Giving Whm an identity

[Semirhage]

WHM strongest personal/selfish DPS pure healer
AST strongest raid/support DPS pure healer
SGE strongest personal/selfish DPS shield healer
SCH strongest raid/support DPS shield healer.

There, space for everyone.

The thing that's always been the killer for attempts to make WHM's selfish DPS an actual niche is the design around it all. WHM just doesn't have the weaving or oGCD space that SCH or AST do, which exaggerates the hard stops in damage dealing that tank WHM's personal contribution. It's really weird, because you'd think that needing to hard stop your damage for healing is perfect for healers that, you know, contribute a lot to damage through their support abilities, because the targets of their buffs continue to deal damage while they've stopped their damage dealing to heal. But it's the opposite. The healer that loses the most from stopping their damage output is also the healer with the fewest tools to mitigate that. And it's pretty clear in the logs what this causes, expansion after expansion.

[GrimGale]

The thing that's always been the killer for attempts to make WHM's selfish DPS an actual niche is the design around it all. WHM just doesn't have the weaving or oGCD space that SCH or AST do, which exaggerates the hard stops in damage dealing that tank WHM's personal contribution. It's really weird, because you'd think that needing to hard stop your damage for healing is perfect for healers that, you know, contribute a lot to damage through their support abilities, because the targets of their buffs continue to deal damage while they've stopped their damage dealing to heal. But it's the opposite. The healer that loses the most from stopping their damage output is also the healer with the fewest tools to mitigate that. And it's pretty clear in the logs what this causes, expansion after expansion.

Honestly, considering how Scholar used to be in FFXI (unique access to strong regen spells Regen VI and Embrava), you'd think the Job with the slow damage over time would also be the one to use healing over time (And a fairy that also uses heal over time). WHM in FFXI was the "Protector" healer, with Stoneskin, Bar spells (Status prevention shields) and so on. Feels like WHM and SCH are flipped around when it comes to what they should do best.

[Roeshel]

snip

If all healers can throw out more than enough healing for any situation then that would classify all of them as healing powerhouses. Two out of three happened to be able to deal damage while healing (so that would make them damage powerhouses?) and one of them did not, despite having one of the strongest offensive healing spell in the game - assize.

The ability to overheal is not worthless. Overhealing is worthless. There is a difference. When you have the ability to overheal, it becomes a lot easier to recover from mistakes when such are made. So in essence you are not overhealing, you are correcting other people's mistakes. This is something only the healers can do.

And yes, people can complain about how whm is the most terrible healer job and whatnot. But the reality is the whm is the easiest healer job with the losest skill ceiling. It is easy because it is straightforward, it is easy because it relies on gcd to heal, it a popular healer job because it is easy. The problem this job has with weaving is why many ppl play it.

The strongest gcd heal still belongs to whm - 1170 from medica II, casted in asylum while having wings and plenary. Burst heal is not something that whm is just good at. They are the best job for that.

Also: "AST's Neutral Sect for example turns Diurnal AspHelios into 1140 potency (or 540 upfront) from a single GCD and lasts twice as long as Thin Air/Plenary with wider range."

This is just wrong information.

Plenary has 20y radius, aspected helios only 15y. And Asphealios has 1140 if you let the regen do it's work, so you get to cast 1140 potency strong heal only twice every two min with ast. If you actually need healing right now you don't have cure III like whm. You resort to helios after all of your ogcd have been used, but of course, there is no content that requires so much healing except terminal relativity.

And no, the ability to deal damage while healing is not important. It has been made important because there is nothing else for you to do as a healer. I am not sure how you don't see it. You have no debuffs to cleanse, no strong buffs to apply, no variety of group utility to grant and no real damage to heal. The game has been designed this way. This is why a healer's performance is determined by how much damage they have dealt in the raid, and not how much healing they've made because the healing part is never a challenge in this game.

If the devs actually thought that healers should focus on dealing damage, they would have given us a proper and interesting rotation. But that's not the case now, is it? Healer's DPS being relevant is an afterthought, it is the consequence of smth else, it is not the primary focus and it has never been.

[Semirhage]

If the devs actually thought that healers should focus on dealing damage, they would have given us a proper and interesting rotation. But that's not the case now, is it? Healer's DPS being relevant is an afterthought, it is the consequence of smth else, it is not the primary focus and it has never been.

I couldn't disagree more. Damage is the primary focus in almost every single RPG I've ever played, single- or multi-player. When you're in combat, the combat is over when your enemy is dead. The thing that makes your enemy dead in 99+% of encounters is damage. Healing output can help you get there. Buffs can help you get there. Mitigation, debuffs, countering enemy attacks, those can all be important depending on the systems as designed. But at the end of the day, those are all supporting your ability to smack your enemy to death. I can count on one hand the number of games I've played where my healers haven't been respectable damage dealers. Fact is, if all but the most explicitly difficult content requires constant heals or support, most players are going to die. Squeenix wants most players to ultimately succeed in the vast majority of content. That gap between players on top of their heal/support game and the ones struggling to keep up through story dungeons is where the downtime comes in. That downtime has been pretty large in most games I've played. From tabletop D&D type games, to easy RPGs, to more difficult ones. I've never reached the end of a Final Fantasy game where my more heal-focused character wasn't spending a good 80% of their turns attacking the enemy in some way.

The ability to deal damage while healing is important, because that's the way RPGs are generally designed. FFXIV isn't some bizarro world exception to a rule where forum princess healers are "strangely" "forced" to deal damage. Healing is regularly a multitasking role with a sliding scale of downtime based on how skilled you get at your primarily important task. Having downtime that isn't a terrible, stupid snoozefest of a reward for gaining finesse at your basic task is one of the most important facets of designing a multitasker class. I don't enjoy playing healers because I'm particularly enamored with spamming Cure over and over and over again. I like healing because it's a balancing act that should be rewarding when you manage to minimize healing as much as you possibly can. Because that's the (perhaps ironic) definition of getting more skilled at healing, no matter how much of it you design into an encounter. Minimizing it is ALWAYS the eventual goal.

[Roeshel]

snip

Damage being the primary focus in most rpgs doesn't change the fact that the devs don't like the idea of healers doing dps that much. From what I've learned, with Shb they even tried to reduce sch and ast to perform as poorly as whm when it comes to damage dealing. SCH had many dots and strong ED while ast had a very op time dilation spell that extends the buffs you put on targets by 15s and a 20% damage buff on some cards or smth. If whm is their model for a healer then in the gms' perspective the other two were seen as defects that must be corrected. So that only supports my point. The problem can't be with whm as this it is probably the first healer they designed so they must have put more thought into it and how it plays out than the other healer roles. It is also the only healer class with which you can start the msq so obviously it is going to be the most popular one with the strongest personal dps. In my opinion, sch and ast have been given good weaving spots because it is just harder to play them in general and they rely exclusively on ogcd to heal. So at the end of the day, it is only appropriate for a healer class with a higher skill ceiling to deal more damage and heal more than the easiest class.

And yes, things die quickly when you have the ability to deal damage. However, that damage doesn't have to come directly through you. The healer class is a support class in nature. It is kinda the reason why it doesn't come naturally to ppl to start dpsing as healers in dungeons. When your damage output is close or even higher to the one of your dps party members your class is no longer a support class, something that healers are meant to be.

Spamming cure is very different from spamming glare because if you mess it up ppl will end up dying. That's putting pressure on healers. This is why I liked tanks doing big pulls even if they don't use cds when I was levelling my first healer role. On the other hand, if you skip one, two or ten glares nobody will care as long as the boss doesn't enrage.

[Liam_Harper]

This is just wrong information.

Plenary has 20y radius, aspected helios only 15y. And Asphealios has 1140 if you let the regen do it's work, so you get to cast 1140 potency strong heal only twice every two min with ast. If you actually need healing right now you don't have cure III like whm. You resort to helios after all of your ogcd have been used, but of course, there is no content that requires so much healing except terminal relativity.

Plenary is 20y but Cure III is 6y. You don't have to resort to Helios after your oGCD have been used under Neutral, you reapply AspHelios as the shield breaks. 540 upfront is like regular Cure III's, paired with Horoscope Helios for another 400 and that's enough to recover from most things. Popping an undercooked Star in emergency is also practically a full Cure III's worth. Speaking of burst heal to correct mistakes, 2 charges of Essential Dignity on a short cooldown can cover more than WHM's one Benediction + Tetra. Bene's great but it's overkill and 40s > 180sec.
It's not that WHM's heal toolkit is bad at all, it's quite solid. But it doesn't bring anything to the table that the other healers can't cover, while at the same time being clunkier to use. Sure, it's also easier to play at a mediocre level because you aren't juggling cards or fairies, but "Baby's First Healer" that ends up being sort of bad as you learn to play better is not good design for a class. No other class is designed like this.

If everyone's a powerhouse, it's not special and then no one's a powerhouse really. Just average.

The ability to deal damage is always important. It doesn't matter if the devs are being stubborn about it, the fact is that damage is always useful. It wouldn't matter if you gave healers more to heal either and we healed 100% of the time at first, we'd coordinate mitigation, map the fight, reduce that to 70% or less and fill the rest with dps because we'd contribute more to the team.
The difference between two 5k dps healers and two 14k dps healers who keep everyone alive is killing the boss much faster meaning less time for mistakes to occur and likely skipping dangerous mechanics like Pitch Bog II, Cycles or Terminal. Or sometimes simply being the reason the group beat enrage. Even if dps isn't mandatory, the high dps healers have a much higher value to the team.

Correct that the devs should focus on dealing damage and give us some rotation. Just because it hasn't been the focus, doesn't mean it shouldn't be.

[Semirhage]

Damage being the primary focus in most rpgs doesn't change the fact that the devs don't like the idea of healers doing dps that much.

Then the devs don't understand how RPG combat works. This is evident. They tried making Scholars spend less time dealing damage by deleting several of their damage spells. That's...not how this works. Time spent on an activity isn't determined by the number of tools you have to do it. It's determined by the most useful thing you can be doing at the time. Even if that's pressing one button a thousand times.

If whm is their model for a healer then in the gms' perspective the other two were seen as defects that must be corrected.

Most healers who had any skill at healing whatsoever despised WHM's design in Stormblood. For reasons that were explained in excruciating detail both here and in other places on the internet. Doubling down on what your skilled players consider boring is...a look I guess.

So at the end of the day, it is only appropriate for a healer class with a higher skill ceiling to deal more damage and heal more than the easiest class.

Yes yes, WHM deserves to be the weakest AND most boring healer because AST and SCH are just so much more complex. Their superiority should be written into the Forever Meta, et cetera and so on. I've been rolling my eyes at that since late Heavensward, and they keep on rolling. This is not a dynamic for any other role in the game. WHM is the only job people regularly come out and advocate for sucking just...because.

It is kinda the reason why it doesn't come naturally to ppl to start dpsing as healers in dungeons.

I started dealing damage in Sastasha. Naturally. Because I've played a healer before. And I know that means keeping people at 100% HP all the time is a fool's game.

When your damage output is close or even higher to the one of your dps party members your class is no longer a support class, something that healers are meant to be.

Not in the RPGs I've played. They certainly haven't done *more*, but comparable? Absolutely. At least depending on the encounter.

Spamming cure is very different from spamming glare because if you mess it up ppl will end up dying. That's putting pressure on healers.

Pressing one button over and over again is good design guys. Really.

[BaconBits]

Jesus Semirhage how do you even have eyes at this point?

[Semirhage]

Jesus Semirhage how do you even have eyes at this point?

I have Visine droppers installed on the underside of my brow bones. They get a good re-wetting every time my eyes roll up there.

[BaconBits]

I have Visine droppers installed on the underside of my brow bones. They get a good re-wetting every time my eyes roll up there.

Mind telling me where you got them installed? If I see one more "WHM needs to stay simple" post my eyes will actually turn into dust