White-mage is doomed - and why

[Semirhage]

I never said a unique weakness alone makes for a sufficiently unique job, nor that parity should not be required. "Homogeneity isn't the only solution to imbalance" =/= "Just leave shit imbalanced."

You can have parity without having complete homogeneity. You just fill the otherwise gaping hole with literally anything else of equivalent value in a competitive 8-man environment, rather than, as earlier proposed, turning essential skills (such as any and all forms of mitigation) into Role Actions.

Agreed, my one major point of caution is where people define "parity". I've seen quite a lot of suggestions on the forums over the years that aren't very good. And the reason they're not very good isn't because the suggestion isn't unique or theoretically an interesting bit of design; most of WHM's "suggestions" follow the same vein that the Square designers want for the job. Something that seems interesting or unique on paper but is actually something that the game's combat system cares nothing about. WHM could use self-healing potions faster. It could have a 5 second shorter cooldown on Sprint. Hell, it's historically been cursed with the "has higher healing potency" name (though that hasn't been true in a long time since AST stomps all over its healing potency outside Cure 3). All of those are unique, but they certainly aren't what I'd call advantages.

I'm particularly harping on this point because this is exactly what I mean when I say the massive community circular argument surrounding WHM never actually seeks to -solve- WHM's issues. When I've argued with AST and SCH mains, and they agree WHM needs to bring something unique to the table, they never, ever want it to have anything *useful*. Just something stupid that never translates into a real advantage, like more overhealing or whatever. Hell, technically at this point Holy's stun is an advantage, and you'll find no shortage of ASTs and SCHs kvetching that WHM shouldn't even have that.

In order for WHM to have something interesting or unique that's actually useful, the community would need to come off this vague unspoken assumption that AST and SCH "deserve" mandatory meta slots and WHM can only have "uniqueness" that never threatens them in the slightest.

[Grimoire-M]

Agreed, my one major point of caution is where people define "parity". I've seen quite a lot of suggestions on the forums over the years that aren't very good. And the reason they're not very good isn't because the suggestion isn't unique or theoretically an interesting bit of design; most of WHM's "suggestions" follow the same vein that the Square designers want for the job. Something that seems interesting or unique on paper but is actually something that the game's combat system cares nothing about. WHM could use self-healing potions faster. It could have a 5 second shorter cooldown on Sprint. Hell, it's historically been cursed with the "has higher healing potency" name (though that hasn't been true in a long time since AST stomps all over its healing potency outside Cure 3). All of those are unique, but they certainly aren't what I'd call advantages.

I'm particularly harping on this point because this is exactly what I mean when I say the massive community circular argument surrounding WHM never actually seeks to -solve- WHM's issues. When I've argued with AST and SCH mains, and they agree WHM needs to bring something unique to the table, they never, ever want it to have anything *useful*. Just something stupid that never translates into a real advantage, like more overhealing or whatever.

Lilybell is that in theory. The problem is the devs then shove something even better than that into the newest healers (Panhaima, Physis II on Sage, Macrocosmos on AST) for no good reason. Ostensibly it is to enforce that parity issue. If SCH wasn't already ahead of the curve relative to WHM (though it's pretty clear they're Third only by the grace of how far ahead they've been in the past) I would be bothered by them distinctly -NOT- getting some equivalent to that, but the fact is SE didn't even bother to figure out what SCH even needed (and I'd agree it -wasn't- a Lilybell equivalent), and it shows. The devs don't seem particularly interested in even -trying- to enforce any particular paradigm, just whatever looks the prettiest and easiest to juggle in testing, in order to get the casual players to say it's fine and then they tell the vets to shut up about the consequences. And the result is the most efficient tools and rDPS wins. Every. Damn. Time.

To be clear, I don't have a problem if only a particular subset of all healers have -something- for a given situation. My problem is that lack of attention to how those edge cases affect their overall state. After the trashpile that was AST for the last three expansions, they couldn't even be bothered to figure out how to make Sage -distinct- in a manner that actually matters for 80% of the kit. And the result is that last 20% makes it flat out better just from prior game knowledge. That's been happening to WHM since ARR.