Giving Whm an identity

[Roeshel]

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 you played your first mmo, did it come naturally to you to dps in dungeons as a healer? I really doubt that it did.

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

You guys are kinda hypocritical. You say that you don't like the homogenisation(I am jumping to a conclusion here because most ppl complaining about healer roles are against the homogenisation as well) of the healer classes yet you want whm to play the same way as the other two healer classes. It is easy to reduce glare's cast, and turn the lily spells into ogcds and have whm play exactly the same as ast or give whm an instant strike attack like the sch. But it is a whm at the end of the day not another copy of ast or sch. It's gameplay must feel different first and foremost and currently feels a lot different than the other two healers. And yes, it must stay different and hopefully it will, regardless of what you guys think.

[Jandor]

When you played your first mmo, did it come naturally to you to dps in dungeons as a healer? I really doubt that it did.

Why wouldn't it come naturally? Nearly every game in existence makes you deal damage with your character.

[Shurrikhan]

When you played your first mmo, did it come naturally to you to dps in dungeons as a healer?

Yes. Yes it did.

[Rilifane]

When you played your first mmo, did it come naturally to you to dps in dungeons as a healer? I really doubt that it did.

It did.
It took maybe 2-3 pulls for me to notice that I have enough time to dot everything, followed by as much Smite spam as my mana allowed when I healed my first dungeon in Vanilla WoW. And with tighter mana and far tighter aggro management and hit being a thing, it was the most risky and punishing time for healers to dps.

You guys are kinda hypocritical. You say that you don't like the homogenisation(I am jumping to a conclusion here because most ppl complaining about healer roles are against the homogenisation as well) of the healer classes yet you want whm to play the same way as the other two healer classes. It is easy to reduce glare's cast, and turn the lily spells into ogcds and have whm play exactly the same as ast or give whm an instant strike attack like the sch. But it is a whm at the end of the day not another copy of ast or sch. It's gameplay must feel different first and foremost and currently feels a lot different than the other two healers. And yes, it must stay different and hopefully it will, regardless of what you guys think.

Relying on oGCDs is. Not. An. Identity. Being braindead is not an identity either.
Nor is it homogenization by default when there are countless ways to design oGCDs. Delayed heal, decaying heal, triggered heal, regen, shields, ground target heal, oGCDs tied to resources and synergies open up a lot of ways to design oGCDs. If you think that every healer will play the same just because the use skills tagged as "Ability" over "Spell", that's on you.
SCH is "WHM plus something cool, but different from AST" and AST is "WHM plus something cool, but different from SCH", not the other way around.

[Roeshel]

Relying on oGCDs is. Not. An. Identity. Being braindead is not an identity either.

WHM currently has GCDs tied to resources. And if they didn't lose any potency they would have been just as good as an ogcd, even better since you would get the time needed to weave 2 additional oGCDs after using a lily. It is not like the current design is a complete failure, small adjustments need to be made to enable whms to play optimally.

What I mean by small adjustments is removing the dps loss from using a lily and maybe change benison so that it nourishes the gauge and gives one lily per cast. It is a water spell, after all, it's kinda thematic if you ask me. The same thing could be done for fluid Aura so that it stays relevant. Kinda like how Ninja's Mug Shot is relevant because it charges up the ninja Ninki Gauge despite it dealing almost no dps.

Revamp plenary. Make it a gcd spell that consumes a lily because most of my clipping comes from wanting to activate plenary before using afflatus rapture. It will be a gcd but it will have its own recast timer for balance purposes something like gnb's dot. Also, change what it does because to get the most value out of that spell right you will just end up overhealing. Maybe instead of having the 200/400/600/800 cure potency healed right now, they can be stored up for the second AoE. Or you know, it can just become a party-wide regen healing spell that comes with no dps loss kinda like Ast's Celestial Opposition.

Make Tetra a dps neutral water regen ogcd and make it charge up the lilies. You already have 700 neutral cure potency from Afflatus Solace.

Make Thin Air interact with your lily gauge. Instead of nullifying mp requirements for gcd heals make it so that it allows for the execution of lily spells without consuming a lily.

Last but not least, introduce the lily system at level 30, when you become a white mage. Ast and SCH both have their gauges before level 50. Also, remove the passive charging of the lily gauge. You already have 3 ogcds from which you get lilies. You need to start pressing your buttons to have access to your whole kit, just like sch and ast. At level 30 you get Presence of mind as well, so this would be a great way to make that ability interact with your lily gauge. It can be smth like a party-wide that is unlocked only if you have 3 lilies stored.

Now adjust all of the cure and damage potencies so that the class is balanced.

This is the kind of change I would like to see for whm. It still remains a gcd healer which is its identity. The changes I proposed are not that big in my opinion. They are only expanding on what is already there and making different abilities interact with one another so that the person playing the role gets the sense that the skills are not randomly put in the whm's kit.

[Shurrikhan]

WHM currently has GCDs tied to resources. And if they didn't lose any potency they would have been just as good as an ogcd, even better since you would get the time needed to weave 2 additional oGCDs after using a lily.

Okay, yes, objectively true, so long as there aren't additional dependent opportunities attached to the GCDs in necessary (uptime-)conflict with those (e.g. Lily) GCDs.

maybe change benison so that it nourishes the gauge and gives one lily per cast.

You're talking about literally doubling their Lily generation, allowing for a Misery every 30 or 60 seconds, cycling (or, at an average of 45s; split the cake as you like).

Make it a gcd spell that consumes a lily because most of my clipping comes from wanting to activate plenary before using afflatus rapture.

So long as it feeds the Blood Lily. Moreover, you could just have it go back to an earlier design, whereby it's automatically charged by the number of AoE spells cast in the last 10 seconds for follow-up potency, rather than frontloading added potency to each.

Make Tetra a dps neutral water regen ogcd and make it charge up the lilies.

And with that we're now 8 Lilies generated per 90 seconds, up from 3. Or, a Misery available per ~34 seconds...

Make Thin Air interact with your lily gauge. Instead of nullifying mp requirements for gcd heals make it so that it allows for the execution of lily spells without consuming a lily.

Not an outright horrible idea, but I don't see the need for Lightspeed(-but-better-except-in-that-it-can't-be-used-to-DPS-and-actually-forces-delay-in-Misery-casts). By the time you've that kind of resource, it just adds to WHM's historic problem: overhealing. What use is all that weave-space if the weave-space can only be spent on heals, and you're already trucking the meters?

Last but not least, introduce the lily system at level 30, when you become a white mage. Ast and SCH both have their gauges before level 50.

AST and SCH primary gauges (Cards and Aetherflow) also have -- or at least use to have -- useful, choiceful, and thematic utility attached, rather than just an extra-Swiftcast-but-limited-to-heals-and-eventually-made-to-refund-offensive-uptime-costs system that's clearly been tacked on in a non-integral fashion. Let's not call the deer, the deer, and the deer-bits-a-week-since-run-over equally venison here.

_____________________________

While I agree with you that Lilies are not a terrible design, I agree with Rilifane that what you seem here to take as a sufficient center for a job's identity... isn't even close to sufficient.

[Roeshel]

And with that we're now 8 Lilies generated per 90 seconds, up from 3. Or, a Misery available per ~34 seconds...

My idea was to have only 5 lilies per minute. This is how much you get if the passive charging of the lily gauge is removed. Benison and Fluid have 30s cd, tetra 1min. So you get 5 lilies per minute which is more than twice as much from what we have now. And misery could be adjusted to be available after 5 lily casts. I really think that whm needs more lilies for movement. Like, right before a mechanic you are going to heal up your main tank + move where you need to be. Then you use your lilies for aoe heal and then save up misery for extra movement or weaving option while you charge up your lilies.

Whm gets a lot of free healing with so many lilies but it doesn't mean that they are going to be overhealing. The potencies just need to be adjusted so that it plays out better. Utilizing your resources should be required to optimize your dps output and avoid the casting of Medica II or Cure III. These should be emergency heals, at least for savage.

Tbh, my idea was for thin air to be kinda like lightspeed for movement purposes. But it doesn't have to be like that. It can be something that augments the next cast of each lily spells. For example, Augmented afflatus solace could be a ST spell that grants a buff to all healing received to the target you've healed for a set amount of time, which is smth that can be prolonged by subsequent use of afflatus solace on the same target but if the buff runs out you will need to wait till you can use thin air again. Augmented afflatus rapture could grant a party-wide buff. It's named "Rapture" after all. After using thin air, your party members obtain the rapture buff which will transform into one of these three buffs - damage dealt buff/damage reduction buff/regen effect. It can be made so that it gives different buffs in different scenarios. For example:

Solace - Plenary - Rapture / Plenary - Solace - Rapture = damage reduction buff

Plenary - Rapture - Solace / Rapture - Plenary - Solace = party regen effect

Rapture - Solace - Plenary / Solace - Rapture - Plenary = damage increase buff

It can be also made that the rapture buff is activated only after you've used misery. So you would have like a 10sec window to figure out which buff you want, do the rotation and then use misery to activate the buff. If you don't use misery the buff will not get activated. And if you do the rotation wrong where you've used the same lily spell twice before finishing your augmented lily casts you get no buff.

The damage increase seems like the best choice in most cases which is true. But having an additional damage reduction as an option while progging is just as good. The regen option is when a lot of healing is needed, but you don't want to resort to using Medica II and Cure III.

Augmented plenary could give 50% of the stored cure potency as additional max hp while the buff lasts. Some savage raids have some very hard-hitting aoes and the most common way to survive them is to just shield + mitigate. Increasing max hp could be whm's way to keep the party alive. Also, Plenary could be made so that it synergies with misery. It could be made so that you get 500 cure potency stored when you use misery and 100 from each rapture. I think this way ppl won't be pressured into overhealing healing to get good value out of plenary.

So thin air could be something like: "Augments the next cast of Afflatus Solace, Plenary Indulgence and Afflatus Rapture"

[Shurrikhan]

My idea was to have only 5 lilies per minute. This is how much you get if the passive charging of the lily gauge is removed. Benison and Fluid have 30s cd, tetra 1min. So you get 5 lilies per minute which is more than twice as much from what we have now.

And with that, Benison becomes even less able to be held for when you may actually need a shield. Unless ALL shields are being removed from "pure"/"HoT" healers, you should probably assume that at least in Savage content there may be some need for a shield... to be used as an actual max eHP increase, rather than mere oGCD throughput.

Binding generation to Benison would further increase any opportunity costs for using it as an actual shield. I'd really rather not.

Solace - Plenary - Rapture / Plenary - Solace - Rapture = damage reduction buff

Plenary - Rapture - Solace / Rapture - Plenary - Solace = party regen effect

Rapture - Solace - Plenary / Solace - Rapture - Plenary = damage increase buff

Assuming your Plenary would be an oGCD, it has the prior weave issue, but I otherwise don't hate this. That said, it still seems like you're lavishing inordinate attention upon decoration for a rat-eaten cake. Where's the actual fundamental identity? Let's get that first before we push out the possibilities for the actual meat of the job just to bake a little more flavor into its whip cream.

Scholar's Aetherpool at this point is a bad enough example of an integral mechanic, and it'd still be better than what seems possible from or for Lilies as a similarly time- or cast-afforded resource system with specific spenders without solely stepping on its toes and/or trying to undo its past mistakes to make WHM a better SCH than SCH.

[Roeshel]

And with that, Benison becomes even less able to be held for when you may actually need a shield. Unless ALL shields are being removed from "pure"/"HoT" healers, you should probably assume that at least in Savage content there may be some need for a shield... to be used as an actual max eHP increase, rather than mere oGCD throughput.

Binding generation to Benison would further increase any opportunity costs for using it as an actual shield. I'd really rather not.



Assuming your Plenary would be an oGCD, it has the prior weave issue, but I otherwise don't hate this. That said, it still seems like you're lavishing inordinate attention upon decoration for a rat-eaten cake. Where's the actual fundamental identity? Let's get that first before we push out the possibilities for the actual meat of the job just to bake a little more flavor into its whip cream.

Scholar's Aetherpool at this point is a bad enough example of an integral mechanic, and it'd still be better than what seems possible from or for Lilies as a similarly time- or cast-afforded resource system with specific spenders without solely stepping on its toes and/or trying to undo its past mistakes to make WHM a better SCH than SCH.

Aren't the lilies not enough? Ast has cards, sch has fairy and whm gets white lilies behind which party buffs and utility are locked. What kind of identity do you propose for whm? I don't expect a complete revamp of the class, that would be the same as making another class.

Plenary is lily consuming GCD.

Benison in savage is used 99% of the cases on the tanks and if it was a pure heal it wouldn't have mattered much. And outside of savage there aren't many aoe that would kill you if you are on full hp but you are not shielded so where would you need that shield saved for? In savage, there is some need for shields but the shields need to be party-wide, not single-target, so benison is completely useless in that aspect already. I mean, I am rarely using it outside tankbusters because there is just no reason to use it, unless the tank's hp drops below 40% - 30%hp. I don't have many weave windows so using benison as an oGCD is my last priority. Giving whm-s an incentive to use that ogcd is how you get ppl to use it to optimize their gameplay.