you're proposing recast times of 2.0s, not cast times of 2.0s, and you want it because you wanna throw Stones real fast? Okay. Cool. In case you're wondering, the difference is whether it applies to the GCD timer or the cast bar. There's a difference. Cool? Okay.

I'm not knocking what you're trying to propose here, but, unfortunately, this alone tells me you really don't get how this game works, nevermind how healers work. That's not meant as an insult either, it's just a common mistake if you don't take the time to do the math. It's not like there's an official tutorial out there for this nonsense. I'd encourage you to go read the Balance Discord or SaltedXIV's guides on WHM and Healer BiS and think about how they arrive at their recommendations. Because they do the math so we don't have to. I'll try to summarize the concept:

For most jobs there's a recommended skill/spell speed threshold to aim for, or you're losing DPS most of the time to some cooldown drift. Last I recall, WHM's recommended spell speed is based on aligning Lucid Dreaming in your Dia DoT refreshes so you don't have to clip for it every time. They accept that they're stuck hardclipping oGCDs and so adjust for that slightly, but they don't go out of their way to get to melee DPS levels of speed. Presence of Mind's Haste Buff (like the melee haste buffs/passives) also doesn't stack in a way that makes Spell Speed good either.

Historically not stacking it was necessary for TP/MP concerns, but that's honestly not even true now. That said, you can meld to account for ping or discomfort as you do with Piety, but generally it's gonna make your job harder, not easier, at least if you're actually serious about pushing your efficiency.

Yes, changing it from a 200 pot heal to a... Maybe you didn't look this up before commenting?

No, I read it, and did the math in my head before laughing. You got that right. It's 140 potency off of two fully charged Earthly Stars and is better than Regen on single target btw. I expect you to do the homework. Have fun with that.

Bringing it up to Asylum's range (where it's 2y short now) makes it easier to...

This is a fair complaint, but also not really a problem in the way you think it is. I'd rather solve the clarity issue on Cure III by simply making healer hard-cast AoEs telegraph themselves to other players while you're casting them. Think Earthly Star or the story mission ally AoEs. Those are actually helpful. And if DPS still don't stack for those, they have no excuse if they die at that point. It doesn't take much to get a feel for ranges as the caster when you can see that telegraph either. Even then, I don't think size is Cure III's actual issue. It's how SE balances the other healers and encounters around it, and I'd rather resolve those issues in their respective threads.

I want to be a rock chucker again...

...If glare gets deleted I'm fine with that too.

I'd rather have good, functional, well thought out mechanics first, and good aesthetics second, cause I trust SE to get the latter right most of the time, not the former. If you're upset about Glare then Afflatus Misery's waffle sounds should piss you off. There's also lore reasons Stone IV was replaced with Glare. V Rank spells and above are impossible to cast for us plebs.

How would that be frustrating? Making them OGCD makes it so you have to weave them in, and if you're saying this would make healing unreliable then (to be very blunt) you likely don't know how to play WHM correctly.

Lemme get this straight: You think oGCDs, off-global cooldowns, don't have to be weaved between GCDs. And you think lower recast GCDs are good.

I've gone over this charitably already above. Reread it and the Balance guides again until you've internalized it.

That said, I'll explain where I'm coming from. My goal when analyzing any rework proposal (This is the standard I try to hold my suggestions to) in general is to ask a few things:

1. Does it look as close as possible to what SE does, has done, and could do?
2. Do any major mechanical additions or changes make the class play better than it does currently?
3. Can the minor mechanical proposals be made in isolation?
4. What interactions are added between elements of the kit, if any? Do they add to the overall kit?
5. Anything I don't see mentioned (MP costs, ranges, AoEs) I default to assuming it matches SE's own Job Guide listings Here where able. I'll ask if it matters.
6. Is there any broken aspect to the kit? ie. Does it add something that is hard to balance around or tune numerically, or is overly powerful just in its numbers relative to other options?
7. Does it consider some constraints that come up in gameplay from a player's perspective, both in hard and easy content?

In my opinion, you failed at coming up with anything good because you didn't even bother to ask these questions before posting. In the case of mine, it probably fails a few of these questions, but it's not immediately obvious in the way yours are. But it's kinda unfair because my suggestions have had time to bake for two expansions, and you don't strike me as a mathematically-inclined or design-sensitive person just based on your formatting. But it's what I'd expect from someone who understood their class, and could reasonably understand any class in this game, design-wise. At least if they want their suggestions taken seriously.

But let's pretend that somehow it happened anyways. So you can understand the exercise I intuitively went through while reading your post, and the one I put through my suggestions.

You got some nice, well meaning buffs, and also Crit-stacking oGCD Lilies empowered by AoE-Regen II.

Congratulations, you've opened up abhorrent abuse cases! Put yourself in the shoes of maximizing your crit-fishing while minimizing overhealing. How do you want to do that?

Well, as written: Medica II is your best heal, by far, and Glare is your best DPS spell, by far. One grants the other. Oh, and math wise? Glare > Stone. Enough Glares >>>>> Stone, even if we have to give up a GCD for a heal.

I think you see where this is going.

In short: You'd literally do the 100% Medica II uptime nonsense every raider hates about casual pug healers (because fuck aggro and efficiency, am I right?) and -then- when that absurd 200 potency regen tick somehow wasn't enough, you'd be clipping in-between your 2.0s recast GCDs to use your lilies on cooldown (losing 25% of your potential DPS) with barely any thought put towards targeting and it would -still- feel like trash to play. And what do you get for it? Glare Spam. Good Job. You did it. You wanted Stone back then immediately made it irrelevant. Also your Lilies are perma-capped because these are the proc rates Bards can only dream of. What else is this trying to unlock?

Oh, right. Scholar heals. With resources acquired from WHM regens. I guess you did play it. Congrats on getting it to 80. Now, as someone who mains that job, I can appreciate that Scholar's oGCD spam is good. That's clearly what you're trying to emulate, but that only works because Aetherflow is capped at a reasonable limit and most of the other ones just plain suck. Procs don't have this limit, and current Lilies are already reasonable. but you don't specify cooldown numbers, and Lilies don't have one, so I assume they're just on-demand. Ergo: They're busted.

And, honestly, procs just aren't fun on healers when they're properly balanced. WoW commits this sin repeatedly and it drives people away and back for a reason. You think Freecure's bad? Your Lily proc rate would be worse for balance's sake. Look at BLM's thundercloud procs. Think about how would it feel on your regen ticks. It'd basically be like Stormblood WHM, which is basically the same as Heavensward WHM, plus a couple cooldowns from Shadowbringers. Does that scream -fun-?

I don't think so. And I doubt you would either once you played with each class to see how it feels.

Taking every change that matters out of your proposal in aggregate, you not only undo and undermine multiple aspects current Lilies establish that are unique to WHM, you throw out the current kit in exchange for a busted version of Scholar's, rewarding the worst WHM players with superfluous resources they won't have any idea how to spend efficiently, while flattening the top potential for players who are already deathly bored and frustrated by WHM's current state. It just makes it feel like a bad Scholar/AST hybrid with nothing flashy to play around with or foundational to build upon, but is nonetheless busted anyways because of one poorly tuned spell. Literally everyone loses in this situation. You. Me. The Dragoon waving at us on the floor. Everyone. Is that really what you want?

By the way, this is all to get you to see that I'm trying to make White Mage better in a fashion SE might actually consider. ShB SMN's Further Ruin change is basically something I suggested word for word back in Stormblood. Sure, you've dismissed actual effort and legitimate criticism I've offered prior as me 'not knowing how to play WHM', But as far as I'm concerned, that's just Duning Kruger. You're new to coming up with good design suggestions, and I am frankly unsurprised that you don't see the problems in your own work and are unable to even engage with my rework post because of it.

Maybe you don't want to handle the legwork of semi-accurate tooltips and numbers tuning befitting of an actual prototype, and that's fine. But something between your level of rework and mine is what healers actually need to be posting right now. Desperately. A lot of casual healer suggestions like Doubling Medica II's total potency are not good for this game's overall health. Your post is full of them along with some half-baked QoL that doesn't really solve the intended problem. If you want to learn something instead, go read my rework, and just jot down notes about how it would affect what you could or would do in-game. Try to think of use cases. Then apply that framing to any suggestions you've made in the past and see where it leads you by comparison. My Cure I change alone does more to add to WHM's depth than the rest of our recent posts combined, once you think about it. It's a good thought exercise. And it'll save you from embarrassing criticisms like this one.

[Almagnus1]

That said, I've seen WHMs use Freecure to save runs in ARR and HW when both were still relevant content. ie. Not nerfed four times in a row. I'm not gonna pretend it's good, but I understand what it's trying to solve. It's RNG-gated Thin Air on your most efficient single-target heal during the part of the levelling period Tanks generally would get murdered by auto attack and cleave routines. ARR Coil depended on one healer utilizing their single target healing efficiently, and Freecure was the basis of how that worked. Till Gordias happened and we got good or quit, anyways.

The problem is that any WHM that's casting Cure 1 after they get Cure 2 is doing it wrong, and a mechanic encouraging you to cast Cure 1 is actively bad. You don't mess around with a bad skill just because it mgiht save you. And siting Alex as "here's why this mechanic is good!" isn't a good reason because WHM in ShB is a far different beast than the HW WHM - We don't have Cleric Stance anymore for starters....

So you're proposing recast times of 2.0s, not cast times of 2.0s, and you want it because you wanna throw Stones real fast? Okay. Cool. In case you're wondering, the difference is whether it applies to the GCD timer or the cast bar. There's a difference. Cool? Okay.

I'm not knocking what you're trying to propose here, but, unfortunately, this alone tells me you really don't get how this game works, nevermind how healers work. That's not meant as an insult either, it's just a common mistake if you don't take the time to do the math. It's not like there's an official tutorial out there for this nonsense.

The problem is the sluggish 2.5s cast (and recast) timer. Yeah, I know the math, but I'm good enough that I can play around that.

For most jobs there's a recommended skill/spell speed threshold to aim for, or you're losing DPS most of the time to some cooldown drift. Last I recall, WHM's recommended spell speed is based on aligning Lucid Dreaming in your Dia DoT refreshes so you don't have to clip for it every time. They accept that they're stuck hardclipping oGCDs and so adjust for that slightly, but they don't go out of their way to get to melee DPS levels of speed. Presence of Mind's Haste Buff (like the melee haste buffs/passives) also doesn't stack in a way that makes Spell Speed good either.

And that's why you're always thinking a skill ahead and spamming the skills so you can maximize your clipping. That's like MMO 101 stuff dude....

No, I read it, and did the math in my head before laughing. You got that right. It's 140 potency off of two fully charged Earthly Stars and is better than Regen on single target btw. I expect you to do the homework. Have fun with that.

So you're comparing it to another skill from a different class and pretending like that's relevant how? I mean, it's not like you can stack Medica 2 and regen on a target right now for passive healing or anything...

But I think you're demonstrating why a non-healer trying to tell the healers how to play is a bad thing...

This is a fair complaint, but also not really a problem in the way you think it is. I'd rather solve the clarity issue on Cure III by simply making healer hard-cast AoEs telegraph themselves to other players while you're casting them. Think Earthly Star or the story mission ally AoEs. Those are actually helpful. And if DPS still don't stack for those, they have no excuse if they die at that point. It doesn't take much to get a feel for ranges as the caster when you can see that telegraph either. Even then, I don't think size is Cure III's actual issue. It's how SE balances the other healers and encounters around it, and I'd rather resolve those issues in their respective threads.

I can still make Cure 3 effective as it is now without needing the telegraphs IN DF RAIDS - and if this is your real complaint you need to git gud scrub. The game doesn't need this pointless handholding when the group gets organized, and if you are pushing savage content, it's a complete non issue if the WHM brings it up to the group as there's enough other solid AoE heals in the arsenal to use.

I'd rather have good, functional, well thought out mechanics first, and good aesthetics second, cause I trust SE to get the latter right most of the time, not the former. If you're upset about Glare then Afflatus Misery's waffle sounds should piss you off. There's also lore reasons Stone IV was replaced with Glare. V Rank spells and above are impossible to cast for us plebs.

Considering we're the warriors of light, and we're our own one person army... that sounds more like "you can't have Stone V because my headcannon says you can't!"

Lemme get this straight: You think oGCDs, off-global cooldowns, don't have to be weaved between GCDs. And you think lower recast GCDs are good.

Ok, that's as far as you go.

When you have the lily system, even if you are procing them far more frequently, every single one of them would make better sense if they were OGCD skills because it makes it possible to actually weave them between other GCD skills. For example, if I do Plenary Indulgence (OGCD) => Medica 2 (GCD) => Afflatus Rapture (GCD) that would make more sense if it was an OGCD skill. Afflatus Misery is (IIRC) an OGCD skill, which means I can snap that off between Glares. The last one Afflatus Solace is frustrating as a GCD skill when it should be OGCD like Tet. But that also highlights a problem with the single target healing on the WHM as you generally shouldn't need Cure 2 unless things are really going sideways.

However, most of your comments are coming off as if you really need to play WHM to refresh yourself because I'm about convinced you know absolutely nothing about what you're talking about.

[aiqa]

Annoying how a flavor/theme thread is hijacked by yet another argument over game mechanics. There are more than enough discussions about those, so go post in one of the those already.

[Almagnus1]

Annoying how a flavor/theme thread is hijacked by yet another argument over game mechanics. There are more than enough discussions about those, so go post in one of the those already.

Ikr. All I want is a bit fast cast speed on most of my spells as it feels like it's a tad bit too long atm, be able to throw rocks again, get my AoE DoT back, and have a way for lilies to be converted into healing or damage so I can do more of whatever's needed in a situation with a few QoL things thrown in.

Is that really too much to ask?