I want the game designers to show us WHM-s how to play optimally without clipping

[Mortex]

This just in, wanting a job to be designed well is just min-maxing the fun out of it. Embrace bad design.

Healer Stockholm syndrome is strong.

It is really insane when you think about how many people actually defend this. Every job can clear with the basic ability they have the “casual” content. Every job when you trying get better rewards you feeling wise and number and kill time wise. The only jobs were it isn’t the case is healers. The moment you actually try to play healer better you are rewarded with a 1 button spam fest also in comparison too dps and tanks, healer do feel so much more clunky every expansion. Scholar had in stormblood a super smooth fairy doing everything when ogcd the moment you pressed the button, now it takes you too cast the ogcd and then 3 seconds for the fairy too use the ability, also the ghosting being a think that never did happen in stormblood, if you pressed the abilities in order they were used in that order. Astro always being bad for 2 raid tiers each expansion we had that if you think about it sounds like a inside joke from the square enix job design team that, only for it to be buffed close to the end of the expansion to outshine all. And whm not gaining anything cool at all since 4 years if you count assize getting 100 potency on both healing and dmg and 15 second cd reduce. It’s just feels like we are not being treated like players and more like idiots.

[BungleBear]

Also don’t forget the last strong buff whm got was in Stormblood in the form of a 15 second cast time decrease on assize that was over 2 years ago. Whm got so little in over 4 years it’s insane and too add even more insult it was forced to share some of it exclusive tools that were good with other healers in stormblood. So whm lost more good stuff then it gained and then they can’t even give blood lily a 300 potency buff too make it dmg neutral.

WHM got the revamped lily system in Shadowbringers, which largely addressed the main problem for WHM in Stormblood, i.e. being heavily punished in DPS for having to GCD heal. WHM went from being the lowest rDPS healer in Stormblood by a large margin to being the highest at the start of Shadowbringers. (AST and SCH got some buffs during the expansion, and now WHM is bottom again, but only by a small margin.)

[BungleBear]

Some thoughts on clipping your GCD.

In my opinion, it adds interest to the game if the optimal thing to do in some situations is something which is generally suboptimal. Sometimes you have to break rules.

Some examples. In general, it's optimal to use raid buffs like Trick Attack on cooldown, to maximise the number of uses during an encounter. But given fight timings, it is sometimes better to delay raid buffs. In general, it's optimal not to clip your dots by refreshing them early. But sometimes it's better to clip your dot, e.g. to snapshot within raid buffs. In general, it's inefficient to use AoE heals to heal a single target. But this can be efficient during extended periods with no AoE damage (e.g. fighting dungeon mobs). I'm sure there must be other examples.

I think it would be less interesting if optimal play could be reduced to rigid adherence to a set of simple rules ("use raid buffs on cooldown", "never clip your dot", etc.) without any exceptions. The exceptional cases where the right thing to do is break the rules provide opportunities for creative optimisation.

Now, it seems to me that clipping your GCD is another example of this. Although as a general rule, you shouldn't clip your GCD, as this may result in fewer GCDs used over the course of the encounter, there are exceptions when it's optimal to clip. But this isn't a bad thing. As with the other examples, having exceptions to the rules makes things more interesting.

[Mortex]

WHM got the revamped lily system in Shadowbringers, which largely addressed the main problem for WHM in Stormblood, i.e. being heavily punished in DPS for having to GCD heal. WHM went from being the lowest rDPS healer in Stormblood by a large margin to being the highest at the start of Shadowbringers. (AST and SCH got some buffs during the expansion, and now WHM is bottom again, but only by a small margin.)

I mean the revamped lily system still forces you too use a Gcd to heal. The only reason why whm became the most dmg strong healer is the fact that his single target dmg spell got the highest potency number by a margin and that it changed from earth based element too neutral element. And yes they fixed Lily’s from being absolutely horrible to still horrible but you can play with it. And also when you look for the best player healer dmg you have fights were astro does out dps whm by a mile just because astro has so much better possibilities. And I can tell you that whm mains that try to perfect optimization the job are fierce players that would stick too the job through hell and back. I ditched it for astro and I still love the job.

[BungleBear]

I mean the revamped lily system still forces you too use a Gcd to heal.

What's wrong with using a GCD to heal? It costs you DSP. But when you use a lily GCD, the lost DPS is partially refunded by Misery. This is a solution to the problem WHM had in Stormblood. Lacking oGCD heals, they were forced to GCD heal, which tanked their DPS. A different solution would have been to move WHM's healing more towards oGCDs, but this would have further homogenised the healing jobs. I actually think the new lily system is a fairly elegant and innovative solution to the problem. Game devs don't get enough credit.

[Mortex]

What's wrong with using a GCD to heal? It costs you DSP. But when you use a lily GCD, the lost DPS is partially refunded by Misery. This is a solution to the problem WHM had in Stormblood. Lacking oGCD heals, they were forced to GCD heal, which tanked their DPS. A different solution would have been to move WHM's healing more towards oGCDs, but this would have further homogenised the healing jobs. I actually think the new lily system is a fairly elegant and innovative solution to the problem. Game devs don't get enough credit.

The problem is that both other healer have the sufficient Ogcd healing tools and weave possibilities too use them and lose either almost no dmg or if so little it doesn’t matter and they also have group support that whm doesn’t has at all. I mean it isn’t that hard to start by giving blood lily 300-600 more potency as a decent replacement for missing ogcd. Whm only strength is dmg because astro and sch can heal almost more efficiently then whm and you can’t use his dmg potential cause you are kneecapped by bad job design. Even Blm is more Mobil then whm and that should tell you how bad he is.

[BungleBear]

The problem is that both other healer have the sufficient Ogcd healing tools and weave possibilities too use them and lose either almost no dmg or if so little it doesn’t matter

It's not obvious that SCH loses much less DPS than WHM by healing. Aetherflow heals lose DPS (except with Recitation). And fairy heals also lose DPS unless you have a spare Aetherflow stack to weave Energy Drain. SCH loses more DPS by weaving an oGCD heal under Ruin II (without ED) than WHM loses by using an Afflatus heal, once you take into about the DPS refunded by Misery. AST is clearly the healer with the most free healing.

[Kabooa]

The problem is that both other healer have the sufficient Ogcd healing tools and weave possibilities too use them and lose either almost no dmg or if so little it doesn’t matter and they also have group support that whm doesn’t has at all. I mean it isn’t that hard to start by giving blood lily 300-600 more potency as a decent replacement for missing ogcd. Whm only strength is dmg because astro and sch can heal almost more efficiently then whm and you can’t use his dmg potential cause you are kneecapped by bad job design. Even Blm is more Mobil then whm and that should tell you how bad he is.

The thing about just boosting Misery is it doesn't change how you 'optimize'.

It is currently utilized in a way that even the 'penalty' is still a gain. So flat improving Misery's potency just means you do the same thing for an even bigger gain.

Now, do white mages need that sort of boost? Probably, sure, but at the tippy top end of the game, you still have all the same problems. It might be 'neutral' to use it at +300, but it's also 'better' to use it as they do now, because they already squeeze gains out of it. Why would you settle back into neutral when the gain is just bigger?

[Semirhage]

Some thoughts on clipping your GCD.

In my opinion, it adds interest to the game if the optimal thing to do in some situations is something which is generally suboptimal. Sometimes you have to break rules.

Some examples. In general, it's optimal to use raid buffs like Trick Attack on cooldown, to maximise the number of uses during an encounter. But given fight timings, it is sometimes better to delay raid buffs. In general, it's optimal not to clip your dots by refreshing them early. But sometimes it's better to clip your dot, e.g. to snapshot within raid buffs. In general, it's inefficient to use AoE heals to heal a single target. But this can be efficient during extended periods with no AoE damage (e.g. fighting dungeon mobs). I'm sure there must be other examples.

I think it would be less interesting if optimal play could be reduced to rigid adherence to a set of simple rules ("use raid buffs on cooldown", "never clip your dot", etc.) without any exceptions. The exceptional cases where the right thing to do is break the rules provide opportunities for creative optimisation.

Now, it seems to me that clipping your GCD is another example of this. Although as a general rule, you shouldn't clip your GCD, as this may result in fewer GCDs used over the course of the encounter, there are exceptions when it's optimal to clip. But this isn't a bad thing. As with the other examples, having exceptions to the rules makes things more interesting.

I agree in theory, but I've also seen this done more elegantly on a DPS class.

Reprise is a fantastically designed ability. Hats off to that one. I *really* hope the design team leaves it alone in Endwalker. It allows you to move if you're stuck in Dualcast stutter step hell, which is great. At the low, low cost of 5 black and white mana. But it's also a damage gain. Yes, that's right, the math on its potency to recast ratio makes it a gain over using your spells. So why not use it constantly? Because compared to the melee burst combo, it's a loss. So you have to be careful, because if you use it so many times that it loses you a melee combo over the course of the fight, then you've actually lost damage for it.

It's a solution that encourages greed for the right reasons. Gives you a tempting, rewarding solution to a problem, but punishes you for indulging that temptation too much. And best of all, it doesn't require you to craptastically clip your GCD like a neanderthal White Mage, because playing smoothly is for classes with actual design behind them.

[Roeshel]

But the topic started with the specific intent of 'it feels bad to get precisely 12 glares in in a savage fight' before it broadened to the more general topic of 'WHM has been wronged' so it's like, what do you actually want a solution to?

I want the game designers to show us their real vision of optimal play for WHM because the current one is just bad and not really achievable.

Clipping is not the only problem. Not only is it not possible to achieve optimal play in the place where you need to play optimally but it also goes against what the class is meant to be doing. The way I see lily gauge now is as an effort of stitching the holes in the design of the class. A lily can reduce the damage potency loss when healing & provides WHM with the chance of weaving 2 oGCDs while giving time to move. All of that is available once every 30 seconds for a class that can weave 2 oGCDs without clipping and can move only when they reset Dia. The worse part is that in the perfect scenario a WHM would do more by not utilizing their job gauge at all. This only proves that the design of the class and the content are not in agreement.