WHM Revisions and Ideas

[Silver-Strider]

I would like to preface this by stating that I am not an end game raider. I haven't done the current raid tier nor have I even stepped foot in Ultimate content. I am here merely as a WHM player that has been here since ARR to express my concerns about my class and how I believe it can be improved upon. My goal with this post is to improve the QoL for WHM as a whole, while also improving upon its current toolkit in a way that will allow WHM to remain a powerful Healer choice for end game (and as I said, I'm not a Raider so please take my suggestions with a grain of salt).

1st off, rework and reintroduce old skills as low level version of our existing toolkit. Since the trait system can be utilized to enhance these skills at the appropriate levels, this not only prevents the issue of button bloat but it also enforces good learning habits for players to take with them as they level up the job. Skills like Fluid Aura, Stoneskin and Divine Seal (or Largesse for those of you that joined when SB was released) could all be reworked and reintroduced to be the low level version of Aqua Veil, Divine Benison and Temperance respectfully so that players learning to play with WHM are given their toolkits at a much earlier stage and learn how to handle them each as time goes on with each upgrade coming more naturally in the leveling process instead of just being handed new tools at the tail end of leveling and having a harder time of it because they haven't learned how to properly manage them at lower levels.

Secondly, the return of an AoE DoT. This is more a suggestion applicable to all healers really than simply WHM alone but I am suggesting just to complete our "rotation". If Healers can, at bare minimum, maintain a Single Target Nuke and Dot, why should our AoE rotation be any different? If the concern is that it will increase healer damage too much, couldn't they simply make the AoE DoT apply the same type of DoT as the single target version in a similar fashion to Thunder on BLM so as to prevent that from happening? This not only gives healers something else to do in AoE trash pulls apart from their AoE nuke skill but it alleviates the burden of these pulls by allowing the mobs to die quicker as well since now Healers won't have to manually apply their DoT on each individual target.

To my next point, I would like to address the Lily system. With the changes to cast times on our attack spells as well as the increase in potency coming in EW, the Lily system is currently looking to become obsolete just when it finally got a solid foundation in ShB. To address this issue, I would to expand the Lily System to remain relevant for WHM with the introduction of 2 new Afflatus abilities, Afflatus Reminiscence and Afflatus Tenacity as Lily Equivalent versions of Medica 2 and Cure 3 respectively. These abilities would cost 2 Lilies, as opposed to the single Lily cost of Afflatus Solace/Rapture so as to not only prevent overshadowing those skills but to also grant WHM a much less punishing usage of the Lily system by speeding up the process in utilizing Afflatus Misery at a much lower DPS discrepancy than it currently is. Since the current reason that WHM lacks raid utility is because they offer the most damage out of healers, which might no longer be true with the introduction of SGE, WHM needs more damage to remain relevant in the end game scene. With these 2 new skills, the damage lost by utilizing Lily Skills is greatly diminished and WHM can get that extra damage it so desperately needs.

On the topic of the Lily System, I would also advocate for Afflatus Rapture to be moved to level 58 so as to both be closer to acquisition as Solace as well as make up for the missing skill gap that is currently there, with Afflatus Reminiscence and/or Tenacity taking up the current level slot of 76 so as to prevent that gap from occurring.

Now, on to a more controversial topic, Lilybell and the Thin Air nerf. Since we don't really know what end game for EW is going to look like, its hard to gauge just how useful Lilybell is going to be but at a cursory glance, the skill is.....lacking. While the max potency of the skill is extraordinarily high, the condition of activation is less than ideal; Coupling the heal to the WHM taking damage is bound to cause problems rather than resolve them. The best times to utilize such a skill is on multi-hit Raid damage attacks, such as J-waves in TEA, but there hasn't been many instances that would require such an ability and Cure 3 was our answer to those moments when they did pop up but with the nerf to Thin Air making Cure 3 spam much more costly to do, it feels like Lilybell is meant to make up for it but really doesn't because as an oGCD ability, it doesn't gain the benefits of skills that boost the healing potency of abilities, such as Temperance or PI. A single Cure 3 with PI can heal for almost as much as 2 tics of Lilybell, meaning that we'd still have to utilize our GCD to healing in order to make up for that lower healing value so it kind of defeats the purpose. To make it even worse is that any wasted stacks left on Lilybell upon finishing its duration only restore half the potency. This does NOT warrant a 3 minute CD as it currently stands nor does it make up for the nerf to Thin Air.

So, I would like to suggest that Lilybell be added to the Lily System as well at a cost of 3 Lilies, a reduced CD of 90 seconds so that its technically available more often than 3 minutes, that it restores MP for the WHM as a secondary Lucid Dreaming and that the Lilybell heals on a fixed interval similarly to a Regen, going off every few seconds instead of relying on the WHM to be hit to proc. Now, I know the unlikelihood of a WHM holding on to their Lilies in Ultimate or even Savage content to even warrant saving them for something as meh as Lilybell but hear me out. By turning Lilybell into a GCD ability via the Lily System, it will now benefit from more of WHM's toolkit, namely Temperance and PI, meaning that the heal can become even more potent than what is currently being offered. Not only that, but costing 3 Lilies means that Afflatus Misery becomes a DPS gain for WHM since Lilybell will be able to grant instant access to the skill on its own. Finally, by adding the secondary MP restore to it, WHM can remain a strong progression healer due to having another means of getting more MP from its toolkit.

I know these suggestions won't address all of WHM's pain points but I hope they at least get some more ideas and talks going in regards to the future of WHM. Please feel free to criticize as I am very interested in discussing alternative opinions on the matter.

[inhaledcorn]

To address this issue, I would to expand the Lily System to remain relevant for WHM with the introduction of 2 new Afflatus abilities,

Honestly, I don't think that's totally necessary. I think if they just make Thin Air a skill that applies the Lily effect to any of WHM's healing skills, you get the same thing you want without increasing the button bloat. Basically, new Thin Air would be like this:

Thin Air

Your next healing spell will cost 0 MP.

Additional Effect: When the spell is cast, nourishes the Blood Lily

Healing Gauge cost: 1 Lily

Additionally, I believe I've already discussed with you why Lilybell costing lilies is a bad idea. Since Lilybell is an oGCD, using it on cooldown will always be a dps gain for nourishing the Blood Lily. On top of that, making it cost three Lilies, as per your suggestion, means that every other Lily action is basically unviable.

[Silver-Strider]

Honestly, I don't think that's totally necessary. I think if they just make Thin Air a skill that applies the Lily effect to any of WHM's healing skills, you get the same thing you want without increasing the button bloat. Basically, new Thin Air would be like this:

Additionally, I believe I've already discussed with you why Lilybell costing lilies is a bad idea. Since Lilybell is an oGCD, using it on cooldown will always be a dps gain for nourishing the Blood Lily. On top of that, making it cost three Lilies, as per your suggestion, means that every other Lily action is basically unviable.

There's 2 ways I'm reading your Thin Air suggestion.

1) Thin Air now costs a lily to use. That would be a massive nerf to Thin Air cause then I would always have to hold on to a Lily on the off chance someone dies or I have to pay the full price for a rez.

or

2) I need a Lily to cast my next healing spell to nourish the Blood Lily and if I don't have 1, I'm out of luck towards making progress for Misery, and even if I do have a lily to burn, it wouldn't result in a DPS gain because I would still need to cast 2 other Lily skills as well as Misery vs the 4 Glare casts that Misery is competing with.

Neither option resolves the issue with the Lily system being a DPS loss for WHM and creates new problems instead.

Now, I do concede that Lilybell costing 3 lilies can potentially make the other Lily Abilities unviable, in which case, Lilybell's CD can be adjusted so that it isn't always available, giving the other Lily skills a time and place for usage; Hell, with how much I packed into Lilybell, it would actually warrant the 3 minute CD that its currently looking to be strapped with and I appreciate giving me that insight for it.

However, the primary reason I suggest putting it on both the Lily System and on the GCD is because it doesn't interact with WHM's toolkit in its current form. It doesn't gain benefits from Temperance or PI and unless Asylum is up with it, the 400 potency heal tics just aren't enough to justify a 3 minute CD. Not only that but it actively goes against normal healer protocol and encourages the WHM to take damage so that they can sit there and cast Glare more since the Lilybell will heal the party; IT'S THE LEYLINES OF WHM!!!! I can already see WHM's trying desperately to squeeze out the most damage possible while Lilybell is up, siting in an easily avoidable AoE just so that they can cast Glare and that is a problem. Lilybell in its current form is a TERRIBLE ability, from either a DPS perspective or a healer one. It needs to be changed and I'm entirely open to any and all suggestions to do so.

[Hozomeen]

I really think the current Lilybell version looks very strong, and am confused that you think it's lacking.

Even if only one of the stacks pops, that's 1200 AoE healing potency. Isn't that already extraordinarily powerful? On mechanics like J Waves or Terminal, Lilybell pretty much provides 5 uses of Indomitability. The issue I see is that damage and healing propagation could lead to the heal being triggered before everyone in the group has taken the damage that triggered the heal when it hit the WHM. But from the media tour footage it doesn't look like that will happen.

[Sebazy]

Lilybell's potential throughput is absolutely vast in the right situation. As you say, Timult style AoEs will be it's bread and butter.

It has two issues the way I see it though. The first is that it's dependant on the WHM taking damage to heal anything. Hello World style mechanics where damage is frequent but quite specific and potentially not on the healers will be a problem for it. It has the potential to end up being a 15 second Earthly Star that you can't pop early in the worst case.

Which leads me onto the second issue. Why is it a 3 minute CD given that weakness? Really it should be 2 minutes. Sure, against J Waves it's more powerful than Macrocosmos, but those tend to be once a fight style AoEs. For more typical AoE damage, Macrocosmos is just plain more flexible and on a significantly shorter cool down.

[Semirhage]

That's a common bit of design weirdness with WHM's cooldowns. Ooooo, it's 20% more potent than X from another healer that's cool! Oh it has three times the cooldown. That's dumb, that means it's actually less impactful 90% of the time. Nevermind.

[Acece]

Whm should be able to manually use Lilly bell, ast can pop microcosmos early idk why whm can't either. Also the CD should def be 2 min in line with microcosmos.

[Naoki34]

WHM Revisions Idea

No, but, I don't know if you're aware that it's already done, Yoshi-P isn't going to consult you for WHM gameplay in Endwalker.

[Silver-Strider]

I really think the current Lilybell version looks very strong, and am confused that you think it's lacking.

Even if only one of the stacks pops, that's 1200 AoE healing potency. Isn't that already extraordinarily powerful? On mechanics like J Waves or Terminal, Lilybell pretty much provides 5 uses of Indomitability. The issue I see is that damage and healing propagation could lead to the heal being triggered before everyone in the group has taken the damage that triggered the heal when it hit the WHM. But from the media tour footage it doesn't look like that will happen.

I have 2 main issues with current Lilybell.

My main issue with the skill is how it procs. It requires the WHM to take damage, meaning its only useful in unavoidable damage situations, in theory. If order for WHM to remain as a high damaging healer, it needs to be able to utilize its few oGCD abilities as effectively as possible in order to gain damage so that its raid contributions remain somewhat balanced out with the other healers. My worry with Lilybell is that, in order for WHMs to use it more than as a 15 second Horoscope, it will encourage WHMs to take avoidable damage so that they can focus on DPSing instead, hence why I called it WHM's Leylines. That's not a healthy direction to go with for this skill. If it was just an oGCD that I could trigger on the fly like Earthly Star, so that I don't have to take damage for it to work, then it would be less problematic.

Another issue I have with it is that, with the nerf to Thin Air, Cure 3 is now just too expensive to reliably spam in those situations that would warrant its usage. Thin Air with Cure 3+PI helped not only to alleviate WHM's long standing MP issues that its had since ARR but it also gave WHM the ability to power thru mechanics that required stick healing thresholds to be met to survive. The answer, it would seem, would be Lilybell since now we can just replace Cure 3 with Rapture/Medica 1+2 to make up the difference in potency that Cure 3+PI once had but Lilybell being a level 90 skill means we can't utilize in content that once was just a few Cure 3's away from completing, so J-waves in TEA just became a more daunting task for WHM to contend with than before. Not only that but, other than Rapture, Medica 1+2 have a longer cast time than Cure 3, meaning weaving in an Assize or Asylum will now cause us to clip more heavily into our GCD in order to utilize those tools, making it less effective overall.

Then there's the overhealing, the lack of synergy with other parts of WHM's toolkit and the lack of interaction with the lily system, which are all just personal nitpicks really but I still feel it's wasted potential for growth that I would like to rectify. Lilybell has potential, I see that much but not in its current state.

[inhaledcorn]

<snip>

Thin Air has already been massively nerfed. The only thing this changes is that you can't use Thin Air on Glare, Holy, or, yes, Raise. The other healers have to eat the Raise cost. You just have to either deal with it, stop dps from being dumb, or leave them on the floor to think about what they did. You want Afflatus Medica II and Afflatus Cure III. This basically does the same thing without adding to the button bloat.

The problem right now with Misery is that it's not DPS neutral. This is easily fixed by making the potencies equal to 3 casts Glare/Glare III (when the trait is granted upgrading Glare to Glare III). This also leads to some interesting optimization since using Misery under buff windows essentially gets you two extra casts of Glare.

From what we know currently about Lilybell: 1) it's cooldown is absurdly long and 2) the WHM has no control over it. If it was 90s and the WHM could manually trigger the skill, Lilybell would be an extremely powerful and effective healing tool. Heck, I would even throw in a duration buff to 30s. Now, you have plenty of chances to plan out how it's used. WHM doesn't need this sort of thing on the GCD. What it needs is more oGCD healing options, especially since Assize isn't really used as a healing tool, and WHM now has more convenient weaving windows.

Speaking of Assize, Assize should be split into two buttons: Assize (for the heal) and Banish (with the damage and mp regen). This leaves Assize to be used as its intended purpose but still leaves WHM with a good damage ability with some MP regeneration to be used for damage windows. Honestly, I would give WHM Fluid Aura back with 2 charges on a 45s timer and just give it the damage aspect. No knockback or Bind. Again, more damage options on WHM since it's supposed to be the "my damage is my damage utility" healer like Sage. While, yes, this is increasing button bloat, something I criticized about adding new Afflatus skills, but healers want more damage options, and I think this fills that idea while still fitting within WHM's identity.