How to fix WHM and AST

[tadashi_3]

White Mage and Astrologian feel clunky to play right now. But fixing them would be extremely easy.

White Mage

Ability changes:
Make Afflatus Solace and Afflatus Rapture oGCD, similar to Lustrate / Indomitability
Increase Afflatus Misery potency so that it is not a DPS loss, and/or add a secondary healing effect

QoL changes:
Glare/Holy III -> Glare/Holy II (this is just really offputting)

Astrologian

Ability changes:
The card system is broken...
Make Draw change to the card that is drawn, so that the same button is pressed again to cast the card (Play is a useless waste of a button)
Get rid of Clarifying Draw effect, its overcomplicated for no reason, allow Draw to be used on a 30s cooldown like it was before
A big problem is that there is no way to use up a card that you don't want...
Make Minor Arcana "convert" a card you drew but don't want, get rid of Crown Play (another useless waste of a button)
These small changes would make the cards feel streamlined. Right now, they feel clunky, too many buttons, and there is no flow of using up cards.

QoL changes:
The Earthly Star ground placement marker is HUGE. The big range is great, but the entire floor turning orange when I place the star, is not great. Make the marker the size of the star itself (comparable to the size of Shukuchi's gound marker), once the star is placed, it's easy to see it's range from the particle effects.

[Saffron2357]

uhhhh wait if the afflatus heals are ogcd misery no longer needs a potency increase since now it's automatically a dps gain, on account of ogcds not using up your gcd. right? or am I forgetting something?

[ty_taurus]

I think keeping lilies as GCD actions is ultimately a better option for WHM and adjusting Misery's potency to be neutral rather than a loss. The reason for this is because you are now encouraged to use your Lilies when you need healing rather than using Glare as much as WHM does which is exactly something that many players would like to see. A lot of people may not mind having DPS be a part of healing, but hate that Glare is the overwhelming majority of what WHM casts.

It also helps keep WHM as a low APM job which I think a lot of players also are happy with. It's really more about giving WHM more love in its value as well as its priority of tools that it relies on. Another option originally pitched by Sarixis was "Diacloud" where your regen ticks could proc Aero/Dia to apply more upfront damage--essentially stealing the concept from BLM. It gives WHM more mobility, more damage, more rewards for maintaining your regens, and more choice with their casts. This picked up popularity here on the forums because it's honestly a great way to add more depth without necessarily changing WHM much or making it harder.

[Shurrikhan]

Make Afflatus Solace and Afflatus Rapture oGCD, similar to Lustrate / Indomitability
Increase Afflatus Misery potency so that it is not a DPS loss, and/or add a secondary healing effect

These are redundant. By making the generators for Afflatus Misery oGCD, you've made Misery itself free potency per 90 seconds (at a value of its potency minus your best filler's), to a net 393 extra potency per minute.

That's nearly enough to fix WHM's rDPS gap (440 extra ppm would be roughly equal to a 5% rDPS bump), varying based on how near the fight ends to your most recent Misery (and Assize) usage.

Get rid of Clarifying Draw effect, its overcomplicated for no reason, allow Draw to be used on a 30s cooldown like it was before

Going back to how it was before means that your effective cooldown is longer; any time you'd spend placing the card is time Draw wouldn't spend cooling.

A big problem is that there is no way to use up a card that you don't want...
Make Minor Arcana "convert" a card you drew but don't want, get rid of Crown Play (another useless waste of a button)

These I'd be fine with so long as you didn't revert the cooling procedure on Draw/Play, since that'd mean you could bank the damage/healing of Lord/Lady for up to 30 seconds, which would be plenty sufficient. Otherwise, you need to be able to load the effect immediately via Minor Arcana (which would then require you to separately use Crown Play, though its button could be made to replace Minor Arcana's once an effect is loaded).

[Shurrikhan]

Personally, I'd rather not make any of the Afflatus skills oGCD. So long as the potencies of their opportunity costs are superior, having them on the GCD is superior for all but burst healing, as the GCD provides add mobility and weave space. Rather than using a free Misery per 90 seconds (with progress theretoward being wasted if the fight doesn't last just long enough for a trio of Lilies to be spent and Misery released), I'd rather just buff Glare and Dia directly: 320 potency Glare III, up from 310, and 180 direct potency, up from 60, on Dia. Together, those would net about a 5.3% increase to raw potency per minute while also increasing the general usefulness of Dia (and decreasing its relative penalty for early reuse).

That said, we do need a way to not waste Afflatus potential in fights that won't end just after a 90-second mark. That means allowing Misery to be used at any number of Lilies' generation, rather than only every 3 Lilies. To do this, we need only cause every Lily consumed to build a Blood Lily. Misery could then be used to consume up to 3 Blood Lilies at a time, with --once upgraded by a lv82 trait-- 600 potency dealt for 1 Lily consumed, 940 for 2, and 1280 for 3. That'd make it DPS-neutral at 3 even in Endwalker while allowing one to sacrifice up to 40 potency for up to 2 extra mobile and fully weaveable GCDs per minute. WHM would thus reach up to 4.7 mobile available GCDs per average minute without loss (or 6 with only ~53 potency lost per minute), up from a practical limit of 2 (with up to 4.7 if not wasting ~250 potency per minute).

To fill WHM's other needs, just reduce its MP costs via some new trait and fix Liturgy of the Bell to make it competitive with Panhaima. And done; its capacities and functionality are good to go. It'd then merely still lack an involved identity (though that's largely true of the other healers, too, at this point).

[Hyperia]

<Humor> Merge AST & WHM into White Astrologen and merge SCH and SGE into Sage-Scholar, make them incompatible with the same job and ta da... meta fixed, we now have 2 healers per raid, one regen and one shield. </Humor>

In all seriousness, these are good changes for the most part, I hope the devs read this.

[ty_taurus]

Here's a repost of something I said elsewhere since we needed another WHM thread...

I'm going to throw down this card: Making the lilies OGCD heals is objectively worse than just buffing Misery's potency for every type of WHM player. Here's why...

1. Many players like that WHM is a slower-paced healer, whether it's because they're not as skilled enough to play the other healers, or sometimes because they physically have a hard time with higher APM jobs like AST due to conditions like arthritis. While WHM is hilariously bad in almost every way compared to the other healers, being a low APM job actually is a unique aspect of the job and could be utilized to great effect to make it a job that's slower but more methodological.
2. Currently, if you're reapplying your DoTs on time every time, that equates to 3 GCDs every 90 seconds leaving you with potentially 33 Glare III casts. You may be forced to heal instead for a few of those, but emphasis on the word "forced." Ideally, you will not have to use your GCD heals, and thus are aiming for 33 Glare IIIs every 90 seconds. If Misery is made DPS neutral, then lily heals are no longer a deterrent and can be used interchangeably with Glare III at no potency loss (Potentially for a gain if you time your Miseries with buff windows). This means theoretically 4 less Glare III casts per 90 second window if you're not over capping on lilies. Casting less Glare III is something everyone wants.
3. It makes lilies competitive with OGCD healing on other healers in the same way that Pneuma is. It's not OGCD, but because Pneuma is DPS neutral, it can therefore be used interchangeably with OGCDs. The same would be true for Lilies if Misery were buffed, resolving your concern.

[Liam_Harper]

While I agree oGCD lilies are bad, APM isn't really an issue because players who struggle with high APM and have conditions like arthritis generally aren't keeping 100% GCD uptime or doing harder content. They'll just press the buttons at whichever pace they're able and that's fine for everything below Savage.

I disagree with designing specifically classes for people who can't handle more than one button press every 2-3 seconds. Remember they've already designed the content to cater for that type of player. Everything from MSQ, dungeons, Normal mode and even EX has extremely low or no dps requirements at all and is intentionally designed so every type of player can experience the game (which is great). There just isn't a need to butcher the classes too. Even if WHM had a bit more APM when optimized, you don't need to optimize it in Normal content and nothing changes there.

Slightly off topic but I'm tired of the concept that WHM must be the "simple" class with no skill ceiling when we already have accessibility built into the content.

[SieyaM]

There were ways to dump unwanted cards before EW. Lord and lady use to play a card without generating a seal, and before that even there was royal road, which would burn a card to modify the next card you played. It is really only recently that they have not offered a way to use cards you may not want.

[elioaiko]

I'd rather they make Misery DPS neutral simply because WHM still needs a way to move in long mobile mechanics.

Also add a second charge to Assize.

Honestly for AST just give us ShB AST back at this point, the cards somehow feel 100% useless without it being attached to Divination. Astrodyne is a neat idea but it's only for yourself? AST's entire gig is party buffing, I'd rather they make Astrodyne give you MP regen regardless of seals, regen on active tank for two and a 25s Balance for a random DPS.